Freyberg
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Posts
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Posts posted by Freyberg
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2 minutes ago, Redwolf said:
What would you say is a typical engagement range in CMx2? I can set up a little shootout for it.
There are plenty of great QB and Master Maps - I think it's peculiar if first engagement ranges, especially between tanks are less than 1000m - quite often longer.
As I say - I mostly play attack scenarios - ME is a historical outlier - and a defender that doesn't have AFVs well positioned in the 1000m range (or more) is already at a tactical disadvantage.
Think Operation Goodwood...
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1 minute ago, chuckdyke said:
Exactly I don't have a problem with the system. I go with historical accuracy, the Stug III was the most numerous AFV made by the Germans. For the transparency of the point system it is on BF to explain to its customers. I think the allies are attacking Germans defending. If the Germans counter attack it is done by Mark IV and Panthers. The point system could reflect this. The Stug III as it has no turret it is better employed in a defensive position.
I usually play Allies, attacking against the AI - I find all German tanks pretty lethal - you can't match them 1:1 even against the AI - and the Stug is right up there; it's a bitch
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10 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:
To be honest battles are not fought in typical tank friendly battlefields in North West Europe. Bocage in Normandy soggy soil during Market Garden. On top of that worse winter condition period 1944 - 1945. A platoon of Shermans vs a single German AFV is historically realistic.
That's a fair comment, but the vehicle points-weighting is not map-specific, nor could it be.
Besides, in a bocage map, the Germans have a major infantry AT advantage, so it should kind of balance out.
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The advantage the German AFVs have over budget Shermans is significant, but it's an advantage that mainly exists at longer ranges, which are more typical of tank engagements.
If you're unhappy with the balance of your QBs, perhaps you should choose more appropriate maps for your tank battles.
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On 10/26/2021 at 1:13 AM, Battlefront.com said:
Instead of spending a large amount of effort getting the game engine to be meaningfully accessible to outside modders, we could put in a lot less time making major improvements to something like the Editor.
That would be fabulous - I love the editor, but there are certainly ways it could be made easier and better.
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10 hours ago, Glubokii Boy said:
Most likely there is some reason as to why most people don't decide to spend hour after hour in the editor...
Honestly, it can be kind of 'clunky' when first starting out...
There's lots of fun to be had in the editor.
The first use I made of the editor was to edit CMBN QB maps. Being such an early release, a lot of them came to look a bit featureless compared to later maps, especially the rural ones, so I would add fences, bushes, footpaths, vary the ground cover and so on, just to make them prettier to play on.
Another really fun thing is to make QB maps from Master Maps. The newer titles have excellent Master Maps (CMRT/FR is my favourite for this) - and you can find interesting tactical challenges in them, and throw together a really fun QB map in less than an hour.
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10 hours ago, AlexUK said:
Not starting from scratch by e.g. using master maps or modifying existing scenarios seems fair enough to me, and as good a way as any to start off, and perhaps be encouraged rather than being called a parasite.
I'd go further - isn't the whole point of the Master Maps to give people material to create QB maps and scenarios...?
Using things for their intended purpose is hardly 'parasitic.'
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18 hours ago, AlexUK said:
I also think smgs are overpowered in the game (accuracy over 100m).
I dunno - 100m isn't very far in real life; and 100m is definitely the limit of the effective range of SMGs in Combat Mission.
WW2 SMGs were a heavier weapon firing a bigger bullet than modern SMGs; and even a smoothbore musket in skilled hands had some sort of accuracy at 50m, so I don't 100m range for SMGs is an exaggeration.
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If you want to play urban or close-quarter maps with SMGs, the best way to get your fix is to play as Soviets
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The impression you get from his book is that he was traumatised from the loss of so many friends and had a death wish...
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On 10/2/2021 at 8:28 PM, John Kettler said:
...Red Army Shermans...
Super-interesting
Thanks
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On 9/18/2021 at 10:41 PM, chuckdyke said:
Here in CM hunting in the command panel tends to confuse people.
