How does Friendly Fire work in Combat Mission?

[@Coddykin]

An ISU-152 hitting a tree trunk right in front of it and fragging a whole friendly infantry platoon made me very aware of checking what's in front of my tanks before they fire.

[@wartsnall7332]

It's also a good way of remembering to play with trees full ON, rather than toggled.

[@statstats3724]

One of my more unexpected friendly fire-ish situations was in Fortress Italy - a short campaign about British forces going ashore. I'd discovered that troops with demo charges could chuck them at pillboxes, which was handy, and I was merrily having my commandos storm a fortified bridgehead. I was watching one of them pull back their arm with the demo charge in it, ready to throw, when they were shot dead. A few seconds later the demo charge exploded next to them, wiping out the team. I was both infuriated and impressed.

[@breadcan]

The CM:SF2 manual says (or used to say) that small arms don't incur friendly fire in order to emulate a coordinated lift and shift of fires. These games would be a nightmare to play if you had to set that up manually.

[@alarminglyfastmovingskelet7289]

Yep this is pretty much what I said in my comment too. Very relevant for modern titles especially.

[@steven401ytx]

The muzzle blast from friendly tanks can hurt your troops too, I've found.

[@alarminglyfastmovingskelet7289]

Yep, and backblast.

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Muzzle blast I can't remember any incidents of, backblast: definitely yes.

[@rubinolas6998]

Backblast? Isn't it difficult to place infantry in such a way that backblast hurts them? Not counting putting them inside of buildings, of course

[@emile47]

I have also experienced CAS aircrafts mistakingly bombing my own troops when they are inside the zone I selected them to roam around.

[@michaeljenkins1375]

I have had that happen to me, too. Along with friendly fire from APS if my troops are in front of a vehicle when it goes off.

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Yep. CAS friendly fire I'd put in a different pigeon hole, because it's a very specific case but absolutely yeah: the Air Force cares not whence the blood flows!

[@buckplug2423]

average British serviceman working with Americans experience

[@realQuiGon]

There is another type of friendly fire that wasn't addressed here, but did cause me quite some severe losses on some occasians: APS! Active Protection Systems of modern tanks and IFVs as modelled in CMBS (and CMSF2?) can be quite the threat to friendly infantry if they are positioned nearby or are in the process of mounting up or dismounting the vehicle.

[@specter0023]

APS has killed many of my pixeltruppen. I was under the impression APS has a minimum engaging distance of about 40’. But every time I engage with AT4s from 10’, APS blows up in my face at the exact moment the AT4 fires. Makes me really want to know the mechanics of APS in this game…

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Yep, absolutely!

[@alarminglyfastmovingskelet7289]

Remember fellas the number one rule of IFF is to have fun

[@alarminglyfastmovingskelet7289]

2:08 Alot of people look at this and think it is a silly oversight but I'd argue that this is actually a decently thought out system. The game can only simulate so much realistically. I'd say this is an extension of the idea that a base of fire will shift fire naturally as a friendly unit advances. e.g. if fires are being put down on the left of a building, then as the assaulting unit moves to the right the base of fire shifts their fire to the right of the building. This seems like a reasonable compromise given what the game is capable of. While everyone loves watching their pixeltruppen it's important to note that alot of what you see in-game is an abstraction, and shouldn't be treated as the entire picture. This being an example amongst many other things like the concealment system.

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Yep. It even says so in the manual, which I managed to not read for this one.

[@Tragisty]

My friend and I have a running joke where we say STUGGG in a silly voice because one time a stug hit the only tree in front of it merking like 20 his own guys

[@ironchancellorottovonbisma8573]

Im remembering the first time I discovered friendly fire was a thing in combat mission. In a night mission my panzer-grenidiers were close assaulting a group of buildings when a whirbilwind decides to "help out" suffice to say little german boys and old men dont stand up to quad 20mm fire very well

[@Romitas]

Thank you, super useful! Been wondering about friendly fire since the moment I started playing, and like you said, just been playing cautiously all this time under the assumption it works realistically every time (and of course, still losing twice as many troops to my own artillery than to enemy fire in many missions, because reasons). Good to finally know for a fact how exactly it works

[@usuallyhapless9481]

No problem! It's another CM feature where there are some interesting elements and details that players deal with all the time but don't really notice.

[@vik7380]

I knew about the friendly fire rule for explosives and large caliber weapons. I learned quickly to be more careful when I was playing as Americans and was suppressing Syrians in a flat building. I had a detached assault team get closer to the backside entrance while the front was being suppressed by 1 and a half squads, who really were laying into the small syrian FO team. I was very surprised when I saw the team icon blink with a casualty the next turn. Apparenty from a small explosion. Zooming in and watching, I noticed a small dark dot flying across the scene. A 40mm grenade from an underslung grenade launcher arched perfectly over the entire building and hit the point man of the assault team right in the face as he was about to kick in the door.

