Sgt Joch

I always presumed the wooden bunkers represent proper dug-in field fortifications (the representation being only for FOW purposes). As such, it could be a bit tougher to knock out than it looks.

The 716th was a "static" infantry division guarding the US sector. It had no inherent transport capability, hence the static designation. It was supposedly composed on 2nd rate troops. The 352nd was a regular infantry division which was deployed in Normandy sometime before D-Day, although it was missed by Allied intelligence. Both were short of equipment which was one of reasons why the Flak regiment I mentioned above had been added to the 352nd to add AA/AT capability.

apparently the 352nd had an attached Flak regiment with 60x20mm guns and 48x88mm guns. see here (reference is at middle of page 100): http://books.google.ca/books?id=RDYiS6TzZMQC&pg=PA73&lpg=PA73&dq=balkoski+beyond+bridgehead&source=bl&ots=AnSuwSFSzZ&sig=qMmXiJV1-w-ECYIewMX_RCXRIxQ&hl=en&ei=0-LnTeC3BePj0QGU0rz8Cg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false I presume its the same unit.

Inside joke. I'm on the other side of the PBEM where he is trying to cross the ford. All my men are wondering why he is sending up smoke signals.

Try Alt+k Remember, artillery does'nt care about smoke.

Paul Wiedorfer, who won the Medal of Honor during the Battle of Bulge, died a few days ago. From his MOH citation: Here you have one man charging over an open field at two MG nests and taking both out singlehanded. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_J._Wiedorfer Admittedly an extreme example, but it does show that you can't just assume that HMGs are Uber-weapons. RIP sarge.

I was only stating what Steve had said before. Do not start dragging me into your silly complaint thread unless you want me to go through everyone of your posts and point out every error you ever made. It's a game, you like it play it, you don't like it, play something else, or better yet go out and get some fresh air for a change.

Got mine today in the mail, no additional customs, perfect condition Slipped in just before the postal strike.

Once inside a building, weird spotting issues happen which I presume are due to the abstract modeling of walls and rooms. If you run quickly onto a floor which seems to be unoccupied, you may find bad guys popping up all over the place after a few seconds putting your guys in a bad spot. Using Hunt, my guys seem to spot the baddies more quickly and be in a better position to handle them. YMMV

I should have been more specific, I meant once inside the building to clear the other floors. That is the one area where Hunt seems to work better than Quick. To go in to the building in the first place, yes, I like to go in with a QUICK move

I never use "hunt" anymore for infantry except for very specific tasks like clearing buildings. "Hunt" just seems to get my men killed, because it gives enemy infantry more time to spot them and shoot them. Instead, I keep 2/3 to 3/4 of my men on overwatch keeping an eye out and the rest, I always move on "Quick", always from cover to cover, the aim always being to move to a good observation/firing position. They get to the new OP faster and then have a longer time to spot whatever maybe around.

yes, of course.

URC, you have some major behavior issues, just because you are unable to understand how CMx1 area fire works is not my problem. You are of course entitled to believe whatever you wish.

that is different, you are talking about direct fire. In CMx1, the terrain works more as in a traditional hex based wargame. If you are in a "woods" tile, everyone gets the spotting/defence benefit no matter wher the fire is coming from. If there is a wall between you and the incoming fire, you get an additional benefit for that. If the fire is coming from two separate directions, the attacker gets a bonus to simulate enfilade fire. If you are directly targeting a spotted unit, the fire is more effective than area fire on a particular hex. remember that in CMx1, the game only sees your squad as occupying a single point on the map. Once all these and other factors are taken into account, the game calculates a result: suppression/casualties. In CMx2, because of the 1:1 representation, the effects of direct fire is more directly simulated, although there is still some abstarction. If your squad is behind a wall, the wall protects you from the bullets which will impact the wall. If one of your squad member pops up to look over the wall, he could get hit. If an enemy squad comes up from behind, the wall offers no benefit. The overall effects are more or less the same, it is just more directly simulated in CMx2. The effect of 1:1 simualtion is much more in movement and the interaction of infantry with terrain.

