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TO&E Bug? Missing MG in Panzergrenadier squads.


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2 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

I think what he is trying to say is that he rather would like to learn something about captured weapons in German use.

Yes, Tyne I did understand that. And, I also appreciate that you can hurl as much abuse at the scenario designers, Steve, and Charles as you like, and there is Sweet Fanny Adams that we can do to stop you.

Edited by Warts 'n' all
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I think BF could investigate adding new weapons like these in addition to vehicles. I doubt it would cost many resources, and it would add a nice touch to low-quality and rear-guard units.

I have noticed that many vehicles introduced by some modules could be added to other games. The Brummbar from CMFI and CMFB could find its way into CMBN, like the upcoming StuG IV for R2V.

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On 9/29/2019 at 7:00 AM, Warts 'n' all said:

, and there is Sweet Fanny Adams that we can do to stop you.

I would venture to say that it even encourages the guy. I suggest it is time to add another fact ignoring ignoramus to our ignore lists. I find it really helps me to resist the urge to correct his untruths and insults if I never read them :)

Edited by IanL
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1 hour ago, IanL said:

I would venture to say that it even encourages the guy. I suggeat it is time to and another fact ignoring ignoramus to our ignore lists. I find it really helps me to resist the urge to correct his untruths and insults if I never read them :)

I'm thinking Tyne might be going on my thankfully short ignore list too, as I think that it is probably a forlorn hope to expect some kind of apology to the people he abused.

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@Warts 'n' all

Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it.

If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER.  There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem.

---

I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s.

 

On 9/25/2019 at 9:39 AM, Frenchy56 said:

Okay then, I had a suspicion that it could have been that too. Strange that Nazi Germany had more machinegunners than it had machine guns at that point, a matter of having the right stuff at the right place and time, then?


Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed.

@Ts4EVER

Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

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3 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

Sure thing but note that not all of them list small arms, possibly due to the amount of buerocratic work involved:

https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/index.php?thread/14672-zustandsberichte-gepanzerter-verbände-1943-1945-teil-ii/

https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/index.php?thread/17343-zustandsberichte-ungepanzerte-verbände-1943-1945/

Also they are in German, obviously.

quite useful stuff, thanks. Lots of unit reports on units I have a particular interest in. B) Think one can say that germans in italian theater made good use of italian small arms and maybe some from allies as well. The same on other theaters depending on location of depots and stockpiles of captured weaponry. Lots of that stuff went early to non combat military units, RAD, Flak, police and various others. Usually these units took their weaponry with them when fed piecemeal into actual combat formations beeing hastily rebuilt or reinforced at the frontlines. I have Fritz Hahn´s book German weapons and secret weapons of the german army - 1933 - 1945. It also compares weapon losses in the various theaters with running production/stockpiles of standard weaponry and it´s fairly easy to grasp why germans took everything from depots to keep formations combat ready. Could also tell of my relic hunter experiences, confirming on a wild mix of foreign weaponry to be found among german standard stuff on  late war battlefields and unit retreat/surrender locations.

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On 9/28/2019 at 10:16 AM, Ts4EVER said:

Just because they call it an "engine upgrade" doesn't mean it's more than a patch. Bug fixes and quality of life improvements behind a paywall are on the same level as those silly loot boxes they have in "triple A" games. Also nice from warts and all to apparently completely leave behind the point of "plugging new games", instead looping back to the start, ensuring that the conversation will go nowhere. But I guess at least you displayed what you mistake for wit, so congrats.

Anyway, to actually return to the way more interesting discussion of this thread:

Well, let's look at the monthly reports of different divisions. This time around the late 1944 era, since we are in the Ardennes game forum.

Lastly, for the Red Thunder game;

In conclusion, I think it would be cool to have this kind of obsolete or foreign equipment ingame, maybe when setting equipment levels to low. Some of these weapons actually already exist ingame and the Beretta MP is already used by Germans in Fortress Italy.

As you can see even with these few examples, the ratio of of any particular beutewaffen small arm to standard small arms is often incredibly small, almost to the point of meaninglessness.  Including something then setting it's appearance rate at 5% or less averaged over every formation in game does not really add much and can have some odd effects, particularly if you are dealing with weapons that draw on different ammo stocks.  If one squad in your company randomly ends up with a French LMG then runs out of ammo in the first battle of a series without resupply, you will be deeply annoyed.

