ASL Veteran

Incidentally National Geographic Channel ran a series called 'Inside Combat Rescue' where a Nat Geo camera crew followed an Air Force Para Rescue team around Afghanistan for about four months. Although I did serve in the military back in the 80s I never saw any combat (thank goodness), but the absolute carnage that the Para Rescue men saw on an almost daily basis in Afghanistan was pretty incredible. At first it was fairly riveting viewing, but then it started to bother me and by the time the last episode was on I could barely watch it. Just the absolute carnage and broken bodies from explosions .... blown off limbs, gunshots to the head, a man drowning in his own blood, it was pretty brutal stuff. I've got to hand it to those medics who deal with that stuff on a regular basis. Just a few days of that and I have to think that you would start to question what you were doing there. It was obvious that the Para Rescue men felt a great deal of satisfaction in saving the lives of the wounded, but you could also see the strain coming through from dealing with all that human destruction on a regular basis. Going back to the original post for a bit - there was absolutely no way those Para Rescue men could do anything in the prone position. It was just not possible. Thank goodness that we are only blowing up pixel soldiers. If only all wars could be fought with pixel troops.

A good intro to the topic would probably be 'The Unknown Eastern Front: The Wehrmacht and Hitler's Foreign Soldiers" by Rolf-Dieter Muller. Spain had an entire Wehrmacht division up until about 1943 or thereabouts so not all foreign volunteers were in the SS. The French also initially served in the Wehrmacht as well. You should also count the Hungarian, Romanian, Finnish, and Italian national armies.

I wouldn't count on the CMBN file structure ever being altered to match CMFI and CMRT. That's not to say that it will never be altered, but I certainly wouldn't be holding my breath over it.

You were wondering why two identical things are acting differently. I'm merely pointing out that they are not two identical things. Things that do not follow microsoft's officially approved file structure will trigger the little pop up window asking you if you really want to run the program while things that follow the official file structure do not trigger a pop up. Obviously, internally, the operating system is treating the two programs differently. If the OS is not treating the two programs as identical things then the two programs are not identical in how they function.

You are forgetting something ... CMBN and CMRT install onto your computer with a different file structure.

The way I see it, even if one was to assume that 1941 would have largely played out the same in the complete absence of the western allies, 1942 probably would have been substantially different. I think there were something like 200,000 German troops occupying Norway and there were plenty of troops occupying France. I don't know how many, but certainly the Germans could have fielded two more entire armies on the Eastern Front. So instead of two Romanian Armies on either flank of 6th army it is not outside of the realm of possibility that there would have been two more entire German armies deployed in addition to the two Romanian armies. One could also theoretically include a much larger Italian order of battle. Hitler didn't even want Italian troops on the Eastern Front but Mussolini felt that it was his sacred obligation to send them and he insisted. Mussolini probably would have sent a much larger Italian contingent if he could have so a doubling of the size of the Italian forces in 1942 is not out of the realm of possibility. Lest some scoff at the Italians, the Italian army did give a good account of themselves in 1941 and even in the winter of 1942 they held the line for several days before breaking. If each division's frontage was shrunk with the addition of two German armies and another Italian army they could have been a decent addition to the Axis OB. There would also be more German armor as well. Just the presence of the Afrika Korps as a reserve armored force to counter Soviet breakthroughs would have made a big difference in the Stalingrad operation. German reserve armor made a big impact on Zhukov's failure in Operation Mars as well as the big Kharkov breakthrough just before the push on Stalingrad. On top of that you have a substantial increase in the size of the Luftwaffe with plenty of fuel to fly as many missions as they want to since the German sources of fuel and oil are secure and nobody is bombing the German rail and transportation system. Certainly the German home front would not see any bombing raids so German production would not have been hindered in the least from the standpoint of enemy action. Of course political interference would have been ever present, but I think it is safe to assume that the German order of battle would have more of everything in it relative to what was actually present. So I'm not sure at all that the Soviets would have pushed Germany out of their territory or that Soviet survival would have been assured.

You have now made your position clear. The Soviet Union, by itself, without any assistance or participation in WW2 from Britain or the US would have defeated Germany all by itself. If Britain and France did not declare war on Germany after it invaded Poland and Germany then invaded the Soviet Union history would not have changed at all and the Soviets would be in Berlin regardless. Perhaps that might be the case or perhaps not we will never know. This does explain your position on the utter uselessness of Lend Lease though and how it contributed absolutely nothing to Soviet victory.

