M Hofbauer

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: Sort of. Think of it this way. An M113 is an APC. APC describes a whole class of vehicle. M113 is the specific designation of just one type of APC. An Sd Kfz 251 is an SPW. SPW describes a whole class of vehicle. Sd Kfz 251 is the specific designation of just one type of SPW. "Sd Kfz" on its own does not describe anything - it could be a halftrack, a tank, or a half-tracked motorcycle, depending on the number you use behind it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Truth shines through the words of Mr Dorosh....however, to confuse the matter further, let's not forget though that mittlerer Schützenpanzerwagen mSPW and leichter Schützenpanzerwagen leSPW were official designations of the Sd.Kfz. 251 and Sd.Kfz. 250 series respectively, so these designations aren't entirely generic, although basically they are.

bump.

I totally agree with CRSutton. I've just recently been to Munster, where it just happens to be that a Panther (BefPanther) is placed right next to a T-34/76B, a few meters away is a T-34/85. The Panther totally dwarfs the T-34, and anybody, even non-grogs with at least one eye, would reach the prima-facie result that the Panther in a one-on-one comparison must be the better choice. btw: What I also noticed was the very crude workmanship on the T-34; the only T-34s I had seen before were on display so they looked poor anyhow; but these were nicely maintained so one could clearly see the T-34 was a crude piece of work. Ugly, too. Not saying that russian tank designs are ugly per se; the T-54/5 and it's follow-ups up to the T-80 are very beautiful IMO, but the T-34 is definitely not. Especially that hydrocephalus-85.

I think the main gripe I have with infantry close asaulting tanks is that tanks can't run over infantry. In reality, that would be a real concern (for the infantry) / option (for the crew) respectively. I wonder of this will change for CM2? probably not. So again I will have all those Jagdpanzer out of ammo being chased around the map by them little soldiers.

hmm just had a look at the Volkssturm cite linked above...was positively surprised to see they had a section on the Panzerfaust and was hoping for new evidence, information etc. - but then I saw they simply plagiarized (cut&paste) my Panzerfaust site...

oh and one more thing... the abbreviation "Feld" might be a colloquial abbreviation used not in written context but when talking. Very similar to the american Sergeant being abbreviated as "Sarge". The Oberfeldwebel could be referred to as "Oberfeld", like in "Where did the Oberfeld go?"

Mike, in a listing of crews and rosters etc. I found the following abbreviations re. your question. Although they are from Luftwaffe records, I think it is pretty safe to assume that the Heer used the same method. Feldwebel is abbreviated Fw. Oberfeldwebel is abbreviated Ofw. etc. Note that in this listing the first letter of the second noun in the composita is not enlarged in the abbreviation, for example they would also write Ogefr instead of OGefr. That does however not mean that your way of enlarging them is wrong. In fact, today it is much more common to abbreviate that way than the other way, especially in the armed forces, too. It is the same thing as whether you write PzKpfWg or Pzkpfwg

lessee if the search function works again...yup... quote from a post made 10-19-1999: (me):"there are mistakes in the abbreviation for german ranks: (...) Obergefreiter should be abbreviated "OGefr" not "Obg"(...) the abbreviation for Unteroffizier is "Uffz" not "Unt"." (BTS):"Yes, we are inventing our own shortenings of ranks. We wanted to keep them all to 3 letters for spacial reasons. Therefore we have created ones that are most easy to recognize. (i.e. Unt = Unteroffizier)." Michael, I'm shooting from the hip here but if memory serves me right Feldwebel would be abbreviated Fw., therefore an Oberfeldwebel would be OFw. et cetera, e.g. StFw ...

