Germans Just The Same As Everyone Else in Combat Mission

[Michael Dorosh]

From this thread by Steve today

For the Germans only? No. The US and Commonwealth Armies operated under the same tactical principles as the Germans did, largely because they emulated German advances in infantry and mechanized warfare during and after WWI. Trust me, any Allied officer worth his salt had read most of the same classics that the German officers did (including Rommel's "Infantry Attacks"). In turn the Germans were influenced HEAVILY by British, French, and American mechanized warfare theorists. Ironically, initially the Germans paid more attention to the likes of Liddell-Hart, Fuller, Patton, etc. than did their own militaries

My point is that by the time 1944 comes around there isn't much tactical difference in terms of theory. The Germans should not have some sort of different means of acting, at least not at the tactical level that we simulate. Plus, the day we would be able to program the AI to carry out subtle differences in tactical execution is the day we quit wargaming and get our Nobel Prizes in Artificial Intelligence

Steve

Any reactions?

Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but I see some room for discussion on these points.

Squad Level

The German infantry squad trained to use the LMG as the primary weapon of destruction of the enemy. The "sharpest shooter" (this is the phrase that Alex Buchner uses, or at least, the English translator uses it, in the German Infantry Handbook) trained to use the LMG, and the squad maneuvered around its firepower. The riflemen were there to support the LMG. In the British and Commonwealth forces, it was the other way around, and the squads were permanently divided into two "fire teams" as we call them today - a 3 man Bren Group and a rifle group - usually 2, 3 or 4 men (on paper it was 7 men by 1944, but in action the squads went into battle short-handed deliberately) who maneuvered to close with the enemy with the squad leader's SMG and grenades. The LMG supported the advance, the opposite to the doctrine in the German system.

How this worked in practice, I have no idea. Lots of scared kids yelling and shooting, I imagine.

When I achieved a position of real responsibility in Nam, platoon sergeant and platoon leader, I always told the new guys as they came to the field: "Forget everything they taught you except how to use your weapons, and follow your squad leaders." What this indicated, of course, was not that the training was that awful but that in actual combat nothing goes according to the book. Everything is hellishly confused, you can't remember hand and arm signals, you haven't the time to yell out formations, so you just yell, "Let's go, let's go! This way, let's go!" and hope your people come along."

Private Mark M. Smith, Company A, 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division
Binh Dinh Province Feb 1967 - Feb 1968

Company/Battalion Level
Even overall, I think the reliance by 1944 on high explosive should have an effect on the game, though perhaps the availability of German mortars might even things out. Don't know. The original CM prided itself on depicting the battle after the barrages went through, after the reconnaissance was done, and the infantry were doing their thing. The smaller scale of CMX2 kind of reinforces this "grunt's-eye" view. If they want to persist in their Real Time venture, I suppose we need to stick to the platoon-level and at most company level perspective.

How many platoon commanders read Clausewitz or Rommel I wonder? I do know that the Canadian Army Training Memomorandum was highly circulated and did have articles on German Army training methods (or what we thought we knew about what the enemy was doing) but these were not greatly detailed. There were indoctrinations in enemy methods (Band of Brothers had a neat display of this when they showed the British soldiers in German uniforms walking through the U.S. airborne camp before D-Day - they actually had demonstration teams who did platoon sized attacks using German tactics with enemy weapons and uniforms so that the troops could see what it looked like before the real deal).

Even if your average platoon commander sat around reading Lidell-Hart or Guderian, I doubt it did him much good...

Incidentally, the British and Canadians were well versed in initiative at the lowest levels thanks to Battle Drill; it didn't seem to extend to continuing the battle once the immediate objectives were won - something not really applicable to CM.

How would this translate into how CM should be portraying things? I'd like to see the squad animations doing different things for the different nationalities - at the very least, the British squads should be different sizes than the "stock" 10 man paper squads; they had a Left Out of Battle (LOB) doctrine that ensured they usually went into action at 50% or 60% strength as a matter of routine. They should also be splitting up into 3 man gun teams and a rifle team. The Germans - I'd like to see them split off into even smaller teams to reflect their greater individual initiative, dependent on the type of unit and experience level. I wouldn't expect a squad of Ost Battalion "volunteers" to do much but sit in a group and be reluctant to do anything but wait around within eye-sight of each other - I think those kinds of capabilities should be tied to experience, reflecting how often they drilled together. So far, CM has tied unit capability to nationality, which seems wrong.

Someone at BFC had suggested a few weeks ago that green troops should bunch up more when moving - a great idea that I hope gets implemented.

 

[Redwolf]

Steve's opinion is definitely not fully warranted. Let's leave aside whether he makes these claims to easy implementation of his company's games and/or whether he doesn't want to get involved in opinionated discussions about who's soldier should bebehave how.

