Someone please explain this to me

[GreenHornet]

I realize that advancing out in the open can be a risky endeavor, but this seems a little excessive to me.

In the first image, my regular Soviet Company HQ is advancing in the open. The units status is "cautious" and you can see the tracers coming at them. Note the time counter in the lower right corner is at 15 sec.




Now, only fractions of a second later ( the counter is still on 15 sec. ) my HQ is broken AND rattled...and without sustaining a single casualty!! Wouldn't shaken or pinned be more likely? I realize CMBB introduced more realistic infantry modeling, I know we're all been frustrated by this type of thing and there have been many discussions and debates about this; but this really seems a bit excessive to me and, quite frankly, can ruin any sense of enjoyment in playing the game.

[Jobu88]

Looking at the first image, it appears the fire is coming from the HQ's rear quarter? Beware someone firing at your exposed rear end.

Just a guess. In my experience, Russians get pinned easier than any other nationality except the French, who just surrender.

[Soldier]

Broken and rattled sounds good to me. The fact that this HQ unit is moving in the "open" and suddenly finds it's self under enemy fire, is enough to freak those boys out..
Especially Russian officer. They were not extremely brave.. :-) Sending conscripts into frontal and fruitless attacks, training friendly machine guns at their backs, was their favorite tactic. It helped to assure, that they, instead of the privates, would survive the war, etc..

Anyway, the key here, is the open terrain. Like in no place to hide.. :-)

[RedDevil]

It appears you're under fire from a MG 34 or 42?
Lets look on the low side of 800 RPMs and the high side of 1400RPM for the MG42.. that's equal to 13 rounds a second up to 23 rounds a second. You're in open ground, no cover, and 23 rounds coming at you in a single burst....

I don't know of any way to describe the amount of lead coming in your general direction, but if you've ever pissed off a large nest of hornets or wasps the results are similar.

Being broken doesn't mean complete routing of the unit, it describes a state of incoherent organization within your squad.
Nobody is listening to anyone else and it's every man for himself trying to find cover while cussing the idiot who ordered them out there.

In all fairness, you paid the price for the lack of respect of the MG

[GreenHornet]

Still doesn't seem to wash with me. I've advanced enough CM units (short distances) in the open that have taken enemy fire that this still seems excessive to go from "Cautious" to "Broken and rattled" in a few tenths of a second. Maybe I failed to mention that this was the first and only burst of MG fire the unit took.

If the unit took heavy casualties from the enemy fire I'd be able to understand a little more. Seeing a few of your buddies get cut to pieces would definitely make a big difference. But not a single man was hit in the 7 man squad...which, to me, means that a whole lot of bullets were spraying within inches of them. Pinned, or even panicked seems more likely. Maybe pinned on the first MG burst, panicked on the second burst a few seconds later, then maybe broken after a third burst.

If the game models HQ units being excessively fragile then that could possibly explain it. If thats the case, I was not aware that CM modeled this.

I'm not really complaining here, but, personally, I've never seen a unit break THAT fast before in CM ( not counting direct artillery hits or canister rounds from a large gun...both of which inflict heavy casualties right away ).

CM never ceases to surprise.

[The Coil]

Wouldn't shaken or pinned be more likely?

I've never seen a unit break THAT fast before in CM.

More likely? Maybe. But 'more likely' doesn't get you far when you apply it to a specific situation. Maybe there was a 99% chance of getting pinned and a 1% chance of breaking. Maybe this is an outlier result. I know I have a tendency to always want the expected result to happen, and to feel cheated if it doesn't (unless it goes in my favor, in which case I'm a brilliant tactician). My Tiger kills a Stuart, all is well. Stuart kills my Tiger, the game is broken. My Stuart kills a Tiger, I'm a great CM player.

Is it within the realm of probability that an already jittery regular unit hit in the flank/back with MG fire would break. Sure. If it happens every time, maybe that's excessive. But you seem to be pointing this out as remarkable and out of context with the rest of your CM experience. Accept it as that. Sometimes wacky things happen. When wacky things happen regularly, the game is broken. When wacky things happen every once in a while (as this seems to be), that's a good model of reality. :soap:

That all being said, my best guess as to what happened is that the unit took fire from something you never saw. Given that it is an HQ unit (sniper magnet) in the open, it probably got sniped. A sniper will panic/break a unit in the open with one shot, esp. in conjunction with MG fire and an already heightened morale state.

[McIvan]

The sniper theory is a strong one....they don't have to hit a target to instantly break a squad, even one in good order.

As well as that, cautious is a fair way down the morale chain, only pinned and panic before break if I recall correctly. Fire from the rear is very effective against morale. The HMG could have done the business.

[Ratzki]

I am with McIvan on this one

Fire from the rear is very effective against morale. The HMG could have done the business.
Posted by The Coil - Today 05:06 AM

It looks like flanking fire from an MG and you may be receiving the first shots of another unspotted unit as well that the tracers are not showing up yet. There are some other units face down as well, so a fair bit of lead must be comming the HQ's way. It also looks like your HQ does not have any morale bonus' either. As well, I wonder when your HQ started the SNEAK move type as during advance he would get a little morale bonus, but not under sneak. I wonder if units sneaking are more likely to break as they present an almost nonmoving target. Add all the above to just a lousy morale test and your HQ is in trouble.

[bluehand]

two things-
one- are those units crawling in front of him from his unit(D company)? If so, I don't know if this works in game terms but, panic spreads. seeing part of his command routed already can effect his ability to remain calm and rally them too.
second- what year is it? if it is pre 43 then your "regular" HQ unit is actually more akin to a conscript HQ unit; and with the routing of afilliated subordinates nearby (and likely from the same machine gun) the panic of the HQ is not a surprise...

[RedDevil]

possibly some modifiers in play here would be

minus:
for crossing open ground
Taking fire in rear/flank
HQs unit (bullet magnet status)
Suppressing fire from a MG (MGs are big time suppressors)
natural Soviet unit fragility

Possible:
Taking Fire from another source not spotted due to cautious stance prior

So there's quite a possibility that you had a LOT of negative modifiers to your boys' chances of making it across that open ground and they failed the morale checks because of them.
There's a good chance they failed multiple checks, and thus incurred multiple drops in status leaving you at the broken stage.

They could have routed and began retreating across that open ground and then started losing men from covering fire.

you're better off they're broken, as a few minutes in cover without being fired upon would prolly bring them back to fight again, whereas routed would have them running all over the place taking losses and not be worth a poop later on.