UDC, I presume the ones who designed and programmed the game have a pretty good idea how the bloody thing works. What you see in CMx1 is just the graphical representation, area fire is spread over the 20x20m CMx1 AP and the combat effects calculated on that basis, even though your little red line is pointing to a particular spot of the AP.

to add to what C3K wrote, there are, AFAIR, 5 elevation levels in CMx2 to determine LOS, they are, if I recall correctly: lying down, kneeling, standing up, commander of an AFV, on top of a building. Therefore, if you have a squad lying prone and a squad kneeling in the same AP, the ones kneeling could have LOS because of the higher elevation while the ones who are lying prone do not. By comparison, CMx1 has just 1 elevation level, but the game uses various tricks to make it seem as though there are many. After you have played CMx2 for a while and you fire up CMx1, these visual tricks are pretty obvious.

On this point, I just want to mention that it worked the same in CMx1. Area fire was always targeted to the center of the 20x20m action spot. Its the graphical representation that made it looked as though you were targeting a precise point.

I guess we did take this one way off topic, but it would not be the first time. Just so people don't get the wrong idea, I have nothing against the Russian people who sacrificed more than than another Allied nation in WW2. If it was not for their determination, we would never have won WW2. It is the Communist Regime as imposed by Stalin I have no respect for, although I hate the Nazi regime even more. It is one of the irony of history that to defeat the worst tyrant of the 20th century, we had to ally ourselves with the 2nd worst tyrant of the 20th century.:confused:

LemoN, you are the one who brought up Enemy at the Gates. Barrier troops did exist and they were used to prevent retreats. Glantz discusses them in his first volume of his Stalingrad trilogy as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops

Gunnergoz, I believe what Steiner 14 is referring to is the fact that many Ukrainian partisan groups, after they had booted out the Germans launched a Guerilla war against the Soviets to try to get independence/autonomy. The Red Army took until 1950 to quell all the revolts. Stalin was able to unite everyone in 1941 because he promised reforms after the war would be won. Many people hoped things would be different after the war. When the Red Army liberated Ukraine, first thing they did was to disarm the Partisan groups and shoot or emprison their leaders. Some took that as a sign that reforms were not forthcoming....

The one by Montefiore, the court of the Red Tsar? excellent book, I read it a few years ago, it goes a lot to explaining Stalin's actions and the brutality of the Great purges Another good book is "Stalin" by Robert Service. He had access to the secret communist party archives and came up with lots of interesting info. I read his book on "Lenin" a few months back. When you read the real story of Communist Party rule in Russia in 1917-53, you realize that in many ways they were worse than the Nazis.

Nope, taken straight from the history books. Trotsky started it in the civil war to prevent retreats. In WW2, the NKVD patrolled all the rear areas to make sure no one retreated or deserted. Anyone who was found without valid written authorization could and often was summarily shot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrier_troops I can recommend you some basic history books on the Eastern Front if you wish.

Gunnergoz, I may have to clarify my comments. When I referred to "Stalinist propaganda", I meant the history of the Soviet Union in ww2 which until 1991, was based almost exclusively on Soviet sources which had been heavily censored by Stalin and subsequent communist administrations. It is only with the fall of the USSR, that Soviet archives have been opened up and western historians, like Glantz, have been able to get a clearer picture. However, the traditional view of the Great Patrotic War still influences the viewpoint of many western histories. Regarding motivation, you have to make a distinction between individual and "Unit" motivation within the meaning of CMBN. If I can make a parallel with CMSF, all the authors agree that individual arab soldiers are generally brave, you had many stories in 67, 73, 82 and 91 of Arab units fighting to the last man, even against impossible odds. At the same time, you had even more stories of entire units, even divisions collapsing without a fight. If you have units which are poorly led, where "motivation" is imposed by outside coercion and where the soldiers don't necessarily agree with the Regime, you get poorly motivated units which are fragile in a game sense, even though the soldiers in them may be individually brave.