[@deztag3964]

I've had a Stryker pull up on a suppressed building, dismount its troops, the troops identify the pinned EI and clear, breach and start securing prisoners. Only for the .50 on their Stryker to turn near 30 seconds after dismount and start trying to kill the surrendered enemy, mangling its own troops who were in the process of tying them up (no, the EI didnt pick up guns again they were broken). Also, an Apache put a Hellfire into a friendly Stryker MGS about 1200m from its ~75m radius area target command. Restarted that mission...

[@zyavoosvawleilte1308]

I guess it would be an incredibly hard video to do, but this friendly fire talk reminded me of one of your USMC Syria campaign where a pixeltruppen got sniped by a piece of shrapnell and now I kinda wonder how the shrapnel mechanics works

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Potentially not so much hard to test as time consuming to drop some artillery and wait until someone's number comes up. If that's something like a 0.01% chance, it might take a while.

[@paul.._..]

Correct me if your testing proved otherwise, but in my experience grenades don't hurt the element (team or squad) that has thrown it. This is important when clearing buildings by combining an attack with a (5 second) wait command from the outside. On guy will throw a grenade inside and another one will run inside before it has detonated. I've never taken a casualty from this.

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Grenades are a little difficult to test. And buildings are very abstracted, so they muddy the water even more. I can certainly say that pixeltruppen about to throw grenades who get shot and drop said grenade definitely cause friendly casualties.

[@carlfromchicago]

Thanks!

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Thanks very much man!

[@DrewShotsFan]

The Target Light command (if the unit has one) will avoid friendly fire casualties. I use it for AFVs when targeting a building that friendly troops are storming

[@jonorcutt6030]

Absolutely learned the lesson of tank fire tree bursts the hard way

[@mzjalic324]

Hapless, would you be willing to make shorts about some vehicles going through the course you’ve got for the unit guides? Maybe not new ones without guides but ones from the past before the course was made to see how they fit in?

[@usuallyhapless9481]

That's not a bad shout actually! The main problem is that the footage would basically be the same each time, so it'd be kinda boring. I don't know if I can sidestep that.

[@mzjalic324]

@@usuallyhapless9481 That's totally fair. Maybe each one can have a little bit different action shots of the vehicles going along if that's not too much extra effort

[@Wolfman2598]

Every single one of my friendly fire incident have been my troops running parallel to my base of fire

[@copter2000]

The Mk19 Stryker when they see a friendly unit securing surrendered enemy:

[@BoneIdolUK]

One thing I'd love to see tested is the shrapnel effect of artillery depending on terrain type. In CMFI I've had 155mm shells causing shrapnel casualties at 200m+ when landing on rocky terrain

[@stevejones5824]

Another great insight into how the game works.

[@whyme943]

I’d love to see a comparison of “forest-clearing” and the best orders to use in combat mission. The two I usually end up using are hunt and assault. I can think of the following variables: Bolt-action vs semi auto vs. Full auto weapons Entrenched or non entrenched enemies Visibility (day or night) (also, night vision equipment maybe) Soft factors on troops. (I think minimum, regular, and maximum would be sufficient) Just one thing I think could do with some experimentation.

[@christiankongsted5084]

Sawed half a section down when I had them enter a formerly hostile building, without getting the supporting Tripod-MG (700-800 meters away) to stop firing. When the boys ran through the door, a burst came in with them and made me feel very stupid.

[@Mechanized85]

"What are you doing! Fools! You're firing upon your own side! Cease fire already!"

[@DwarfElvishDiplomacy]

Man imagine how miserable it would be if you troops did blue on blue if you manouver too much around the frontlines and the cut off troops got confused where your own troops are

[@3badgersinatrenchcoat]

Did the flamethrower in the last few seconds of the video attempt to avoid covering his buddies in sticky, burning fuel whilst area targeting their square?

[@usuallyhapless9481]

It does kind of look that way.

[@artemisfowl7191]

I had an overeager Marder hose down a couple of Panzergrenadiers with it's automatic cannon once

[@larsdejong7396]

In a nutshell: don't be a psychopath, and keep your pixeltruppen alive. Treat bullets, shells and bombs of any kind with respect. :)

[@rf2958]

Dont forget that .45(M1 Thompson and M3 greas gun) have a higher caliber than 10mm. Surely friendly fire is higher than 12mm.

