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Krotos said:
The point is, men like Meyer may even be able to rally the dead, but the average officer or NCO is not made of similar metal. In SPMBT, all of the squad leaders appear to be Kurt Meyer clones.
Krotos
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Agreed, such "super rally" leaders should be few and far inbetween, probably best represented with high leadership quotients for specific individuals rather than overall troop quality ratings. The default infantry toughness in SPMBT does seem high, but it's also a double-edged sword in that if you're playing a Western nationality, your own troops should be more prone to look after their casualties than the game's infantry toughness quotient may suggest. In the old GDW map-and-counters game called "Phase Line Smash", the designers made an interesting note regarding disruption (their version of pinned/retreat, which means Coalition units can't attack after taking hits until auto-recovery next turn):
"So how come the Coalition units are such a bunch of babies with no combat ability when disrupted, and the (Iraqis) are hairy-chested warriors who keep fighting even when they're down? Most of this is due to the differences in scale, Coalition battalions vs. (Iraqi) brigades, but also because when a Coalition unit is hit, it does stop as soon as possible to take care of casualties and to regroup before continuing the fight. A diagnostic feature of (Coalition) units is that they will stop and focus their attention on the care of even one casualty in the middle of a firefight. And don't think it's because they're a bunch of babies. It is that very same team cohesion that makes them such excellent fighters. Soldiers don't fight very well when they know no one gives a damn. On the other hand, you have the Iraqis, who didn't fight very well, because they know no one did, and were defeated before they started. At the same time, their command and control was so godawful that they might as well keep fighting when disrupted, they're not that much more in the dark now than they were before, anyway. Coalition units used sophisticated doctrines and operations that did require them to stop, regroup, and sort things out before continuing. And their terrifying effectiveness when doing so proves the wisdom of taking an extra moment to do it right" - probably Dave Nilsen (parenthetical paraphrasing for clarity)
Basileus