CRSutton

Actually the Puma was pretty rare. I think only a few hundred were produced. Funny, how often it appears in the game though. I don't much like it because of the slow turret. Best to send a cheaper vehicle on recon as they are the first to die.

Well, I know some fanatical units on the East front fought hard, but hundreds of thousands of Germans did surrender and whole fronts and armies fell apart which suggests that not all Germans were fighting to the end.

The German 50mm was really just a glorified grenade launcher and not a great weapon. It's range was limited and it did not have smoke ammo. I am guessing that the Germans phased out it use due to the fact that the men required to man it could be put to better use firing more effective weapons. (Not a minor concern with the growing manpower shortage in the later stages of the war) The British mortar was a little better in that it had a slightly better range and could pop some smoke. Once again I am guessing but I suspect that the Brits did not fully abandon it for the same reason they did not abandon the Lee-Enfield. That is that the British economy was already taxed and it was easier on production to produce the older tried weapons than to suffer the losses in production involved with making new weapons. Seems like with the Brits, inertia was a major problem as well, but I wil leave that to the more knowledgable pundits posting here to confirm. Although the Germans removed the 50mm from front line service, they still had thousands in inventory and many second line and Axis allied units used the mortars til the bitter end.

The other issue is the length of your battle. It is easy to go through all of your ammo in a 30 turn game-especially if the fighting in intense. A powerfull expensive squad such as a strum or motorized still only has 40 rounds and if you buy expensive troops then ammo management becomes a concern. A 13 man squad with no ammo is useless. If you buy the cheaper, samller squads then your ammo supply is more dispersed and you have a greater ability to sustain a long firefight. You can duel with the stronger enemy squads with some of your force to deplete their ammo, then move in fresh squads to take the objectives. Of course in a shorter scenario, the stronger squads make more sense. Likewise a large high firepower squad can be broken just as easily as a smaller sqaud. If you have many cheaper, smaller squads then the effect of one or two "!" on you force is lessened. I personally prefer a base force of inexpensive smaller squads and then have one platoon of quality high firepower troops as a reserve-hopefully to finish off the enemy.

Scott, What I am talking about is not a penetration and kill through a weak point but the force of a heavy shell hitting the AFV and not doing any damage but the shock of the impact shaking the vehicle so violently that the gunsight is broken or knocked out of allignment. How common was this?

Here is a question to throw out. Have not seen much on it and wanted to see if some of the readers here know the subject better. I have read that frequently a non penetrating hit on an AFV would disable the main gun by knocking out the gunsight-forcing the vehicle to have to pull out of action to repair or replace the sight. Does anybody know how common this was?

Actually, if they are poorly supported they can also be taken out by an infantry rush. Use one squad to supress and draw fire while rushing with one or two others. They are not especially deadly at close range-If you are moving and shooting.

I am a mod whore and love to download all the pretty tanks being created out there. But I have to admit, for a computer nimrod such as me, it can get overwhelming. I sort of backed off EAW mods because all the wonderful downloads began to mess up my machine and I did not have the skill to sort out the mess. Also, in EAW there is a lot of debate over which flight characteristic mod is the best-with pro-germans players prefering one and pro allied preferring another. This is not a problems with CM as people are not messing with combat characteristics in their mods but is a good example of how too much variety can be a bad thing. I say yes--simplfy and standardize should be the buzzword. However, it is important to keep it easy for us nimrods.

I would think that air superiority played an important role in the development of these bigger allied guns for field use. With control of the skies and excellent fighter bombers, hollow charged rockets, and decent ground control in the last year, the need for large caliber AT guns really was not there. Mobility was most likey considered more important-especially for an attacking army. The Axis on the other hand, had no hope of regaining control of the skies. Plus by virtue of being on the defensive, this type of weapon made more sense. It is important to remember that big guns are more defensive in nature, due to their characteristics and weight. Although, they could be used offensively-their main tactical use was defense. The American Army, and the Brits to some extent were moving away from towed AT weapons. Why would it make sense to push for the development of a big AT gun when your armies were already racing through Europe. I am willing to bet that many a British commander wanted to see the 90mm AA guns moved a bit closer to the front in North Africa.

Well, actually, any American tank. Cause they all had excellent radios. Usefull for calling in the Jabos.

This may be an old topic but I have a bit of a problem with the delay in execution when a reverse order is given in a vehicle. I under stand the theory behind the delays for orders as the abstract the delays and communication confusion found in combat units. However, a reverse order in a tank or truck is usually a spot decision made by the driver or tank commander. (Usually in the face of a serious threat). Why is there such a long delay? I would think that the response would be very quick with very little delay at all and would like to see the time delay for this type of order reduced. Perhaps a solution would be to inplement a "bug out" order similar to the withdrawal order for infantry. There should be some penalties assocaited such as greatly reducing the ability of the tank to fire. Any comments?

The answer is fairly obvious to me. Playing Combat mission with a one on one duel, Only a nimrod would want a T34 over a Panther. However, if in the real world I have to equip an army and run a war time economy, the T34 is the far better choice. The proof "was" in the pudding my friends.

