Joachim

Retaliation was only found in dictionaries using Hebrew letters. For "Revenge" or "Avenger", "Avenge" I found the following naqam, par`ah ga'al is "Avenger" yasha` is "Avenge" hth Gruß Joachim

Yes - 240mm FO as reinforcement with massive delay... Even better... incendiary rockets... or the biggest rockets available.... Guaranteed to hit both sides equally. Gruß Joachim

Well... two very interesting alternatives. The brothel is a real temptation. Gruß Joachim

Really seems that squad went fanatic. If they have 2 SMGs left, it is very hard to overcome them. Maybe rush them with several squads at the same time. Approach march should consist of Move to contact and Advance. What tank do you have? Is smoke available? Is it save to drive the tank to behind the Soviet positions (=morale penalty for the squad) Gruß Joachim

oooops... I just imagine what kind of wine you can buy for 30$ per bottle over here (and this is freight alone!). Charl, you gotta be really convinced of your product. Congratulations on that! Gruß Joachim

@sand digger - do a search function (or try http://ns9.super-hosts.com/~dragonlair.net/combatmission/) @Sergei: Don't ever dare to enter my mission! Catholics or Ex-acolytes only. @Andreas: Stop trying to be important and send me my turns! @Hans: Saint Joachim... Yes! I am honored not being forced to choose sides in this battle thus representing the truly good forces of the forum. Gruß [ April 29, 2004, 04:23 AM: Message edited by: Joachim ]

-Move them in cover or out of sight. -Scout their approaches -Check the LOS of potential locations with recce units

IIRC you can't enter any number ofr the prob but 1, 2, 5, 10, 15, ... The probability for losing reinforcements drops dramatically from 5 to 2. With 5% there is about 80% probability to show up after 30 turns. With 2% it is just 26%. Dunno how you tested, but the involved probabilities cry for at least 20 observations (aka replays or using lots of reinforcements with the same prob in one scen). If you did only 5 observations, I'd expect your results. With 20, they are still pretty likely. Or BFC tinkered with that. In a current PBEM I am waiting for 6 turns for my most important reinforcements. With them I could overrunn the enemy now that I know where his amror is. But he play US - and as we all know, BFC is heavily biased towards the Allies . Gruß Joachim

The barrel length is the diameter (122) times the calibre (48). So the 122L48 is 122mm * 48 = about 6m long You King Tigers have 88L71 which is a tad bit longer than the Tiger I's 88L56 Usually the higher the calibre the faster the round - compare 75L24 to 75L48 or 75L70 or the 2 88s. Gruß Joachim

The 20mm ATR is different from the 20mm automatic cannon. Note the difference from the 250/11 with its 20mm ATR (168 tungsten only ammo, single shot thus lower hit prob, higher penetration) to a SdKfz 222 (40 or so bursts) with the 20mm auto that is even AA capable as it is the same gun as the GE 20mm FlaK. IIRC the Italian 20L65 in their ACs are not auto cannons though the seem to be the same as one of the Italian 20mm AA guns. Those ACs have a huge ammo load but a low hit prob (besides being Italian, but AIUI the engine doesn't check for nationalities). How it works: Once you penetrate the armor, the round has to hit something important inside the tank. But as a tank is a cramped place, you may get lucky -especially if the round starts to bounce. Gruß Joachim

PC, for short scens you may have said the same... for a 70+monster scen reinforcements arriving in turn 14 at 10% will appear with 99%. In a 25 turn scen, I would not bet on its arrival. Especially if you use lots of reinforcements balancing the scen will only be able by formulae Gruß Joachim [ April 28, 2004, 06:37 AM: Message edited by: Joachim ]

There is often a little gap between the wire. Maybe your opponent overlooked it. Or he wants you to go exactly there. Gruß Joachim

Every grog or wannabe has to grumble to earn this title! And besides - everything we do not criticize must be good. And there's a lot that was not criticzed yet. Gruß Joachim

