Hensworth

In actual fact the Panzerwurfmine was meant to be thrown (hence the name), while the molotov essentially was not. The Soviet AT molotov is not the same thing that you see people throwing at the police in a riot on TV. They contained far more effective stuff like thermite and smoke generating substances that went into the ventilation system and forced the crew out. They were used in exactly the same way as other handheld AT devices : they were smashed up close against the tank from close quarters, preferentially on the engine deck. But what we see is the PWF getting a 100% kill rate while the molotovs appear to be mainly there for comical effect. It's not unusual to see one launched several tens of meters up into the air and landing a hundred meters from the target when the squad is only 10 meters away.

The demo taught me about this thing : M18 57mm RCL Why have we never seen this in CM ?

No, not any Tiger. Any Tiger that got a chance to get into a turkey shoot with T-34s, yes. But the vast majority of Tigers never got that opportunity. That's all there is to it. As to whether CM got it right : </font> In july 1943 a Tiger costs roughly 260 points. You can buy 2 T-34s for that. So if you consider 10 to 1 fair odds for T-34s against Tigers then CM is a long way off. And that's based on performance on the tactical battlefield, which is one aspect of the price. It clearly doesn't account for the fact that there were 50 times more T-34s than there were Tigers, give or take. As a Soviet player, I wouldn't have a problem with losing 10 tanks to a Tiger if I could avoid running into one around every corner.</font>The Soviet 76mm gun can't penetrate 80mm of armor at any range, which is debatable at least.</font>Take a Soviet T34 and a captured German one of the exact same type, both unbuttoned, and put them head to head. For some inexplicable reason the German tank will always acquire its target first. I assume some coding glitch is responsible for the quality of optics still playing a role in target acquisition even when unbuttoned. It does mean that in unbuttoned duels Soviet tanks are forever slower in acquiring their targets than German ones. Pretty annoying when you have to survive on manoeuvering into position and getting the first shot off.</font>Every tank in the game does about an equally good job of estimating its chances against a foe and deciding on fight or flight, except the IS-2, which will back out of every duel even when the opposition has only the minutest chance of killing it and there is a round in the tube.</font>While every thrown infantry AT weapon seems to be equipped with a homing device (have you ever seen a grenade bundle or wurfmine miss ?), it frequently looks like Soviet troops are trying to launch their molotov cocktails into orbit. Whether or not smashing a bottle of flammables on a tank was an effective means of taking it out is another discussion, but I don't see any reason why molotovs should miss so much more often than other thrown AT weapons.</font> There are many features of the Soviet side in the game which are justified and where I won't even bother going into a discussion about whether the particular way in which BFC chose to portray them is correct. The fact that troops are one level of quality lower than you actually bought them in 1941, the response times for tanks without radios, the artillery delays, the crappy AT ammo. All OK. But with the above things I have issues. [ September 20, 2006, 03:23 AM: Message edited by: Sgt_Kelly ]

I think you caught Jason in a less than gracious mood as he has just stepped into a rather nasty pile of Nazi fanboy poo in another thread. I have to say my mood sinks a notch or two everytime we uncover one of those idiots in here as well.

Who says that gallery includes everything that's modeled in the game ?

Nahverteidigungswaffe.

Moon took some screenies of what he termed the most dense terrain he could find in the game. Go here , it's fairly close to the bottom of the page.

Even worse, the beaten zone of small arms fire (particularly MGs) wraps around over the top of a hill, so you need to be about 20m back from the very top to be absolutely safe.

They put it in because people thought it was fun, not because it was in any way, shape or form realistic. Megakill has said as much, sort of pre-empting the need to go into in depth discussions of how it should be modeled. Once it's established that the model has no basis in reality whatsoever they can pull whatever they want out of the hat, as far as I'm concerned. The only widespread use of captured tanks occurred when armies (predominantly the Germans) surrounded and bagged large numbers of tanks unscathed and incorporated them into their OoB, with crews specifically trained to use them. It may have happened once in a blue moon that somebody with at least some knowledge of how to fire a cannon got into an abandoned enemy tank and used its main gun. But I am yet to come across a single reference to an abandoned enemy tank being taken over and put to full use within the course of a single tactical battle. The use of captured enemy guns as portrayed in ToW belongs more in a Napoleonic or American Civil War era. An AT gun or field piece wouldn't generally be sited in such a way that you could simply swing it around and use it against the enemy in such short notice. But then of course the deployment of guns in ToW leaves something to be desired in the first place.

In that case we are wasting our time with you. Please present yourself at the nearest disposal facility for termination.

But not enough.

You can't have a realistic wargame set in the modern era covering both the grand strategic and the small scale tactical aspects. Up to about 1850 or so wars were decided by distinct battles, which lends itself to Total War type games. After that, the influence of each individual tactical engagement upon the outcome of the whole conflict went into sharp decline. Thus, you can no longer cover both the tactical and the grand strategic in equal and convincing detail once you reach the modern era.