The sherman is not as bad as some would have it. It was extremely reliable and had much greater track and engine life than pretty much any thing the Russians or Germans built. However, don't knock the people who put together the American war machine. It actually worked very well. There were obvious mistakes but our allies and enemy made just as many. Come now, who actually believed that the Maus would have had any use on the battlefield-yet the Germans constantly poured resources into dead end programs-and allocated precious resources into too many complicated AFVs thus diluting the efforts of their industry. The wonder weapon of the war was the duce and the half truck. Even Joe Stalin admired that marvelous vehicle. Produced in untold countless numbers this great truck gave American infantry divisions true off road capability by virtue of its excellent 6X6 wheel drive. Even German armor divisions were somewhat road bound because virtually all German trucks had only one drive axle and German halftracks were always in short supply. American troops rode to war in the best motor vehicles and the short coming of a few weapons was by far offset by the excellent inovation and output of American industry. If the Sherman was slightly inferior this flaw was offset by the excellent radios, special ammo, loads of machined guns, plentiful ammo, gyrostablizers, medicine, food and condoms that the U.S. was able to load them up with. Who would dare match German synthic rubber sheaths with American rubber Trojans? Certainly not me.

I traversed the canal in the mid 1970s right after it was reopened. (It was closed for a few years after the 73 war). The Egyptian army's front lines were on the Egypt side of the canal and I saw quite a showcase of vintage Russian vehicles. Lots of the SU 100, 122 and 155 types and a few Stalin tanks to boot. There was even one old T34-85 that was broken down and having repairs made to it. Not much in the way of modern tanks. I suppose these were in reserve.

It is my experience that quanity works well over quality. Big tanks are expensive. I like the M18 Hellcat as a counter. Relatively inexpensive and excellent in any but open terrain. Despite its thin armor, TD crews actually liked it and preferred it over the other TDs due to its reliability and ability to shift position quickly. Mobility is the best weapon when fighting the big tanks. Of course on a small map your options are much more limited.

I fought a night battle with rain and visability was less than 5 meters with my buddy. (You should try it, it is a hoot!) He ran his jeep right through my lines straight to the rear. The jeep never saw a unit until it ran into my Wespe. Like an idiot, I ordered the Wespe to target the Jeep. Do you know that if you hit a jeep at five meters with 105 mm HE, there is a good chance you will blow yourself to pieces. Yes, his tactic was gamey but fun and we laughed about it and i kicked his ass anyway. On the other hand, I had an opponent run his no ammo American mortar and AT teams at me in the closing turns of a close game to deplete my ammo and draw my fire. Yes his tactics were gamey and I was not amused. However, there is one wanker out there that I now know to avoid in the future and I am losing very little sleep over the loss. The point is I tend to avoid gamers who try to throw in a lot of optional rules as they just lead to misunderstandings and more problems than the prevent. But, I expect my opponents to play withing reason and keep the gamey stuff to a minimum. When I feel it is getting out of hand, I just find excuses not to play them again. No worry and no big deal.

47 My wife says I prefer this to sex. I don't want to tell her the truth.

Played one of my first TCP games the other day. Fun, close infantry battle with the issue in doubt. Both sides were low on ammo. My opponent then advanced all of his out of ammo baz, mortar and HMG teams to draw my fire and deplete my ammo. Punk SOB!

Some times they are tougher than others. I had one game where I drove my Stuart up to the rear of a Tiger and pumped about a dozen shots into it without effect. Needless to say my armpits began to give off the stench of fear as I watched the turret slowly rotate. The end result was not pretty.

Don't start singing the praise of Geman tanks over American tanks so fast. German tank production was bogged down in a mess of production problems. There were too many design and development teams vying for the attention of the govement and many over complicated tanks were produced as a result. On the whole German armor was well armed and had good armor protection. This combined with an excellent gun sight and good armor tactics gave them some advantages, However, German designs tended to be overly complex and prone to breakdowns. All of the heavy tanks were slow and proned to bogging on any thing but paved roads. The vaunted king tiger was a failure as an offensive weapon and just got in the way during the battle of the bulge. American tanks on the other hand were underarmed and tank doctrine was not up to par with the Germans. Shermans, however had many design pluses that do not show themselves in a game like CM. Sherman engines has the longest field life of any contemporary engine. The partial rubber tracks would last for 4-500 miles compared to the all steel tracks on German tanks which might be good for 100 miles. Shermans had faster turrets, quicker rate of fire and some had gyros, which when finally understood by their crews, gave American tanks mobile superiortiy. American tank losses were high but that is the sort of territority that goes with the burden of attack. American fighter and bombers losses over the Reich were terribly high too. That does not mean the Germans had better airplanes.

Got it! Thanks to all for responding. Can't wait to try it out.

That is the patch that I installed. I see that my game is showing ver. 1.05 in the bottom window. Perhaps I made an error in installing the patch. I will check.

Downloaded and installed the beta patch. Easy download. Executed and it seemed to load right into my CM main directory. I am on AOL and using ver 1.05 of the game. However tried to load a test game but the game type menu the Ip/tcp button shows grey and can not be clicked. I was on line at the time. Any ideas as to what I am doing wrong? Ross