Andrew H.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dittohead: . Maybe the German's mistook the IS-2's going back to resupply as running away. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It's also possible that "running away" (a term that has negative connotations) is absolutely the correct tactical move for IS-2s in many situations. Given the relative rarity of Tigers overall, it would make a lot of sense for IS-2s to avoid a direct confrontation with the Tigers and either try for a flank shot or, on the attack, ignore the Tigers and attack a less well-defended area. If the Tigers are on the attack, retreating and allowing AT guns to hit the Tigers makes a lot of sense, too. Certainly engaging Tigers at a range that would result in the loss of the IS-2s with minimal losses to the Tigers makes less sense than "running away."

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC: They are still overpriced in CM for their combat effectiveness, because they are vunerable to any sort of AT weapon or light gun and easily spotted, and lack the lethality of tanks to neutralize such shooters in reply. Scenarios will often give you a whole platoon of them. When buying yourself for QBs, think twice about more than a couple to reposition heavy weapons easily. Usually, another tank will serve you better in the scale of fights in CM, than a couple of 'tracks.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I think Jason is generally right. The only exception would be the Ram, which is not really a track, but more of a hollowed out Sherman, with appropriate armor. It's still vulnerable to enemy AT assets, of course, but if MGs are all you need to worry about, these units are much better than normal HTs. Of course the US doesn't get them.

I do think that the ROF for vehicle mounted 152 mm guns should be lower than the ROF for field pieces, simply because no matter how capacious the superstructure, it will be more cramped than the area around a field gun. Also, on at least some occasions the vehicle will be moving or turning, which would also slow things down. But, assuming a relatively capacious superstructure, the ROF shouldn't slow dramatically. If 3-4 is what a field gun gets, 2-3 should probably be the ROF for a vehicle, with greens probably having about a 2, and reg/vets having a 3. Perhaps crack/elite can approach the ROF of a field gun. There are other factors that could slow this rate down. If a vehicle is particularly cramped, for example, the ROF would be lower. Also, if the gun was particularly troublesome to lay, the ROF should maybe go down, at least if some of the laying delay would be on top of the loading delay. I'm interested in how the proposed "fitness level" for CM2 would fit into this calculus. It must be the case that after firing dozens of 100 lb shells, the ROF would drop due to loader exhaustion. I don't know if there is a need to model this directly in CM2, as there aren't many occasions where I've had one unit fire 25-35 shells consecutively, with no pause. But it might add a certain amount of realism, for some tanks with larger shells, if ROF dropped after a certain number of shots in a specific time frame. On the other hand, I'm not aware of any battles in which loader fatigue directly played a role, so perhaps this would best be not kept track of individually, but left to scenario designers. That is, a scenario could start with certain heavy tanks in poor physical condition to simulate having just fought an all out battle (when they are counterattacked or whatever).

Don't fight a land war in Asia. Don't gamble with a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Jason: that's an interesting system; more importantly, it seems relatively realistic. With that system, it's easy to imagine the groans of the troops as the new green replacements come in. It's also easy to see attrition at work, as the ranks of the experienced troops become thinner and thinner. Did you do anything with the leadership attributes (aka hearts, moons, stars clovers?).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mattias: Steve, For the period between the 5th of July to the 5th of November 1943 the 656 s.Pz.Jg.Rgt. incured the following losses on the Soviet forces: 582 Tanks 344 AT guns 133 Guns 103 At Rifles 3 Aircraft <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> For some reason, I'm particularly struck by the large number of AT rifles knocked out by the Ferd.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jshandorf: BTW here is an interesting point on this whole Copywrite thing... An painter can take photograph, reproduce the work, and then display it for the public without needing permission from anyone. Period. It's been done, has been done time and time again. Scanning a screen shot and posting it is not a copyright violation. Especially if it is in a public forum where you are not gaining ANY financial benefit. For example: If I created a CD mix of my favorite music and then proceeded to play it at the night club I DJed at I would be commiting NO copywrite violation. The same applies here. A friend owns the original article and all he wants to do is take single picture out of it and show it to his friends. Somehow people here are taking the magical leap from that to reposting the article in it's entirety. Jeff [ 05-31-2001: Message edited by: jshandorf ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> A painter can sell a picture of a photograph because it is not a *copy* of the photograph. A painter adds stuff (i.e., art)to a photo when he paints. A photographer, on the other hand, cannot take a photo of a painting (assuming that the painting is still copyrighted), make the photo into posters, and sell it. You can play your own CD mix in a club you DJ at because the club belongs to ASCAP or the other ASCAP-like organization. These organizations pay copyright-holders for the public use of the copyrighted material, the same way that radio stations do. If you opened your own club, didn't join one of these organizations, and played CDs in public without permission, you would be violating copyright. In any event, this forum is not "public"; it belongs to BTS and they have the right to prevent people from posting stuff they don't want people to post.

