Bimmer

Ahh, yes, the famous Boyd Cycle, or OODA Loop: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act. It applies to CM, most other wargames, Flight sims, clickfest RT stuff, business, and virtually every other competitive activity known to man. A modern-day version of Nathan Bedford Forrest's "get there firstest with the mostest." Force your opponent to react to you, and you will set the agenda and pace, and give yourself a potentially decisive advantage. The only question is just how strictly you adhere to it and how loudly you proclaim its superiority to all other methods of decision-making, which seems to be decided based solely on whether or not you wear a blue Class A uniform and turn fuel into noise for a living.

Care to support this statement? Interviews? Empirical evidence? Anything except blind faith or misguided conjecture?

Very good points, although the Falaise numbers seems extremely high. By these figures, there were 30000-40000 German vehicles in the Falaise Pocket?!? I have seen figures that support the contention that Allied tac air was even less effective against AFVs than the numbers you quote suggest. Regardless, (as I have said here before) it seems to me that tac air is far too likely to knock out armor in CM.

Smoke and/or terrain masking are key. If you have the means available, and you know the enemy is in the town proper in force, liberal use of preemptive high explosive can do wonders, particularly against a low-quality force.

I spoke to an intellectual property lawyer about this issue, and he seems the believe that the owner of the ASL rights would have a viable case. I will not go into details here, but suffice it to say that in our lawsuit-happy culture this could at the very least be a major inconvenience should the owner of ASL decide to press the issue. Besides, I think TFBGoWW2TC is a fine game and I look forward to the adaptations of its numerous excellent scenarios to CM.

Not sure about MS products, but in Netscape Mail there is an option under the View menu to View Attachments Inline - try changing this, and then saving the file.

Turretless AFVs are pretty useless in urban combat, except in ambush. Fast vehicles with fast turrets are a must for the attacker. Armor is kind of a moot point since many threats will appear at less than optimal angles, and unless you have one of the few types with universally heavy armor, most AFVs are done for once hit from close range. Guns with good HE capability and a decent ammo load of both main gun and MG ammo are helpful for blasting the enemy and demolishing buildings. As usual in CM, as in life, failure to sanitize the area with infantry will lead to dead AFVs no matter what you buy. Tactics are the first thing to consider.

Attended a talk given by Steven Zaloga tonight about Operation Cobra. In answering a question about some of the night battles that took place, he mentioned a few things about the availability of illumination flares, which of course got me thinking. Was this ever considered for inclusion in CM? (I'd have to think it was...) Any chance of seeing it in CM2?

This reminds me of an idea I had for a wargame I used to play a lot, but never implemented. Some of you may have heard of Tactical Decision Games. For those that haven't, basically a TDG places you in a situation as a commander of a specific force with a specific mission. You are given a map, a description of the situation, and of course a problem (usually the enemy). You are then supposed to come up with a plan and issue orders to your troops. The point of the exercise is to get junior commanders thinking about tactics. If there is any interest in this sort of thing for CM, I will create a TDG that I will make available to anyone who wants it. Better would be if someone with a website would post it there (volunteers?) After a period of time had passed I would make the scenario file available so people could try out their plans, along with a new TDG. Given sufficient space, a few of the submitted solutions could be posted as well.

Hadn't heard about this film until this thread. I had the privledge to fly front-seat in an SNJ (Navy T-6), owned by a friend (who died in an aviation accident a few years ago) and based at Dillingham, down the valley the Japanese used to approach Pearl some years ago. Canopy open, sun rising off the left wing, and Pearl Harbor in the distance. Still gives me chills thinking about it.

I must offer my compliments on the operation. Like all your other work, it is a fantastic scenario. Thanks for the comments, and keep up the good work!

Playing the TF Butler operation as the US. Just finished the first of five scenarios, with incredible results (if I do say so ): 15 enemy vehicles destroyed at a cost of 2 Shermans, 1 Greyhound, and 1 Stuart. 7 friendly casualties (2 KIA). Two most amazing moments of the game were when I popped 5 Shermans over a rise 600m directly on the flank of a major German column and killed five AFVs in one turn at no loss, and on the last turn when a single Sherman 75 greased 2 Panthers in 9 seconds! Flank shots at 400m. The Sherman commander's name: Sgt Coward. Just had to share. I do love this game.

The reason for choosing infantry first is that, IMHO, it is the core around which everything else operates. As a previous post said (paraphrase): everything else supports the infantry. If you run out of arty or armor your infantry can still operate effectively if handled carefully; the reverse is not often true. Another point: I am one of those players who tend to purchase in reasonably historical measures. I like buying whole companies, limiting support to the sort and number of weapons that would likely be available, and sections or platoons of armor and support vehicles. Some mixing and matching occasionally, but I try to stay close. I have found no real disadvantage to this in play, and I prefer the simplicity and inherent flexibility of coherent small unit organizations.

I almost always purchase my infantry core first, regardless of disposition. Everything else is there to support the infantry, IMHO, so artillery and armor choices are tailored to the infantry force and mission.

