brucer

As someone who's done a little of this kind of stuff myself, over the years, bravo... definitely worthy of a fuller response from BTS. I'm sure I don't need to point out though, that you only MAY have established that the Allied guns are punching under their weight; the other equally logical deduction would be that one or both of the guns you are using as constants in your ratio calculations(the German Pak 38 and 75/48) are hitting OVER theirs. Best to find some other data to seal that other possibility off, while we wait for Mr. Moylan. As to the other suggestion, that the Allied numbers are futzed to reflect superior German armour metallurgy... I'd suggest that's just way too much of a kludge for these guys even to consider. Give them some credit: they're a class act. BruceR

A long time ago now, I was helping beta test CC3, and a couple of us who argued a lot on a certain discussion board about the series' historicity pointed out a whole lot of obvious, no-debate problems (typos, really) in the data files, and suggested the makers change them before going gold. We were told to shut up, and forget about it, because the beta was only to test the game for playability... That, in a nutshell, was the difference between that game and this. I guess I played a small role in getting the whole CC mod scene going. But you have to understand that was out of frustration, more than anything else... an eminently fun and challenging game that yet was wildly flawed, and a game company that refused to support fan modding in any way, or even consider issuing patches in response to our (often very sensible) suggestions. I tell you, the amount of reverse engineering and data base checking we had to do... BTS eliminated all that when it put out the game the way it did... and then they did the noble thing by setting up this board, by listening to concerns, and by patching the game when fans pointed out real legitimate problems about which a consensus can be clearly reached. The historically-minded gamer in CC2 or 3 had one choice: to learn hex editing and everything else that was involved and fix the mess themselves. The same gamer in CM also has one choice: to listen into this board, to try and win their points in often highly educational debate, and get down in the books so they don't lose so often, knowing if they ever make an unarguable point, BTS is quite likely to change the whole game accordingly. Me, I'd rather spend time in a library than in a hex editor. (I only spent so much time modding to save other people time.) That's why a lot of people like me play CM now. The day BTS stops listening to fans, via this board or some other means, is the day I throw the game out, though. I can buy lots of games that are fun, or that I can mod up to make them fun; I can buy very few where I feel I'm part of a great big resource the development team might need to draw on some day. But it's more than that. Because this is about a war that really happened, that real people lived through. We're not talking aliens and space marines here. BTS clearly sees this game as a monument of sorts to those people. They want that monument to be as truthful and honest as a computer game can get. (If that determination interferes a little with some people's unfettered practice of their own creativity, tough.) I can dig that, also: their motivation for making their game the way it is is the same as ours was. Even if I could mod up this game, I'd like to think I'd just try to win my points here in debate, instead; we all win that way. But I still don't really mind that they removed any temptation... BruceR [This message has been edited by brucer (edited 10-22-2000).]

You sure about that link being fixed? ------------------

Steady up, gunner. And drop us a line at 9 Bty next time you're in Toronto. On Mondays the round's on me. Ubique. B. Rolston BK 9, RCA ------------------

I'm in the CPX for the CMMC right now... let me know what you've got planned, though. But if people are interested in campaign play, they should still drop the CMMC guys a line. As we're all finding out, it takes a rare breed to play to this level of commitment, and not everyone who signs up really has the time or inclination, so there seems to have been a fair bit of attrition. ------------------

