CMx2 goes beyond just simulating the hardware to maintain contact on the battle-field, but also attempts to realistically track what happens with the information passed up and down the chain. A rifle squad reporting an enemy contact to its platoon HQ will trigger an entirely different response than if it is broadcasting the information through the battalion radio net! That’s because the platoon HQ is set up and has procedures in place guiding it what to do in this situation. For the Battalion HQ, this piece of information is largely useless.
What this means in game terms is that units can effectively only trace com-mand-and-control to their immediately-superior HQs.
Higher HQs may fulfill this role only to a limited extent. If a squad or team is out of contact with its immediate superior (usually a platoon HQ) then its company or battalion HQ may provide voice and close visual contact, but not radio or dis-tant-visual contact. This simulates that a higher HQ can’t babysit a large number of units more than one level lower in the organization, and it means that higher HQs can’t be used in a gamey way to make platoon HQs unnecessary, but they can step in and provide command-and-control in a limited radius in emergency situations.
Information Sharing
The better organized and connected a force is, the better able it is to communicate
critical pieces of information between units. Though it is not obvious to the player that the information itself is moved around, the results of it are. There are three primary benefits of good organization and communication: spotting of enemy units, calling for support, and maintaining discipline.
One of the most important aspects of Combat Mission is its system of revealing information about enemy units, such as position, type, and actions. Unlike most other games, CMx2 uses what we call Relative Spotting instead of Absolute Spotting. In an Absolute Spotting system, when an individual friendly unit “senses”
something, that information is instantly, and perfectly, available to all units on its side. It doesn’t matter where the other units are or what sorts of communi-cations capabilities they have. Relative Spotting, on the other hand, keeps the unit’s “sensed” information from moving to other units unless there is some way of communicating it to them. In other words, when you click on a unit in CMx2 you get to see what it sees relative to what it knows. If the unit is isolated from the Chain of Command it wouldn’t be able to target something it didn’t spot itself, for example.
Note: On-map mortars can fire indirect even if they are out of command & control and lack a radio, pro-vided that the spotter is within 50m.
Lastly, maintaining C2 is important for keeping unit cohesion intact. Units tend to get jumpy when they don’t know what the friendly units around them are up to, or where their superiors are, or what the enemy might be trying to do at that moment.
Without C2, the imagination can run a bit wild, so to speak, and the unit may be imagining the worst scenario. Perhaps all its buddies withdrew and forgot to tell it to pull back? Maybe the HQ was wiped out and nobody higher up knows about those tanks coming down the road, and therefore no help is on the way?
Well-disciplined units hold up better under these circumstances, of course, but every unit has its breaking point. If it has contact with its fellow forces and feels supported, things are less stressful.
Leaders
Every unit has someone in charge of its soldiers, though not necessarily the same type of Leader. Leaders provide units with, what else... leadership. They help maintain internal discipline, direct fire to be more effective, and keep contact with other Leaders. The more Leaders you lose, the harder maintaining C2 becomes.
Leadership influence takes the form of a Leadership Modifier represented in the Unit Info Panel. The better the modifier, the more effective the Leader is in keeping things on the straight and narrow. Note that the modifier values are +2, +1, 0, -1, and -2. This means that a Leader can have no special effect on Leadership (0 rating) or even a negative influence (-1 or -2). Anybody that has ever served in the military, or studied it in historical texts, knows that some people should
never have been put in charge of anything except washing dishes (and you don’t necessarily want to be the one eating from those dishes). CM dutifully simulates these poor Leaders.
There are two types of dedicated Leaders; Unit Leader and Assistant Leader. A Unit Leader is a soldier who has the training and rank to command the unit he is assigned to. The Assistant Leader has similar training and capabilities as the Unit Leader, but is of a junior rank and may not have all the skills necessary to command a unit over the long term. However, an Assistant Leader generally has the same chance of being a good Leader in a tactical fight, which is good because that is exactly what he’ll have to do if the Unit Leader becomes a casualty.
Squad-type units usually have a Squad Leader (Unit Leader) in charge of Team A, and an Assistant Squad Leader (Assistant Leader) in charge of Team B. When Squads are split up, like Weapons Squads normally are, this effectively means that the command responsibilities are split up. If one Leader falls to fire, the other one will not take over his responsibilities, because they are assumed to be physically separate units when split off as Teams.
When a battle starts, the name and rank displayed are that of the unit’s current senior Leader. Should that Leader fall in battle, the name and rank will change as the replacement assumes command.
Radios
World War Two commanders did not enjoy the luxury of a whole array of powerful communications tools that are available on a modern 21st Century battlefield (when satellite based tracking systems and communications are often available even to small units and formations). Instead, the primary means to communicate over distance (outside of visual and audio ranges) was the radio.
But radios were expensive and (compared to today) rare. While the US forces made a deliberate effort to try to provide radios usually at least down to the platoon level, many German formations only possess a radio for the main Company HQ, or have one reserved for specialized Forward Observers. Some forces with more outdated technology, such as the Royal Italian Army, did not have any radios in their infantry formations at all, instead relying on pre-established field telephones, and messengers carrying written orders for communication.
Players will probably learn quickly that paying attention to where the radios are on the battlefield is going to provide a crucial element on the road to victory. Without a radio nearby, that group of on-map mortars is pretty much limited to only firing at targets within sight. Without a radio, that platoon commander who loses sight of his Company CO is effectively out of the loop with higher ups.
Below the company level communications were mostly by voice and sight. Because the effective range is so much less than a radio, Platoon HQs have to remain quite close to their assigned units in order to control them. A Rifle Platoon, for example, would usually advance in a way that most, if not all, of the attached squads and weapons teams could see or hear the Platoon Leader’s commands.
Weapons type platoons were often asked to operate over larger distances than in-fantry type platoons. Since radios were not usually available, the solution was to add intermediate Section HQs between the Platoon HQ and the weapons under its command. Their job was to extend the range of the Platoon HQ by acting as