Joachim

Two reasons not do do this: Sneaking is exhausting. You might want to rest your men while hiding. Worn out troops don't advance. They even break and surrender more easily. From my experience sneaking is not as good as hiding when it comes to concealment. Gruß Joachim

THe target routine for the TacAI is to aim for the most expensive target. Vehicle HQs are more expensive - so they are picked first. Dunno if this was fixed, but I remember that in some version you could screw the TacAI by dancing around with the HQ a mile away while closing in with the rest. During the turn the TacAI would target the expensive vehicle. Between turns the target priority was more complex. IIRC this feature is gone now. I am a bit superstitious. So I do the following; a) HQs to the rear of the plt and in positions where their hit prob is lower than the others. If the HQ is targetted, it is harder to hit. Trade off betwene the sure kill of a plt member or a likely kill of the HQ. If the plt moves out of cover, HQs show up last - the TacAIs first target may be sticky. c) If I have some other expensive stuff, use it with or ahead of the HQs. (Note that single vehicles are as expensive as HQs). A favourite tactic was to have a regular PzIV plt a few hundred meters behind a vet PzIII plt. The T34 and PzIIIs happily fire at each other without doing some real harm. The PzIVs did the killing. Works great with Marders, too. If the map prohibited this tactic, I tried to move up the PzIIIs early during the turn with the PzIVs showing up a bit later. Guess who received the incoming.

If even a Tiger commander like Wittmann leaves his vehicle to scout on foot, I'd bet AC crews left their vehicles to scout, too. ACs are not armored to withstand any threat. ACs are a means to travel fast and protect from small arms fire. If your task is to check whether there is traffic on a crossroads: Would you drive to the crossroads - or drive near the crossroads, dismount and peek around some corner? Which method will ask for more incoming in case you find something? There were small arms in many vehicles. There are many other occasions where the crew has to leave the vehicle and needs them. But if you want to move stealthy, side arms are enough. The crew member leaving the vehicle is likely covered by the weapons of the AC. Gruß Joadchim

For an interesting reading, somebody placed this link http://www.adamfive.com/guerrero/zvezda/ in an old thread ( http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=006053#000000 ) Gruß Joachim

Troops routinely used existing craters as cover in WW1. Especially when attacking. The similarity between a foxhole and a crater (both are holes in the earth, usually supplied with mounds of earth around them) is telling. So do you think all those grunts in WWII ignored craters? How long will it take for an infantry commander to ask the arty to provide some cover on his way forward - not just concealment from smoke or suppresion? If he doesn't get it by asking for it, his recce might find some "targets" in the neutral zone just to get craters. How much craters will a rolling barrage supply to advancing troops? It is not gamey - and should have made its way in the "how to attack over open ground"-threads. But it is damn expensive in CM. Each turn of arty big enough to supply craters costs about the same as an inf plt. And craters - just like foxholes - are inferior to scattered trees IIRC. So as stated above, it is a trade-off. Gruß Joachim

I second Brent. Every crew will bail on their second casualty. So even a 20mm or ATR penetration might result in the abandoning of the vehicle. Given the low behind armor effect of 50mm and below this is a real advantage. Gruß Joachim

You can't. edited to add: Maybe there is a higher chance for a certain direction, but 4 enemy planes had different entry vectors in one game. Their entry vector had a direct relation to hitting or getting hit. Gruß Joachim

Flagrushing....

Representing the map in 1m x1m tiles is less a problem with storage but a problem with LOS calcs. I dunno the granularity of LOS checks in the current engine - maybe this is already down to 1m. But remember that calculating LOS has to do checks for every unit for every piece of terrain it can see. More units and a higher granularity means longer CPU time.... which I fear as much as scenario size (30mins of calc time and up to 4.5MB per email in one of my last scens). Gruß Joachim

They faced mostly second rate troops. Plus a few good ones. The good ones were not enough to stop them - but they had their share, too. Guess we found an agreement here. I have no problem in a nice debate. I felt no bitterness and hope I didn't cause any. On Comet: I agree with Sosabowski - it would have failed. Gruß Joachim

