Bertram

Hi-res, 1200 x 1000 resolution, and that on a PII/400 with a voodoo3. No problems at all.

I never have used a flamethrower yet. I usually keep them to the rear, out of harms way when assaulting. When my troops find an unmoveble obstacle I lay down supressing fire, and send the flamethrower in. But I found that the enemy either takes out the flamethrower before it comes into range (not enough supression) or has been broken/reduced before the flamthrower arrives. When defending I try to use them in ambushes. But until now I never have had one succeed. They are always spotted (and shot) before the enemy gets into range. Even when I tried to use reverse slope positions. Bertram

Wiling to take on some opponents. Send me a mail. I played only qb's up to now, saving the scenario's. I am not in favor of any side, so pick any, pick a side and mail me. Bertram BORedmeijer@home.nl Ps.: anyone knows why my e-mail adress isn't 'clickable'? (yes, HTML and UBB codes are on). Ah, got it. [This message has been edited by Bertram (edited 07-09-2000).] [This message has been edited by Bertram (edited 07-09-2000).] [This message has been edited by Bertram (edited 07-09-2000).]

As for putting fires as a 'gamey tactic', In the house to house fighting in Arnhem both sides put houses on fire, to rout out defenders, when retreating to deny the other side the cover, and to light up the terrain during night fighting. Bertram

After playing the scenario as American, I played it as German. I used the standard setup. In the first turn both Sherman 105's pop into view of my 75 mm AT in the bunker. Confident of a nice kill it lets loose. Miss. One of the Shermans replies, and takes the AT gun out. We are maybe 30 seconds into the fight. In the second minute the Shermans split, one supporting an attack on the north side, the second an attack into the valley. Halfway into the turn my infanrtery gun opens up, and kills one flamethrower squad. The Sherman responds and takes the gun out with one shot. He uses the remainder of the turn to take out the wooden bunker. Meanwhile in the north the other Sherman has neutralized that mg bunker. Took him about two shots. Needless to say that after this the battle was decided. Withhout AT gun the tanks were master of the field, and quickly blew away every resistance. The Americans attacked though the centre, bypassing the ambush and the minefields. They were held up shortly by mortar fire, which caused them the most casualties. I tried to delay them until my Panther arrived, but had to surrender before that. Until reading the posts above I was under the impression that the bunkers were fairly useless. Now I guess I was just extremely unlucky. (Hope this isn't going to be my trademark. In my first PBEM game my opponent just killed my my Puma in the first turn. The Puma saw some infantery at 350 mtrs, got a HE shot of. He missed, the infantery fired back, killed the commander with the first burst. Talk about unlucky

A Hero is someone who did something stupid and got away with it.

If I am not mistaken it was standard German doctrine during WW2 to defend on the 'enemy side' of the river, that is to establish defensive bridgeheads and try to hold on to them. This in accordance with their doctrine that a defense has to be active, and is at best conducted by counterattacking. Digging in on the 'friendly side' of the river implies a static defense, with very limited room for counter attacks. It also leaves the initiative entirely with the enemy, and severely limits the observation and interdition of the build up of his forces. Therefore it is contrary to the 'blitzkrieg' concept. Of course towards the end of the war the Germans were almost constantly 'fighting backwards', and didn't have any reserves left to counterattack with, so the concept became somewhat irrelevant. Bertram [This message has been edited by Bertram (edited 07-05-2000).]

I might have seen something related. In a recent random scenario I played one of my tanks was backing of from an engagement. This backing away was along a road, flanked by dense buildings. As the turn ended while the tanks was still moving I could see its (TacAI planned) way points. To my surprise one of the waypoints was put somewhere in 'infinity'. The other waypoints descibed a logical and legal path along the road, but this one was located way past the edge of the board, the purple connecting lines passing through houses and woods, looking like a railtrack running of into the distance. So I guess there might be an occasional issue with the automated pathfinder, especially when tanks are backing away along a road flanked by inpassible terrain. (Unfortunatly I didn't save the screen. I had to give a stop order to get rid of the waypoint, as I could not reach it with a mouseclick. I could not reproduce the effect manually). Bertram

