Bullethead

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>I live in beautiful Austin, Texas, and think it is a very good place to live.<hr></blockquote> The above speaks volumes to one from basically anywhere else in Texas

Chad Harrison said: <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>i was curious to know what others experience had been with sharpshooters as recon or whatever.<hr></blockquote> My experience with sharpshooters: These are one of my favorite units but they have to be used carefully both to be effective and not be gamey. Use of sharpshooters by the attacker (or either side in a meeting engagement) is either very gamey, very ineffective, or both. The reason for their ineffectiveness in these situations is their AI. They are hard-wired to try to avoid giving away their position, to the extent that they often won't fire if any enemies are within 150m, because odds are they'll die from return fire. Put opposing sharpshooters inside the same building and they'll never shoot at each other. So basically, they suck at closing with the enemy. OK, so they won't shoot--that just makes them harder to spot, right? Thus, they could be good scouts. However, scouting per se is gamey in battles of CM's scale. Having your main body wait while a few expendables systematically scour the map looking for the enemy is by definition taking unrealistic advantage of CM's universal spotting system and the unlimited realtime available between turns of gametime. In real life, the time necessary for the scouting info to come back to the commander, the commander to make plans based on that info, and then get the word to his troops, is far longer than CM battles last. So doing this sort of recon is inescapably and completely gamey, whether you do it with an armored car or a sharpshooter. That said, sharpshooters are very effective and realistic on the defense, provided you use them properly. Otherwise, you can slip into gameyness this way as well. The best way to use sharpshooters is to position them in advance of your MLR with a good LOS over a likely enemy AOA. Then just leave them alone--never give them orders. Their AI was designed for this role and does a better job picking targets for maximum damage while staying alive than you can do for it. Sharpshooters have 2 purposes on the defense. First, they spot the enemy in advance of your MLR. This enables you to shift reserves with foreknowledge to shore up threatened areas or set up counterattacks. You can also call in arty on the advancing enemy to do heavy damage without revealing your MLR (a sharpshooter-TRP combo was EXTREMELY effective before TRPs got all hosed up). The second purpose of defensive sharpshooters is dislocating the enemy attack by killing, shocking, and/or panicking key enemy units before they reach your MLR. This is nice but often the early spotting of enemy units is worth more to you. But either way, a few sharpshooters are a great investment--they might not do much damage themselves, but they allow you to use your main force more effectively. But you have to be careful here because the Borg spotting system works on defense as well as offense. On the defense, however, it's a lot easier to accept that the sharpshooter can give real-time intelligence reports. His main job, after all, is manning an OP, the whole purpose of which is to deliver just such reports, and which can safely be assumed to contain a telephone wired to the command post. But such means of communications aren't mobile. Thus, it would still be very gamey to rely on a sharpshooter's spotting reports if you're making him use shoot-and-scoot tactics. This is yet another reason for not giving any orders to sharpshooters. Anyway, that's my $0.02 on the subject. In a nutshell, sharpshooters are best used as static defenses. Moving them around quickly becomes a matter of gamesmanship and also takes them out of their most effective shooting situations.

I think WW2 only became WW2 when folks forgot that the Seven Years War (aka the French and Indian War over here) was actually WW1

BloodyBucket said: Hmmmm. Read the chapter in CMH Pub 100-14 "Small Unit Actions" about Santa Maria Infante. Both sides, US and German, made extensive use of indirect MG fire as SOP, which it was. As a side note, the U.S. changed specs on the ball ammo used in the M-1919 and Garand just before WWII to help functioning problems with the Garand at the expense of extreme range performance in the MG.

No it's not, because you still have to have an LOS to the area target point even if you see no units there. I'm talking about the inability of MGs to shoot into areas in which they have no LOS. This makes smokescreens way more effective than they should be. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I use 2 waypoints of 45^ each for a 90^ turn. I have made some racing sceanrios where maintaining speed is very important, and this seems to work the best. Using more waypoints doesn't seem to make a difference except in the amount of finagling you as the player have to do. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I don't think MGs have changed that much in the last 100 years. Hell, some WW1-era things like the M2 .50cal are still in service, you know . And the M60 borrowed most of its features from a couple of German WW2 MGs. CM undermodels MGs in several respects that add up to a large effect on battle results. The lack of sustained fire, the inability to shoot blind, not having PDFs, no long range beaten zone interdictions, for example. I think this is one of the main reasons why the force ratios in attacks and assaults were lowered recently. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

