"Going Prone - Protection Level Gained?" Topic

Looking for estimates here, on gaining protection from enemy small arms fire by dropping from a standing position, and going prone.

Obviously, that may depend upon the range to the target from the firer, so let's just use effective firing range as the baseline.

My guess is that a trooper going prone will be about 75% – 80% harder to hit that one just standing in the open, and in some cases, might even gain total concealment (like if dropping down in tall grass, or behind rocks, etc..

So, how much do you think going prone should reduce the chance to be hit by enemy fire?

I let the dice roll work that out. In essence I assume troops are prone when not moving. Roll high: you caught the enemy "standing up" and waxed him. Roll low and he really hugged the earth.

You would be shocked how little you need to be fully concealed.

More important than anything is moving. Anything moving is easier to see, spot and fire at. If the target is prone, partially concealed and not moving, just *locating* them is difficult.

Which is why you can see film of afghanistan actions across a 100 yard field where there are no casualties.
I recall one which lasted 7 hours.
Mind you.
Players would often find gaming that dull.
You can have too much reality in a game.

I use 1D6 for hit location.

1 head
2 shoulder
3 torso
4 abdomen
5 thigh
6 leg

Firer can hit whatever is exposed from his POV.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
Bunker Talk blog

The long-noted tendency of soldiers to miss high, rather than low, is the overwhelming effect.

I'd be shocked if the number of hits wasn't reduced by 95%, and I'd expect the reduction to be 99%+.

BTW, your original formulation of "about 75% – 80% harder to hit" is between ambiguous and meaningless. If you have a 10% chance of hitting a target, does that mean that it's 10% hard to hit? Or 90%? If it's 80% "harder" to hit, that should mean an 80% increase in difficulty, not an 80% reduction in the number of hits. (The two are inverse.) It's like saying "Twice as cheap!" That doesn't make sense--they don't want to say "half off!" for some reason.

IIRC, from my reference manuals, going prone reduced casualties from artillery/mortar fire by 2/3ds. When I get a chance, I'll see what else the TMs had to say and report back.

B

Im inclined to stay that troops are ALWAYS prone, crouching or otherwise.

Then you can simply give a bonus to shooting at troops caught moving about.

I appreciate the responses.

I look forward to more info, Blutarski. The data on prone protection vs. howitzer and mortar rounds is very useful.

My formulation isn't ambiguous at all.

If you have a 10% chance to hit a target at long, or greater range, reducing that by 75% – 80% means a 2% – 2.5% chance to hit the target. It's simple math.

At effective range, where the definition is that 50% of shots will hit the target, the To-Hit % would be reduced to 10% – 12.5% vs. a prone target.

Obviously, cover available is variable, so I can see where total concealment and/or cover might occur if one goes prone, but also much less so in more open terrain – say, a hillside with short grass.

From a purely mathematical standpoint, vs. targets being fired at from the front, who minimize their profile by going prone, head-on vs. the firer(s), seems to me the reduction is about 80% – 85% (more or less), depending upon whether the target keeps his head down, head up, etc.. The above assumes a 6 foot tall man hunkering down in the dirt, so really then presenting a target about one foot, or so high (head and helmet, plus shoulders, from when viewed from the front).

There'd theoretically be less coverage for a man going prone, when viewed or being shot at from the side, assuming he's not concealed by grass, of gaining cover from a fold in the ground, rocks, etc..

A pity manufacturers don't produce more prone figures, if that is the case.

Blutarski has an excellent point. Prone reduces the exposure to infantry firing to the front a lot less than it reduces exposure to shelling--and more so in the are of airburst. But I'd agree with the comment that only moving targets are caught upright, and not always them.

Having engaged targets at up to 300 meters, I'd say that 80% to 90% would be about spot on. I base that on being able to hit a standing adult human being about 75% of the time at 300 meters and 100% of the time at 150 meters, but when engaging prone targets, that drops to about 20% for long range and 50% for mid-range targets.

Weasel, good idea.

