Apocal
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Posts posted by Apocal
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1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:
Fair comment, the Stirling connection was probably over-egging the cake, but I still think both subjects are relevant to the wider topic here and thus worthy of discussion.
In context of the thread, light motorized transport is a case of one eyed men being preferred to those who are cometely blind. The "better than nothing, but still worse than everything else" option in a serious brawl. Outside of serious brawling, go nuts, doesn't matter, except when/if you start finding mines the hard way.
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On 8/12/2017 at 2:11 PM, MikeyD said:
I recall while playing CM:Afghanistan with its stunted late war infantry squads I joked that the purpose of Russian infantry in the game was mostly to move forward over the charred corpses of their enemies after the tanks got done with them.
On 8/13/2017 at 0:24 AM, Sgt.Squarehead said:No joke, that was pretty much doctrine!
The guys who served in the more kinetic battles of Iraq said similar about entering defended buildings, "Main thing is to just poke your head around and make sure the attack-by-fire element did its job."
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5 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:
It made a pretty big impression on the Libyans!
TBH it's all just a replay of Stirling's SAS tactics (in more or less exactly the same spot).....Small but heavily armed and highly mobile groups going for the enemy's soft & dangling bits.
Thats projecting too much. The Chadians beat Libyan combat formations, on the attack, once given MILAN. Whenever and wherever they showed up with ATGMs and French air support, the Libyans were stopped cold and hammered flat at that point. Rear area raids were something the Chadians pulled off semi-regularly before they got MILANs and French air. They just didn't do much good in stopping the Libyans any time they actually wanted to attack and mostly served in its final impact to help the Libyans when some of the best (relatively speaking; none of these guys were that good) Chadian formations were off in the deep desert instead of the point of contact when Libyan tanks and artillery struck.
Seriously, that entire war was a bum fight.
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27 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
No. Not as far as I know. We can change what kind of tanks and vehicles are used, and adjust the amount of ammo, but we cannot change small arms, infantry AT weapons etc.
When I crack open an American AIB and select dismounted, I can choose from 0-3 bazookas and what type. I haven't noticed quality influencing small arms much at all though...? I'm fiddling with FJ and their squads all have double MGs with typical or excellent set for equipment.
I think it should be possible to manipulate weapons directly though.
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3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
It seems what confused me is that we cannot change equipment level after the formation is purchased. This is quite unfortunate when building a scenario, because deleting the formation and re-purchasing it deletes all the carefully placed defensive positions and customised levels of experience and leadership, and even worse, it erases the assigned AI groups. Would be very nice to just be able to change the equipment level and play around with the setting until it gives the right results.
Can't you fiddle with all the settings it (equipment quality) influences manually in CMx2 though?
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26 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:
Quite agree.....I found the comparison with the Tachanka to be very apt.
Chad's 'Toyota War' with Libya long ago demonstrated the advantages of such formations.
The Toyota War was a bum fight, certainly a high intensity one for those involved, but still a bum fight. The only thing that war demonstrated was that one side (Libyans) could get away with being completely, utterly inept by the virtue of possessing the tanks and ample artillery while their opponent had virtually no heavy weapons... until the French gifted them MILANs. After that, there was certainly a lot of Libyan ineptitude being exposed in the form of burning tanks but had the Chadians tried some of the stuff in Hiluxes (which the Libyans allowed them to get away with, routinely) against almost anyone else, they would have been blown the hell away.
There is an argument for lighter vehicles in occupation-duty compared to high-intensity combat, but the Toyota War is not a shining example thereof. It's more of a demonstration that when you opponent is truly awful, damned near anything can work, provided you also have air support.
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I believe you, I just can't see what might be causing it.
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Did anyone else want to give it a spin and provide some feedback?
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17 hours ago, DMS said:
As is written in document above, machiengunners and snipers stay in SMG platoon. Like in mechanised battalions in the game now.
It's interesting, why developers removed TO&E "B".
Why did they remove AA vehicles' ability to shoot down aircraft from the initial versions of CMx2? Why did they remove the ability to purchase divisional artillery as on-map assets? Why did they remove the ability to directly set ammo levels in units? Why did they remove the in-game information display for units? Why did they remove the ability to set any time for a fire mission to go off, not just five, ten, etc.?
I don't know.
19 hours ago, DougPhresh said:I genuinely miss the large maps of CMx1. Maneuver and terrain certainly mattered much more.
