Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: kevinkin

I think a heard that there is no resupply in one of the videos. But that begs the question, do units run out of ammo? Or is it endless?

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ORIGINAL: PoorOldSpike

I suppose the solution is to have a few units in reserve to relieve units that have run out of ammo.

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ORIGINAL: Sorrow_Knight
AB is tactical level game. In short tactical combat of batallion\brigade level of forces you will never be able to send additional ammo to your units.

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Army Research Report 1345, "Field-Expedient Maintenance Experiences of M60-Series Tank Crewmen" of 1983 to be enlightening.
"In making field-expedient repairs... NCOs often use tools or any other available materials in unique and occasionally ingenious ways. Most of the techniques described took 30 minutes or less to complete and generally were effective in restoring malfunctioning tanks to operation."

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http://www.bits.de/NRANEU/others/amd-us-archive/FM-17-15%2896%29.pdf
FM 17-15 (1996) discuss so many things for tank platoon, and one of them is emergency resupply technique, introduced from page 248. Depending on the situation, platoon leader for armors can receive tailgate resupply, or service station resupply, or combination of them, during engagement. I think the method I suggested is "service station" option on the battlefield, and this is the one Steel Beast Pro scenarios introduced.

FM mentions that "Generally, the platoon should attempt to avoid resupply during the execution of offensive operations; resupply should be done during mission transition. Resupply is unavoidable during defensive missions of long duration." However, FM also mentions "The situation will also dictate when to resupply" and "Emergency resupply, normally involving Classes III and V, is executed when the platoon has such an urgent need for resupply that it cannot wait for the routine LOGPAC. "
Based on those comments, I think such resupply operation is OK to be introduced not only for defense mission, but also for assault and meeting engagement in this game as well. FM mentioned that decision of emergency resupply is based on situation and commander's decision. FM mentioned "commander should try to avoid resupply during offensive" but they never ruled out such option, so it is still possible for offense and meeting engagement, according to FM.

For the 'limited repair', since this game abstracted battle damage to light and heavy damage only, instead of modeled subsystems, this battlefield repair should be abstracted too. How about only enables light damage to normal, and heavy damage to light damage?

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ORIGINAL: Sorrow_Knight

AB is tactical level game. In short tactical combat of batallion\brigade level of forces you will never be able to send additional ammo to your units.

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ORIGINAL: Sorrow_Knight
I don`t know about US Army, but in Soviet resupply only allowed after combat as part of preparation for defence.

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ORIGINAL: thewood1

This has been discussed on the Combat Mission and Steel Beasts forums several times. Real life tankers in the US and German armies have stated that reload for normal ammunition is done back from the frontlines if there is any chance of combat. Its done well behind the lines and can take 30 minutes to an hour at least for a tank to fully stock up. As was stated there, if the supply point is 15 minutes to 30 minutes, you are talking close to an hour at least. In a two hour scenario, not having ammo resupply would not seem to be a priority feature.

Now infantry arms and missiles might be a different story.

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ORIGINAL: exsonic01


All in all, I think Soviet army during cold war were capable of providing battlefield resupply / maintenance / limited repair service during middle of the battle. According to those descriptions, it looks very similar to "Service Center" type emergency field resupply of US Armor platoon / company. At least US intelligence evaluated the ability Soviet army field resupply in combat in good way.

But I don't have 1st hand FMs written in Russians for Red army, and I can't even read Russian. So I was looking for such materials. I'm also Curious how UK and FRG and other NATO nations did. I think it would be similar.

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ORIGINAL: Sorrow_Knight

quote:

ORIGINAL: exsonic01


All in all, I think Soviet army during cold war were capable of providing battlefield resupply / maintenance / limited repair service during middle of the battle. According to those descriptions, it looks very similar to "Service Center" type emergency field resupply of US Armor platoon / company. At least US intelligence evaluated the ability Soviet army field resupply in combat in good way.

But I don't have 1st hand FMs written in Russians for Red army, and I can't even read Russian. So I was looking for such materials. I'm also Curious how UK and FRG and other NATO nations did. I think it would be similar.

I`ve just quoted Soviet Army regulations where said next:
"Израсходованные запасы ракет, бое­припасов, горючего, продовольствия и других материальных средств должны пополняться до установленных норм.
Подвоз ракет, боеприпасов, горючего, про­довольствия и других материальных средств в подразделения осуществляется по устным заявкам командиров рот и отдельных взво­дов и приказу (приказанию) командира (на­чальника штаба) батальона.
Пополнение танков, боевых машин пехоты (бронетранспортеров) боеприпасами и за­правка их горючим в ходе боя производятся непосредственно в боевых порядках, а при совершении марша—в районах привалов, дневного (ночного) отдыха и по прибытии в назначенный район. При невозможности под­воза боеприпасов и горючего к танкам, бое­вым машинам пехоты (бронетранспортерам) непосредственно в боевые порядки транс­портные средства с боеприпасами и горючим подходят как можно ближе к ним. Танки, боевые машины пехоты (бронетранспортеры) поочередно скрытно подходят к местам рас­положения транспортных средств для попол­нения боеприпасами и заправки горючим."
(Google translate... sorry but it will take too long for me to translate this properly):
The spent reserves of missiles, ammunition, fuel, food and other materiel must be replenished to the established norms.
The delivery of missiles, ammunition, fuel, food and other materiel to the subunits is carried out at the oral requests of company commanders and individual platoons and the order (order) of the battalion commander (chief of staff).
Replenishment of tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (armored personnel carriers) with ammunition and refueling them during combat is carried out directly in combat formations, and when making a march, in areas of halts, daytime (night) rest, and upon arrival in the designated area. When it is impossible to bring ammunition and fuel to tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (armored personnel carriers) directly to combat formations, vehicles with ammunition and fuel come as close as possible to them. Tanks, infantry fighting vehicles (armored personnel carriers) alternately secretly approach the locations of vehicles for replenishing ammunition and fueling.

In case of AB this mean, that units ranned out of ammo mosly should move off-map for resuply, also "combat" in this terms have extremely flexible meaning and may be anything between two squads skirmish for couple of seconds and strategic operation with several divisions involved and lasts for veeks and months. Actually for Soviet Army incombat resuply under enemy fire is very rare case, and usually situation (or order) require unstoppable pushing forward and unit commanders may just have not time to resuply their unit.

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ORIGINAL: exsonic01

There, they can have logistics station maximum 4~5km back from front (battalion), and company can have such station 100~200m behind (only for defense ops)

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ORIGINAL: Sorrow_Knight
Exactly what I`ve said about- during defensive operations there could be service stations and even fully equipped machine-shops where tank could be unmounted till last nail, repaired and mounted back, but in attack there is no time to wait for evac transports/ammo trucks and so on, damaged vehicles will be just stopped and will wait for higher level unit evac\repair transport while company/batallion will go forward without it... Soviet doctrine based on fastest possible moving from defence to full-scale attack actions and defemsive actions there seems possible only if there is no any options to continue pushing worward and crush enemy lines.

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ORIGINAL: exsonic01
ORIGINAL: Sorrow_Knight

Yeah, and that is why I think it is still possible for both factions, "with the limitation of game size". This game can depict platoon ~ brigade level battle. I think it would be reasonable + historically accurate to introduce such "service station" type resupply function from battalion size games.