109 Gustav said: I've never agreed with that. First, the aforementioned competition said otherwise IIRC. Second, all kinds of military equipment and video arcade games that came out about that time and somewhat before used trackballs and nobody had trouble with them. Remember "Missile Command"? ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Logitech TrackMan Marble Trackballs are the only way to go, as was known back in the early 80s after extensive trials of all types of pointing devices including mice, touch screens, light pens, etc. These trials were conducted at the behest of the Great God IBM, who was going to put the winning technology on the 1st generation of PCs, and in those High and Far-Off Days of Gods and Heroes, when Big Blue said "Jump," the whole rest of the industry said "How high?" The trackball won the competition. It was the most ergonomic, the least fatiguing, used the least desk space, and was the least prone to FOD problems. So everybody who was "into computers" back then (which was only the computer grogs due to the lack of serious internet and the newness of personal computing--everybody else was "into stereos") was looking forward to having a trackball. But then Macs came out, and Macs had mice. Mac advertising relied heavily on its mouse as a way of making computers easier for the unwashed masses to use. But the 1st generation of Macs were such dogmeat that they didn't even have a printer at first, so anybody interested in more than drawing pretty pictures on their monitor still wanted a PC. But the unwashed masses liked the mouse thing and demanded a mouse on the PC. And because in those High and Far-Off Days of Gods and Heroes the masses were totally unwashed as to computers, they didn't know something better was all set to go. So The Great And Powerful IBM was humbled--caving in to the demands of the lowborn, it introduced PCs with mice instead of trackballs, as had been originally planned. And once the Mighty IBM said "Let There Be Mice," that put the kibosh on all other types of pointing devices for a long, sad, and carpal tunnel syndrome-inducing time. Not until a full 10 years had passed, during which the worship of Big Blue gradually declined, did a few trackballs dare to venture onto the market. So here you have the 1st and best reason to hate Macs I'm thinking about a class action suit against Apple for knowingly inflicted mouse-related carpal tunnel syndrome on the masses for its own profit. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Madmatt said: Speak of the Devil In Dr. Brian's specific case, the use of a flamethrower should be answer enough. Those things spew out pre-ignited fuel faster than the fuel is burning--otherwise the stream wouldn't reach the target. Squirt enough fuel and it will puddle and burn for some time, even if there's nothing else flammable in the tile. So he should assume that's what happened to him. As for wet tiles burning, there's no problem with that. Hell, just last January I had to fight a fire in a field so muddy that we got an engine totally immobilized in it. All it takes to burn such a field is 1 match on 1 clump of dry grass, which is exactly what happened then thanks to a stupid kid. This little fire then dries out the surrounding grass, to which the fire spreads, getting bigger in the process. The bigger the fire, the more heat, so the more drying it can do, resulting in more and more and bigger and bigger things in the field igniting. This process takes more time at first than with a dry field, of course, but if there's enough kindling-type stuff available in the initial area, eventually the fire gets big enough that there's no longer any difference. It's big enough to dry out all fuels over a large area outside the fire itself. Then the fire spreads as if the field was dry, and us poor firemen sink up to our knees humping hose to it from our bogged truck. ------------------ -Bullethead West Feliciana Fire Protection District #1 International Brotherhood of Dragonslayers Local 911 [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 03-26-2001).]