You can't really compare a game played on a 10 foot by 4 foot board with one played on a 15" screen. CM is more realistic than, say, microarmor, but I wouldn't say that CM was "better," or even "more fun." CM has nothing like getting 12 friends together to play miniatures. On the other hand, solitaire with miniatures doesn't really exist. There are charts and stuff for miniatures, but it's not really much like D&D. In our microarmor games, people usually commanded small units, like one or two platoons of tanks, say. We also had painted dowels to use for measuring movement and distance, so a "T-34" dowel would have fast moves, half moves, etc.; while a movement dowel would be marked off into 250/500/750/1000/1250, etc. (with each area painted a different color). Players would tend to have a card with the relevant stats for their vehicles with them (and typically only had one or two vehicle types). So to shoot, you would lay down the distance rod, read off the distance (say 1250 feet), see that you need a "6" to hit at 1250 feet, and then roll to hit. This would be followed by hit location, and your chart will tell you that your gun penetrates, say 60mm at 1250 feet. The other guy's chart has the thickness of the area hit. While this might sound like a lot of rolling, abstractly, it goes very fast when you actually play it. And is punctuated by the kind of chatter and comments around each roll that you would expect in a wargame. SL, of course, has a much more complex ruleset and far more rolls are required; it's more difficult to get excited about making the "pre-AFV assault TC", especially when the leader and every squad has to make it.

All your Babra are belong to us.

What kind of arty did you get? I would assume (not really knowing any details of your forces) that you needed more -- maybe of smaller caliber. 81mm mortars are good for that. The most relevant weakness of lower quality troops on the attack is that their morale is brittle, so a couple of casualties can make them panic or break. But you do need to cause the casualties in the first place, which can be difficult if you are substantially outnumbered. Hence the low caliber arty. HMGs can be effective against lower quality troops, too, but IMO they are most effective at ~500 meters, where they can sometimes pin or slow green troops. This is not decisive of itself, of course, but it is often causes the attack to spread out (as some troops slow or are briefly pinned), which makes it easier to defeat the enemy in detail. But don't underestimate green troops, either; they can be effective if used correctly.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by lcm1947: . I finally found one of my old manuals and sure enough they state that a full metal bullet of .30 cal. will penetrate 58, 7/8 in. pine boards at 15ft. where the soft nosed only 13 of these same boards. :mad:<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> When I was at camp, several years ago, the counselors set up an experiment for us where they set up a box thing containing several pine boards (about 1' by 1' by ~1" thick). There was about an inch between each board. They fired a shotgun at the box and the shotgun blast penetrated about 5 or 6 boards. They then fired an arrow from a (compound) bow, and it penetrated 8 or 10 or 12 (I've forgotten exactly how many) boards before sticking outside the back of the box). I think the point was to have us be careful on the archery range...although that may have been the excuse for the counselors to do this cool demonstration.

I do like scenarios that have different experience levels, even within platoons; I think that all of those designers who use platoons with 2 regs plus 1 green for most late '44 Germans (sometimes with a regular, sometimes a vet, leader) have really hit on an accurate way of simulating German troops of this time frame. Round it out with a couple of grn/grn/reg platoons and a rare vet/vet/reg platoon and you have a very cool challenge for the German player.

As I think several people have pointed out, it doesn't make sense to describe which nation's army was best because the armies were so inconsistent. It only makes sense to discuss which units were best, and even then only at a particular period of time. As an example of "good" US troops, I would include the units in the (I think) 28th ID who, when they were cut off by advancing German forces, fell back and set up scratch defensive forces in various villages and greatly delayed the German attack. This despite often not having air cover, not knowing how many troops were attacking, and not having received any orders (indeed, in many cases, HQ thought that these units were wiped out and only learned of their existence when scouts found them). I would also add the 101st airborne at Bastogne and elsewhere, as well as the 82d airborne at Arnhem. I would exclude the troops who fought at Kasserine pass. You get similar inconsistencies with the Germans. The Germans who fought in June-July 44 in Normandy were often very good soldiers: they held out for a long time against overwhelming allied material superiority, but nevertheless gave ground slowly...and often took back some of the land they gave up with a quick counterattack against numerically superior forces. But I would exclude from the "best" category many of the later war VG formations. You find these disparities among almost all forces that fought, even the Finns. Some Finnish troops, for example, could disable Sov. tanks by using toothpicks, but the less elite forces often were only able to disable tanks by using pliers or even crowbars.

