Los

"So....are you saying its easy or common that one could hit a target the size of 2 men at say around 100 yards away and about 3 stories high on a roof with a rifle grenade in 1 shot? (judging from the BoB scene)" What a highly trained paratrooper? Who by the way would have been designated the Rifle grenade guy in his squad, having spent months leading up to the invasion going to the range weekly. I'd say it's perfectly possible. It's all in the training. One can be lethal with any weapon so long as they train with it. Los

"Unfortunately not available on DVD... and Amazon wants $50US for it!" I just bougt a DVD copy on Ebay for like $12.99 plus shipping! Los

In scenario design there are several parameters you can adjust wrt your leaders. Los

I do have a copy and enjoyed the "Lost Command". Anyone wearing a lizard cap is "kewl". Los

Speaking of Vietnam has anyone ever seen a French movie called Platoon 317? It's supposed to be pretty good, French in Indochina. And while I'm on the French did anyone ever see the "Lost Command" with Anthony Quinn (Algeria). I've also seen "Battle of ALgiers". What other French flicks am I missing from the post WW2 era? Los

Keep up the good work! Los

Whatever, enough with the horsesh*t preaching. The issue is whether Vietnam would make for interesting CM battles. It's the same argument cast against every other non-WW2 european theater that's come up, (Pacific, Modern, Vietnam, whatever.) In each case it's a clear issue of those against the idea having an apparently "dim" understanding of what tactical combat in those theaters was all about, or hanging their hat on one type of battle. I suppose when CMx comes out and (if) it's not about WW2 in Europe there's going to be a few unhappy campers. Los

"Mine isn't really the Vietnam battle... just has some of the flavorings of it. It is 500. SS-Fallschirm-Bataillon's attack on Tito's HQ. Similar situation" Berli, If you are designing that battle I have some material for you, let me know. Los

SPOILER ALERTS Ok lets think about this and compare it to what happened for real. "After 20+ Turns of scrambling around gathering forces, the German player is faced with all of the ones he fought with being cut off, his reinforcements and one Crack Platoon being on what is now the right (east) side of the front." This is as it should be. 1/2 FJR had to make an airborne assault under heavy fire in occupied territory, got themselves togeter, secured Racchi Ridge and act as a blocking force against the movement of British forces between the Northern and Southern parts of Leros. That day and into the next the Paras fought cut off against furious counter-attacks from North and South. A company+ of paras dropped as reinforcements later in the day were all but annihlated dropping in the same area which 1/2 FJR was holding. (Yeesh one whole stick plowed into the ground by dropping so low that their chutes never opened.) So at the start of battle two (unless all your paras have ignored their orders and run pell mell through enemy fire to the safety of the Kustenjager!), you should have your paras behind enemy lines but ensconcened in perimeters in critical postiions on Racchi Ridge and other areas. Decisions you make in that first battle after the drop resonate well into battle 2 and 3. As for troops being scattered, the majority of platoons that are seperated can be reconstituted within 2 turns. And in battle 2 the paras should be on the wrong side of the line. It's incumbant upon the German player to link up the forces on the east side and the onces stuck in the central part of the map. Again a link-up of these forces is a central part of an airborne operation. The Germans should be stuck on the wrong side of the line for at least 2 turns if not three. Which is exactly how the thing plays out if the German player runs things correctly. He has to hold Racchi Ridge and effect link up with the kusten jager and reinforceing ground forces, clearing the brits out of the way between the two as he goes. Once he does that, he'll find himself on the right side of the frontline trace. Until then you have to manage what your units are doing and conserve ammo, perfectly doable with a modicum of thought. The Leros op follows in general what happened in the real op, presenting the German commander with more or less the same problems as his historical counterpart, complete with all the frustrations that have been designed in there on purpose. It's not a design flaw, it's on purpose. You clearly do not want to be presented with those frustrations, fine, move along, but don't couch your personal preference problems with some sort of position that OP design in CM is flawed and then expect us not to rebut. I too do not like every op battle ever distributed on a CM disk. But those are my personal preferences. I have no interest in Tank Battles or very small battles etc. But certainly others do. So if I play one I sure as hell aren't going to come in here and slag off designers because they included them in here and they don't go accoring to what I think they should be. Los p.s. As the designer of Leros, which clearly sent Blow off the deep end, I don't take any personal offence to his rough-around-the-edges comments towards the op. (Though he has made unecessary nastier comments towards others.) In fact, in the past, I've had as much fun discussing the why's and historiocity of the ops as I've had designing them. [ December 22, 2003, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