nick said: Dust is also caused by shells. When you bombard an area with arty, you often have to shoot in "bursts". That is, shoot like 20 rounds FFE, wait a bit for the dust to settle, then see if you need to shoot some more. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Martin Cracauer said: Yeah, the defense in general has a lot of unrealistic disadvantages in CM--more than the attacker IMHO. I'm sure this is why BTS lowered the purchase points available to the attacker in a QB, in a effort to give the defender a better chance to win. If you accept this, then imposing even more limits of your own on such things as arty availability is logical. I don't accept this thinking, however. I consider it a bandage over the underlying modeling problems. Besides, in real life, the last thing you want is a "balanced" battle--you want a walk-over. And military planners go to great lengths to achieve this. So to me, realistically the attacker should usually have overwhelming force and should usually take his objectives. It's the defender's job to make him pay as high a price as possible for this, but he must accept the likelihood of being driven back. CM's victory determination system, however, pretty much precludes an "AAR screen" defensive win in these conditions. But that's not important if you know who really won. Oh well, this is another subject entirely. To get back on track... I don't entirely understand your question but I'll give it my best shot. "Divisional" arty means guns owned by the artillery formation within the division and ultimately controlled at the division level of command to support the division's over-all mission. In most armies, a division was supposed to contain 3 line regiments (tanks and/or infantry) and 1 arty regiment, which was the "divisional" arty. Unless detached by higher HQ, the division always had its divisional arty available. The main mission of divisional arty is to help the division achieve its tactical goals. Divisions are grouped into corps. Attached to corps HQ are usually some number of independent (meaning not part of a division) arty units. The guns in these units were usually bigger and had longer range than those in the divisions. As such, they mainly were used for the operational-level goals of corps-level commanders, although they could add their fires to those of a division's guns to help achieve tactical goals as well. Arty really isn't a "strategic" weapon. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Michael Dorosh said: Just for the record, I didn't say "most" of the arty would be firing barrages, I said "at least some" But even if the guns were firing barrages, barrages from divisional guns would mostly be falling on divisional battlefield objectives, i.e., the CM battlefield, due to their relatively short range. Thus, the defender should be sucking up that fire, or have casualties inflicted arbitrarily in the set-up phase to represent its results. There's no way to do this in CM except by having the barrage guns be represented by FOs. If you have a neutral 3rd person to help, he can actually fire the barrage as planned per your orders by playing a few hotseat turns, then exit the FOs used for this and send the game to you. But otherwise, the only alternative is to normal FOs under full player control. The reason for 6 x 25pdr FOs is to give the battalion the full number of tubes it should have supporting it. 1 regiment = 24 x 25pdrs = 6 FOs the way CM does things. Having less FOs means having less tubes, in which case, how do you justify their absence? In the normal context of the war, the only way I can think of is by saying your battle is a diversion and the real fight is happening just off the map edge with another infantry battalion. Somehow, this just isn't satisfying to me I agree, it would be nice to vary the number of guns represented by 1 FO unit. I hope we see an option someday where we can have 1 FO control a dozen or more guns, or even less than 4 to represent damaged batteries. Completely agree. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Whoops, I see I forgot to say something about fire support from corps. Rather than edit the post above, I'll do it separately. First off, in WW2, almost all arty in a division was howitzers. These things had short range for arty, on the order of 10-15km. As such, given their usual distance behind the FEBA, they weren't much use for deep missions. So they were used almost entirely for direct battlefield support of their division's troops, whether on-call or by barrages. This made divisions pretty much self-sufficient in this regard. Corps level and above was were you usually found actual guns (as opposed to howitzers) with much longer range as well as usually bigger shells. Because divisions could usually take care of their own battlefield needs, these bigger weapons mostly did deep missions, taking advantage of their longer range. However, for various reasons, they were still sometimes used for battlefield support--that just wasn't their main job. As a result, imposing some sort of limit on the amount of really heavy arty available in a battle makes historical sense. After all, the deep missions are important, too, and using the big guns for battlefield support means some deep missions don't get shot. So where do you draw the line? Regular attacks normally wouldn't have such support, IMHO, unless there was a shortage of lighter stuff. Nor, I would think, should the big guns be found in company-sized battles because these just don't seem important enough for them by and large. OTOH, if the company is assumed to be trapped behind enemy lines, or off on a recon mission there, then the big guns are probably the only thing that can reach them. Thus, I'd think the main type of battle in which to have the really heavy stuff is a battalion-sized assault. The battle is large enough, and hard enough, to justify such firpower to ensure success. