SgtMuhammed

Sounds pretty reasonable to me. Three imobilized tanks are a much reduced threat than three healthy ones. A couple more hits and the crews will probably bale out. You have to look at it from the perspective of the men on the ground. The tanks might not be burning but at least they aren't charging.

The ability to assign and lock an HQ is also high on my wishlist. Thow in an "assume command" order for HQs if you want to be able to use a different HQ in a pinch.

Yes the attacks with the greatest actual effects were against the supply organs of the Panzer formations but attacks on the combat formations had great effects as well. Panzers didn't hide in trees because they were afraid their supply trucks would get shot up. Regardless of the actual damage caused by air attack to AFVs the perception of the ability of aircraft to destroy vehicles severly effected their willingness and ability to operate. It isn't as though the German combat formations were saying, "hey guys, aircraft only actually kill about one in ten vehicles so just ignore them." Post battle analysis too often fails entirely to find the reality of what happend during the actual fighting.

There is no CMAK. BFC hired the Anderson Accounting firm and this is just a smoke screen while they prepare to run off to an island in the Pacific where they have used their vast CMBO/BB wealth to purchase the island and stock it with wine, cheese, and beautiful mute women with little memory and fewer morals. You'll see, just as it starts getting cold everything will just suddenly vanish.

There is no CMAK. BFC hired the Anderson Accounting firm and this is just a smoke screen while they prepare to run off to an island in the Pacific where they have used their vast CMBO/BB wealth to purchase the island and stock it with wine, cheese, and beautiful mute women with little memory and fewer morals. You'll see, just as it starts getting cold everything will just suddenly vanish.

But remember that the comparisons were a little harsh. It doesn't really matter if the target is destroyed by their aircraft or not but rather whether or not it accomplished its mission. Post Bulge analysis confirmed that arty didn't really destroy as many AFVs as thought but rather caused many to be abandoned with only minor damage. Regardless this is still a knocked out tank. It may not be destroyed but if it is in your hands rather than the enemy's it might as well be. Aircraft can reliably be credited with having a great impact on the tactical battlefield even if they didn't blow many enemy tanks into smoldering wreckage. Comparing actual kills to mission effectivness is often like comparing apples to oranges, the two don't always mesh.

I think the AI's seeming luck is kind of like breaking up with a girl. You remember the bad parts a lot longer than the good. If you really look I think you will see that it all balances out. I have had the computer KO my tanks from nearly 200 meters and I have also had my tank hunter squads throw and RPG from 50 meters while sprinting from building to building and still kill an enemy tank. Sometimes you are the windshield....

Ok, you got me. But we were discussing pilots rather than the weather.

If you want to get real technical the first Kamikaze was a Russian. On September 8, 1914 Captain Nesteroff scored the first air-to-air kill against an Austrian aircraft flown by one Baron Rosenthal. Nesteroff downed Rosenthal by crashing his plane into his enemy. Rosenthal became the first man to die in air-to-air combat and Nesteroff the second.

Strange indeed. Nothing like this has ever happened to me.

Not sure about the AI but I have noticed that BB troops seem much more willing to go through minefields than those in BO. Maybe it is just me but it seemed that the AI automatically rerouted units around known minefields in BO.

For the Axis my vote might actually have to go to the PzIII. It was the primary battle tank of the Wehrmacht for the first 3 years of the war, at a time when they were killing thousands of Soviet and British tanks in the east and in North Africa. Considering its length of service and its service during the "good times" it probably deserves consideration. Of course much the same could be said for the PzIV. After all it was the only tank to be produced during the entire war and fought everywhere.

Mines are definitely one area I hope gets attention in the next build. Hopefully they will quit being "units" and become features meaning you can paint them over an area rather than laying little squares. The more mine points you buy the higher the density of the minefield. When placing obsticals just remember than an obstical that is not overwatched is no obsitcal. I once laid a mine/wire obsitcal in front of one of my platoons and watched then shred an entire company. They can be effective but they are not impenaterable. They are best used to give you that extra few seconds that can spell all the difference in a battle. One quick note about infantry. One of the best ways to use them is to put them on the back side of a woodline. That way the enemy has to come to you and his support weapons have no LOS while yours probably will. Always remember to choose your own ground to defend it is one of your greatest advantages. [ August 25, 2003, 02:33 PM: Message edited by: sgtgoody (esq) ]

Well you know the Brits. They think just because the language is named after them that they can use it however they want. Bloody confusing at times.

