Bonus: Initiative Mechanics in CMBN 18 Platoon (Patreon)

The question of command and control comes up in the Combat Mission community on a semi-regular basis. The way the game works is that the player is a kind of gestalt hive mind simultaneously controlling every friendly unit on the field and can operate with an understanding of the overall picture that the troops on ground simple cannot have.

And that's simply not realistic: military history is full to brimming with examples of orders going astray, subordinates failing to properly comprehend them and command structures that restrict individual initiative.

One of the ways to inject some of that command friction into Combat Mission is to take a leaf out of the tabletop gaming world and institute a kind of Initiative Test: units out of C2 of their superior have to pass a test before the player can give them any orders.

A common mechanic for this is to roll 2 six-sided dice and add the results (or, to roll 2D6 in the parlance). This gives us a bell-curve of outputs where 7 is the most common result and 2 and 12 the least.(Graph from here: https://www.thedarkfortress.co.uk/tech_reports/2_dice_rolls.php)

And by pitching our the result we need to keep things moving at a certain level, we have a degree of randomness (but not too much).

Tying this into Combat Mission, we can use the pixeltruppen's experience level as a base and their leadership values as a modifier.

So, for example, we could say that Green troops have an Initiative value of 6, Regular troops 7 and Veterans 8. That would mean that Green troops are less likely to act on their own when out of C2 than Veterans. Makes sense.

Adding in CM's leadership values we get something interesting. Those -2,-2,0,+1 and +2 values are that much of factor in your average game of Combat Mission. But now, a Regular unit with a -2 leader has to score under a 5 to pass their Initiative test. That's bad news if they fall out of C2.

What's great about this is that it doesn't only mean that C2 chains and leaders matter much more, but that splitting your squads is not much bigger issue. Split teams generally have a worse leadership value (that's why they're not squad leaders), so the more you disperse the harder it is to keep control.

That's the logic... it's not for everyone and could perhaps do with some better calibration and more testing. Not least because I chose this particular scenario focusing on the scale of the fight and not how difficult it might be for the Brits!

But something to run with in any case!