Renaud

The T34 and BT russian tanks were heavily influenced by the T3, a tank designed by american J. Walter Christie but never adopted by any allied army. Mainly the big-wheeled 'christie' suspension is what made it into the russian t34. If you look at the T3 and T34 side-by-side you see some basic similarities, but the T34 is a new and vastly superior tank. To say that the T34 was an 'american' designed tank seems like a large overstatement. -Ren

I know, it's horrible. I check this forum way too often. I need help.

The mistake of indicating a Panther as armed with a 88 was also made by Charles B. MacDonald in his book about the Huertgen Forest battles. The proliferation of this error might be due to people all referencing a bad source, or referencing each other and doing no primary research. I consider the books buy MacDonald to be more entertaining and grittily realistic than Ambrose but they both have faults. For really top notch writing and historical accuracy see anything by Max Hastings. Notable: 'Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy'...much better than Ambrose's D-Day book. -Ren

***SPOILER WARNING*** Of course if you even peek at this forum without playing the gold scenarios first they are going to be spoiled. ***SPOILER WARNING*** My favorite kraut tactic in VOT is to take my best infantry platoon and rush up the left side into the far left quarter pine woods. I'll then move up and right a bit setting up a quick ambush. The fight is short and brutal but I can usually wipe out several US platoons and maybe some heavy weapons and leader units too before being annihilated. The US invariably calls in artillery on the area blasting both US and krauts with treebursts. But the german platoon is usually doomed anyway so this is ok.

Guys (and especially username if you are still reading this thread): Here's a nifty way to increase the challenge factor vs the AI. After setup, play the game entirely in view #1 and always from the perspective of your units. Use only the +/- keys to scroll through units with view-locked-to-unit. Move/fire orders can only be given to the unit you are currently locked to. You might consider allowing zoom when locked to vehicle, leader, or FO units. I also advise allowing rotation of the view once locked to a unit. One other possibility is giving orders to sub-units from the perspective of their commanding unit (only if they are in command radius). When you play the action phase, only allow watching the action from your top leader unit (company, battallion, or designate one before the game starts if they are co-equal). Movement orders tend to be in short hops and recon units take on their real-life significance...recommended only for the hardcore grognard. I intend to use this method for all the full-release scenarios when playing them the first time. Ren

I love zooming down to view#1 in the enemy positions and experiencing my own arty come in on ususpecting german reinforcments. the horror...the horror... Imagine what 155mm/8" etc will be like...crescendo of doom. Just how big can these exposions get? I'm afraid to see a 15" naval shell. Collapsing buildings blow up like ammo depots now. Rather odd. I would have went with a simple burst of fragments followed by collapse. Also i've got to find that pesky .wav of the GI saying 'forward march' and replace it with homer simpson chanting 'donuts, donuts, donuts'. Ren

typically people have more of a problem trying to keep their stugs alive. It's hard to get the stugs hull down sometimes. You might try a slow advance with 3-4 shermans close by each other so when one is seen they all see the enemy stug at the same time...so you get 3-4 vs 1. Also remember to keep them unbuttoned as this dramatically affects spotting enemy tanks before they spot you. One good tactic is to move 3-4 shermans up the road quick and they left up the hill till they are right up against the woods...then have them watch laterally across the map from behind the woods. Be sure and carry some infantry along to get in the woods and ambush any german infantry that come sneaking through the woods to get your tanks. -ren [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 05-17-2000).]

