Matrix Games Forums

Playing human games caused me to notice the order in which units move when they fly, or when they load on ships. I became suspicious of the relative device costs: in particular .30 caliber MMG tended to load later than .50 caliber MMG - and on both sides. So I checked and found that indeed .30 caliber MMG had higher load costs than .50 caliber did. Since I don't like to just fix one thing - but everything related to it all at once - I have initiated a review of land device load costs.

One aspect of the problem is that devices are rated on more than one basis: sometimes the standard is number of men in a squad; sometimes it is weight of equipment; sometimes (static devices) it is also 9999 - at least in CHS and stock - which results in vast manpower counts of poor cosmetic value even if not of much meaning in battle.

Another aspect of the problem is devices were defined by different people - or by the same person at different times - not always with the same considerations in mind. In my case I always focused on range, effect and accuracy values - and more or less kept the existing load costs. At other times I redefined load costs on a weight basis - mainly for formerly static devices - so they can be moved at great cost. And yet other times I was looking at squads in terms of manpower - although Joe Wilkerson had already done that to a high standard for IJA - I tried to make it similar for the rest. But at no time has anyone considered the relative cost of movement of a device relative to other devices as the standard - which is my present concern. If this isn't in the ball park, units move in odd and possibly incorrect ways.

Not that "right" is easy to understand. RHS often has combined devices - more than one weapon is represented. There is a fundamental contradiction between crew size and weight as a foundation for the calculation. Sometimes weapons are manpacked, sometimes mule packed, sometimes draft, sometimes motorized, sometimes static - and often the SAME device gets into more than one category. So what is "right?"
One thing already done is that big guns require two support squads instead of one - which helps increase the cost of moving the unit and supplying the unit. Another is that we distinguish between motorized support - usually for larger artillery - and draft - by assigning motorized support or support squads - and motorized support squads are easier to move (reducing total unit size). Yet another is that a pack unit requires two support squads and one labor squad - representing the vast size increase of such units. These (mainly RHS) techniques help make the total unit size right - but still - what should the size of the basic device squad be?

A new idea I have is a "blended" standard:

1) For small arms units - which in RHS (only) means everything below two inch mortars - use pure manpower - assuming the unit is space limited - and each man carries some weapon and/or ammunition. This is approximately the stock definition - except we have taken out all MMG and light mortars bigger than the Japanese 50 mm "knee" mortar - which remains in them.

2) For AFVs use vehicle weight - strictly. This may be the stock definition.

3) For very heavy guns use weight - strictly. This is a departure from the concept of making them static - and permits sea movement of a unit with such a device IF the unit is not itself defined as static (which admittedly most units with such devices are). This is an existing RHS practice.

4) For smaller artillery and other weapons too large to include in squads defined by (1) above, use a combination standard:

a) Crew size plus weapon weight plus vehicle weight for selected weapons

b) Relative changes for similar weapons to make it harder to move the heavier weapon - comparing with the standard cases.

The Type 41 Improved Mountain Gun could be manpacked in 11 loads - or mule packed in 5 loads - or presumably moved "la porte" on the bed of a truck. I rated it as load cost = 11 to represent 11 men or 5 mules and 6 men - which is normal for this weapon. Both are considered to be forms of pack - and this device is usually in pack divisions - so the squad is supported by two support squads plus 1 labor squad (eating one of the support squads) - representing the pack ammo trains.

A more basic standard is the Type 95 Field Gun. It could be found in draft or motorized units - and thus will be supported by support or motorized support squads respectively. I rated ot as a load cost = 15 to represent the crew plus weapon weight plus the number of horses in the actual gun crew OR the weight of the truck or tractor towing it. The 75mm Infantry gun has the same load cost - but because it is direct fire - it only has a range of 3 - instead of the range of 13 whch the Type 95 has.

These values plugged in nicely between other values - e.g. load cost = 10 for a 20 mm AT/AA gun (the wheeled one - not the manpacked AT Rifle of the same caliber - which has a load cost of 4 - because it is really crewed by 4 men who carry it with 4 handles).