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I see nothing wrong with that much arty in that size battle, and this isn't because I'm an old cannoncocker In WW2, most US and German infantry divisions contained an arty regiment that itself contained a number of 105mm arty battalions at least equal to the number of infantry regiments. In addition, the arty regiment often also contained a battalion of 150 or 155mm howitzers, and more arty was often attached from corps. Now assume an infantry division is attacking with 2 infantry regiments and holding 1 in reserve. Further assume that one regiment is the division's main effort and the other is making some sort of subsidiary attack, and that in each attacking regiment, 2 battalions are attacking and 1 is in reserve. Thus, the division-level attack boils down to 4 battalions, 2 of which are making the main effort. If the division's arty regiment contains 3 battalions of 105mm and 1 of 150/155mm, that gives 4 arty battalions supporting 4 infantry battalions before considering additional support from corps. Because 2 of the infantry battalions are making the main effort, they will get more arty than the other 2. And one of these main effort battalions would probably be more in need of support than the other. Thus, it could easily happen that this infantry battalion would get the 150/155mm battalion and a 105mm battalion, the other main effort battalion would get a 105mm battalion, and the remaining 105mm battalion would get divided between the other battalions on the subsidiary mission. In CM, a single FO unit controls a single battery of 4 guns. An arty battalion usually contains 3 batteries, so you need 3 FOs to represent the support given by a battalion of arty. Now, in a 3000-point battle, you're talking about an attacking infantry battalion more or less. If you consider this to be the main effort battalion with the highest priority for fire support, then having 3 each 105mm and 150/155mm FOs in the battle is perfectly reasonable. The Brits did things a bit differently. Their infantry divisions usually had 3 arty "regiments" each of 3 "batteries" each of 8 x 25pdrs. So in a similar situation to the above with 4 infantry battalions attacking, they might have 1 regiment supporting each main effort infantry battalion and the 3rd regiment supporting the other 2. This gives 3 batteries per main effort battalion. Because a Brit battery had 8 guns, you need 2 FOs per battery. Thus, a main effort Brit battalion could easily have 6 x 25pdr FOs. All the above, however, opens up a big can of worms because FOs in CM have capabilities in some ways far exceeding those of real life WW2. They can move all over the map like they have radios instead of telephones, and can do so without the emcumbrance caused by the extreme weight of a WW2 radio. Plus (and in part because of the real WW2 limits on FO movement and communications), at least some of the available arty support for each battalion would probably be firing planned barrages instead of being on-call. So in these ways, CM arty is more flexible and responsive than it was in the real thing. OTOH, CM FOs have some severe limits that WW2 FOs didn't have. They can only adjust on-going FFE in a 100m radius, which is WAY too small. They can't shoot linear patterns. They can't shoot MT airbursts, mix airbursts and groundbursts in the same FFE, they can't shoot WP, they can't shoot illumes, and their FFE stops the moment they die instead of continuing for the number of rounds they called in. Plus now they can't use TRPs in anything approaching a realistic manner. So in these ways, CM arty is considerably less flexible and powerful than the real thing. My own opinion on all this is that the various inaccuracies of CM FOs in both directions more or less cancel out (except for the TRP thing, which REALLY hurts the defender). Thus, I think having the number of FOs for a 3000-point battle as derived above is the most realistic solution. This is certainly more realistic than arbitrarily limiting the amount of arty support an attacker can have to less than this amount. Hell, he should have the option of getting more from corps guns. IMHO, it's a great pity that BTS has chosen to reduce the attacking side's force ratios in attack and assault scenarios to considerably less than what is considered the minimum for these situations in real life. This makes it nearly impossible in a QB to give an attacking battalion the amount of arty it should really have, among other things. Thus, battles are reduced to pushing around tanks and grunts without adequate fire support, with the result that they die more than they should. This might be entertaining to some, but it's not how you're supposed to fight a war. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