The lack of NCOs with any kind of actual leading (as opposed to drill) skills is the one factor making Soviet style armies (including post-war Arab armies). And that has an impact on squad tactics, big time.

Furthermore, even though you can argue that British, American and German soldiers on comparable level and comparable experience think mostly alike, tactically, tactics are drastically changed by the environment. Environment namely a British tendency to avoid casualties and American reliance on support fire.

On average, an American squad will move differently than a German one, because by default the American one has more support. Artillery, air, tanks, .50cals, more mortar ammunity in company and battalion, everywhere. Germans on the other hand will always rely more on maneuvering, lacking support and ammo and usually having time against them.

And then things anchor themselves in the mindset. After a couple months of fighting like that your fighting style has changed and the two groups behave differently even under idential circumstances, even when having gone through the same training and teaching.

 

[Palantir]

How would this translate into how CM should be portraying things?...They should also be splitting up into 3 man gun teams and a rifle team...

Someone at BFC had suggested a few weeks ago that green troops should bunch up more when moving - a great idea that I hope gets implemented.

Interesting discussion and good ideas, the animation changes would be nice.

But- how much should the A.I. take over for the player's decisions here?

What if I want my 9 man German squad to stay together, will the A.I. break them up into 3- 3 man teams automatically after moving 20m?
Say I order a formation of Green troops to move out & have 40m separations- would the A.I. bring them back together into a bunch after 20m of movement? So much for me giving them individual orders.

That would really take away player control of his units in CM & uncertainty for the enemy player. It would make it easy to know what the enemy player can & can't do with his units. If you know green troops will always be "coming together" in a herd say if w/in 50m of each other then that poses limitations on individual player initiative. But then, players would just figure out how far they HAD to keep green troops apart to avoid the A.I. overriding their orders etc.

There would probably have to be player options to toggle these A.I. features on/off, but the possibilities sound fun.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

They're having a similar conversation right now about the British module for Shock Force. Geordie is trying to pin them down on whether or not the fact that British troops are trained in individual radio equipment will have an effect on the modeling of squads in the game, but so far, the beta testers are avoiding the question and either quibbling about questions of technical detail, or changing the subject to talk about uniform mods...

 

[Geordie]

Yes MD appears to be right. Something as fundamental as improved comms and therefore control should have a positive impact on any soldiers using it. If they want the Brit Mod to be something other than just a Mod then they have to reflect the fact that the Brits arent just Yanks with different clothes on.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Great discussion in the windows thread about how the Syrians really get treated at a disadvantage because they are simply lumped into the same game mechanics as the U.S. also.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84640&page=7

Steve, here's a list of features that would primarily help the RED side and which are not present for them.

1) Uncons and Syrians without Body Armor should be easily able to get trough some windows - even if they are not in a prepared ambush point/house but moving around the city.

2) All soldiers should be able to scale some 2m+ walls without explosives.

3) Trenches and Bunkers should be invisible until spotted. There should be foxholes and also some light top cover avalable (tin metal sheets + sandbags...)

4) If you have only slow artillery assets, TRPs are essential.

5) Two man with an RPG should be able to go on the roof if the Squad leader one floor below tells them.

6) Buildings should be able to be fortified.

7) If you try to flank someone and have to break a route for it, he should not be aware of it.

That's at least 7 concrete points the Red Commander is lacking in his tactical arsenal, some of them heavily favor the US Attacker (like visible trenches).

This applies NOT to counterinsurgency, but regular MOUT and Open Ground Warfare.

Now please, show me at least 5 points from the US/Attacking side that are not present due to "abstractions". What tactics can the US player commanding a Stryker platoon and with Air Support NOT use?

If you say it's all about abstractions, and that's the way it is, then both sides should be equally disadvantages due to game mechanics. Are they?

And one of the responses regarding the supposedly superior modelling of U.S. tactics:

• US night vision sucks. As far as I can tell, thermals in this game as worthless.
• US clearing occupied rooms/buildings is often pretty bad. Soldiers often run to "their spot" in the building while enemy five feet away shoots at him. There are work-arounds to "prep" the room but they are clunky.
• Spotting Red units in buildings is out of the question. As long as Red units do not fire, they are invisible in buildings, regardless of their stance and lack of hide status.
• Most useful machine gun tactics are out of the question.
• M203s cannot be used to cover dead space.
• Artillery cannot be used on a spot not in line of sight.
• The infantry formation is totally kaput. Squads and fireteams cluster in big clumps which are an RPG gunners dream come true.
• Going around corners is an all or nothing proposition. No way to peek.
• There is no way to detect mines until someone or a vehicle gets blown up. Then there is no way to clear them.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

And as Redwolf points out in the same thread, one advantage the Germans had in Normandy - camouflage and fortification - is nullified if BFC can't get their act together for the new game engine and figure out a way to make trenches, etc., "hideable".