It should be noted that the "german abreviations" used in CMBO are not authentic, but were done by BTS within their artistic license. So it would be best to refer to them as pseudo-german abbreviations.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: To answer your other question posed a while back, Maximus - no, I have no plans on releasing a smock mod based on this helmet covering: Because this is what I was trying to simulate: <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Hey Mr. Uniform fetishist do you know if this splinter camo shown/used by Scipio is the one used by the early post-war german statu nascendi Bundesgrenzschutz (border guards) police force? btw, two notes about those pictures there... #1 is odd because it seems the entire Wehrmacht is made up of Unteroffiziere #2 looks suspiciously like pre-war Reichswehr helmets to me, no? yours, M. [edited for smilies] btw: it seems to me the splinter camo was not very effective, as the germans still did lose the war [ 06-17-2001: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Degrees of Frost: Isn't this another instance when absolute spotting becomes an issue ? Defending tanks are spotted almost immediately on most occassions allowing buttoned up attacking tanks to begin firing back effectively - immediately. The units doing the spotting are probably not the buttoned up tanks but supporting units. The good old "borg" thingy. PS: its a great dissapointment to me that I was never assimilated properly <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Don't worry, many here have never been assimilated, especially those who were here long before the CMBorg. And many of those that had been assimilated have (for lack of a better word) "dissimilated" again. They come and they go. It seems even the Borg himself Yes it would be nice if spotting was limited to the individual units (which we will not see before CMII) and if the spotting was environment / conspicousness-dependant. One positive thing I noted about the OperationFlashpoint demo (besides the negative fact of a non-aspect-dependant, cumulative damage model on tanks ) was that whether or not you are being detected by the enemy depended so much on your conspicousness. When you were lying somewhere on an open road they would spot you immediately, but if you lay somewhere near a bush or tree or other disturbance in the environmental landscape and wouldn't do anything they wouldn't see you to the point of almost walking by you without noticing. If you started firing, it depended upon your volume of fire and distance, for example they would react to a machine gun immediately, but some isolated shots from an M-16 far away would take them quite some time to localize and react to. Same with movement vs. lying still. Background is also considered - try walking across a crest and you will be backgrounded against the sky - enemy soldiers will spot you very fast once you draw their attention into your direction by shooting or even without that if you are close and they are watching. It really almost seems the AI has the same criteria and hence problems in spotting something like a human has in such a game. So even though this game might suffer from the same beehive/Borg mentality on the AI part as well, it somehow does not become apparent because of this very realistic spotting behavior. As long as you stay put in the bush, hardly anybody will notice. Start running around with your M60 firing from the hip and of course everybody will take notice. The last step would be taking smokeless powder and camoflage into effect as well - imagine a Marder under a heap of treenbranches and bushes on the edge of some woods waiting in ambush for the enemy tanks, not being spotted only after the first few rounds... Like Martin L. King said, "I have a dream..." (edited for an even better pleasing reading experience) [ 06-17-2001: Message edited by: M Hofbauer ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tero: Have YOU ever gotten a Stug in a decent hull down position from which it could shoot effectively and survive for more than a few turns ? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> answer to Q#1: yes, regularly. answer to Q#2: nope. yes, they (german armor, esp.StuGs) seem not to achieve the actual RealLife successes in CM. However, just checking, tero, you *do* know that hulldown is an I/0 decision and that this is totally irrelevant of actual vehicle layout/dimensions etc.? Therefore, it is just as easy or hard to put a StuG into hulldown as it is to put, say, a Sherman into hulldown, IIRC.

That's not a tank, that's a hampster! Seriously, looks interesting, albeit the pic is really a bit too small to tell anything yet...

Scooter, thing is this thread started as a thread in which Steve gave some answers, but it has long since degressed into an undefinable, remotely general but still CM2-related, non-pengish but in a bizarre way undefinable ... thread. And if you really love CM and CM2 like you describe yourself then you better read every damn single post in this thread! Enoch, you're right, but not only during mobilization. Even before that, the regular Reichswehr units were generally "localized" in that they were made up in manpower largely from a region.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Tarkus: My question: have you guys at BTS thought about a way to implement a feature where Platoon HQ could command squads other than their organic ones? I have been given extensive thoughts about that (both historically and game-wise) and think this would be an accurate one. Just to take a few examples, the Ardennes campaign (mostly for the US Army) saw many such an arrangement, as did the Wehrmacht in Normandy. And I do have good references on this.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Usually, such administrative reorganizations would not occur at the climax of a melee of a 30-turn CM battle. If your sources include references where the staff of a division is regularly reorganizing it's platoons and companies with one hand while bayonetting the enemy with the other hand I am most intrigued to hear/read them. But seriously, I think such reorganizations are definitely outside of CM's time scope. The CM batles show only the hot half hour of an engagement, not the preparation, not the aftermath. I think there will not be reorganizations just like there won't be rearming, refueling, and repair. Not saying I am against your idea, would be nice, I would welcome it, but as far as I can see it is considered too much micromanaging by the powers that be.

tero, "I for one will absolutely hate it if the Finnish squads act according to the German set of behaviour patterns because the tactics employed by the Finns were nothing like the tactics employed by the Germans." your computer game squads will employ exactly those tactics which you as the player are using. If I as the player decide that finns will always charge in a zig zag line then they will do that. That is the status quo and I am sure BTS' stance on that will remain like that for all future versions. Doing your suggestion of implementing national characteristics is understandable from a historic perspective but it's simply invitation to quarrel about which country's soldiers should always do this or should always do that, and we would not reach any consensus exactly how it should be modeled. Take for example that some people here even question whether the russians used human wave assaults later etc. The only way to reflect poor or good behavior are the nation-independant experience settings from green to elite. It will not sufice totally for what you are aiming at but that is the closest you will ever get to it in CM. Scooter, you are not making sense. Did you read this thread at all? Whether pro-IS2 or con-IS2, we have a consensus here (incl. Steve/BTS) that the IS-3 did not see actual combat in "all that fighting that started at 0300 hrs on the morning of June 22, 1941 with Operation Barbarossa and ended in various places on various dates in early May 1945" so I am really confused as to what the point of your posts is?? On the IS-3, well, as I said before, as long as you make it available only for April/May/("what-if" June) 45, make it very rare, and give it an armor quality of 50% and riddle the remaining 50% with weak spots then I'm fine [tongue-in-cheek mode on] plus if the IS-3 is in, can I please have the X-7 Rotkäppchen ATGM for my May 45 german infantry [t-i-c mode off] Frenchy, you can already withdraw in the existing game engine. Simply withdraw the units off the (preferrably friendly) edge of the map. If you are unable to withdraw them that way then you really shouldn't be able to withdraw anyhow.

