JasonC speaks for me. As much as I did enjoy the (fixed) CMSF and CMBN, my gaming money is staying in my pocket until the stuff he noted gets addressed, and they add some kind of AI trigger.
"Yes there are occasions in which a whole battalion was destroyed in a day's fighting. There are occasions on the Russian front where a whole regiment was destroyed in a day's fighting, and plenty in which a Russian rifle division was destroyed in 2-3 days. But this did not happen *every time*, and in CM today, it does.
Casualties are higher in CM than in the real combat it depicts. All the cherry picking in the world can't change that fact.
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I for one use CM to simulate entirely bog-standard tactical combat in the European theater in WW II. I do not exclusively simulate the first day of the Somme, or Omaha beach on D-Day. But the casualty rates seen in *every* CM scenario are those of the Somme or Omaha beach.
It is busted, it is wrong, it is broken, it is inaccurate, it is false. Stop making excuses and admit it, already.
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Faithful modeling would be fun gaming. But we have never seen it in tactical scale games with this degree of realism. Design for effect gets these things right effortlessly, because it bases its assessments on what actually happens in the real world, not on engineering abstractions that get only a few of the variables right. But it generally does so on a larger scale than this, and with less immersion detail.
As for what isn't present - yes to cover seeking and self preservation. Yes to micro terrain. But also much more confusion, much less firing, much briefer exposures. Men don't bunch as much in areas that can take fire. They are reluctant to expose themselves to use weapons of marginal impact on the battle.
The true sighting ability prone or making full use of cover is greatly impaired, and is the usual state once fire has opened. Men take cover when they merely *hear* fire, even when it is not directed at them, personally. They continue their mission with reluctance and delay when convinced the fire is not directed at them, and when it is located, and when they trust what they are being asked to do, tactically.
Leaders routinely advance and find that half their men didn't move.
Said leaders either go back and try to rose them, or go on with a few braver men, or they and perhaps some of those braver men get themselves shot very quickly. In the latter case, those around them spend the next *half hour* evac-ing casualties and do not try again, a solid majority of the time.
Detailed combat reports say things like, you can only hear the Brens or the MG42s at any given time, but almost never both going at once. Because when one takes up the song, heads go down over on the other side of the field, and they stay there until the clip is out or the belt fire pauses.
The periods of time in which both sides are within 100 or even 200 yards, are both "heads up", can both see identified enemy personnel in their positions, and both are pulling triggers trying to kill the other side with aimed fire - which is the *norm* in most minutes of CM action - are very very brief in real combat. The most exposed men get shot quickly in that situation, without delivering very much fire. The sides then "LOS separate" - everyone in the mutual sighting zone is dead or ducks. More duck than die, but what they don't do is duck for two seconds and then keep firing for 10 minutes to hit their opposite number.
The tactics required of CM players are better than arcade video games or FPS twitch fests. They are not yet the tactics required of even men in MILES gear in training, let only in real combat with death on the line.
We can all acknowledge that CM is the best we've seen to date, in the engineering - fidelity to detail approach, at all this stuff, without pretending it is perfect. It isn't, we know it isn't, and we can see the places where it is still idealized. All I ask is that people face these things objectively, eyes wide open, and drop the excuses.
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First, completely agree with "people take cover".
"military training and group cohesion make for different behavior"
They try to. If the enemy is exposed enough and the men have confidence that their weapons can protect themselves by taking out the enemy, everyone will fire (contra myths spread by Marshall e.g.) That does come up, especially in static defense situations against reckless attackers. In other words, military training can suffice to get men to expose themselves when "expose themselves" means stand in a foxhole or put their head up around cover while prone and basically a tough target, to shoot their weapon at a seen, exposed enemy.
But that is a pretty limited set of circumstances, and requires a particularly dumb attacker to be relevant for a lot of your force. (Dumb attackers definitely happened - and Darwin got rid of the dumb).
The other place where training and group cohesion can make for different behavior is in a formation not under direct fire, but hearing it, managing to keep moving due to veterans within that force, frantic urgings by non coms and officers, and a clear improvement possible in the tactical position, clear enough and near enough that the individual men can see the point. Where less trained men would go to ground and stay there, confused, trying to figure out what was happening and what, if anything, it was safe to attempt, better led and more experienced men can stay up and advance to a better position, trusting their local leaders and their "read" of the situation, with their lives.
But that has definite limits. If the fire is directed at the men, it gets much harder even with that urging and direction. If the fire is killing some of those leaders who are exposing themselves to continue the movement, the trust between men and leaders is easily overwhelmed by fear. Leadership devolves to its most primitive form, literal example. Sarge did it and he didn't die, maybe it isn't completely crazy.
But usually only a portion of the men are that aware and capable of even that much confidence. It takes truly superior training and experience to do better at that, and it is the mark of especially effective forces that they can accomplish it. In CM terms, it is something only well led veterans can be expected to do.
On CM being fun gaming now, definitely agree. And yes, it has improved over the years. Being objective about how far it has come and what could still be improved is how it has done so; overestimating the former and underestimating the latter would tend to stall that trajectory. Let's help keep it going...
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