But those Brits should be in shorts! :cool:

I think that CM has fords right for France, since most of the actions I'm familiar with (Bulge, in particular) do involve steeply banked creeks that could be crossed by infantry, but not by tanks. There are also streams that might be 15' wide and 12" deep; these are probably not obstacles to anyone and are maybe abstracted in other terrain. However, things are different in Russia, and there probably should be some provision for vehicular fords, or at least a workaround better than brush. As fords tend to be under water, there should be an increased chance of bogging. But I'm not sure what the increased chance should be -- maybe one level worse than the normal weather? So a ford is "damp" if the weather is dry, wet if the weather is damp, mud if the weather is wet, etc. In deep mud, fords would be impassible? Maybe fords are two levels worse than the scenario conditions, but engineers can improve them to one level worse, the way they clear minefields. Horses and horse-drawn vehicles would move as infantry, of course.

Black sea marines! Soviet SMG squads! Soviet tank borne infantry (although I don't know if they had a different to&e).

There have been some recent critiques of SLA Marshall, but other than some slight tweaking of his numbers, none of these critiques have been very compelling, IMO, and don't affect the underlying point that there were a lot of people not using their weapons. The key point about Marshall's research is that it was conducted immediately after combat. Interviews done 20 or 30 years later that are used to challenge Marshall's work just aren't good enough. Now the *reasons* why fewer men fired than in a Hollywood reason are fair game (although I *thought* that the theory of unrealistic training (i.e., focusing on marksmanship rather than combat) was Marshall's theory.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: Hey, here is a novel idea, why don't you all just sit back and wait until we start releasing some official pictures and the previews come out before you worry about what sort of graphical improvements will or won't be in the finished game? Seems a reasonable solution to me...Madmatt<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Nah, that might involve that "patience" I hear so much about.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by SadBloke: ... i know this might sound harsh.. but the current engine is sh*te by todays/yesterdays/last years/year befores standards. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I don't think that's right, even. What older game (or even newer game) can push as many polygons as CM?

Stacheldraht is correct that neither he nor any other graphics people (for lack of a better word) demanded anything; they did pose a reasonable question. But I think people responded as they did because this discussion has frequently come up before (do a search!),did involve a lot of demanding, a lot of acrimony, and eventually, locked threads and the creation of alt.combat-mission (or whatever that's called). So given that history, its hard for people not to overreact a bit when yet another person brings up bump mapping, dynamic lighting, etc. At some point, I think someone had some information listing the specifics as to what computers most people have; they were on the low end. Also, regardless of the RAM and speed, most entry-level computers you find at places like Best Buy don't even have an AGP slot. Without an AGP slot, it doesn't matter how cheap GeForce VII's become. But the time concern is the big concern. I don't want to wait 2 years for CM2, and I don't think most people want to either.

Maybe CM models thatch roofs.

I like those suggestions. I typically give the AI +1 experience, +25% troops (or I take -30% troops), but at least some of this handicap is to make up for the fact that the AI is not great at picking forces. I have played against the AI where I bought units for it (and then I bought mine), and the battle *was* sort of close, despite the fact that I knew what the AI was equipped with. This did detract a little bit from the battle, as I knew when all of the Panthers, say, were gone. But it was still a better battle than not knowing what the AI had, and what the AI had turned out to be lame. I suppose the ideal situation would be to either have someone else pick the AI's equipment (although if you have someone to do that, why not just play them?). Or for there to be some sort of "directed randomness," where you would enter things that would influence the computer's selection (like Panther or Gebirgsjaeger), but it would make the actual selection. Another thing you can do against the AI is to play Green troops, and have the AI play Normal (which gives it regs or vets, and if you give it a +1, you'll be playing against vets or crack). This is fun because it neutralizes one advantage that humans have against the AI - the ability to immediately recognize important terrain/turning points and quickly react. You will still recognize these points/moments, but you won't be able to capitalize on them effectively without moving deliberately and making sure that you have all the supporting weapons you need. One of the most realistic and challenging ways to play the AI is to do the following. (1) Pick "probe". (2) Be the attacker. (3) Choose Green troops for yourself and let the AI be normal. (4) Give the AI +1 experience and take -30% attacking strength for yourself. I routinely beat the AI, even handicapped, in other battle types, but the AI sometimes still decisively smashes my attacks under these conditions. Picking the AI's forces might make things even more difficult. Picking open terrain will make things extremely difficult.