The exception is Beretta MPs, as the Germans took over the factory in Northern Italy late in the war and began to produce Beretta MPs to supplant MP40 production as those production lines themselves were turning to MP44 production.  And of course these could use German 9mm supplies without modification. Consequently a number of divisions in Italy, being closest to to this production center, did receive significant numbers. You will see this reflected to some degree in Rome to Victory.  715. Infanterie Division was in Italy until March 1945, so I would guess was one of the divisions to benefit from this "official production beutewaffen" and then take that to the East Front for the last few months of war. Note that 15. PGD was also in  Italy until summer of 1944, but it's holding of Beretta MPs may have come from disarming Italian divisions in '43 rather than from northern Italian Beretta production.

Where "beutewaffen" are more significant is actually heavy weapons like mortars, field guns and light flak rather than small arms. Even Ost battalions were equipped mostly with German production small arms, but some did have large numbers of Russian heavy weapons. might be equipped entirely with German weapons.

*note that English MPs are almost certainly Stens, not Thompsons, especially considering the significant numbers sent to resistance groups.  Thompson would probably be listed as an "American" MP, although I'm not off the top of my head remembering a "beutewaffen" listing I have seen for that.

Edited by akd
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7 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

Sure thing but note that not all of them list small arms, possibly due to the amount of buerocratic work involved:

https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/index.php?thread/14672-zustandsberichte-gepanzerter-verbände-1943-1945-teil-ii/

https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/index.php?thread/17343-zustandsberichte-ungepanzerte-verbände-1943-1945/

Also they are in German, obviously.

If you are interested in any particular unit, I have the kriegsgliederung for most German divisions for January - March 1945 (or at least for one or two months in that timespan) except Infanterie / Volksgrenadier divisions in the range 1.-99.  These usually have Deutsche Waffen and Beutewaffen listings on the backside.  This provides a much more consistent overview than the somewhat random snap shots in the Forum-der-Wehrmacht material. Having reviewed all these, in my opinion the importance of beutewaffen for small arms in German divisions is often overstated.  Setting every German infantry battalion to, e.g., a 25% chance of Russian or Italian MPs would be deeply misleading.

I will note these were a driving factor in having the option for lower equipment quality give late war panzergrenadiers 1x LMG instead of 2x. That is certainly something that could be characterized as typical rather than exceptional.

Edited by akd
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17 hours ago, akd said:

  Setting every German infantry battalion to, e.g., a 25% chance of Russian or Italian MPs would be deeply misleading.

True, but that is not what I am suggesting.

Picture this: Let's say I am a scenario maker and want to make what I would consider a fairly standard and realistic scenario for the exploitation phase of Operation Bagration in Red Thunder: A Soviet forward detachment runs into a German Sperrverband that was hastily cobbled together from Sicherungs troops, Ordnungspolizei etc. Maybe with a Marder in support. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just buy a Grenadier or straggler company and set the equipment to "Poor", replacing the MG34s with captured DPs or MG26(t), as well as the MP40 with PPsh41s or MP28s?

Or in Final Blitzkrieg: You want to have a Volksgrenadier unit that has no received enough StGs to equip their Sturmzüge, so you set them to "poor" and now they are equipped with a mix of G43s and Beretta MPs. Berettas, btw, were not only captured, but actually produced by the Germans starting in 1944, and in larger numbers than MP40s. That would be the 38/42 model though, not the one ingame in Italy.

Same in Normandy: If I remember correctly in the tutorial mission of that game you fight a bunch of Osttruppen, who for some reason often come with MP44s. Would be cool if they instead used captured Russian gear, as was apparently often the case.

Standard troops or Panzergrenadiers would of course not be affected.

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8 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

True, but that is not what I am suggesting.

Picture this: Let's say I am a scenario maker and want to make what I would consider a fairly standard and realistic scenario for the exploitation phase of Operation Bagration in Red Thunder: A Soviet forward detachment runs into a German Sperrverband that was hastily cobbled together from Sicherungs troops, Ordnungspolizei etc. Maybe with a Marder in support. Wouldn't it be cool if you could just buy a Grenadier or straggler company and set the equipment to "Poor", replacing the MG34s with captured DPs or MG26(t), as well as the MP40 with PPsh41s or MP28s?