Yes, bias can swing two ways Elements of the 10th moved thru Arnhem towards Nijmegen. Elements were ferried across the river nearby while the bridge was held by the paras. Graebner's 9th Recce moved thru Arnhem. Yes - the latter ain't tanks. Translation errors will happen between Dutch and English. Definition errors happen. An armored column might get a column of tanks - which is not the same. Do ACs count as tanks or armor? What happens with translations of those words? I know the story about the 5 Tigers that got ambushed. But it was the 43rd Wessex division near Elst, not the 1st paras. And I don't state the defence was just old men and boys. Most of it was signallers, rear echelon, etc. Units fighting as infantry that were not trained as infantry. Ie troops that are 2nd or 3rd rate as infantry. Much less combat power than Panzergrenadiers. But still there were Panzergrenadiers available. Sometimes with captured weapons (seems several small troops had made their way thru France and were rejoining their division at Arnhem). Sometimes fully equipped. But the amount of available fully trained infantry was low. Yes, the German defence was a success. Part of the success was made possible by the British plan that did not expect resistance at all. Then the paras encountered men from an SS Pz Division. They encountered fierce counterattacks from men in uniforms of an SS div - how should they know it weren't trained infantrymen and how weak the division really was? I guess some officers of the paras got cautious - which is a bad thing cause a para drop needs to keep its momentum to be successful. If they stop or allow small hodgepodge skirmishing units to delay them, the Germans gain time to defeat them in detail with the little combat troops and tanks they have available. Of course stopping XXX Corps helped even more to gain enough time. Gruß Joachim

Well, a small number of tanks - including Tigers - and self-propelled guns, towed 75mm guns, halftracks, and a substantial amount of infantry, which surrounded a battalion of infantry with light AT weapons and a finite amount of ammo with no immediate means of resupply. </font>

yes a bridge to far actualy! in the book of the same name by cornelius ryan, puts the strength of the german armour at the start of market garden at 51 armoured cars and if the forces you describe were all that was there 30 corps could of passed through themselves even with out the bridges. the german armour moved up after the start of the operation as noted on page 365 i think of a bridge to far he also estimates german casulties as between 7,500 - 10,000 men so where were they joachim i guess cornelius ryan was wrong. with all this info you should rioght a book montgomery also mentioned 2nd ss panzer in his war diary i guess he was wrong to? try and read books before you comment. </font>

Hey, so much fun I have to join again... but on an older matter from page 1 of the thread: the 2nd ss panzer korp (9th and 10th panzer division) where in the area, along with several more armoured units (battalions etc) a total it has been stated at 100 tanks and 50+ armoured cars. link At the bridge itself, frosts troops where up agaisnt a panzer company (with tiger tanks), a panzergrenader regiment, SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 9 (recon something, i dont know what it translates as) as well as several battle groups one of them - Kampfgruppe 'Knaust'was made up of a panzer greandier training battalion and the 6th Panzer Replacement Regiment (8 tanks) Knaust later had tigers attached to it. in the Oosterbeek Sector, sure there was alot of traning units but there was also armour and arty. didnt Fallschirmjäger troops also take part? </font>

Maybe the accounts are biased? a) Divisions in the west were often second rate. You often had Osttruppen who were more or less pressed into service. Note the remarks about the 352nd at Omaha - "veterans from the East front". If the divisions in both theaters were equal, why especially note this in accounts of Omaha? Motivation to fight in 1944. Most knew that the war was lost. In the east surrendering meant Siberia. Holding out (and the German troops had learned that one of the most effective form of defense is to counterattack) would allow civilians and other parts of the Heer to escape the Soviets. c) Bias. The west wanted to make believe that the Soviets stood no chance - both to its people and to the Soviets. Make your people feel secure and deter the Soviets. And of course it makes you feel good when the Germans are "better" than the Soviets and you are "better" than the Germans. An example for bias is the Arnhem bridge. The British 1st para fought against an SS Panzerdivision. Hey, they had no chance against tanks, had they? But if you look at it you'll find that said division was severely mauled and had just given away all of its armor and arty to another division. The paras where held in check mostly by rear echelon troops. d) Statistics. Does the "ratio" include the wholesale surrender in early 1945? Most troops tried to cross the Elbe to surrender in the West... I once read some statistics that stated the ratio in battles was in favor of the Germans. But if you take the big picture the ratio is clearly in favor of the Western allies. e) Whose numbers do you use? German accounts for the fight in the East, US and Brits in the West? Enemy losses are always overestimated. Gruß Joachim

