View Full Version : Suggested Changes to RT TO&E
I'd like to put forth the following suggestions for some changes in the Raging Tiger TO&E:
CHANGES TO RAGING TIGER DISMOUNT TO&E
1) Change all instances in database referencing Squad to read (fire)Team
2) For US at least- change all instances of M16 to XM-8, except for Spec Ops Teams- either M4 or add 'shorty' XM-8 to database
3) Changes:
Dismount Rifle Squad (now Dismount Rifle Team)
Rifle, XM-8 (x3)
GL, XM-320 (x1)
MG, XM-8 SAW (x1)
Rocket, AT-4 (x1)
Dismount Scout Team
Rifle, XM-8 (x2)
Dismount Stinger Team
Rifle, XM-8 (x2)
SAM, FIM-92 Stinger
COLT Team
Rifle, XM-8 (x2)
DRT Team
Rifle, AK-74 (x2)
Engineer Squad US/ROK (now Engineer Team US/ROK)
Rifle, XM-8 (x3)
GL, XM-320 (x1)
MG, XM-8 SAW (x1)
Rocket, AT-4 (x1)
M60 MG Team (now M240 MG Team) or OCSW MG Team
Rifle, XM-8 (x1)
MG, M-60 (M240) 7.62mm (x1) or MG, OCSW .50 cal (x1)
Mortar Team M-57 (60mm)
Rifle, AK-74 (x3)
SK Fireteam (Mech Dismount)
Rifle, XM-8 (x3)
GL, XM-320 (x1)
MG, XM-8 SAW (x1)
Rocket, AT-4 (x1)
Spec Ops A Team
Rifle, XM-8 (x3) or M-4 Carbine (x3) or 'shorty' XM-8 (x3)
GL, XM-320 (x1) or M-203 GL (x1)
MG, XM-8 SAW (x1)
Rocket, AT-4 (x1)
US Mortar Team (60mm)
Rifle, XM-8 (x3)
US Mortar Team (81mm)
Rifle, XM-8 (x4)
Weapons Squad (US)
Redundant- not required in database
Why these changes?
Commonality- as US forces are predominantly equipped with the M-16 now, the same should hold true for whatever the replacement would be by the year 2010, so replace all instances of the M-16 with the XM-8. Also, being the modern, industrialized ally that South Korea is (and hopefully still will be by 2010), I can see ROK forces having an upgrade equivalent to the XM-8.
Too much gear- Specialty teams, for example DRT's and COLT's, have enough stuff to carry without the burden of extra weapons, especially AT weapons. Also, these weapons are contrary to their primary functions.
Larger mortar crews- crews have been increased by one because I felt the number of men currently represented would not be enough to carry the tube, baseplate, and bipod, as well as minimal ammo. In the case of the 81mm mortar, I'm not convinced four men are enough, but it fits the game better with regard to the number of teams carriers can hold. These crews are meant to operate away from their carriers, so they must be able to carry their own gear when necessary.
Weapons Squad redundant- having separate mortar, MG, SAM, and AT teams make this designation unnecessary.
I generally agree. I think it would be preferable for heavy weapons to be segregated into their own teams rather than integrated into a gaggle of riflemen.
As for the 81mm mortar, I assumed 5 men in my DB; I think this is about the minimum needed to carry a useful ammo load. I only gave them 30 rounds, and even so I feel sorry for the bastards. Considering that a single round weighs close to 10lbs, and adding the weight of the mortar, you're talking about 70lbs per man before any individual equipment.
I know the USMC has 6 men in an 81mm squad, and that's with an HMMWV available to lug it. Three of them do nothing but lug ammo.
Scenario-wise, you can assume there is a larger stockpile, but that would make the mortars immobile for all practical purposes.
--- Kevin
On reflection, yeah, six for the 81mm and four for the 60mm teams seems reasonable to me
3 is actual TOE for US 60mm teams. Mortar + 30 rounds comes in around 55 lbs per man, still lighter than the 81mm guys.
5 is TOE for airborne 81mm squads. However, they have an HMMWV. I doubt they're in the habit of manpacking more than a few hundred meters.
--- Kevin
How often would a 60mm team be strictly on foot? More often than not? Or...?
How often would a 60mm team be strictly on foot? More often than not? Or...?
I would say practically always. They have no organic vehicle support themselves, and typically neither does the rifle company of which they are part. In general, I would say however the company as a whole moves, so goes their mortars. If they move by truck, it is because the whole company has been picked up.
In the airborne rifle company, at least, the mortar section is six guys with two mortars. Officially, the two NCOs carry carbines and the gunners and ammo bearers carry 9mm pistols. Obviously, not much good in a firefight.
