Scenario: Acceptable US Casualties Against 3rd World Armies

[IronDuke99]

Speaking as a Pom who lives in Aussie, I agree with what Suhiir said.

Modern (ie, certainly 2000 onwards) western censors, firepower and body armour all tend to reduce casualties against 3rd world enemies. (although body armour sometimes prevents death rather than wounding).

These days in a modern Western military with body armour, and helo evacuation of casualties, excellent medical services, etc if you lose 10 men as casualties chances are only one or two will die.

Civilians, including the media, tend to take much more note of military deaths than they do of military wounded (which, maybe, is partly why we end up with so many homeless/in problems ex military, but I digress).

In game terms a casualty is a casualty, without regard to being more or less slightly wounded up to atomised.

No Commander likes casualties to his own men. Every Commander, worth his salt, strives to minimize his own sides casualties in his plan, while still carrying out his assigned job of work. Battalion Commanders and above tend, these days, to be very conscious of the media, while those below them are much less so.

My own view on modern, COIN/terrorist/guerilla, game scenario design would be that an objective would have to be very vital for it to give victory, in an offensive operation, to a Western military that suffered, at most, anything over 25% casualties. Defensive ops would have different rules, since being overrun, against a lot of these types, would almost certainly result in 100% unpleasant death and the spoiling of ones whole day.

Scenario designers need to make maximum use of assets like, night vision devices (ie, a Western military should be able to spot the enemy considerably better than the enemy spots them at night or in poor visibility) attack helos, spotter drones, close air support and artillery, etc.

Use Preferences and increase a Western forces Search (to help spotting) and also Infantry Toughness (to allow for body armour). I also tend to slightly raise Western and/or lower terrorist/guerilla Hitting as well since many of them -not all- seem to have poor shooting skills.

My view is that, in general, the game is pretty good at showing peer on peer warfare, such as a Russian or Chinese battle group v a US or British battle group (that is always going to be bloody) but you have to tweek it a bit to be more accurate for COIN ops and then give the western side fairly strict parameters to win the game.

[IronDuke99]

PS
Please remember Western soldiers are relatively expensive (although none of them are paid enough) and there are fewer and fewer of them.

In my day (1980's) the British Armed Forces (Royal Navy including Royal Marines, British Army and Royal Air Force) was over 325,000 strong.

Today the British Armed Forces are only about 187,000 strong, in my view, at least, 50,000 short of what is required.

(That compares to to over 393,000 prior to WWI and over 384,000 prior to WWII, although the vital RN strength was relatively much higher in both cases).

US, and other Western, forces are also all thinner on the ground than they once were...

[shahadi]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

Use Preferences and increase a Western forces Search (to help spotting) and also Infantry Toughness (to allow for body armour). I also tend to slightly raise Western and/or lower terrorist/guerilla Hitting as well since many of them -not all- seem to have poor shooting skills.

Regarding Preferences, do have numbers in mind to affect the changes you suggest? I'd appreciate the numbers.

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[IronDuke99]

Originally Posted by shahadi

Regarding Preferences, do have numbers in mind to affect the changes you suggest? I'd appreciate the numbers.

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For post C. 2000 games, for what little it is worth, I tend to increase the Western forces spotting to 150% and and infantry toughness to 140%, while increasing hitting to 110-120%. If terrorist/guerilla forces have any armour I will also reduce that armour's toughness by 10-20% to simulate poor maintenance,lack of spares etc. This latter is especially important with more advanced tank designs with advanced armour.

As I said, this goes along with setting the Western forces low, ie, 25% maximum in most cases, casualties to gain victory.

[Imp]

Originally Posted by IronDuke99

For post C. 2000 games, for what little it is worth, I tend to increase the Western forces spotting to 150% and and infantry toughness to 140%, while increasing hitting to 110-120%. If terrorist/guerilla forces have any armour I will also reduce that armour's toughness by 10-20% to simulate poor maintenance,lack of spares etc. This latter is especially important with more advanced tank designs with advanced armour.

As I said, this goes along with setting the Western forces low, ie, 25% maximum in most cases, casualties to gain victory.

I tried these settings are you aware quite how powerful they are, as above using 120% to hit.
Only rough as did not set experience to 60 for each unit just switched off training & set experience to 80 for the USA & 63 for the enemy which was also USA using identical units.
Played both sides for a few turns with the following observations.

Side A exp 80 & boosted prefrences.
Side B exp 63 standard prefrences. (3rd world tend to be 60 to 65 experience.

17% average experince diffrencealready effects morale search hit etc.
80 experince attempt to dodge shots fairly often, 63 hardly ever.
80 gain more shots in 3rd & 4th slots need to be higher to gain overal shots so not much diffrence both have same number of shots for rifle & LMG.
80 will also normaly recover quicker & stay in the battle longer.

