CMBS balancing and the 'value' of casualties

[Tumatauenga]

Common wisdom among forum members seems to be that for the best balancing quick battle players should stick to UKR Russ games.

I think this is a bit of a pity so I embarked on a wee experiment where I have played three Russ attack US defend games giving the Russian side a 10% points advantage. Two of these have been mirror games with GazNZ and one with Libera where I was the Russian attacker.

Result: one major victory to me as the Russ attacker but two likely losses emerging in the mirror games with GazNZ (he's not top 'o the ladder for nothing folks!)

Conclusion is that 10% is unnecessary and that its best to stick with the default attacker/defender offset already built in to CMBS.

However, it raises in my mind some interesting if slightly tangential questions:
I have noticed that my most successful strategies in CMBS (and other CMx2 games if I think about it) invariably involve sacrificing a fair chunk of 'cheap' infantry to allow armour or other heavy weapon assets to locate, pin down and destroy the opponent. For example, its much more tactically effective in a small QB to field close to a full battalion of dismounts with the odd ARV (and lose a hundred and fifty men) than it is to invest a couple of platoons of APS enabled ARV's

Its hard for me to imagine any modern army claiming victory while sustaining the casualty rates that we might sustain in winning a typical CMBS QB.

So, I wonder if casualties attract a sufficient penalty in QB play in CMBS.

Would increasing the penalty for casualties shift the nature of the game? Would it make it better - feel more modern? Would it increase the likelihood of us using toys like APS, airsupport?