The immortal and unbreakable last infantry man

[Stelteck]

I noticed something. Maybe other too.

I often entrenched infantry units in cities and urban area. I noticed an interesting behavior.
The unit fight and take looses normaly, but a lot of time, the last infantry man is quite really difficult, maybe impossible to kill.

In my current game (a though nut to crack), i have no less than 4 lone infantry men hiding in different ennemy occupied square, taking fire each turn, having no ammo left.

Maybe they hide in a cave or something, and are difficult to "finish". I could understand, but there are issues :

- The AI really try to kill them, shooting at them with massive force each turn and they effectly slow AI offensive a lot. (Even though the unit is harmless, having no ammo and 0% morale and like 20% readiness).
- It still provide me good intel on ennemy movement. (They probably still have radio and talking camly in coms....very professional)
- I cannot order an artillery strike on the square where these lone men are, even though there is sometimes like 50+ enemy units in the square
- These units are very slow to (or maybe do not at all) respond to FOP relocation order, even though i try to order them to run though relocation interface.
- If i give them a move order, they are usually killed instantly trying to move.

Is there something wrong with lone survivors ?

Save included.

[Stelteck]

I finished the scenario (and lost ).

The situation is better than i though, as a lot of one-man survivor units have been finally wiped out after hours of battle. So it was probably not a bug.

Could be a side effect of the fact that smaller units are harder to hit than larger units, leading to unintended consequences when the unit is really, really small.

Maybe a unit with 0% morale should automatically scoop out when fired upon, something like that, in order to not stay in the way.

[CapnDarwin]

Unit size (number of active subunits), shooting, smoke, craters, burning vehicles, the base terrain, weather, time of day, and the sensors searching all play into spotting and engaging an enemy. A team or squad of guys in a town low or out of ammo and low morale can be hard to find. It also can slow down an advancing force as they are unsure how many troops and vehicles are there.

[cbelva]

I don't think it is necessarily a bug, but urban combat is still something that we still need to work on and perfect. One thing I do like about it and does add some realism to it, it ties up units trying to find or finish off the few survivors. We can argue over how realistic that is. When you have just a few lone survivors in a urban hex, it is possible (even with enemy units in the hex) for that the survivors to hide and not be seen as long they don't move or fire. When they do try and move away, they tend to reveal themselves because they are now moving and exposing themselves.

[governato]

I don't think it is necessarily a bug, but urban combat is still something that we still need to work on and perfect. One thing I do like about it and does add some realism to it, it ties up units trying to find or finish off the few survivors. We can argue over how realistic that is. When you have just a few lone survivors in a urban hex, it is possible (even with enemy units in the hex) for that the survivors to hide and not be seen as long they don't move or fire. When they do try and move away, they tend to reveal themselves because they are now moving and exposing themselves.

maybe there should be an automatic chance every turn that this 'last man standing' eventually decides to live to fight another day
and just hide till nightfall... instead of going full 'Bruce Willis mode' as it does currently. In game terms that means that the one man unit with low ammo and low readiness ceases to exist for all game purposes.

I think it'd be a realistic compromise

[pullg]

When you think about it, though, the game does a pretty good job of that already. If you're looking at a Blue unit, it's already making decisions based on its SOPs, morale, readiness, and supply status. If it's still on the board, it's still capable of organized action, although it may not respond effectively to orders (try taking a near-broken unit and ordering it to advance -- it autonomously changes status and stops that nonsense almost immediately). A "destroyed" unit isn't necessarily physically wiped out -- it's just finally understood by to be combat ineffective, or as you put it, that last guy finally decided to hole up and wait for the action to pass. If you're looking at a Red unit, it's likewise just some level of certainty there's an organized and capable threat in that location, or that the threat's been rendered ineffective.

[IronMikeGolf]

I noticed something. Maybe other too.

I often entrenched infantry units in cities and urban area. I noticed an interesting behavior.
The unit fight and take looses normaly, but a lot of time, the last infantry man is quite really difficult, maybe impossible to kill.

In my current game (a though nut to crack), i have no less than 4 lone infantry men hiding in different enemy occupied square, taking fire each turn, having no ammo left.

Maybe they hide in a cave or something, and are difficult to "finish". I could understand, but there are issues :

OK, let me say this about that.

First, it's NOT "the last man." It's a squad or crew.. OK, that's a quibble, perhaps, but it needs said. If you reduce an infantry unit to one subunit that is not a vehicle, it's not a single soldier.

Next, let's look at how soldiers, particularly, those squad leaders are trained (both NATO and Warsaw Pact). Lets look at WP first. You have the last squad of a Motorized Rifle Company. What's the training? They form a Combat Outpost, performing self defense first, and then reporting what they see. Honestly, a mediocre NCO can accomplish that much.

Now, let me add my lived experiences at NTC and CTC Hohenfels. First my personal background and some mil history, as these inform my choices as a game designer.

WW II, Normandy air drop. Are you familiar with the acronym LGOPs? That is "Little Groups of paratroopers". The air drop was a disaster from the aspect of coherent combat power upon landing. But as Benjamin Franklin said in 1784(!) "Ten thousand men descending from the clouds might not, in many places, do an infinite amount of mischief before a force could be brought together to repel them." And that's what happened in the wee hours of 6 June 1944.

My first assignment was in a Rifle Platoon in a Ranger Battalion. The next to last line of the Ranger Creed is "Readily will I display the intestinal fortitude required to fight on to the Ranger objective and complete the mission though I be the lone survivor." I internalized that.

10 years later, Squad Leader, teaching my fellows the finer points of land navigation and building IEDs a couple of decades before the term even existed. Light Infantry unit and we went to NTC (National Training Center). Now, that place was about heavy forces, but we went anyways. One more than one occasion, my squad was the last one standing in the company. One time, I was the actual Last Man. For about an hour.

So, the first time that happened, m guys looked at me, the rest of the Company being KIA at 2 AM, their looks at me asking "What do we do now?" LGOPs. We swapped weapons with the "dead" and went hunting tanks. Killed 2 and the OPFOR retired from our sector.

I have a hard time believing a squad would "opt out" of the battle in this era. From the WP side, there is the "knowledge" that another echelon of forces will arrive soon. Likewise on the NATO side, though that might be local combat power to extricate an isolated remnant of a unit. This gets into Tactical Psychology, which is both complex and fascinating.

So where are we? I think there are sufficient historical examples of unit remnants making progress very difficult to keep what we model in place. If your success hinges on a remnant rolling over and awaiting your bayonet in their chest, then I suggest either your plan or its execution needs improvement. Harsh words? Yes, but gentler than if you were in my squad.