Los

I agree with Andreas (am at work or I would be forking over refrences right now). The Arras counterattack had little bearing on German decisions on how to handle Dunkirk. Los BTW didn't someone make an early war total conversion for CM once? I'd love to get my hands on that. I have the pacific TC and it's a great thing... [ October 15, 2003, 09:24 AM: Message edited by: Los ]

Ellis' Cassino book confirms what TRL is saying. In fact either in that book or somewhere else in a Cassino book, I have seen these troops. IIRC they are wearing French helmets and have these wazoo quilted traditional wool overcoats type things (that actually look warmer than what the normal issue overcoats. Sorry but am at work and can't give more confirm than that right now. Los [ October 15, 2003, 10:42 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

If I recall, Mussolini led a couple of bayonet charges during WW2... Los

If you work really hard at, it maybe you can get a flamewar started between the CMBO and CMAK factions of the bbs. Los

Most of the colonial troops (Algerians/Morrocans) were wearing their traditional uniform items still. Los

Some detailed study of Cassino would find that the French Expeditionary Corps in Italy had some of the better performing troops and one of the best commanders (Juin IIRC). So they did OK with their crapola (hey who wants a french rifle when you can have a garand or a lee-enfield!). Los

This has been mentioned before in the forum, it's not like it's unknown. Sorry for your frustration. (It's happened to me in CMBO) 36K points? Yeesh... Los

I happen to agree that leaving the post numbers out of obvious view is a good thing. In many forums people with low post numbers are sometimes discounted as if they just were born the day before and have no idea of the subject matter they are talking about. And likewise, because someone has a lot of posts they almost start deluding themselves into thinking that makes them right, and they actually know what they are talking about. (this occurs here from time to time with member numbers). It detracts in a small way from actually looking and what they are saying and basing your reactions or opinions on the message conveyed. Of course us Americans are always absurdly enamored with stats... Los

We on the CMBB team researched, in detail, NKVD operations against their own troops and the whole policy of Stalin's Order 227 did have an effect on the war, albeit the strongest effects lasting only for a certain period of time starting in the winter of 41 but tapering off after Stalingrad. There was neither a shortage of sources either official researched or anectdotal in supporting the extent to which 227 was implemented. If one calculates the TOE and strengths of the penal units at Corps, Army and other levels and does the math, (13 fronts each with 1-3 Penal bns for officers and 5-10 penal coys for men per subordinate Army within the front) there were a significantly large amount of soldiers (up to a quarter million, well over two divisions per front)in the pipeline to give these soldiers an opportunity to "redeem their crimes against the Motherland by blood." Or essentially to be disposed of as Front and Army commanders see fit. (Note: this does not include outright executions.) BUT>>>> Most of this has nothing to do with CMBB's scale and the 30-60 minutes duration of those battles. Before testing started, we did slice and dice in great detail different ways to reflect Commissars and NKVD units' terror effect on Soviet morale on the CMBB battlefield, but given the engine as it is, many effects were found to be either unworkable, or would lead to an overeffect, or whatnot. The current rules with commisars as developed ended up doing a good enough job without complicating matters too much. Gamey effects to the Barrage units were considered to override some of the elements which were considered for inclusion at the time. Actually this was all stuff we worked out almost 3 years ago, so forgive me if I'm a little fuzzy on it. BTW for interest's sake (and no other reason) I'll repost Stalin's "Order #227 by the People's Commissar of the defense of the USSR" here: THE SUPREME COMMAND OF THE RED ARMY ORDERS: 1. The military Councils of the fronts and first of all front commanders should: a) In all circumstances decisively eradicate retreat attitude in the troops and with an iron hand prevent propaganda that we can and should continue the retreat to the east, and this retreat will not be harmful to us; In all circumstances remove from offices and send to Stavka for court-martial those army commanders who allowed their troops to retreat at will, without authorisation by the Front command; c) Form within each Front 1 to 3 (depending on the situation) penal battalions (800 personnel), where commanding, senior commanders and political officers of corresponding ranks from all services, who have broken discipline due to cowardice or instability, should be sent. These battalions should be put on the more difficult sections of a Front, thus giving them an opportunity to redeem their crimes against the Motherland by blood. 2. The Military Councils of armies and first of all army commanders should: a) In all circumstances remove from offices corps and army commanders and commissars, who have allowed their troops to retreat at will without authorisation by the army command, and send them to the Military Councils of the Fronts for court-martial; Form 3 to 5 well-armed guards (barrage) units (zagradotryads), deploy them in the rear of unstable divisions and oblige them to execute panic-mongers and cowards at site in case of panic and chaotic retreat, thus giving faithful soldiers a chance to do their duty before the Motherland; c) Form 5 to 10 (depending on the situation) penal companies, where soldiers and NCOs, who have broken discipline due to cowardice or instability, should be sent. These units should be deployed at the most difficult sectors of the front, thus giving their soldiers an opportunity to redeem their crimes against the Motherland by blood. 3. Corps and division commanders and commissars should: a) In all circumstances remove from offices regiment and battalion commanders and commissars who allowed their troops to retreat at will without authorisation from divisional or corps command, deprive them of their military decorations and send them to the Military Councils of fronts for court-martial; Provide all possible help and support to the guards (barrage) units (zagradotryads) of the army in their work of strengthening discipline and order in the units. This order is to be read aloud in all companies, troops, batteries, squadrons, teams and staffs. The People’s Commissar for Defence J.STALIN [ October 10, 2003, 02:34 PM: Message edited by: Los ]