In CM1 it was called 'move to contact.'
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19 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
A perfect example of diversity enhancing the game experience is in CMFI Rome to Victory where we included Sikh models and textures, but didn't make specific voice samples for them.
That was a big plus - I've really enjoyed playing Indian Army, including Sikhs.
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41 minutes ago, Bufo said:
Like when half of my infantry squad killed themselves with an rpg grenade because a destroyed tank happened to be just in front of them and this game doesn't calculate that into the line of fire and also doesn't simulate arming distances.
Keep playing, get better at the game and at tactics, and 'random bugs' will happen to you less often...
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On 9/27/2021 at 12:23 AM, dbsapp said:
...But there is difference between "not always happen as it should" and "happen too often as it shouldn't"
On 9/27/2021 at 1:18 AM, Redwolf said:Random randomness is not helpful, in other words
I've never had that problem - and I've played a lot of Combat Mission.
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14 hours ago, MikeyD said:
We older CM players can't go back to experience discovering the game for the first time but we can enjoy what we've got
I first found CMBO when I experiencing my first 'mid-life crisis' - and I started searching the internet for a computer equivalent to the tabletop wargames I loved when I was a kid. CMBO and CMBB were exactly what I was looking for and the games just keep getting better.
I have never felt CM really lacks anything. Hi res shoot-em-ups completely bore me - the gameplay is infantile. The occasional fudge factors in CM don't bother me - they're like dice rolls. You can't have a wargame without them. They make it more realistic, not less - the realism is in the risk and the randomness. If everything always happened as it 'should' the game wouldn't be realistic at all.
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I know I post pointless things like this too often, but I just can't get over the incredible wealth of fun I get out of the Combat Mission games.
I've been playing Commonwealth and minor Allies in CMFI so long - with huge enjoyment - that now I've started a few QBs with US forces they seem brand new. Meanwhile, I carved off a few slices of the gorgeous CMFR master maps, quickly threw together some QB maps and started playing them - late '44, early '45 - which are a terrific challenge and hugely enjoyable. The AI does such a good job with a good map that you can put together your own fun QB map on your own chosen terrain with relative ease, without any idea of how the battle will unfold.
And I'm still scratching the surface of CMCW, which offers a whole new unfamiliar world of units, vehicles and capabilities which are engrossing and offer a whole new historical learning curve. Plus of course I still dip into the other titles (I've still to properly explore CMBS and CMFB - and after all these years with different versions, I still love the extended versions of CMSF and CMBN).
Through all kinds of ups and downs in life, Combat Mission has been my 'happy place' for nearly 20 years!! 20 years FFS!! That's beyond unique for a computer game.
Sorry - I'm a bit drunk, but I just had to say wax rhapsodic...
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On 8/20/2021 at 2:22 AM, SimpleSimon said:
Barbarossa's win conditions were more reasonable than Russian and some Western Historians have summarized, ... When we run out of guns go to the bayonet. When we run out of bayonets go to your fists. Return with your shield or upon it as the Greeks used to say...
I always find your insights worth reading
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8 hours ago, dbsapp said:
It's like a sophisticated riddle you was trying to solve for days just to realise that it was flawed frome the start and never had a beautiful solution.
It was a hard battle with high casualties even when I played it, which was not long after CMRT was released. It sounds like subsequent updates have upset the balance of the game and perhaps made it unwinnable.
Plus, some of the campaigns are really bloody hard. I've had other campaign in other titles that I gave up on, because I couldn't be bothered replaying one battle for a second or third time...
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9 hours ago, dbsapp said:
I tried to find different paths to victory, which would be more "natural", but they didn't work.
It's been a long time since I played this, but I remember the Nazis being, as always, tough but brittle.
I played the way I usually play - a really big 'skirmish screen' across the whole frontage - because I need to know where everything is - then the rest of my infantry and heavy weapons, moving quickly but carefully; tanks following in tight bunches, not too far behind but VERY carefully, relying on a lot of infantry eyes up front, so even when I'm surprised, I quickly know why.
