tar

Of course you could also let the computer buy the forces for BOTH sides. You get an even battle and the chance to try your hand at directly more, um, interesting (yeah, that's the word) force mixes than you would be likely to come up with on your own.

No. Yes.

You can't directly target open ground, but I hear it is on the wish list. You can, however, issue a direct-fire TRP as one of the orders. Just tell the units you care about to pay close attention to the area. That should get you a quicker response anytime anything around there gets spotted.

I will note as regards point "a", that you can get better behavior from the helicopters, but you have to do it manually. You can move them about using the delayed orders and have them pop-up for 15 seconds at a time using the altitude controls. That gives you pretty good tactics, in that NOE flying keeps them mostly out of trouble and the pop-ups, as long as spread out in time and space give firing opportunities with minimal risk. As for the evasive action SOP, I find it not particluarly useful, since it sends the choppers all over the place, especially on the small maps. I don't use it, since it is too unpredictable.

You really want to try to backup the Russian infantry with AT guns if you can. The 45mm isn't the greatest, but it is cheap and if you can get side or rear shots you can actually do some damage.

Well, for a nice maneuverist approach to strategy, I would recommend the book: Strategy by B. H. Liddel-Hart, ISBN 0452010713. It doesn't really cover tactical level games like CM, but makes for really good reading. From the publisher's blurb: "Liddell Hart stressed movement, flexibilty, surprise. He saw that in most military campaigns dislocation of the enemy's psychological and physical balance is prelude to victory. This dislocation results from a strategic indirect approach."

The main benefit for using TOT procedures is that research (and unfortunately, I don't have a reference) showed that it was the initial set of shells landing in an artillery barrage that caused the largest casualties. That was because after the first shells fell, everyone got themselves into the best available cover, which greatly reduced the chance of being hit by the blast and fragmentation effects. It was one of the particular benefits of the massed rocket artillery that the barrage occurred mostly in one single set of impacts. This was certainly the consideration that (eventually) led the United States to develop the MLRS (multiple-launch rocket system) in the 1980s. (The Soviet Union kept their multiple rocket launchers from WWII in production, upgrading them over time). So, since the initial strike was the most effective, having several batteries all time their inital shells to land at the same time gave you greater weight of fire in the crucial first few seconds of the barrage, when you were most likely to catch soldiers in exposed positions. Trivia: There was some work on the US Army's (since abandoned?) new artillery system to allow for multiple round TOT shots from a single artillery tube. The idea was to select different trajectories with the same end point that would take different amounts of time to complete. The longest one is fired first, with successively shorter time of fligth trajectories fired later, with the result that all of the shells hit at about the same time. This required electronic computers to devise....

I like this one. Although I rather suspect the last word should have been "Gelb" instead....

The Defense Department announced some new changes to the organization of military combat forces and their supporting arms. The Defense Research Office for Standard Systems (DROSS) is seeking to deploy commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) technology to streamline the provision of services. In keeping with the philosophy of the Stryker brigade concept, it is important to reduce the amount of support personnel needed for each combat fighting man. As part of the effort to provide improved service while reducing manpower requirements, a major effort has been made to apply state-of-the art customer service practices from the commercial sector to military problems such as fire control support. The first fielded operation, due for deployment late in FY 2007 will be an Automated Artillery Support System (AASS). This will use the transactions processing technologies pioneered by US businesses and will allow a reduction of manpower in the fire control call center by 20% initially building to 32% as the system becomes fully deployed. Initial testing of the prototype system has been completed, and the following transcript of a typical user interaction has been obtained: User: <Connect to Automated Artillery Support System> AASS: Welcome to the U.S. Army Automated Artillery Support System. You may choose from among the following menu options at any time: To request a new artillery shoot, press 1 To change an existing fire mission, press 2 To inquire about the remain balance of shells in your account, press 3 For all other questions press 0 and a fire support representative will handle your call in the order it was received. You may also press 0 at any point during this transaction to speak to a fire support specialist. User: [2] AASS: You have chosen to change an existing fire mission. Please enter your fire mission confirmation number followed by the pound key. User: [20050401567834#] AASS: You have entered two, zero, zero, five, zero, four, zero, one, five, six, seven, eight, three four. If this is correct, press 1 now. If this is incorrect, press 2 and then enter your fire mission confirmation number again. User: [1] AASS: For confirmation purposes, please enter the grid coordinates of this fire mission, followed by the pound key. User: [453215#] AASS: One moment while we access your mission.... Our records show that this fire mission is currently in progress. We estimate that it will continue for an additional 4 minutes. If you would like to cancel this mission, press 1. If you would like to reschedule the mission, press 2. If you would like to adjust the aim point, press 3. If you would like to change the mission type, press 4. If you would iike to User: [3] AASS: Please select from the following menu of adjustments. To adjust azimuth right, press 1 To adjust azimuth left, press 2 To adjust range up, press 3 To adjust range down, press 4. User [3] AASS: Please enter the change, in meters, rounded to the nearest 10, followed by the pound key: User: [200#] AASS: Your fire mission will be adjusted range up 200. If you would like to make further adjustments, press 1. If you would like to access a different fire mission, press 2.

