CM / PC Casualty Disparities

[Liebchen]

Having played quite a bit of Combat Mission (although not much, lately), I have to wonder about the combat casualty rates in HPS' PC games. In CM it is not unusual to see 20 to 50 tanks KOed in a matter of 20-30 minutes, depending upon the concentration and mass.

In the PC games, on the other hand, an attack by 80 PzKwIIIs attack 20 T-34/76s, the losses are typically much lower -- and that's over the span of 2 hours, not 20-30 minutes.

Similarly, infantry assaults in CM can easily result in much higher losses in comparison to what it feels like in PC games, especially when it comes to artillery.

It's been quite a while since I played CS games, but I seem to recall high casualties there, too, compared to the PC games. (I haven't played SP, and so can't comment on that one.)

Has anybody else noticed this?

[Ricky B]

To me, it is all a factor of scale. A tactical game, with many units facing each other in the front lines, basically, represents just a part of a battle represented in PzC at the operational level. So having 80 vs. 20 tanks, and only seeing maybe 5-6 tanks knocked out on a side, is due to the operational level, related to dispersion, sight lines, etc. Not all these tanks are going to see each other and be firing for the 2 hours.

Also, the CM games, at least, allowing large sized forces to fight it out in a short time, may not be providing a realistic look at the tactical combat either - probably a combination of both factors. Take a big battle such as Kursk, with thousands of tanks on a side, and you won't be seeing 50 tanks being killed per hour for an entire day. I would guess that total losses per day averaged around 150 for both sides, maybe 200.

Rick

[McIvan]

The fact is that human wargame opponents tend to be, usually by many orders of magnitude, more agressive than anyone ever was in real life. So in CM, with nothing much riding on the outcome (unless playing an operation), we feel free to expend all our forces on pursuit of the overiding objectives.

PzC takes an approach which assumes, I think, units "pacing" themselves for an engagement which can last days if not weeks or maybe even months.

Also, firing in PzC should not be taken as representing what CM does....CM is definitely a PzC "assault"......one with a 50% loss riding on the outcome to boot. It's not at all difficult in PzC to annihilate a unit/units in a single turn, and in that respect it can be just as bloody as CM.

[Tide1]

Or the old Squad Leader board game If you put togather large battles you could actually average a 3:1 kill ratio Germans vs Russians. But like McIvan said that's guys playing wargames.

[Steel God]

I think Ivan hits the nail pretty squarely. I'm not a cm player, but have played 100s of SP games (similar scale to CM) and very rare indeed is the player who isn't unrealistically aggressive. The scale in PzC and MC games being battalions the game engine is instilling some measure of realistic combat loss in it's "die rolls". But even so, in testing I always found players were more aggressive and losses could easily be higher than in real life.

Unlike CM and SP, PzC games do reward players who pull their units out of action and rest them because you have days and weeks of a game to manage, not just hours and minutes.

I played a moderated campaign of SP once (not at Blitz) called Red Snow and when equipment was lost it was not available for the next battle. It seriously changed the way people played SP and caution, cover, recon all became treasured habits.

[Dog Soldier]

I recently played a PzC scenario of the invasion of Crete with default optional rules against a good player in PBEM. At the end the CW troops were in full retreat heading for the embarkation hexes. My losses of FJ were quite close to the historical losses in the battle.

I think Tiller & Co. has really done a fine job on the battle results outcomes in PzC. One should look at other games and ask why they do not come closer to the PzC standard.

It is worth mentioning again, what Ivan and SG were saying. The turns are two or four hours (for night) long. This is more for regulating movement than combat. Combat is not continuous air strikes, barrages, assaults and direct fire for the full two hours. Just an engagement of an unspecified length time that occurred in those two hours.

Dog Soldier

[Liebchen]

All excellent replies, for which I thank you.

Of course wargamers are more aggressive than real combat commanders (except for McClennan, that is, of course ;) ) and that does explain a lot.

The compression of time also is very accentuated in the more tactical games. A player may be given 30 or 40 minutes in CM to "accomplish a goal," be in hold territory or exact a certain level of losses on the enemy, whereas in PzC the tactical command (i.e. the regimental 'piece') is told "to assault" without any geographical or other specific imperative.

I agree that, at the end of the day (or days) casualty figures in PzC feel about right, and it isn't my position that any of the systems is a "better" simulation and another. It's just that there was an apparent contradiction inherent in the differing systems' outcomes.