Maybe not quite on topic, but I'll post it here anyway. I'm quite enjoying the series Sie Kommen ! as a format. This seems like something you Grogs could really do something with. It offers a bit more interest than the single battle but doesn't require the huge year long time commitment that a metacampaign does. I thought of it specifically when you brought up that idea for a metacampaign but worried about having the time for it, Michael.

The same squad type can have different weapons compositions. For example a Fusilier 43 squad can have MP40 SMGs or scrounged PPSh's.

I haven't tested it, but in my experience McIvan is exactly right. Units will relax their fire when they see the enemy unit is suppressed, presumably to save ammo. If you order them to area fire, they will keep up the same rate of fire no matter what and burn through their ammo like there's no tomorrow. When you're up against green troops, aimed fire once you have a positive location is best because any fire at all will keep their heads down once they're suppressed. Saves ammo. Against tougher opposition, you're better off using area fire or you'll risk a recovery by the enemy unit just when your assault elements are halfway between them and the cover they've left... This is notably why I hate the use of fanatic troops. In a foxhole or trench they're virtually unsuppressable and will eat huge (gamey ?) chunks out of the attacker's time and ammo. Fanatic troops should be used very sparingly and not in scenarios where the attacker depends heavily on small arms fire. [ August 21, 2006, 11:26 AM: Message edited by: Sgt_Kelly ]

Metacampaigning is quite a small niche within the CM community. It remains to be seen whether there's room for one more next to CMMC and OW. I reckon there's no more than 50 - 100 people involved with both of those. So I wouldn't design a game where you intend to have 1000 people playing (I wouldn't do that for other reasons as well...). It's not so much CMBB's age as the fact that many new things have recently been announced by BTS. If there was no CMx2, CMC or ToW to talk about, I think there'd be more people working on initiatives to provide fresh interest for CMBB and CMAK players.

Yup. ToW has nothing to do with CMx2. For an idea of what CMx2 might be like you need to look at CM:SF. Since you appear to have missed everything else, you probably don't know that the first module to come out for CMx2 will not be WWII.

Yup. ToW has nothing to do with CMx2. For an idea of what CMx2 might be like you need to look at CM:SF. Since you appear to have missed everything else, you probably don't know that the first module to come out for CMx2 will not be WWII.

The banter you find in the public part of the Onion Wars forum is not representative of the way the game is played. That's just where the two teams go for smack talk and general ribaldry. There is a pretty serious game underneath, they're into their 17th turn with every turn representing one month of war. The learning curve for new players who want to get into operational command is pretty steep, but the fun thing is you tend to learn from your teammates rather than having to study a hefty rulebook. Although the nations in Onion Wars are fictional, they have taken on a real identity over the years. Players tend to identify strongly with their team and there is a fierce rivalry that gives a nice edge to the battles. I've been involved with it for a couple of years both as a player and a GM and I'd say it's the most fun thing I've ever done with CM. [ August 09, 2006, 11:55 AM: Message edited by: Sgt_Kelly ]

Soviet and German tanks duke it out at realistic ranges while a well concealed ZiS-2 lies in wait to mop op any German survivors.

My conclusion after reading Moon's AAR is that the tactical model of ToW is not the same as the tactical model of CM. If you let your infantry spend all their time in the merry wide open with no cover at all and charge them across the full length of a field at an enemy trench, you'd be toast in CM, pretty much regardless of what's in the trench. Likewise for artillery pieces deployed in the middle of a field without any form of protection. I don't have any military background or experience, military service was fortunately abolished here before my turn came up. So most of my ideas of what works and what doesn't on a tactical battlefield come from what BTS have tried to teach me through CM over the past 6 years. As a result, a battle that features half a dozen air strikes and a company of tanks to support the actions of one infantry platoon, said infantry platoon spending virtually all their time without a shred of cover and the whole battle seemingly revolving around the takeover of enemy weapons does strike me as... peculiar. My own impression is that ToW will be good for a quick game when you're not in the mood for the epic hour-long struggle that is a game of CM. I'd put it closer to games like BoB than to CM.

I can't wait to read JasonC's views on the combat model .

I see two possibilities, but the real experts on operations could probably come up with a few more. In an operation you can't always see the whole map in the first battle. So it may be that the flags are currently hidden on a part of the map you can't yet see. The more likely explanation is that this is an 'advance' type operation, which doesn't require any flags. Victory points will be determined by how far you advance up the map.

What is modeled in the game is not engineers clearing mines by detecting and removing them. It's engineers using demolition charges to clear a path through the minefield. I suppose it didn't give the 100% certainty in real life that it does in the game that all mines are cleared, but there we are. I don't think clearing wire or roadblocks should be possible in the middle of battle, but it should be possible in between battles in an operation.