Holien

The radio code word we used at the time was "River City."  We didn't lose many folks, but you'd usually have 10-30 seconds to finish what you were doing before the call centers, internet, and even the official DoD connections to the "real" internet got shut down (the military intranet stuff kept going, but it's not like you got on gmail with that).  Our Artillery Battalion had a mascal and one of the dudes who died was first generation immigrant from Guatemala.  We did not have normal contact with our families until they'd found the dude's family in his home country so a real human in a US Army uniform would tell them their son was dead and we are so sorry.
 
Which is why this Putin mess pisses me off so much.  Oh.  Your son is dead.  SORRY it didn't happen really but he's just as dead.  HEY.  There's your kid on youtube getting probed by Ukrainians.  HE SHOULDN'T HAVE GONE ON VACATION!
 
It's like my god, I knew if I died Baghdad wasn't going to know peace until my body was brought back, and some Captain and a Chaplain were going to have to tell my family that I died serving this country I love.  Or if I went missing my country was going to do literally everything it could do to get me back or ensure I was really dead before it gave up trying to get me back (even if I was a crapbird like Bergdalh).  
 
Russia?  Pffft.  Their soldiers are cheaply sold for questionable goods, and are quickly forgotten when they're broken.  Someone's son is worth more than that, but it's readily apparent Putin's concern for that son, and for Russia's children's future only carries as far as ensuring his corrupt buddies have places to build casinos, and a tinny hollow version of "russian glory."  Whore's makeup on a corpse if you will.  

Thanks for the video that really helps, wondering what you will decide on for force...

Why is it absurd Sburke? If we are going to call Russia fascist, because of cynical actions of its state, and then dismiss that your state makes some pretty serious cynical decisions themselves, is that reasonable? So, the thousand posts here http://www.911truth.orgas well as hundreds of other sites, means all these people talk absurd nonsense?

Arguably, the difference is the FSB guys got caught doing what they were doing, while your guys didnt get caught doing what they were doing. Thats the difference. The end result is the same.

And the talk about the excuse machine, dude, noone is making excuses for what the Rus. Government is or is not doing. Im saying dont be sitting on your high chair calling them fascists, and then pretending that there are no similarities in US's actions of the past, that could just as easily apply that terminology to themownselves.

Really?  You are suggesting there is any comparison at all between 9/11 and the Moscow bombings?  There is no doubt who committed 9/11.  The saddest thing about 9/11 is that our intelligence agencies were so poorly coordinated they couldn't stop it.  That we do not hold Saudi Arabia more responsible as the promoter of wahhabism is another sad point.  To say however the US gov't somehow cynically murdered 4,500 people to not pay attention to an economic crisis is just pretty absurd. 
 
And this isn't "America's war".  The same folks, as have been previously pointed out, have hit the UK, Spain etc. So did America also somehow pull those off as well?
 
With the Moscow bombings however the FSB is caught red handed planting a bomb, then somehow the bomb becomes flour and it is a training mission, then the gov't shuts down the investigation and Putin rides the wave of vengeance against Chechnya... hmm yeah they are even close to comparison....
 
Sheesh it is staggering sometimes to see the excuse machine that creates whatever it needs to in order to make what is going on in Russia just run of the mill normal stuff.
 
Call it for what it is.  Yes it is a nasty word and not one to be used lightly, but when it is appropriate then for damn sure it is time to say it.

Looks like this thread is rapidly swirling down the drain.  Perhaps best to shove a plug in.
 
Looks, gents, war is hell.  There is nothing glamorous about it.  There is nothing moral about it.  And it is nothing to celebrate. 
 
It is really easy to point fingers at the other side and decry them as murderous bastards, fascists, commie pinkos, the great satan... pick you favorite slur.   It changes nothing in the long run.  It doesn't bring back the dead. It doesn't comfort or heal the wounded, whether those wounds are physical or psychological.
 
It just leads to another cycle of violence.  Like the saying in Star Wars - anger leads to the dark side.
 
