M Hofbauer

12,8cm Flakzwilling 40 as others suggested, yes it was a fixed rotating mount, the vehicle you see there is probably bogus, actually it used the Sonderanhänger 203 (which looked quite a bit different) with which it could be relocated (transported). was used for local air protection (duh!) of very important cities (used for example in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna). from the pic it seems it isn't even complete. essentially two regular 12,8cm FlaK 40 with a special addition for fast rotation. 27 in use in August 1944, 34 in Feb 45. Production started at in July 44 with one and peaked out since December at 12 per month. not exactly the rarest/oddest piece of equipment.

12,8cm Flakzwilling 40 as others suggested, yes it was a fixed rotating mount, the vehicle you see there is probably bogus, actually it used the Sonderanhänger 203 (which looked quite a bit different) with which it could be relocated (transported). was used for local air protection (duh!) of very important cities (used for example in Berlin, Hamburg, Vienna). from the pic it seems it isn't even complete. essentially two regular 12,8cm FlaK 40 with a special addition for fast rotation. 27 in use in August 1944, 34 in Feb 45. Production started at in July 44 with one and peaked out since December at 12 per month. not exactly the rarest/oddest piece of equipment.

well then you are simply wrong. An SMG round will not penetrate, and a rifle round will. Period. no it's not. maybe you should do more reading. most people would not need reading to substitute lack of common sense for printed matter, anyhow. we are not talking about "blindly" hosing down a house as you seem to suggest. the usual situation would be the enemy gunner/soldier taking cover below the window sill, beside the door opening, going into cover behind a treetrunk/log in the woods etc. now guess what happens to those bullets that do not hit the opening but closely around it? like, if they hit half a meter below the widow sill, where an enemy soldier might duck? in MiamiVice - type movies, maybe. In real life, your statement "What deflects or stops a SMG bullet usually also deflects or stops a rifle bullet." is simply blatantly wrong.

IIRC the Suomi used 9x19 Parabellum. That round is comparable to the russian7.62x25 used in the russian SMGs. The russian round might have a slightly better penetration capability because they have a comparable energy, but the russian round has a slightly smaller cross-section. The slight differences in penetration power are completely negligible however for our comparison to a rifle round. german official penetration data for the 9x19 when fired from the MP40 (as per DV 167/1 Maschinenpistole 40) roughly coincide with you data, except for the iron at 300m (no penetration of iron at 200m).

the problem with the abstracted firepower thing is it is a mix value of volume of fire, precision, penetration power, etc. so you are saying a SMG has 8 times the firepower of a rifle in CMBB. you know what i don't like about that? in real life, if a soldier takes cover in a russian wooden loghouse (wood thickness >30cm), at 50m he is pretty safe from a SMG. a full power regular rifle round however will simply penetrate, period. in CM, it seems from your post that it will be the other way around. in a light building, a soldier is much safer from a rifle than he is from a SMG, at a rate of 8 times safer. similar problems pertain to woods / scattered woods and similar terrain cover (tree trunks, small earthen dikes, etc.). I am not whining, we got used to that model from CMBO (and in a way, it works). Just wanted to add that the re-modeling of small arms in CMBB you describe above, welcome as it is, is not the be-all end-all of modeling small arms.

the problem is that the visible area ratio between turret and hull differs a lot depending on how the turret is facing w/r/t the hull. for illustrative purposes, lets take a Königstiger (use a three-sided view or CMBO for the following reading). from the front, with the turret facing dead ahead, the visible area is about 40 (turret) : 60 (hull) (turret area from the front includes the visible side areas, something CMBO neglects, too). from the side, the visible area is about 35:65. now, when the turret is facing 90° off to one side, these values and ratios change a lot. since from the front you are now comparing the huge side area of the turret vs the hull, the distribution is somewhere like 60 (turret) : 40 (hull). at the same time, the visible area from the side with the gun pointing at the viewer is also distributed different. the rather slim turret front is compared to the huge hull, making for a ratio of roughly 25 to 75. these are just very rough figures. my suggestion for a solution, which goes along your idea, is to give each area (lower hull, upper hull, turret) from each aspect a certain absolute size (not RELATIVE to the other areas of one heading, but an absolute value). that way, the distribution remains true even if the turret is rotating to the side, since the true value of the front is now compared to the true value of the side hull.

btw, John, the russian battlefield has been on that URL (www.battlefield.ru) for *quite* some time now, and I'm very sure BFC knows Valera's page very well.

