I have a weak understanding of radios.

[Squallion]

Would anyone be willing to make my understanding strong? As far as I can tell, they are meant solely to communicate with artillery.

My scout can see 2 tanks, 1 TD, and 1 self propelled gun, however, my tanks seem to know nothing about them. Don't tanks have radios built in? If they don't, couldn't I just move someone with a radio close?

[MikeyD]

Radios back then were pretty rudimentary. Most tank radios are short range and tuned in to their platoon's signal. Russian tanks, a lot of them would be without a radio or receiver only, no broadcast. Though I don't think CMRT models that. Much of the time when you see a big bold number painted on the sides of (real world) tanks that would be their radio call sign. Whenever they built specialized command tanks to communicate with higher up they'd have to remove ammo, coax mgs, etc. to fit all the necessary extra radio equipment. Heck, sometimes they'd even remove the main gun! :eek:

[JasonC]

First the game, then some reality.

In the game, radios serve two functions - calling for fire from indirect fire assets, off map or on it (mortars), and keeping units in command for morale, rally, and leadership effects. They do not help units share spots, on their own.

Second on reality and WWII radios. They were very low power affairs, a few watts being typical. This meant the only carried a few miles, and made reception difficult and uncertain even within their very limited range. They were made low power because higher power sets were much bulkier and also more expensive using the limited tech of the day. A field artillery radio meant to routinely raise a firing battery 10-15 miles in the rear was typically bigger than a modern microwave oven and could weigh 40 to 50 pounds. Backpack sized radios had a best conditions range of maybe 10 miles and were typically battalion assets. Only the US widely deployed handset sized radios, and those had a range of 2-3 miles with poor connections, and would be used as platoon commander assets talking to other company officers on a company net.

Vehicle radios were not much better. As another poster mentioned, in some armies only platoon HQ vehicles had transmitters while the line tanks just received, and range was about five miles tops. Platoons each had their own net to hear commands, and had to switch channels to talk to higher ups. They also talked over headsets to the crew of their own tank, and one instruction could easily be mistaken for the other if the channel was open. More powerful radios required command tanks that removed the main armament to make room for them, and normally only those could reach higher HQs or rear area artillery. Weaker front line radios had to hand off messages to more powerful ones and relay to the rear, which was a clumsy process with limited channels, poor reception, and confusing crosstalk.

Some kinds of coordination were rendered impossible by technical systems. E.g. German planes and artillery observers used Morse code and voice and could not hear each other. Others by organizational issues e.g. most Russian indirect fire assets were command designated as to which unit to support, and could not receive calls from other observers, and wouldn't obey them if they heard them, because they were under orders to listen for requests from someone else, by rear echelon officers who vastly outranked anyone calling them on the radio for fire. The Russians stayed off the radio in 1941 and 1942 because the Germans had the best radio direction finding in the world, and a division HQ broadcasting at 100 watts power to reach all its subunits amounted to a giant "bomb me" sign for the Luftwaffe. They also didn't have enough coding and decoding bandwidth to handle urgent traffic without ruinous delays, so when they did broadcast often did so in the clear - and German radio intel heard them and got word out to German units as fast as it got to Russians. In both cases admittedly for higher HQs than we see in CM, broadcasting at higher wattages and therefore easier to overhear or radio-locate.

Basically you should not think of any of them as networked real time comms, of the sort contemporary western armies rely on. German armor from early on (a benefit of Guderian, the armor force designer and planner, being a communications officer), the western allies in the last two years of the war (better tech and richer equipment overall) when talking to their artillery or their armor to each other, are the only forces that come close, and they get much better coordination at the higher scales of battalion or task force, than they manage at the lowest of platoons or among individual vehicles.

As an interesting PS, the most technically advanced equipment in the world was the stuff the western allies were using to break German codes (basically inventing modern computing in the process), and the German higher HQs and staffs used a sophisticated teletype system that effectively let them run the war by email. But we are a long way from the front line radios in CM at that point...

[Squallion]

First the game, then some reality.