Nope, I understood the point perfectly (I even reread the initial two pages just to make sure). Apparently you didn't understand my answer. The answer is the game system has absolutely no way of simulating FOW for terrain. A blown up section of wall is seen by both sides simultaneously because there's no way to filter that information based on LOS. And we don't expect to be able to do that for a very long time. - Steve

Trenches are currently terrain - bear in mind that bunkers also deform terrain even if the bunker itself is invisible.

 

[Redwolf]

Yeah, but they did have trenches and bunkers with FoW in CMBB and CMAK.

The first sign of trouble to come was when CMAK got sandbags with no FOW (and no cover as such).

CMBB's trenches aren't perfect. They do not modify morale, you can pin down a squad in a trench and prevent it from moving by firing a machine gun over the trench, the squad is -morale-wise- treated the same as if there isn't a trench and hence gets pinned even though it doesn't take cacualties. But they were a hell of a lot better than what we have now.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Maybe they need to concentrate less on providing German, Dutch and Canadian troops for Shock Force and spend more time on implementing actual game features for this wonderful 1:1 rep.

Animations for crawling over walls. Why can't players jump off 2nd floor balconies, if going through a 1st floor window is inadvisable because we're going to pretend they have bars on the windows, or complain that the scenario designer didn't put enough doors in? Sit down and write the code for that. Any urban assault manual beginning in 1943 with Ortona will tell you that you assault a fortified house starting with the roof and working your way down. CM:SF is urban assault in a shooting war, not a counter-insurgency. So where are the tool and doctrines to represent that?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84708

Yet another thread asking for repairs under fire and medics. All good replies to them, but - do you think maybe if they released...I don't know...those Designer's Notes that Steve keeps throwing cold water on, they wouldn't have to waste so much time answering the same questions over and over...?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

But back to the topic at hand - Steve is pretty much happy to let the forum answer his questions for him regarding tactics - and I get the feeling we'll see no real functional differences.

istari: Remember too that there will be differences in Condition, Experience, Leadership skill etc. As with CMBB, veteran German troops may be Weakened Veterans with superb +2 NCOs, while Americans are Fit Green troops with +0 NCOs. That will make a real difference.

Steve: Yes, what the other guys said The differences in tactics comes out due to differences in equipment, organization, and capabilities. This was true in CMx1 and with a far less sophisticated underlying simulation. A new thing, with CMx2, is the ability to script each side differently. If you want to simulate a Human Wave infantry attack vs. a combined arms attack, that can be done in the Editor. In CMx1 the AI basically had to figure out for itself what to do with the forces it had, and it did so very generically.

In other words, Steve in banging the "CMX1 sucked" drum again, right next to the "CMX2 is so much more sophisticated" drum. But it's not remotely true. The ballistics modeling may be more complicated, but the game doesn't do anything more sophisticated as far as AI. Unless the scenario designer is a mind reader and lays out complicated scripts which telegraph what's going to happen.

I think he over-states the ability of the new engine to do a "combined arms" attack, particularly since all accounts so far indicate the AI can't properly use artillery yet, and if you manage to stop, say, an infantry attack in its tracks, there is nothing that will make the tanks stop and wait for the infantry to catch up if the script calls for the tanks to move on to another intermediate objective in the meantime. Pretty ludicrous suggestion.

And to suggest that simply fiddling with the experience levels will somehow capture the different squad drills and levels of initiative at the lowest levels seems crass too. Ditto the differences in equipment - what the rate of fire of a Garand vs. the rate of fire of a Kar98k has to do with modeling the tactics is beyond me. I'd have thought Steve would know the difference, but apparently not.

But then again, the average customer probably doesn't even care if you dress the Syrians in German costumes and sell it for $45 as long as there are SS lightning flashes and Tiger tanks in the game, to wit:

Istari: It's been so long I had forgotten about those factors. Works well enough for me. I guess I have just always enjoyed games more if they possessed a bit of rpg-like quality to them. *shrugs*

~Viajero: All this about tactics etc in CMx2 is very well etc, but... screenshots planned for when?

 

[Geordie]

But then again, the average customer probably doesn't even care if you dress the Syrians in German costumes and sell it for $45 as long as there are SS lightning flashes and Tiger tanks in the game, to wit:

If the first model is US in Normandy, then historically your not going to see many SS or Tigers facing the Germans and a lot of those guys will be disappointed. In fact you'd be hard pushed to see anything other than the occasional Stug. The US didnt face many SS until Mortain etc.

As for the way they do their Modules then that too is going to be curtailed a bit, they are going to have to choose a US unit for the campaign which will drive the rest of the game. What US units were in Normandy from beach landing to break out, well thats going to be your basic Infantry grunt. They can flesh that out with a few 75mm Shermans, some Arty etc.....