When I was in Bosnia in '93 as a Canadian peacekeeper, two Bosnia Serb soldiers came up to me at a checkpoint.  They were two brothers from Toronto, Canada.   I asked them why they were here in Serbian military uniforms.  I then heard a story about as they were growing up, they heard from their grandparents and their parents over and over about what the Croats did to the family in WW2 and stuff post war.  They were here to defend the motherland and to settle accounts with the Croatians for something that happened to the family nearly 50 years ago.  I don't get that - they were born in Canada (their family came to Canada post war) yet they felt that this was THEIR war to fight.
 
Anger and hatred lead them here.  Instilled by the anger and hatred of their parents, perpetrated by anger and hatred from their parents.  Fighting in a war not of their making, for a cause not their own, for a homeland they have never seen.  A cycle of violence nearly 50 years in the making.
 
I have seen some of that anger expressed here and I am reminded of that time talking with the two brothers.  And I am seeing the seeds of that tragedy here.
 
I was in a very dark place for a long time after my peacekeeping tour in '93.  Some would call it PTSD.  You can only see so much of genocide up close and in your face and a part of me inside died.  There was no moral high ground for either side,  All sides did stuff terrible things that are war crimes - the Bosnians, the Croatians and the Serbs.  Yes, the bulk of the ethnic cleansing was done by the Serbs but is no excuse for the Bosnians and the Croatians to do what they did.  I saw a beautiful country in ruins, shattered lifes, mounds of civilian dead, and a land with seeming madmen running around with guns seeming to want to re-fight WW2 or address the wrongs they suffered in that conflict..
 
Chains of the past.  So many people in the world are bound by those chains.  I see the ghosts of the past conflicts playing out in the conflicts of today.  There is the real tragedy.  We seemingly can't escape our past and we poison the well for our children so they are doomed to repeat our mistakes.
 
Anger leads to the dark side.  That is true.  I lived it grappling with my PTSD and the nightmares of seeing a country gone mad in Bosnia.  I wanted to kill every ethnic cleansing son of bitch with a gun.   It took a long time but I came to accept certain things.
 
I saved lots of civilians, Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian but not enough for me.  I wanted to save all of them.  I couldn't and felt guilty for decades as a result.   War lesson 1:  In war people die, soldier and civilian alike,  War lesson 2:  You can't do anything to change lesson 1.  It took a long time for me to embrace that and that saved my sanity ultimately.
 
There is real evil in the world and real monsters.  The monsters look like us and talk to us but make no mistake, there are real monsters out there.  You only see them for what they are by what they do.  I want to Kill All The Monsters but the reality is, strike one down and another rises to take his place.  Nothing changes and we learn nothing from our history.  Hitler was struck down and Rwanda and Bosnia happened.  Deal with those and then it is Sudan. Or Cambodia.  Or Syria.  Or ISIS.  Or who ever the next Hilter wannabe is.   People who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.  
 
Chains of our past.  Everyone has this issue.   Do you allow the past to bind you and deny you a better future or do you let it go.
 
The chains of the experiences in Bosnia bound me and put me on a self destructive path to most likely a grim future.  Only by embracing what happened and learning to rise above it, to not allow the past to control my present so I can forge a new future did I finally find peace for my soul.  It was hard because the chains are thick and strong - memories, recollections and seeing stuff like the genocide in Bosnia playing out elsewhere in the world brings it all back.  But I broke free finally and the memories are not emotionally charged as they were in the past as a result.  No, the memories never go away.  But you can make peace with them and find a way to a sort of 'wholeness' again.
 
I have rambled on.  Partly to acknowledge my past and the role I played in it.   A affirmation that something in life tried to beat me down and I rose above it.
 
Partly to my brothers in arms from any side of the conflicts who are dealing the the imprint of what total war does to their soul and well being, that there is a way ahead.  Memories can become less emotionally charged and less painful. Memories do fade somewhat through time, working hard toward wholeness, and throwing off the shackles of the past and living for the future.  It is not a easy road or a fast road and not everyone can break their chains of the past but it can be done.
 