Steve, you are correct that no one here has, to my knowledge, conducted extensive tests on CAS. If I can get some time and a reasonable setup I may try to do this. My comments are based on anecdotal evidence within the game as compared to historical evidence. In the earlier thread I pointed out a USAAF ordnance study cited in Deichmann's book that suggested that TacAir was substantially less effective than claimed, particularly against tanks and heavy AFVs. As Tero points out, success with 500lb GP bombs is highly dependent on fusing and ground conditions. Aerial gunnery is not terribly easy, particularly against targets moving on a different axis to the firing aircraft (incidentally, this is one of the reasons why interdiction along roads and railbeds is substantially easier than attacking deployed forces). The one type of ordnance not mentioned, rockets, are actually what prompted me to comment in the first place. Historically they were terribly inaccurate (check the study mentioned above) and highly unlikely to kill any sort of heavy AFV. Blast effects by any sort of ordnance are a different question entirely - softskins and infantry are highly vulnerable to these, as are open-topped AFVs. Your point about quantifying these impressions within the game is well-taken. I'll see what I can do.

Here's the point on interdiction: Who is going to make the decisions based on the results of enemy interdiction? That is to say, at what levels of command are the effects of interdiction likely to be evaluated and countered? When moving forces around within a theatre, or even down to a corps or division sector, the decisions are being made at several levels above the highest represented in CM. We are not handling division command-level movements here - CM is purely tactical. I cannot think of a situation where even the largest possible CM operation would (or could) represent battalion-level movements of any distance longer than what would be considered tactical adjustment, and thus not subject to interdiction. If a designer wants to incorporate the effects of interdiction in an operation, fine, but there is absolutely no reason that this needs to be modelled in detail or represented graphically in the game - it is beyond the scope of CM's tactical environment. I consider the CAS question to be completely separate from the interdiction argument with the sole commonality being the use of tactical air forces in both activities. P.S. - The Luftwaffe general whose name I couldn't remember in the old post is Paul Deichmann. His book is _Spearhead for Blitzkrieg_.

This has been covered before, as you might expect. The fundamental points have been hit here - interdiction vs. CAS, strike accuracy, ordnance effectiveness, etc. I am of the mind that air support is now entirely too effective and does not mimic the historical capabilities of CAS very well. Interdiction is beyond the scope of the game. Unfortunately, there are some who do not understand the differences between the two. If you want to see some other thoughts on this and supporting evidence for my position, check: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/013472.html

The Americanized version definitely leaves something to be desired. Half the fun of the British episodes was listening to the banter. Nonetheless, it still brings me back to the carefree days of youth and power tools. We never seemed to build much though - just took stuff apart (impromptu convertible, anyone?)...

Do you have a link for this so I can get a more printer-friendly version? Or maybe you have it in a text or Word file you could send me? Thanks.

1) Buy wife bargain-basement computer for web surfing, keep good computer for CM. 2) Buy latest greatest PC for CM, give current computer to wife. 3) Bargain with wife for more computer time (good luck). 4) Duct tape wife to chair, play CM on current computer. (this option saves you money as well). 5) Declare that you have a mistress and you are going to visit her, then go somewhere where you have computer set up to play CM in peace. (this will, however, be extremely embarassing if she finds out the truth).

I have to say that I do not see any real problem with MGs as they are. I tend to use them in pairs firing from positions where they can cover avenues of approach at long range (up to 1000m) if possible. They frequently suppress the advancing enemy enough that I can 1) drop artillery on their heads, and 2) shift forces into better defensive positions to deal with what's left. Their ammo load and long effective range makes them ideal for this sort of work.

I figured this would come up. I know that WWII arty procedures were not as simple as "keep dropping shells on the target until I tell you to stop," but at the same time I think the instant halt upon FO death is a little much, particularly when only a couple rounds have fallen. The ideal of course would be the ability to specify the number of rounds to be fired on the target, but this seems to me a bit more complicated to implement. Its not that the current system is particularly bad, nor is it that I'm complaining about abstration in the interest of game play, but just that I think things could be tweaked a bit.

No, this is not a revival of the incessant discussion on whether or not other units should be able to call arty. Rather, a question about the continuation of already-falling arty after the FO dies. It seems a bit odd that the last act of every FO prior to collapsing is to call for his fires to stop. I would think (and I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong on this) that the battery would continue to FFE until out of ammo without constant contact with (enouragement from?) the FO. Dead FO=no contact=fire continues - no? Any thoughts?

Belton Cooper's _Death Traps_ is an interesting read. Cooper was ordnance liasion officer in 3rd Armored Div. The book is very good at setting the scene of armored warfare based on his experiences, which primarily dealt with the aftermath. He seems to have been horrified by the vulnerability of the Sherman tank, and spends some time talking about this, along with other coverage of both technical and operational topics. Its a very easy read, and well worth purchasing IMHO. If nothing else it offers a different perspective on the war from most other memoirs I've seen.

I defer to your obviously more complete source. I was reading Cooper and happened upon his recollection, which I related above, along with his explanation. Just putting the material out there for those who might be interested.