Apocal

This might be a question for the hardcore treadheads. Anyway, in CMBN, most of the Shermans had the TC's fifty mounted in the entirely sensible front and center position, right where he could pop out of the hatch and use it. As far as i know, this was originally a field modification. But I've started to notice that this arrangement is much rarer (I can't recall which models because I don't cherry-pick armor) in CMFB. Not only is the ideal rare, but it has been replaced by the useless (literally, since it won't fire on aircraft) rear-facing AA mounting in most cases, with only the occasional loader's fifty arrangement. Can someone explain this to me? And tell me how to get the commander to use the AA fifty for anything at all?

No, because it isn't a question of bodies that makes the AI succeed. It is the fact that it doesn't know how to do even basic combined arms. By packing a bunch of guys on their start line, the most likely outcome is the player (having a brain and all) simply maximizing the effectiveness of every weapon system they have available, to ludicrous degrees. We're talking machine guns that kill numbers in the high double-digits, rifle squads easily accounting for half-platoons, tanks that knock out a half dozen of their counterparts, etc. The next most likely outcome is that the player is overrun having run most of his forces completely out of ammunition in the process of stacking a massive number of bodies. Try it in a quick battle. Pick the map, "Wax Museum," it is the last in the list of stock QB maps. Make it a huge point pool, then give the AI +150% points to boot. Only spend half your points -- but do so intelligently -- then lay out your defense. Include generous amounts of large-bore artillery (105s and 155s) along with TRPs. Lay out mines in places you want to "snag" their attack up. Include a modest reserve, maybe just half-tracks and some infantry, maybe add a pair of medium AFVs to that. Build a competent defense in other words. Then watch the AI blunder its way through all that mess, as if it doesn't understand that it should not sit under 155mm treebursts, walk three platoons in series through a minefield, that supporting fire should be kept up close enough to the scouts that anything that threatens them is instantly silenced with the corresponding threat being discovery. Place your armor at keyholes and watch as it racks up whole platoons over the course of a minute. Move your reserve literally anywhere, doing anything, and watch as the AI fails to respond in any fashion except shooting at you -- and not always then. It takes a lot to make the AI attack well in CMx2, far, far, far more than in ArmA.

The SP 105mm battery the Americans get comes with 400+ rounds of HE, so hell yes. Even without that much, large bore guns heat up just the same as machine guns but with far fewer rounds involved. That's why artillery pieces have a maximum and sustained rate of fire. In CMx2, those little green or red dots indicate when they will drop down to their sustained rate. When all the dots are red, they slow down their rate of fire. For larger pieces (155mm or higher, or thereabouts) the sustained rate can be as low as one or two rounds per tube per minute. And since the really large bore American stuff comes in two tube batteries, well, if you're counting on them delivering a ten minute long shellacking, you're going to be very disappointed after only a third (or less) of the elapsed time when they switch to low rate of fire.

I dunno, FMB managed to mix both narrative and "simulationist" elements pretty well. He didn't do anything to hold your hand beyond a briefing, but definitely missions were carried through with a narrative aspect. The most frustrating thing for me is that the first mission of the Allied campaign (Courage Conquers, I think?) seemed like something FMB would have whipped up. There was nothing really hard about the mission as long as you pushed your recon forward and saw what you needed to see, but the emphasis on no reinforcements, no resupply (other than off-board artillery). But the second crept up in scale and I was getting nervous. Finally, the third mission (I can't remember if I won the second or not) was basically stacking up everything in the task force onto the map, including two companies of tanks, I think three platoons of infantry between two companies themselves, mortars, etc. and it became a chore to manage it all. That was disappointing, because it was shaping up pretty nicely. Anyway, I'm still futzing around the map editor. I made a few missions before, but either went with very simple maps or recycling QB maps and that definitely won't fly as far as players now are concerned.

I loved the scale, narrative and layout of his campaigns, From Dawn to the Setting Sun (CMSF) and Devil's Descent (CMBN). They were like gold to me because of the way I was forced to care about losses but not in an overly punitive way; the scenarios within weren't puzzle games and simply a presented a plain, understandable tactical problem that could be overcome without mashing my forces to the nubs or having foreknowledge from previous playthroughs. I looked through the repository, nothing. However, with the search function here presently broken (something about rebuilding indexes for the last few days) I can't find anything on the forum either. So now I'm asking in this thread. Has FMB made a campaign for Final Blitzkrieg? If he has not, I would love a steer in the direction of any campaigns made at a in his style (company core force, narrative and decision branches, persistent losses, few replacements, limited resupply) covering any force or period in CMFB.

No, you can sometimes tell when there is something wrong with a track. Not always, to be sure, but often enough I don't think it is weird to have multiple stages of damage before getting to the point the track is immobilized.