And finally, to the Croatian, Bosnian and Serb posters.  I see anger and pain in your words.  War is terrible and it will write things on your soul that will deny you a bright, happy future.  I know.  I was there.  I have lived it.   Acknowledge the past, regardless of how ugly or hurtful it is.  Realize the past is the past and is not your future unless you allow it.  Do not do what a Serb family that moved to Toronto did and poison their two sons with what happened long ago in a land now far away that resulted in them involving themselves in killing other people, perhaps being killed themselves and exposing themselves to the horrors of war, for a cause not that shouldn't been theirs to fight and a war they shouldn't have been involved in, all over something that happened nearly 50 years ago.   Don't deny the future of your children or grandchildren by binding them in YOUR chains of the past and dooming them to fight in some future war because the last war had a negative impact on your family.
 
War is death, destruction, shattered lives and futures denied.  Don't glorify it and not rationalize it.  Your a damn fool otherwise.

Still don't see how you pay 46% the rate is 40% and only on the amount above the threshold....

That puts you close to the top 10% of earners in the UK.

Also by paying yourself Dividends you are avoiding (depending on how much you take) the 40% tax rate and only being taxed 20% and Russia taxes companies profits at 13%?

All companies (unless you are Amazon and Apple et al) pay taxes to the country they gain their profit from.... (refer back to my comments about the UK spending more than it is taking in as taxes)...

I get what point you are trying to make comparted to Russian but you are being very liberal with your examples and it is not supporting your point IMO...

BTW good to know you are paying taxes as our defence budget will be going up....

Hmm this is wrong on so many levels... (Oranges and concrete comes to mind as you are not even in the realms of comparing fruit...)

1. You have far more freedom in this country to express your beliefs as long as they do not include violence to other groups and are against the principals of law. Currently we even tolerate preachers who epose radical Islam?

2. You then say that you want better economical advantage and in the other breath say that is better in Russia?

3. In Regards to the political parties again so far from the mark I am wondering what realm you live in. The last parliament was hung and no one party won. I guess some peoples votes counted? Then two parties formed a govt and compromises were made so clearly each party had to give ground? I would like to see Russia run like that?

4. Taxes going up? Nope not happened yet (but hey we spend more than we get so I guess we need to start getting more money in as a country - so I would guess that might be true statement soon)

5. National Health service a joke? Hmm free health care not a joke to those trying to get into the UK. BTW did I mention we are spending more than we take in as taxes so what is going to give?

6. Yep 2 million people freely protested against the war, but the country had debates and the polls clearly showed their was a majority in favour. Of course hindsight has proved that majority wrong myself included.

7. I guess increased security measures around our Parliament is something to be expected when you consider the threat levels. Speakers corner is open for all to protest at and Pussy Riot in the UK would not end up in jail for singing in a church...

Hmmm I think you live in a different country 50%!!
 
40% Tax rate if you earn over £42k which is not the vast majority of the country. For the vast majority it is 20% and could be a lot less if you are a low earner.
 
The company does get taxed for NICS and that is to contribute to the health service which is all free for UK citizens. At least the employees do not pay for that...
 
Yes there is a council tax but I guess you want police, bins emptied and local servicers like buses and swimming pools etc...
 
As for Death duty that only hits if yoiur house is worth £325k and again not many people fall into that. There are ways to reduce it legally...
 
I would guess our taxes will be going up soon to pay for extra jets to escort lost Russian war planes.... Funny how they keep getting lost...
 

I don't care about the year thing - that's not it. 
 
In the UK the existing police services are hiring more employees.  Admittedly they will have less training and less authority but they are still going to report to the existing civilian police service and be hired by then, run by them, be uniformed by them and do as they are told by the existing police forces.
 
The example quoted by @sburke says this new "force" will be formed from a political party using political loyalists.  They will be uniformed by the party.  It sure sounds like they will be controlled by the party. That just screams "Brown Shirts" and sounds very different from the UK service you are comparing it to.
 
