Casualty Madness

[notenome]

So on turn 2 I starting clearing out the large southern pocket I made on turn 1 of my new 41 GC game as the Axis (using BigAnorak's custom 100-110 setting) and I got so frustratred by the absurdly high casualties that I started taking screenshots. Keep in mind that these are all deliberate attacks made against isolated units, many which had retreated the turn before.

This is the reason I'm not going to be playing any PBEM's as the Axis any time soon. In my last GC I simply left the pockets alone (completely gamey tactic) and basically turned western Ukraine into swiss cheese.




I think my favourite might be loosing 700 men even though I had 70 bombers and 900:1 combat odds.

[Flaviusx]

Switch to hasty attacks. Your losses don't seem that high to me, but deliberate attacks generate higher casualties. The very high odds you are getting on these attacks kind of shows a lack of economy of force -- you're using much more than necessary to clear these hexes. And if they are isolated and ripe to surrender, then the point of the exercise is to bump them from the hex not throttle them with super high odds attacks.

[jjdenver]

Hm. I'm not sure losing 774 men killed, wounded, mia when attacking a force of 10,000 is so far off. I'd guess you'll get a lot of those guys returned from wounded status right? Soviets won't get any of them back afaik? I don't have east front casualty numbers at my fingertips but the Germans took casualties even when winning handily.

[jomni]

Your complaining about 700 casualties when your opponent gets thousands?
And those numbers include disabled units so it's not so bad. As the previous reply said, the Russians end up as captured so they are in deeper trouble.

Odds are dynamic right? The odds that you see at the end in your screenshots are the odds after the fighting.
Odds might just be 2:1 or 3:1 at the start and if you closely watch the numbers, you will notice that the attacker gets more casualties until the defender's breaking point.

[notenome]

Flavius, I normally only do hasty attacks on pockets. This was done more out of frustration. With hasty attacks my losses are even worse actually. The point wasn't to be effective, as I didn't save. The point was to show that these losses are way too high for reducing a pocket, which wasn't even reduced. It's not at all uncommon for an Axis to loose 16-20k men reducing the Lvov pocket on turn 2, and disabled aren't much better do the 1% rate of return. And to ask why I am complaining as its worse for my opponent, well yes, I pocketed him dammit. If the Axis loss ration is 1:4, 1:3 or even 1:2 whilst reducing a pocket in July, then they are sorely screwed. Most axis players use a mark of 10:1 loss ratio by Mud as the goal, and pockets are the way to raise it.

[Flaviusx]

I'm surprised to hear you were getting higher losses from hasty attacks, that doesn't sound right.

The disabled issue is still under review pending more data. For whatever it is worth, I think the current percentage is too low even before blizzard, based on my own read of the sources. (Bob finally convinced me of this and I went back to Seaton and Halder's diary and found some figures to back him up.)

But we need more data to present a stronger case that this is affecting game balance. My own read at this point: the numbers kinda sorta work out ok in AI or even solo games but tend to break down in PBEM because the tempo of operations goes up in PBEM.

[Oleg Mastruko]

Those numbers seem OK to me. You're rushing to close pockets that in reality did survive some time and were reduced more slowly. Try letting them starve for a turn or two with no supplies... ah, OK, you won't do that because you're in a hurry, well, then take casualties...
 
Soviets sometimes fought like crazy to the last man like the defenders of the Brest fortress etc.

[notenome]

Oleg as I wrote before, I normally let the pockets starve for a couple turns, but that is a gamey tactic. Pockets were reduced gradually, not left to stew for weeks. You have to remember these are week long turns, and 2:1 and 3:1 loss ratios are insane for the beginning of the war. Also remember that some of these battles had over 100 bombers, which no one would use in their right mind. Also notice the gigantic disparity of forces. I've stated many times that I have no problems with soviets holding or not surrendring. I have a huge problem with axis casualties. Soviet defenses for the first months should burn axis mps, not manpower. Axis casualties on June on all fronts from combat were 8,8k dead, 29k wounded, 2k MIA.

[Joel Billings]

I just want to point out again that disabled are only a small portion of the wounded. Elements get damaged all the time and then recover or are sent back to the pool to flow back to another unit as a replacement (a small percentage would be disabled). You could take 700 "casualties" in a battle. What this might represent is 140 damaged 10 men squads. If most of these were repaired, you might actually have very few KIA's or disabled come out of those 700 casualties. Better to look at permanent losses if you want to compare versus history. It's because of the damaged elements representing the majority of the wounded that the disabled return rate is so low.

