L4Pilot

BTW, where did you get v1.12? Michael

I set up a 35th Division Yahoo group (with Div CO's permission) and issued invitations to all Allied COs. So far no takers.

I did.

Request left at the AK thread. Michael

Sorry, should have said any level Allied command. Michael

Long time CMBO, BB, AK player. Interested in any level command. Lot's of time now that my favorite team is out of the playoffs. Edit: to remove email address to defeat evil spam crawlers. Looking forward to the campaign. [ October 08, 2007, 01:40 PM: Message edited by: L4Pilot ]

I, for one, sincerely hope you are correct.

As said elsewhere on this forum, practice your CMBB skills anew. </font>

Member #304 agrees with member #10780.

Just like the French look at Napoleon as French.

No just the overlayed squares. Nothing else. But the original map may have and I just can't see them. Panther Commander [/QB]</font>

Does the map have longitude and latitude markings? L4

Does the name "Sahara" bring back any memories? [ November 10, 2003, 09:34 PM: Message edited by: L4Pilot ]

So does this mean that a campaign game module is possible? (With a lot of hard work and brilliant programming, of course.) Because if you can script the mouse and keystrokes to create maps in the CMBB interface from an external file that represents a larger map... couldn't you also... script the mouse and keystrokes in the CMBB interface to create setup zones on those maps, script the mouse and keystrokes about what forces to put where, script the mouse and keystorkes to set the casualty levels and ammo levels...and stuff like that? Just a thought. Heck, I'd pay for that... [ January 21, 2003, 10:13 PM: Message edited by: L4Pilot ]

To just screw up the discussion even more, my example with the IS-2 did not involve the "hull-down" command. As an old CMBO'er, I still like to place them myself. And once it was there, I had a clear line of sight to the point, in front of it, in back of it, to the left and to the right of it, with no obstructed lines of sight reported for multiple yards around. And still the ditch digging effect. If this is an intentional part of the game, why doesn't the LOS indicator line report "Main Gun Blocked" like it does for the bow MG when that is the case? And just a suggestion to anybody to whom it might apply: probably a good idea to edit any messages that contain derogatory slang terms for female genitalia before somebody bigger, badder and balder comes along and "edits" the poster.

I've observed this. Frustrating when it's a IS-2 with limited HE to begin with, and the errant shells casue friendly casualties. Is it related to the "double hull down" effect, where even though one tank is on a reverse slope, peeking over the crest, and the other is on flat terrain for a hundred meters in all directions, both show as "hull down"?

Yeah, that Moussorgsky could write some real toe-tappers....

Agreed, very interesting thread. Synthesizing the comments above, troop effectiveness seems to be a 3 dimensional matrix: Training, Experience and Morale (aka Motivation) They can each vary somewhat independently (though there are obviously interactions between the three.) Morale level doesn't vary due just to recent failure or success. There's also a long term, theater wide, element to it. (I.e. how's the war going?) Would it matter how much training and experience you had if you were trapped in the Stalingrad Pocket after relief efforts had failed? More grist for the thought mill.

LOL! Proof that Soviet Workers and Peasants Army invented concept of Vertical Envelopment!

Agreed. Other than fanaticsm is not adjustable (if it's present at all, I can't tell...) in QB's. And if the solution is more points for the attacker, BFC might have up'd the attackers point advantage and QB length to produce QB's where both sides have a roughly even chance of prevailing.

No, it was worse than that. It was blasted, moon-like terrain, that provided unsure, fatiguing footing and necessitated frequent detours. All of which slowed an advance. Yet significant numbers of soldiers frquently crossed hundreds of meters of this type of terrain against machine gun fire. In CMBB, with less obstructive terrain and shorter distances, they drop, pin, panic, break and rout.