I like the idea of MG's occasionally going "hot," for several reasons. One is that it is realistic behavior. Another reasons is that, especially if it is tied to unit experience, it adds another level of interest to overall game strategy. For example, in a BYO game, one might consider whether it would be useful to purchase above average experience MGs because of the increased chance of going hot (similar to how people sometimes purchase more experienced FO's). Also, in a scenario where there are MGs with differing experience levels, it will be important to factor this ability into unit placement. I also think that linking this to unit exposure will make it more realistic both in term of not using MGs to blast units out of heavy buildings as well as in terms of providing proper (dis)incentives to the opposing side. Finally, I like having a wider variety of possible outcomes, even if the chance of a regular MG going hot was something like 1-100 against moving units in light cover, and 1-20 (or so) against units moving in the open. While I don't think that SL's treatment of MGs was particularly realistic (indeed, with the favored 6-12 HMG + 10-3 leader on the top floor of the stone building to repel the attacking hordes, the HMG acted more like a phaser cannon (apparently vaporizing enemy squads) than a WWII HMG)), I did really like the variation in results that you could get. I.e., while the normal result of being attacked by a MG, even if moving in the open, might be a chance of a morale check, things were much more dire if you happened to be moving in the open when the opponent rolled snake-eyes (or a three, even). Just the possibility of this even happening encouraged realistic behavior. Although, on the other hand, sometime you would go for broke and the opponent's roll of 11 would make your suicidal tactics pay off. I also liked the ROF roll that ASL added. While the above SL results may be less than realistic, some sort of variation *is* realistic, and also adds a lot to game play. From a purely eye (or ear) candy perspective, it might be nice if a MG that went hot had a different sound associated with it, so that the players would know that this was happening. (Because it's cool to know this, and I think everyone involved would know this). Perhaps the simplest and most appropriate way to indicate this would be with a different MG firing .wav sound. I like the idea that the MGs fire would sound like sustained full auto...maybe slightly louder to suggest intensity. Whatever you do, Don'thave an "NBA Jam" style ON FIRE! .wav. And combining it with a red "On Fire!" graphic (like the hulldown graphic) would be even worse.

I have a 286 with 640K of RAM and CM plays wonderfully with all the high-res mods. It's a little tiresome having to insert all the floppies, though. :eek:

In May 1940, when Holland surrendered to Germany, the US Army went from being the 17th largest army in the world to the 16th largest army in the world. As a consequence of having such a small peacetime army, some US soldiers underwent part of their training with dummy wooden rifles (probably safer anyway) when the US began to mobilize en masse. Rifles were needed for the fighting troops, and do take some time to produce. Some trainees, and even some frontline troops, were equipped with the bolt-action Springfields because there weren't enough Garands. I believe that the wooden soviet rifles were used for the same reason. Although I've periodically run across references to unarmed conscripts ordered to pick up rifles from fallen comrades, I've only run across one description that had any detail in it, which makes me suspect that it may have happened once and the story was repeated until it appeared commonplace. Anyway, the details of the unarmed conscript story as I remember it were as follows: very early in the war (like June or early July '41), the soviets mobilized to repel the fascist invader. "Mobilizing" meant that civilians were ordered to report to certain places -- often railroad stations -- where they would be taken to a training place and made into soldiers. Eligible civilians knew in advance where they were supposed to go if they were called up for mobilization, so when a radio announcement stated that all men between the ages of 18-21 were to report on date X, these men knew that they were supposed to be at specific locations on date X. Unfortunately, the Germans advanced so quickly that on one occasion lots of conscripts arrived at a specific railroad station on date X, which happened to be the date that the Germans attacked the location containing the railroad station (I've forgotten the name of the town). On this occasion, the men in charge of collecting the conscripts picked them up, armed the ones that they could, and instructed the remainder to follow behind the armed men and pick up the rifles of the fallen. This is the only detailed example of this tactic that I've run across, and it's instructive in a couple of ways. The first is that this procedure is not particularly inhumane. I mean, I wouldn't want to fight without a gun, but given that the only alternative was to fight (or surrender, I suppose), fighting is the best thing to do. At least you have something of a chance if there is a chance to pick up a rifle. Second, this was not the result of some sort of deliberate plan instituted by Stavka; it was a local response to a location with a bunch of unarmed conscripts being attacked. Remember, too, that the Soviets did not lack for industrial production -- they had 20,000 tanks at the beginning of the war,for example, and lots of other equipment as well. It's not like they made the decision not to produce rifles or something. Finally, an important part of sov. doctrine was to have a large strategic reserve, and they made very good use of this reserve on several occasions. Thus, there were places for untrained soldiers to go other than the front line. This reinforces the conclusion that using unarmed conscripts in battle was an unusual and not particularly favored tactic. And then did send in the conscripts *second*.