Judging by the nature of the question I don't think one should underestimate the critical nature of a tank's MG armament in combat and not just for self deefnse. There are plenty of times even today when the MG is the weapon of choice over the main gun, particulary against soft targets and for suppresive fire. Los

"I just think that all these pre-war civilian or para-military training was of little use in a modern war. Was this really useful in the war?" Yes it's extremely useful in training for war. If I'm the guy doing training resource management for Germany in say WW2 or Japan or whatever and I can cut a week or two off of basic training because recruits already have or can master much quicker certain basic skills sets, (which they would have learned through paramlitary training, or in the Reichsarbeitdients, etc) then I can feed trained replacements into the front line in a faster manner. That's what that's all about. Los

"And Canada, the US and Britain never had sports? How much of a quantifiable difference could it possibly have made?" Reminds me of that line from Red Dawn. "Ah but your son was part of that elite paramilitary organization: Eagle Scouts". Los

Not that there's a rat's A$$ chance of seeing this ever come to fruition but as an interesting discussion for argument's sake... I think people view the term "national differences", something akin to racial characteristics (and all the political baggage/issues that raises),instead of what the real intent seems to be: National Army Characteristics. Certain armies configure themselves in certain fashions which in CM terms could even effect performance at the Plt/squad level. I'll try very poorly to explain this without quoting real life examples that I have observed and worked closely with so that I won't be branded some kind of racist or degenerate. You can have two armies with similar TOEs. In one Army, there's is a formalized professional education system for junior NCOs. In the other Army, the only guy that know's what he's doing is the Platoon Leader. The rest of the troops pretty much follow around. NCOs are not promoted based on merit, some are tabbed right out of basic to go to NCO school or just be promoted based on partonage or whatnot. In the first case, as losses are incurred, the platoon has a reasonable chance of staying intact, maintaining it's current level of reaction time to orders, ability of squads to operate outside of the direct supervision of tbe Pl etc etc. On the other hand once the one critical leader is gone, there's more or less no one to take his place. Squads in this category would suffer greater command delays when out of radius of the PL than normal if they had lost their SL (figured out by some calculation.) They just go into default "hold tight" mode or worse run away mode, until someone else comes along and tells them what to do. Or it means you can't give more than one Way point to at a time if it's going to take them out of your PL's command radius. In some armies the thought of splitting up a squad into fireteams is unthinkable. There just is not enough qualified junior leadership to go around. (Hell in some armies the thought of splitting platoons into squads that actually act as tactical sub-units is unthinkable.) Yet in other areas the squads my be able to operate just fine. (i.e. the troops might be brave, difficult to panic, great shots, hardy, physically fit etc, but they just can't operate without direct control. Blanket setting a whole battalion at conscript status to capture command delay issues would be doing a dis-service in other areas of their performance. (monkey with each squad in that battalion individually to get what you wnat is might be time consuming.) Now as both armies partake of the crucible of war and gain more experience, this gap potentially narrows, assuming the lesser army passed it's initial sink or swim phase of learning. Secondly when discussing these national army differnces as they pertain to WW2, you can not apply them equally throughout the entire period of time of the whole war. The German Army in 1940 was a very different Army than 1943 than in 1945. Likewise the French Army in 1940 was a differnt army than the French Army fighting in Cassino in 1944. If this were done in table form, than for each army for whatever characteristics you wnat the default setting for that period to reflect, you would need a column for what time period, those charcateristics would be enforced. It's like the default charateristics for green-regular-veteran troops in each army would vary depending upon the year. Meanwhile conscript troops are conscript troops, elite troops are elite troops and crack troops are crack troops, regardless of their National Army. Los

"If a scenario designer thinks a given unit will fight to the last man, he gives that side 50% fanaticism. ...<snip>.....There is no good reason to instead introduce fundamentally arbitary stereotyped differences between one regular unit and another." Of course there is the obvbious inverse to the arguments where you have national characteristic default settings and use the methods mentioned above to adjust and tweak units to the given situation or historical perforamce as necessary to suit a scenario. But then again it's pretty clear that there were absolutely no measurebale differences between national armies, no little a quirks that affected performance or operations, they were all the same, just one big mass of plain vanilla..... Los But then again maybe I just imagined my observations from the past 25 years of military experience as an advisor working closely with armies from all over the world... [ October 06, 2003, 10:40 AM: Message edited by: Los ]