Sounds like a good plot for a Thirties movie on the futility of war. However, per Joseph Miranda, in "World War I and the Revolution in Warfare" in S&T #198 (Jul/Aug 1999) (and he is referring to the general course of trench warfare, not a specific battle or incident) The point being that the problem was not failing to reach the opposing trenchs, as you suggest, but failing to do so with enough numbers and with sufficient communications with their headquarters so as to be able to hold their "gains" against counterattack. The tragedy of that style of warfare was not that so many lives were sacrificed for no gain, but that so many lives were sacrificed for such small gains. As an example, the Germans were able to push the French back 2 to 4 miles over the course of the battle of Verdun. It just cost them five months and hundreds of thousands of casulaties to do so. :eek: And the relevance to CMBB is, again, if soldiers could make their way across hundreds of meters of the forbidding terrain of No Man's Land, why can't they make their way over a few dozen meters of less forbidding terrain without dropping, pinning, breaking and routing?

The five platoons I was referring to were all using coordinated area fire and the "advance" command. But all this does bring up the question of why could they do it in WWI, but not in WWII. How could men cross hundreds of meters of open terrain at a jog (I assume) against machine gun fire (admittedly with horrible casualties) without dropping, breaking and routing in WWI? But not 60 meters in CMBB? Is anybody saying the German, French and British troops on the Western Front in WWI were braver, better led and motivated, faced less fire (from massed, watercooled Maxims), more brutally disciplined, carried higher firepower weapons, could run faster, or faced less complex entrenchments than the German and Russian forces on the Eastern Front in WWII? So what accounts for the ability of WWI soldiers to consistently be able to cross several hundred meters of open terrain in enough numbers to (temporarily, at least) occupy opposing trenchworks against automatic weapon fire that produced high casualty rates. But in CMBB, 5 unbloodied platoons of men drop, pin, break and rout trying to cover 60 meters from cover to cover? And no, not all Russian troops were fanatical on the Eastern Front. But enough of them were to garner repeated comment from their enemies. I think some work needs to be done here.

Before going further, I wanna say I strongly feel CMBB is an improvement over CMBO in how it treats infantry attacking in the face of automatic weapons fire. No question. It's only the propensity for troops to break and run when under such fire, rather than just hug earth and crawl, or hug earth and shoot, or just hug earth, that has me furrowing my brow in puzzlement... Oh, and as for how much fire it takes to keep somebody from doing something, I've known some ex-platoon sergeants that could be AMAZINGLY persuasive. I'm not claiming military experience here, just life experience with some people with military experience. :eek: [ October 31, 2002, 04:21 AM: Message edited by: L4Pilot ]

Unfortunately I don't have nearly as much time as I would like to think, test, and post about CMBB. My comments regarding routing were not meant to be conclusive, but observational. The troops involved were 5 platoons of regulars, in command, using area fire to attempt to suppress defenders, advancing from smoke into cover, into an area subject to a Katyusha barrage a few minutes before and 120mm mortar fire just before, with armor attempting to provide HE support against defenders not in the immediate attack area (with some success). So an attempt, at least, at a coordinated assault. I've also seen similar results by attacking German troops. I'd love to test the withdraw command to see if the troops actually run faster than the fast command. My impresion of the withdraw command is that it gives a delay reduction but not a speed increase. A delay reduction because it is easier to organize and communicate ("Fall back! Fall back!), and more likely to be obeyed quickly without lengthy "persuasion" (swearing, shouting, butt-kicking) on the part of the non-coms. Another thing I wish I had the time to test was the effect of posture on casualties and on perceived (by the target unit) firepower. When a unit "goes to ground" as a result of incoming fire, say in open terrain, does it continue taking casualties at the same rate as it did when it was upright and moving? Or is the number of casualties per unit of incoming firepower per unit of time reduced because they are more difficult targets? A seperate question, more important to the breaking and routing question, does a change in posture change the speed of progression from OK to Panic to Routed? When a unit goes prone from incoming fire, does it FEEL safer in the new lower mobility, lower exposure posture? Or does it continue to say "Oh! we're in open terrain, receiving X amount of fire, we will continue to progress towards reduced levels of morale at the same rate as when we were standing up" ? If the latter is the case, it could explain the "run, drop, panic, and rout" syndrome observed. In other words, is infantry losing the ability to move out of incoming fire (into, say, covering terrain) when they change posture, but continuing to progress to reduced states of morale based on the firepower and the terrain but not posture? I don't know if that's the case or not, but I'm curious if it is. I think what we're trying to do here is not just say whether or not we think the current behavior does or doen't feel realistic, but identify just what parts of the behavior does or does not feel right. I'm exhausted.