Loading infantry units on trucks and Inf unit size ?

[nukkxx5058]

Hi, is there a way to load infantry units on trucks?
How do you move infantry units on larger distances like 100+ miles away ?
Thank you.

[nukkxx5058]

And I have a second question about infantry units: How do I know the unit size and attack value ?
I can see different types of Inf units: Inf / Inf Bde / Inf Bn / Inf Coy / Inf Plt / Inf sec.
My guess is that it's respectively Infantry / infantry brigade / infantry Battalion / Infantry Coy (convoy???) / Infantry platoon / infantry section. Is that correct ?

Because I want to know how they differ in terms of number of soldiers and fire power. But by looking at the number of MG bursts and dispersal radius it doesn't seem to always make sense.

So how do I estimate the number of men in each unit and the unit attack value ? Which type of infantry unit is the largest/most powerful ? How do I guess the attack value ?

Thank you

[hrfepo1]

Tagging along for the answer.

[BDukes]

Not sure if this is a feature yet so holding on the bug report. You can add the cargo but when you unload it disappears. This is kinda on the line of what this version of CMO does so one of those things where you've got to be fair. Will wait for dev to respond. No pressure at all!

Lua in the meantime.[8D]

Mike

[stww2]

1) Vehicles cannot transport cargo using the Chains of War cargo system (AKAIK-I've never seen it, anyway). You could of course use teleportation or delete/spawn the infantry via Lua to simulate vehicle transport.

2) The exact number of soldiers directly is pretty much irrelevant for combat purposes (although highly relevant for Chains of War cargo purposes). What you'll likely want to look at is the number of mounts and what weapons they have (you can find this information in both the unit's DB entry and from the Weapons Tab on the right-side panel). For CMO purposes, the more powerful unit is likely going to be whichever one has the longer ranged, more accurate weapon (generally, for infantry, the order will be: ATGM's>recoilless rifles>Generic Unguided AT/7.62 MG), though different sensors would probably also have an impact, especially at night. Generally, having mounts dispersed across multiple units is going to be better than having every mount in one unit. If two units with the same type of weapons and sensors encounter each other, then the battle will probably come down to whichever one has more mounts plus a healthy dose of luck (those generic unguided AT rounds can be devastating if they hit, but that's not always guaranteed).

If the enemy has no AA, the most efficient anti-infantry weapon is probably the door mounted machine guns on most transport helicopters. Infantry MG's in CMO aren't modelled as having an AA capability and cover is too granular for the game's scope, so MG armed helicopters will slaughter infantry squads once detected. And the helicopter's generally still get these weapons even with a ferry loadout, so that means you can usually ready them in 30 minutes rather than the six hours that a purpose built strike aircraft will generally take.

[SunlitZelkova]

He gets the main points, but I'll add to stww2's answer-

The different infantry units are as follows-

Inf- this is an "empty" unit, that spawns with the mounts you loaded on to a ship or aircraft when cargo gets unloaded. It can be added in the scenario editor and is viewable in the DB so that it works like a normal unit, but in practice I don't think players are expected to use the unmodified unit itself.

Inf Bde/Inf Bn/Inf Coy- These are APP-6 placeholders intended to represent larger units depending on the design of the scenario. The acronyms stand for Brigade, Battalion, and Company, respectively. Players are presumably expected to add mounts to these, not use them "out of the box". An example of the use of this unit would be adding all of the mounts that an infantry company would have instead of using the individual platoons. So if I wanted to lower the unit count in my scenario, I would add 12x M1126 Stryker mounts to the "Inf Coy" unit to make a Stryker company, instead of using 3x Mech Inf Plt (XM1126 Stryker). Use of this would depend on whether you want your units to operate close together or spread out.

Inf Plt- This is supposed to be an Infantry Platoon, but due to some inconsistencies in nomenclature and the cargo system, it technically isn't exactly. For practical purposes it is fine, however. The way infantry platoons are modelled in the game, they can basically be described as consisting of the automatic riflemen/gunner's weapon (a machine gun). The platoons consist of four squads/sections (which based on the personnel count in the cargo DB, are actually more like fire teams), thus four machine guns. It should be noted that infantry weapons are literally on the very bottom end of the game's weapon systems, only surpassed in lack of hitting power and range by the 9mm pistol mount in the DB3000. Thus even though it says "7.62mm MG Burst (20 rounds)", it might as well be the entire squad firing their rifles in semi-automatic mode; or in the CWDB, even bolt action rifles.

