Sublime

One could make an argument that a large part of the Wehrmachts tenacity in defense on the Eastern Front had to do with knowledge of what would happen with the Red Army unleashed on Germany, and knowledge of what being a Russian PoW meant. Another good example of U.S. troops taking iniatiative is the river crossing at Nijmegan during Market Garden. I believe it was in Cornelius' Ryans book A Bridge Too Far where a US Colonel was asked by a Brit about how many times the US troops had practiced crossing the river (They crossed with makeshift craft, often without paddles and used rifles under withering fire) The Colonel replied 'None. This is on the job training.'

I've killed many Marders with arty. But thats an easy one. Two of the best was a Puma armored car - 60mm dropped into the open hatch. Devastating explosion followed. Same thing happened another time to a Pz IV.

The cheap price I can live with as the Allies had air supremacy at this point in the war and during the early summer especially the airforces were tasked with a lot of interdiction etc. My beef is how can the pilots spot the infantry so easily? I can see large numbers of troops in the open but I routinely get groups of 8-10 men as targets of strafing runs, oftentimes these men are against a hedgerow too. That doesnt 'feel' right to me. Also I think the strafing runs are pretty damned accurate, very little dispersal, and I also would think that the line strafed - e.g. where the bullets hit - would be longer, though more spread.

What is starting to confuse me is the CMx1 nostalgia. If you miss it that much -its been made, play it! I for one - do not wish to go back to abstracted troops, etc. The biggest improvement by far has been one to one modelling of the soldiers. Makes it way more realistic. Also try explaining all the abstractions to a non wargamer. -sigh-

haha. I was being lazy. waiting for someone to say its a little better, or whatever. -sigh- Ill go look at the fu*king chart I guess

Quick question - how does the 7.92mm round used by the Werhmacht stack up?

jpclark@bhcc.edu send me a turn if you want Scenario or QB. If its a QB I'd like to discuss the forces mixes etc briefly before we start?

Speaking of -- PBEM Anyone?

Also - split all your squads that will be in combat with this gun up. and spread the men out. All of your men have guns firing at the 88. The 88 has one gun firing at your men. So it can only target one group at a time. The less men in whatever group it targets - the better. Expect an ATG Ammo bearer squad with an MG42 to be nearby...

Crews cant interchange with different tanks

I believe they're 30 round clips. I may be wrong and they're 20 however.

Well you can at least have the crews jump back into tanks they've bailed out of. I wish you could recrew abandoned AT guns. At least by their own crew. Would make a big difference and also be more realistic - Ive heard accounts of the crew going to ground near the gun and coming back up to man the gun after a barrage.

ok now see pix one and three See the terrain type? thats the heavy undergrowth forest, at least in my experience

FWIW all preplanned arty seems to have this option. Well at least if its not a mortar, I dont think mortar shells can do this. TRPs as well - you can do it. I also think with FO's you *MAY* be able to do this with heavy arty- like the 240mm. I think so, but Im starting to think Im wrong because the scenario I had in mind had TRPs..

Well how do you think those noses got brown? where theres a nose theres usually a mouth close by =P

Maybe there hasnt ever been as much comment about a scenario in this community - but as someone who has been around since before the CMBO BETA (not even a demo) I can tell you that the community has changed. I never thought I'd see a post about ****ing SLIDERS for realism. Are you kidding me? All I've noticed since the game has came out is a lot more whining then I ever saw on this board. Dont get me wrong. Discussion is one thing. Calling the scenario a turd? All the people saying this **** arent making games or campaigns. And if you dont like that campaign, they included several others. It doesnt ruin the game at all. I seriously cant understand what the big deal is, or how people are getting so upset about a game scenario thats very difficult. This is like the 6th or 7th incarnation of a CM game. Just out of company scenarios theres doubtless going to be ones that are hard, or people dont like that much. As it is, I played this scenario a week into owning this game, and without smoke, without sneaking engineers I got across the bridge with troops. Didnt get to the hill. my attack stalled out there. I called for a cease fire. I took a lot of casualties but **** what do you expect fighting a WW2 game? As far as contributing anything to the campaign, what does any mission really contribute to the campaign? Most people play scenarios or qbs, and those are one shot - they have even less effect than any campaign mission could ever have. Those dont affect ****. And as far as the campaign, this does affect things - you have a lot less troops. does it affect ANYTHING if you even play the game really? No, except BFCs paycheck. Because its a GAME. Its something people do recreationally. And dont give me 'well its not fun.' If you want 'FUN' then go play Command and Conquer. CM Is and always will be FOR GROGS. this doesnt mean its not 'FUN'. It means its 'FUN' for people who like REALISM. And guess what, IRL sometimes you get the **** kicked outta you. If you're playing C&F for the 10th time, ya it may be a drag knowing that this mission is on the way. But then again, if you played through any campaign once you basically know what to expect mainly. The first time you play this, you have no idea what to expect, and you get your ass kicked. It happens.