Or in Final Blitzkrieg: You want to have a Volksgrenadier unit that has no received enough StGs to equip their Sturmzüge, so you set them to "poor" and now they are equipped with a mix of G43s and Beretta MPs. Berettas, btw, were not only captured, but actually produced by the Germans starting in 1944, and in larger numbers than MP40s. That would be the 38/42 model though, not the one ingame in Italy.

Same in Normandy: If I remember correctly in the tutorial mission of that game you fight a bunch of Osttruppen, who for some reason often come with MP44s. Would be cool if they instead used captured Russian gear, as was apparently often the case.

Standard troops or Panzergrenadiers would of course not be affected.

I recognize fully that in reality you could encounter huge diversity with individual units, but the TO&E system in CM is not setup to capture the exceptional, but the typical.  Sometimes exceptions can be carved for very particular units, but generally this is avoided as "soldiers" are often reused across multiple formations, and this includes their chances of particular small arms.  That means that even the "poor" setting needs to reflect what was typical across many formations, not what might be seen in a handful of units (of course more accommodations for the exceptional will be found with armor, since even in small numbers these could have more significant effects on individual organizations). 

Just poking through my files, here is an excellent example of how it would be nearly impossible to code a "generic" system to capture the individual diversity of particular units.

131_ID_Jan101945_Kriegsgliederung_back.jpg.716358ff6b284575e2f719f1795eb133.jpg

Backside of Kriegsgliederung for 131. Inf. Div. on Jan. 10, 1945.  This sort of diversity is nearly impossible to capture in the game system (and even includes something I have not seen elsewhere: DP-27s converted to use German ammunition).

I will point out that the TO&E system already accommodates much of your CMFB Volksgrenadier example.  Set one of these to "poor" in CMFB and you will in fact get a unit that has few Sturmgewehr, substituting these with MP40s, Kar98Ks and G43s. Set the same to "excellent" before purchase and you will get a formation with close to its full paper (KStN) establishment of Sturmgewehr.  That reflects what was typical across many formations.  If it were typical for formations that did not receive Sturmgewehr to equipped with mostly with G43s and Italian SMGs, then we could accommodate this, but that was not the case.  There were indeed some divisions that received large numbers of G43s instead of StG44s, and some divisions that had more Italian SMGs than MP40s, but these were not typical.

1 hour ago, Frenchy56 said:

In fact, we already have a Sicherungs formation in CMRT.

Indeed, and a typical Sicherungs formation was equipped with German small arms, IIRC.  Ost battalions were definitely a special case and not well-accommodated in the TO&E currently.  I will revise my previous post to make my statement there less categorical.  They would really be better handled as separate formation rather than a "poorly"-equipped standard infantry battalion.  Their defining characteristic was not equipment, but personnel.

 The "Ost Battalion" in the CMBN tutorial falls victim to the general problem of the MP44 in CMBN: there is really no way to know how these were distributed to formations in Normandy because there was no official TO&E or reporting for them at the time.  I don't really like how it is handled currently, but haven't really figured out something better to propose.  That said, setting a formation to "poor" before purchase should lower the chance of seeing MP44s significantly, and this is probably simply an oversight at the time that particular scenario was constructed.

Edited by akd
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2 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

Really? Never noticed. What is the difference to Grenadiers right now? Do they use the older infantry organization?

They're basically lower quality, both in men and in weaponry. Squads have no organic LMG.

 

1 hour ago, akd said:

That said, setting a formation to "poor" before purchase should lower the chance of seeing MP44s significantly, and this is probably simply an oversight at the time that particular scenario was constructed.

Well, I tested that out and it doesn't seem to lower the chances of the STG, even the G43 appearing. It does affect HMG's (you can find only MG34's when set to poor, however LMG's are still most often MG42's).

Edited by Frenchy56
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1 hour ago, Frenchy56 said:

They're basically lower quality, both in men and in weaponry. Squads have no organic LMGWell, I tested that out and it doesn't seem to lower the chances of the STG, even the G43 appearing. It does affect HMG's (you can find only MG34's when set to poor, however LMG's are still most often MG42's).

This may be improved in next version.