Inf Sec- This is an infantry section. It is used for an even higher degree of dispersal, so you don't have all of the mounts getting destroyed by one guided bomb. There is also an infantry recon section, which is invisible (impossible for the enemy to detect). Otherwise, infantry sections are only used for anti-tank weapons and support units (heavy machine guns and mortars)

As far as attack power goes, whoever has the most mounts will prevail. So even if you have 4x infantry platoons dispersed across a valley, a single infantry battalion with 16x infantry platoons is going to prevail.

I built a very rough Khe Sanh scenario recently, and it was very interesting. The artillery was wildly inaccurate firing point blank, and mortars and recoilless rifles had severe issues too. The USMC actually held out pretty well against the PAVN onslaught, but artillery was continually firing on fixed positions, and the shrapnel was hitting the regular infantry platoons. So the south side of the base was nearly annihilated. On the north side, however, the attack was much smaller, just a few infantry platoons supported by PT-76s and a couple 81mm mortars, and the USMC infantry not only survived (as it was spread out more and there were fewer fixed positions) but also succeeded in destroying most of the attacking platoons, while recoilless rifles succeeded in destroying the PT-76s. I also added some T-34-85s and IS-2s to the PAVN side to see how they did against a smaller number of Marine M48A3s. The M48s missed wildly, not hitting any of the infantry units or tanks they targeted (they actually ran out of AP ammo trying to destroy one IS-2 platoon). The IS-2s likewise probably had their own issues, because despite driving directly into the Marine infantry positions, they did not fire at all.

On the other hand, most of the PAVN forces were detected well before reaching the base, and thus were subject to 175mm artillery fire from nearly maximum range at Camp Carroll. These were inaccurate but the enemy units were spread out enough that some were actually hit, and received a decent amount of damage.

[nukkxx5058]

ORIGINAL: SunlitZelkova

He gets the main points, but I'll add to stww2's answer-

The different infantry units are as follows-

Inf- this is an "empty" unit, that spawns with the mounts you loaded on to a ship or aircraft when cargo gets unloaded. It can be added in the scenario editor and is viewable in the DB so that it works like a normal unit, but in practice I don't think players are expected to use the unmodified unit itself.

Inf Bde/Inf Bn/Inf Coy- These are APP-6 placeholders intended to represent larger units depending on the design of the scenario. The acronyms stand for Brigade, Battalion, and Company, respectively. Players are presumably expected to add mounts to these, not use them "out of the box". An example of the use of this unit would be adding all of the mounts that an infantry company would have instead of using the individual platoons. So if I wanted to lower the unit count in my scenario, I would add 12x M1126 Stryker mounts to the "Inf Coy" unit to make a Stryker company, instead of using 3x Mech Inf Plt (XM1126 Stryker). Use of this would depend on whether you want your units to operate close together or spread out.

Inf Plt- This is supposed to be an Infantry Platoon, but due to some inconsistencies in nomenclature and the cargo system, it technically isn't exactly. For practical purposes it is fine, however. The way infantry platoons are modelled in the game, they can basically be described as consisting of the automatic riflemen/gunner's weapon (a machine gun). The platoons consist of four squads/sections (which based on the personnel count in the cargo DB, are actually more like fire teams), thus four machine guns. It should be noted that infantry weapons are literally on the very bottom end of the game's weapon systems, only surpassed in lack of hitting power and range by the 9mm pistol mount in the DB3000. Thus even though it says "7.62mm MG Burst (20 rounds)", it might as well be the entire squad firing their rifles in semi-automatic mode; or in the CWDB, even bolt action rifles.

Inf Sec- This is an infantry section. It is used for an even higher degree of dispersal, so you don't have all of the mounts getting destroyed by one guided bomb. There is also an infantry recon section, which is invisible (impossible for the enemy to detect). Otherwise, infantry sections are only used for anti-tank weapons and support units (heavy machine guns and mortars)

As far as attack power goes, whoever has the most mounts will prevail. So even if you have 4x infantry platoons dispersed across a valley, a single infantry battalion with 16x infantry platoons is going to prevail.

I built a very rough Khe Sanh scenario recently, and it was very interesting. The artillery was wildly inaccurate firing point blank, and mortars and recoilless rifles had severe issues too. The USMC actually held out pretty well against the PAVN onslaught, but artillery was continually firing on fixed positions, and the shrapnel was hitting the regular infantry platoons. So the south side of the base was nearly annihilated. On the north side, however, the attack was much smaller, just a few infantry platoons supported by PT-76s and a couple 81mm mortars, and the USMC infantry not only survived (as it was spread out more and there were fewer fixed positions) but also succeeded in destroying most of the attacking platoons, while recoilless rifles succeeded in destroying the PT-76s. I also added some T-34-85s and IS-2s to the PAVN side to see how they did against a smaller number of Marine M48A3s. The M48s missed wildly, not hitting any of the infantry units or tanks they targeted (they actually ran out of AP ammo trying to destroy one IS-2 platoon). The IS-2s likewise probably had their own issues, because despite driving directly into the Marine infantry positions, they did not fire at all.

