dieseltaylor

Actually further investigation and after a nudge from Kingfish suggests some 76m tanks may have arrived in Italy in August. However given that in late '44 even in France most divisions had to make do with one 76mm per platoon of 75mm's I find it difficult to believe there were a huge number diverted to Italy. So a general shortage excepting of course the new divisions arriving in France fully equipped. for amusement: "I just got this from Joe Demarco and it's from the USNA and is a report from the Battalion Records: On April 19, upon completion of operations with Eighth Army, the battalion reverted to Fifth Army and was re-equipped with the following types of tanks: 1 Med Company -- M4 and M4A4 w/ British 17 Pounder Gun 1 Med Company -- M4 Series 1 Med Company -- M4A3 w/ 76mm gun 1 Light Company -- M24 Source; HQ Fifth Army Armored Section, 6/15/45" Not used in action though. web page

I have three on the go currently, one in Italy and two in Russia where the designers?testers believe it to be correct that you are the CO but you have not a blind clue as to your forces!!!! In Italy I am told I have a reinforced Company of the big Red. Can they tell me how many tanks etc that is or am I meant to dig out some books and research what it might mean!? Do I then guess what ratio they then equate it to on the map as sure as eggs is eggs they will not be one to one basis. Stark staring bonkers design philosophy. To cap it all I find I am mainly tooled up with Sherman 76's which any good WW2 fan knows were peculiarly Normandy and on. GRRRRRR! In the first Russian battle , very large, I am told that I will meet MkIII's and IV's. Do I have a ******** clue as to what tanks I have coming on - nope. Perhaps I need to deploy our spies behind the lines to give me some insight. In the other Russian battle I receive reinforcements unexpectedly [the briefing implies I have everything on board] on a road which I have already put a screening force at to cover it. It seems to me that there has been a collective breakdown of intelligence in briefing design. I am not that fussed if I have two less or more tanks turn up as a tribute to comms. foul-ups but I would expect to have a rough idea as to quantity and types. Is it just me? Am I unreasonable as a commanding officer to expect to have some concept of what tanks are in my division? Late war with radios common is it too much to expect some units to tell you when they expect to reach the battlefield, what road they are on etc!!!!!

I thought it did affect the values at game end - but I only have this from reading and not from personal knowledge.

I am a fake also generated several years ago by GAJ so that he would not overtake Grog Dorosh in posts.

T[h]anks : )

Capt Bly. BoB The idea is to form an actual online club and to stop people enlisting several times under different names, and also as real people they are unlikely to drop games when losing. BTW do you actually belong to any RL clubs? Do they wear masks and speak in funny voices to stop themselves being identified : )

Sorry to be absent from the thread so long but in fact I should be away on holiday but circumstances mean I have returned to the computer today. I am glad that my idea finds some merit : ) It is interesting map and if I briefly divert it does raise two quick points: 1. Bad scenarios can ruin a good map by A someone who is good at maps but not a good player, inadequate testing B forcing the player to use a certain plan to win 2. Game engine does not allow RL to work A borg spotting means ambushes do not work well B driving along roads is a chore C precise distances allow gamesmanship in fog/dark Anyway my first reaction to looking at the map is YUK! We have two ways of looking at the map as in RL or as for playing CMBB on. It is the latter I will be bearing in mind as it is the game that we are discussing. Without looking at the troops I glance briefly at the map and see plenty of woods, boggy ground and water. I am told in the briefing it is dark and historically based. Immediately two problems as historically based to my mind means sod play balance this is "realism". Darkness means that the idiotic BF decision to give all units laser rangefinders that mean they know to a metre how far they will see throughout the battle and when they will be invisible to the enemy. Anyway I'll rumble on with my stream of thoughts - remember I have not looked a the scenario forces - the idea was to look at terrain but as this map is tedious ...... OK short ranges means SMG's are king. Mortars are probably useless unless you have good commanders. Morale tends to be very important at night so getting the really good platoon and company commanders for the important roles is very much worth doing Major artillery you might think would also be useless . Any hopes of laying fire along roads is likely to suffer from the games decision you can only fire one direction. Also the target road is at an angle which makes beating a path alongside it very much more difficult. Danger of roads being blocked by too many dead vehicles when running through woods could be embarrassing. Boggy ground - the game model is a bit sucky but some vehicles are theoretically much more likely to bog. In actual terms this tends to be your most crucial vehicle. As I have to go pack again - lastly I will say in my 200+ games I have finally come to the realisation that Battlefront did a great job of modelling the tanks but the infantry sucks for a number of reasons so to get the greatest enjoyment try to find battles with plenty of tanks and room to move, and infantry are the supporting cast. The larger the game the more chance you will have to try different approaches and I can whole- heartedly recommend Tiger Valley and BotrytisII as they give players lots of different strategies and terrain to sneak units about. 45 plus turns need not take long to play. I am sorry I have to go now as to be honest I have not really been able to discuss the points I wanted to - when I return I will find a map where movement is possible and good weather does not use screwed game mechanics. : )

Its refreshing in a way to come and see Jason C still being the arse he so often is in reaching to invective as a substitute for discussion. Given I think that we are playing an imperfectly modelled version of RL warfare I really cannot understand why anyone can be so dogmatic. A little bit of civility is not life threatening or mean your counter argument is weakened. I don't really expect JC to change - its just a shame he feels it necessary to alienate potential and existing CM players. With regard to all the comments here I always feel it helps if we actually had a case in point to discuss. I have no idea if Axel plays on maps 880 *560 or 1680*5200 so what applies on one size battlefield will look pretty stupid on another. Perhaps if people would quote a scenario from the CD it could then form the map for discussing the tactics. And I do mean a map to which the points can be aimed not a re-hash of the battles fought there with the forces provided in the scenario.