"Since you are all for chaos, can we have a version where my side's AA guns can "accidentally" shoot friendly CAS down?" Who know's it could already be factored into the equation? "So when the CAS pilot sees tanks and infantry advancing towards the town, they're unable to reason like a human (gee whiz, those looks like troops attacking the town, which would mean they're OUR troops), and just strafe what they see, because they see it." We are giving way to much credit to most uncontrolled CAS pilot's ability to be be able to discern exactly what's happening on the ground in the middle of a battle. Again, this is also a function of experience level of CAS assigned. If you want accurate, error-free CAS, better include Crack or elite pilots. I you want "so-so" then go regular. What's not in CM is the carefully controlled CAS most of you are looking forward, with TAC-Ps or FACs or even ground-based controlled measures ("Start the purple!") You, like most ground commanders at the Bn or Company, have absolutely no control over this type of CAS. Even when those measure I mentioned above are present they are above Company or bn level control as there's not a lot of them to go around. As someone stated before, the solution to this (other than a rewrite by CM which won't happen), is a function of scenario design. If you are going to design a scenario for say the start of the XXX-Corps offensive in Market Garden and you want to have Michael Caine bringing in CAS, then you are going to have to abstract this by providing an additional FO with artillery. (And make the vroom vroom airplane noises yourself)even having elite pilots won't put CAS where you think it's needed. If you want to simulate a situation say at the start of the Crete invasion where the Luftwaffe was roaming around beating up everything that moved mostly interdicting enemy forces but sometimes getting their own, then you want CAS as it's defined in CM today. In fact I think the very term CAS as you have it in CM is a misnomer. Los

"I put 12 M3 GMC, 4 halftracks, and 5 jeeps in open desert. I gave the Germans one hiding FO to avoid autosurrender, and 11 Bf-109s strafing - the nearest thing to P-38s without bombs. It took a little longer than 3 minutes. The result was 17 vehicles destroyed" Wow, it shows that a squadron of fighters with complete air superiority and no flak to worry about can shoot up a column of vehicles in three minutes. Sounds like a reasonable outcome to me. Los

How about if CM executes the command "Format C:"

CAS and it's implementation have been discused in great detail on this board or ready so I won't rehash but: The game does not depict directed CAS from TAC-Ps or even FACs. It's the kind fo CAS most often depicted in the battle area, the kind that the company or battalion commander has absolutely no control over. The reasons for this have been discussed elsewhere. What's obvious to you on the ground is clearly not obvious to pilot overhead speeding along trying to avoid ground fire, looking out for enemy fighters, trying to read a map, figure out who's who, or just out on a lark trying to beat up some ground targets. Even today with all the control measures and technology in place, under close direction, accidents still happen. (I myself was nearly killed in an erroneous strafing run from an F18 a year and a half ago) It's very easy given pilot task saturation in combat even in WW2 that getting misoriented, or misidentifying targets was a common occurance. To me there is absoultely nothing wrong with getting the occasional bad CAS atatck no matter how frustrating it is at the time. It happens in real battle. It's just another event that have to take into account. Los

