In the time frame of a CM scenario, for a squad to lose 3-4 men to death and injury, would not translate into any efficiency 'bonus' unless we are talking about some cold-steel-commando types. You do realize that squads are made up of Squad Leaders, Assistant Squad Leaders, PFC's and Privates. Not that easy to contain the losses to 'privates' and not the NCO's and experienced PFC's?
Looking at it another way, what is the difference if a squad breaks off a small detachment or has an equivalently sized bunch of 'privates' shot away (in your thinking, that is)? In the game, there is no penalty for busting up squads. In fact, I hardly keep squads together at all.
For breaking up squads, I'm (kind of) with you. There should be some delay in orders' execution, it looks. But yet, when you break up a squad, you get those assistant squad leaders and corporals at the helm of each new team ... And managing a team takes less time than managing a squad, so why a orders' delay penalty?
As for the effects of attrition on single (i.e. not divided into teams) squad, I think the situation is more complex than what it may seem. You have one decision node (squad leader) for the entire squad, yet for one fire team you have an occasional extra decision node (asst. squad leader). And above all things, each guy in the squad may eventually ignore a fire order and point his gun at other more serious threat. That leaves you with many decision nodes at times. There is an entire school of thought that maintains that the rate of decision making and execution goes down when the amount of decision makers goes up. But it's all academic, I guess.
I'm not proposing that an attrited squad should have any type of bonuses. It's unfortunate it came out that way in my post. All I wanted to question is the idea of an attrited squad suffering additional penalties in the form of orders' delay. You correctly point out that losing a private is not as critical as loosing an assistant squad leader. This looks like a nightmare to model correctly.
I think they threw out the baby with the bathwater in the whole 1:1 revolution. Much like the Chinese revolution, where kids jumped on their bikes and rode to old people's houses and tormented and killed the aged, CM has taken a odd turning on it's old ways in the name of 'change'. Only to find itself also growing old and slowly realizing that they confused wisdom with evil.
Battlefront has survived the worst global financial crisis in decades designing and selling games for a very small niche of the entertainment market. They don't seem to be going under today, and they didn't seem to be going under yesterday. They may be even thriving. That's not throwing the baby with the bathwater. It's vision.
And if they are thriving, I wish they continue. Because no matter how much I dislike Steve's BS or other assorted peeves with the engine, since 2007 I have not been able to enjoy any other 3D tactical war game as much as Combat Mission.
Cheers,