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7 hours ago, akd said:

The "Ost Battalion" in the CMBN tutorial falls victim to the general problem of the MP44 in CMBN: there is really no way to know how these were distributed to formations in Normandy because there was no official TO&E or reporting for them at the time.  I don't really like how it is handled currently, but haven't really figured out something better to propose.  That said, setting a formation to "poor" before purchase should lower the chance of seeing MP44s significantly, and this is probably simply an oversight at the time that particular scenario was constructed.

I have the Sturmgewehr book by Dieter Handrich and if I remember correctly there was an "early" version of the Sturmzug that was supposed to be formed in divisions that tested the MKB42 or MP43. So I'd imagine that would apply to Normandy. That being said, the list of divisions in Normandy with MP44s was very short, probably fewer of those in use than Berettas in late war... the 2nd Panzer Division had a few, the 1st SS as well, but other very well equipped units like the Panzer Lehr Division didn't use them at all.

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According to Handrich the LSSAH Division still had 108 MP43/1 in early 1944. Granted, that was on the eastern front, so I guess it is possible that they turned all those in? 2nd SS Das Reich had 41 in the same time frame, and they were already in France. (Plus one Kampgruppe in the east that had a further 29).

Anyway, regarding use of the MP44 in Normandy: OrgAbt issued an order in March 1944, which said that the MP43 was NOT to replace the MP40, but instead be issued and used in bulk, in so called "MP-Gruppen". From the order (translated from German by me):

Quote

1) The MP34/40 will be replaced largely by the Beretta MP, the production of which has started and which will probably be available in large enough numbers starting in June. Until then the need of MPs at the front and for newly created units is to be satisfied by the use of G.41 and G.43 and the combing out of MP38/40 from supply troops and staffs.

2) Use of the MP.43 only in large-scale tests by Inf.Div. Issue of MP.43 ammunition is dictated by these considerations.

To me this means that those units who used the MP.43 in Normandy, rare as it may have been, likely formed MP-Gruppen to use them. Basically like a Volksgrenadier-Kompanie in FB, but more rare and probably only one in each Kompanie. These early MP-Gruppen were to be organised like this:

Groupleader (MP43)

Rifleman 1 (K98k + Riflegrenade equipment)

Rifleman 2 (Scoped rifle)

Riflemen 3 - 8 (MP43)

Note that this early version had no "heavy" group with two lmgs yet, as the Germans still hoped to also replace the lmg with the new weapon! This of course was idiotic and the Volksgrenadier units you get in FB are the more developed version of this concept.

This organization is dated to February 1944.

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23 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

According to Handrich the LSSAH Division still had 108 MP43/1 in early 1944. Granted, that was on the eastern front, so I guess it is possible that they turned all those in? 2nd SS Das Reich had 41 in the same time frame, and they were already in France. (Plus one Kampgruppe in the east that had a further 29). 

Das Reich has 29 "Masch. Karabiner 43/1" on their Feb. 1, 1944 return, but the following returns for March and April have no such listing.

23 hours ago, Ts4EVER said:

Anyway, regarding use of the MP44 in Normandy: OrgAbt issued an order in March 1944, which said that the MP43 was NOT to replace the MP40, but instead be issued and used in bulk, in so called "MP-Gruppen". From the order (translated from German by me):

To me this means that those units who used the MP.43 in Normandy, rare as it may have been, likely formed MP-Gruppen to use them. Basically like a Volksgrenadier-Kompanie in FB, but more rare and probably only one in each Kompanie. These early MP-Gruppen were to be organised like this:

Groupleader (MP43)

Rifleman 1 (K98k + Riflegrenade equipment)

Rifleman 2 (Scoped rifle)

Riflemen 3 - 8 (MP43)

Note that this early version had no "heavy" group with two lmgs yet, as the Germans still hoped to also replace the lmg with the new weapon! This of course was idiotic and the Volksgrenadier units you get in FB are the more developed version of this concept.

This organization is dated to February 1944.

Yes, I was aware of this order for a trial organization (but above offers some additional detail), but still have no evidence for which, if any, units used such an org in Normandy.  That said, you can "mine" something pretty close out of the September Panzer Brigade panzergrenadier battalion.  Doesn't have the rifles, but some headcount manipulation and specialist teams additions can get you even closer.

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