SgtMuhammed

I have seen them fire, but as has been stated, not nearly as much as the forward armament. The rear MG is an emergency weapon and most crews will want to face the big gun and the thick armor at any threat. The rear gun is just meant to give them time to do so.

Micheal, Just looked at your profile, my wife is from Olympia. Small world. Instead of resupply CMBB needs what you mentioned, fire discipline. I recently watched as one of my platoons fired a quarter of its ammo at one enemy squad. Generally the rates of fire are too high and the effect of casualties are too low. You will not see a 1 man squad running around in RL, nor does everyone take every target under fire at their maximum rate. Most fire is suppressive fire, which after the innitial rapid volley slows down dramatically. As a machine gunner we were trained to establish fire superiority during the initial contact and then to just fire enough to keep their attention once the enemy had been suppressed. It was the manuever force that was expected to close and destroy the enemy not the fire support. As a team and later squad leader, I often became kind of a walking ammo supply as I was often too busy actually leading the squad to fire very much. What I didn't use went to my guys as soon as we had a chance to reorganize. We didn't expect resupply in the middle of a fight and used what we had accordingly. On the flip side of firing, the effects of fire are flawed. Troops will not break and run at the first sign of hostile fire but you don't have to kill an entire squad to stop it either. One or two casualties will usually stop a squad in its tracks as men are detailed to evacuate them. To properly model this I would suggest rating squads by effectivness. Casualties would cause a hit to this rating with a randomness factor built in. This would allow for things like walking wounded or the ability to quickly get the casualty to a position of relative safety. Squads could be seen as getting lucky and having casualties that they can take care of quickly, or can do nothing about, or having to focus their efforts to try to save a squadmate in a particularly bad situation. Another effect of this would be that between battles "destroyed" squads could return, sometimes even at full strenght, as men come back from the aid station or from evac detail. All this could be modified by a variety of factors, enemy presence, proximity to HQ units, etc. Just a though to make infantry a little more like the real thing.

Any chance of you guys releasing the "special" stuff in a big patch for us old timers?

Especially as it has a tendency to jam quite frequently when used that way. The ammo loads in CMBB represent all the ammo stored in the tank. If BFC really wanted to be accurate they would force the tank to fire at a drastically reduced rate after the first few rounds. This would simulate moving rounds around the tank after the ready rack is spent.

I remember some discussions when BB first came out about including things in the 1.01 patch because the disk was full. Trust me, you guys really don't have to worry about adding another disk even if it is 90 percent empty. Yes I know there must be priorities but I am quite sure nearly all of us would agree that if you need to use more than one disk then go for it.

Yes please, use all the CD's you want. If it comes down to a choice between leaving things out or adding another disk I will gladly pay for the disk.

The problem with the concept of tactical re-supply is that it makes people think that it is during tactical combat. Except for very rare instances it isn't. Supply units waited for lulls in the action to rush supplies forward. Sometimes they were caught in the front lines because of sudden flare ups but combat re-supply wasn't common practice for anyone. In defensive positions troops would often overstock on ammo but this would be lost if they move. Troops on the attack would have to hope that they could secure the area enough for supply to reach them. My point is that making an option of something that was only rarely ever done would lead to totally unrealistic use of that option. I can see every attacking formation being closely followed by supply convoys. The potential for abuse far outweighs the possible benefits.

Actually they both had about the same amount of planning. One because of Hitler's lack of real interest and one because of German overconfidence. Barbarossa was a more viable plan because it didn't involve transporting an army across an unruly body of water in the face of the world's best navy. Germany was a continental power. Hitler felt that if he were to knock the Soviet Union out of the war it would put him in such a powerful position that everyone else would have no choice but to seek terms. He wasn't the first to underestimate British tenacity, nor the last.

Just another refrain from the continental powers' plan to rid England of her "Continental Sword." The Germans tried that one in WWI and Napoleon before them. Funny how it never seems to work.

I just had a Russian medium bomber level about a block of houses. Of course the Stug he was aiming at then drove away.

