Stalins Organ

There weer all sorts of allied mobile AA, not just the quad 50's and twin 40's. There were several twin .50 mounts - on M3 half tracks and staghound a'cs I think, plus a single 40mm, and single, twin and tripple 20's on Crusader tank chassis. Most of them were withdrawn (at least from British service) soon after D-Day since allied air superiority was almsot total.

Dunno, but as a general rule I use the same password for all my games - makes it harder to forget!!

I'm only on hte ladder to get differnt opponjents. The rankings don't mean much to me.

I put everything on the left in game 6 - I was probably rushing a bit, expecting to overwhelm the defence and aware of the time limit. A couple of platoons of US Engineers really tore my guys appart - you wouldn't see them until you're on them, and then their satchel charges would knock the stuffing out of my guys! Not to mention a bloody flamethrower ambush - he only got off 2 shots, but they were good ones (another vet squad bites the dust!! ) And the superior US armour was a nasty surprise too, especially since only 1 faust hit anything, and hte schreks died quickly when bought up to try to deal with it!! Yuckies!!

It takes a lot more than satchel charges to destroy bridges. Even heavy artillery is probably only breaking up the roadway. To collapse a bridge you need heavy bombs hitting the structural members, or shaped charges cutting them (although there are methods of cutting them without shaped charges too). Engineers might take an hour or more to rig such a demolition for a decent bridge, so it's completely outside the scope of CM.

Oh dear Clinton, living up to your namesake for intellectual depth huh??!! No, it refers, in this discussion, to the representation scale - how many "real" soldiers each toy soldier represents. The size scale you are thinking if is what modellers use to describe their figures. In CM a squad of 3 figures is anything from 7-13 men, for a scale between 2.3:1 and 4.3:1. There are wargames where each toy soldier represents a single "real" soldier, for a scale of 1:1. Of course figure size is also of interest to miniatures gamers, but it's a spearate issue - most games can handle several different sizes of figures, but only 1 representation scale.

And I'd just add my $0.02 worth by pointing out that many miniatures rules DO use 1:1 scale men & machines to miniatures!! So there! Oh, and another thing - the cost of the CM disc is not the only thing I paid money for in order to be able to play the game! There's also the the $3000 NZ + GST I paid for my computer. I could obtain several different armies - WW2, Modern, Ancients, Horse & Musket, etc. with that - already painted and ready to play with. Mike, Figure gamer of no great repute!! [ 05-28-2001: Message edited by: Mike the bike ]

On the subject of traverse speeds - if yuo play the "Axis Campaign" (see the Scenario boards) in one game you get an 88mm bunker. Without giving too much away I had a little duel between this and the AI-crewed-sherman. The Sherman was using "popup" - ie it would come up to a crest, shoot 1 shot, then reverse. The Bunker would target it, swing onto it, then lose it and retarget some infantry. The gun never got a ahot at the Sherman, even though it was never more than 5-10 degrees away from theinfantry directly in front of the bunker. Eventually the stupid bloody bunker used up all it's AP shooting at a god-damned 60mm mortar!! :mad: So that's 40+ each of HE and AP used up by the one gun - it had exactly 4 smoke as it's only ammo at the end of the game (and yes I tried to use those to smoke in front of the Sherman too, but it wouldn't bloody fire them!)!! :eek: Of course the bunker did kill a few other vehicles, but that last bloody sherman pissed me off no-end!! :eek:

Here's a photo of a twin 128 mount (I think): http://www.danshistory.com/ww2/flak.html Note the level of the railing in the background - this gun is not going to fire at low angle at anything. Also note the size of the bloody thing!! :eek: [ 05-28-2001: Message edited by: Mike the bike ]

Um...if a Bn gets AA then that AA's task is to protect the Bn area, not the supply line back to Berlin - there are regimental, divisional, Corps, Army and Luftwaffe AA units that do that. And AA can protect quite a large area from air attack, while still being of use in the front line. Putting AA 1-300m behind your MLR dosn't seem at all unrealistic for Bn assets to me. Especially if they are in reverse slopes or otherwise hiden from direct observation from the enemy. Hell at one stage Panzer-Grenadiers had 1 SP AA per infantry PLATOON as part of the standard OB - you'd expect those to be somewhere in the platoon area!

