Andreas

I've already got one.

What's a cheeseburger?

Not if you are playing me, mate.

Learn something new every day. I thought Feldjaeger was the modern variety of the Feldgendarm. Thanks Michael.

Err, and what were the historic casualty ratios for the 'average' CM level battle 1941-1945? I look forward to learning about them.

If you are around tonight, your Italians can do some assaulting, matey. Chris and I could not pick it up last night, so I hope you have a savegame left. I'll kick your rear back to Roma. Sapristi!

They were the official military police (fondly known amongst the Landers as 'Kettenhunde', chain dogs, after the breastplate on a chain they wore). But no, they were not what I referred to. These sort of niceties were done away with towards the end, and it became a free for all. I just read about a case of a German military judge who ordered two soldiers to be executed on May 13th, 1945 (sic!) for Wehrkraftzersetzung/desertion - the sentence was carried out without the Canadian military authorities interfering. The judge became a civil judge after the war and retired in peace. When one of the widows tried to get him on a charge of murder, the German justice system would not accept that and open a trial.

John, that would indeed be a departure. The way I understood this was something along the line of what Mellenthin described, where German soldiers rallied at their field kitchens if the proverbial had hit the fan. His line that the Red Army did not have field kitchens, and that therefore the Red Army soldiers were more committed to the attack, since they had no obvious rally point, is certainly 'interesting'. *cough* *cough* I agree that since you currently control everyone down to Section level you won't need the RV. You order it when needed as commander. The other one is outside the scope, and best represented by the friendly map edge.

Hehe - or you could see this as one way to simulate the NKVD blocking detachment or the SS Death Squad... Heh, can I have that in writing? Oh, I already do... Now there are only Charles, Dan and Matt left who have to say it, and then all will tremble before the weight of my knowledge...

Killmore, you are probably talking about NSFOs (Nationalsozialistische Führungsoffiziere - National Socialist 'Leadership/Education' Officers - very difficult to translate). Unlike Commissars, these were not really involved in the leadership of their units, but were supposed to do the indoctrination bit. One of the most prominent examples (to a German) would probably be Franz Josef Strauss. Their role was quite different as I understand it, because the Wehrmacht had a very different tradition from the Red Army, and was far more apolitical, therefore making political agitation work a weird thing to have. Strauss for example claimed that he only got the job because his unit commander was ordered to appoint an NSFO, and he chose someone who he knew would not cause too much hassle, but would make him appear compliant with the order. What the Germans had were their death squads though, shooting/hanging soldiers almost at will in the last weeks of the war, especially in the east. von Luck has an excellent example of this in his memoirs 'Panzer Commander'. A large number of German soldiers found themselves dangling from a lamp-post because they were deemed by some roaming 'judge' or a troop of SS to be AWOL. The final death sentences for desertion were handed down (and carried out) in Denmark after the surrender. The judges who passed the sentence were never brought to book for this. Another 'motivational tool' in the German army was 'Sippenhaft'. Soldiers were threatened that if they did not stand and die in their foxhole, their family would be suffering for that at home. I have no idea how prevalent that was, but you find a number of references to it with regard to the fighting in the low countries in British histories. Certainly a fun place to be.

Hmm, I would have thought the 'friendly map edge' is just that, since the 'rally point' (which is for girls anyway, if it is not on or beyond the objective) is most likely off-map.

The Soviet General Staff's study on Kursk has GD down as a Waffen-SS unit. Must be the name.

fk - I'll sent an email later tonight

In 'The South Albertas' Graves recounts the tale of Sgt. Halkyard and his mates from the Recce Troop taking out a German railway gun near the Dutch/Belgian border with their Stuarts, and no infantry support. Stuarts, the true Ubertanks in North-West Europe

Indeed.

You people make me sick. Is there no decency left in this world? Do you have to just leave your den and frighten the SSN? Revolting bunch of do-no-gooders you are. No Grog Porn or even a bit of the old poetry to make up for this vile incursion into the Real World. You bunch of useless mongrels. BTW - Mace says it is a Bring Your Own Sneak Sheep preview at his place.

They're the best. Nothing like a bunch of clown tanks with clown-car support in front advancing on the terrified enemy... I will keep a beta copy with clown tanks to just chuckle away at it. You all don't know what you are missing

CombinedArms, in a nutshell: no, your current system will not cut it. The main bottleneck is VRAM. The processor is probably on the slow side - I started with CMBO on a processor upgrade PPC604e 200 (to G3/300) with minimum RAM and that froze quite often. Options would be: 1. Get a better videocard, at a minimum an 8MB ATI Rage 128. 2. Once you have done that, get a processor upgrade if you are unhappy with turn processing times (although that is a minor problem, unless you are into huge battles) 3. Get a newer machine. I run CMBB happily on a G4/400 with stock 16MB ATI Rage card and 384MB (overkill). I picked that one up (including the superb 17" ADT see-through) for £600 in February and am quite happy with it. If you look on ebay you should be able to get an early G4 for very little money (e.g. this one or this one. Upgrading to a better video card is the only thing you then may want to, but don't really need to do. Even an older iMac will do, just make sure it has at least 8MB VRAM. Hope that helps, ask if you have any other questions.