In the game, radios serve two functions - calling for fire from indirect fire assets, off map or on it (mortars), and keeping units in command for morale, rally, and leadership effects. They do not help units share spots, on their own.

Second on reality and WWII radios. They were very low power affairs, a few watts being typical. This meant the only carried a few miles, and made reception difficult and uncertain even within their very limited range. They were made low power because higher power sets were much bulkier and also more expensive using the limited tech of the day. A field artillery radio meant to routinely raise a firing battery 10-15 miles in the rear was typically bigger than a modern microwave oven and could weigh 40 to 50 pounds. Backpack sized radios had a best conditions range of maybe 10 miles and were typically battalion assets. Only the US widely deployed handset sized radios, and those had a range of 2-3 miles with poor connections, and would be used as platoon commander assets talking to other company officers on a company net.

Vehicle radios were not much better. As another poster mentioned, in some armies only platoon HQ vehicles had transmitters while the line tanks just received, and range was about five miles tops. Platoons each had their own net to hear commands, and had to switch channels to talk to higher ups. They also talked over headsets to the crew of their own tank, and one instruction could easily be mistaken for the other if the channel was open. More powerful radios required command tanks that removed the main armament to make room for them, and normally only those could reach higher HQs or rear area artillery. Weaker front line radios had to hand off messages to more powerful ones and relay to the rear, which was a clumsy process with limited channels, poor reception, and confusing crosstalk.

Some kinds of coordination were rendered impossible by technical systems. E.g. German planes and artillery observers used Morse code and voice and could not hear each other. Others by organizational issues e.g. most Russian indirect fire assets were command designated as to which unit to support, and could not receive calls from other observers, and wouldn't obey them if they heard them, because they were under orders to listen for requests from someone else, by rear echelon officers who vastly outranked anyone calling them on the radio for fire. The Russians stayed off the radio in 1941 and 1942 because the Germans had the best radio direction finding in the world, and a division HQ broadcasting at 100 watts power to reach all its subunits amounted to a giant "bomb me" sign for the Luftwaffe. They also didn't have enough coding and decoding bandwidth to handle urgent traffic without ruinous delays, so when they did broadcast often did so in the clear - and German radio intel heard them and got word out to German units as fast as it got to Russians. In both cases admittedly for higher HQs than we see in CM, broadcasting at higher wattages and therefore easier to overhear or radio-locate.

Basically you should not think of any of them as networked real time comms, of the sort contemporary western armies rely on. German armor from early on (a benefit of Guderian, the armor force designer and planner, being a communications officer), the western allies in the last two years of the war (better tech and richer equipment overall) when talking to their artillery or their armor to each other, are the only forces that come close, and they get much better coordination at the higher scales of battalion or task force, than they manage at the lowest of platoons or among individual vehicles.

As an interesting PS, the most technically advanced equipment in the world was the stuff the western allies were using to break German codes (basically inventing modern computing in the process), and the German higher HQs and staffs used a sophisticated teletype system that effectively let them run the war by email. But we are a long way from the front line radios in CM at that point...

I appreciate that. It must have taken you some time to type that! Lol. Thank you. =D

I wonder what kind of comms we will see in the next modern iteration of combat mission. (I haven't played shock force).

[MikeyD]

There's the Shock Force demo which you can play for free. Radio, expecially for the Blue side, is pretty much universal. And most-everyone has some authority to call in fire support.

There's are also land lines. The good-old telephone system. The Syrians have spies and militia fighters who would most probably be using their cell phones to communicate rather than carrying radio equipment around.

[LukeFF]

They do not help units share spots, on their own.

Yes, they do.

[DavidFields]

Yes, they do.

My understanding is this:

The scout can share the spotting with your tanks IF it is connected by C2 to the units above it, and if the tanks by C2 to the units above it, and one of those higher level units are the same. The spotting information goes up the chain of command from the scout, and then down to the tank. There is a time delay in passing that spotting information. A radio can help keep those communication links. (as in: Radios don't pass spotting information, people do, and sometimes the radio helps)

But, at the risk of stepping into the military experts area, in the time frame of CMRT, it was unusual for armor and infantry to be tightly integrated at the scale of the battles we see in CM2. Often the armor is "attached" to the infantry, temporarily. Hence, the armor is in a different, non-connecting, chain of command than the infantry.

