SgtMuhammed

One refinement I would like to see, rather than medics on the battlefield, is the incorporation of "stretcher bearers" into the casualty figures. By this I mean the soldiers that are detailed to take care of the wounded. While this wouldn't have much effect in a single battle it could have a great effect during an operation. In between battles units could get those men back even in the squad is shown as "destroyed." This would be a more realistic reflection of battlefield casualties as squads weren't usually wiped out to a man but rather lost combat effectivness as casualties began to mount but recovered fairly quickly once the firing had stopped.

What most pictures of combat vehicles towing field pieces don't show is the one in the group pulling the ammo caisson. Ammo could also be carried in crates strapped to the tank or to the gun itself. It wouldn't be a lot, especially for the larger guns, but it would be something to get by on for a little while.

The U.S. stuck with the 75 Shermans so they could make a ton of them. Some efforts were made to upgun them but there was a general unwillingness to disrupt the production lines. American tankers were expected to use the Sherman's speed and good tactics to get into favorable firing positions if confronted by enemy heavies. It is also true that they weren't considered primarily anti tank weapons until later in the war. By then the TDs were getting the good guns and switching would have slowed production of both so they kept pumping out what they had. About the gun stabilization systems, most tankers found them unreliable and complicated so they just turned them off and fired from the halt. At least that is what most of my sources say.

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Good 1:50,000 scale would be nice. I have checked the CMH campaign series. They have good large scale maps but nothing you can build a scenario around. I will check NG though, hadn't thought of that. Thanks

Field repairs can be as simple as plugging back in a loose wire to having to put the entire track back on the vehicle. If you are extremely lucky and recieve a "Gun hit" that knocks the firing wires loose or splashes something on the sights then it might be possible to repair it. Without the sights though, there really is no way to accuratly aim the gun other than to look down the barrel. There are no open sights. The commander can guestimate by looking outside the tank but he will take many hits before he manages to zero in unless he is just really lucky. As for throwing track, unless you are lucky enough to be able to walk it back on just by turning the vehicle getting it back in place can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. I have put track back on an M113 with a few hits from a sledge in 15 to 20 minutes. I have also had to completely remove the track from the vehicle, tow it and the vehicle to a good piece of ground and then put it back on, a process that takes at minimum an hour or two. All this was done with the relativly light track of the M113. For an M60 or M1 the track is so heavy that the crew cannot lift more than a couple shoes and often require another vehicle to pull it around for them. The fastest I have seen a crew break track and then put it back on is a little over an hour. Of course all of this is without the fun of enemy fire. AFVs are bullet magnets and disabled ones doubly so. They are also made from very heavy components that don't like to come apart easily. This tends to make repairs on the battlefield so rare that modeling them in the CM environment would be very ahistorical. One thing I will say though is that I have never had a vehicle return during an operation. While repairing vehicles under fire may not be possible, repairing them between battles was often done as vehicles tended to go down for less than catastrophic damage. I know the manual states that it is possible for vehicles to return if their crews survive but I have yet to see it happen.

For those of you who can't wait. Title: A Taste Type: Axis attack (semi historical) Date: January 1942 Location: Robaa Valley, Tunisia. Length: 40+ turns Size: Large Recomended Play: 2 player or Germans vs AI Based on the battle where the British captured their first Tiger. Elements of the "Buff Howards," the 72nd Anti-tank Regiment, and 4th Troop, A Squadron, 48th Royal Tank Regiment face a combined arms KG including elements of 2nd Kompanie 501st schwere Panzerabteilung. Other than the fact that there is no sand and the "Brits" all curse in Russian, this is about as close as I could make it. [ June 12, 2003, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: sgtgoody (esq) ]

Anyone got a source of these yet. I have found a couple but they are not very detailed. Looks like I'll have to rely on photos.

Nice post Jason. The scenario ideas are bursting forth.

The problem with using roadblocks (even thought that is what I use) is that they can't be breached. Tank ditches can be by digging in the sides. You can simulate the look by putting trenches in front of road blocks but again you can't breach them. This is also a big problem with creating them with terrain editing. Another is that it pins the defender to specific ground since you can't move them during setup. A normal tank ditch has the ditch in front of a berm (the berm is on the defender's side) so they are quite easy to spot but tank ditches are turning obsticals. You put them where you don't want the enemy to go so that he will go where you want him to, preferably into your minefields and fields of fire. To me, of all the things in the CM series that I would love to see given a lot of attention it is the entire range of engineering tasks and objects. My short list is: Minefields as paintable areas rather than little squares. Various AT obsticals. Breachable wire. Engineer laid mines. Just for starters at least.

Send it my way. It may take a bit but I'll get too it as soon as I can.

Just a quick thanks Keith. Got my first review today, woohoo!

I really haven't found a connection between the types. Take Patton, he had some classic AR traits, clean freak, dress codes, but he was one of the most creative commanders the U.S. produced. If there has been one lesson of military history it is that you can almost never tell the lions from the lambs until they are put under fire. A garrison stud often turns out to be a battlefield dud while that private who was nothing but trouble in the barracks becomes another Audey Murphy when the bullets start flying. Another thing to consider is that the AR commander will often tend to have everything in order and so is more difficult to surprise. A more opportunistic commander often tends to get men out of position to exploit one opportunity only to find his men in trouble when something unexpected comes up. [ June 10, 2003, 06:36 AM: Message edited by: sgtgoody (esq) ]

So how does one become a scenario designer for the disk? I would guess that BFC already has a pool of you guys because someone has to get the early releases so they can start designing. How do you become part of that pool?

Give it a couple of days.

Just posted a new operation to the Scenario Depot. It is a fictional operation in Stalingrad. What if the Sturmtiger and Brummbar had been developed before the fighting?

Pong Told you I've got an old system.

Basically, unless the code somehow self destructs, CMBB is done. Martin, Shouldn't you be coding something desertish right now instead of fooling around in the forum? Chop chop man, I want my AK.

Your underestimating them again. They would only use one round and trust the flying pieces of the destroyed tank to take out the others.

One thing the remember about "Infantry Attacks" is that Rommel wrote it as kind of a book length resume. Still I found it a pretty good read but it did tend to bog at times, especially, as you said, at the end.

I encountered the last one before. German defender vs Russian attack in heavy snow. The game finished with no contact and the final map revealed that the AI had spent the entire time trying to mass his forces at one point. They were all in one clump of trees or on their way there and were exhausted.

The latest figure I heard was from the Korean War. The ratio was 70,000 to 1. Mike, I'll be a civilian this time. Spent two tours at Lewis already. Yes it is very beautiful, it's even better when you don't have to sleep in the rain for weeks at a time. [ June 05, 2003, 05:03 PM: Message edited by: sgtgoody (esq) ]

I haven't tried to see if a battalion of PzIs can annoy an IS2 to death...yet.

What the...?

Yes I will probably be back there in 6 months to a year. Like they say, the best simulations are done at 1 to 1 scale.