Low casualties

[pjdegrieck]

I'm noticing low casualty numbers for infantry.

There's a particular scenario when you invade China as the Soviet Union in the 60s, I'll surround and destroy stack after stack of Chinese infantry. It will show 700 Assault squads destroyed, but this only equates to 7000 infantry casualties. I have no idea how many soldiers are assigned to MG units, motar, etc.

I'll even drop 1 Megaton bombs over stacks of infantry. It only appears to strike the top selected unit, and will only kill 137 squads, which equates to only 1037 soldiers. This seems insanely low. Am I reading squads wrong?

I assumed each squad equaled 10 soldiers.

It would make more sense if it was 100.

Thanks!

[josant]

Yes, rounding up/down, it could be said that each infantry squad equals 10 men. For me, nuclear attacks in TOAW are too weak.

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: pjdegrieck

I'm noticing low casualty numbers for infantry.

There's a particular scenario when you invade China as the Soviet Union in the 60s, I'll surround and destroy stack after stack of Chinese infantry. It will show 700 Assault squads destroyed, but this only equates to 7000 infantry casualties. I have no idea how many soldiers are assigned to MG units, motar, etc.

If you surround and destroy a unit then the entire unit is destroyed. So yeah, it must have had 7000 soldiers and that was it. You can always open the scenario as the other guy or in hotseat and look at the units to see what's there.

[sPzAbt653]

Plus, it all depends on how the Scenario Designer designed the scenario. Squads can represent any number of men, and casualty rates can be adjusted up or down.

[NikolaiEzhov]

Hmm, a division should always have rear-echelon units.
For a PLA division in the 1960's, there should be exactly 243 rifle squads with 9 men each = 2187 "infantrymen; while the total personnel division: 12457. Most of them are rear-echelon troops and weapon crews:
RPG squad, rifle company: 7 personnel.
60mm mortar squad, rifle company: 13 personnel.
Feeding squad, rifle company: 10 personnel.
75/82mm recoilless rifle squad, infantry battalion: 8 personnel.
...
These rear-echelon troops' fate can be varied. Sometimes a division gets crushed with all infantry lost and all equipment abandoned, but the structure of the division maintains intact. Sometimes the division vanished in a pocket and all its personnel ends up in POW camps. TOAW is not able to distinguish these. It only represents the loss of front-line troops. Thus an exact estimation of casualties is just impossible.

Some designers may try to compensate this manpower gap by adding "support squad" to the units, but this can still be questionable. Should someone add 1000 support squad for a PLA army division? That can be silly.