--- Kevin
CPangracs
23 Jun 04, 17:01
Any changes to my database will need to either be done by the user or may be addressed in a future build of the game if/when other issues are found after release. The final build is "in the can".
I will stress again that this database is basically a "future" glimpse, based on equipment either real or imagined by someone in the military development community. You both have pointed out a couple of valid points, however your speculation on how things will look in 2010 is no better than mine for reasons I won't go into right now. The fact that you can build any kind of database you want in Raging Tiger, ATF, or any other ProSIM Company product should provide you impetus to create your own or modify the stock database.
Nice ideas, though. Did either of you request to be on the beta team? These problems you have with the database could have easily been addressed 3 weeks ago.;)
I have a sneaking suspicion that you will enjoy RT very much despite what you perceive as drawbacks to the "authenticity" of a database which is based on a Task Force that doesn't exist. Every one of the Beta testers, and even Pat Proctor love the game, and I think we have both been very forthcoming and responsive to the desires of our intended audience.
Again, Abe Lincoln said it best...:p
BTW, have either of you tried the game with the picture icons on instead of the Operational Symbols? Play it a cou[ple times, and you may begin to enjoy it!
Please, keep the suggestions coming, and don't read into this post. I have no problem with valid, constructive criticism, however, for the sake of meeting deadlines and trying to get all of this finished before Origins, I have to set a cut-off point somewhere.
Now, I need to go take a nap before I drive all night to Columbus, OH!
See you on the high ground!
Curt
Pat Proctor
23 Jun 04, 19:56
I expect this to be the most heavily MODded ProSIM game yet. Not, neccessarily, because it is missing something, but because it IS a purely what if game. Every what if generates three more what ifs.
I look forward to playing all of the custom scenarios and databases :)
My main impetus for posting the suggested revisions to some of the dismount teams was not an attack on your database- since you, me, and kbluck had determined the other day that some of the units had too many dismounts to be a logical fit in some of the carriers, I thought I would post my take on the future, in case there was something you found useful you could add while making any adjustments. As I said before, now that the "teleporting dismounts" issue has been resolved, I am excited about the game and I would like to see it go the distance.
I alpha/beta tested on BCT, and alpha'd on ATF, but I dropped out of both as I felt my input wasn't going anyplace- I've tested on several games with similar results, unfortunately. I had considered applying to test RT, but figured it would be a waste of time on my part. Maybe I was wrong, too late now.
I only play with the NATO icons over a contour map, partly because I always have played that way (including boardgames, way back), and partly because the bitmaps pixelate all to hell at the closer zooms and look terrible (I know there's nothing can be done about that).
I have a question regarding guys apparently walking on water?? Anybody else notice this miracle?? RT Scenario 1 I have a squad apparently swimming towards the objective, and in the DMZ Sweep scenario several vehicles deployed in the river.
RedMike:
Which ones? Both scenarios have amphib capable vehicles. Which unit is doing the water walking?
Ivan Rapkinov
24 Jun 04, 00:17
Hub: my main issue with your suggestions (and definately not criticism) is the scale of the game - it's Armoured Task Force, not yet AATF - the main actors are always going to be the vehicles, and while I'm as keen as anyone to see infantry get primacy, at the scenario levels, it just gets' too cluttered with smaller dismount teams.
I think as the series progress towards AATF we will see better and better infantry representation, but all the RT scns I've played make micromanagement a pain if you go below platoon involvement at times - the exceptions being things like the Delta scn.
IMO ATF's scale (as in map on ground scale) is too large to effectively simulate infantry small arms tactics properly atm (ditto TacOps, and every other modern sim)
RedMike:
I did a test with all the dismounts in the first scenario, and they all can walk on water...
Ivan:
I know it can be a pain in the butt, especially with a game like ATF/RT that is meant to run in real time, but I'm stumped as to what would be an adequate solution. TacOps has never really bothered me, maybe because there isn't the pressure of real time involved (playing PBEM).
What would you suggest for a scale that would allow working with team sized units, and still allow for a decent amount of map real estate to play in?
Ivan Rapkinov
24 Jun 04, 01:12
I think perhaps not so much the scale, but further zoom levels may be the answer. Only problem is that ATF, TacOps and other milsims abstract terrain to suit the scale.
For infantry you really need invidual buildings, (even down to individual rooms), trees etc etc - things that atm are abstracted by current milsims. I know the OOTW sim I'm involved in is at that scale, but that is more akin to a "command sim" than a milsim - it adds factors that are irrelevant in an ATF-type environ.