This is off-topic for this thread but I have to chime in and second Sgt.Morgue's observation on the 'forward march' command being yelled by some american nco. This is a bit goofy considering these guys must be aware they left the parade ground a while back. Maybe it's the green squads doing it. I'll bet if I look hard enough I can find that .wav file and delete it. This won't screw the game up will it? Thanks, Ren

Hi all. It occurrs to me that at ranges less than 300 meters (and even farther out for really high velocity guns like the panther's or the 88) the trajectory of high velocity anti tank guns does not vary more than the vertical size of the target. In other words, you can simply lay the aiming reticle centermass and you will get a hit assuming ONE important thing: The reticle must be boresighted correctly. For you non-tankers out there, boresighting is the process of making sure the aiming reticle is pointing exactly where the center of the gun tube is pointing. This must be done periodically because the optical sights and gun tube of every tank are different and the factory alignment changes over time with tube wear, outside temperature, etc. This will insure that the range bars show the actual range when you must aim-off for long range shots in which the projectile experiences significant drop due to the effect of the earths gravity and the slowing of the projectile itself. What this means is that the talk of 'corrections' made for subsequent shots is meaningless for short range situations in which you can simply lay the reticle on the target and press the trigger. This does NOT mean 100% chance of hitting of course. Many things can change the boresight during the course of a battle...jarring of the optics...tube droop caused by heating...an incorrect original boresight setting...a hangover...drawers full of poop...you get the idea. If the boresight is off for any reason then you are reduced to guessing. There's not going to be any 'correction based on observation of fallen shot' because: 1) high velocity rounds that miss high will fly into never-never land; 2) Sign of the shot fall will be obscured at these short ranges by the muzzle flash and smoke and would likely dissapear out of your field of view or in foliage in any case (solid shot); 3) All but steely-hearted elite panzer crews will be both screaming and praying not to die at the same time. Trying to find logic in short range tank duels is a hopeless task. Too many variables. Might as well be purely random or based only on crew state/skill. The most important thing is who-sees-who first and turret orientation/rotational speed...assuming equal gun/armor of course. I think the current system mimics the chaos of close range gunnery just fine. IIRC The modern 105mm british and 120mm german guns can simply be laid right on the target if you are under 600 meters or so. You don't need aim-off unless you are leading a moving target. In fact I would think this is a good way to aim a WWII high velocity carriage mounted AT gun for first shots. Keep the breech open and look down the tube at the target. Center target. Slam a round in and fire. This is a theory since i've never tried it. Ren former 19K 2/3ACR E Troop driver/loader/gunner/TC at various times/places.

Someone mentioned 32-bit color. Will CM in fact have a display mode supporting 32-bit color? And what will the highest supported resolution be? Now that I think of it someone mentioned that it simply adopts whatever screen res you are running on the desktop. Wonder if this applies to colors-displayed as well. -Ren

I've played maybe 15 AI games, no multiplayer. I never was surrendered by the AI, the computer was a few times though. It seems pretty rare. Panzer stumbled upon a situation where the general AI surrender calculations didn't work out perfectly. But as with any abstaction, you are going to see some situations where the AI reaches a decision that seems nonsensical. I mainly intend to fight AI operations and battles only, and make scenarios, so putting in an option for the hardcore ladder gamers doesn't bother me. For AI games I favor if anything a higher chance of autosurrender. But in the interests of historical realism I could imagine a flag for certain troops making them fanatical from the start and never surrendering...here we go with the wannabe game designer mission creep. Ren

Not sure if this applies to WWII engagements the size of CM, but i've heard that at the operational level fuel usage and ammo usage are inversely related with more fuel being used in offensive operations and more ammo being used in defensive operations. The 15% figure seems reasonable given that many infantry will be suppressed by HMG/MMG crew fire, cannon fire and artillery fire during an intense engagement. This seems to be modelled in CM. Also consider that when an infantry regiment deploys for action, only 1 or 2 battallions will be up front, out of each battallion only 1 or 2 companies will be up front and out of each company only a few platoons will be up front depending on whether the operation is an attack or defense. So even though the entire manpower of the 'regiment' might be listed as 'in action' only a fraction come into contact with the enemy and had the opportunity to fire personal weapons. From what I can tell, WWII small unit actions succeeded or not for reasons other than how many grunts fired their rifles. Support fire saturating the objective, attacking where the enemy isn't, tactical surprise and manuever would rank higher in importance for me as a commander than making sure every soldat fired his bolt action rifle. I'd place more importance on finding concealed routes of advance for the assault infantry so I could infiltrate them into the objective area without firing a shot. In defensive situations where a regimental line is penetrated there are going to be a lot of men fleeing, throwing down weapons, surrendering and generally not fighting. (ex: bulge) This would certainly help explain a low %%-fired figure for squad personal weapons. Another interesting tidbit (from Bruce Catton I believe) is from examination of the US civil war battlefield at Antietam Creek. It was found that sometimes 4 out of 5 rifles discarded on the battlefield by soldiers of green Union regiments had never been fired. Some had been loaded up to 5 times but never discharged. Some regiments simply freaked and didn't fire hardly at all. I imagine the same could happen in WWII. Ren [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 04-16-2000).]

