Would be nice to see in SBs

[Dog Soldier]

If there was a feature to detach soldiers from their unit and recombine them with another unit, what types of gamey play would have to be excluded in the code?

I can see my Russians breaking up squads of 10 men into ten new one man units. Then I shout URRAH! and charge the enemy positions one man at a time drawing all the enemy defensive fire I can. Keep doing this until I assemble enough survivors next to the target hex for my assault with a new combined squad of heroes. Meanwhile the enemy weapons effectiveness is driven downward by each shot taken at a single man the same as if the weapons were fired at a unit.
Would this be worth it if I had enough units to do this several times? Could I bore my opponent into surrendering by watching replays where one man moves at a time? Could a line of one man units screen from direct fire larger units, ala meat shield tactics?

This might be extreme. Break down all my infantry into a mass of individuals for all movements. The game has difficulty taking out really small units unless a certain OR is used IIRC. Would that OR have to always be on if unit breakdown is allowed? How would that affect current small units like crews, officers and snipers? I think these would become much more vulnerable, right?

I can detach an individual I would call my grenade boy. This one man unit would follow my troops and pick up useful equipment that gets dropped in the normal course of the game by other units. I only risk defensive fire against this one guy for the pick up command and not a whole unit getting pinned while trying to get that vital equipment.
Grenade boy then brings the useful equipment to rendezvous with a unit or just drop it out of enemy LOS so I can pick it up with the unit I really want to have it. Much smaller risk involved for all but poor grenade boy. Grenade boy is worth it though so I can keep my other units fighting and not getting those awful pins trying to pick up needed equipment.
Does the grenade boy concept make sense to those with far more experience than I with the SB system? Is it realistic? A sham?

Anyways, the idea of unit breakdown is not a bad one. The unintended consequences need to be thought out first or you could end up ruining a fine gaming system.

Dog Soldier

[TheBigRedOne]

I had a rather long-winded post about potential gamey issues that could arise from this break-down concept, and you hit on many of them.

From a 'playing the AI' standpoint, breaking down squads would really lend itself to doing stuff like the above quite easily. Against a smart human, they'd probably hold fire long enough to get the idea of where the rest of the troops are.

From a time standpoint, there's really not *that* much extra time in most scenarios to spend completely reorganizing units in this manner, especially in the older games. I would assume that doing this would have to cost movement points in order for it to be realistic, and as Mike said, you'd have to then adjust a variety of numbers to reflect the mixed unit, probably going down to the lowest valued parameters. I'm not really sure if there would be enough benefit to doing this on a large scale.

I could see the utility coming in for units that have heavy weapons that need an extra guy to man them if someone gets clipped, not necessarily re-arranging full blown squads. The designers in the most recent games have done a nice job of trying to give these types of units an extra guy so that when you lose someone, the weapon isn't 'undercrewed'.

The fire-team concept is also a good one, but it didn't really come into play in the US military until 1944 or so, and then it was predominantly the Marine Corps, if I'm not mistaken. Giving every force in the entire series the opportunity to re-organize their structure like this gives would-be commanders way too much flexibility in terms of historical accuracy, I feel.

There are benefits, clearly, but does it change things *too* much? Hard to say.

[cazart!]

I'd think putting a max on the number of sub units at 2 (parent + 1 unit), along with a morale drop for both would prevent the majority of abuses.

I am not sure 'grenade boy' would be much of an abuse.

[TheBigRedOne]

I'm thinking about changing my alias to Grenade Boy.

[cazart!]

THAT would be abuse.

[Outlaw Josey Wales]

Dog Soldier has some great points. I fault myself though because I always look at things from a realism point of view. I try to play all my games that way and hope I am successful at it. I'll keep trying to come up with usable ideas and keep tossing them out here for the powers that be. :)

[jomni]

Historical command and control capabilities and doctrine is also an issue with regards to breaking down. I think it's more suitable for modern combat (as done in the Long War Mod) with all the portable communications equipment but not World War 2.

[Dog Soldier]

jomni has an excellent point in the capability of different nationalities in WW2 to be flexible.

I would add that even within a nationality, unit flexibility varies over the course of the war. Soviet troops in Finland during the 1939 / 1940 winter war were far less adaptable to the situation they found themselves in than those that fought at Kursk in 1943 or Korsun in 1944. The leading indicator in this change would be the experience and quality of the NCO's and officers.

Modeling this at the SB level would increase the realism factor of the game. I have no idea how it could be done with the current design tools available for SB.

Dog Soldier

[cazart!]

In the above WW example, the Soviets are often D or even worse quality. If they take a morale drop during a split, they are going to be even worse performers. We all now the difficulties of prodding along low quality troops under fire, especially with limited leaders. Say you take a platoon of 3x14 man squads of D quality with 1 leader and split them into 6x7 man squads all of E quality. You still have only 1 leader to shepherd them along. And god forbid you lose that leader... Now at Kursk you have the same situation, except they are C or Bquality to start and you have a leader or two instead of just one. Managing 6x7 D or C squads with a leader or 2 is not that daunting of a task.

In fact, what you will see is reinforcement and reward for historic play. There was a reason why they kept large squads.

Now the designer might already break down squads (we already have that capability) or use fire teams in the oob (already there by design) or add more leaders to give certain nationalities or units more inherent flexibility.