Hub: I think the Falklands and Afghanistan ATF iterations will progressively work this issue out. And AATF as the "penultimate" ATF-engine game will have it spot on.
I think the issue is to maintain fidelity while zooming in further and further. Something I think that will require a graphics engine recoding and will a major PITA.
John Osborne
24 Jun 04, 01:14
Hub, RedMike,
I also did an experment with Beach Party and the soldiers were able to swim or walk how ever you want to call it across the large body of water. The tanks I plot them across the same body of water and they went half way across before stopping and will not go forward or backwards.
John
Yup. I think the program is not recognizing deep water as impassable terrain for non-amphib units. I noticed it in both scenarios. Some ROK vehicles deployed out in the river/lake in the DMZ Sweep scen.
Ivan:
Individual bldgs, rooms, and trees- why, you mean Ghost Recon! LOL
Yeah, it'll have to be something other than bitmaps. It will be interesting to see what transpires in the next couple of years.
John and RedMike:
I think this classifies as a fix me up, all right...
Ivan Rapkinov
24 Jun 04, 04:39
Hub: well, look at it this way - during the LA riots there were shopping malls that swallowed whole companies!
seriously though, any sim that models infantry down to teams will have to consider things like enemy teams occupying the same building and room to room fighting. I think the trade off will be an unrealistic vehicle weapon/armour model, and infantry will be superbly modelled down to things like medevacs, LTL etc.
I just don't see a sim that models armoured warfare really well ever being capable (without major tweaking) of modelling low/mid intensity firefights involving large infantry formations. The current ATF system imo is adequate for the role assigned to the infantry in the mission.
Hub: well, look at it this way - during the LA riots there were shopping malls that swallowed whole companies!
seriously though, any sim that models infantry down to teams will have to consider things like enemy teams occupying the same building and room to room fighting. I think the trade off will be an unrealistic vehicle weapon/armour model, and infantry will be superbly modelled down to things like medevacs, LTL etc.
I just don't see a sim that models armoured warfare really well ever being capable (without major tweaking) of modelling low/mid intensity firefights involving large infantry formations. The current ATF system imo is adequate for the role assigned to the infantry in the mission.
You're completely right. A sim would have to cover one aspect or the other, and they would be at differing and incompatible (with each other) scales. MOUT situations (as an example) certainly can't be modeled at the scale of any of the games in this section of WarfareHQ. I think (never having designed one myself), that it must be hard to create a game that has an appropriate and even amount of focus across all of it's aspects- in the case of ATF/RT, having a certain level of detail covering artillery and vehicles that is at one level of detail, but when also applied at the same level to dismounts (and for the sake of continuity, would have to be), problems arise, as you pointed out.
What would be interesting to have would be a sim within a sim. You start out at a kind of macro level at say, battalion. Events are played out at this scale until a situation arises (and you can play at this scale all the time if you want to), like an OPFOR platoon and a BLUFOR platoon collide with each other in a small village. There you get to choose to continue at the same granularity as before, or you can zoom in (like a microscope) and deal with events at a much finer and detailed level- room to room, or whatever it takes (action at the higher level "freezes in time" while this is going on). Once this action has been resolved, you zoom back out, and continue play as before, until the next major event occurs. How this would be implemented is beyond me- but it's interesting to think about.
I played some board games years ago you probably would have liked, if you haven't played them yourself already. Patrol and Sniper (SPI Games) were 5m/hex and single individual in scale, the first dealing with combat in various terrain types, the second was MOUT type in a small hamlet with rooms, windows, doors, floors, basements, rooftops, etc. Each was configurable to represent combat from WWI into the near future. Another was called Firefight (also SPI). It was hypothetical '70's to '90's combat at 50m per hex with a MOUT flavour to it. Needless to say, although vehicles were available in all three games, their function was subsumed by the infantry...
You're completely right. A sim would have to cover one aspect or the other, and they would be at differing and incompatible (with each other) scales.
I disagree. It's all a question of scale.
A full-on "down and dirty" infantry sim is going to involve individual elements. It would have to be fought from the point of view of a platoon or perhaps company commander, someone who can reasonably influence in a direct manner the actions of his subordinates. At this scale, tanks would be relatively rare "super-weapons".
ATF, on the other hand, is primarily from the battalion commander's point of view. To a BC, platoons are pretty much atomic entities. Sometimes they worry about squads in high-value situations. But that's it. Individuals are meaningless.