[abulbulian]

I too have seen the same causalities and think posted the same concerns as notenome. Sure of the 700 some will be disabled, however, but with the very low %1 return rate for disabled men. I think it's still a bit outrageous.

bwhealty also posted that he feels the loses to a hasty attack should be on average more than deliberate attacks. I agree and I think logically in most cases it makes perfect sense. Deliberate attacks have invested the time to scout best attack routes, plan for contingencies if things go wrong, etc. Thus lessening the causality factor.

I'd like to hear from those that think hasty attacks should incur less loses on average that deliberate.


The 900:1 odds taking 800 loses, that just doesn't feel right. It was 35k vs 10k. I'm wondering it the formula is just flawed and taking a certain ratio of loses from the attacker with less consideration to the odds. Say he had attacked with 70k, then he might have taken 1,600 loses? That isn't modeling the combat very well, IMO.

Given what should be low moral and experience for the sov defender in sum 41, I think a good portion of those sov soldiers being out numbered 3.5:1 would have ran or surrendered. Maybe later in the war when the sov soldiers where more confident and dogged defenders it would be different.

[jomni]

ORIGINAL: abulbulian
The 900:1 odds taking 800 loses, that just doesn't feel right. It was 35k vs 10k. I'm wondering it the formula is just flawed and taking a certain ratio of loses from the attacker with less consideration to the odds. Say he had attacked with 70k, then he might have taken 1,600 loses? That isn't modeling the combat very well, IMO.

Again can anyone confirm if the odds are dynamic? 900:1 that we see is after the Sovets died and were taken prisoner.
The initial odds might just be 3:1. When I watch the combat resolution, the CV values change as the casualties mount so the ratio much change as well.

Here's how I see Hasty vs. Deliberate attack:

Hasty attack, unplanned and less coordinated, might take more casualties (manual says it will) but can abort the attack easily (especially with good initiative).
Deliberate attack, planned and well coordinated, might take less casualties as there are no penalties. But units are more determined to boot out the defenders so aborting is not as easy (my theory). More stacks / units can also be involved in the attack, more targets for the defender if they have the initiative and more long range weapons.
So in both cases heavy casualties can mount depending on the circumstances.

[randallw]

Some of those battles had arty on the defense, which may have been 'outside' the pocket.

[ComradeP]

The worst I've seen is about 11k to 15k casualties solely for cleaning up the huge pocket I created in the AGS area. My losses in my game with notenome were also fairly high.

The main thing that bugs me about those losses, which I've reported a number of times, is that they only happen in the AGS area. The couple of extra points of morale and experience the Soviets units in that area have seem to make all the difference. I took minimal casualties in each battle in the AGN or AGC area, but hundreds in the AGS area. Sometimes economy of force isn't possible due to the terrain units are located in. Isolated units in cities or swamps can cause high losses. That's fine by itself, but the defenders should take more losses than the attacker due to their isolated state, which sometimes doesn't happen. Case in point being an attack on an isolated unit in a swamp in my game with notenome, where I took almost 1500 losses and the defenders held.

Considering the fairly low German replacement rate in general (which barely copes with attrition losses alone in later years), and the low disabled percentage, these losses do hurt. They're trivial for the Soviets, but not for the Germans.

[KenchiSulla]

So basically the issue is too many losses are KIA and to few disabled? Taking losses while clearing out a pocketed but fairly determined enemy should be costly...shouldnt it?

[ComradeP]

More like: too many disabled that return too slowly at a rate of 1%/turn. Lower losses or a higher return percentage for disabled would both solve the issue.

Also keep in mind that the forces in the AGS area retreat rather than surrender after many battles, which will mean you will have to take hundreds of losses attacking the same isolated unit a number of times. Somehow, their slightly higher morale/experience has a huge impact.

[Klydon]

Probably hard coded, but I wonder if the 1% should be different depending on who you are talking about. If the Russians are 1%, then perhaps the Germans should be higher. The Axis Allies can remain at the lower rate as that makes sense for them. 

[raizer]

morale drops for isolated units right? The question is how much...its says 1...that seems low if im reading it right

[ComradeP]

Slightly each turn, yes.

[raizer]

should be a lot more than that imho 10% would be a start

[Singleton Mosby]

ORIGINAL: abulbulian

bwhealty also posted that he feels the loses to a hasty attack should be on average more than deliberate attacks. I agree and I think logically in most cases it makes perfect sense. Deliberate attacks have invested the time to scout best attack routes, plan for contingencies if things go wrong, etc. Thus lessening the causality factor.

I disagree with this suggestion. A hasty attack doesn't pack the punch a deliberate attack does because only a small portion of the unit is used for the attack. Hence the casualties are relative light. A deliberate attack is a prepared attack by an entire unit, mostly used against a stronger defense.