This causes, realistic to the time, difficulty with co-ordination between the infantry and the armor. This is a game feature, not a bug.

Of course, this being a game, there is still some artificialness about the situation. Since your scouts see the enemy armor, you know exactly were it is, and can guide your armor accordingly (unbuttoned to increase the spotting chances?--it can be a tough decision).

Nevertheless, it gives a hint of the difficulties of communication and coordination in battle--and it is hard to go back to "all-seeing" tactical games after seeing CM2.

Indeed, I think I won't be contradicted when I say that the actual battlefield conditions were much, much, much, more confusing in real life than what we see in CM2. The situation you describe is about as frustrating as most gamers will bear--even then I am sure it causes some rage-quits.

[Not to trivialize it, but remember going to a shopping mall, or setting up any meeting before cell phones? Get the place or time slightly wrong.....annoying and time consuming, and potentially very difficult to straighten out.]

Maybe Modern Warfare has fewer communications problems. That is why I think there is a large conceptual leap between CMSF and CM2. And it will also be why, when they develop modules earlier in the war, it will require, I imagine, even more conceptual thinking on getting "the feeling right"--particularly for the Soviets.

[Doug Williams]

Good thread, great responses so far. Bookmarking.

[JasonC]

Cool, thanks for the detailed explanation of the spot-sharing features of radios in CM...

[DavidFields]

Cool, thanks for the detailed explanation of the spot-sharing features of radios in CM...

[Well...I just brought my wife over to the computer to read the nice comments. She has no idea what she is reading, but she can tell I am, unaccountably, pleased]

So let me ask a super-grog type of question as to real life.

Situation:

It is 1944. A small German infantry force, with three attached MkIVs are to assault a building complex. You are the squad closest to the friendly armor, which is about 200-400 meters away.

Things are not going exactly to plan, or, you want the armor to fire at specific enemy location. By good fortune, both your squad and the friendly armor has a radio.

Do you?:

A: Go over to the tanks, trying not to get shot in the process, and talk to them, or use hand signals? Sub-question: Do you send a low level enlisted person to do this--I doubt that--or send a leader, with the radio or not?

B: Radio your platoon commander, who, there or up the chain further, crosses over to the armor formation communication network and gets information down to the armor unit--per the OPs issue, this seems to be the way CM2 handles this. Given the BFC penchant for accuracy, that either means it is historically correct, or done to give the correct "feeling" for battle.

C: Hey, I have a radio, they have a radio, let's call each other up! This seems to be the issue with the OP's post. But I can think of, and would like to be corrected if incorrect, that this direct communication might not happen because 1. They radios are on different frequencies, indeed almost certainly are. Finding, or being given, the frequencies of other units might not be done. 2. Chattering in the open air might not be considered acceptable, for security reasons. or 3. a squad calling up a local armor unit and telling them what to do was "just not done"--there are orders to be obeyed, and many issues need to be resolved at an appropriate, higher level.

Note that in game terms, there are always going to be trade-offs. I think, for example, a scout squad which sees an enemy unit, and is sitting right next to a tank, is not going to be able in CM2 help with the tanks enemy unit spotting unless they are in the same chain of command at some point. Purists would argue that some tanks had external phones the infantry could call the crew with, or if the tank was unbuttoned there should communication available, but I can see why excluding those situations could, overall, make for a better, more realistic feeling simulation. But, for someone new to CM2, this issue could cause some perplexity.

[DavidFields]

Cool, thanks for the detailed explanation of the spot-sharing features of radios in CM...

[Well...I just brought my wife over to the computer to read the nice comments. She has no idea what she is reading, but she can tell I am, unaccountably, pleased]

So let me ask a super-grog type of question as to real life.