Sure. Especially the shock effect. Glad CM is not RT. In a PBEM you have enough time to recover from the T38's feared ROTFL-effect. In TCPs they are probably terrible weapons, rendering the enemy helpless for several turns. Gruß Joachim

Downloaded it a few weeks ago. Am busy sorting out my troops for battle 6 of "Ghosts of Napoleon" at the moment. Guess the full division is present right now. **************SPOILER AHEAD ****************** A quick glance on your op: a) IIRC Many guns in reserve but no foot infantry. Swap guns and an inf plt. Especially the sIGs should support the attack - they save lives. The StuGs are one plt and two single vehicles? I'd use 2 pairs or 3 plus 1. c) I'd like to know when night falls. d) I'd like to know the supply&refit situation e) I'd like to know which tanks come as reinforcements. f) The briefing says I should capture all villages and be careful not to be cut off. In an assualt op the usuall way is to race forward. I expect some Soviets on my flanks in battle 1 but in subsequent battles I know the AI deploys only in his setup zone - forward non-immobile units are shifted backwards. For 2pl, a briefing like this is ok. g) Hey, I said ops with 30+turn battles! Maybe after GoN... Gruß Joachim

My tactics to conserve ammo: There are 3 types of fire mission: 1) Killing/Breaking 2) Keeping up suppression (JasonC's pursuit) 3) Blocking movement If a unit can not achieve any of that on enemy units, it will receive a covered arc to areas where it can achieve that should the enemy go there. The unit will probably go on hide. If it is to block movement - it will receive a covered arc for that area. If the enemy is in good cover and my ammo is wasted - a covered arc. Either a small one for self defence or one containing the enemy unit. If the enemy is pinned - only one unit will actively target him or use a covered arc where only the pinned unit is in. If it is close combat with isolated and pinned enemy units - advance or assault with overwatch. Overwatch should be out of grenade range! While advancing the unit fires less but the enemy is killed faster - usually when trying to flee. A strong enemy group rushing in will flush out a suppressed enemy (see above - the tank hunters were ignored by the AD crew, but a numerically superior and better armed squad rushing in did the job). Don't know the model, but I'd guess that the more suppression, the less men are needed to flush out cowering units. This needs micromanagement, but I usually start with covered arcs anyway as most of my troops use MTC and covered arcs instead of move - occasional incoming doesn't hurt them so much. On the defence most of my troops hide with covered arcs. Using CTRL+click for a 180° arc the covered arc is almost as fast as targetting a unit. Troops far away from the enemy usually don't suffer from heavy ammo consumption and those in close combat deserve some micro managament. Missing an easy kill or two may be annoying - but having too little ammo in the end may be much worse. Allied units may outlast German units in a 1:1 shootout. But the higher fp of the Germans allows them to break the Allies faster. What I consider buggy is the higher fp of US rifles - if they are able to fire faster, they should be penalized by using up more ammo and having less rifle ammo. Gruß Joachim [ April 27, 2004, 04:59 AM: Message edited by: Joachim ]

Or only one penetration that didn't even do some damage. Gruß Joachim

Finally... no paperwork in a campaign... I'll miss it , though my time is limited at the moment. The technical concept is good, but what about game play? How do your campaigns work? A few interesting points: Random scenarios? A tree of pre-made maps/battles? How does your core transfer from battle to battle? Upgrades? Have to check that tool! Gruß Joachim