ScoutPL said: Same goes for anybody in combat. You know as well as I do what the chances are of anybody on the firing line surviving even a few months' worth of a multi-year war. Yes, I've met a few such people. Hell, a cousin of mine was an Lt. in the 82nd AB and fought all through every single campaign that division did, from North Africa to the middle of Germany, without a scratch. But he was by far the exception (and if there's ever a war around here again, I'm using him as a shield ) Go look at this page: http://history.vif2.ru/library/archives/losses/losses3.html On it, you can see that most Soviet tank formations took 80-150% losses in every operation throughout the war. More to the point, there's another page on the same site, describing the experiences of an ATG officer defending the Sandomiertz Bridgehead in the fall of 1944. His unit took a 300% loss of ATGs in that time due to the usual result of taking out 1 tank per gun before the gun was destroyed by other tanks. So there ain't nowhere safe and you ain't gonna survive no matter what you do for a living out there. I'm sure ATR gunners took just as heavy losses as any other Soviet troops. But this doesn't mean they didn't hurt the Germans. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

the Commisar said: All this bullhorn and vodka crap pales into insignificance compared to the absence from CM of bagpipe units ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Good luck. I hope the spelling of this thread's title isn't a bad omen ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Michael emrys said: You know, this single waypoint thing is what you get when you select a whole group of units and give them a movement command. So maybe it would be easiest just to make the Russian hordes only capable of receiving group movement orders. Don't know if this single waypoint is realistic for such occasions, but if it is, this would be pretty slick When units are moving, the AI will detour them around impassable terrain, so I don't think we have to worry about that. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I think some of you may have the wrong idea about tank turrets getting blown off. In most cases, this does NOT happen immediately upon vehicle destruction. Usually, it happens after the knocked-out tank has been burning for some time. To blow a multi-ton turret off, you require a HUGE instantaneous force inside the fighting compartment acting on the bottom of the turret. In a tank, the only possible source for this force is the HE shells. AP rounds had 0 or very little HE content and the propellant for all rounds doesn't explode, it just burns very intensely. Plus a fuel tank explosion isn't sufficiently powerful and usually isn't in the fighting compartment anyway. So, HE... HE in shells is very insensitive to shock--otherwise, it could not be fired from guns. Thus, it's usually not going to explode just from the impact of a penetrating round. However, some types of HE are sensitive to prolonged exposure to high temperatures (Russian more than others, apparently). Thus, the HE usually only goes off after the tank has been burning for some time. Plus, such big, long-duration fires heat up all the HE more or less equally, so it all goes off at once. This generates sufficient force to blow the turret clean off, or fracture the hull and/or turret seams. But just 1 or 2 shells going off inside usually won't do this, unless you're talking about an SP gun or assault howitzer with really big shells. So, the usual process of explosive tank destruction goes like this: 1. The tank is set afire by some means, usually by hits in propellant cartridges or fuel tanks. If the former case, the propellant usually all burns at once in something resembling the catastrophic explosion in CM. This intensive flash of fire usually ignites everything else flammable in the tank, leading to a sustained fire heating up the whole mess over time. It also usually creates enough overpressure inside to lift the turret a few inches but no more. Then the turret often falls back onto the hull but slightly askew, just as is usually seen in CM. 2. After several minutes of general stem-to-stern burning of the wrecked tank, the temperature inside has built up a lot. While this is going on, MG ammo, smoke grenades, etc., will be cooking off, and the fuel tanks will usually go if they haven't already. Sometimes, depending on the type of HE in the shells, how they are stored, and the type of fire involved, the temperature will build up enough to cook off the HE. All shells usually get near their cook-off temperature about the same time, and are often more shock-sensitive in this state, so the detonation of 1 shell usually causes all of them to go off together. 3. When the HE goes, one of several things can happen. This depends on the amount of HE in each shell, the number of shells exploding simultaneously, how they are positioned in the tank, how the tank is built, and how its structure has been effected by the fire and whatever started it. Thus, final effects can vary considerably. At the low end, the internal HE explosion leaves the vehicle essentially intact externally, but drives all internal fittings and bulkheads into the ends, leaving an empty room except for the engine. Often, hatches blow off as well. In the middle, the turret can pop off, or both it and/or the hull can fail on seams, thus blowing off just chunks of tank plating. At the top end, the entire vehicle can fragment, leaving only the engine and the bottom sections of track to mark its grave. To do all this in CM, the existing system of fires and catastrophic explosions should be left alone as far as initial results go (although the graphics of the catastrophic explosion should be tweaked as mentioned in another thread). Assuming the vehicle is burning as a result, then several minutes later there'd be a chance (higher for Russians) of an HE explosion within the wreck, which is where new stuff would come in. This would result in a range of different final vehicle conditions, depending on the magnitude of the explosion. Check out the pictures here: http://people.delphi.com/jtweller/gulfwar.htm All destroyed vehicles on this page were of the same type: Iraqi 2S1 SP guns. Every one of them suffered an internal HE explosion of a varying number of 122mm arty shells (much larger than the shells carried by most WW2 MBTs). As you can see, the results varied on the scale I mentioned above. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