WARNING: I've included CAS in Descent on Maleme so run for your life. The real battle is rife with CAS, but without guidance from the ground. (In other words the CM variety) There are several recorded instances where CAS attacked germans instead of Commonwealth. And in one case a CAS strike proved to be a crtical battle winning event. However In all my playings of the operation (and Leros) CAS has never hit friendly forces yet but has nailed enemy forces a number of times. BTW the higher the skill level the better chance that CAS hits where it's supposed to. LT Badger sez: "I play the game for fun, and random disasters don't add anything to the fun for me." Moon, Steve, can you make a note of that? The next time a CM game is released mark one of the "Fun-non chaos" versions for LT Badger. After all ramdom disasters have no place in the carefuly controlled environment that an accurate world war 2 game should be. But put aside one of the "Fun-Chaos included" versions for me... Los [ December 19, 2003, 04:49 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

I agree, everything I've designed has been to my tastes and what I want out of an op in CM. With a bunch of people doing that you get a good variety to choose from. I've designed four Ops on the CDs, Villers-Bocage, Carentan, Maleme and Leros. They have one thing in common: they are all very large ops in terms of area size. For me personally I like the freedom to explore true operational maneuver (as it's defined in CM). Some people don't like having to cover so much area, or have hardware issues, in that case there are a number of very nice smaller ops others have done. But if it's not a labor of love first and foremost then it's already set up for failure. Los

SOME MINOR LEROS SPOILERS! Sorry you didn't like the op. In both airborne operations the effect of the scatter is done on purpose. Not every airborne operation starts with fighting right out of the airplane, but in both Leros and Maleme this was a the critical phase of the battle. Had these battles started with the airborne forces already concentrated you would miss out on what was the biggest problem for the commander and one of the most critical phase of the fight. This is in contrast to say an Op centered around Market Garden where most of the drops were not seriously contested. If dealing with the first critical minutes of the invasion and the hassle of scatter is not your cup of tea, stop playing the op imediately and move on. Or better yet edit it. As far as how the AI calculates OP front lines, well it is what it is. Getting into subsequent turns on both ops would kind of be a spoiler. But in the Leros case you end up with the same problem your counterparts ended up with. Most of them will get no resupply until you start taking ground and connecting the dots. Again pretty much similar to what happended in the real battle. If you had everyone blow their wad in the first battle you are screwed. In both Ops each play through ended up in a white knucle affair, regardless of whether every minute of the battle unfolded historically correct. As far as Operations design in the combat mission series in general, it's been one of the strong features of the game and generally the ops delivered have been very highly received. It's very difficult to make an operation go the exact way it's historical real battle did. WHat you can do accurately is present the player with a very similar opening situation to what his counterpart faced and then from there off he goes into his own experience. On the other had Operations are exponentially more hard to design than battles. A critical part of battle design is playing it through a few times, making tweaks and what not for cause and effect to get the AI to perform some reasonable facsimile of your intent in order that the fight flows how you want. In an Op is very time intensive to test since you have to fight multiple battles and getting the first one right is easy, but to get the second and third right means making changes and then fighting your way through the first one all over again. It can take weeks to get one operation right unless you are a full time op designer without a real job and not working to any type of time schedule. In particular sometimes you want to try an op as either an assault or an attack or whatever and you might run two concurrent tests to try and establish which op type is the most effective for what you want to accomplish. And always you have to deal with that dreaded front line draw between battles. I remember the first time I played through Leros and then saw the front line trace drawn by the porgram on Battle two. At first I was distraught and looked at changing parameters and whatnot and then started another run through. But I continued to play the original and eventually realized that there was nothing wrong with flow of the fight. Most of the units land close enough together that they can be consolidated with a turn or two. Some are in deep **** right off the bat. Depending on what youa ccomplish in the first turn you are in good stead for future turns. It's important to consolidate in the first battle. If you do not consider your objectives, your situation at the start of the op or if you expend all your ammo in the first battle you will be screwed later on, a real consideration. Providing you make the right choices in consolidation and what terrain to grab you will have a chance in the second battle. Most units will get no resupply in the second battle due to how the AI draws the front line. This is completely realistic, the Paras had to hold on to Racchi Ridge with no support other than CAS while they fended off fierce attacks by the defenders. That is exactly what happens in the second battle. But the Kustenjager also have to consoldate their hold on the city of Leros, and push the front line trace NW in an attempt to reach the paras, those of which who are not holding Racchi should be pushing SE. Eventually by battle three you should have linked your front line. If you want to get resupplied and sustain yoru force you will figure out a way to make that happen or whither on the vine. Hopefully the FJ bn cdr has husbanded platoons in reserve the whole time to keep a core of units ready for fierce fighting in each battle. Then in the final turns it's the job of the Germans to push south. What starts out looking like a confusing shambles of an op ends up being a coherent fight that more or less follows the general outlines of the battle. Los [ December 18, 2003, 07:38 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