At this scale, you have to assume the small-unit leaders, the NCOs mainly, know what they're doing. That they will move tactically, keep their men firing effectively, use cover and concealment, etc. At this scale, I don't think modeling individual buildings is really all that important to the ultimate result. Abstraction can take over. We find that LOSes are generally short, except in essentially random cases where they are longer. Troop quality has a lot to do with their effectiveness, but simple luck also plays a large role in close combat. Ranged weapons lose importance, and short-range firepower (ARs, SMGs, GLs, etc.) takes precedence. In short, it comes down to a question of volume of short-range fire and troop quality modifying what amounts to a roll of the dice, with occasional random, fleeting opportunities to engage at longer range that disappear just as rapidly.
Although ATF doesn't shift focus like this in close terrain, there is no reason it couldn't. I see no reason at all why a game like ATF couldn't model the close infantry fight with historically defensible results just the same as vehicles. True, you wouldn't be able to exert utter control over your forces a la Ghost Recon, but that's not realistic at a battalion level anyway.
Its all about the results, not the process. If the end result is largely indistinguishable from the results of a battle fought at the individual "paintball" focus, who cares if you can't precisely control the actions of individual troops or buildings aren't modeled? ATF's problem with infantry at the moment is that, in my opinion, it fails the "equivalent results" test.
With regard to infantry combat, ATF in particular suffers from its simplistic combat resolution model. "Partial kills" simply aren't modeled. Barely tolerable for AFV combat, it is even less acceptable for infantry combat. Given the attention to detail lavished on other aspects of the game, I find the binary "dead or not" abstraction a bit baffling. Supposedly the model is based on MILES, but even MILES simulates partial kills and "wounding". The ATF binary model results in a very high "granularity", as units blast away at full firepower until they suddenly are smitten by a magic bullet and all fall down dead at once.
Another major issue for close infantry combat is that direct fire suppression, in my opinion, just doesn't work. It should, by all rights, but it doesn't. No matter how much you hose down the enemy, they are still able to return fire essentially unimpeded. Only artillery does a good job of suppression. A better suppression model would go a long way towards mitigating the granularity issue; ideally, there would be both temporary and permanent suppression states; temporary reflecting duck and cover, while permanent reflects individual incapacitiation from wounds or battle "brain damage". Suppression shouldn't just shut off fire completely; depending on its intensity, it should slow rates of fire and movement, and reduce pH to increasing degrees as the state increases. "Permanent" suppression states, applied somewhat at random based on the overall pK, would do a pretty good job of modeling partial kills.
ATF could do these things, and I think then it would work just as well for infantry as it does for armor combat (which would also be improved at the same time.) These features simply aren't a development priority at this time. But that's not at all the same as saying it probably can't be done.
--- Kevin
I'm in total agreement with Kevin. The ability to model partial killings is an advantage of TACOPS over ATF. Although TACOPS also abstracts many things, it wins in terms of perception in actions that involve infantry. Infantry units lose combat power gradually with losses until all men are "killed". ATF would be greatly enhanced if it could model partial killing and vehicle damage in TACOPS fashion. I hope that future versions of the engine will give answer to these issues.
Antonio
I disagree. It's all a question of scale.
<snip>
With regard to infantry combat, ATF in particular suffers from its simplistic combat resolution model. "Partial kills" simply aren't modeled. Barely tolerable for AFV combat, it is even less acceptable for infantry combat. Given the attention to detail lavished on other aspects of the game, I find the binary "dead or not" abstraction a bit baffling.
<snip>
Another major issue for close infantry combat is that direct fire suppression, in my opinion, just doesn't work.
<snip>
ATF could do these things, and I think then it would work just as well for infantry as it does for armor combat (which would also be improved at the same time.) These features simply aren't a development priority at this time. But that's not at all the same as saying it probably can't be done.
--- Kevin
This stuff is over my head and makes it hurt- you guys are too smart for me- all I know is I want to play with the grunts, and for now I guess I'll limp along with whatever I can find. Having some sort of attritional effects would be nice, though...
Deltapooh
24 Jun 04, 17:06
This stuff is over my head and makes it hurt- you guys are too smart for me- all I know is I want to play with the grunts, and for now I guess I'll limp along with whatever I can find. Having some sort of attritional effects would be nice, though...
That's why I keep my mouth shut up, read, and take notes :D
That's why I keep my mouth shut up, read, and take notes :D
Must be a moral to this story somewhere...
Deltapooh
24 Jun 04, 20:34
Must be a moral to this story somewhere...
You guys are smarter than me. ProSim has a professional consultant team available for free.
Ivan Rapkinov
25 Jun 04, 00:04
You guys are smarter than me.
somehow I doubt that... ;)
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