"How Should Troop Quality Influence Our Games?" Topic

Oswald was 260+ feet (268 if I recall) from Kennedy. A pistol was out of the question – even though he had a 38 (which he used to kill Officer Tibbets). The Carcano he mail ordered from Kleins was CHEAP. LHO was trained as a Marine on the M1 Garand. He had no training on a bolt action like the Carcano. He also had no experience with a scope, having been trained with iron sights. The scope was poorly attached and wobbled with each shot (the FBI expert could not hit a man sized target with it in testing later on). How LHO managed to hit JFK, especially after missing his first shot, still baffles me. No, I am not a conspiracy guy, I just happened to have been in 8th grade and remember it all too well.

One other thing – the Carcano fired a solid bullet which could easily have pierced Kennedy and done what it did to Connolly. I still wonder, however, about the thir d bullet (head shot) as that was never found and would not have disintegated.

@Number4: I do a little shooting myself, and while I certainly can't hit anything beyond about 30 feet, my shooting buddy regularly has targets out past 100 feet in competition.

@RevZoom: Didn't realize it was that far. Definitely long-gun range, then, though I could probably use a pistol-caliber carbine (say, .44mag lever action) to get hits at that range.

Bah, forget it. I really don't care who plugged JFK, or why. Less political horsepucky, more gaming!

As far as troop quality and morale goes, having them be two separate statistics is my preference. I've met well-trained Sailors with -poor morale, and met complete noobs that were 10 feet tall and bulletproof.

I'm torn on whether to have the man-in-charge's leadership abilities as a third statistic, or to assume that it's reflected in the troop morale. I have never come across a unit with idiots in charge and high morale, after all.

I was trained to fire a .38" revolver in the USAF. To qualify periodically we fired (one-handed) at targets 25 yards (75 feet) away. Ordinary bulls-eye type paper targets, probably smaller than a man.

Erm, yes…my post was in response to claims of accurate fire with pistol caliber weapons at ranges of +200yards!

As far as troop quality and morale goes, having them be two separate statistics is my preference. I've met well-trained Sailors with Bleeped text-poor morale, and met complete noobs that were 10 feet tall and bulletproof.

Fully agree with Lion here.

This is true in all facets of "competitive life" whether military, education, sports, or business.

You can have all the skill and talent in the world but it means nothing if you're not motivated enough to apply it.

You can also be highly motivated but ultimately fail anyway since you simply lack the knowledge or talent to accomplish a given task.

I see troop quality as a composite of these two attributes which determines how they can be used on our miniature battlefields.

Highly motivated, low skilled fanatic militia? You won't be a great shot but you'll close with the enemy through numbers while taking lots of casualties…gladly.

Unmotivated, extremely experienced soldier? You might be reluctant to get your butt shot off by advancing in a forlorn hope action but you'll be really tough to kill.

In our home grown rules we use two attributes: Mojo and Skillz. Mojo is a combination of morale, determination, bravado, confidence, and even luck. Skillz range from Leet to Noob and represent field craft, marksmanship, technical knowledge, etc. (Yes, my kids have a big role to play in developing our rules!)

'an SMG is easy peasy, safety off point and click.'

I don't think the Sten had a safety?

I've read about the 'gutful men' before. In Congleton town Hall i once saw a display about the town's VC winner, who took out 3 German MG nests in Holland one after the other, alone, & in spite of being wounded taking out the 2nd… the caretaker's comment 'He was a devil' was revealing… here's the local nutter/thug/ASBO who suddenly comes into his own in the face of Total War.

If you read the novel of CROSS OF IRON, this depicts the 'gutful men' psychology. Steiner is a born killer, who doesn't hesitate to scout alone, & engage & kill enemies doing it. He's got perhaps 2-3 men who are pretty together in a fight, by the last fight one of these is leading the men in action in his own right, although not with the elan of Steiner. The others need close supervision/motivation.

'an SMG is easy peasy, safety off point and click.'

I don't think the Sten had a safety?

I've read about the 'gutful men' before. In Congleton town Hall i once saw a display about the town's VC winner, who took out 3 German MG nests in Holland one after the other, alone, & in spite of being wounded taking out the 2nd… the caretaker's comment 'He was a devil' was revealing… here's the local nutter/thug/ASBO who suddenly comes into his own in the face of Total War.

If you read the novel of CROSS OF IRON, this depicts the 'gutful men' psychology. Steiner is a born killer, who doesn't hesitate to scout alone, & engage & kill enemies doing it. He's got perhaps 2-3 men who are pretty together in a fight, by the last fight one of these is leading the men in action in his own right, although not with the elan of Steiner. The others need close supervision/motivation.

A very interesting discussion and something I always pay attention in a ruleset.

