Bimmer

I'm in. Email's on the way.

SS_OGF, sure we can meet up at some point. Are you in Ljubljana? You can email me at aeg@computer.net and we can make plans. I have some things planned already, but it will be no problem to make some time to meet during my trip.

Small world, indeed. My father was born in Celje, raised in Ljubljana, and emigrated to the U.S. in the early 60s. I still have a lot of family over there. I'll be there in July on vacation. On a gaming related question, will there be any sort of modelling of Partisan operations in SC? That is to say, beyond simple combat units, i.e., supply reductions, LoS breaks, etc.

Given the chance to reprise my mediocre performance in RoW, I can hardly refuse. Count me in.

Yet another question from someone who hasn't paid as much attention to this board as he should have: Have the RoW scenarios yet been made available for download anywhere, and if so, where? Thanks again.

Forgive my ignorance, but have the AARs been posted yet, and if so, where? Yes, I know, there is a certain silliness to asking this question when I didn't submit any, but I'd like to have a look at the experiences of those who did commit theirs to paper (or the electronic equivalent). Thanks.

Actually, I would think we will be done in considerably less than three weeks, but that's just me talking. We managed to do about 3 turns on Friday alone - all we need is a couple good days. Its just a question of when those days happen to fall. We'll try to move it along ASAP.

We made some good progress Friday, but my opponent is heading out of town today. He said he has installed CM on his laptop and will try to continue from the road, but I don't know if this is going to work out or not. We have about six turns left to go. We are doing everything in our power to get finished ASAP. Once again, sorry for the delay.

Tabpub and I got a late start on our game due to his being swamped with other games in process. Things were further delayed by a couple of unfortunately-timed travel absences on both our parts. We are now proceeding as quickly as possible and are several turns beyond the halfway point. I apologize for this delay and will do everything possible to wind things up as soon as we can.

Hiking in the mountains along the Slovenian-Italian border a couple years ago I came upon all manner of WWI relics. This area, as you may know, was the site of the numerous battles of the Isonzo (or Caporetto, or Soca, if you prefer) and being at high altitude and quite inaccessible by normal means, is relatively intact. Many of the improvised stone fortifications still stand. I found mess tins clustered in hollows behind the firing lines where the troops must have gone to eat. Further up there were many shell fragments, and a small alpine lake was filled with wire-handle grenades. I know of people who have recovered rifles, shells, helmets, and other reasonably intact artifacts from this area. Of course, I nearly died getting off that mountain, but that's another story (non-ordnance related). My father was born in German-occupied Yugoslavia, and immediately after the war there was all manner of German surplus floating around. Grenade fishing was a common practice, and I've been told that the local flying club was equipped with Stukas in the late 40s and early 50s. To this day WWII artifacts are commonly recovered in the area - I know a guy who has the second largest private collection of WWII materiel (weapons, uniforms, other assorted stuff) in Europe, much of it collected locally. He has a German naval mine pulled out of the harbor some years ago as a lawn ornament. Pretty amazing stuff, currently housed in an 11th century watchtower built to keep an eye out for Turks approaching from the south.

Small comfort at the moment, but a comfort nonetheless. Thanks for the quick reply.

For the second time now, I have lost hours upon hours of work on a custom scenario when, in the course of playtesting it, I accidentally saved over the game file. This is due to the fact that CM dumps both created scenarios and saved games in progress into the same directory (and my own stupidity in temporarily forgetting this and saving over my own work). Please BTS, I implore you, make the scenario creator files go into the scenario directory and saved games in progress go into the saved games directory, so that this horror never happens again. Well, I'm off to slit my wrists...probably 20 hours of work down the tubes. Oh, I am SO pissed right now...

(lurk off) Blackout, please. (lurk)

Glad to hear it. Thanks.

I sent my completed application to both Treeburst155 and WineCape yesterday - any chance one of you guys could confirm receipt? I don't want to miss my chance to get in on this one. Thanks.

While I've never been up in a B-17, I have ridden in a Ju-52, a C-47, the only flying DC-2, and I actually have a little T-6 stick time. Flying in these old birds is quite a rush, and the opportunities to do so are few and far between, and become less certain with every passing year. Go for the ride while you can.

Perhaps my initial comment was not specific enough. I was not looking for a documentary or an SPR clone. I was looking for film that at least did not bombard me with cliches and/or outright stupidity (the German major in his private luxury rail car who manages somehow to stay scrupulously clean throughout the movie, the Russian sniper with his own press agent, the German senior officer taking a shower in an exposed open position that close to the front, the female Russian sniper wearing lipstick throughout the movie, etc.) I don't really care if they include plot elements that are supposed to broaden the viewer demographic - I just hate silly oversights (or worse, conscious decisions) that detract from what could otherwise be a decent movie.