If you subtract the entire western allied order of battle from the equation the Germans have plenty of fuel because their POL isn't being bombed. I said that an argument could be made that the Germans could have defeated the Soviet Union if you completely subtract the Western Allies from the equation. Der Alte Fritz seems to be of a mind that even if you completely subtract the entire western allied order of battle the Soviets would have defeated Germany regardless because the Western Allies contributed almost nothing to the defeat of Germany.

I thought that was only referring to the last statement that you made. I don't think that anyone is arguing that Lend Lease, all by itself, won the war. However, I think that an argument could be made that the Soviet Union, all by itself, could have been defeated by Nazi Germany irrespective of what some Russian citizens may say or think. If you subtract the western allies air force a good case could be made that Germany would never have lost air superiority on the eastern front. I don't even think the Soviets achieved air parity until late 1943 and that was with one hand tied behind its back (metaphorically of course). If you eliminate all the allied bombers and move the entire German Luftwaffe from France, Sicily, and Germany to the Eastern Front then I'm not certain that the Soviet Union ever would have gained air superiority. If you subtract all the Lend Lease trucks from the Soviet OB and you give Germany as much fuel as it needs because their oil supplies aren't threatened by allied bombing then a good case could be made that Germany retains the mobility advantage on the eastern front for the duration. If you move all those German and perhaps even Italian soldiers from combat and occupation duties in France and North Africa then the Soviet manpower advantage would be reduced .. perhaps even significantly enough to make a big difference (in terms of armor especially). The same could be said about the western allies too of course. If the Soviet Union wasn't actively involved in fighting Germany it is not hard to imagine a case where a continental invasion would be prohibitively difficult to pull off. You simply can't make that argument in the Pacific though. America was basically fighting Japan all by itself from a naval standpoint and I'm not sure how much of a difference the land fighting would have made since Japan is an island. So you could subtract the entire British war effort in the Pacific, and even eliminate the American radar advantage, and Japan would still lose the war. I don't think there is any question about it.

You can't be serious can you? You don't actually think that the USA would have been defeated by Imperial Japan in the Pacific if the British didn't help the USA do you? Do you know how many carriers the USA had by 1945 and how many carriers Imperial Japan had by 1945? About the Lend Lease trucks ... as the Germans themselves demonstrated in 1939, 1940, 1941, and 1942, you don't need your entire army to be motorized in order to have enough mechanized units to have a substantial impact on the battlefield. By 1944 the Soviet forces were effectively more mobile on the battlefield than the German army and that hampered the German ability to react to operational conditions. Yes, the entire Soviet army wasn't motorized but enough of it was that it made a substantial difference.

The threads are old threads so when I use 'as you suggest' I mean that they were attempting to alter their file structure the same way as you are suggesting that you want to do now. Suggest being defined as "to mention (something) as a possible thing to be done, used, thought about, etc." From your first post I was led to believe that you hadn't altered your file structure yet and that you were thinking about that alteration as something you might possibly want to do. Thus my use of 'suggest' was used in the context of you thinking about altering your file structure (suggest) and me pointing out that others had done 'as you suggest' in the past and the result of their attempts were that their games were broken. So I wasn't inferring that you were suggesting that everyone alter their file structure but rather that you were thinking about doing it. I'm sorry if there was any misunderstanding about my response.

They do not have the same file structure. CMBN was made with a different, non windows compliant, file structure. CMFI and CMRT both have a windows compliant file structure. The file structure for CMFI and CMRT are the file structure for CM games going forward. It was decided to leave CMBN with the old file structure. No, the games should not work correctly. There are some threads in the tech support forums about this when players were doing as you suggest and then complaining because their games didn't work.

Yes indeed. I was beginning to wonder if your love of CMx1 had blinded you to reality. Infantry in CMx1 didn't get cover from live friendly vehicles either IIRC. By your own admission your point about CMx1 vs CMx2 in this situation was a non sequitur since in neither case is the issue addressed to your satisfaction. This leads a rational person to wonder why you bothered to bring up CMx1 at all since it doesn't add to your point, but rather detracts from it. The switch had absolutely no effect on the situation described by the original poster since the end result is the same in both iterations.