Same here, pages took up to a full minute to load, and I have got cable... Bertram

A nice way of getting introduced to modern day tank gunnery is the demo of Steel Beasts. Search any gamesite for it. The demo has a nice tutorial, which gives step by step lessons in tank gunnery (and driving), and a shooting range. Point is, that it is indeed SOP to change ammo by firing the current round, if in a hurry (like a target coming up), but if there are no targets, it is very well possible to order the loader to change ammo by unloading. However, I think IF this should be incorporated in CM it should be done by the Tac AI (i.c. the tank commander), not the player. Interesting question is if there was a SOP for tanks in WW2 regarding ammo. Did they load AP, until infantery was engaged? Was this depending on nationality, type of tank, date or just the commanders fancy? Anyone got any data on this? Bertram

Lol, Nice joke, reading in the dark and silent room, I almost fell from my chair... Bertram

I like the 'hard target only' option also. But the objection that a nearby infantery team with pantserfaust should not be ignored is very valid. I understand from Charles posts that there is a threath value and a stickyness value involved. Maybe there could be an option to order your tank commander to concentrate more on threats, giving hard targets and targets with AT capabilty a + modifier to threath value? Also, could it be an option to make 'stickyness' and 'threath value' dependend? This would mean that a higher threath would automatically get a higher 'stickyness'. Of course I don't know how this is implemented, so maybe the first option isn't possible, and the second is already done . Bertram

I saw the site for Europa Univeralis yesterday (www.paradoxplaza.com) and was sold. Fond memories of Machiavelli and Empires in Arms surfaced. Fortunatly it is sceduled for Q4, so it won't interfere with CM Bertram

Hemo2 posted: " I would have to say this would depend on the forest. I hunt in the Black Hills of South Dakota every fall, and it's full of pines and has a lot of ground cover." You shouldn't compare European forests with American or other 'original' forests. In Europe, and especially western Europe, all forests are production forests since the 16th century. The demand for wood (for ships among others) in those times was so great it completely de-forested England, Ireland, The Netherlands, and most of France and Germany. The remaining woods were at the time of WW2 mostly pine (fast growing) with a little or no undergrowth (it was actively cleared to get the pines growing faster and straighter). Bertram

By the way: our customs put a sticker on it (according to my girlfriend, grrr) saying "software, worth 5 dollar", which put it under the limit for vat, so I didn't have to pay any additional tax. Bertram

My girlfriend just phoned: the copie of CM I ordered on her credit card has arrived. Unfortunatly it was send to her adress in stead of mine, so I have to wait till friday to get my hands on it... (my girlfriend thought this a big joke). This shows two things 1) preorders to Europe are arriving (I ordered somewhere in may) 2) orders are send to the creditcard adress, not to the adress it was ordered for (from?) Bertram

45.3 for 354 votes

As regarding Mout tactics, there is a site dedicated to this kind of fighting, called 'The MOUT homepage': http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6453/ Another site with recent 'Real Live' articles is the US Military History Institute: http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usamhi/ Both have links to other sites with interesting (tactical and less tactical) reads. Bertram

I would like to see some way to give an 'orders list' especially to tanks or other verhicles. Something like - move over there to hull down - shoot once at the first tank you see - back out that would save me some frustration caused by tanks duelling it out, instead of playing hit and run (the AI occasionally does this better than I manage to do). Beside that I would love to have a better indication of the trouble along the pathway of verhicles. It happend me to often (in 'chance encounter') that I lost two Stg's because they could not decide who had right of way, and they kept backing up and waltzing around till a Sherman decided the issue for them. Bertram

Regarding the casualties of artillery versus mortars: I read somewhere (but I forgot where) that that lots of US casualties in Normandy were indeed from mortar fire. I don't remember if it stated that it was most, but the US army was most impressed with the effectiveness of the mortar. Only in this article especialy the heavier mortars (120 mm) where credited with (or blamed for)the casualties. Comparing it to the effectiveness of other artillery however, one should take in accound that the German heavy artillery at this stage probably was severely hampered by the disability to travel and amunition shortages due to interdiction. The article also stated that only after these experiences the US army became more mortar heavy, especially in regard to the 81 mm mortar. Bertram