But making maps is a cast-iron bitch, so most people get burned out after only a few missions. Anyway, the one thing I want is some kind of omnibus edition of CMx2. It is a bit weird having all these years and months to choose from and yet only like three or four of them are available to be selected in each title. There is already a way of switching around regions, so why not whole theaters of war. As an added bonus, it would help bring the MP community together and maybe spur someone out there to make a dedicated matchmaking program so we could find opponents easier. To say nothing of fantasy match-ups like late war Soviet tank regiment vs. American armored infantry company on the defense.

Yeah, units can pass spotting info either vertically (up and down the chain of command) or horizontally (directly unit to unit). There was a big topic on it somewhere, I can't remember which forum though, since the general CMx2 stuff is scattered all over the place.

As far as I know, the LL vehicles were slotted into the existing TOE in exactly in place of their Soviet equivalents. Certainly, the Soviet Shermans weren't running around in platoons of five and companies of eighteen like in the US Army. In a game with Jagdtigers?

Yeah, I remember one scenario was pretty easy-going until I put about a half-platoon of Marines into a building that was wired to blow...

An off-map direct fire option would likely be panned by players used to map-edge runs. People already complain about mines in that area during RT MP matches; I can't fathom the howls of incandescent rage that would emerge from unspottable, unsuppressible AT fire.

Just to be clear, when I say "operational layer" I'm not referring to expanding the scope of on-map CMx2. I mean something like Close Combat 2's campaign or Graviteam Tactics, where the operational level moves are made through a separate interface, with the actual tactical game only beginning when forces clash. People already do so with CMx2 via other games as the operational layer, but the implementation is difficult (particularly in terms of accounting) and it is restricted to head-to-head play over long periods of time. Example here: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118958-operational-level-campaign-completed/?do=findComment&comment=1597228 There are more examples stretching all the way back to CMBB, at least, and possibly earlier. I disagree with the bolded portions. Delaying isn't necessarily dull, particularly because it demands more from players tactically than does straight-line brawling. I'll agree that more of the fight happens before the first turn, when planning the fight and contingencies, but that doesn't make for bad games. At least not in my experience. Most importantly, however, is that looking ahead to another fight and another and another really changes the outlook players have on losses. An attacking player might be paranoid of losing his best armor and shy away from attacking an inadequate defense that presents itself boldly or similar shenanigans. And ultimately, the point of delaying is usually to bring reinforcements to bear in superior circumstances, so players still get the satisfaction of "victory" when they've held back attackers long enough that now they have their own iron fist of combat power to throw back at them. If nothing else, it would get players closer to understanding the advantages and disadvantages of armor on the attack, the kind of energetic operations possible when you're riding two dozen or more tons of tracked combat power into the fight. They would realize exactly how devastating a breakthrough could be and what pursuit fighting entails, the ways in which an armored thrust can be neutered, etc. A lot of things that single scenarios and even the stock campaigns don't do an especially good job of catching the flavor of.

Strip a platoon from both leading companies or use the engineers, recon troops, etc. as a fourth maneuver company. You have to fight your companies flatter, without their own reserves, but generally it is hard to have a trailing platoon commit to the action in a meaningful manner without getting blasted in the same way as the first two, at least in my experience. So I'm not losing much doing that. The downside is that I usually don't care enough to run battalion-level scenarios.

Eh, it isn't just scale. You really don't get the full gist of armored warfare because in pretty much every scenario, that attackers running into an intact, prepared defense capable of repelling armor. That certainly happens, but after a breakthrough, it was the exception rather than the rule. If that weren't the case, none of those bold, grandiose advances would have happened because the first village armor rolled through guns a-blazin' they would have gotten blown the hell up. In the real deal, there were a very great number of very hasty attacks made against scattered remnants of fought-out units that could hardly have mustered a trio of panzerfausts between them. Even so, their small arms (particularly machine guns) represented a very credible threat to things other than AFVs. So those sort of holdouts might be able to delay dismounts and force them to expend time, effort and ammunition rooting them out but against tanks there was, in essence, sweet f***-all they could do. Frequently they didn't even try -- preferring life over a glorious death, natch -- and instead slithered away in darkness or surrendered , either outright or to follow-on forces. I thought there was one scenario depicting the above in CMRT, but it turns out the briefing was misleading and the Germans had nearly as much armor as the attacking Russians, and an arguably superior mix as well. I understand why, certainly, but it sort of takes away another dimension to tactics, battle command and decision-making. It isn't a perfect analogy but you're holding a straight and working the entire table, figuring the odds are against anyone holding anything better and seeing how much you can take from them. Most fold, but some don't and it is up to you to decide whether to back down or call their bluff. That's kind of why I wish there was an operational layer because you could see this sort of thing crop-up organically and give a feeling for what is typically doable for an unsupported infantry force against meaningful amounts of attacking armor. There are ways for the infantry to win that fight, but they are exceptions to the times when the defenders simply make sure the juice isn't worth the squeeze for marauding armor, such as intelligently prepared defenses that leverages poor terrain against the tanks, channelizes them with obstacles and mines, takes away the attacker's combined arms by separating tanks from dismount protection and the dismounts from the firepower of the tanks, mortars/artillery and mines to deny movement foot mobility, etc. A lot of times, an "operational win" can be had just by delaying the armor or giving them a "pop to the mouth" and making them gun-shy about brazenly assaulting your positions. Other times you might present them with a "soft spot" for easy penetration that is actually your chosen killing ground with plenty of defenders backed by anti-tank firepower that results in the typical CMx2-style blowout losses that a hasty, highly aggressive attack with armor endures. That being said, I agree with most of the rest of what you wrote.