In my conversion of Epic Armageddon for WW2, troop quality is normally defined as having a higher morale save against firing, but critically also the formation motivation and skill also determines initiative, which is the D6 number to roll equal to or below to activate with effectiveness (this number is modified when suppressed etc.), and this motivation level could vary in scenarios, but the morale save would still remain the same.

Just remembered that I have a friend taking the Captains course in the Army right now, figured I could ask him whether training, experience, morale and leadership should be lumped into 2 stats or three.

Yet it could add another dimension, if in company sized game the commanders and their units are rated individually.

@Milites The add-on rules I use to simulate leaders tries to do just that; with various individual rated commanders

Grossman's work is interesting and points out something which is pretty obvious really.
Most people don't like killing other people.
Most people are reluctant to kill and putting a uniform on them doesn't suddenly make them effective killers.
There are very few people who are particularly capable at killing.
It's a very low percentage – just over 1% so it's tricky to prove correlation to anything.
It is perhaps not much of a leap to say these guys have something unusual going on in their head. Maybe something "normal" people would call wrong.

When you read up on those heroes who won medals there are quite a few who were a danger to those around them when in barracks.
David Sterling is a well know example.
His men pretty much worshipped the guy and had a stack of stories about what he'd done.
Some really stretch belief.
In one interview about him, one of his men pointed out you didn't want to go drinking with the guy.
Getting beaten up for no reason at all was quite likely if you did.

If you're particularly good at killing then you were more likely to find your way into the elite.
The likes of the paras and marines filter for aggression.
Surprise surprise, they have more "dangerous" people.

There are also the keener types.
Those soldiers which are likely to act without needing direction and orders all the time.
They form the bulk of an elite.
Then they got better training as well.

Altogether, they're more likely to be motivated and hence effective at anything you ask them to do.

Regular units had a lot of what Wigram calls "sheep".
They lack initiative, to put it politely.
If someone popped up right in front of them they would probably defend themselves rather than freeze.
Someone a hundred yards away just wasn't any of their business unless someone ordered them to shoot.
Even then they are quite likely to miss unless you give them a crew served weapon and direct their fire.

"Even then they are quite likely to miss unless you give them a crew served weapon and direct their fire."

Interestingly David Rowlands came across cases of crewed weapons where the crews simply ran away when targets came into view. They were most likely in Wigrams third category of 'a complete liability'.

In general the participation rates for crewed weapons were higher than individual riflemen iirc Rowlands study found the performance degradation in combat for crewed weapons was around 75% whereas for individuals it was in excess of 90%. I can't recall the exact ratios. The big surprise they found from analysing laser-simulated tank battles was that the same proportions of gutful men/sheep/liability thing applied to tank crews too, even though they are all 'crewed weapons'.

"I don't think the Sten had a safety?"

I was fortunate enough to fire a Sten once. There didn't seem to be any sort of safety catch in evidence. I just handled it extremely carefully.

That is a surprise.

Grossman reckons it's shared responsibility of killing makes it easier to kill with a crewed weapon.
The tank crew aren't all operating the gun together.
So maybe the gunner doesn't have the warm re-assurance that it's not all his fault.

Random Friday evening thought.
The proportion of completely useless is higher than psycho killer. There are many more sheep than wolves.
I find that vaguely reassuring.

Just got a reply back from my active-duty USArmy buddy:

Me: So there's this thread over on The Miniatures Page about what effects training, experience, morale, and leadership should have on a game.

My question to the practicing professional is, would you want to treat all three separately, or should morale and leadership be part of the same combined stat?

I'm assuming a difference between training/experience and morale/leadership anyway, but should the leader's ability be a separate piece from unit morale? I can't say I've ever seen a poorly-led unit with good morale.

To answer your question, morale is a function of command, which is tied to but separate from leadership.. its all intertwined, and hard to break down.

Functionally for a game, leadership should be the stat. It allows you to take leadership tests for multiple things. Morale would really be just not breaking, while leadership could be for special skills, resisting combat shock, etc.

How FoW does it is actually pretty legit, you have skill level, and 'leadership' level.

But honestly, to the first part of the question: most games undervalue leadership. It should have a greater impact on games which seek to emulate more realistic factors.

Despite training, etc, most units regress towards the mean. So any given trained unit is comparable to any other unit similarly trained. Elite training matches elite training, conscripts match conscripts, etc.

So major factors then really are capabilities and leadership. An elite Roman century versus a Ranger company: both are trained to elite skill, but Rangers got rifles and mortars, not pokey sticks.

Then leadership.. in the land of equals, he who can move his unit forward through personality, force of will, competence, brilliance, whatever, will have the advantage.