Against WP and HE mortar rounds:
YouTube link

John Salt put out some good stuff:
PDF link

Wolfhag

Prone reduces the effectiveness of fragmentation weapons far less than small arms fire. A factor of ten for SA is about right.

Which means that for game purposes, ranged small arms fire has little chance of hitting anyone. Unless you really want to model a seven hour firefight shot by shot.

The us manual on artillery notes that if cover is not available the optimum (but not good) position is the featal position as this minimises overall area exposed to airbusrt.

Also it should be rememberd that to take ground you meed to get in close enough to assult. This does not mean you have to hit a prone man, just hit near enough too him to discourage him from shooting back while you close with close in weapones like greandes and SMG's.

'Anything moving is easier to see, spot and fire at.'

First 2 are correct, i'm hoping your meaning of 'fire at' doesnt mean 'easier to hit', moving targets are the hardest to hit. You can always tell miniature players who actually fired weapons from those who never did.

Prone targets in my rules as as much harder to hit as troops in foxholes. Troops in foxholes can however go 'heads down' for extra protection while the prone troops are as low as they can go.

I allow prone troops who move away either crawling into open ground or keeping heads down into cover to regain concealment. Concealment is a big help at longer ranges but less so close to the enemy.

When to go prone is based on a soldier's training and experience.

If you leave the effects of going prone in the hands of the player by allowing the player to determine if and when a single figure goes prone then you're missing a major opportunity to model soldier quality.

A civilian dufus (like me!) with no military training will not know when it's best to go prone (or not) or how to use "micro terrain" to its best advantage.

A highly experienced solider such as some of our fellow TMP members who have been in combat and are well trained would know that stuff.

SO let's say you have two wargame figures representing "Middle Aged Man with No Military Training" and another representing "Highly Trained American Combat Veteran".

If it's entirely up to the players to define how the figures use stance and micro-terrain to avoid enemy fire they're effectively the same quality when it comes to battlefield survivability. If you abstract that a little bit then the game data can handle that sort of thing and you increase the contrast in troop type.

In our upcoming "Rush of Battle" game, troops have a Fieldcraft value which determines how hard they are to engage effectively. A unit composed of guys like me would have a low Fieldcraft value. A unit composed of trained soldiers with extensive combat experience would have a higher Fieldcraft value.

This is why we often see lopsided results in fights between well trained western troops and middle eastern insurgents. Not only do the well trained troops shoot more effectively, they also use concealment and cover more effectively.

The same is true for insurgents over time. As one combat memoir noted, during the early days of the Iraq insurgency western troops frequently encountered militia that were easily spotted and killed. Over time, as the author wrote, the stupid ones got killed leaving the smart ones alive. Natural selection meant that the naturally talented insurgents survived and groups of such insurgents became harder to detect and engage. In "Rush of Battle" terms, their Fieldcraft value increased over time.

My old training manual given an approximate 2 rounds needed to hit a full size target at 2-300 meter, going up to 10 rounds needed for a prone target and 20 for a target in cover.

You would also need to dump twice the amount of artillery shells to achieve the same outcome if the targets are prone and seeming basic cover in shellholes or uneven ground.

Mako wrote -
"I look forward to more info, Blutarski. The data on prone protection vs. howitzer and mortar rounds is very useful."

The following data comes from TM9-1907 – Ballistic Data Performance of Ammunition, July 1948, and covers adjustment of ground burst shell densities required to produce a given effect upon a target. Assume that a density factor of 1 = shell density required to produce the desired casualty effect upon unshielded, standing infantry.

> Density Factor 2 – men standing, rolling terrain, no shielding.

> Density Factor 3 – men prone, flat terrain, no shielding.

> Density Factor 4 – men prone, rolling terrain, country fields.

Hope this helps.

B

Given that, in WW2 at least, I've read that most of the troops never really took careful aim but just banged away in the general direction of the enemy (or kept their heads down without firing at all) I'd say that prone troops, not moving around would be very hard to hit, especially if they had any kind of cover at all.

Much harder to hit, but any hit is most likely to be a kill?

Thanks for the info.

80% – 85% seems like a pretty good number, based upon the above.