[@nbr1rckr]

Honestly, Combat Mission made me the opposite of a tree hugger. More trouble than they're worth, O² and CO² exchange be damned. So many times I've had my units next to a tree and a Bradley or whatever somehow triggers the HE on the top leaves of the damn thing and kills my dudes. I also had a Ukrainian SPG-9 turn and shoot at the Bulat like 100 meters to its direct left out of nowhere on Iron once. I was screaming the entire turn.

[@ZarathustraMG42-qo7oj]

Bit of a Kelly's heroes moment at the start of this!!

[@SirPatrickofPoland]

i forgot that there are flame throwers in this game. Have you ever used one in your campaigns?

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Not in a campaign, I don't think. They're very difficult to use, unless they're the ones mounted on the British Crocodile or Wasp: 100m range flamethrower? Yes please!

[@sirfanatical8763]

Uhm..... remember that one time in the scottish corridor? Ye, that time Or that one time near Aleppo with the CAF LAV III in your formation guide

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Well, the Scottish Corridor Incident was definitely a case of the one unit engaging through the other!

[@sirfanatical8763]

@usuallyhapless9481 and ofc the poor pixeltruppen who got hit by the bushmaster in sf2 Btw there's no real singular for truppen Technically it's Trupp but that also implies more than one person. In case you ever want to refer to a single soldier, you can call em pixeltrooper xD

[@d.c.6065]

I was hoping for an order 227 playbook but this is good enough i guess.

[@onsholo]

So it is actually easier to cause friendly fire when playing in lower difficulties? Damn, now that is a funny thing.

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Potentially. The difficulties in CM are really not conventional difficulty levels: they're generally much more punishing at lower levels because they apply to everyone, not just the player.

[@daredemontriple6]

I think it's worth noting that weapons like HMGs, and especially automatic grenade launchers, are deliberately manufactured to be slightly un-precise - note that precision and accuracy are distinct from one another - Weapons like automatic grenade launchers are employed as saturation weapons. The idea is not to be able to lob 10 grenades through the same window, after all, what are the other 9 grenades going to kill in a room that the first one didn't? Their purpose is rather to saturate an area with fire, a so called "Beaten zone", and as such the weapon is likely to 'miss' it's target byd esign, nevermind the conditions and the gunner's skill. I guess my point is that it's important to use more care with some weapons than others. An autocannon can fire over your troop's heads at specific targets with little to no risk (provided tree strikes or similar aren't a possibility) whereas an automatic grenade launcher might drop a grenade short and pose a significant risk to your own troops

[@matthiuskoenig3378]

friendly fire isn't

[@qwelas5466]

How about air support can they cause friendly fire and/or miss identify troops?

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Yes.

[@annoyedbipolar7424]

Unless you're the British, in which case FF is hard-coded. At least, that's what happens in CMSF2. I'm the only one with armor and air. So why for the love of god is the latter murdering the former? (really sick sense of humor mimicking the A-10 vs Warriors developers) No, it's not me being a lousy player this time because the Americans and others don't have this issue; it's just the UK three times this year alone.

[@statstats3724]

I do think that their targeting systems aren't as good as the American ones? Same as the Challengers don't seem to spot quite as fast as the Abrams - I treat their kit as more just late Cold War rather than post-Cold War. I've certainly had far too many incidences of friendly fire from aircraft as the British as well - I remember playing "Sabres at Dawn" when I was pretty new and one of my teams getting shot at by the Apache, at which point I really wished I could grab the radio and scream at them to engage all targets on the FAR side of the river!

[@usuallyhapless9481]

It's like that for everyone

[@ExitJuin]

But units can mistake each other for the enemy and engage in "non-accidental" blue-on-blue on the highest difficulty, no?

[@usuallyhapless9481]

I've never seen units engage friendly units on purpose. I've seen them shoot through them when targetting the enemy, which could potentially cause casualties in some circumstances, but that's not the same thing.

[@MandolinMagi]

.45ACP is 11.43mm. So, under 12mm?

[@usuallyhapless9481]

That might be more like it. As a natural metric person, in my headspace I don't even consider .45ACP

[@trevontrevisjjiwih]

Do combat mission in the jungle

[@Brille_Zwo]

Nice video as usual ! BUT I must disagree on one point at least: Units can misidentify friendlies for enemy forces, though it seems very limited and only under certain conditions. I had incidents with partisans in CMRT which regularily shot at each other during night time or morning hour battles. And this would make sense, since they have no radios with them so they could not update everybody on each others current locations. I haven´t witnessed this with more organised military units yet. Here is a video of the friendly fire incidents I was talking about: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sHPGnYinbqakn6Msi=qQu6Rwc2uP9D5Lr9

[@usuallyhapless9481]

Now that's interesting! And bonus points for getting one step ahead of "video or it didn't happen"! I didn't test things out with unconventional troops (ie. Partisans, Uncons etc) and have never seen it happen, but... obviously it can.