I have a Compaq n1000c through work (1.7g, 40mb HD, 32mb ATI rage mobility card 512 ram winxp). CMBO runs very smooth, cmbb ruuns pretty good too though larger maps tend to chunk it a little bit. (Have played up tp 3.2kmx2.4km maps). Gotta remember to turn off z-buffer/mask and FSAA. Los

Ok well since we're going up in the scope let's also tack on the bottom of the barrel. I'd like to double clcik on any unit and then drill down to where I'm the actual guy or tank cerw. Use either the BF1942, or DOD engine (better) for infantry combat and the Steel Beasts engine for tank combat and while you're at it, interface it with il2 Sturmovik Forgotten battles too. There ya go, now you can be a general or a private! Los

First off, I think the example with the tank describes nothing more than something the AI already does today in CM. An individual unit is attacked, whether it suffers casualties or not it might become suppressed or even attempt to withdraw. Or maybe the NVA commander had right clicked on the tank and gave it advance to contact orders instead of move, hunt, or assault orders. When a LAW hits the outside of a tank you hear a huge clang. You don't sit there and go , oh well, "I've seen the penetration table back some time ago and in it's just a Law and it probabbly won't kill me". A big bang means somebody's trying to do something bad to your tank and you're more than likely going to either A: Remove the threat (if you can see it) or B: Get out of the kill zone. Keep in mind also that NVA armor at that point did not have a tremendous amount of experience or training level, as they were used very seldom before that, so that unit may have been green. Morale effects of enemy action against units who are the victims of that action already have morale rules taken into account. A better issue where CM could use an adjustment in morale is this: You are moving a whole company across a front of several hundred meters, there's a platoon of tanks leading with the grunts behind. A hidden 88 rips into the lead Sherman and it explodes in a spectacular fireball. Sqauds within the blast radius either take casualties or hit the dirt. (as they were physically effected by the attack). But what about the rest of the company which is in LOS of this event but not in direct threat of flying shrapnel. Do they just ignore it as if nothing has happened and just trudge along? DO they hit the dirt too and stay under taking cover action until the player reorders them forward? Or do they potentialy even suffer further suppression results based on a temporary lowering of morale based on viewing such a catostrophic event so close and knowing they may be next? I think that may be a better example of a "battlefield shock" effect to be considered for future implementation. Suppression doesn't always effect just the guy getting shot at, sometimes it effects everyone around him on LOS. This effect of course would be modified by various factors such as leadership, unit experience level and fitness, as well as terrain, whether the enemy is spotted, and other circumstances. As far as larger morale issues that occur outside of the 20-60 minutes most CM battles are fought, they don't have much place in the calculations of the game during battle. The scenario designer can set all this up front. I mean, you can take the first SS panzer division and set it's morale to regular or green, if you want to simulate some sort of bind that they are in (i.e. trying to withdraw during the final stages of the bulge operation when evertything has gone wrong). Or tweaking fitness and supression to get units to a certain temporary or game lasting mental state. There's much subtlety in the scenario design system.(though no doubt more can be added). Los [ October 03, 2003, 09:59 AM: Message edited by: Los ]

There are Yugoslavian partisans in CMBB. SO you get virtually the whole Yugoslavian war already except for the first 10-14 days. (Or however long that took?) Los

If that was the case I would have preferred May 20th at dawn... Los

"Afganistan, Vietnam, China, Bangladesh" Yet in all four cases you mention countries under totalitarian, despotic or otherwise very tightly controlled rule where the people don't have much of a say in their governments (or ruling class') policy. Well, that is if they want to live. The alternative to fighting to the death is, well, death anyway. Los

"My annoyance is the accuracy of Stuart and Greyhound armor vehicles that can hit tigers that are on the move from 700m away and veteran and crack tigers that can't hit a churchhill from 700m away." Well you know what they say: "On any given Sunday..." Los

In real life, crossing relatively open terrain under fire we either run or crawl. That's why I prefer to run, gets me where I have to go faster, less time under the baleful gaze of the muzzle. If I have to cross open terrain and the distance is not too far that it can be covered within a turn or a turn and a half, I have overwatching fires out, and dash from one cover to the next. If there's enough overwatching fires and time, do it one unit at a time, if you don't have time or enough overwatch then dash all at once but more than likely the first guy will get hit. If your afraid of open terrain better stay away from CMAK... Los

not to mention you can fly the plaines using WASD, not to mention no flight model, not to mention bs armament, not to mention..... los

"things in BF1942 like, for example, riding on the hood of a jeep as a bazooka wielding soldier" Actually all of BF1942 can be classified as "gamey".(I'd love to see someone who thinks otherwise?) Not that I don't enjoy playing it myself. Los

Kingfish, Please put General Freyberg on your list of souls to call up, as I'd still like to know why it took him so long to stop worrying about a seaborne invasion and really pitch in against those pesky Germans at Maleme. Los