The ridgeline problem is as much a map issue as it is a soldier issue. When setting elevations in the editor you set them per action spot. So if I'm making a ridgeline that is one action spot wide and several action spots long then by the necessity of the way it is made in the editor the action spot is set at a higher elevation than the surrounding terrain. Since soldiers occupy part of a single action spot then you have the issue as described in the first post. In other words, in order for the individual soldiers to position themselves just behind the crest they would need to be positioned between two action spots rather than in either one action spot or the other. The only way to mitigate that somewhat would be to have the elevation difference between the higher elevation action spot and the lower action spots be the minimum of one meter. Soldiers can see over 1 meter height obstacles from the kneeling position but they cannot see over 2 meter obstacles while standing. The terrain mesh for elevations can only be set in 1 meter increments. This is clearly demonstrated with the way the ditch lock feature works in the Market Garden module.

There is no scenario baking anymore.

I know that the game makes a pre game LOS calculation from action spot to action spot. Steve has said on numerous occasions that individual spotting 'on the fly' by each individual unit in game is so computer intensive that it's simply not feasible so you can just forget about any fancy theories anyone may have as to what they want the game to do. What some want and what is possible are often two different things. The problems come when those who want something get confused about whether it is possible or not through a lack of appropriate knowledge of the issues from a computer standpoint. The forum is littered with hundreds of posts from those who say "I want X and BFC is incompetent because they can't just implement something so simple." Typically those who say these things have no idea what they are talking about.

I believe the building situation that you show above might already be known because there is a situation with LOF and buildings, although I'm not certain if that's related or not. I believe that spotting goes from center of action spot to center of action spot so that's probably why you got the result that you got, although Steve has said on multiple occasions that LOS is always reciprocal so there must be something involving the positioning of the spotters somehow. It does look very odd though. I do think that it would be helpful if you continued testing spotting, not only to help BFC to see if spotting can be improved or not, but also to help you get a better handle on how it works within the game. The more you nail down the spotting routines in the game the better positioned you will be to work around those limitations when you are playing. Hopefully that would reduce your frustration since you would then be aware of the limitations and how they affect you in the game.

You might check out some of the gaming clubs too. Few Good Men, The Blitz, and Band of Brothers seem to be the main three.

Kauz, please stop embarrassing yourself. I suggest that you stop making assumptions about things and take the time to actually find out how they work in the real world.

It really depends upon the circumstances. HMGs in defensive positions were typically assigned 'sectors' to cover - preferably in enfilade - where they could use grazing fire to deny that area to the enemy. A relatively tight covered arc type of command where the suppression effects were applied from the muzzle all the way out to the target area would be something that would be useful to a defender.

Something almost identical to this has actually been proposed, but when or even whether you may see something like this is anyone's guess.

I don't want to speak for Phil, but I think he has managed to nail it down.

Kauz, I would like to recommend that you have a look at an MG 42 tripod and see how it actually works. Perhaps you could also study up on the terms 'Grazing Fire' and 'Beaten Zone'. Once you have done this, then perhaps you can contribute to this discussion in a meaningful way. Hyperbole isn't going to move the discussion forward.

Hopefully you noted the word 'necessarily' that I placed in my initial paragraph. If you make an assumption that nobody goes to ground and they continue to run forward in an upright position yelling 'Urraahhhh' without moving right or left then perhaps you might have a point. If they go to ground though then you wouldn't have a point. I also don't 'necessarily' disagree with the burst size needing adjustment either. For a 500 cyclic RPM standard heavy machine gun an average burst size of around 6 rounds is probably appropriate. For an MG 42 I could see 20 round bursts on a tripod as being a reasonable expectation since you have it in the FM, but it's also possible that the code can't distinguish between different models of MG in terms of assigning a round per burst count. If the code can't distinguish then you are stuck until that can be altered - assuming it can be altered. You also need to realize that the HMGs in the game typically only come with somewhere between 1500 and 2000 rounds so you will be burning through your ammunition pretty quickly my friend. Maybe that doesn't bother you but I just wanted to toss it out there for consideration.

There were Elefants on the Eastern Front during this time frame but they were located with Army Group North Ukraine which wasn't featured in the base game. You will see both of those vehicles eventually, but they just didn't come in the initial release.