Well, one factor in CM that works against the maneuverist camp is that there isn't any substantial penalty in morale for getting "cut off" from other off-map friendly forces. In particular, losing your line of communications (i.e., supply or retreat) doesn't dislodge an enemy force. To take the canonical meeting engagement situation, if one side does the "flag rush" into the middle of the map, and the other side secures all of the map edges, it is the surrounded force in the center that will win. In real life, surrounded forces tended to do really poorly. The great pockets on the East Front and the Falaise pocket are great examples. The situations that go the other way are much less common, but tend to be greatly celebrated (Bastogne, for example) in part because they are such great achievements. Many early campaigns, such as those of Frederick the Great, involved a lot of maneuver and fairly little fighting. If the lines of communication could be threatened, then the forces would withdraw. Granted this is on a larger scale than CM battles, but the lack of any real need to keep open lines of communcations gives a disconnect between these levels of conflict. One very rarely sees troops running back in panic because their position has been flanked. Instead, they just turn in place and face the new attack, pretty much none the worse for the surprise.

An addendum: Sometimes HQ units are more reluctant to "go to ground" than regular infantry. This makes them more potent as tank assaulters, but it also means they stay up longer during assaults and thus tend to attract more fire. An up infantry unit is a better target than one that is taking cover or pinned.

I believe that BFC has mentioned that HQ tanks can be identified under some circumstances. In fact, you can do it yourself. The indicator is rather subtle, though. It involves a different portrait of the tank commander. The rationale behind this is that the HQ tanks typically had more communications gear and radio antennae which would be visible to careful observation. For radio-less (Russian) tanks, there would be the use of flag signals from the command tanks that I would expect to be even more obvious than extra radio aerials. The bottom line is that HQ tanks can, in fact, be identified with enough observation. Infantry HQ units are a bit harder to ID, but if you find things that are not identified as "Infantry Squad?", then it may be a headquarters. I don't find them to be targetted more than I might otherwise expect, unless they end up leading the charge and being the closest unit. But I guess it's not unexpected in that situation.

Actually, I would expect it to be relatively common for at least the crew commander to dismount to scout ahead. You can be a lot sneakier on foot than in a vehicle. Especially for looking through or around hedges, ridge lines, or bits of woods.

Actually, wasn't that a bug fixed in one of the early CMBO updates?

IIRC, all of the map sizes are relative to the point values of the troops involved. I think it pretty much has to be related to the point values, since the map gets generated before unit purchases, doesn't it?

Well, the Canadian scenarios certainly do require a bit more experience and finesse to win. My own ranking system would put the US Army scenarios as easiest, USMC next and Canadians last. Mostly this is because, as the Major says, the lack of a plentiful and good mid to long range ATGM. The USMC is a bit tougher to use than the US army because they tend to be a bit more thin-skinned and thus require a bit more skill to use properly -- but the large infantry platoons are nice when fighting in the woods!

Besides, without it, how are the Germans supposed to do gamey Jeep recon?

Or course, it could also be someone's compromised host with an AOL address that is trying to attack as well. One of the joys of Mac ownership is a much, much smaller market share of the Malware market. [Knock wood]]

Unless this is some sort of proxy feature or download accelerator that AOL is inserting into the pipeline. Since it seems you are an AOL subscriber and the origin of the connection attempt appears to be an AOL site, I would expect that it could be some sort of caching or proxy system.

I believe the Candian Army book you are thinking of is "First Clash: Combat Close-Up in World War Three" by Kenneth MacKsey. Seems to be available via used book sellers through Amazon. I thought about it as a source for TacOps material, but concluded that most of the action was described at a little bit too low a level for the actions, even though the formation covered is brigade sized. Nevertheless, the situation would make for an interesting set of scenarios.

With the 1:1 representation, I wonder if there will be any control for influencing the general formation to be used by the troops in a squad? Certainly to a large extent one would want to have the details of the location of individual soliders handled by the TacAI (or some similar automatic method). For example, to conform to nearby walls, fences or buildings. But the general sort of formation should be something that is under player control. When advancing, it should make a difference if one want to do it say in a line versus a column formation. It would be nice if there were differences between a tactical column, such as one might use on a wooded trail: Point man, gap, rest of squad versus a road march column. I would expect that there should perhaps be some other sorts of formation choices, and some control over the compactness or dispersion of the formation. A spread-out formation can be useful for covering a lot of ground as well as to reduce vulnerability to artillery fire and the deadly cannister fire. I note that the Baldur's Gate games have general and flexible formation controls, although since it is a single party controlled by the player, probably with a bit too much detailed control. But something along those lines would be nice to have.

TLA = Three Letter Acronym

I think this would be a big boon to the tactics modeling. But it shouldn't be limited to just machine guns. It really should apply to all small arms fire. No more shooting over the heads of friendly soldiers. Attackers will have to take care to leave fire lanes open for the support weapons -- as it should be. This will also add more bite to attacks from the flank, since (given a linear disposition), it will have the potential to hit multiple units.

So, will it be harder to reverse your jeep if it has a trailer attached to it? That always struck me as a weakness in the modeling of the Crocodile tanks -- they didn't seem all that hindered in mobility (forward and especially reverse) by the presence of the trailer... I also presume that either the runners will have to function in 1:1 mode or else they will be abstracted away and thus dropped from the actual on-map forces. It wouldn't do to "double count" them, but I'm confident BFC has already thought about this....

I don't think it is gamey. First of all, there were plans (i.e., at the Normandy landings) to provide craters on the beach through aerial bombardment, just to give the infantry something to hide in. (The bombers missed). Second, I don't think it counts as gamey because it neither exploits a weakness of the game engine and because it is neither a "free" nor invincible tactic. The cover is limited and you pay for it by expending your artillery or HE fire on open ground rather than enemy units. It is just such tactical decisions and tradeoffs that one wants to see in a game.