On the other hand, most of the PAVN forces were detected well before reaching the base, and thus were subject to 175mm artillery fire from nearly maximum range at Camp Carroll. These were inaccurate but the enemy units were spread out enough that some were actually hit, and received a decent amount of damage.

Very interesting !! Thank you.

[ClaudeJ]

Note that there's a parameter not to be overlooked when comparing Bde/Inf Bn/Inf Coy, in CMO : that's Component Dispersal Radius.

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So, regardless of their name tag, these entities could be used to simulate a more or less concentrated unit.

I assume here that a more dispersed unit might be less susceptible to be fired at from a single platform.

[TitaniumTrout]

This is an interesting mechanic for large units, especially filling the formation via the Weapons/Mounts menu.

I see an issue in scenarios though, and that is the player doesn't know what is inside of that formation. If you create a generic Artillery BDE on the AI side, fill it with 155mm's, trucks, etc, then the player will see it is a Artillery BDE, and that it has a count of units, but there's no way to determine if this is tanks, trucks, thin skinned vehicles, so no good way to decide how to prosecute an attack against the formation.

[ClaudeJ]

Well, a Brigade sized unit of anything contains more than one type of vehicle and weapons anyway.

Since much too long, in that I really should Nike it (just do it), I'm toying with the idea of using authentic TOE to build up inst version of various land units.

As far as I know, once you get eyes on a unit, in game, you can see a detail of its mounts.

[Gunner98]

I tend to use the 'shell units' Claude indicates as general markers only. Often I make them detectable or on a non-player side. They have '0' defence points so if you fire an MG at them you can kill them (unless you add a bunch of components) but then it just gets abstracted anyway.

Land warfare is hard to simulate in CMO and the game is not designed for the task. Tweaks and adjustments have made it better, but you really have to ask yourself - what am I trying to achieve? Is replicating a land element important to that goal? Can it, or should it be abstracted?

I am as guilty of any in trying to use CMO for land fights and have used land combat in many scenarios. Here are a couple things I try and do:

-Always use platoon level units, this gets ugly at anything over a battalion size but if they are going to have any chance of surviving you need to. Also name them so you don't confuse yourself
-Add in lots of AD, more than the real unit has. Its the only way you can keep the laser-beam Atk helicopters off their back
-use bunkers with weapons and sensors added to create hard targets
-the Norwegians and Fins have some good fortress guns, so I use those to represent dug in gun batteries
-use Lua to pop in your reserves or counter-moves force, otherwise they will be found too early and die
-For the truck question in the original post - trucks die really easily, so the number of infantry getting out at the other end is often academic - but use Lua to spawn them in as someone else mentioned
-If your ground force has to travel any distance, make it easier for the path algorithm by doing a decent ground study first - don't have them climbing mountains and circumnavigating lakes and swamps if you want it to work right. If you want CMO to understand the ground - you need to understand the ground.
-If your just trying to replicate a convoy, put it on a Support mission and use the waypoints to follow the road, you can do this for mobile reserves as well, just put in a trigger and when they reach it, Lua them to a new mission
-give the player more to worry about than just the land fight, CMO is not a land based sim so focus on what it is designed for, and use the land bit as part of that not the main event.

OK, stepping off the pulpit now.

[nukkxx5058]

Well, I'm very happy with CMO land units and I'm having tons of fun playing large scenarios with ground combat (like invading a whole country !). Of course, I'm perfectly aware of CMO limitations in this field but again, it's extremely fun, even if it's not always as realistic as air/naval ... yet (yes, I'm fully confident that time will help. It already did a lot) !

Combined arms is definitely the key for great CMO scenarios (at least from my point of view).

I often read here and there that CMO is not designed to be played with ground units. I disagree with that. It's perfectly in line with the description made by the devs ---> https://command.matrixgames.com/?p=4982

If the game didn't become atrocely laggy when the # of land units grows, there wouldn't be any problem nor the need to use these above mentioned units containers like generic brigade units. [aka shell units / AAP-6 containers (whatever it means)] .

Now, as it isn't the case, we need to find ways to make it playable on large scenarios with "large number of units" (well, 3.000 ground AU is already near unplayable for most PCs). Hence these brigades containers/shell units.

