Brian Rock

This may be a "hi Mum!" threadl, but I figure in light of the heat of some of the other threads we were due a bit of light relief. Well done Trench Knife (even if your semi-colons seem to be in all the wrong places).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian: I'd suggest you need to read what I've already posted a little bit more closely, if you cannot see I've already stated why, at least twice BTW, armies have abandoned the use of bolt-action rifles - training. It is easier to train a soldier to fire a semi-automatic weapon at a high rate than it is to train him to fire a bolt-action weapon. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'd suggest you either learn to form more coherent arguments. Yes, I read your comments that "the only advantage of the M1 over the Enfield was that you could give a man off the street an M1 and know he could fire 8 rounds a minute, whereas to get to the much higher rate of 20 rounds a minute for a .303 SMLE, you had to put in quite intensive training." You also indicate that you believe Commonwealth troops were better trained. Indeed, if I take the previous sentence at face value, at least some of these highly trained troops were capable of putting out 250% the amount of firepower, and aimed firepower at that. So, if you are capable of providing the appropriate levels of training, and that training is producing a superior outcome, then there is no benefit in a faster training cycle. My question still stands: why change? <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I've never denied that semi-automatic weapons allow a higher rate of fire to be attained… <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Really? Then what do I make of your earlier comment: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> As I have noted, the theoretical rate of fire for the SMLE was in fact superior to that of the M1. You are basing your views IMO on a spurious idea that the M1 actually had a superior rate of fire to the SMLE, when in reality it did not...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> First you say the M1 didn't have a superior rate of fire, Now you say you've never denied it. I'd suggest you need to read what you've already posted a little bit more closely. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> …I just question if the M1 Garand is the wonder weapon its portrayed to be by most Americans. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This may be true of Lewis - I'll let him answer that. Otherwise there have been no claims that the M1 is a wonder weapon. What I've seen are arguments that CM is correct in giving the M1 a marginal increase in effectiveness. Perhaps you're the one erecting a strawman here. Now can we stop the pissing contest and simply focus on the issues? [ 08-23-2001: Message edited by: Brian Rock ]

I'm a bit bemused by the other Brian's insistence that a bolt action rifle is at least the equivalent of a semi-automatic. It begs the question why armies have abandoned them - including the Australian Army. As for WWII Aussie attitudes to high ROF weapons, here's an interesting link about Diggers' reactions to Owens and Sten guns in the Pacific war: http://www.smallarmsresearch.org/abstracts/v5n3&4Parker.pdf It supports both the benefits of aiming (last para pg 1) and of a high ROF weapon for suppression (para 9, pg 2) depending on circumstances.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wilhammer: Then again, if timely executed, a smoke barrage THEN -FFE barrage- WITH infantry/armour combined arms sequence attack works well enough, a defender can't really stop it from succeeding.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Interesting. When I use smoke I tend to do the opposite - FFE while I have clear LOS to get as many shells on target as possible, then if necessary smoke to cover my advance against the survivors. I must confess I'm not particularly expert in the usage of smoke, and often screw up the timing, placement and quantity, so I'm prepared to learn a bit more about it.

I haven't seen this one. It might be a bug that hasn't been seen before. Alternatively, is it possible there were daisy-chain and regular mines in/near the one location and your engineers only cleared the first lot?

I had my first try at these rules last night. I found them an excellent innovation that gives a substantially different feel to the game. The fog of war increases by an order of magnitude, and the pace of the battle adjusts to match this. I built a QB, advancing to capture a village, with three inf platoons, an 80mm mortar spotter, a single Sherman 76, and two MG jeeps. Yeah the jeeps are gamey, but I wanted to see how well they'd hold up in a scenario with limited intel. In this battle at least: badly. Both died on turn one, splattered by enemies I never even saw. The infantry moved out along the left flank, where there was plenty of wooded cover, and in the middle where there were some buildings with good LOS. The AI had placed some light guns with excellent firing lanes that toasted my platoon in the middle. Two platoons entered a light building just in time for the gun to bring it down on their heads. In the meantime my platoons down the left flank were addvancing unopposed. One squad got well ahead of the others, one took fire and bolted towards the rear, and the last squad and HQ sat in the middle as the enemy moved into position on the edge of the village and pinned them down. It's interesting moving infantry forward with full foliage on. I tended to advance to the edge of the woods with greater caution as I couldn't see what the ground looked like at the edge of the woods. Where was the high ground? Where would the enemy be in relation to where I came out? Much less clear and far more interesting. Even trickier to work out when the Germans shelled my advance position with smoke. The Sherman also moved forward much more cautiously than I would have done if I'd viewed the map from level 3 or 4. It took longer to get into battle, but was deadly-as when it did, killing two guns and a Lynx. My 80mm mortar spotter managed to get into position on a two storey building a few hundred metres out of town and started raising hell while my infantry advanced along the flank. The combination of mortars, infantry and tank fire finally began to take its toll, and the Germans have started to pull back. It was about turn 12 when I saved to game. I'd highly recommend this to anyone who hasn't tried it yet. It won't be to everyone's taste, but for me it came much closer to catching the feel of small unit combat. Certainly moreso than the standard level 4 god's-eye game I play