Not sure that there were many Hurricanes in use by 1945!! IIRC not many dual mounts were made, adn they were all emplyed on FLAK towers, so aren't likely to have been much use in ground battles. But I have seen photos of a F-105 hit in the wing by a 100+mm shell over Vietnam - IIRC there was a guy standing in the hole!

Make the Sov's Green and/or conscript, the Finns regular or better, and see what happens......

Skipper only the survivors learn this, and then they get spread around or reinforced with new recruits. Also veterans in the Jungle or agaisnt the Japs would not have this experience at all. Other vets might have learned to dig deeper as a response to artillery. Not everyone in war gets to "experience" the "classic" situations.

Hmm?? So you think that Heer don't have idiots in their ranks? :eek:

So some idiot recruit opened fire before he should have (even a vet platoon might have an idiot or 2 in it!). Maybe if you'd set an ambush point they might've held fire, but possibly they might've decided they were about to be discovered anyway, and they should get the 1st shot in. what options would thye have if discovered? Continue hiding, shoot it out, surrender, run away............. I have no problem with troops f-ing up occasionally.

I'm about 20 turns into game 1 - I must confess I was a little pissed off when: 1/ the Brit armour arrived right on top of my 2 h/t's that were doing a "left hook" to provide fire support for an infantry assualt up the hill, and 2/ A stug lost it's gun to a HE shot from a cromwell at a MG 10 yards away! but the H39's are doing sterling service in infantry support...(er...isn't that what they were designed for??!! ), the other stug has accounted for 2 Crom's, 1 Stuart and miscellaneous h/t's, Bren carriers and white scout cars, and, as someone else said, the 251/2's (and the walking 81mm mort) have a ball whenever the Brit infantry is in view! IIRC they're out of ammo now! So the game is finely balanced - there's 1 Crom left vs 1 Stug, the gunless stug, H-39's and h/t's are supporting my infantry against the Brits at the top of the 2nd hill, and I think I've only taken 5 or 10 casualties so far so I'm in good shape to push on once the Crom's disposed of!

I had a Sherman kill a pillbox the otehr day - got a "slit penetration", no other damage, and het crew bailed out without any casualties. Perhaps they just figured their time was up and it's best to get out before it's made more blatant?? On a related note IIRC the Journal of Strategic Studies has an article in it in the 80's soem tiem which was a survey of damage done to tanks in Normandy by airpower. It concluded that the most dangerous thing for tanks was loss of morale, as many were abandoned in running order and with full tanks of gas! (IIRC)

The answer is easy - if she gets in the way, leave her! Or she'll leave you! Mike, recently single!!

Hmmm...don't think so Triumvir - for starters there are things that can kill KT's in 1945 that are fairly common (like Fireflies and Typhoons!), and there sure as hell shouldn't be any elite russian troops in 1941 at all!!

Look guys - how about just giving the guy a simple straight answer to his question. Like...NO

I want to know what fuel has got to do with that 3" AT gun???

I imagine there will be a fairly generic "Anti-tank-mine" for infantry.

I think that was referring to patches to bring the game mechanics up to speed. Haven't heard any more on that for a while tho'.

I don't think so - the ino in those files will refer to completely different things in CMBtB - I don't know the details, but, for example if CMBO gives the allies a Sherman then it's going to be something else entirely in CMBt - maybe a T34, Maybe a Su-76..who knows?, Probably the same problem for many of the Axis equipments.

no, no, no Gunner - stop putting your fantasies onto me mate!! I'm a fully bred-out Kiwi!!