I'm not seeing these as similar organizations at all.

OK so I have been playing Die Letzte Hoffnung and I have hit a Problem where I think I am being shoirt changed on Panthers and MKIV's going missing from 1st scenario where I lost none in that scenario.
 
I have now seen quite a ferw different threads where other strange things have happened for people. Loss of AT guns that they expected to be there.
 
I have a feeling (yet to be proved) that older campaigns created with earlier engines are in effect broken and this really affects the longevity of CMBN and the other titles if true.
 
I have just given up on Die Letzte Hoffnung until I get to bottom of it as it is a wonderful campaign but I hate to waste time if it is truly broken?
 
Here are other threads where people think things are broken...
 
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/115286-campaign-engel-bug-after-30-install/
 
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/108388-the-scottish-corridor-a-amazing-job/page-5
 
The Scottish Corridor Campaign is just too good to be thrown away like this if there is an issue.
 
Possible explanation from Myles
 
One of the few unfortunate side effects of BF upgrading CMBN to stay up-to-date with newer CM releases is that some of the older scenarios and campaigns that were created under the 1.0 engine are now out-of-date especially as to OOBs.  There have been changes to OOBs that have resulted in some older scenarios/campaigns now missing vehicles/equipment or having what appears to be bugged chains-of-command (ex: changes made to the OOB for US armored infantry platoons will result in their having TWO platoon commanders in older scenarios.) 
 
Since all CM campaigns/scenarios are user-made, BF doesn't update them when it patches or upgrades the game.  It leaves it to the individual designers to update them or not.  And most have chosen not too.  So, when one plays an older scenario/campaign with a fully updated/upgraded version of CMBN then one will occasionally stumble across OOB discrepancies or "bugs."
 
 
Other threads it has been raised
 
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118086-missing-reinforcements-in-campaign/
 
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/98972-new-file-at-the-repository-campaign-die-letzte-hoffnung-2011-08-26/
 
No real solid answer and no proof it is broken...
 
So I have asked Vanir who has an earlier version of the game loaded to see if he can get different results from a save game I have for DLH campaign and if I get some further time I will try and load up the different engines and see if I can prove any changes...
 
Has anyone else seen this issue and is there anything that can be done about it?
 
Is it really down to re-creating the campaigns in each new engine version?
 
For me it seems to important not to keep these wonderful campaigns alive for new players of them...

The ISU-152 idled for roughly 10 seconds almost directly in front of the Hetzer, yet somehow remained invisible
 


Instance 2: foliage.  
The Panzershrek was INSIDE the bush and otherwise had an unobstructed view.
 


Instance 3: Smoke. As soon as the smoke cloud dissipates the Hetzer spots its target.  
You can clearly see that smoke didn't obstruct the target. Even when the ISU-152 was covered with heavy smoke after being knocked out and pelted with grenades, it was STILL VISIBLE to the Hetzer.
 


Instance 4: There are two trees that are "trunks only" between the T-34 and the Hetzer. The T-34 got lucky and spotted the Hetzer before being spotted in return.  
What a LOAD OF CRAP.
 
The Hetzer was completely incapable of detecting the T34 from when it slowly lumbered into view, right up to the moment that it was knocked out by the T34s third shot. FORTY-THREE SECONDS LATER.
 


* take two companies if infantry. Call it 150 eyeballs a side, and 150 targets. That's 150^2 potential spotting checks per cycle. For round numbers, let's say there's an average of 10 cycles per minute, so in an hour, 600 cycles times 22500 = 13.5 million potential checks per hour. And that's just one company a side. Many, many of those checks are handled "in summary" by the LOS table, but it's all part of a system that, generally, works.  
What a LOAD OF CRAP.
 
Out in the real world, it's a simple matter of coding an algorithm that extrapolates a basic vision radius and checks yes/no to whether an enemy is visible.

I read through the linked threads, for the most part. I don't think you're at all wrong in critiquing John when you feel that he has said something untrue. Everyone should be open to critique- it's necessary and healthy.
 