Situation:

It is 1944. A small German infantry force, with three attached MkIVs are to assault a building complex. You are the squad closest to the friendly armor, which is about 200-400 meters away.

Things are not going exactly to plan, or, you want the armor to fire at specific enemy location. By good fortune, both your squad and the friendly armor has a radio.

Do you?:

A: Go over to the tanks, trying not to get shot in the process, and talk to them, or use hand signals? Sub-question: Do you send a low level enlisted person to do this--I doubt that--or send a leader, with the radio or not?

B: Radio your platoon commander, who, there or up the chain further, crosses over to the armor formation communication network and gets information down to the armor unit--per the OPs issue, this seems to be the way CM2 handles this. Given the BFC penchant for accuracy, that either means it is historically correct, or done to give the correct "feeling" for battle.

C: Hey, I have a radio, they have a radio, let's call each other up! This seems to be the issue with the OP's post. But I can think of, and would like to be corrected if incorrect, that this direct communication might not happen because 1. They radios are on different frequencies, indeed almost certainly are. Finding, or being given, the frequencies of other units might not be done. 2. Chattering in the open air might not be considered acceptable, for security reasons. or 3. A squad calling up a local armor unit and telling them what to do was "just not done"--there are orders to be obeyed, and many issues need to be resolved at an appropriate, higher level.

Note that in game terms, there are always going to be trade-offs. I think, for example, a scout squad which sees an enemy unit, and is sitting right next to a tank, is not going to be able in CM2 help with the tanks enemy unit spotting unless they are in the same chain of command at some point. Purists would argue that some tanks had external phones the infantry could call the crew with, or if the tank was unbuttoned there should communication available, but I can see why excluding those situations could, overall, make for a better, more realistic feeling simulation. But, for someone new to CM2, this issue could cause some perplexity.

[Vergeltungswaffe]

You're unlikely to be on the same net as the armor platoon, so I'm going with A.

I agree with your assessment of B, but I think it also reasonably simulates the A possibilities.

[JasonC]

Rankorian - first, a German 1944 infantry squad has no chance of having its own radio. None whatever. Second, the platoon leader doesn't have a radio either. The lowest German infantry formation with assigned radios was the battalion and it had 4 teams with one radio each, enough to establish comms with its component companies. The German did have some backpack sized radios - with a power output of 0.15 watts. Yes, less than 1/6th of one watt of broadcasting power.

Second, the way a squad communicates with other units is shouting or sending runners, occasionally hand signals or a pre arranged flare. They stay pretty close to each other on the battlefield and those methods are perfectly sufficient for communication within the squad. For communication up to platoon, a runner is frequently needed, and the same was often required to get new orders out to a separated squad.

Third, the tankers are not taking orders from infantry sergeants. They are taking orders from the tank platoon commander and he is designating their targets and missions. They are not a service oriented business taking requests. They can certainly react to perceived threats or chances, but they are not waiting for an infantryman to tell them what to shoot. At most, the infantry company commander may have had that talk with the tank platoon commander an hour ago when they planned the action out in a leaders meeting (not over the radio, face to face, out of action).

Third, if the infantry company commander has one of the battalion's four radios, it is on the battalion net frequency. If he and the tank leader coordinated it all ahead of time, they might have an agreed frequency to talk to each other; if the coordination is "pick up", on the fly, then they won't even know how to talk to each other. If they are coordinated, the company commander needs to be by his radio team, he needs to not be distracted by other events, he needs to be talking to the tanks (or trying to) not the artillery or his battalion CO (different frequencies, each), and the tank platoon commander has to know or guess that at that moment his own tank's radio should be switched over to the infantry company commander's frequency, or he will "miss the call". If he is instead talking to his other tanks, he will miss the call. If his personal headset is on the internal comm for his crew, he may miss it, though his radio operator might pick it up. If he is trying to talk to his armor company higher ups, he will miss the call. If he is too busy directing a duel with a Sherman over yonder, radio calls won't be in his personal bandwidth.

