dieseltaylor

I suggest someone tests it out : ) BTW unjamming seems to take 50secs or so - I think crew rating has a small effect. I look forward to your next post!

Big Duke6 Really interesting information. Regarding maps I referenced Berkeley and in fact in Imperialist times the Russians considered themselves some of the leading cartographers. However that does not detract from the quoted statement that middle and junior officers were not issued with maps in the early war. It may well have been that the Soviets took a view on who should have maps and also the possibility that following the war with the White Russians there was a dearth of maps anyway. If you are going to keep a lid on accurate maps then printing of them would be strictly controlled also. Funnily enough even into the 90's the Turks were equally ferocious about detailed maps of Turkish territory. There was a newspaper report of a Harrier pilot arrested after exercises there for not returning his detailed map. From the 1960's " It turned out that the U.S. military had assisted in the production of the maps, which looked just like USGS topographic maps, but the military participation had led to their being classified. Prior to those maps, many maps of Turkey had had longitude and latitude slightly rotated, and other strange aberrations. This was done deliberately to make use by enemies difficult. Such was the logic of the military! "

I think that the point about morale can be likened to being in a ring with a mauler who is going to knock your head off. So you circle around avoiding/blocking the lethal punch when introduced into the equation is a little boy with a BB gun who you know is unlikely to kill you unless he shoots you in the eye. He circles the ring popping up unexpectedly and shooting at you - the distraction is an overload too far. On surviving the round you return to your corner to find the water bottle shot full of holes and your second has been driven away. Morale is at an all time low. : ) BTW if 50% of the 223 Panthers examined in the British sector had no definite cause attributed to their demise it does leave an interesting area of conjecture. Hopefully JasonC can post a link to the source and/or the methodology etc. for the figures quoted.

Jason C "250 were claimed in the Mortain attempt alone, while the Germans only lost 50 to all causes and 10-20 to air attack on that occasion (the uncertainty comes from categories like "abandoned")." So taking out 20-40% of the destroyed tanks was not significant? Overclaims does not mean it was not worthwhile. Can we assume then that Mortain was a success because very rarely would the Germans try to attack in numbers in daylight because of the high risks involved. Therefore this is the proof provided at Hitler's insistence. " As Eisenhower reported: The chief credit in smashing the enemy's spearhead, however, must go to the rocket-firing Typhoon planes of the Second Tactical Air Force. They dived upon the armored columns, and, with their rocket projectiles, on the first day of the battle destroyed 83, probably destroyed 29 and damaged 24 tanks in addition to quantities of "soft-skinned" M.T. [Motorized Transport]. The result of this strafing was that the enemy attack was effectively brought to a halt, and a threat was turned into a great victory. " And for a general German take "Allied air operations over the battlefield during these weeks are best illustrated by extracts from captured enemy records. On 6 July the German 84 Corps reported: ‘The enemy controls the air to such an extent that movement on the roads is impossible. The enemy artillery guided by aerial observation is able to destroy our infantry in their defensive positions without exposing itself to any kind of retaliation.’ The same story was told on 17 July by General von Luttwitz, who commanded 2 Panzer Division: ‘The enemy have complete mastery of the air. They bomb and strafe every movement, even single vehicles and soldiers. They reconnoitre our area con- stantly and direct their artillery fire. Against all this the Luftwaffe is conspicuous by its complete absence. During the last four weeks the total number of German aircraft over the divisional area was six ….’" from NZ electronic history web page Furthermore I thought the ground attack worked mainly in sweeps and taxi-ranks so any armour caught in the open was likely to be visited by more than one aircraft. [i suspect that CM actually has factored this into the game and are fully aware that single aircraft would be unlikely to be of any use within the game.] The possibility of destroyed/abandoned tanks being the result of exhausted crews [from fighting, constantly watching the sky, lack of sleep], out of fuel[because FB's have taken out the tankers], breakdowns where the chance of fixing the tank without being attacked is negligible, or believing they were about to have 9 fighters about to drop in on them is also worth consideration. After all what the enemy is claiming in kills is irrelevant to those on the receiving end on the ground.

Great site Frenchy. I found I was reading the map well - surprisingly well - and then I saw it was re-done by the Ordnance Survey. I have real modern French and Spanish maps and the differences are notable. It put me in mind that a lot of people may not be familiar with various countries cartographic symbols which must lessen the value of the maps to them. Do you have any symbol = ? sheets?