The reported mechanical unreliability of the KT is not surprising at all. That they were practically immobile is well known. Hitler's best panzer generals did not prefer the heavy tanks, tigerI or II, as their limited mobility did not excel at offensive operations or elastic defenses. However, at this late stage of the war the germans were almost completely defensive, a task for which the Tiger II was well suited. According to the report, TigerII frontal armor is foolproof against the russian 76 and 85mm guns. These guns probably armed 95% of the russian tank force even in '45. In any case, the formidable part of the tigerII is it's L71 88mm. By the russians own admission the l56 88 is superior to their own 100mm AP and their 100mm AP completely penetrated the TigerII frontal turret armor from long range. Imagine the effect of L71 88mm AP on 95% of russian armor from any aspect angle and any range. Most KTII were killed by airstrikes, artillery concentrations, immobility kills, or just plain abandoned and captured because they were to slow to get away or too heavy to cross a bridge, rather than enemy gun kills. Even in the last months of the war attacking russian armor was typically annihilated in large numbers when confronted with heavy german armor. The KTII was a waste of resources, but still very intimidating, particularly on the western front where the allied armor was armed with pop-guns for the most part right up until the end of the war. The fact that the KTII is going to break down in a few hours doesn't help sgt snuffy in his generic M4 looking down the barrel of an L71 88mm in our 30-round game of CM. Getting out and trying to disassemble the KTII with a monkeywrench could only improve this unfortunate individual's chances. -ren

In Luftwaffe War Diaries by Cajus Bekker there is an interesting description of a battle in the Polish campaign where flak saves the day during a particularly heavy action. In one instance a 20mm gun is manhandled up a slope (nearby artillery observer officers ran to help). The weight of the gun is mentioned as being '16-cwt' and the unaided crew can't get it up even a shallow slope. From that position it fired a 20 round burst at the nearest identified MG nest or artillery observation post, silencing it. Then they rolled it back down to reload, only to repeat the process multiple times. In one case they fired 4 20 round bursts at a stone watchtower but couldn't penetrate the heavy stone. An 88 was then towed and set into position in the twilight and managed to rubble the tower just before nightfall. -Renaud

We seem to have a kind of sideline offtopic thread going here about socialism (rather entertaining)...what the hell i'll join in: The essential refutation of the socialist economic system was authored by Ludwig Von Mises in his treatise 'Socialism' published in 1922. Naturally Mises was labeled a crackpot at a time when socialism was considered the wave of the future. The gist of it is that socialist central planners have no way to rationally calculate prices without the existence of an external market economy to emulate. Perfect worldwide socialism would have no workable price structure at all for goods, while socialist systems in this century which observe market economies and try to emulate them experience a slow decay as the incorrect prices build up into crippling inefficiencies. It is simply beyond the capabilities of any bureaucrat(s) to accurately calculate prices for the millions of goods necessary to the survival of a modern technological-industrial civilization, and to continuously update them in response to changing human demands. This would require an omnipotent god at the controls 24hrs a day. Thus, pure Marxist socialism is a theoretical impossibility while the semi-socialism of our century is doomed to stagnation, decay and ultimate dissolution (but not before murdering millions in demented attempts to make the impossible work...5-year plan anyone?). This is essentially what the first commentator on this thread presented and it is now being taught in (some) Universities 78 years after original publication. Mises was chased from Europe to America by the National Socialists only to be hounded for the remainder of his 92-year life by soft-socialists in the US, yet he maintained his integrity through it all. Mises died in 1973, not living quite long enough to see the triumph of his theory.