Agreed, Germans relied less on artillery to do the job. But I found the author's comments on German artillery survey to be out of line with my own experience as a gunner, and any history I've read. If the author is arguing that the German artillery was slow because they got orientation and fixation from known points, well, all pre-GPS artillery survey did that. If he's arguing it's because Germans used fewer gridded maps than the Allies, well, he could be right... on the Eastern Front, where good topographical survey would have been harder to find. (France, which was gridded down to the millimeter even before the war, should have been a different story...) If the author had chosen to argue that the Germans' need to fight all over Europe forced them to specialize in a form of artillery survey that turned out to be less efficient in Northwest Europe, or that early German reliance on tac air had led to a de-emphasis on good artillery coordination, those are valid arguments I've heard elsewhere... but it's a lot more than just "one side used TIR, and the other side used topo." As for the American vs. British practice, I have not seen any reliable evidence that British indirect fire plotting (which they all but invented in WW1, after all) were somehow more complex than the American versions of the same documents. All evidence indicates that the Brits didn't use a FOO system instead of a FO system 'cause they thought the average soldier wouldn't understand the math... they did it because they thought it more efficient to leave the authority to fire in the hands of a person who could actually see the target. Many historians have concluded they were right. And I think you'll find the Brits relied just as much on radios as the Americans in artillery units, by the way... In fact, the only criticism I've found in the history books of late-war British artillery doctrine was that it was sometimes superbly wasteful, taking out whole grid squares when the Americans or Germans watching them thought a fewer number of shells was all that was really needed. Historians say that was a product of three things... the higher ratio of British fieldpieces to soldiers on the ground (often twice the Americans'); the general British aversion to infantry casualties by this point in the war, if shells would do the job; and the fact that the British COULD. It takes a lot of efficiency to engage targets on the fly with dozens or hundreds of tubes, with a minimum of delay... the fact that the British did so regularly speaks to the superiority of their artillery practice, not the other way around. A much better source for artillery doctrine on the web is at http://www.jmkemp.demon.co.uk/artillery/. BruceR

Snort! Very few unbiased historians agree that American artillery doctrine (with the notable exception of TOT fire, which only they used extensively) was in any significant way superior to British/Commonwealth gunnery. The Yanks' FO system (as opposed to the FOO system their Allies used) was criticized then and since as being inefficient, inflexible, and slow to respond. Don't believe everything you read about it: the Commonwealth countries are still using a FOO system over 50 years later, with no complaints. Sure, lots of Americans were trained to locate potential targets, but the command to fire in those cases generally came from an artillery officer in a CP van, miles from the action, with an often imperfect knowledge of the situation. This often led, as a previous post alluded to, to wasteful fires, completely out of proportion to the target, or no fire at all, if the section commander on the other end of the radio couldn't convey the proper sense of urgency, or off-target fires, or fires with the wrong ammo for the job... in the British system the command to fire almost always came from an experienced observer with the target in view, with all the benefits that entailed. Many historians have concluded British fire landed as fast, with no worse accuracy than the Americans, and often in greater strength (due largely to the Brits' higher ratio of field-grade pieces to soldiers on the ground: 8 field guns to a line battalion, instead of 4) As to that piece on Artillery Doctrine referred to earlier, it has largely been discredited... it's discussed more fully in the other thread. Regards, Brucer

Sorry, but you're better off reading the later version of the same article (on combathq.thegamers.net, among other places) where the author admits at the end that all his main suppositions about the differences between American and British artillery were WRONG, the result of something he misheard at a gaming conference by some speaker whose name he can't remember. Please... Actually, given that the article has exactly zero historical backup to it, the amount of play that has been given the author's unique and unverified assumptions on the web is quite remarkable. I have little more faith, for instance, in his conclusion that since the Germans used a TIR coordinate system instead of gridded maps (source? who knows?) that they were therefore less efficient gunners. There's a big difference between claiming that the Germans relied less on artillery in their doctrine (which no one disputes) and claiming that their gunners therefore must have been relatively incompetent (which seems largely unfounded). Keep looking: there are better sources out there, most of which don't happen to share the author's deeply pro-American bias, either. Regards, Brucer

Try http://www.geocities.com/MotorCity/8418/.

Page 87 of the CM manual says every round a spotter/FO is given will equal 4 rounds being fired on board. But in every scenario I've seen/designed, the number of explosions on map is equal to the number of rounds given, not four times as many. Is this wrong, then? Or am I missing something? Brucer