Then when the company CO and the tank platoon leader get on the call, they will be on the infantry battalion net or the tank platoon net. They will hear the crosstalk of the others on that net. That crosstalk will burn through their speaking - only one voice will get through. They must repeat call signs to make clear who is speaking. They must repeat everything 2-3 times to ensure they were heard. They must reply with phrases to register when they hear and understand something or the speaker must repeat himself.

Then the phrases must be precise. Which houses? Each has lost track of where the others are. Just left of the road means something different to each of them. Chances to garble the message abound. Then the tank commander must relay his instructions to his individual tanks. He will translate his understanding of all location and direction terms to his own position and that of most of his platoon. If they talked on the company net, it is the first the other tankers have heard of it. If they talked on the tank platoon's net, they heard two sets of directives and are supposed to act on the second, from their own immediate superior, so hope he got it right.

In all of the above, also keep in mind that there may be 20 men in the whole battalion who know how a radio actually works...

That help?

[Michael Emrys]

Jason does an excellent job of painting a picture of just how chaotic a place a battlefield is...except that it is even worse most of the time with critical people getting WIA or KIA or just too busy to perform as one might wish. Everything in military science—so far as that can be said to exist—is geared towards managing chaos: how to win even when everything is going wrong. Keep in mind that aside from the normal human propensity for error, the other side is doing its best to make things go wrong for you, just as you are for him.

And in order to win in CM you must learn the same lessons. The essence of successful tactics, I would say, is that even when your beautiful plan falls apart you retain enough balance to at least extricate your force reasonably intact or preferably to exploit an unexpected opportunity. Don't give up hope. Remember, the other guy has his problems too.

Michael

[YankeeDog]

If he and the tank leader coordinated it all ahead of time, they might have an agreed frequency to talk to each other...

This is a critical piece of information to understand regarding use of radios for tank-infantry coordination in WWII. Battlefield commanders did have some discretion as to where they put their limited wireless comms assets, and at least in the case of well trained formations that knew how to execute good low-level tank-infantry tactics, if the need was appreciated ahead of time and there were time to prepare, the usually scarce portable radio resources could be allocated accordingly and infantry-tank radio comms could be fairly good. But this was an exception to the rule, and except in these "set piece" situations, local tank-infantry coordination was generally done by much lower tech methods, such as an infantryman hopping up onto the tank and talking to the crew through an open hatch.

You see local, low-level tank-infantry wireless comms used more often with e.g., late-war Americans, who had radios and batteries to spare. It was fairly common practice late war for U.S. tankers to scrounge a spare SCR-536 "Handie Talkie" set and rig it next to the TC's position with the antenna sticking out of the turret. In this way, they could talk to nearby infantry over the local (AM) radio net.

Late-war U.S. forces had a huge advantage in wireless comms over other nationalities, not just in quantity but in quality. In general, U.S. tech was smaller and lighter for a given range capability, and the U.S. also had the advantage of using two different radio techs for Company and higher level comms (using Frequency Modulation/FM), and the low level Company net (using Amplitude Modulation/AM). This may seem like a disadvantage since an FM radio and an AM radio can't talk to each other, but in practice what it meant was that the local U.S. Company level AM radio net didn't interfere and have crosstalk issues with the wider area FM radio net, since they were on an entirely different protocol.

The AM SCR-536 radios late-war U.S. infantry platoons carried were a far cry from modern portable comms; they were often unreliable and under many conditions had a useful range of only a few hundred yards. But the fact of the matter is, no other nationality had anything like it. For its time, it was a major advance in portable wireless comms tech.

In general, I think CM probably overmodels the radio comms capabilities of most forces right now, especially for the Germans who as Jason notes did not have the resources to allocate one radio/infantry platoon as the game models for many German formations. In fact, by 1944, the Germans were having serious problems meeting even the theoretical TOE allocation of portable radios. The problem wasn't so much portable wireless sets as it was batteries -- WWII-era batteries were big and bulky and didn't last very long. By 1944 the Germans were having a hard time getting enough batteries into the hands of front line units to keep the portable radio sets running. So the actual extent of German portable radio comms in 1944 would probably be substantially less than the paper TOE most of the time.