Like you, the left flank was where I broke through, but I recall some strongpoints on other parts of the line, with good overwatch, that needed to be eliminated before the left flank was properly open
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Some few years ago, when I had the time and energy to play PBEMs, I found good opponents on the Blitz forums.
Having said that, it's been about 5 years...
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9 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:
...Wart? Freyberg? Sid? Dbsapp? Erwin? Anyone?
Your assumptions are both churlish and groundless.
And why don't you start your own thread and get that locked down, instead of doing to thread where other people are having an interesting discussion.
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39 minutes ago, Probus said:
Is the Barbarossa Campaign achievable if:
- If Barbarossa had started earlier...
I really think that would have been enough.
By the time the freezing temperatures came, Hitler had destroyed a huge part of the Soviet armed forces - the remainder were hanging on by their fingernails. Zhukov's Siberians had the advantage of being winter-trained and equipped, which would have counted for little or nothing if the encirclement of Moscow had begun 6 weeks earlier.
Without the ice-road, Leningrad would have been fully encircled too. Kiev, Leningrad and Moscow accounted for most of the USSR's industrial capacity, and European Russia contained almost all the Soviet population. They would have had no human or economic resources left.
The morale effects of such a loss might well have broken the extremely precarious hold the Communist Party had on the Soviet people.
And with Siberia denuded of its garrison, why wouldn't the Japanese have attacked from the East - with nothing to stop them? Truly the fate of the world hung in the balance in 1941...
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23 hours ago, Rinaldi said:
The main issue I take with the criticism regarding Churchill's decision to support the Greeks in their struggle is that they are all purely military criticisms. Churchill wasn't a purely military leader (indeed, constitutionally, he wouldn't be much of one at all in any other circumstance other than total war).
It was an excellent political decision, and arguably a morally sublime one. The United Kingdom was functionally alone at that point, Western Betrayal sentiments were just beginning to really solidify in Poland and Czechoslovakia, and there had hitherto appeared to be no way to get at the Germans on the continent since being bounced off it in 1940. Intervention in Greece showed that the UK was still very much willing to fight against the odds. Crucially, it demonstrated that it wouldn't further abandon anyone who sought to resist Fascism and Nazism. The decision may have made Wavell despair but it certainly would have been a trumpet blast to occupied Europe, and the Americans, that the British were willing to not only defend themselves on their island, but to seek active decision with the enemy. In short, there were political considerations, very good ones.
Goodness knows there's a lot to criticise Churchill for, the man was far from a saint. I just don't think most of the grounds for criticism are related to his leadership during WWII. From a top-down perspective he did precisely what was necessary to carry his country through the conflict, and it must be said, quite a few other governments-in-exile. Any further analysis is nitpicking best left to academics with more letters behind their names than myself.
4 hours ago, danfrodo said:RINALDI, well stated. That danfrodo guy really just doesn't know what's he's talking about
Seriously, I now agree w you on this subject -- I was thinking too small.
Yes, that was well said, and you're so gracious Danfrodo - such a rarity on any forum
12 minutes ago, Artkin said:I do wonder what would've happened had Germany not redirected its resources to Greece and friends.
Maybe Barbarossa would have had that extra uumpf? It would have definitely saved a few weeks.
Yeah, the Schlieffen Plan was undone by falling just a little behind schedule; and the evacuation at Dunkirk hinged upon a German pause of mere days.
Hypotheticals are inherently incalculable, but six weeks seems like a long time in operational terms to me.
Petition to equalize QB prices of some similar WW2 tanks
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted
It's unusual to see German high velocity round 'bouncing off' a low budget Sherman at any range. Those very basic M4s can't take much of a hit.
They may not lose their crew (a well designed tank for crew survival), but being still combat capable after a hit from a PzIV or Stug, even at range, requires pretty good luck.