However, critique is not my problem. Caustic behavior towards other individuals is. If someone posting a rebuttal does so negatively then logic is displaced, and there can be no genuine discussion. At that point, because of negativity bias, all discussion will become paranoid, defensive, and aggressive. 
 
I know you guys have a history I don't fully understand, but both parties are valid, even if one side is sometimes incorrect. I'm not asking you to stop fact checking or become apathetic. Just try to pretend that other people on the forums are actually people. 
 
Source

Yes, stop. Your constant vendetta against JK is becoming extremely tiresome. If you think you are winning people to your side, you are not. Every snide and demeaning attack you make on JK shows us what a small, petty and vindictive man you really are. Every time JK, for all his faults, turns the other cheek or addresses your attacks with civility shows us that he has a lot more character.

From now on, I’ll be reporting posts I see where you spout your usual belittling, denigrating and snide comments against fellow members whom you deem as a lesser or disagree with. As a higher profile unpaid employee of BFC (You create content, for free, that ships with the game, making you an unpaid employee for all intents and purposes), the way you conduct yourself throws a bad light on BFC. It’s time that they are made aware of this.

...they work on "The Fog"? ...well I will be ready with the Adrienne Barbeau mod! 

since when have you become a moderator? You behaviour towards JK seems to be verging on stalking IMO. Does you no credit.
A football phrase comes to mind "play the ball not the man"

since when have you become a moderator? You behaviour towards JK seems to be verging on stalking IMO. Does you no credit.
A football phrase comes to mind "play the ball not the man"

since when have you become a moderator? You behaviour towards JK seems to be verging on stalking IMO. Does you no credit.
A football phrase comes to mind "play the ball not the man"

since when have you become a moderator? You behaviour towards JK seems to be verging on stalking IMO. Does you no credit.
A football phrase comes to mind "play the ball not the man"

Lt Bull, I actually disagree with your premise that these types of "looping" was not that common, but with a couple of provisos, which I will address.
 
The amount to which a unit is "dug in" is directly a function of time spent on position.  And there were periods, especially when the Amis were busy clearing Cherbourg, that the Germans had plenty of time to improve positions, as First Army did not really turn south in any strength until the first weeks of July, giving German units almost a month to prepare positions in some cases. 
 
When a unit occupies a defensive position, there is always a priority of work that goes on.  This usually looks something like this:
1.  Deploy OPs/LPs
2.  Dig slit trenches - these are usually just big enough to lie in and still below the plane of the ground, and can be dug in a very short time.  In this case, I agree with you that it would have made sense to start with the ditches at the ends of the fields, assuming these were not waterlogged.
3.  Prepare range cards.
4.  Dig fighting trenches.
5.  Lay comms wire all over the bloody place.
6.  Begin constructing defensive obstacles according to the obstacle plan.
7.  Dig overhead protection and shelters.
8.  Dig depth/fallback positions
9.  Dig communications trenches between positions.
 
Keep in mind that this is off the top of my head, I am probably missing stuff, and things like defensive fire pre-registrations for direct and indirect fires would be started early and continue throughout, in increasing complexity as secondary killzones are covered.
 
The point I am trying to make is that the development of a position is a very planned and organized affair that is done to a timetable - for instance I expect that fighting trenches will be complete and overhead protection started no later than six hours of troops arriving on the position.  After a month, I would expect that fighting positions, obstacles, shelters and comms trenches would be extensive, which is what we see on Hill 192, and, I would expect that to be repeated in any position that was occupied for any length of time.  In fact, a competent unit should have a fully developed position, with strong fighting positions, some fallbacks, and a developing obstacle network, after only a few days on position, with this time getting shorter the further away from the enemy the unit is. 
 
So we can see that time is less of a factor than one might think.  Of course a unit might lack some sorts of defensive stores like wire and mines, which would lessen the obstacle plan.  But digging can be completed very quickly, even while manning the MLR, maintaining outposts, and conducting standard administration like eating and maybe even sleeping once in a blue moon.
 