And then you looked in my profile! : ) Don't worry guys contact has been made for another willing recruit to BoB.

Good answers. Broompatrol. You do not say what size games you play but I tend to the larger games which I maintain allow a better mix of troops : ) Buying a battalion of British infantry generally brings the Universal carriers which were designed specifically for the problem you are talking about. Bear in mind that to be historically accurate it is 90% certain that your units would not be at full strength so you can use the casualty button on set up to become more accurate. I mention this as battalion assets can be bought even in 2000 point game at 10 to 30% casualties. This may sound unimportant but the Germans with their intrinsic company level HMG's do very well in CM against countries who have to buy in their HMG's at full price. Battalion level buying means the Allies are better value and have a rounded force mix to play with.

Cabe: A credit to the Band of Brothers club : )

Downloaded from GameZone twice but file reported as corrupted in two area each time. However my brother has successfully downloaded from there : ( Looks like he better send me the CD wiht the demo on it

You can give the dismount order for a special location whilst the infantry is on the vehicle. Obviously they will not carry it out until the vehicle stops - therefore you plot a stop order at the correct place. The infantry already know they are to dismount there so should do it quickly. It is something very worthwhile practicing so you can be confident when playing that it will happen

Is there some assumptions here on weather, terrain, night or day that have not been explained? BTW I think that the Germans intrinsic infantry strength and variety of armour to choose from actually make them pretty lethal against the Allies up until late war when the British infantry becomes much more butch. I would give the Axis about a 5% advantage in terms of winning more battles during the CMAK period. How much would change if rarity were ignored is an interesting point. I am talking of battalion size ME battles.

Hidden?

Band of Brothers has the sponsor system to weed out the type of people who drop games when they are losing, or disappear for a few days without mentioning that there will be no returned moves. Everyone in the club has a vested interest in getting in people who have got stickability because we do not want to be responsible for introducing anyone who is going to stitch up a fellow member 6 weeks into a game. Works reasonably well if not 100%. So more of a friendly club than a ladder club with people giving up real personal details to establish their bona fides.

There is no how to, the game decides whether it occurs or not. Mortar crews having no offensive arms would be more likely to surrender than fight so it will be quite a gift to your opponent. CM series tries to prevent commanders sacrificing troops in John Wayne heroics.

Somewher or other there will be a link to Mr Hare's spreadsheet and you can print out all the allied and axis , armour , infantry, etc through the war with how good they are at ranges etc. The only thing not included is the price per unit. archive search should find it.

Not the Italian SMG paratroopers with the ammo expenditure of riflemen bug --- or is that just CMAK? There are things that happen that can seem miraculous but are just blind luck. Gice us a clue as to the circumstances,

Reposted from BoB I have it that the gunners sight was a TZF9d and this is a from a British Army report of 1947 on the ergonomics of a moving Tiger VIb. This gave a 3 or 6 magnification. The TigerI was a TZF9b binocular giving 2.5 magnification though late TigerI's had the TZF9c. The first 50 Porsche turrets for the TigerII came with a TZF9b1 sight though some had a retro-fit later. This family of sights had a field of view of roughly 23 degrees Nothing much else from the book Tiger Tanks by Michael Green about sights. Incidentally rate of fire recorded at about 6 rounds a minute though that is modified as to how the barrel is elevated. A lot of anecdotes an interesting one is that at 3000 metres in North Africa the Germans would use HE at Shermans as they were more accurate at range than AP! Still adequate to kill/disable Shermans.

Basically a discussion on running tournaments. Over at BoB we have stacks of running tournaments in many different permutations. As is always the case "fairness" of the tournament design raises its head. I would hasten to point out not in a carping way as the club is run for fun not for divas. Just a pursuit of excellence : ) Anyway in our latest perambulation around the possibilities NABLA was mentioned and I have generally good feelings about that. Particularly if it uses my amendment giving two winners by doing away with the problem area of who fought the more scoreable series of battles. Not a huge problem but it was aired at the last RoW tournament However in discussing this the role of Variable Endings and Mirrored battles have been raised. Personally I regard mirrored battles as a complete abomination in that endeavouring to provide fairness they ignore the fact that war is mainly fought in ignorance of your enemies true force. There are other complaints that can be laid at the concept whether they are played consecutively or contemporaneously. Variable endings is interesting in that it has almost been de facto that all games will be VE. However in a tournament where the players are all meant to be competing on the same map this could screw the results. I would add a caveat here that in fact if the battles are ME the variable ending at game start is neutral. This is certainly not true in A/D battles where the defender will always suffer in a lengthened game. I thought I would air the subject here to gather some opinions on the points raised.

I suspect B but it is probably fairer to give us a view of at least the whole turret to see if it looks odd.

Works for me, though the download sequence is not quite as intuitive as I would like.

I am not playing someone who has played it before but I did play it in RoW and have two on going games. One day I might actually be the Germans! Highlanders in Hell is a very good game and seems to play smaller than Tiger Valley [thats because it is] but does come equipped with options like TV. Remember Band of Brothers is your friend ....

http://afvdb.50megs.com/usa/m4sherman.html not really