As to the nusiance value of Russian anti-tank rifles, I've read several memoirs of Tiger commanders. While the ATR had no hope of penetrating a Tiger, this isn't what the Russians were after. The ATR was apparently just as accurate as any large-bore rifle. This made it capable of hitting very small targets at fairly long range. So the Russians used the ATR to snipe at the vision blocks and weapon sights of thick-skinned AFVs. If the vision block or sight went straight through, such a shot might actually penetrate into the tank. But even if it didn't, and even it it was the top of a periscope, the big bullet would cause a serious degradation of view out of the vision block. AFVs often carry spare periscopes and such that can be changed from the inside. However, enough ATR hits and the tank would be blind, even if physically undamaged. This left the tank crew the option of unbuttoning or withdrawing from action. Unbuttoning was often not an option, so in this way an ATR could mission-kill even vehicles as heavy as Tigers. That's nothing to be sneezed at. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

curih said: Woohoo! That's the type of result I was looking for--very bloody and very close Did this happen in the 3rd version or one of the earlier ones? I lost your email address so have been unable to learn how the 3rd version worked for you. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I once tried to build a Heurtgen Forest operation. All in tall pines, the German front line consisted of a continuous belt of wire and mines backed up by a few MG pillboxes, a few more bunkers, a VG company filling the intervals, and a fair amount of arty with TRPs galore (before the infamous TRP de-nutting). The US had a full battalion of infantry with some arty support. One day just for grins, I let the AI play the US. It spent the first 1/2 of the battle probing the defenses with 1/2 squads until if found a sally port in the line of wire. This sally port was a re-entrant funnel of wire with scattered mines and TRPs in it, leading to a bunker and a VG rifle platoon in foxholes. For the 2nd 1/2 of the battle, the AI conducted a human wave attack into this sally port. All the German arty was falling on the TRPs covering it and anything that got through that faced point blank smallarms fire AND the US arty that was falling on the German defenders. Despite this fire, the German grunts were disappearing so a reserve SMG platoon hustled about 400m to reinforce them. At the end of the battle, the VG rifle platoon was wiped out, the SMG platoon was about 1/2 gone, and the bunker was down a crewman. But inside the funnel, an area about 40m x 60m, lay the corpses of virtually an entire US rifle battalion. It looked like that Brit trench on Spion Kop in the Boer War, truly an "acre of massacre". ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Guy w/gun said: Besides all the in-game command and control problems already mentioned, I can think of another thing: realistic defending unit boundaries represented by map edges. This is actually something applicable to CM1 scenario design as well. Basically, the idea is that if the CM scenario represents a battalion-sized part of a division- or larger-sized battle, then the defending side is probably best considered as a section of a long continuous front. Thus, the defending side shouldn't have its flanks in the air for the attacker to maneuver around. Ergo, the attacker is forced into a frontal assault by the narrow map. Hoffbauer said: This isn't true. When the encircled Russians were trying to break out of the pocket in the May 1942 Kharkov battle, they reportedly used the stereotypical Russian human waves: masses of drunk, often unarmed soldiers charging into dug-in MGs with arms linked. Apparently they did this mostly at night, although the Germans used flares extensively. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Dirtweasle said: Well, if you're short enough on your TO&E compliment of assault guns, ATG guns, or TDs, to start dragging your arty up into the trenches, you've got a big problem. It might not be a full-blown emergency, but it certainly exceeds the scope of your normal operating parameters BTW, I have CWTE myself. Great book. I used its bocage tactics section in the great Willy Peter debate some time ago Yeah, they had to do this a lot to overcome their elevation limitations. Either find a natural hill in the right place with the right slope, or make one. See my post above with the picture of the M7B2 and M7B1. This is another reason why trying to use SP guns as on-board indirect fire weapons isn't a good idea. They'd have to be placed on such slopes, which would mean they'd have no LOS toward the enemy, or at least be unable to depress the gun enough for direct fire (Priest had only -5^ depression, less than the slope of the hill). So to use direct fire, they'd have to move, which would prevent them from doing indirect fire. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.