If I could know ONE thing about CM it would be how many pre-orders are in. 500? 1000? 10,000??? I'm thinking closer to 500. I think if CM is half as big as the CC series these guys may well have their red testero-whatchamajig cars. Consider the low overhead and no publisher eating into their margins. CC was designed to pander to the 30-min quick fix RTS crowd and made a lot of money that way. Can a game like CM, which requires more serious and time consuming cogitation to play well, maintain the interest of the unwashed yet monied masses? Only time will tell... Ren ps best of luck battlefront

I think TTRL could have benefited from at least 1 hour's worth left on the cutting room floor. There were simply too many minutes (hours?) of long panning shots of grass, dirt, the sky, etc. This is the kind of thing can be done well (see Akira Kurosawa's RAN for instance), but in this case it turned out to be merely agonizingly long shots of leaves and the sky. However I thought the combat scenes and the lead up to and from those scenes were fantastic...equal or superior to SPR. The fight through the tall grass up the hills to that final rocky crest followed by the close combat. The cuts to the japanese perspective were fantastic too. I would like to get a digital video editing system and create my own version from the DVD master. I could edit myself a GREAT movie I tell you (the pointless john travolta cameo would dissappear for instance). -Ren

I am very thankful for all the unpaid beta testers and scenarios designers out there helping make this game a great one. The idea of beta testing/scenario design for the final product has some superficial appeal until I think of the thrill of seeing the complete package with no spoilers and not having already been worn out by interminable bug hunts and scripted play-testing. Thank you beta testers! -Ren

You and everyone else Zigster!

I'm playing the 'Counterstrike' mod for half-life. (www.counter-strike.net) I just ordered 'Smolinsk 41' and am really looking forward to it...been a long time since I played a really good grand-tactical or strategic level historical wargame on the computer. -Renaud

Hmmm...sounds serious. (*laugh) Evidently I missed all the higgledy-piggledy action since Fionn now attracts rants by his very presence. Maybe it's that I habitually avoid all topics which appear to be bloated for no good reason. I'm sure I don't even want to know the details. You guys let Steve and Charles have a Christmas Holiday damn you! You will find coal in your stocking instead of CM.

Pham: From the Earth to the Moon, an HBO miniseries, showed up as a DVD boxed set.

Hey, another guy named Renaud! Hi there. -Renaud

'Overlord' by Max Hastings. I later read 'D-Day' by Ambrose and while not a bad book, Hastings' 'Overlord' stands head and shoulders above it. 'Overlord' makes you feel what it must have been like to fight in Normandy. The real stories of numerous soldiers are intertwined throughout the book, creating a superb sense of unity. These personal accounts are action packed and taken from interviews conducted by Hastings with British, American and German survivors. The book was published in 1984 so many more survivors were available for interviews than today. He interviewed hundreds evidently. The book changes focus back and forth from high strategy to in-the-hedgerows accounts quickly enough that you don't get bored. Of special note are the letters and poems written by men about to go into a battle.

Kai, Of course the reason your Stug didn't switch to the Sherman in time is because the CREW didn't see the Sherman in time even tho you floating godlike above could clearly see the sherman. I've seen this happen a lot, especially when the vehicle is buttoned up. I personally consider this to be realistic and really fun. Being able to over-rule this via a command interface which is always available as the game plays out would allow you to force units to notice and react to all new threats in a most unrealistic way. I think the designers of CM don't want that kind of micro control which is one reason the 1-minute control interval is part of the game. That being said, a real-time CM with limits on your mind-meld with the troops could be something cool for the future. The scale would have to be very small tho, since CM will apparently allow really large battles with scores of units on each side and giant maps (3km x 3km and up!) that take quite a while to scroll over. Imagine a full mechanized battallion sized task force on a 3x5 map....utterly impossible to control in real-time. The demo scenarios are truly tiny.