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Slapdragon: Well, what can you expect from a country that was smart enough to buy the F-111 from the United States and cannot recognize that their cultural center is Tasmania. Oh yeah, and that whole Paul Hogan thing. [ 07-26-2001: Message edited by: Slapdragon ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I've spoken to you about this F-111 thing elsewhere Slappy. Get over it already. However I have no defense over the Hogan bit.

1) Great site, and one of the few I bother to go to. Your work is appreciated. 2) Does it have some inaccuracies? Frankly I don't know, and I don't care. It's important to me that the game engine is as accurate as possible. The mods are chrome that have no impact on play whatsoever. 3) If this is still a concern to you I suppose you could post a disclaimer saying: "Some of the mods and articles scenarios here may contain inaccuracies. I am a gamer, not a historican. If you find an error, and it is a serious concern to you, are welcome to send me an email about it. Please document the error and include references to the source materials that substantiate your position." If it's a serious error then you can fix it. If it's trivial or unsubstantiated you can ignore it in good faith. 4) Alternatively keep doing what you're doing. Some of the hardcore whingers will whinge no matter what you do. Even if your site is 100% accurate a few will complain based on faulty knowledge and/or reasoning. 5) When it stops being fun, stop. Just not yet.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Binkie: Thanks. Yeah, I was just wondering if they maybe had a magic map or something of the exact mine placements, and could thus move through with impunity. Lol. Not a very realistic notion, eh?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Troops sometimes did have maps showing lanes through minefields, although I believe this was generally for the non-shooting periods (eg infiltrating patrols through them at night). I'd think navigating them while under fire was generally not recommended.

It's tricky analysing what it takes to kill a tank. We all agree AT weaps work, of course, with a reasonable degree of effectiveness. At the other extreme of likelihood are those one in a million situations where some guy armed with a butterknife raps on the top of a Tiger while calling out "Hans!", and some idiot named Hans opens the hatch and gets spread across the turret. It may have happened, but I wouldn't bet my life on that one. It's the in-between situations that are harder to call. Do the inf have grenades? Is the tank damaged? Are the infantry approaching unobserved, or so close to the tank they are within its blind-zone? Is the crew spooked? Are the infantry spooked? How disorienting is the environment (smoke, noise)? DO the infantry have improvised AT weapons (molotovs or whatever)? At some stage a designer has to abstract and randomise the likely chances. I tend to lean to the "it's damn hard to kill a tank" side of the debate. I base this on anecdotes such as US tankers in the Pacific, tanks swarming with Japanese light infantry, sweeping each other's tanks free with MG fire. Or Ethiopians fighting the Italians in the 1930s, who found they couldn't even penetrate a light tank - so they just rolled the suckers over. One thing I am sure of: whatever decision a game designer comes up with, 2/3s of the gamers will argue with it.

It sounds like a legitimate tactic to me as well. Given it's a smallish map it seems the only alternative was a frontal assault into the teeth of your defense, which doesn't leave him much room for tactical manuever. It is a tricky issue though. Hugging map edges is a perennial problem with wargames. The question is what is the alternative? At what point can you tell a player "sure, that point is on the map, but you can't go actually go there"? Using larger maps is one solution, but it raises other problems. Make the map big enough and you have to consider supporting forces on the flank - forces which don't appear in a game like CM. Every game list I've been on has had this debate, and no answer yet. The closest I've seen might games like Steel Beasts and Armored Task Force. These games can have friendly & enemy AI units on the flanks, creating a more dynamic battlefields while leaving you an zone to manuever in.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I NEED FEEDBACK ON THIS: Lately I have played all my online games using the Random Generator and there is one problem I am having and Im not sure what the best solution is. The problem is 'lite trees' and 'open trees' terrain. Games with these 2 terrain settings are just not fun or challenging. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Maybe have the program select light trees and open trees only in hilly terrain and/or on village maps?