I have done Japanese devices. I call for comments while I do the Allies. I will issue the microupdate (device file only) today.

The main impact of this is to change the order of loading of squads, in particular on aircraft, also on ships.

A side effect is that units with lots of .30 MMG, light mortars, or medium and heavy artillery will be easier to move - and
cheaper to buy change of command for.

Another side effect is that units with lots of light artillery will be harder to move - and more expensive to buy change of command
for.

Some units will see these opposite trends offset - and many will see little or no change whatever. The biggest impact is ultra light
units - will be easier to air transport - and that light units with only light artillery will be harder to airlift. Pure artillery units with large gund - or large AA or CD guns - will be easier to move (if not otherwise static becuse they are part of a CD fortification).

These changes are now uploaded as microupdate 7.91 - and they are retrofitted into levels 5 and 6 - which remain unposted and unissued - but will post whenever we get access to the RHS site (via Mifune).

I didnt tested this since WITM40 is on hold. But my idea was for artillery(except siege and railway artillery that i calculated specifically the unit weight) Gun+towing vehicle+100kg per crew. This roughly made load coast weight 2x the gun weight. Light guns: Mountain and light infantry has 1.5x their weight has load coast. Tanks has 2.5x their weight. MMG device accounts for 2 MG's with transportation accounts for a ton in a light vehicle or horses.
I also had many modifiers for open vehicles armor etc. For example tank low velocity guns intended against infantry had double the range but roughly half the accuracy. For example the 75mm Pz IVD has a range of 2 accuracy of 4, the 50mm/L60 of Pz III has range of 1 accuracy of 10.

Like i said none of this was tested. And since i dont know what is the range formula this might be wrong.

Btw if i am not mistaken squad and army weapons are all in tons. That made foot born squads much less weighty. For example a Panzer Granadier 41 squad in Halftracks have a 18 Load coast while a garrison unit have 3. I have given an armor value to armored infantry and partisans/special forces.

Joe Wilkerson - who once did the IJA squads for CHS (and was my supervisor then) - and who later specialized in land combat units
at Matrix (apparently before becoming a coordinator for AE - if there was a before) - thought that squads were men - so for this reason
IJA squads were actual men plus 3 for an attached "knee mortar team" (there are three such teams in a platoon) - or 14 plus 3 = 17.
I made sure all other squads were the same.

I seem to havee come up with almost the same formulation for heavier weapons - e.g artillery of the regular sort. I also use 100 kg (i.e. 1/10 of a metric ton) for the weight of a man (average, with pack and weapon or ammunition). I also distinguish between HE and AP guns - the armor penetration of an non high velocity gun is half that of a HV gun - and a HV gun point blank penetration is 1.75 times caliber in mm.
We use a greater effect for mortars (125 per cent I think) - and less (2/3) for AP - and in all cases soft effect is based on a square root function. [Thus you take shell weight and use square root for HE, square root of 2/3 of weight for AP, and multiply the value by 5/4 for mortars or bombardment rockets or similar devices).

For larger weapons the weight of the weapon is so large that it dominates - and indeed in extreme cases it is rare the thing can be moved at all. But RHS has rail guns - and in EOS family - even a transportable heavy CD unit - so we had to define what that means in some way. Weight seemed the easy way to do that. There is so much else in large units that the men and supporting vehicles are represented by other squads. Also - I felt that in all cases it was the combination of basic squad and support that really matters - you need both to be effective - so some unit types have different combinations. Thus a pack gun - which is pretty light in firepower terms - requires you to move FOUR squads - the gun - the labor squad - and two support squads - one for each - meaning the cost to supply and move is nicely represented as higher - which using only one squad would not achieve. The heavy First and Second Independent Artillery Company organization is even worse - you may have only 1 or 2 big gun squads - but you have organic AAA and other things to move and feed.