Good, well done. I will buy you a big hat Osprey"s Bagration book by Zaloga is a bit 'easy' reading, but quite informative. My favourite on the operation is Adair's 'Hitler's greatest defeat'. Frank Cass Books has two superb series publishing a lot of stuff edited by Glantz. Any of those are worth reading. Edited to say that the Osprey one on Bagration has pwettier pitchers than the one by Adair. Very good to visualise the terrain, and to use for scenario design. [ July 17, 2002, 08:04 AM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Just a quick comeback to that Scipio, and then I give it a rest. The Russians did not really need that much longer. In September 1944 they had liberated/reoccupied all the territory they had in 1941 minus Kurland. From then on they fought on ground the Germans owned on 22.6.41. If you assume no stalemate, with the Germans marching on until 11/42, and the Red Army from 12/42, it took the Germans 17 months to get to the Caucasus, and the Red Army 22 months to get it all back. Not that much of a difference, especially if you consider that the Germans had one year of training and preparation before their attack and were at the height of their military prowess, while the Red Army started from its nadir. Regarding production - 1944 was the year with the highest production numbers for war material in Germany.

A sneaky bump while all the Americans are fast asleep.

Let's bump it for the boys.

I am sure all those Matildas and Valentines made all the difference at Yelnia, Rostov and Moscow... Going back to someone who knows what he is talking about (Steets 'Gebirgsjäger zwischen Dnjepr und Don'- he was the 1a of 1. Gebirgsjägerdivision then and published the book in the late 1950s working from the KTB, and other primary sources), the Red Army reinforcing divisions coming from Asia were very good quality, while at the same time the Gebirgsjäger divisions of XXXXIX. Armeekorps were on their last gasp, with supply problems, reduction in manpower especially in specialist units etc.pp. Consequently, they were thrown back by quite a distance. Hardly a winning army then. AFAIK lend-lease did not kick off before October, by which time the Soviets were already beaten according to your schedule. BTW - care to put the total production figures for Soviet equipment next to the lend-lease deliveries? E.g. for planes, according to the appendix in Kaberov's memoirs 'Swastika in the gunsight' the Soviet Union produced a total of 136,800 aircraft of all types during the war, of those 108,028 were combat aircraft. Lend-lease amounted to 17,834, i.e. ~16.5% of the total number of combat aircraft produced by the Soviets, or ~14% of the total number of planes in use. While not insignificant, I am sure the Red Army could have done without them, especially since their later models were apparently better than the lend lease they got anyway. [edit]Just dug up production figures for Soviet tanks: somewhere about ~100,000, meaning that 7,000 lend-lease tanks are a nice addition, but certainly not crucial, especially since many of them were not particularly goo.[/edit] The story is different when it comes to transport, and the massively successful operations in 1944/5 were only possible because of the presence of the US trucks. Without them, the Red Army would have taken longer to get to Berlin, but they would have gotten there eventually. Bottomline is, the Wehrmacht did not beat the Soviets where it mattered, i.e. on the strategic level, in 1941. Lend-lease had nothing to do with that. [ July 16, 2002, 04:52 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

Well, I think there's little you can do about this. At the moment, there is no way you can stop a player from co-ordinating his infantry and tanks better than the British CO did when attacking Cristot with 4/7th Dragoon Guards and 6th Green Howards on June 11th. Incidentally, five days later they had learned the lesson too. In CMBB, as in CMBO, if your opponent wants to (and can) apply proper tactics, all you can do is call him 'gamey', because his counterparts in Real Life™ did not do it.

I really don't care much about worries on TH forums one way or the other, since last I checked someone was worrying that all we Beta testers are a bunch of Paul Carrell acolytes worshipping at the 'Shrine of Wehrmacht Superiority'™. *shrug* You still have not explained how in CMBO the slow turrets are worse off. Shurely if you are a decent player, you will use tanks in overwatch yada yada to prevent this from happening. That would be variant 'd)' (noting here that I screwed up my numbering) of the above: 6d) CO Sherman breaks cover and flanks German heavy; German tank in overwatch acquires it. 7d) German tanks wait for Firefly to break cover too and whack two for the price of one. Any reason why this would not work in CMBO now?