Sgt Joch

well... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Nusra_Front https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Front_(Syria) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_Conquest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajnad_al-Sham_Islamic_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabhat_Ansar_al-Din https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansar_al-Sharia_(Syria) notice a trend? btw... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliban while the Taliban were fighting the Soviets, they were "freedom fighters", now they are "terrorists", while the same groups fighting in Syria are "moderate rebels". What happens after they take Damascus, impose Sharia law, massacre Alawites, let Al-Qaeda set up bases in Syria, etc.? Assad is not a long term solution, but refusing to look at reality and hoping for the best is not a plan. The only way Washington gets the "moderate" government it is praying for is if they send in U.S./NATO combat troops to impose one.

ok, but one last point to make things even more complicated, I presume everyone knows that the Turkish Air Force (a NATO ally) is spending most of its time bombing the Kurds and not ISIL. Funny how that gets so little play in the west: http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-launches-overnight-air-raids-against-pkk-army-003648366.html http://news.yahoo.com/turkey-warns-us-russia-over-support-syrian-kurds-102133071.html

85%? are you going by the colors on that nice map? The situation on the ground is a lot more complicated and confused: 1) The FSA is a loose collection of groups, most of which are Sunni fighters who want to establish an islamic state/republic. 2) Next to those, you also have allied islamic groups, most of which are also Sunni and also want to establish an islamic state/republic; 3) Then you have ISIL where, you guessed it, most are Sunni and also want to establish an Islamic state/republic. It's all very nice to say "we back the FSA because they are freedom fighters", but at the end of the day there is not that much of a difference between the ultimate goal of all the groups. the West condemns Russia for not attacking ISIL, but the West has not laid out any plan other than repeating the mantra "Assad must go." If the ultimate aim is to turn Syria into an islamic state/republic or another failed state like Libya, how will that be an improvement? and what happens to the 2,000,000 Alawites who back Assad and who most "freedom fighters" consider to be at best, Shiites, at worst "godless heretics"? death or exile? before turning this into yet another exercise of arguing who is right and who is wrong, all parties need to come up with an actual workable plan, hopefully better than Libya this time.

another point to bear in mind is the fact that even though this limit has been in all CMx2 games for 2-3 years now, no one ever noticed, so obviously it has had no impact on gameplay.

nice find there JasonC.

Curious that your avatar has a doodyhead.

and I will try not to post off the cuff response. A bad habit of mine.

Actually Steve, I was responding to IanL. Arguments about who is right and who is wrong, who is telling the truth and who is lying were interesting the first few times, but at this point have become mind numbingly repetitive. This dirty little undeclared war will keep going until it has run its course and I personally have zero interest in discussing it here. But its your forum and you can set whatever rules you please.

I have to agree with Vladimir Tarasov on this one. I mean honestly why does every thread in this forum have to turn political?

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so you are saying that Citino's German campaigns of 42 or Stahel's Kiev 1941 discuss Soviet manpower shortage in 1945? I think you are the one taking this too personally. My basic premise stands, the Soviets did not have a manpower shortage in 1945. They had an infantry shortage caused by their manpower allocation system and secondarily also by how they handled their replacement system. I am usually loathe to quote wiki, but: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Army#The_Second_World_War_.28.22The_Great_Patriotic_War.22.29 btw, Bellamy's "Absolute War" on p.8 quotes the exact same figures. again, no raw manpower shortage there. Now if you have any pertinent point to make on that topic, please share it.

personal issue? I don't even know who you are. I was just pointing out that the statement that the Soviets were facing a manpower shortage in 1945 is incorrect. Eastern Front literature has gone through several phases. For a long time after 1945, it was warped by lack of access to Soviet archives. It is only since the end of the Cold war that we can get an objective view on what really happened. However, you still have a lot of myths circulating about the Eastern Front, i.e., the Germans could have won if they had attacked in May, could have won if they had gone directly for Moscow, etc., many of which have been discussed extensively here over the past 13 years and debunked.

There was a famine in Ukraine in the early 30s, yes, but it does not seem to have had any appreciable impact on Red Army manpower in WW2. I rechecked my sources. The USSR had a baby boom during the mid 1920s after the end of the civil war, and there were an estimated 3.25 million males turning 17 each year during WW2, meaning up to 3 million could be inducted. Out of that 3 million, 1 million were in areas occupied by the Germans reducing the number in 1942-43 to 2 million per year. Based on Soviet records, 90% of all males turning 17 in 1943 and 1944 were inducted and the Army took in over 2 million new recruits in 1943 and 3 million combined in 1944-45. These 5,000,000 new recruits were more than sufficient to replace all casualties.

written in 1965 well before the Soviet archives were accessible, based mostly on the early postwar German sources which are now very outdated. A good book if you know nothing about Barbarossa, but useless if you want an objective view. Anything written before 1990, except maybe Erickson's "Road to Stalingrad/Road to Berlin" is a dubious source to find out what really happened. Ryan's, "the last battle", written in 1966 has the same problem. I would recommend books written by Glantz for good operational material, including his book on Kursk and his superb Stalingrad trilogy which recently came out and which I am still plowing through.

and what accounts would that be? the info I posted on the Soviet Army is from Dunn's "Hitler's Nemesis: The Red Army 1930-45". An excellent book for anyone who is really interested on how the WW2 Soviet Army actually worked. http://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-Nemesis-1930-45-Stackpole-Military/dp/0811735435

The Soviets were not facing a manpower shortage in 45. They were facing an infantry shortage, but that was due to allocation of resources. In 43-44-45, 2-2.5 million boys were turning 18 each year (baby boom in the mid 20s), more than enough to replace all casualties. However, towards the end of the war, the Soviets started allocating more and more men into armor, artillery and specialist units like engineers and reducing the size of the infantry. By early 45, they had even begun demobilising engineer units to start working on postwar reconstruction. By the time they get to Berlin, you see Russian infantry divisions with as little as 3-4,000 men, but backed up by large amounts of armor and artillery units. The Germans did have a severe manpower shortage. By 40-41, something like 80-85% of men in their twenties were already serving in the Wehrmacht and only around 600-700,000 boys were turning 18 each year (baby bust in the mid 20s), not enough to replace casualties. That is why you see them progressively drafting younger teens and older men.