He goes on to say: "An assault rifle is an assault rifle is an assault rifle, really. Night optics are night optics. The effective difference of 50m of sight or something are realistically not that impactful."

And this is a guy who lead a Stryker Platoon for a year in Astan.

The night optics thing.
He means so long as you've got a set of night optics then you're pretty much on a par with another unit has different night optics?

I like the way sg2 handles leadership, quality and morale.
Your unit quality defines the dice you make rolls on.
d4 really bad through d12 really good.
The leader of a section or fire team has a leadership number 1 through 3.
1 is great, 3 really bad.
You want to roll over that number.
You want to remove suppression, the section leader counts.
Rallying is carried out by the platoon co/leader.

I suspect that he Rangers would suffer against the Romans in a close encounter, say dusk in woodland because the Romans are used to sticking a short sword into someone that is breathing in their face.
Hellenistic armies using pointy sticks were shocked at Roman brutality and lack of inhibition. When they took a town the Romans killed the men, the old, the young, the dogs and animals and raped and enslaved the rest.

Readiness to kill seems to count for a lot.
Stabbing someone is a very personal thing.
It was accepted in the SAS that just one unsuspecting guard stabbed in the neck was your quota during a raid.
Unless you were the boss man.
IIRC something like 17 on just one airfield.
Geez louise!
I reckon that takes a very special sort of person.
From our modern society anyhow.

Grossman's explanation for the fact most people perform so badly in combat is that only the killers really want to.
Call them happy killers, psychos or whatever.
Very few people really excel and they are just streets ahead of the rest.
Training can sort of tune up some of the rest.

You can desensitise with training.
As an aside training doesn't help them with PTSD, it just sort of tricks people into thinking as the enemy as objects.
They are the person shaped paper target.
Until something happens, reality comes home and the nightmares start.

If you have a culture where killing is generally more acceptable then maybe more people are happy killers.
Maybe the Romans actually kind of had a point with watching people slaughter one another in the games.
Whichever way you look at it though, the battlefield of ancient times would be a very bloody place.
We lose one or two blokes and it's news.
At Cannae there were what, about 70,000 Romans all stabbed and hacked to death.
That's a lot of bodies.

The night optics thing.
He means so long as you've got a set of night optics then you're pretty much on a par with another unit has different night optics?

Yep. The difference between models is much less than have/have not.

Thanks.

"That is a surprise.

Grossman reckons it's shared responsibility of killing makes it easier to kill with a crewed weapon.
The tank crew aren't all operating the gun together.
So maybe the gunner doesn't have the warm re-assurance that it's not all his fault."

Bear in mind that these are relative ratings. So all tank crews benefit from being a 'crew' and degrade under combat conditions less than non crewed weapon systems, but within that envelope there is spread of capability with some crews vastly more effective than others – which perhaps is less surprising.

Rowlands also did an exhaustive analysis of why towed AT guns were so much more (2-3 times more) effective against armour than then same weapons mounted in tanks. One of the most significant factors was the composition of the gun crews – being both larger and with a higher proportion of senior NCOs and officers than tank crews. They were better led, and so fought more effectively (among other things).

Why did it take a larger crew to man a towed gun than a self-propelled one?

Don't also forget Grossmans's identification of shepherds, people tasked with protecting their flock who will remove any wolf as effectively as a 'happy killer'. You see the same phenomena in teachers reactions to school shooting incidents, many die, or are injured, protecting their students. NCO's in professional armies, often seem to have a strong bond with 'my lads' and will venture into harms way to save them, or eliminate the threat.

My own home grown system had a factor that represented the platoon commanders proficiency in coordinating his squads and a factor representing the squad leaders proficiency, in directing his teams. The training of a unit was critical as die rolls could be changed by expending proficiency points. Losses were reflected by a deterioration of all the factors, representing either gradual breakdown or casualties to key personel. This weakened state could be countered but only by using the same pool of points needed to fight the unit.

In the end, it's the man behind the weapon, not the weapon itself, that makes the difference, any simulation, worthy of the name must reflect that truism.

Why did it take a larger crew to man a towed gun than a self-propelled one?

Man-handling the gun and the ammo in action requires a decent number of men.

Yes, artillery units, be they arty, AA or AT always seem to have large crews.

Of course a gun can be operated by just one man, but it is hard work and dangerous. Which is why they give medals to people for doing that sort of thing.

A full strength (infantry) 6pdr AT platoon with six guns had 55 men including two officers and 14 NCOs! It was the high ratio of command personnel which Rowlands identified as key.

Why 14 NCOs? I can see one for each gun (6), one in charge of each section (3 more for 9 total) and a platoon NCO for a total of 10.

What did the other 4 NCOs do?