Balancing the rather generous allocation in radios in CM somewhat is the fact that the player currently has no discretion as to where is radios go in his OOB. That is, if I were playing a Company-sized German force and the game gave me only 2 radio sets amongst my entire force (which would probably be a more realistic allocation), the game does not give me the discretion to decide which HQs get the radios, something that IRL a Company commander would be able to do.

[womble]

Would "preplanned coordination" between armour and infantry formations have included things like coloured smoke to mark "targets of interest" for the armour/assault guns? Did the infantry even have ways of delivering such markers (Very pistol, I'm thinking of, Allies-side)? I can see flags/pennants being used to attract TCs' attention to initiate "conversation" however that's managed, e.g. wave a blue flag (from somewhere the enemy can't shoot at you, but the tank can see you), then use agreed (army standard?) hand signals to relay the particular information of concern...

[YankeeDog]

Would "preplanned coordination" between armour and infantry formations have included things like coloured smoke to mark "targets of interest" for the armour/assault guns? Did the infantry even have ways of delivering such markers (Very pistol, I'm thinking of, Allies-side)? I can see flags/pennants being used to attract TCs' attention to initiate "conversation" however that's managed, e.g. wave a blue flag (from somewhere the enemy can't shoot at you, but the tank can see you), then use agreed (army standard?) hand signals to relay the particular information of concern...

Sure. All sorts of techniques were used to signal targets and other information. Smoke was indeed a common way of signalling target areas; targeting smoke was often delivered via mortar and would be used to mark target points for everything from MG fire to Naval Artillery, including fire support from tanks and other AFVs. Smoke in and of itself usually couldn't be used call in fire, though. That is, usually the fire support request would be initiated via a radio or other message, and then a smoke drop would be used to specify the exact target -- guns didn't just open up on any little puff of colored smoke they saw.

Simple tracers were sometimes used to mark targets as well. For example., U.S. Platoon scouts were sometimes issued with special red tracer ammunition to that they could mark targets by shooting at them. I have also read that many scouts disliked this procedure and discarded the tracer ammo because shooting bright red tracers made the scout himself an obvious target to the enemy.

I haven't read of U.S. infantry using flags for targeting/fire requests, but the Soviets definitely made pretty widespread use of them. From what I have read, flags were often used by Soviet infantry on the advance to signal that a certain objective or phase line had been achieved. The artillery support would then initiate fire on a pre-planned set of targets to prepare the advance upon the next set of objectives. In this way, some timing flexibility could be worked into otherwise rigid Soviet fire plans.

[AttorneyAtWar]

Since radios were so rare at the platoon and company level in German formations shouldn't we see a patch fixing this? Or is it just an abstraction to help with calls for fire? (Simulating runners and such)

[Sgt Joch]

Since radios were so rare at the platoon and company level in German formations shouldn't we see a patch fixing this? Or is it just an abstraction to help with calls for fire? (Simulating runners and such)

Yes, to a certain extent. In the WW2 Russian Army, there were no radios at the infantry company/platoon level (and none in game), yet Russian infantry Platoon/Company HQs have a limited ability to call in artillery fire.

We actually had a long discussion about this in the Beta forum during the run up to CMRT without coming to a definite conclusion, although the ability to call in artillery in CMRT is more limited than in previous titles.

[MikeyD]

The old rationalization regarding HQ radio abilities had been that land line comms have been 'abstracted'. The game makes no distinction between portable radio communication and a phone line run from the artillery battery up to an command or observation post. Thought their capabilities would be very different. So there's a big 'grey area' when it comes to radio comms in the game.

[YankeeDog]

The old rationalization regarding HQ radio abilities had been that land line comms have been 'abstracted'. The game makes no distinction between portable radio communication and a phone line run from the artillery battery up to an command or observation post. Thought their capabilities would be very different. So there's a big 'grey area' when it comes to radio comms in the game.