The very lack of specific sizes makes me think that the size was a reflection of the current farmed area around a village. Given one would run into another than I do not think it makes much practical difference which field belongs to which collective. State farms where much larger enterprises and set-up as industrial agriculture but I suspect they were rare showpieces before the war. In the open lands to the east the of the Urals I suspect plantations where more common earlier. web page is interesting.

A map revised 5 times since 1938 at 1:50000. sample map at about1.5mb from berkeley

A snippet I just found. Might explain the Russian problems in performing. ">Don't ever, ever, try to navigate with a Soviet map or chart. I probably can write a book about Soviet carthgraphy:) Here are just some highlights. When I was a student (1970-s) in Western Ukraine we needed maps for our mountain hiking in Karpaty mntns. We had to use Polish maps of 1930-s (that is made before this area was annexed by the Soviet Union) Soviet maps either did not exist or were top secret. It is a well known fact that in 1941, when the Germans invaded, Soviet field commanders (of low and medium level) did not have topographic maps of Soviet territory at all. There is a lot of discussion of this fact in the historical literature, and I think further research is needed to see why exactly this happened. Later in the was they used German maps taken from the Germans. I mean the German maps of Soviet territory. One reason for this is that the Soviet authorities were crazy about secrecy. Any precise map, even a city plan, was considered a top state secret. And you could not board an airplane with a photocamera or binoculars. Alex. " Interesting huh!

Somewhere or other there are maps for Western Russia of the right period. A search under maps may find it. I did have a map of the southern Ukriane at about a mile perinch that I downloaded about 2mb. Certainly showed individual buildings etc.

And lost the next five times ...so far.

Goody! First time win : ). I will play more to see if I can do better or if I was flukey.

Interesting point about vision blocks. I was aware the Russian ATR's would shoot for them but had never really considered the effect of being in a large tin can with all the vision ports screwed and infantry clambering around. Even if you have no fear of the infantry you are in no position to guarantee that enemy tanks are not now surrounding you - I assume that loss of aerials would render you blinded and then deaf to warnings from other tanks. Would the onboard mortars be a danger to aerials? and therefore not widely used?

Yes

Nahverteidigungswaffe. I had the dubious honour of the Americans in playing a Battle of the Bulge operation. I had whole platoons of Panthers running through my infantry foxholes firing these, Mg's and Tank cannon. Extremely effective and I would lose whole companies to them. Too effective and unlimited ammo. To be honest I would have thought 50mm mortars would have been a better representation given tha dearth of information - if they had been wonderfully effective more would be known about them!

And what about the hedge thickness : )

I think you would expect a far higher number of ricochets in a city setting so I can see why it might be useful for that. Also it may have the ability to protect against bladed weapons, and perhaps most importantly if I wish to fling myself to the ground quickly I do not wish to check for rubble and glass. A punctured lung or broken ribs being more likely than when throwing yourself onto vegetation : )

Thank God for BirdGunner : ). I like obesessives - they are important in society for such emergencies. As for re-asking all scenario designers regarding posting I think that is a ridiculously tough bar to add at this stage. Get a site up and running and the designers can go to it if they really feel that bad about it. As a raw archive it is still better than nothing. We have the ability to use the CM Scenario forum to post comments on scenarios if nothing else is set up. Archive searches would allow reviews to hauled up and added to. I would suggest that all reviews are titled by scenario full name, designer and version number so that the search engine can be utilised to best effect. Whether CMX2 makes this a little redundant really depends on whther it has the gameplay and PBEMability of the current games. So lets play safe and get another haven set up pronto.

Churchill III's. You can buy 6 vets and 2 regulars for 7 IV's [6H's and an L43 variant]. Result at 1300 metres all IV's dead 3 Churchills alive and kicking and one alive but gun damaged. Easy : ) The number of partial penetrations on the Churchills is amazing and very cheering!

I am busy drawing tartans over them - stop trying to delay me! : )

Strange I can see the War & Peace imported ones but not these image shack ones!

Why can't I see any pictures? I know its to do with Firefox blocking images imported from other sites as a security measure but I cannot seem to get the "Allow certain sites" to work!

And for those who have not tried it - it is great fun against the AI at the recommended +3. I played it straight through I was enjoying it so much : )

Yep Napoleon sure was useless. I think any nation sometime in its history is hot stuff. Italians/Romans etc. I am not to sure about Luxembourg though .....

Number one use is to push them through woods so thta you do not get the transport blown up delivering them to the scene. And of course they can sit nicely there until something turns up, or be aggressive and put them into an area overlooking your enemy. You should always try and get someone to spy out good sites for your guns as a first priority - not think about it when your infantry has passed into the battle zone.

Nice game against the AI.