Can someone post a link to that website? Sounds like an interesting book.

Wow! This really is the first "must have" mod I have found. Nice work.

One big thing to remember about Sealion was that the Germans were never really equiped to carry it out. They were relying on river barges to carry their troops and equipment and for airborne assaults to secure ports to bring heavy stuff (armor and such). Nothing they had encountered on the continent would have prepared the Wehrmacht for a massive amphibious assault. Imagine a fleet of slow moving barely sea worthy barges loaded with troops in the face of what would have been suicidal resistance by the Royal Navy and the RAF. What little would have reached shore would have been cut to pieces by a lot of really pissed off Brits. We now return you to the Mike and Mike show.

The accounts I read didn't describe the Allied AT shots probably because they didn't tend to pay attention to something that wasn't trying to kill them. The description was mainly about the 88 so I don't know if it applied in general. The curtain of dust was because of the German tendency to dig in the guns so that they were barely above the ground. The round ripping through the air at two or three feet would suck up dust behind it. Of course this means it probably only really applied when the Germans had time to dig in. Which probably also means it wont be in the game. Oh well, it would still be pretty neat to see. As long as you aren't on the recieving end that is.

Group orders would certainly make the player seem more like a commander rather than an uber-squad leader. I would love to be able to give my units orders to perform certain tasks and then just see how they perform. Along these lines I would like to see an option to reassign command in the event the commander is KO'ed. This could come with command penalties but is not outside the scope of the game. Given more than a minute or two someone nearly always takes command or is given it.

While playing a PBEM a while ago I was laughing when my opponents Henschel blasted a couple of his trucks. Unfortunatly I was still laughing when his buddy turned around and blasted my only platoon of T34s with one bomb, killing two and gun damaging the other. Sometimes your the windshield... Matt, do you owe me a turn?

I brought this up a time or two myself. Allied troops in NA reported that German AT rounds looked like flaming tennisballs trailing a curtain of dust. I wonder if that will be in CMAK.

Actually that front was opened when the war started, it just wasn't done very well.

One of the considerations for length of the scenario is ammo. Units tend to burn through their basic loads extremely quickly. It just isn't fun to have most of your force on low or worst during the last several turns. During individual battles this can be fixed with reinforcements but during the battles in an operation it can't. Another consideration, especially for operations, is the need to keep the scenario playable. Meaning that people will actually want to play it to the end. If an operation consists of 10 battles of 40 turns each this is a major time investment and one that many will refuse to make for a variety of reasons. I agree with you that the time limitations are unrealistic but so would be making every battle a race to make up for them. From personal experience I can remember taking up to an hour to take one small house while taking only three hours to defeat an entire armored battalion and move 20 klicks. There are usually no specific time conditions but there is always the need to move as rapidly as possible because of the need to keep the momentum. One way you can help is to review and playtest scenarios. Suggest longer turn lengths and help the designer try them out.

If you are in Ireland I would highly recomend Kilkenny. Sort of like Guiness's little brother.

I'm working on a couple now. Keep your shirt on tooz! Take a walk along the Great Wall or something.

18 January 1871, the last time the Germans won a war. Seriously, in my opinion it was 1942. Germany and the world still thought they could win, by the end of the year anyone willing to see could tell they could not.

Here's a big second on that. I am tired of having to edit each and every unit. Also how about a random experience tab so you could buy units with a variety of experience levels without having to edit each one? Make things easier for the scenario designers and we will give you some real eyepoppers to play with.

I might agree with you were it not for the fact that he started with just a regular line unit (namely 7th Company 124th Infantry (6th Wurttemberger) and believed in the power of decisive action from the very beginning. Rommel descovered quickly that people have a tendency to want to think about things. If you can get inside their decision cycle you can usually beat them.

When reading any historical sources one has to remember that all historians have their own view of what "really" happened. They will write to support those views. Most competent historians will not lie but will manipulate data by only using sources that support their view. The unfortunate truth is that what really happened about any event is almost impossible to know and you can find evidense for nearly any interpretation you want to put forth.