To be honest I dont think its that hard to figure out how dense the undergrowth is. When you lower your view level to about ground level, you'll notice forests with no undergrowth are just a bunch of trees with.. grass under it. When you see the different terrain type under the trees, primarily the dark greenish mush looking grass bitmap under the trees- thats heavy forest. Its a difficult thing, as it should be, to attack in a heavily forested area. First of all, you should split your squads. You're going to take casualties, and its best if that grenade or burst of automatic fire only has three bodies to hit, rather than 8-12. I dont just mean scout squads, I mean split the squad completely. Dispersal is important too - not too much though, because its easy to miss things as it is if the forest is dense enough. Then you need scouts to advance... etc. Smoke IMHO doesnt do much except if you run into a trap and want to bug out. Otherwise it just confuses things more and its down to attrition. If you want to fight attrition, just hunt all your squads into the forest as is and you'll get attrition without the smoke. And if you're gonna fight attrition that means you've got heavily superior numbers anyways or you're an idiot. Otherwise the options as I see it are - leapfrogging split squads WITH LMG/HMG support. Slow, careful, bloody. If you have arty, stop for a few and let them blast the woods. Unfortunately for the defenders the woods are a downside to defense if theres artillery coming in. You want to saturate a good amount of the woods though, because if you just blast a path you can get killed on the flanks. My favorite, if at all possible, is isolating the said woods as much as possible. And giving any defenders who have LOS out of the woods a taste of something to shoot at. Once I ID any positions I blast the hell out of them. If I can avoid the woods entirely I will - but keep some guns on it. Once the defenders realize the front lines have moved way behind them, they'll prolly try to bug out themselves - and get gunned down. This is where its tricky too. Is it one AT gun and a squad in those trees? Or a platoon? A platoon in your rear can do some bad damage, especially if you think the woods are empty and bypass them. On the other hand you dont want your offensive to lose its 'tip' by encircling suspected enemy positions. All of that however, is more of a case by case basis

Yeah Ive been downloading every one. Makes a great difference in the game. I dont even realize a lot of the stuff till a few days later or whatever when Im zooming in to see something important and I stop and look at a tank or something and think 'nice..'

I dont think theres anything wrong wtih school of hard knocks. It is what it is. People are upset because the scenario designer came up with something innovative. Scenarios are primarily designed for the first go round or two, and the first go round you dont know you're gonna get clobbered at the bridge. Usually everyone is up in arms about how the AI sucks. The designers gave the AI kick ass tools and now everyone is acting like it ruins the game. And FWIW I thought Bumper Cars was an excellent scenario. I had a challenging go of it... Razor Back Ridge - very difficult and I only progressed further thanks to a 'draw'.

at least you admitted the mistake insteading of pretending you didnt find out otherwise

Arty can come in quicker than the expected delay given to you. Ive found that the arty delay seems to be 'worse case'. Probably accounting for a lot of spotting rounds. Sometimes you get lucky and the spotting round is real close. Then that cuts the response time. As far as mortars on tanks, Ive seen US 60mms immobilize a Pz IV one battle, and a Panther another time. Obviously if you pay close attention you can keep this from happening. However when managing a platoon of tanks, with a company of infantry in RT... I couldnt keep issuing forward/backwards orders for the tank, and plus I needed the tank there for fire support. IIRC the damage was to the tracks, not engine. However I could be wrong at least in one of the cases.

Wow Boche .. impressive

Lol! they always seemed too wide to me too - mass graves is EXACTLY what they look like.

the StG, MG42 combo is of course ideal. As far as SMGs I hafta admit the Thompson seems to kill more people than MP40s. This is in my experience, with no testing besides anecdotal battle experience. I havent seen enough of the G43 in action to really be able to tell. To be honest the StG44s are so few and far between I dont even know how great they are in the GAME either. As far as garands over lmgs I gotta say that Tux has the point. We can discuss this endlessly, but history, men's blood, and 'the powers that be' have spent endlessly more time researching this topic. If you take the U.S. Army, all the memoirs I've read about Vietnam show that great importance was placed on the 'pig' (m60) man, and his abilities with the machine gun. In years later the M60s were fazed out with the SAW and I believe we have two of those per a squad now. The Russians obviously came to similiar conclusions, equipping men with RPDs in each squad, etc etc. My knowledge of every militaries TO&E is limited, but obviously the trend has gone in the direction that it seems the Wehrmacht was going with in WW2 - at least on paper. On paper is what brings me to my next thought. I know the TO&E says each unit had this and that but would this be true in real life? I know theres only so much battlefront can do. I wonder if most squads did have two Mg42s, or what. I know as situations grew more chaotic you could throw things like this out of the window - but Im wondering about 'in between' As in not in the review line in front of Rommel in late May 1944, but also not on the side of the road trying to flee the Falaise pocket at the end of the summer. Would German squads two days into the fighting have such a uniform equipment loadout? (I believe they would but Im curious) The reason I ask is I always had the impression each squad had ONE mg 42. I was pleasantly suprised to see otherwise in CMBN. at the same time, it definitely makes sense. Oh and the MG42 is ALSO better than the Allied LMG's because of that lovely 50 round can that can be attached to it. Only reasonable alternative to belt fed for that role IMHO. the BARs 20 round clips SUCK.

I used to play veteran. But my internet connection kinda sucks and since I play RT it'd be hard for me to get back to PBEMs. tho I'll give it a try since I have done one since CMBB days... (anyone want to msg me) But I tried warrior a couple of weeks ago and thats the best setting imho