Yes; since wire comms aren't explicitly modeled at all right now, I think you can argue that some of the "overmodeling" of other comms capabilities is there to compensate.

Eventually, I would love to see wire comms modeled more explicitly, and other comms capabilities, especially wireless, scaled back somewhat. This has important implications for e.g., Defender C2 vs. Attacker C2. Given prevalence and generally superior reliability (as long as the wire lines aren't cut), a defender in established positions should have a C2 advantage over a moving attacker, and the game doesn't really model this right now.

[YankeeDog]

Since radios were so rare at the platoon and company level in German formations shouldn't we see a patch fixing this? Or is it just an abstraction to help with calls for fire? (Simulating runners and such)

As I mentioned previously, part of the issue here is that the engine currently doesn't allow the player to move radios around his force to where they're most needed.

As it is right now, in a typical German Infantry Coy, all Platoons have radios. That's overly generous.

Probably more realistic would be for a well-equipped German Infantry Company to have something like 2-3 radios to share, but the player would have some discretion as to which units got the radios -- for example, maybe one always stays with the Company CO, but the player could chose which subordinate HQs got the "spare" radio(s) based on tactical need.

You can even argue that the player should have some ability to detach and shift radio teams around from HQ to HQ during the battle, as needed.

I don't even want to think about how hard this would be to design and code.

So for now, more HQs have radios than probably should, and even HQs without radio can usually call in support. Not completely realistic, but you can argue there's some necessary abstraction going on here, given the current state of the engine.

[JasonC]

All useful comments. On wire comms, yes they could be more reliable than radio as well as much more secure vs eavesdropping or radio direction finding, but they are only more reliable if the line can be buried. Otherwise artillery cuts it easily - and a big enough prep fire by heavy enough stuff will cut all the lines, even the buried ones, by churning the terrain into a moonscape.

It wasn't hard to have multiple ways to get a message somewhere in tactical combat, but in WW II, at least in most armies, periods, and branches of service, it was quite hard to have a way that was *reliable*. The result is its own kind of friction - people make plans expecting word to get through and then it does get through to a third of the force but not the other bits, and a mess ensues. And yeah, chaos like that is really hard to model accurately. Anything that stops the player from acting like an orchestra conductor with perfect and instant response is a move in the direction of realism - as frustrating as that may be for the player involved.

[Lt Belenko]

This applies more to Americans in CMBN. I wunder why there are no radios with the XO units?

[John Kettler]

JasonC,

The information you presented on the development of computing is incorrect. The official story used to be that the American ENIAC was the first programmable computer. Then came the belated discovery that an engineer named Walter Flower of the British Post invented Colossus (AKA Colossus I). It wasn't until Colossus II that a true computer, as described above, was born. Then, while reading Farrell's Reich of the Black Sun I was shocked to read of a guy named Konrad Zuse and to see a photo of one of his machines.

This Wiki is quite the read.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

"Konrad Zuse (German: [ˈkɔnʁat ˈtsuːzə]; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German inventor and computer pioneer. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse has often been regarded as the inventor of the modern computer.[1][2][3][4]"

"Improving on the basic Z2 machine, he built the Z3 in 1941. On 12 May 1941 Zuse presented the Z3, built in his workshop, to the public.[14][15] The Z3 was a binary 22-bit floating point calculator featuring programmability with loops but without conditional jumps, with memory and a calculation unit based on telephone relays. The telephone relays used in his machines were largely collected from discarded stock. Despite the absence of conditional jumps, the Z3 was a Turing complete computer (ignoring the fact that no physical computer can be truly Turing complete because of limited storage size). However, Turing-completeness was never considered by Zuse (who had practical applications in mind) and only demonstrated in 1998 (see History of computing hardware).

The Z3, the first fully operational electromechanical computer, was partially financed by German government-supported DVL, which wanted their extensive calculations automated. A request by his co-worker Helmut Schreyer—who had helped Zuse build the Z3 prototype in 1938[16]—for government funding for an electronic successor to the Z3 was denied as "strategically unimportant"."

Regards,

John Kettler