Your main argument against "looping" and digging "into" the bocage (where possible, of course), seems to be that it was too hard, what with all the rocks and roots and such.  But there are several advantages to doing it that make the effort really worthwhile for the defender versus fighting from the top of the embankment.  First is that you have more overhead protection, thus removing the need to jump into a separate foxhole, from which you can't put fire into the adjacent field.  Second, you are much harder to spot, as you can camouflage your firing slit quite easily.  Just these two factors increase survivability quite a bit.  So why would you not, especially if you had time to do so?   It's what I would have done, and I value my skin quite highly.
 
And to those who object that the firing slit would have restricted field of view too much, this actually is a bonus.  You dig the slit just wide enough to cover the arcs of responsibility for that weapon system, and trust your flanks to your comrades.  While it is good to be able to see, whatever you can see can potentially see you too, which is why you never occupy a position that has longer lines of sight than you can engage with your own weapons systems, and why reverse slope positions are so valued.
 
Anyways, I want to stress that the level of fortification encountered was largely a function of how long the defender had to prepare, and there were plenty of occasions where the defenders did not have time to do much more than dig a few foxholes behind the embankment and then fight from the top.  But digging in does not take long at all, especially when you are motivated to stay alive, and the advantages to digging IN to the embankment far outweighed the disadvantages.

You've been spending too much time around Kettler.

Yes, to pinpoint unspotted ATGs to the exact action spot. Really great...
Chess vs checkers.
Trying to attract checkers players to play chess can only result in losing both in the long term.

CM is WAAAY to complex to be attractive for the masses EVER. It will always be a niche product.
Chess will also NEVER appeal to the masses. NEVER. One could pump up the graphics of chess and make it look like a FPS, but after the initial spike of shallow interest, it will again only be played by chess players who are not interested in explosions and action, but like the challenge of the mind.
The same is with CM. I think the core CM-player was interested in realism above all.

Now what will have the bigger impact on sales: those that like CM more because of hit decals, and therefore will buy the next game, or those disappointed customers who no longer perceive guns as threat after the first shot because of hit decals?
I believe each of a disappointed core customer is a customer who bought all their products - contrary to those who are quickly attracted by shallow visual effects like hit decals and other gimmicks at the cost of degrading realism. Graphical effects attract quickly but the same crowd is also moving on to the next shallow effect in the next game.

But beneath everything the core of the problem seems to be something completely different:
The main game designer plays the game not in the mode the vast majority of wargamers play his products. That's never good, if you develop something and don't know, what your core customers need. There are no ladders, no campaigns, nothing played realtime. One could say: realtime does not exist among the wrgaming community.

The result of this dramatic discrepancy could be observed since CMSF was released.
The spotting problems as a result of keeping the calculation affordances as low as possible to make realtime play possible. Spotting works good enough for realtime but often not good enough for turn based.
And I think this has dramatic consequences for potential new turnbased customers: they try the demo, recognize a strange spotting behaviour and lose interest. The 1:1 representation makes things even worse, since it leaves much less room for imagination than a symbolic representation. So again: 1:1 is attracting the visual oriented player, but if there are discrepances between presented action and results, itdegrades the experience of the customer who is interested in realism.

The majority of realtime customers cannot be attracted, because FPS games offer them the much better quick action and cooler graphics. Additionally the game concept is so extremely different, that 99% will only shake their head. So the core group is lost and the big part of the massese cannot be attracted because it is chess and not checkers.

I will never forget the disastrous relative hotkeys-concept when I tried CMSF the first time. What a punch into the face of WEGO-players that was.
Or the water-effects since CMRT breaking FOW. Sounds from unspotted units? A problem since CMSF. But in combination with hit-decals since engine v3 this problem has been even increased instead to become solved. How easily foxholes can be spotted. Bunkers and trenches breaking FOW. And much more.

I believe all these are results of a design process done from a realtime-player's perspective and therefore many of the problems are only discovered very late in the design process, or even too late after implementation.