Yes it can be managed by support loadcoast if enough diferent kind of support squads exists. Unless you have diferent loadcoast support units, one kind of support cant represent heavy armored support and tiny parachute unit support at same time. An M4 tank needs a couple of trucks, cranes, medical team etc., An artillery guns needs carts and horses or a couple of trucks, a parachute squad needs a medical team and not much more. Since original WITP was lacking in slots i choosed to increase weight in devices itself.

In SPWAW and possibly this game as well (if scale here is a consideration?), it had wrongfully been assumed an American .50 cal HMG (air cooled) could not keep up with the rest of a squad. It can.
I was a Ranger in a unit that never deployed more than a "stick"/team, of 8 guys, and we took arms mission specific.. I was one of the bigger guys so was the one to take that baby. Another man might have the mount and a couple of guys had the ammo..Our mission was certainly not of long-lasting duration, but either for ambushes or hit/run "termination" assignments..
We rarely used that weapon, but it happened, and that calibre was great for long range "kills".

Further, it had also been erroneously believed the weapon could not be carried and fired in the same "turn".
Of course it could, and was, if you were ever caught in transit.
(Sometimes you got bad intel and this might happen..)

ORIGINAL: Dili

Yes it can be managed by support loadcoast if enough diferent kind of support squads exists. Unless you have diferent loadcoast support units, one kind of support cant represent heavy armored support and tiny parachute unit support at same time. An M4 tank needs a couple of trucks, cranes, medical team etc., An artillery guns needs carts and horses or a couple of trucks, a parachute squad needs a medical team and not much more. Since original WITP was lacking in slots i choosed to increase weight in devices itself.

The problem with that is that weight is reported as troops - and also that it grossly impacts wether the device will airlift at all - or if it does - how many will lift? I try to keep troop report inflation down - it is gross in WITP - and I wanted here to insure hat devices loaded right for light units. Another case that is critical is raiders on submarines - heavy sqauads are severely penalized. Apparently a sub can lift x tons of supplies, but only x/y men - where y is some significant intiger.

For armored units we have a completely different situation - and I actually rate EVERY vehicle as a separate squad - including the support vehicles. Naturallly the motorized support vehicles = motorized support. By this means we get very high unit weight, movement requirements, and supply requirements. But a small armor unit with only light tanks and a little mechanized support is very much easier to lift than a big one with heavy vehicles and many kinds of other saquads and support is.

ORIGINAL: m10bob

In SPWAW and possibly this game as well (if scale here is a consideration?), it had wrongfully been assumed an American .50 cal HMG (air cooled) could not keep up with the rest of a squad. It can.
I was a Ranger in a unit that never deployed more than a "stick"/team, of 8 guys, and we took arms mission specific.. I was one of the bigger guys so was the one to take that baby. Another man might have the mount and a couple of guys had the ammo..Our mission was certainly not of long-lasting duration, but either for ambushes or hit/run "termination" assignments..
We rarely used that weapon, but it happened, and that calibre was great for long range "kills".

Further, it had also been erroneously believed the weapon could not be carried and fired in the same "turn".
Of course it could, and was, if you were ever caught in transit.
(Sometimes you got bad intel and this might happen..)

This is absolutely correct. I was a naval landing party guy - and we were trained by Marines to do what you did - carry arms mission specific. The ships armory included 2 .50s and 2 .30s - all Brownings - as well as 2 BARs, 2 Thompsons, 2 Mossberg 12 Ga pumps, 8 M-1 Garands and 2 Thompson SMG in the same .45 ACP as the M1911 pistols used (I have no idea how many pistols there were - but it was more than we could ever require). I myself had originally been assigned to a landing party as a "radioman" ( I was really a technician, but the captain wanted "someone who could fix the radio if it broke" - so that ship used technicians in leiu of radiomen- the most junior tech got the job). Serving mainly in Caribbean waters, where the climate is punishingly hot, nobody wanted to carry any heavy weapons at all - and I didn't like that - so I generally carried a BAR or an MG - in addition to the radio (which I admit I "cheated" by not using the heavy ancient issued radios).
On a later ship I was the only person with experience of that sort, so I had to train and lead the party - and if Vietnam was almost as hot, I never let anyone think about "we won't carry the heavy weapons" if they might be of use. Once we absorbed 12 local volunteers - a landing party is 14 - and we reformed up as 6 teams - 2 with .50s - 2 with .30s and 2 with BARs. It is indeed possible to carry and use both MMG and HMG at the lowest level of infantry organization.