Nobody else had armored formations, with AFVs numbering in the triple digits, fall apart inside of a weak with only minimal enemy contact. For all their failures, I don't think any French armored formation had over ninety percent of its tanks lost while just moving around on the map like the Soviet 15th Mech Corps.

Alright, but waiting years for DLC is a bit unusual. It seems like porting over a vehicle pack would be quicker and easier than an actual full module.

I remember the plan was for another DLC that would take CMRT to the end of the war but it has been years waiting at this point. So now I'm just asking if there will be something like the vehicle pack, where we can finally get the Lend-Lease equipment, even without scenarios or campaigns to match.

My reason for getting it.

The armies wouldn't get one TOS, the guy with however many BTGs currently busting open a fortified city or thick belt of defenses would get all twelve. But they can't really concentrate fires in the way tube and rocket artillery can, due to short range. So they are essentially forced to babysit the launchers during employment. At any rate, there probably isn't any problem with the system beyond limited range, since the Russians actually bothered developing an upgrade about ten or so years back, the TOS-1A, which extended the range to six kilometers.

It has a maximum range of only six kilometers and how many massive urban battles or fortified strongholds do you expect your army to face simultaneously?

I don't really use off-board artillery, so I didn't notice the issue you pointed out.

I know. I have made scenarios. I also played through a pair of mini-campaigns that did the trick in CMSF.

SD is substantially more realistic than Panzer General was in its day, and we all considered that a wargame, right? CMx2 can't really throw too many stones regarding unrealistic behavior though. I still remember when MG teams were basically toothless and couldn't fulfill their real life doctrinal role in CMBN or CMFI, even when placed on a pool-table flat map against rifle-armed infantry walking upright and not firing back. More importantly, SD gets the important bits of reading the battle, command decision-making and application of combined arms correct. If you go for symmetrical matchups (i.e. tanks on tanks, infantry on infantry, etc.) you wind up taking outsized losses. What the game (and other players pointing out) teaches is the idea that for every tactical problem, there is a counter. ATGs stop tank rushes. Infantry provide defensive "staying power" in close terrain. Machine guns deny movement to dismounts and soft-skinned vehicles. Tanks give fire support as long as they are protected. The application of combined arms isn't about gathering all the constituent elements into a ball of combat power and throwing them wholesale into whatever the enemy puts in front of you but rather looking at the enemy in the same way a mechanic would an engine to be disassembled; carefully picking out each tool, as needed in turn. If the existing problem is insurmountable, the correct solution isn't to try to pull a tactical rabbit out of your combined arms bag, but instead either back off or escalate. It is kinda cool to see that in action, particular when playing on a large 10v10 (player) map. I think CMx2 offers something a bit different, more detailed and such as far as modeling goes, but less realistic in some aspects, such as tanks being better able to spot infantry (for the WW2 games) than real history suggests is the case, thereby harming the historical balance of combined arms. Overall I would say CMx2 is a better simulation if only the morale model was a bit more brittle and units more inclined to flee than fight after casualties, while missions were re-jiggered to make losses hurt more than taking objectives helped.

The fun is being presented with plausible military challenges a modern commander might face and his likely options, regardless of the sexiness -- or lack thereof. Think of it as a boxing game and the clinch. Clinching is pretty unexciting and arguably unimaginative. Certainly no one wants to watch twelve rounds of it. But it represents a valid counter to certain moves and can be integrated into a wider strategy for winning matches, so pretty much every boxing game that goes beyond the most ridiculously cartoonish depiction includes the clinch. Most any wargame with a persistent force mechanic can offer the same dilemma facing a real commander, who does have to make command decisions such as when to break off a fight going bad or when pushing harder through a tough defense is desirable, rather than simply having to reach deeper and deeper into his bag of tactical tricks until he's expected to pull a rabbit out.

I use them as overwatch on probable enemy dismount locations, since they are better at spotting infantry, IME. Other than that, on the attack, they are sort of redundant in a lot of cases, since there are not really collateral concerns to the same degree as in CMSF.