@Jack Depends on how you set the fuse - see Mr. Tittles post: Gruß Joachim

"Have been seen" is a little vague. I doubt the General was at the front. There are other stories about unarmed soldiers assaulting - grabbing rifles from comrades once those fall. But this are probably just a few incidents. What is true is that massive waves of infantry usually followed tank breakthrus and overrun weakened positions. In desperate moments soldiers might resort to these actions - after all there were even Kamikaze pilots. Penal battallions might act this way. A commander under intense pressure from his commissar might act this way. There is also a quote about something like this: "It takes 1200 Soviets to overrun a position, 200 of them mountain troops. 1000 fall, and then the 200 mountain troops climb across the hills of those fallen". Stories tend to exaggerate real actions. It is human behaviour to flesh out some stories. So I am gonna tell you a different story. It starts with "they ran densely packed thru our minefields completely ignoring the mines and thus effectively removing all mines in their path". If you run towards a MG, it doesn't matter if there are mines, too - once you wait, the MG will get you... or the commissar in the rear. Your chances are best when you run. So this is still a somewhat reasonable story. Now add some propaganda (e.g. stupid "Untermenschen", evil enemy government not caring for their own people etc.) or the need to emphasize the risks and problems of the front line troops. Do this 2 or 3 times, once each time the report goes one echelon up. "Dense" gets "side by side". As you can't run side by side it must be marching instead of running. And you have a story that has a small core of truth, sounds plausible (as everyone knows that the Soviets had human waves) but is widely exaggerated. As the true core happened often, the story sounds very plausible and upon hearing it many German soldiers might have said "Yes, something similar happened to us, too". Thus you get many sources confirming it... until everybody believes it. Gruß Joachim

It is not gamey but moviey - to get out of any trouble as fast (or even faster) as it got into trouble. BTW-what is the Hit prob for the PaK (with and without TRP) Gruß Joachim

You can even kill tanks by using area fire with HE chuckers. there is a thread where somebody asked whether this is gamey. He disabled a Tiger with lots of area fire from Soviet SUs. Works especially well vs. thin skinned TDs or ACs. Once I could not target an armored car that stopped my infantry. An ATG bunker stopped my tanks. So I peppered the area next to the AC with 75mm HE. Next turn my inf casually strolled to the bunker and took it out. Armor stops objects from getting thru. It can not stop shockwaves - only spread them across a big surface and thus decrease the effect on a given small space. A crude description of the effect: A 150mm blast will spread out in the air as a widening ball. Air is too thin to have a big effect. The whole energy will be absorbed by a huge area. A 150mm round exploding deep in the ground will create energy. The enrgy will transfer into shockwaves and those will travel and may bury trenches once the shockwaves reach them. A 150mm round exploding close to a tank will have a blast affecting a certain area of the tank. The thick and little elastic armor will absorb the waves in that area and spread the energy/shockwaves across the whole object (tank) - just like a hammer hitting a metal plate. The whole plate will vibrate. If the object is big enough in comparison to the blast, the blast will do nothing to the overall vehicle, except destroying some small/weak parts on the outside (antennas etc). Armor spalling is kind of the same effect as shockwaves burying trenches. If the blast is big enough (navy guns) the object (Tigers in Sicily) may even flip over. Gruß Joachim

The biggest issue here on the forum regarding scenarios is play balance. After WW2, I can see no really balanced conflict - except those fought with WW2 weaponry by "minor" nations. They are usually less well documented as WW2. WW2 offers a wider choice of nations, so it appeals to more people. Would anyone like to play a PBEM US vs Iraq in 1990 as the Iraqi side? I would only play it if I were to chose the location and the part of the US forces I'm gonna attack. Or play exit scenarios on huge maps with small US forces. Technology is just one issue - motivation, training and methods is another. WW1 is balanced and well-documented, but it was a bloody slaughter with arty and human waves, little maneuver. A meeting was rare, attacks or assaults need a huge advantage in points. No (or limited) armor offers less choices. Rarity for armor is excessive. The size of the conflict allows for many people getting involved due to "national flavor". Pre-WW1 there is balance, but any war was limited in scale (except maybe 7-years war from Canada to India). If the module is playable for many conflicts in the 18c till 19c, there might be lots of balanced conflicts plus many possible nations. No armor, but cavalry and DF arty might play a role.. Gruß Joachim

My tests showed that you don't actually lose a reinforcement until you get down to the 2% number. Panther Commander </font>

Thanks. But on the last part of the quote - would you file a protest where the only question is whether the paper is faster in the round-file or you in front of the firing squad? Ethics and morale always depend on fear and career opportunities. Gruß Joachim