Maybe a bit of constructive criticism might be more helpful than a flame. First up, generally avoid placing type over faces and figures. It tends to make the type harder to read. Frame the shots so that you have a neutral background that doesn't fight with the type. I can send you an example or two if you like. We'll save the typography and colour theory tips for lessons two and three.

I sincerely hope so. I sincerely hope not.

Another victim. Just be aware, once you start it's next to impossible to stop.

Quick message from Mace, who can't post here today. He rang me and said he's having a problem with his Ethernet card, but I suspect that's not the real reason. Maybe it's because I'm the suspicious type. Maybe it's because in the background I heard champagne glasses, cheezy porn jazz music, and sheep. Whatever. Anyhow he says he won't be able to post any email turns for a couple of days. Now I'm going back to talk to the big kids.

I couldn't find anything on the Sherman on the site, and they don't seem to have a search engine. Do you recall where you saw this reference? Reason for asking is that I noticed Dmitriy Loza on the page. He's the author of "Commanding the Red Army's Shermans" which I've been reading. He speaks very highly of Shermans, despite their flaws and idiosyncracies. It would be interesting to get another point-of-view.

Just to be a bit nit-picky. Actually, relying on letters is a form of primary research, if you are talking about letters written at the time. Indeed it's often been a very important one for a host of reasons. The same is true for books written at the time - they can also be valid primary sources. Determining the boundary of what is and isn't a legitimate primary source can be the subject of many a historigraphical debate. Oral histories as a valid source really only began to gain acceptance in the latter part of the 20C. Partly this is due to the fact people's memories distort over time, and partly a long-standing academic prejudice against oral traditions and in favour of written ones. We now return you to your normal programming.

You're really into this stuff, aren't you?

Four. First up there's you. Then there's me and two other guys who have a full-time job pretending to be hundreds of other people. It's tiring but fun. I always knew someday you'd find out. Guess it's time to close the forum.

Maybe, maybe not. There are a few things that aren't clear. What kind of guidance system did these missles had and how reliable they were spring to mind. Even in the 1960s missle tech was pretty buggy. For example IR missles had a distressing tendency to lock onto the sun. Not quite sure what this has to do with assault rifles, BTW, but it is an interesting topic.

The games I'm most waiting for are "Black and White" and "Freedom Force" (a superhero RPG by some of the people who did System Shock II). Both non-wargames; there isn't much in the wargame area that really interests me (CM2 an obvious exception here). GI Combat could be fun, but I can't say I'm hanginy out for it. Harpoon 4 could be ok. I'd love to see Decisive Action but suspect it's vapourware. Ditto with Road to Moscow. The HPS stuff is ok, but I'm really over hex based games for the most part, so I can't get too excited about them.

That is basically the point of view Grossman puts forward in "On Killing". As I recall it he argues that it tends to shift the bell curve a bit, which means a handful of people down at the margin may be more inclined to become more violent. This seems a credible argument to me.

Bear in mind we're not talking totally random. It's not like the game will kick to the desktop on turn three. The idea is that instead of a game ending on turn 30 you might have the option of setting it to end between 28 and 32. It helps to fuzz up the time factor. While I'm here I may as well prattle on about my way of looking at this whole issue... [soapbox]There is a paradox for game designers. On the one hand the lack of fuzziness is a major problem in games. If you set precise crystal clear victory conditions people will play in a way to maximise their chances of achieving these. On the other hand you make things a bit fuzzy - say you randomised the value of a flag, and didn't know what it was until game end. Or maybe your enemy had completely different objectives and you had no way of being sure exactly what these were. It starts to become more realistic, but then gamers complain that it's not clear what they have to do to win. Now I'm a minority, and personally I strongly favour the latter approach. But then much of the time I don't give a toss about winning or losing - that's not why I play. But for the majority that play CM - or any other game - as a game first and foremost, this fuzziness can be very annoying. Nothing wrong with that, but it means gamey-ness is next to impossible to eliminate. [/soapbox]

Interesting. Effectively what Bull is doing is turning the argument on its head - in other words, plonking a few guys on a flag and calling that control is gamey. I think Lt Bull has a damn good point here, and I say that as someone who until about five minutes ago argued that the last minute flag grab was gamey. (I would still like a variable end of game option though.)