I thought he specifically meant to exclude people with intel CPUs.

Now, is the ruckus in or not?

It's ....beautiful. Simply - beautiful.

while you have the chance, I would be interested what CDV's assessment/opinion on CMBO is. After all, they are currently running a TV commercial advertising the new sudden strike 2 as the "most authentic ww2 game yet" (or something very close to that, I watch little TV and only saw the ad once, but the claim of unprecedented authenticity/realism struck me). To me this sounds as if CMBO didn't rate very well on their realism scale.

the italians *kicked out* the germans out of their country even less than they *helped* the germans "kick out" the russians out of russia. the kicking out was done by the western allies. italian contribution was minimal. btw, IIRC ww2 ended with german troops still on (capitulating on) italian soil.

Mucillienie.

CC and CM are hardly comparaby in the way you do. It is unfair to point out your perceived shortcomings of CM when compared to CC. CC was a platoon to company sized game that featured individual soldiers. The very focus of the game was the individual soldier and a psychological model to simulate indicidual behavior. CM, on the other hand, portrays larger scale battles around battalion size. Individual soldiers are disregarded (and actually disregardable in the views of the creators) due to playability and computer hardware limitation issues, but also because the focus is on the grand orchestra of tactical cooperation bewtween different arms and equipment. For this intent, the abstracted nature of infantry in CM works pretty well. It works worse the smaller the scale of your game is. If you pit platoon vs. platoon in a tiny CM scenario within a small village, you might actually be better off playing such a game with CC. you might be interested to hear that there is sort of a follow-up to the CC series to be released imminently, very similar to CC with the focus on infantry soldiers, only it is in 3D, called GI Combat, made by some of the former atomic crew that made CC. Depends on your financial and time budget. If you can spare 50$ right now and have time at your disposal right now, I say go for it and buy CMBO. You will not regret it, it is a damn fine game. And even after CMBB comes out, I think CMBO will still have its value, not the least because it will be a looong time before BTS/BFC will revisit the western front with a completely new CM engine. If you are a student or someone who is very low on money but will always have ample time to play the game at a later time, you can wait for CMBB, but although it is apparently (almost or actually) finished, it might very well still be a month or even more before you actually hold it in your hands. CMBO has created a huge amount of fan paraphernalia from very dedicated people, there are all kinds of mods, scenarios, operations. If you are ready to accept the differences, limitations and strengths, of CMBO, foremost in your case the fact that CM does not focus on the individual soldier, but rather on larger engagements, you will be a very happy camper with CMBO, even after CMBB comes out. as regards sneak and crawl, sneak emphasizes stealth, the squad will not fire even if they walk over an enemy, only if fired upon they will stop right where they are and fiore back. crawl emphasizes forging onward at a minimum of exposure to the enemy fire. from the excellent 170-page manual that comes with CMBO when you order it: "SNEAK: move cautiously and slowly to avoid detection, stop and take cover when engaged by enemy CRAWL: go prone and crawl forward cautiously using full cover but at very slow speed" hope this heps, M.Hofbauer [ July 23, 2002, 05:23 AM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

eeek! he is using the CDV interface mod!