BarbaricCo, welcome to the forum and an excellent first post, I might add.

its in the manual. Leadership bonuses help "direct fire to be more effective". I have never tested it myself.

While I would agree that in real life, the difference between a sniper and and average rifleman would probably not be that high, we have to remember that CM is trying to simulate combat conditions. Normally a sniper/marksman has the time to more accurately line up his shot while the average rifleman will usually only have quick opportunity shots. These are all elements which are factored in

Great work Migo. it does suggest areas to be looked into: - The accuracy of the PPS-43 over 100 meters seems to be a bit high, it should probably be closer to the MP40. Did you also test the PPSH-41? - The accuracy of the K98 and Moisan seems a bit low, especially in the 150-250 meter range. They should be more accurate than a LMG in that range. LMGs/MMGs/HMGs were substantially reworked after CMBN came out to increase ROF/accuracy at short range, so I doubt those numbers will change much. We should use them as a base line for the other weapons. Did you check on the leader rating? a +1, +2 leader will provide a small accuracy bonus. That could have an impact. a "Marksman" designation also provides an accuracy bonus. Snipers seem to be performing well.

yes, it is not a perfect solution, but prevents what we saw in the past, namely the TacAI using SMGs in indirect fire at 300+ meters to hose down enemy pixeltruppens. Hopefully we can eventually find a more elegant solution. Based on the SMG II thread, we have been discussing internally what to do about SMGs. Note this is a debate which has been going on since CMBO.

One interesting point is the fact that much of WW2 doctrine was developped in WW1 and was often developped in reaction to enemy doctrine. For example, mid WW1, the Germans developped the concept of the "elastic defence", which remained their basic doctrine until 1945. In a nutshell, it was composed of 3 basic elements: 1. the forward line was very lightly manned to reduce casualties from the prep barrage. Its main role was to warn when the main assault was coming and to slow it down; 2. The Main Line of Resistance ("MLR") was placed farther back, usually on a reverse slope so it could not be fired on directly by enemy guns; and 3. a reserve force would be positioned farther back, ready to reinforce the MLR or counterattack if the enemy force broke through. At first, it worked very well, CW assault troops once they broke through the MLR would often advance outside of friendly artillery range, become disorganised and were often pushed back by the German counterattack, often wiping out all the original gains. In reaction, the British developped the concept of "Bite and Hold". The idea was that by consolidating early within range of friendly artillery, CW troops would have an organised defence AND artillery support once the German counterattacked. Fast forward 20+ years, in the western desert in 1941 and 42, British Armour was operating independently, trying to out-german the Germans, usually with disastrous results. Once Monty took over, the first thing he did was to bring back the concept of "Bite and Hold", bringing the armour under tight control and using it just as infantry support. It worked very well at El Alamein, in a series of limited "Bite and Hold" operations over several days, the British dismantled the German defensive position piece by piece and forced to Rommel to use up his reserves until he was forced to retreat. The Normandy campaign followed the same pattern. We have to remember that the German defensive position in the British sector was very good. Most of the terrain was wide open and dominated by high ground, so CW tanks could be fired on from far away. The Germans had also massed most of their armour and several SS Panzer divisions in that sector. Yet, in a series of "Bite and Hold" operations, some succesful ("Totalize"), some less so ("Goodwood"), CW troops again dismantled the German defensive position and wrote down German armour to the point where they could no longer prevent the breakout. "Bite and Hold", not flashy like Blitzkrieg, but it works.

I am sure Jason will be along, but the CW attack doctrine in 1944 (actually going back to 1918) was "Bite and Hold". First, they would set limited objectives that they could hold against a German counter-attack. A typical attack would be as follows: 1. prep barrage against known enemy positions. They might also progressively "lift" or move the barrage forward so troops could walk onto enemy positions before the defenders could react; 2. infantry would move forward supported by tanks to deal with enemy positions along the way. In normandy, tanks used, at least in the Canadian Army, would be regular 75mm Shermans; 3. Once the objective was captured, 1) troops would dig in, 2) FOs would be brought up and would pre-register artillery against expected counter-attack routes; 3) AT guns and 76 mm Fireflys would be bought up and placed so they could attack any counter-attacking enemy AFVs on the flanks; 4. Once the German counter-attack developped (almost a given), artillery would strip out the infantry, AT assets would deal with the AFVs and infantry would deal with what is left. Once 3 was properly setup, it was almost impossible for the German counter-attack to succeed.

I am usually reluctant to get involved in these topics, but here goes... Focusing on the "legality" of a referendum is missing the point. I doubt you will find many Constitutions that allow a region to secede following a referendum. Even the Quebec referendum(s), which everyone likes to cite as an example, were not "legal". The Canadian Constitution has no provision allowing a Province to secede based on a referendum. The referendums were organised by the Quebec provincial government when the separatist Parti Québécois was in power and it was never clear if the Federal Governement would respect the results if the independence side had won. A referendum is a political tool. For example, if 75% had voted for Quebec independence, it would have been politically impossible for the Federal Governement to ignore the result, no matter what the Constitution said. You can only deny the political aspirations of a nation for so long, if they cannot express it democratically through the ballot box, they will turn to civil disobedience, civil unrest or even civil war which is no one's long term interest.

very useful. thanks Jason.