I wouldn't say it mattered more in CMx1, except in the sense you could get away with a lot of silly things by hanging out in a woods tile. Like slurping up all the opposing AI infantry's ammo in five minutes flat and merely walking up to blow them away. Now, you really, really have to pay attention to little dips and rises, microterrain opportunities for cover/concealment, which side of a building has doors and windows, etc. Unfortunately, the effect is frequently more frustrating and "work" than really having fun exploiting the possibilities, so my opinion is mixed.
Certainly CMx1 was more favored to the sort who favored bold movement to decide battles. CMx2 feels more like an extended, chaotic brawl thanks to relative spotting.
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57 minutes ago, DMS said:
Variant "A" without SMG platoon and variant "B" with. Great! Did SMG squads have snipers and MGs?
Nope. Nine submachine gunners and four more submachinegunners in the HQ team.
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2 hours ago, Xorg_Xalargsky said:
Hmm, from a real quick n' dirty test, it seems like the cupola's hatches don't effect the spotting ability of the tank commander.
I had 4 IS-2 (mid) look at German rifle squads ~120 meters away in grassy terrain. 2 of them had the commander turned out.
The 2 turned out tanks were able to spot all members of their respective enemy squads after a turn where the two buttoned-up were only able to spot 1-3 members.
I'd say it's quite likely that opened vehicle doors and hatches don't affect spotting. Likely for gameplay or coding reasons. Still not sure about hitboxes though.
I'm running quick and dirty tests as well, they seem to support what you're saying. Not surprising; modeling the hatch's position in relation to the commander's face and resulting LOS blockage would be the most ridiculous detail I can imagine in a company-level wargame.
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On 8/4/2017 at 1:20 AM, Fizou said:
Not a very effective configuration but a very cool detail. With a TRP its possible to order air burst missions.
It has always been that way. Situational, like you said, but it will rip infantry in the open a new one, even though a fair number of rounds go smack or detonate so high it is detrimental.
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Remember the little "bug" where one of the crewmen was facing ninety degrees off where he was supposed to, and therefore not taking advantage of some of the tank's optics like they were supposed to? I wonder if his face being crammed right up against the hatch affects spotting...?
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Both mid and early variants, the commander's face is crammed right against the hatch when unbuttoned. Surely this can't be intended? I haven't tested to see if it makes him immune to small arms fire from the front, but if that actually occurs, just pretend I never reported this, lol.
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17 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:
That is definitely one thing that I had in mind. I am vaguer about the other, which suggests that it might exist only in my confused imagination.
Michael
The Puppchen?
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On 8/1/2017 at 7:06 PM, DMS said:
So what do you think about this? There is suprisingly few Russian sources about Soviet TOs, may be I missed something. Let's discuss it.
The strange things is that CMBB had this already, in the Soviet Rifle Battalion 44B, infantry force type:
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On 8/7/2017 at 3:10 PM, Armorgunner said:
There is a great living community, with regular uppdates for steel fury. Today you can fight in, and against about every German and Russian tank, And a some brittish, and American. Plenty of missions for all of them, incusive North Africa.
I'v played steel fury for many years thanks to Steel tank addon. Not much the læst year or so though.
I'm not saying it is a bad game, far from it. My problem is that there was something of a lost opportunity to pull people towards tank sims, and wargames generally, that was squandered only due to an incredibly poor choice of setting. Even for hardcore treadheads, 2nd Kharkov is not typically one of the top ten tank battles/campaigns.
4 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:Amazing level of ground detail for a flight simulator. Even grass bending down as the tank passes over it..
The soldier animations could do with a bit of work though
Yeah, the level of detail is getting crazier each and every year.
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37 minutes ago, 76mm said:
Sorry, but reasons for what? What is your first question?
Wow, my cut-and-paste ate my first sentence. Anyway, I am asking why the Soviets didn't field a bazooka equivalent during the war. After it, certainly, but for some reason not during.
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I've heard a lot of reasons but ultimately none of them make all that much sense to me, the most prominent among them was limited effectiveness. But limited effectiveness is basically a great description for an ATR on its best day, yet the Soviets had these huge formations of the things...? What gives? Third, does anyone have a good diagram of how Soviets laid out ATGs in a gun front? There is some good stuff out there in other places, but my Russian is super-rusty so I can't really get too much mileage out of it without a decent translation.
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20 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:
Perhaps politicians should be obliged to play one of LLF's Ramadi scenarios (on a special PC, rigged up to run a current through their testicles every time they take a casualty) before they are allowed to expend their nation's youth in foreign conflict (I'd have suggested my Mosul stuff, but that would just be too cruel and we'd wind up a planet full of pansies).
