Andreas

The Germans also manufactured ammunition for captured Soviet 122mm divisional guns. Quite a few Wehrmacht units were equipped with that one.

Been a while. Here is the list of updated items: 9th November Text and map on observation systems of B49 near Woronesh, B17 near Yelnia, and B30 in the Erika Aisle added. In future updates I want to publish more of the information from Froben, I would be interested to see how useful people think it is. New pictures in the unknown soldier section added, also found information on location of the soldier's unit. This needs to be made modem friendly now - on my 'To do' list. New page with gun information added. New pictures in Russia section added New pictures in Training section added Scanned information on vehicles, personnel strength, and OOB of Beobachtungsabteilungen added as links on the Organisation page. New book recommendations added. Some errata and new information added I hope you find something there you like. With the new design, it has become easy for me to update the site, and I will hopefully add some more pictures over the next few weeks. Link in my sig.

Vodka and Machorka.

Or maybe it is a problem of the weapons (molotovs) not being viable objects of destruction of the target (bunker)? If grenades eventually do the job (after a while) that could just be the abstraction of the squad taking some time figuring out how to deal with it. I would have thought molotov cocktails are not the weapon of choice to get to grips with a pillbox. What about wooden bunkers, are they being used there?

It was discussed in the Beta team, and IIRC the feeling was that it was not just done on the fly. I.e. outside a CM battle scope.

Yeah, but that's a bit like saying 'I had a nuclear rucksack bomb, and suddenly those Kingtigers were no longer a challenge.' The 100mm gun is a very different beast from the 76.2mm gun. You should not even need to get close.

Judging by the colours in the pictures, they are playing the CM Alpha battle...

Sure that would not be a rebored 85mm AA gun? I know the model number would be off, but this sounds very curious. Some Russian Battlefield info on tractors: Komintern Picture of Komsomolets tractors

Is that an 8" howitzer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me Lieutenant... Radios, or alternatively wire drums would be my guess.

On the dangers of generalisation. Translated by me, quote is a note by GOC 12. Panzerdivision talking about the period March 1943, when the division came into heavy combat in the Orel sector. Previously the division had incurred heavy losses in the Belyi and Luchessa sectors in the Rhzev salient. Must have been some comradeship going on there. Also in the text and evaluation of enemy and own performance: About the preparation for Zitadelle: The status report in early July 1943 reads: When using individual tales about comradeship and how nice it was in the trenches when your best buddy was next to you, and how you would have done anything for him, especially with the Wehrmacht in Russia one has to be aware of survivor bias. The chap who can tell the story can do so because he survived. Which means that it is a fallacy when one assumes that his story can be generalised.

In CMBO, Jon sent me a file once that depicted a realistic MIKE target (forgotten the scale) coming down on two Jagdpanthers. I.e. corrected for number of guns and ROF. The end result was two abandoned Jagdpanthers. Ammo expenditure was probably in the mid-hundreds. Been a while, but it was impressive. That from 25 pdrs. Heavy artillery is useful against tanks per se only if used in mass (unless you are very lucky), which I would argue is outside CM's scale, or to strip the infantry support off the tanks. Those 30 rounds of 120mm mortar coming down will not stop the tanks, but they will get rid of the pesky crunchies accompanying them. And once you got rid of the crunchies, the tanks are so much easier to deal with. Soviet accounts or German accounts dealing with Soviet artillery have to be read very closely to understand if they talk about DF or indirect use. If you can not figure it out, you can not draw any conclusions from it.

I think those who would like to see this feature have not really thought about the abstraction involved sufficiently. In CM, a squad does not have its soldiers stacked one on another in a 2x2m piece of trench to be crushed at Ivan the tankdriver's convenience. They are spread out in the tile. A single tank can therefore not physically crush a squad that is spread out over such a large area. Having said that - if I drive a T34 up to a trench with occupants that are not covered by AT weaponry, and are out of handheld AT weapons, what happens is that they take losses, and often break. When they break, they leave the trench, they get gunned down. The effect is the same (tank wins, infantry dies), and probably more realistic anyway. Crushing ATGs is already in the game, and I am reasonably certain that if you drive a KV1 up to a mortar or HMG position, it will have an effect on the Germans in that position.

Check your email, you Antipodean. Michael, do a search for someone asking to be banned It was connected to the question of ordering directly from BFC for European PC users. That thread was like a very bad traffic accident.

Has already happened. ISTR the dubious honour goes to Fred, the right honourable member with the number 176, or somefink.

Okay, I see what you want now. Interesting proposition.

Really? I thought the Finns could only show up in 'North'?</font>

I call them 'regulars'. Since CM does not currently model anything but the squad and not the individual soldier, what purpose does your 'want' serve in the current model? How do your guys work differently from what we currently have as a maneuver unit, without going to the modelling of the infividual soldier? No, but Stacheldraht's post quite clearly implied that the infantry model does not allow him a wide flexibility. I would argue that it does, and when acknowledging the constraints of soft-factor modelling, and the paucity of research on the topic (compared to armour strength) it is actually as good as it is going to get at the moment.

Stacheldraht, where exactly do you think the infantry does currently not conform to historical reality, within the boundaries of what can be done? Let's see - want 14-year old HJ with no military training but imbued by the spirit of the Goetterdaemmerung? Take conscript fanatical infantry with lots of AT weapons and low ammo. (tick) Battle-hardened vets after 5 days of combat in the ruins of Velikye-Lukyi? Veterans, unfit, low ammo @ 60% unit strength. (tick) Relatively untrained, fresh, poorly led Luftwaffefelddivisionssoldaten ( )? Buy the unit, give it crap officers with no bonusses, make it green, fit. (tick) Ueberhampster Finnish forest troopers in Ukraine? (tick) Numerous examples abound. Instead of just insinuating that CMBB does model the armour fine, but the infantry not particularly well, why don't you outline what the problem is? Has anyone here actually tried to play with unfit veterans? If not, give it a go. They come pretty close to the burnt-out chaps being talked about, IMO.

Oh yes - I always thought Heinlein could have used some of that writing style

You don't need to have the scenario on both machines for TCP. Only on the hosting machine.

What I meant was that they only saw three days days of combat in total, not enough to get them up the curve (especially if you condiers they lost close to 50% casualties in those three days).

Don, I think 6DWR is maybe not a good example - excuse me for not getting out the reference, but weren't they shot up again and again and then again in just two days, losing almost all their officers? I think the 'not a team player' Lt.Col. who wrote the report that got them disbanded mentioned they had ceased being a unit, and instead became a collection of individuals. Looking at John's figures, 6DWR never had a chance to waking up. The batallion never knew what hit it. Great thread, BTW.

Heh, look what I found...

Bump - very interesting

Another issue is that the time here includes the time it takes to transfer the ammo to the gun. IRL™ you would not need to do that if you just wanted to deploy quickly. So if you wanted to have the 'fire from the march' possibility, it would need a new type of code for guns, divorcing ammo from the gun, and treating it separately. That is done to some degree now (when you move after having incurred crew losses, you lose ammo), but this would go further. I would hope the engine rewrite can address the issue. (some engine rewrite that will be...)