Jump to content

Sgt Joch

Members
  • Posts

    4,541
  • Joined

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by Sgt Joch

  1. I ran some tests in CMFB before Xmas. The King Tiger is very difficult to KO from the front, but U.S. 57mm and 76mm AP will easily penetrate the side hull armor at 600 meters.
  2. As I recall, I believe Guderian when he was inspector-general tried to push the idea of just producing assault guns like Stug's, they were easy to build, could be mass produced and the main gun was almost as powerful as on a Panther. Panthers and Tigers look cool, but required more man hours to build for not that much impact. As I recall, most of the Big Cats were lost not through combat, but were abandoned when they broke down or ran out of gas.
  3. Walter Dunn, “Hitler’s nemesis, the Red Army, 1930-45” is my main source for this. Large numbers of 76mm M4A2s were shipped to Russia in late 44-early 45. At the time, there was a shortage of T34s due to the heavy fighting in the summer of 44 so many Guards units were equipped with Shermans. Dimitri Loza also as you noted had a favourable impression of the Sherman vs Russian tanks. One point Dunn makes is that the Russians did not build high quality tanks, they knew from experience that a tank in combat had an average life of around six months so they designed and built tanks with a short designed lifespan which allowed them to maximize production. The Russians liked the Valentine, but used many of them in training units, not because it was a bad combat tank, but because it had an engine designed with a 100,000 km lifespan. To the Russians it seemed a waste to use the tank in combat where it would be killed in a few months. p.s - having a comfortable tank may seem like a luxury, but in an offensive, you can spend days with little sleep living in the tank. Being less groggy can make the difference between life and death in a combat situation.
  4. One point to keep in mind is that the western view of Russian tactics has been heavily influenced by German accounts of WW2, notably the notion of “human wave” attacks and that the Russians only won because of overwhelming numbers which makes you think that the Russians just used WW1 tactics. This is wrong IMHO. As far as I can tell, the Russians used the same infantry tactics in 43-45 on attack as the Germans and Western Allies used, i.e., fire and movement, use of cover, short sprints, etc. The major difference is that the Russians were less concerned about casualties, so they would tend to press an attack when a U.S. commander would be more likely to stop and call in artillery.
  5. CM modules often showcase new equipment, in this case lend lease. Many of the better Russian units switched to Shermans in 44-45. Russian tankers rated the Shermans better than their T34-85s, more comfortable, more reliable with a better and more reliable radio. They also rated the 76mm gun as better against hard targets than the Russian 85mm gun.
  6. Finished the 1st scenario, fun little battle. On to scenario 2, beautiful maps!
  7. Started the 1st mission, very nice, very immersive.
  8. I am still on 21.8.2, no reason to use any newer driver for CM. Newer drivers are mostly of help to the latest cards and latest games.
  9. Battle sight is standard SOP and has been used since WW2. Tankers figured out pretty quickly that at short range, the trajectory of the round is flat and you can just point and shoot without bothering to figure out the range, it saves precious seconds which can mean life or death on a battlefield.
  10. Actually we testers did notice and complained about it a lot, but problem is you are trying to graft a system, PBEM+++, onto the CM engine which was not designed that way ... so you have to use a lot of duct tape and cross your fingers . Hopefully, it will be improved, the team has been working on it a lot over the past few months.
  11. So.... talking about the difference between spotting “on a range” and spotting in combat when you know you could be dead anytime... Gabby Gabreski, the US WW2 Ace recounted his 1st time in combat in his autobiography. He is flying as wingman, all of a sudden calls of “Bandits!” are all over the radio. He starts looking everywhere all around him, but spots nothing. All of a sudden he hears on the radio: “check your 2 o”clock!”. He looks and sees a 109 as big as a house, barely 200 meters away that he was slowly gaining on. Before he can react, the 109 spots him and dives away...