Or we could just learn to "elect good men," as they say...
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29 minutes ago, The Steppenwulf said:
Looked through the manual and searched the forums to no avail. Seems to me like an under-discussed matter; but some important questions have arisen for me in this area of the game:-
1) Surely cease fire is a feature for two player games? If a player selects cease fire in a single player game, does the AI "ignore" the request - i.e. there is no effect?
2) In cases when a cease fire is agreed, I assume the result is an automatic draw - regardless of the division of VP to each side at that point? Or can a player still win or lose as a consequence of agreeing to a cease fire?
3) If a cease fire offer is not accepted, how long before the offer expires, if at all?
4) If a player chooses to surrender, does the game result in total defeat automatically? Or does the game calculate the VP situation at the point of surrender and give the result existing at that point in the game (which would seem illogical)? Or (most likely) does the game calculate the VP and then tag on a penalty to that (for surrendering) to represent scale of defeat (so there is a range of defeats possible with a surrender)?
5) Considering possibilities in 3) above, is it possible for a player to choose to surrender and still gain a draw?1) The AI always accepts a cease fire.
2) No, the victory conditions still apply. Whoever better fulfills them, wins.
3) I don't believe it expires. The only way to rescind it is to hit cease fire again, at least in real time multi-player. I've never done it PBEM.
4) If they surrender, they automatically lose, yes.
5) No.
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2 hours ago, Aragorn2002 said:
Beautiful game. I hope someday someone will make a ww2 tank simulator of that quality.
They did. It was called Steel Fury: Kharkov 1942 and pretty much everyone praised it. But the developers sort of ****ed up with the setting for the game and while all the playables (T-34/76, Matilda and Pz IV) were pretty well lovingly rendered in great detail, none of them were a Tiger or Panther or Sherman. So sales apparently (allegedly) weren't so hot and the team shifted to making tactical sims with the same engine, which sold much better. That was pre-WoT though, so it might go better for someone nowadays, but I'm pretty skeptical about that; picking a battle outside of the popular period of the war (mid-1944 on) that no one gives a **** about probably isn't ideal as far as setting goes. Virtual tankers kinda hunger for a nuts-and-bolts sim but still want their big cats, red steel and Shermans.
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6 hours ago, Ivan Zaitzev said:
Have you noticed the photographer is not behind the tank? Most photos are posed.
In the first one there is even a guy standing right in the open.
Probably because not many people are bold enough to shoot with a tank pointed their way in real life. Any way you slice it, there are a lot fewer things on the battlefield that can hurt a tank compared to an infantryman and they are relatively rare on the battlefield. Most of the times a tank showed up in WW2, it straight-up trumped everything present. Wargamers just studiously avoid those periods of fighting because they don't typically make for good scenarios.
Or they "sexy" them up by adding a bunch of tigers, high-tier AT, well-trained and borderline suicidal infantry, etc. to make what was IRL a curbstomp into a relatively even fight.
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2 hours ago, Ivan Zaitzev said:
I don't know how often the cover behind tanks was done IRL. Tanks tend to attract a lot of attention and you don't want to be around when it blows up.
Often enough:
In David Hackworth's biography, Brave Men, he mentioned an incident during the Korean War:
"There were dead and wounded everywhere. Slugs were ricocheting off the ice; we could see sparks where they hit. Jim Parker's 2nd Platoon had successfully silenced an enemy machine gun to our left, so the pressure was off enough for us to get our wounded behind the protection of the tanks and paddy wall, where they could be patched up. Our progress was hampered, though, because the tank crews kept moving their tanks. They didn't stop to think they were exposing our wounded all over again; they were too busy trying to save their own armor-coated skins. I told the tank lieutenant, whom I'd come to view -- and treat accordingly -- as a recruit at Fort Knox, that the next time a tank moved and exposed our guys, I'd fire a 3.5 bazooka right up its ass. There was no more movement."
Managing Lots of Infantry... A real pain!
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Completely and utterly typical. Almost anyone with sense would sooner "purchase real estate" with bullets rather than blood. Plus infantry can be broken down into very small elements (two man scout teams) that still present a credible threat that forces the enemy to unmask himself to deal with. They don't do it for some elements of the defense against human players though -- for example, a smart human player will keep his HMGs further back and ATGs silent while tasking some small, non-critical element of the defense (typically a squad of rifle infantry) with dealing with the approaching scouts then enduring the resulting pain when their overwatch goes into action -- but the idea is that the enemy just can't hold fire everywhere in an effort to assassinate your key systems.