In RHS I have broken out all MMG and HMG as separate teams - but LMG are part of the regular squads. A US MMG "team" is only 2 men - while a US HMG team is 4 - Japanese usage being different. What they call an HMG is really an MMG - but it got more men - being rarer and more important to them. The numbers of MMG and HMG in US units - particularly Marine units - is vast - even if you subtract those mounted on vehicles (which get them in a different kind of squad). We also put in light mortar squads - and dire predictions this cannot work turned out not to be true. The British forces are different - the superb LMGs they had meant they didn't go for as many heavier MG - but still - all these were missing - and we added them too - usually 16 or 48 - depending on unit size.

The problem with that is that weight is reported as troops - and also that it grossly impacts wether the device will airlift at all - or if it does - how many will lift?

I told you that squad weight went down. Also all light guns didnt got a big hike= 1,5x their weight is just the gun+crew and a little more. Also for WITP looking at nature of air transport there, mostly light, i dont see a problem. I had the problem you point with WITM since Germans have Messerschmitt 323 and that opens air transport to much more heavier devices.

it had wrongfully been assumed an American .50 cal HMG (air cooled) could not keep up with the rest of a squad.

That just depends, what is more correct HMG inside a SQUAD or as an ARMY WEAPON(i dont have a good knowledge of differences)? First there is the range issue: SQUAD weapons are efective at 0 range, an Heavy MG can go usually to 1 , so we downgrade the HMG to 0 or upgrade the SQUAD to 1, each of options seems poor. Usually HMG used are support weapons at level of 81 mortars and such. Also in my WITM a couple of countries use HMG as dual propose with AA capability. For that reasons i choosed to represent them independently. Because of load coast an HMG represent 2 weapons.

I am in substantial agreement - MMG and HMG are in my view not part of regular squads - but separate "heavy weapons teams."
This permits them to be used as AA weapons for one thing. And to have a "range" greater than zero. The ceiling of MMG is 2000 feet
and of HMG = 4000 feet in RHS - and both have a range of "1" (= 1000 yards - which is the nearest 3000 foot incriment to both 2000 feet and 4000 feet ).

What was wrong with the OBs I found was a near total lack of MMG and HMG in the units - as well as in many cases vastly understated or absent mortars and artillery. One late addition was artillery to all of Allied forces in Malaya - which somehow had escaped even CHS. This - of course - because someone in the Forum complained - and turned out to be right (as usual).

Adding vast numbers of "heavy weapons" makes brigades and divisions harder to lift or feed - but more correct. Keeping heavy weapons out of basic squads has the opposite effect for light units - units with no or few heavy weapons then airlift better - as they should.

Is there a RHS CAIO and RHS MAIO 7.91 (or others) update?  The only one I see in my incoming and/or saved email is for RHSAIO.

Edit. Well I have answered my own question through further examination no thanks to Sid for his total lack of naming convention discipline that continues to cause confusion and errors between the scenarios. File was sent out as RHSAIO 7.91 micro update (why not just RHS 7.91 micro update???) AND THEN the file is named wpd 077 (77 is AIO) that included all the scenario changes (Hmm strange it just wasn't named wpd 7.91 micro update).

The micro update was for all scenarios and should indeed have been named as Buck suggests - but since I sent it out on completion - and had not slept in some days - I apparently didn't name it properly. Sorry.

I understand and sorry I overreacted. Not a good excuse but my venting could be attributed to my losing more of my a$$ in the stock market this week.