"I'm afraid that CMBO is out of the loop, old-fashioned stuff that was excellent two years ago but is decidedly not-on in late 2003." Speak for yourself, many of us still play CMBO as well as the other two. Los

OK here's some documentaries I have or have seen that I would recommend. Definately grab World at War, the DVD is about seventy bucks on Amazon or ebay. There's IIRC at least four tapes covering the eastern Front. From International Historic Films ypu can get the follwoing that I've seen. "Battle of Stalingrad" (Russian Film on the battle) "Battle of kharkov: 1942" German wartime documentary on the battle, good footage. "Men Against tanks:" How infantry destroys tanks. Includes an attack (training attack) with about 20 T34s which are all destroyed using live fire with various infantry tank killer methods. "Die Frontshau" (also known as Gebrisjager in Action) 3 German infantry officer training films each depicting live action on eth Russian front and how to do stuff like attack a village, defend against attack in extreme cold weather, etc. Highly recommended. "Through Enemy Eyes:" There's porbably 50 1xhour episodes of german newsreel reports of the war, you can find lots of good footage of the Russian war through their perspective. "Russians at War" Russian COmbat footage from 1942 winter campaign Available from RZM and other sites "Achtung Panzers:" Film on Germn tanks including a segment of good footage on Khursk and a very well porduced 30 min training film on the use of Reserves in Regimental Defense, which depicts a russioan battle. great stuff great footage. "The Russian Front:1941-1945" A pretty good four tape documentary about the Russian front. Good overview. A solid 3.5 hours "Hunter of the Sky" This is like a 20 tapes series (30 mins each) about fighter combat. There's 4 or 5 that are russian Front Specific. ANyway that oughta hold you over for a few days providing you have sufficient popcorn. Los

"If you don't get the time to move your support weapons into support positions and you are sure you didn't do anything wrong ...snip... then the battle is either outright too short or the designer thinks it should be played by just running tanks and squads around." I agree very much here. I normally dislike scenarios that start you off right in the action without having the ability to work out your own advance. This way you can make your own mistakes. Los

One word: Reserves. Actually read this article on combatmisison.com: Grafenwohr Infantry primer And see an example of how reserves make a difference. Los Los

"Several sources I have come across specifically mention that although you could reload single cartridges into a Garand magazine, it was a total pain in the ass to accomplish and was practically never done in practice." Of course you can always just clear the weapon. Unload the old clip by locking the operating rod handle to the rear, holding it there and depressing the clip latch. Takes about a second or two. Then load a fresh clip and reload the other one at your convenience. WARNING IF YOU AREN'T IN THE MIDDLE OF A FIREFIGHT, PUT THE WEAPON ON SAFE FIRST! (Don't wanna get sued by some tool) Los

Michael, I don't know the answer to your question, but here's a link to the AAR: http://www.carlisle.army.mil/cgi-bin/usamhi/DL/showdoc.pl?docnum=32 I find it fascinating to read the thoughts of these legends from the 82d in their own words, so soon after the legendary operation. Los