Instead that Battlefront had followed their former clear path torwards realism and protected and taken care of their brilliant WEGO-child, they lost this focus and now, with an ageing engine, they are sitting between the chairs, trying to keep new shallow action-customers somehow interested while they lose more and more of realism-focused wargamers which one after the other slowly give up, because the problems persist year after year and game after game and sometimes even become worse.

I hope that T-90 will never be able to prove itself in a real tank to tank combat, because that will mean a war against a country operating that tank.

Of course I will not post here anymore as apparently it is pointless. Every John Doe living thousands of miles away, not understanding the language, not knowing anyone personally and who has never been to Ukraine or Crimea, is suddenly an expert on Ukraine, but people who understand Russian and Ukrainian and having their cities swarmed by Ukrainian 'students' are suddenly internet trolls. If you question the validity of Azov picture go to Lviv to one of the Right Sector pubs, you're gonna get more along with personal autographs.
 
Your understanding what is going on in Ukraine and Europe is well...lacking at best. Half dozen of Region Party politicians committed 'suicide' since the beginning of the year, corruption is bigger than before, all anti-maidan people living on Ukraine are devoid of any parliamentary representation and I read that Ukraine is building 'democracy'. Greece is demanding enormous war reparations from Germany on top of its poor economical situation and I will not even start on potential conseqences - enough to say that Europe could be on the brink of biggest crisis in its most modern history - but yeah, it is going to 'rebuild' Ukraine no matter how much it is destroyed.
 
Please also consider tagging this forum in an appropriate way so everyone knows which side is 'right' and 'wrong' and what the 'propaganda' is. Great way to prevent trolls from posting! Fox news would be proud!
 
Have a nice debate sirs!

You were only just complaining about the movie being 'a string of WWII cliches'... yet the biggest deviation the movie makes from traditional WWII cliches is one of your moans, methinks you might be hard to please...
 
So, clearly they respect Pitt's character as a leader and a fighter, but he's also not the man they think he is - he speaks German too well for it to be merely 'a tool of war', and as man who derides his comrade's religiosity he sure can place a biblical quote, he waits until they are no longer watching then weeps and vomits in a corner alone - and instead of looting and whoring after a conquest he secretes himself away from the others to 'play house' with the enemy and the new guy and clearly resents their loutish interruption to leer at the women and **** the place up like pigs. They're angry he seems to think himself above them, that he still secretly percieved himself to be better than the savagery around him - hence they drunkenly arrive to remind him of the time they turned thousands of Germans into hamburger, and the indelible marks they all share which bonds him to them more closely than the civilized decent world Pitt still tries to hold on to. To say they didn't care for each other seems to contradict the actual script - the army is like a family, you don't get to choose your comrades, and the familial bond does not automatically mean you always get along well personally with them, that you never quarrel or resent - quite the opposite.

Finished my 1st test of the 1st scenario and I got a Draw and was kicked from campaign...
 
I Lost Claus Tank but he was fine, kept Village and I was down to 2 Tigers (made numerous mistakes as I have not played too much RT and learning how Tigers work with T85 at close range... (Badly...)
 
I forced my way to finish the game and was pretty miffed with the whole thing.
 
I see what you are trying to do but it felt like you are trying a tad too hard. I often see wargamers who do similar set ups on tables and they never get to finish the game, Less is More IMO.
 
Some things I would suggest you change from my POV which of course might vary from others. (I guess some people will enjoy it...)
 
The feeling I got from the game was that the infantry were mere speed bumps and I became really disengaged from the whole game and just wanted it to end. It just felt like a turkey shoot...
 
I did learn more about Tigers and T85's and even at close range with 1st hits on T85's they could still hit back and wipe my Tigers out with one shot.
 
If I played it again I now know where to position my force and how to play the AI but I am reluctant to put more time into this as it just did not do it for me.
 
I do like challenges but I want to feel engaged and you want to craft the story with one big nasty batle at the end, not sledge the player to death at the start...
 
I will ponder it some more and see if I can add any other thoughts....