While I seem to be in the minority here, I felt this movie was, to use a technical movie-reviewer term, a steaming pile of melodramatic crap. The people responsible took 131 minutes of my life, and I want them back.

I for one think the Tactical Decision Game idea is a fine one. I suggested it a while back as part of some other thread, but I think it got lost in the discussion. I would suggest that you could also make the scenario openly available after the solution deadline was past so that anyone who was interested could try out their solution. If you want a hand with developing TDGs, drop me a line: aeg@computer.net

I am not going to say anything here about the topic, as I said I wouldn't. You (each of you reading/participating) in this thread have your own opinion, informed or otherwise. I still hold mine, as I sure you respectively do yours. The fact of the matter is that I do this for fun, and getting into a heated argument by typing back and forth in a public forum is not within the parameters I have set for enjoyment. Personally, I lack the enthusiasm and motivation necessary to continue this way. If this is interpreted as backing down by some of you, that's your perogative. Andreas, maybe the next time I'm in the UK we can meet and talk about this over a pint - a far more agreeable setting for this sort of thing. I probably won't agree with you, but then that's the way it is.

By all means, it is a matter of looking at facts - the difference comes in the interpretation of those facts. While earlier analysis of Soviet tactical prowess tended to be entirely too monolithic and gave them little if any credit, I do not feel the underlying point was wrong: the Soviet military relied on mass, properly employed, rather than tactical finesse and maneuver. The ability to conduct deep operations does not really indicate maneuver over mass or a high level of tactical finesse - deep operations may be conducted in different ways. Certainly the German and Soviet methods of breakthrough and exploitation were quite different. To bring this back to my original point, high op tempo is a tool, not an end in and of itself. If it can be employed effectively, it can assist the force using it to compel the enemy to react rather than act. AS A GENERAL RULE, I do not believe, based on my reading of the facts, that the Soviets were terribly proficient at utilizing high op tempo to good effect. They were, again IMO, much better at employing mass, and to some degree this compensated for their other weaknesses. This is the end of my participation in this thread, as I have said all I have to say. Revisionism is in vogue now - I do not happen to subscribe to the revisionist POV in this particular case. The adversarial tone employed here when someone does not subscribe verbatim to the current conventional wisdom rivals that of the doctoral program in history at an Ivy League university (with which I have first-hand experience). You should be proud.

Note that I did not say the Soviets were incapable of deep operations, or of conducting high op tempo actions - I said it was not the strength of their system. Bagration was a deep operation that did indeed move faster than the Germans could at that time. Mass played at least as important a role in this as tempo - once the Soviets started to roll forward they were indeed very hard to stop, and that momentum in no small part allowed them to continue their advance and forcing the Germans back on their heels. However, after the destruction of Army Group Center, the Soviets were spent offensively. They had a manpower shortage of substantial proportions, and they were in enough disarray to prevent them from continuing to exploit their success. They lost the initiative. I really have no desire to turn this into a rehash of the old arguments, and I certainly do not want it to become a pissing contest. I have my views and you have yours (respectively). As long as it seems productive, I'll continue to participate.

I'm sorry, but the words of one, or two, or ten vets do not in any way represent the attitudes of the whole of any group. I know and have interviewed vets. I know the value of first-hand recollections. I also know the limitations: failing memories, the distortions that occur after many years, the influence of later analysis on those recollections, etc. You must look at ALL the available sources if you want to see the closest possible construct of what actually happened.

I stand by that statement. The Soviets were beaten tactically and operationally time and time again during Operation Barbarossa by a force that was specifically designed to operate at high op tempos. The Soviets (from STAVKA on down) were frequently in the position of trying to order formations that had already been rendered combat ineffective. This, to me, seems to indicate that op tempo was an important factor. Post-war NATO planning on both the operational and strategic levels conceded the initiative at the outset of hostilities (presuming a Warsaw Pact initiation) and placed great value on regaining that initiative by exploiting accepted weaknesses in Soviet communications and logistics systems, the very systems that are so important to maintaining op tempo. These weaknesses, while not tested in the classic Central European thrust envisioned, were shown to be even more fragile than anticipated in Afganistan. While my initial statement may have been rather broad given its brevity, I do not think it was in any way so outlandish as to warrant the dismissive (and equally broad) reply.

Mass is fine, but the problem with the Soviet interpretation of mass is that they looked to sheer weight to overcome weaknesses in their tactical system, not to complement strengths. You can have lots of mass, but if it isn't where you need it when you need it, it doesn't do you much good. Modern US doctrine tends to do a better job of combining massed fires and maneuverability to form a flexible tactical system. The Soviets were not very good at high op-tempo, and susceptible to losing their balance if caught off-guard - precisely what OODA is aupposed to do. Now, in CM terms, mass has more value simply because the force is almost always at or very close to where it can be employed. However, OODA type planning can still throw off the steamroller-style tacticians, though the potential for disaster is significant.