John, from the Panzerfaust site, page 9, subsection Blendkörper: (quote) A closely related weapon family to the Nebelhandgranaten were the Blendkörper ("blinding devices"), although the latter were intended as a designated AT weapon. Introduced in 1943, the first model Blendkörper 1 H or BK 1H weighed 370g and was a little unwieldy at a diameter of 6cm and a length of 15cm. Therefore, after 225,200 BK 1H production was switched over to the second model, the BK 2H. This was a glass bottle with a length of 12.8cm. It contained 290g of a mixture of calcium chloride / titan tetrachloride / siliciumterachloride which were separated from each other with by a disc. The whole device weighed 400g. The idea behind the Blendkörper was that when thrown, the explosion blinded the crews of enemy tanks. Then, the ensuing smoke cloud with irritant was to make the crew exit their vehicle. Despite appearing to be a bizarre weapon, the Blendkörper were rather common in use. 5,142,800 of the BK 2H were produced and practically all were used up until the end of the war. (end quote) as regards this thread's topic, I think the soviets classified the german tactic of filling russian underground structures / fortifications with explosvie gas and then detonate it as use of a chemical weapon and consequently court-martialed and executed whomever german they found responsible of having anything to do with it (this is from memory and I do not know much of that so take that with caution). as regards incidents with casualties due to NBC weapons, there are four cases known that were not manufacturing accidents (of which several happened everywhere). 1) Sept. 8th 1939, three german soldiers were killed by fragmentation and sixteen were affected by leaking poisonous gas when during the clearing of an obstaclenear Jaslo in Poland a mine detonated and damaged a container that was reported to have contained a Lost-like substance (Lost is a poison gas). 2) Sept. 11th 1939 three german soldiers were affected by poisonous gas when they opened a suspiciously marked container near Ostrowiec in Poland. 3) Dec. 3rd 1943, the famous incident where the US freighter John Harvey, loaded with 60 tons of mustard gas, was hit by Luftwaffe bombers (which were conducting a regular attack against the ships in the harbor and sunk a total of 19 ships; they did not know of the poison gas aboard one of the ships). 4) April 8th 1945 american fighter-bombers attacked the train station in Lossa (east germany). the rail cars of a train there contained the munitions from a nearby ammo depot that was being relocated. due to the attack, several containers with Tabun (a poisonous gas) were damaged. The exact number of casualties attributable to the leaking poison gas are not known. [ July 18, 2002, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

Jason, I do get your point. Reading your post again it is now apparent to me what you meant. As a side note, your arguing is not specific to the Sherman M4(105)/ M4A3(105), but to all.

jagdpzr, I didn't mean to talk down the scenario or your effort. My disappointment stemmed mainly from the fact that I was expecting too much, something that I got used to in reality that cannot really be done with CMBO's terrain system. So I should have anticipated the scenario to be based loosely on the historic event, instead of expecting a 1:1 mirror of reality. But I did realize it's value as a challenging regular scenario which is why I said I look forward to playing it one of these days as a regular, fun game. Thanks for that!

Jason, I beg to disagree with yourview that seems to be that the Sherman 105 fired regular HE cartridge ammunition just like any other Sherman 75 or other regular tank. Firing HE rounds from the 105mm howitzer was not *that* easy. please refer to page 534 and 535 of the US Army Standard Ordnance Catalog. You will see that the ammo for the 105mm M4 howitzer on the M4(105) and M4A3(105) was not a fixed cartridge like any other tank shell, but rather it consisted, typically for howitzer ammo, of a base charge and several additional propelling charges in seperate bags. In fact, the M4(105) tank howitzers used the exact same ammunition as the respective 105mm howitzer gun pieces. quote: "The ammunition used in the 105mm howitzers M2, M2A1 and M4 is issued in complete rounds of the semi-fixed type. The M1 shell round includes a cartridge case containing a primer and propelling charge, consisting of a base charge and six increments. The projectile may be easily removed from the cartridge case in order to adjust the propelling charge for the desired range." In other words, there were 7 types of charges used in conjunction with different elevations to reach certain ranges. You are right however that the HEAT round (M67) was a true "complete round" that did not need adjusting of charges, but could be fired just like that. As regards the Gemünden scenario by jagdpzr, I downloaded it but was a bit disappointed by the lack of an Ü in Gemünden, but what disappointed me even more was that the scneario's map did not resemble the terrain in Gemünden. So I didn't play it immediately but filed it in the "still to play" list to play it some other day not as an historical but a regular, challenging battle. Now of course I will benefit from the improvements jgdpzr made in the meantime and I will probably DL it again in the newest version.