Wasi, I could be wrong as I have not seen the German version, but please check your CMAK root directory for the PDF file which contains the full 200+ page CMAK manual. "Handsome intelligent people such as my self think that this defeats the whole point of belt fed LMGs and run around (or make others run around) with either 100rd belts in cloth bags or just naked belts of 30." Just to expand on Bastables ammo portage minutae. Both M249 and M240 have cloth pack accessories for his purpose. (as he alludes) The M60 didn't need it since each 100 carton came in a cloth bag that you could hook to the feed tray. The M16 magazine fed option was there to get rounds to the SAW from riflemen in a pinch not so much for walking around, since the cloth bags are available. I don't think anyone (well that had any sense) in WW2 or otherwise porting an LMG walked around in a combat area with no rounds in the weapon. (any cursory instpection of pictures of documentary footage shows this. Both Mg42 and MG34 had small drums for portage use.) Likewise relative firepower performance under 150 meters being linked to the factor of any perceived abiity of one weapon to be brought from portage to firing quicker or more effectively over another can be brought to bear is not good programming. That factor would be better linked to time it takes a unit to go from moving to firing. RE: K98 vs Lee Enfield. I have both and love both. I'm guessing the extra firepower probably has to do with the 10 vs 5 round internal magazines since working the bolt on each provides practically a negligable advantage. Anyways anyone banging away that fast on a bolt action rifle is not going to hit much anyways. Well unless your playing Day of Defeat, the K98 is lethal in that game! Los [ December 11, 2003, 12:33 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

Interesting thread. Full magazines are almost never issued from the factory or even depot. A soldier is issued x amount of empty magazines and it's his responsibility to retain them, though certainly more are made available through the supply system. This is why virtually every war movie you ever see where the guy throws away the magazines is a crock. What's he gonna do when they he runs out of mags? Magazines are not pre-loaded in the factory (this has a detrimental effect on the springs in the mags and leads to more jams, leads to problems with corrosion and various climates, not to mention being more labor intensive and costly.) For U.S., Ammunition normaly came in "stripper clips". (Apparently for the BAR it's five or ten round stripper clip)s, The clip is seated atop the magazine and then the rounds are pushed into the mag. Or you can get loose rounds and load them individually. Garand ammo comes pre-loaded in stripper clips and since the magazine on a garand is internal (It's really just a well) the stripper clip is just inserted whole into the weapon. (Hence that trademark k-ching after you've fired your eight rounds.) Disintergrating link ammo usually comes already linked but for cloth belt fed ammo like early war machine guns you can see in some documentaries, the troops, prior to an operation, hand loading the rounds into a device that inserts them into the cloth or whatever type of belt. This is stuff guys did during their down time or on the long boring ride on the assault ship out into theater. And while we're on the micro-subject of ammo packaging, most grenades and mortar rounds (back then and today) came in crates and then sub packed in wax cartons. (they tried to shy away from metal due to danger w/ static electricity.) The mortar rounds were often sealed in way so prior to an operation you had to do the fairly laborious task of unsealing each round individually and then normally putting it back into the carton so you can carry it but then get it out in a hurry. In cold weather this is a fairly easy task but in hot weather it's a sticky and mucky job. Grenades are a bit easier in that the little can has a tape pull that removes the top and you slide out the grenade. Today's grenades have further packing material around the fuze and spoon you have to remove I don't know if the ones back then did. The Germans due to resource restraints used reusable wicker containers for their artillery and mortar round packing materials. Back to the BAR it was very popular by those who used it both in WW2 and Korea, which says a lot for the quality and utlity of the weapon itself. (Not that it does the same job as an MG42) Even up to early Vietnam, BARs were highly sought after by SF units. An interesting AAR I just read, conducted a few weeks after Normandy, by all the Battalion Commanders from the 82d has them unanimously claiming that BARs should be upped to two per squad, and that Machinegun squads should put all their M1919 LMGs in bundles and have them recovered later while every LMG gunner actually drops with a BAR. After the initial assault those additional BARs can be handed off to the infnatry squads (who could always find use for extra BARs). Los [ December 11, 2003, 12:07 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

Actually the full manual is in your CMAK root directory, it's not accessible from the CD. Los