Yes it is possible but the question is was it done enough to make it a realistic feature in the game. The answer in that case is no. Yes defensive units stockpiled extra ammo but this is already factored into the game which is why you lose your extra rounds when you move. Even with extra rounds there is still no imediate resupply. Soldiers didn't carry a ton of extra magazines so extra rounds came in bandoleers and boxes and had to be put into mags and clips. This takes time, several minutes depending on how much you are trying to load, and is made even more difficult by weather, light, enemy fire, etc. For tanks it is even worst. Tanks don't have big barn doors so you can shove a whole new rack of rounds into the turret and drive away. Rounds were loaded by hand one at a time through the loader's or commander's hatch. This takes a lot of time, especially since many of the rounds were stored in various parts of the tank. Fueling can also take a lot of time if you don't have a fuel bowser and are forced to use jerrycans and a funnel as was very likely at the front. Supply units made it a point to be long gone when the fighting started because they were usually the highest priority and least survivable units on the battlefield. The use of armored vehicles for supply wasn't to allow them to run along side tanks during the big push tossing them more rounds every time they fired. They were actually used more for their tracks than their armor. The tracks allowed them to go where the tanks could go. Since most countries couldn't really afford to crank out thousands of tracked supply vehicles but were already cranking out thousands of halftracks and other AFVs those are what they used.

I'll second that. Battles are fairly straight forward. Force A, Force B, some objectives, mix and play. Operations, on the other hand, require more of a story telling than just a single fight. What are the initial forces? Is this the main effort? Is there action anywhere else? And a ton of other questions that effect things like initial forces, reinforcements, no-man's land, map type, etc. It is possible but I believe it would be too much work to get a result that most people would complain about anyway (imagine the current gripes about the QB generator magnified by at least three). BFC probably would rather spend their time on the more important parts and let designers tell their stories through ops.

One big thing people have to consider is where all these scenarios come from. The majority of us are not professional and these represent a best guess or a hey neat kind of effort. Scenario length is usually one of the last things that gets looked at unless the designer is lucky enough to have some dedicated playtesters to advise him. That having been said, much of the problem with the time scale is the lack of prebattle knowledge. As it is actual game play might represent the final rush but because of the mechanics you still have to do your recon and your prep during the same timeframe. Unfortunatly until CM includes some sort of recon element it is up to the designers to supply enough information for the player to operate with. Questions such as likely routs of approach of the enemy or defended areas need to be identified. The majority of battles are not fought completely blind. Surprises do happen but commanders usually did know about where they could expect the enemy to be. We can only hope that future games will allow for the use of maps during the battle briefings. In many respects though the game itself is way to fast. I have often complained about the pioneers and their magic mine clearing but other things are entirely to fast. Building clearing is the biggest. It can take days to clear a single building and usually takes hours for anything bigger than a standard house. In the game it is possible to clear a multistory appartment building in a minute. This is just not possible in reality. Movement is also too fast. Yes there are times when you might actually walk non-stop for a couple hundred meters but what is more likely is that you will stop every now and then because you saw or heard something. Or you could stop because the LT is getting some new orders from the CO. Or a number of other reasons. Yes this is a great game but it is just a game. There are compromises that have to be made to insure that people actually want to play it.

Yes, the old hours of boredom followed by 15 minutes of terror doesn't exactly lend itself to a thrill a minute game. The funny thing is that if CM weren't already time compressed people would be bitching about how long it takes to complete even a simple battle.

Its on A7 between Hannover and Hamburg. Exit number 44.

Well just made the pilgrimage to Munster. Awesome museum (well worth the 5 hour drive (both ways)). Two notes: 1. When you look at the ST up close it looks rather crudely put together. Lots of barely finished surfaces and such. The Tiger and King Tiger look nice and the Panther is beautiful. The Jagdpanther with the 57mm penetration in the gun mantel is neat as well as are all the modern vehicles. 2. The giftshop sucks. Hardly any selection and the prices are outrageous. Couple of interesting notes from the Kursk display: 2SS Panzer Korps is listed as operating 11 T34s towards the end of the battle (sorry forget the exact date) and 503rd sPz is listed as having 45 Tigers on 1 July of which 40 were runners. On 13 July they had 35 with 9 runners and 26 in the shop. 10 are either destroyed or were lost when the report was printed. If you are in the area I really recomend stopping in to see the museum.

The big thing to remember about Infantry AT assets of all types is that they are very short ranged. While it is possible to get some spectacular results a battalion of Infantry armed with AT rockets isn't going to kill a battalion of tanks. The tanks may take losses but they have the mobility and armor to manuever away from the trap and then shell the area. For the Infantry this isn't an option. Because of their range, however, AT guns and other tanks can kill in great numbers regardless of how the enemy manuevers. If the enemy has to go somewhere he doesn't always have the option to call something else to take out any long range AT assets. Often the tanks have to do it themselves which usually means heavy casualties.

Got some British rations once with a much larger P38 than the US version. We called it the B17. Struck fear in many a tanker's eyes with those.

Yes it does. Only the best marksmen recieved the Sharps when it came out so they became known as Sharpshooters.

I think for the Allies you would have to go with the Sherman. There were just so many more of them than anything else. In the West at least.

Even with EFOW you can still sometimes get kill tallies. Especially for obvious kills against armor and such. It usually has to be pretty clear cut though, only weapon hitting and you actually know it is dead, stuff like that. Infantry almost never get kill credit till after the game.