I think theres going to be a lot of disappointed guys when this thing arrives. A lot of guys may be expecting those SS runes, Jagdpanthers, Panthers and Tigers. In reality, all of that sexy stuff faced the Commonwealth guys.

Although I do hear that BF has already modelled the Tiger 1, so they must be planning to put that in at least.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Geordie, don't be silly. The fans will be too busy being disappointed with the broken game engine, lack of amphibious or para-drop/glider assault function, and half-assed fortification modeling to be upset by the lacklustre unit selection of the initial game. The upside will be the immediate move to the bargain bin ala CM:SF (one can only hope).

The problem in getting the Jagpanthers and Hetzers will be when BFC makes you buy the $25 modules via direct purchase only.

 

[British Tommy]

I for one will sit back and read what the reviews are saying before I part with my cash.

 

[Redwolf]

Well said.

Anybody knows a good place to puke?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

I for one will sit back and read what the reviews are saying before I part with my cash.

At least BFC is really good about putting up demos and then updating the demos, so we can all make an informed choice. It's whether or not you want to believe the promises that "we're going to fix this in the next few patches, so hang on." Every game ships with its problems; reviewers don't always recognize that. I think most gamers do, and are willing to trust the publisher to "fix" things with patches. I was with CM:BB and CM:AK. They never did fully fix the games, but they got close enough that I felt it was supported.

CMX2 may be in a different category for some; CM:SF is going on 11 patches now. It's not going to be about reviews of game features so much as how well they can get it going out of the gate.

That campaign in MARINES that Geordie posted about - the one where you're locked out of 20% of the missions because of a bug? That's into the third month of release, and still no word on a fix for that.

 

[Redwolf]

Looks like I'm making friends again.

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=84640&page=9

Redwolf,

Whether you call them terrain or not, for WW2 you have to bring back trenches with FOW like you have in CMBB and CMAK.

In 2007 you can assume that a UAV spotted the trenches or something, but in Normandy that would be a joke.

Agreed that always spotted trenches in Normandy would be far from optimal. I do not, however, for one second think that the lack of such functionality precludes us from making a WW2 based game. We will make whatever we want to without prior permission from you. You get your vote on things after the game is out in the form of buying it or not. Based on my years of observing your behavior and purchasing habits I think it's quite probable that you'll purchase a Normandy game from us with always visible trenches. Of course you'll probably spend almost as much time *****ing and launching personal attacks against us on other Forums as you do playing the game you find so utterly contemptible, but again that is your choice and has no bearing on what we do or not do.

In my arrogant opinion, I'm trying to save his behind by trying to make him not alienate his WW2 fan base that has not have been driven away by CM:SF, skipping modern war (something BFC probably had in mind when they did modern first, don't piss off the WW2 majority with a first release).

If his company ever fails it's probably because of people who pointlessly bashed the products, I'm sure.

I also like his they disabled editing of one's own posts so that I can't fix the typos (corrected above). Of course they can.

P.S. somebody remind me, are SM:SF foxholes subject to FOW?

 

[Michael Dorosh]

How can an attack on "us" (meaning BFC) be a "personal attack"?

Talk about a victim complex.

It's interesting to note he's spent "years" observing your purchasing behaviour though. Interesting as in spooky.

Guess you touched a nerve.

I agree, by the way. The fortifications in plain sight stuff is just plain stupid and kills any chance of tournament play. Of course, if you're trying to sell a ballistics simulator instead of a game, that's not supposed to matter.

 

[Michael Dorosh]

Oh, just noticed Steve's full reply:

Poster:And finally, this is a current MOUT drill (at least for European units).

Steve:Sure, as are dozens of other things which soldiers rarely use in battle. For example, as far as I know tankers still learn "Sagger Drill" even though the chances of practical use in the field are very low. The whole purpose of training is to expose soldiers to the range of possibilities so when they find themselves in a combat situation that they have the widest range of knowledge (and hopefully some experience) to draw from. Therefore, just because a soldier trains to do something doesn't mean much.

No wonder the house-clearing in CM:SF looks absolutely nothing like the house-clearing drills I learned in the field with real soldiers (the "controlled pairs" drill vs. the full-auto etc.) Steve just assumes everything in the manual is optional, so any discussion on actual training can be explained away as meaningless.

There' the right way, the wrong way, the Army way, and now we have the BFC way...

Kind of an "oops" moment for Steve, anyway - he may have known this is MOUT drill, but probably didn't know that we know...

 

[Redwolf]

It's interesting to note he's spent "years" observing your purchasing behaviour though. Interesting as in spooky.

I just spotted this detail myself.

That guys is actually bashing me for continuing to buy his games.

Which I do because I don't want his company to die between what can be great titles in past and future even if not present. And I have publically said why I keep buying. As a matter of fact I have bought Marines (preorder full package) and never even played it (so far).

I dunno, that guy is rubbing me the wrong way sometimes