BUT:

a) Regarding the "dispersal radius" I'm definitely not sure to understand how it is used in the game. In theory, it should "increase" the range of weapons contained in the unit (as well as the detection range) . For example, if it's a brigade, the weapons and detection range should be increased compared to a platoon because actual units are in fact positioned "everywhere" in a 5.000 m dispersion radius around where the unit is actually drawn on the map. But it doesn't seem to be the case. In fact there doesn't seem to be any differences between a platoon and a brigade in terms of range (weapon or detection range) or actual dispersal radius. I hope I'm wrong...

b) And also, from a pure gameplay point of view, what does it change to have a platoon with 8 ATGM + 200*7.62 on the red side against a similar platoon with 8 ATGM + 200*7.62 on blue side as compared to a 10 times bigger brigade with 80*ATGMs and 2.000 *7.62 on red side in front of 80*ATGMs and 2.000 *7.62 on blue side ? I'm afraid it makes no difference at all in terms of gameplay. It's like playing dices with either 1 dice or 2 dices. It won't change anything if your opponent also has the same number of dices as you have. Again, I hope I'm wrong.

Just trying to find a way to get large scenario with large number of ground units run smoothly ...

If there was no lag, I would keep everything with the platoons provided in the stock DB and would be happy to run large scens with 5.000 to10.000 AU.

[SunlitZelkova]

Do you have the weapon endgame messages enabled in the message log? In another thread, it was mentioned that that is part of why large amounts of gunfire cause lag.

[nukkxx5058]

Do you have the weapon endgame messages enabled in the message log? In another thread, it was mentioned that that is part of why large amounts of gunfire cause lag.

Ah interesting ! Will immediately give it a try ... Will let you know if it improves things.
Thanks

[nukkxx5058]

Unfortunately it won't help ...

But it's OK. In the game I'm currently palying It's just 3800 AU and at x5 I nearly get 1 sec per sec. And as it's turn based PBEM, no problem as there's no micromanagement at all. Just need watch my orders unfolding and orders are given while the game is in pause.
The problem is that I'd love to get even bigger scenarios with 5k / 6k AU or even more (and mostly ground units)
Hence the question about these units containers APP. But I'm afraid this won't help neither, for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier message.

[SunlitZelkova]

Unfortunately it won't help ...

But it's OK. In the game I'm currently palying It's just 3800 AU and at x5 I nearly get 1 sec per sec. And as it's turn based PBEM, no problem as there's no micromanagement at all. Just need watch my orders unfolding and orders are given while the game is in pause.
The problem is that I'd love to get even bigger scenarios with 5k / 6k AU or even more (and mostly ground units)
Hence the question about these units containers APP. But I'm afraid this won't help neither, for the reasons I mentioned in my earlier message.

Well, 3800 units will do that

The CMO community seems to be somewhat tight knit and in the thread about the largest known scenario, I think people generally report that 3000 units or so is the limit they can run reasonably. There is one Gulf War scenario that has around 6000 and people reported it being slow universally.

Now 3000 units is only doable because that usually amounts to stationary units like aircraft parking spaces or (presumably) “easier” (on the CPU) units like ships and aircraft.

Having 3000 ground units trudging through forest or snow just isn’t something CMO does well at the moment. Maybe there could be optimization in the future though.

[mustang191]

In real life rifle fire would kill helicopters quickly. At Karbala they lost 30 apaches to a few guys.

But in the game it's fine to use helis to transport infantry. Fuel and spares are infinite so there's no issue doing this.

By the way, currently working on a gulf war scenario in fleet command.

[BobTank63]

In real life rifle fire would kill helicopters quickly. At Karbala they lost 30 apaches to a few guys.

But in the game it's fine to use helis to transport infantry. Fuel and spares are infinite so there's no issue doing this.

By the way, currently working on a gulf war scenario in fleet command.

Just correcting the statement the US lost 30 Apaches to a few guys. Only one Apache was actually lost, and the unit was attacking a division of Iraqis. It was a poorly planned attack, but not to the extent you are describing.

[thewood1]

Missed this thread before with the Mustang guy...

Just in case people don't read the other threads, I want to spread the good news from the Tico thread...

"I stand corrected on the weight"

This is the best news I've heard today. You actually read and comprehended something. Starting out with small things like this is the best way get on the path to getting better.

Now, to keep the momentum, I'd suggest going back to all the other threads you disrupted since you joined a couple weeks ago and really take the time to read and understand all the responses and the great source material posted. It'll take some time, but we will all be patient. I'm sure you'll have a few setbacks here and there, but we're here to help. I'll take on the role of your sponsor. If you feel yourself slipping and not reading the stuff that you and other forum members post, I'll be there to talk you through it.