Apocal

Yeah, I really wish that Assault behaved more like a mix of quick+hunt, wherein a team moves until engaged, then it drops to the ground and fires back (if possible) and another team moves forward.

They ride in MRAPs, but (current) MRAPs mostly aren't official TOE. Units get them before deploying and give them back when they go home. edit: why is this in the RT forum lol?

They work moderately better than engineers with demo charges.

Posted here.

US infantry divisions habitually had one tank (sometimes TD, sometimes both) battalion attached in the maneuver phases, same as the streetfights. There are occasional outliers upwards like 1st ID having around 150+ AFVs assigned at one point in early August 44. My feathers aren't ruffled, its just inaccurate as near as I can figure for both west and east fronts. I was somewhat I'd read contemporary AARs mentioning tanks in cities as a prerequisite for serious combat, I just thought maybe there were some smaller fights that maybe I'd missed. Anyway, I'm just disagreeing that tanks are some kind of rare thing in street-fighting; protected direct HE firepower is just too useful. Its more rare to see a serious urban battle without any form of armor than the opposite case. They also aren't rare in-game either, you can get perfectly effective force mixes including armor, TDs, assault guns for minimal rarity cost in-game.

Not really...? A lot of the dead troops would just be cowering, fled, etc.

Just the actual street-fighting portions of these battles, obviously, all include tanks/TDs or SP arty mentioned at least in passing in the official histories (green book series), AARs, etc.: Cherbourg: 4th Infantry Division, 70th Tank Battalion and 899th Tank Battalion attached. 9th Infantry Division, 746th Tank Battalion attached. Rennes: Very little actual street-fighting, CC A of the 4th AD attacked and surrounded the city initially, defenders withdraw when a follow-on infantry regiment reaches the outskirts to clear it. Brest: 8th Infantry Division, 709th Tank Battalion (minus D Co) attached. 2nd Infantry Division, D Co of the 709th Tank Battalion. Argentan: 80th Infantry Division, 610th Tank Destroyer Battalion attached. Nancy: CC R of the 4th AD, 80th Infantry Division with 610th TD Bn, elements of the 2nd Cavalry Group. Aachen: 1st Infantry Division, I see the 745th Tank Battalion attached, with official and German accounts crediting TDs and "SPA 155mm" as being decisive in the fight for the city itself, "When the Americans are using 155s as sniper rifles, it is time to give up." Metz: 90th Infantry Infantry Division with 807th Tank Destroyer Battalion attached, TF Bacon with "cavalry, artillery, tank and tank destroyer units."

I'm referring to the bold bit about pure infantry divisions or armored divisions stripped of vehicles, when did that ever happen? I mentioned it last year, didn't get a response from BFC.

What does this have to do with CM? Or your advice to do things the hard, ineffective way? Other than Arnhem, when did this happen on the western front?

I asked for an omnibus edition, Steve seemed unenthusiastic.

Submachine gun companies, sapper/pioneer battalions, flamethrower platoons, Panther Gs, MarkIV Hs, StuG IIIGs, T-34s (either 76 or 85), SU-76s, medium howitzers and most (maybe all) Soviet mortars have a rarity cost of zero. OT-34s (~1400 rarity) and IS-2s (~1000) are limited, but both well within the realm of even small assaults (~1900 rarity budget) for the attacker at least. Those are the only two suggestions I've seen in this thread that are somewhat pricey in terms of rarity. Oh and heavy artillery, that is pricey in both point and rarity terms though, so I don't bother in RT. Yeah, but you'll lose a lot in H2H assaulting a city like that.

Lets Play. A narrated play through of a game, usually posted on YouTube.

Don't have any answers for you, but I like your LPs.

Command Ops does not have a discrete "break" in gameflow to facilitate CMRT scenarios, nor does it have a East Front title. As far as I know at least.

Part of it is that the AI is, as yet, not good enough to recognize its in an impossible position. Isolate a trench network, cut off any escape by fire, roll up a tank and the occupants will standby for the coup-de-grace. In the real deal, those guys would usually surrender, except in the case of the Japanese.