1) Did not notice much diffrence due to increased toughness though it was the thing I looked at the least, may benefit more if weapon is size zero but did not study much.

2) Spotting big diffrence on occasion side A moving 2 hexes could spot a stationary side B unit first.
If both units moving at 2 hexs A would spot B 3-4 hexes earlier. Big advantage massive if was defending.

This does not take into account side B is more likely to be suppresed as takes longer to recover & USA would be far more likely to be able to bring support weapons or vehicles to bear.
Also doesnt allow for units vision 15 or 20 vs zero helping with minor vision hindrances due to terrain & invisible smoke etc, this simulation units were identical.

3) Hitting realy dont think needs modifying, my guess the more accurate the weapon the bigger diffrence this makes.
To hit fully stationary units with accurate weapons (above6 accuracy) is often 50% better for side A

Bradley (bushmaster firing) Abrams firing at range 30 hit chances at range 30 vs identical target.
Side A around 90% vs 60% for side B.
Infantry vs infantry or above vehicles vs infantry the diffrence is not quite so severe but still a third sometimes more, depends on range.
MMG at range side A is twice as accurate as side B 6 vs 3%

I would say if using these settings side A needs there unit costs increased quite considerably especially if they are allowed the luxury of time to make best use of the adjustments.

[shahadi]

I wonder if the game has taken into account variations in quality of armies with adjustments to formation experience and morale modifiers in the Mobhack utility.

I am hesitant to publish scenarios relying on changes to Preferences as it is cumbersome to manage, switching back and form between default and a particular scenario settings.

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[jp10]

Originally Posted by shahadi

I am hesitant to publish scenarios relying on changes to Preferences as it is cumbersome to manage, switching back and form between default and a particular scenario settings.

I am building a series of scenarios right now where I am using edits to unit's Experience, Morale, Speed, Ammo...etc to reflect the historical factors of leadership,supply, situational awareness and reaction and for one group, their orders to defend their location only. This is allowing me to simulate a varying quality of units without using a global preference setting outside of default.

[Imp]

Originally Posted by shahadi

I wonder if the game has taken into account variations in quality of armies with adjustments to formation experience and morale modifiers in the Mobhack utility.

I am hesitant to publish scenarios relying on changes to Preferences as it is cumbersome to manage, switching back and form between default and a particular scenario settings.

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The game does take this into account if I understand you & you have training switched on.
A countries experience & morale varies across the time frame according to training.
Elite units get formation specific increases.
Some units like second line get formation specific reductions.

No expert but experience effects many factors of a troops capabilites including its secondary command options, number of shots, accuracy, avoidance, vision.
Set some infantry to 120 exp. & put them against 60 exp. infantry to make the diffrences obvious.
If weapons are the same & exp diffrence is quite large the more experienced unit is better off trying to fight at long to mid range to capitalise on its accuracy & possibly extra shots & better spoting abilities.
High experince units though also are far more capable in terrain where they bump heads, more likely to spot the unit even if surpressed, hardier & often devasting firepower.

As you can adjust morale seperatly its not hard to produce the type of unit your after.
Poorly trained fanatics for example would be low experience but high morale.
You can edit individuals but just copying the formation & applying modifiers to it is quicker.

A good example of experince albeit in WWll is Russia vs Germany
Germany starts with a good experince advantage which swings through the war to the Russians favour.
At the start Russian tanks are inacurate & get very few shots with which to increase accuracy due to staying on target. Their is a Fair bit of engage & pray involved, later Russian experince increases help offset the generaly more accurate German tanks making life far easier overall.

Worse equipment so long as it can do the job is not a major problem in good hands but combined with poor troop quality its a huge problem. Experince (training) is probably therefore more important than technology till technology has an advantage that makes the other systems fairly redundant so long as you use the right tactics.

[Suhiir]

Originally Posted by shahadi

Regarding Preferences, do have numbers in mind to affect the changes you suggest? I'd appreciate the numbers.

I'll frequently adjust Searching for 1st World forces to 150% when fighting vs 3rd World.

Depending on which 3rd World forces we're talking about I may adjust their Hitting to 60-80%, for say Vietnam I wouldn't adjust at all, for some Arabic forces I'll reduce their accuracy as many make extensive use of the "unaimed spray and pray" method.

I almost never adjust Tank Toughness, they may not be as reliable but that doesn't effect their armor.

I often increase Infantry Toughness to 120% to represent body armor, tho I sometimes reduce opposition Infantry Toughness to 80% instead if I'm dealing with say Korean War human wave type situations.