they *can* fire indirect. use leader units in command with the mortars to spot for the mortars and the mortars will be able to fire indirectly at anything the commander wil see. I guess the explanation why they cannot fire anywhere where there is no LOS is that since they don't have the coordinates plotted in and can't observe the effect/impact of their fire, so they wouldn't be able to adjust fire to where you would want them to.

well, you know, there's tanks and there's tanks. Like, there's Pz I's and Pz VI's. There's FT-17's and Char B-1's, etc.

size of target?

Steve, yes you had explained this before but all this talk about cdv doing a german version but I can also buy the english version from them confused me as to whether that english version would be identical to the US version and therefore not have the changes the german version has. Hence my inquiry. I thought I had explained this ... you have to differentiate between the law which prohibits NS symbology like the runes and the swastika, and the software rating bopard for the protection of minors which is very vague and can get at your throat for anything like showing blood or in this case the original wording of the Waffengrenadiere. The former is the legislative and, in enforcement, the judicial branch of government, if you put a swastika in it, it's a criminal offense. The latter is an administrative organ, the executive branch of government. If they will rate your software as dangerous to minors, it will be banned from *sale over ther counter* and from open advertising and shelf display, which will admittedly totally ruin sales for an over-the-counter retailer such as CDV, but has nothing to do with being criminal or making the game "illegal". But I do not want to lecture here. I do respect your decision even though I disagree with it; I *do* know that for you this is your basis of economic existence and that you are not in it for altruistic musings. Thank you for clearing up the questions I raised in my original post (I hope you did notice in my original post that I did not mean to incite a flame or anything and am merely asking for specific information). On the danger of getting on your nerves, I still have one very important and one minor question: 1) you hinted that the original CMBO had no swastikas since you had one product that shipped worldwide and since NS symbology is illegal in germany you had no swastikas in the game (btw I fully support the exclusion of NS symbology). Now that there will be a specific european-only and a non-european version, will the US verson have NS symbology in it, or will it be the same as CMBO? (this is an important question, since if you now include swastikas, this would make the private purchase of the game by a german from an american a criminal act [for both parties, btw]) 2) out of sheer curiosity I am wondering: cdv with their point of view must implement their "Waffengrenadiere" all throughout the game, which means that the stock scenarios that ship with the original game must have their scenario briefings altered. Is this so? I tend to think it will sound funny when in the "Historical Background" of a scenario for example at Kursk it will talk about the attack of the russian 5th Guards Tank Army against the german 2nd Waffengrenadiere Tank Corps. I would be very grateful for a response, especially on question #1. Thank you for your patience, sincerely, M.Hofbauer btw, you were asking for an example where SS was included as such in the game. The CloseCombat series had these units labeled as such, especially cc2 (distributed by Microsoft) and cc3 (distributed by SSI) IIRC, and they were sold over the counter here in germany.

Martin, ok, I guess I will have to buy it off the shelf from one of my lesser - hated software retailers. however, feldgendarm, raises a valid question: will the CDV "english" version be the exact US version, in other words, will there be those "Waffengrenadiere" of CDV-fame? I am fully aware of the legal issue here in germany, but I can't stand it if they are trying to be holier than the pope himself by p.c.-ing out things that are actually legal, like when they are doing their Waffengrenadiere thing. I would really appreciate a definite answer about this since if the cdv-european-"english" version is not the same as the US version, I will have to prepare making arrangements with said "friendly" americans.

Heh. So I guess that accounts for 5 of the 6 Cromwells that were sent to the Eastern Front in that one pic? - Chris</font>