The ATGM numbers specifically: By 2005, between Iraq and Afghanistan, the US Army expended a total of 607 Javelins. Maybe you could add another ~200 or so expended by the Marines. Far from being 40,000. Even adding TOWs accounts only for another 4000 or so missiles. Obviously usage continued along with the war, but I doubt it hits even 10,000 given the nature of most operations post-2005. (source: http://proceedings.ndia.org/5650/Cannon.pdf) edit: (source: http://www.ausaredstone.org/files/CCWS%20PMO%20Briefing%202009%20TM%20Conference.pdf) Better numbers, 801 Javelins expended in initial OEF/OIF conflict, 154 post-2005. Addressing the point in general, the high-end estimates come from taking all ammunition produced or issued, dividing by casualty totals and coming with a figure. But I'm not using estimates of expenditures: in specific, I use accounts of massed aircraft attacks on observed armor (i.e. Mortain, Lorraine, Bulge, IL-2s employing PTABs against Tigers at Kursk, etc.) wherever sufficient detail exists in primary sources, essentially. I'd be more than open to the idea that tactical aircraft could have better effects typically, but the source has to stand up the scrutiny of the receiving side's loss reporting, not just Rudel's bull**** claims. Except decision was achieved within an hour or two in the real deal; I play realistic wargames (like CM) because I want to explore the hows and whys of achieving that decision. If I wanted an experience that was "dialed back" and balanced to keep all units 'competitive' in H2H, I would just play a light wargame like Red Dragon.

Allow me to backtrack a bit, to clear up any ambiguity regarding what has been and has not been said: Nobody said that, not in this thread, not even in the article: "The US database was a result of the modeling data developed in 1972 that required direct hits against tanks to achieve any effects." Slight aside, but for why they specify tanks instead of generalized mix of armored vehicles; the 1972 model (AFAIK) came from OR studies (i.e. 'actual use with all conditions exactly correct.' in your words) not theory work in some lab. Obviously there wasn't a whole lot of field data regarding IFVs/APCs under artillery fire in 1972. The US Army models were built from OR studies of dumping 155mm arty on tanks for real. Well, the real world information available (where available, of course) says tac air (especially large bombs) should be mostly ineffective at destroying tanks. You should be able to put a dozen (or two) IL-2s over the battlefield and get one or zero knockouts as a typical case thing.

Artillery has created an effective smoke screen since CMSF. I haven't noticed AI using it much - the AI in QBs usually expends most or all of its arty/mortar ammo in front of the setup at game start - but occasionally I'll be surprised by a particularly reactive mortar and pay the penalty for it.

I assume you mean this one (page 8). "An M109 155-mm howitzer battery using Soviet fire direction and gun procedures fired the test. The targets were manikins placed in fighting positions, US trucks, M113 and M557 armored vehicles, and M-48 tanks. Several different computer models were used to predict results. The test was fired three times using 56 HE rounds with point-detonating (PD) and variable-time (VT) fuzes. The resulting effects on the trucks and personnel were close to model predictions. However, the effects on the armored vehicles and tanks were significantly higher than model predictions. The model predicted 30 percent damage to armored vehicles and tanks; however, 67 percent damage was achieved. Fragmentation from the HE rounds penetrated the armored vehicles, destroying critical components and injuring the manikin crews. (See an example of such damage in Figure 1.) In addition, the HE fragmentation damaged tracks, road wheels, and tank main gun sights and set one vehicle on fire. Interestingly enough, none of the damage to the armored vehicles or tanks was the result of direct hits—all the damage was caused by near hits." The "REAL tanks" you speak of consisted in large part of aluminum hulled M113 variants and almost certainly make up the majority of the damage taken.

120 meters or so, they'll do damage. At roughly 75 meters, they'll chew through any equivalent formation in under a turn. Within 30 meters, its pretty much a meatgrinder for long pig. "Target briefly" + "Assault"

Some of us have been referring to historical accounts of aircraft attacks on armor, there just aren't very many well-documented successes from which we can infer things. So we go back on onto overall numbers and try to work back to establish an upper limit (we're 100% sure Rudel is a bull****ter, for example) on effectiveness. Those accounts of successful air attacks that exist are usually pushing right up against the extreme edge of CMx2's scope e.g. a full battalion of infantry assisted by two platoons of armor, getting forty-eight fighter-bombers overhead. Obviously that has a severe impact on the battlefield, but its not something you're likely to see in CMx2 ever, for the same reason BFC has tended to shy away from depictions of massed bombardments with multi-kilometer impact areas. Buy Panthers. There are very few situations where the equivalent points in AFVs would not be worth more. There are already plenty of units that are non-viable from a points standpoint in H2H play and even as it stands now I wouldn't take air support over large caliber (105mm or bigger) modules with deep ammo reserves. Artillery is worse at knocking out tanks, but it also won't bomb my troops unless I'm very stupid.

Buy Panthers.

I use it as well, even though I only occasionally play WeGo.

I actually used a QB map (admittedly a somewhat flat one because I didn't want to fuss with pathfinding and traffic jams lead to outlier kills) and your results are within the low-range of mine, especially since you're using one less aircraft. And it remains that IRL, knocking out even one tank was an outlier success for three or four aircraft flying close air support during WW2...

And in Call of Duty I once cleared a room of six bad guys with nothing but a Desert Eagle...