Black Five

I use a different approach. I split up my Stugs and use them to flank the enemy. One goes behind the church, one close to the central flag behind the IV line and the other way off on the opposite side of the map across the road tucked into the treeline also behind an IV line. As the situation develops I pop them up, usually one at a time, and as the tanks turn to face the firing stug I pop out another on the flank or better yet a grill door shot. Just make sure your stugs pop up fire and roll back all in one turn. Also not popping up in the same spot each time helps. Good luck

All- To everyone who took the time to reply to my post, I thank you. In response to one of the earlier posts, Yes, I am currently a tanker in the USMC. I am glad to here that most of you agree that asking a tank to watch his left and the like is not micromanagement. It is utterly VITAL to the survival of a tank on the battlefield to keep his turret pointed toward the enemy. My version of a contact report to my CO is “BOOM,” and then a quick radio call. Speed in target acquisition, identification and destruction is one of the keys to survival for any armored vehicle and you can’t do the last two if your gun is pointed the wrong way. I will continue to enjoy CM regardless of whether turret control is implemented or not. The reason why I brought up this debate again, even though it is like flogging a dead horse is because I feel very strongly that the lack of turret control and knowing whether a target is dead or not is unrealistic. After all realism is what CM is all about. Black Five ------------------

If you liked the demo you will love the full version. The Quick battles option which enables to you generate random battles with your forces picked by the computer or by you adds a great deal of replay-ability to the game. Spend the money and enjoy. It only took 6 days for my copy to arrive.

After reading some of the articles on the subject of tank turret facing and such, I offer the following: It would add a great deal of realism without adding an unrealistic level of control to be able to tell the tank commander what the most likely direction of contact is. It is totally natural for a tank to “pie-off” a corner in a MOUT environment. By allowing tanks and other turreted vehicles to have a direction of travel and a direction of most likely contact Combat Mission will increase the value of armor support. A tank commander would keep his main gun pointing in the direction of last contact when adjusting his position whenever feasible. The ability of our armored brethren to travel in one direction while covering another is paramount to their usefulness. When setting in a defensive position there are times when you want your hull facing one way and your turret another so that you can fire and depart, this is especially true in a delay and defend scenario. A tank driver in most tanks cannot see behind him. Therefore it is a very slow and labor-intensive process to back up in rough terrain. So it can very useful to have the driver already facing in the direction that you wish to depart and main gun facing toward the enemy. As long as you’re not showing your grill doors to the enemy that is Regardless of what the SOP of the time dictated, a good tanker would do whatever it took to survive. If that means rotating his hull to “increase” his turret rotation or pointing his gun off to the left because that is where the enemy is believed to be, then that is what a good crew would do during WWII. On the Abrams we do many things that are not SOP to increase our survivability. For example, we’ve experimented with pointing the .50 over the back deck in mount so that if a BMP slips in behind us we can bring fires to bear on the enemy even if the main gun cannot be traversed. On another note: A common problem in warfare can best be illustrated by the phrase, “Is it dead?” It can be extremely difficult to tell if an armored vehicle is destroyed after a hit or is shook up, immobilized (but the main gun still works, argh) or is just playing dead. Combat damage assessment could be a skill, based on a unit’s experience, for any unit spotting a vehicle that just received an impact. This would increase the fog of war and push in a little more realism. ----------------------------- If you are unwilling to bite, do not bare your teeth. ----------------------------- [This message has been edited by Black Five (edited 09-17-2000).]

How do you record an entire battle for later playback? Thanks.