That would be "Würste" if you are referring to the plural of the german word for sausage(s).

Oh please don't get me wrong I didn't mean to imply a genuine russian cowardism or anything, far from it. I just think that *generally* it seems in CMBO the soldiers are just too willing to fight on even after horrendous loses and against hopeless odds. I am also not saying that there was dogged resistance (on both sides), and that there should be occassional fanaticism where people wpuld die instead of giving up. However, we have a fanaticism factor in CMBO already but it never really plays a role, since most of the time the soldiers are already behaving that way IMHO. I am just for fine-tuning the likeliness of surrender a tad bit away from fanaticism towards surrender in the face of hopeless situations.

My request w/r/t the IS-3 is: if it's going to be modeled for the time period when it was produced, then please model it the faulty way it was back then, and not the way it was after extensive redesign and patching after the war. For example, bad armor cracking open already under the stress of cross-country movement can to a degree be modeled with very low armor quality and many "weak spots" in the existing CM model. Tero wrote: "Should the green Finnish rifle squad for example surrender as readily as its counter parts ? (...)What would be the suitable level of suppression that trigers surrender?" which brings up an interesting point. What I would like to see in CM2 - and I think this should be easy to implement - is that troops should be much more likely to surrender compared to what we see now in CMBO. Right now, the only surrenders I see are immobilzed heay MG squads which consist of one leftover guy. Apart from that, too often soldiers fight despite overwhelming odds and firepower brought to bear against them. Sure they get pinned and panic, but too often IMHO they die instead of giving up. (Think especially of the early phase of Barbarossa where many russian troops surrendered not only on the strategic but also on the tactical level)

If you'ld be working in any remotely related occupation (or if y'all had any common sense ) then you'ld realize that working in an oily, greasy, dirty tank would get your white suit everything else but white very fast But seriously, crews usually don't wear fatigues because they are not expected to need them. They fight from inside the vehicle. If they encounter enemy fire they will button up anyhow. And compared to the visibility/silhouette of the tank itself it doesn't matter much if the guy sticking his head out will have a white or black hat

easy there maxipad, after all you could be considered quite a "newbie", too. Mr Johnson and lcm1947, yes that would be possible, in fact one of the first things I did was just that, give the soldiers a Miami Vice look. I took some screenshots with that (I planned to use them in a signature) but I can't find them right now. The sunglasses joke gets stale after a while though and you will be reverting back to regular IMHO. you can open all the game's bitmaps in any graphics program (paintbrush suffices for your sunglasses) and paint the sunglasses onto the faces. Have fun.

Totally concur with Mr Aitken, couldn't have said it better. Maybe the only thing feasible I could add somewhere along the line what ParaBellum asked for would be some sort of selected bibliography for start or something. yours sincerely, Si Vis Pacem.

Azrael, how much RAM do you have? I remember I suffered occasional random white surfaces/bmps before I increased my RAM to 128. Just a thought.

I too will prefer the original over a localized version, for the same reasons stated by others already. However to me it sounds like a good idea to order it from France (our old arch-friends )so I don't have to do any of those mysterious workarounds to get it from the US at reasonable price and minimum delay. Looking forward to doing business with the Frenhc store4war guys re. CM2! ehm..."je veux CM2!"....or somefink...

I am not sure what you are aiming at here...let me see if I can help nevertheless. For small arms / machine gun fire YES less range means more damage. Check the detailed unit info (ENTER) to see a range/firepower chart for infantry units. Similar applies to vehicle mounted machine guns, for example the bow machine gun on a Sherman. For main guns you'ld have to differentiate. If you use the big gun to engage soft targets like infantry it will use HE ammo which has a set blast rating (again check unit data for info on the specific blast rating for the HE ammo of a given unit) which is INDEPENDENT of range. Therefore, range (aside from accuracy matters) does NOT afect effectiveness in CM. If you use the main gun to engage "hard" targets such as other tanks then range does matter since you will be using kinetic energy penetrator ammunition, armor-piercing AP, for which velocity is important hence the closer you are the better the effectiveness (for detailed data again see unit data). Sometimes you will have shaped charge C ammo which of course is independant of range for it's AP performance, however you want to get close to hit anything with these rounds.