Several 20mm armed recce cars and HTs are AA capable - they can help out sometimes. Both by firing and offering targets. Gruß Joachim

Shameless plug: If you like any size try my own "A Big One" at the proving grounds (10000+ per side). Some 100+ destroyed vehicles. And it even has infantry and guns, too! It is just that the tanks decide the battle on a rather large open map. (Except for ATGs, AD and planes, of course). Do not play it vs the AI - it won't work. Make sure you run it on a decent machine. Gruß Joachim

Welcome aboard. 4 small flags at 100 pts each = 400 pts x points for dead fortifications x is 11% of the total of 400 + x As a mathematician I saw the solution is approximately x = 50 here. x = 0.11 * (400+x) x = 44 + 0.11x 0.89x = 44 x = 44/0.89 = approx. 50 (minus some rounding error 44/89 = 0.49...) From observation: The percentage shown during the game includes your dead units, the flags as you see them (which is not necessarily how they would be counted in the end), and the confirmed losses of the enemy. In your display: your points = your flags plus the pts for (confirmed) enemy losses enemy points = enemy flags plus the pts for your losses (these losses are known to you) neutral points = neutral flags total points = your points + neutral points + enemy points per definition total points = 100% It seems unmanned fortifications are initially known to you, thus they count to the confimred enemy losses. Gruß Joachim

Very near an enemy vehicle that is. Gruß Joachim

Hmmm... Extremes don't matter but as a statistician I'd like somehting more than just an average (where the extremes do count). GaJ could you add the variance? It can tell more than the extremes. Or even better I'd like to have the median and the deciles. Knowing the range where 80% of games ended would tell more than the extremes - and it is easier to comprehend than the variance. An advantage is that scens played less than ten times have their extremes as deciles - which automatically leads to a huge range which in turn is interpreted as "no secured information from this sample". (Lower Decile = at least 90% are bigger or equal, at least 10% are smaller or equal. Upper decile = at least 90% smaller or equal, at least 10% are bigger or equal. E.g. look for the percentile operator in Excel) Gruß Joachim

Second AP - except for the calcs. Approx 50 points on non-crewed fortifications are 11% of 450 pts . If it is a scen, it might have a bonus for one side - but that's rather seldom. Gruß Joachim

The French-German war in 1870/71 was partly decided by the Prussians using a new breech loading rifle. But the more important part was using railways for transport. And I guess it wasn't just troops they transported. I recall a quote that the North did not use breech loading rifles because they used too much ammo and thus costed too much. The less time to reload the less will an average soldier care about actually hitting and just throw as many lead in the general direction of the enemy as possible (when in doubt - empty the magazine). Thus he will need much more rounds to actually hit somebody. Given the logistics in the CW, I doubt they could have transported so much ammo except along the railroads. Are there enough railroads? Enough soldiers to protect them? The need for rear area guard duty personnel might just outweigh the benefit of the added combat value of the front line troops. And it is really annoying if you can only attack along railroad tracks. Gruß Joachim

Ahem... for those who don't know.... the forum might crash with over 300 posts in one thread. That's why the wafflers and pengers start new threads on a regular basis. New posts for this thread go here Gruß Joachim

New posts on that topic go here... Gruß Joachim

Close that thread! Open up a new one! Are you mad to post more than 300 posts in a single thread? Can't you learn from the past! Gruß Joachim