  12. Hummels are available in all games as an on map asset. They are available as single vehincles in some of the other games, CMFI I believe. It is available as a formation in all games, including CMRT, so simple enough enough to buy the formation and delete what you don't need.
  13. The artillery figures are misleading. One of the reasons why the Germans had a high inventory is because they produced a large number of shells in winter 1939-40 because they thought the war would be repeat of WW1. Once France fell, they had a huge inventory and cut way back on shell production. On numbers of guns and mortars the numbers I have for the Russians are: -June 41: 91,000 -December 41: 22,000 -November 42: 72,000 -June 43: 103,000 -June 44: 92,000 -January 45: 108,000 Numbers for Germans are: -November 42: 70,000 -January 45: 28,500 Germans lost most of their artillery in 44 when combat losses far outstripped production. Remember also that German figures are for all fronts. source: Walter Dunn, “Hitler’s Nemesis, The Red Army 1930-45”, 1994. The other issue is that Russian artillery doctrine was different and less flexible than the German, US or CW. The Russians required a lot of planning, so for major offensives they would group large numbers of guns in massive pre-planned barrages to blast holes in the German front, but in quiet sectors or in between offensives, were not able match the Germans for on the fly artillery calls, which are more typical for CM battles. When the 31st Guards division attacked in Bagration, June 44, it was supported by 254 guns: 92 x 76mm, 64 x 122mm, 36 x 120mm, 50 x 203mm and 12 x 280mm. Each gun would have had 100-150 shells available for the initial offensive. Dunn gives the example of a 10 day period in November 44 when all front were quiet, the Russians fired an average of 2 shells a day from 13,000 guns while the Germans fired an average of 9 shells a day from 4,800 guns which works out to 2x as many shells.
  14. The issue with adding women is that all the soldier units are the same size so you only need one set of animations. To have a realistic woman model, you would need a smaller more feminine looking model which requires a new set of animations, uniforms and gear, so a lot more work. The other issue is that women did not generally serve in front line combat units in the WW2, Cold War or even Shock Force period (2008), so this is only really an issue for Blue forces in CMBS, women are not in combat units in Russia as far as I know. The simplest solution would be what other sims do and as Erwin mentioned, having women voices in air/artillery missions which only requires new voice files and could be added as a mod.
  15. visible minorities are already in the game if you look carefully at US or NATO forces in CMSF, CMBS and CMCW. In CMCW, US forces are roughly one third african american.
  16. The problem with determining in game RPG-7 accuracy is that the RL data is all over the map. It ranges from Russian claims that it was a garanteed 1-2 shot kill at 300 meters down to the U.S. Army estimates that in a typical battlefield situation 1st shot hit probability on a hulldown M-60 might be as low as 15%. Based on conflicting or missing data, BFC's approach is to make a best guess estimate. Based on the quick tests run by TheCapt, in game accuracy seems to be within the expected results.
  17. so, according to this 1976 U.S. Army document, hit probability of a RPG-7 against a Hull down M-60 at 225 meters is as follows: - 1st shot 15% -2nd shot 30% /tardir/tiffs/a393159.tiff (dtic.mil) see pages 15-16. That more or less matches the test results by Capt.
  18. The game does take into account shooters adjusting fire on subsequent shots, tanks do it all the time in game.
  19. well if you want to be picky about it, "doors" are not the subject of this thread either...
  20. Well, in the Aachen campaign, which I have partly slogged through, the Germans have weapons covering pretty much all the entrances and expected approaches, so trying to enter that way is usually expensive... OTOH, you have a lot of engineer units so you can blast through walls and make your own "doors" which is what I did.
  21. Well, you are picking ONE outlier event which means it is worthless as an exercise in predicting game outcome. I have also seen instances where the same type of AT weapon scores a kill on the 1st hit, which is just as meaningless. If you really want to see if there is a problem, do what we do, setup a test scenario with 50-100 shooters trying to hit a stationary target at 225 meters, then come back with the results and we can see if the accuracy needs to be tweaked.
×
×
  • Create New...