Triumvir
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Posts posted by Triumvir
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I still don't know why everyone thinks of the Pacific as "island-hopping"... tell that to the Seppos and Diggers in New Guinea, or the Brits and the Yanks in Burma, or even the Bandy-legged Runts (literal Chinese translation) in China.
My vote goes strongly for CM 5, a Pacific game where infantry is very clearly Queen of the Battlefield, more so than any other possible CM game.
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I can't believe that it would take longer to set up SP arty than to set up regular arty (by the by, I don't think 25 pounders can fire indirect in the game either.) Fixing your position and recording centre of arc should be faster on an SP unit than on a towed unit because you don't have to spend the extra time embedding the gun.
The minimum range issue is certainly an issue; when firing indirect, the minimum range for a 155 was, if I recall correctly, roughly 1.5 km.
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Well, the gun on the left is almost certainly a 25 pounder. I should know; I trained on one for ceremonial duties and definitely remember the 25 pounder races we had... six men manhandle 1 25 pounder up a (paved) hill!
The key thing for me is that you can see the circular firing platform under the gun and just barely see the spikes that were used for embedding. Plus I remember peering through the slit in the gunshield to try and figure out what the sights must have looked like (since we were only doing saluting, we didn't need any sights and fired only blanks.)
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Heh. I tried to disassemble a .cmb file to figure out how I could do transforms on large maps and cut them down into smaller maps, pick only a portion, etc.
It seems like an interesting structure. I hope BTS will give us a better map editor in CM II, that will allow us different sized maps, ability to pick a smaller section out of a larger map etc.
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When I was doing my conscription, there were two phones for each company. The queue would start at 7:30 and only end 5 minutes before lights out...
Course, the next year everyone had cell phones...
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Not to mention that the last QB I played against the AI had the AI picking 4 Jacksons in a 1000 pt armour game... a _little_ gamey, I thought. Also, playing against someone in another armour game, the AI bought my opponent a Veteran Panther, Hetzer and 250/9 (the one with the 75mm) plus a platoon of VG SMGs against me having two Regular Shermans, one Jeep MG, 1 M3 and 1 platoon of infantry...
Ouch doesn't begin to describe it.
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Does anyone have a link for any meta-campaign rules that I could take a look at? By meta-campaign, I mean a kind of campaign where many players get together under one GM and attempt to simulate a battalion or higher level conflict, with each player being responsible for some subunit.
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SicherungStaffel? Nothing to do with the Schutzstaffel. Not everything that you can match two letters S together was the SS...
Not to dispute that the commisar order was to be carried out by normal Wehrmacht troops, Manstein's protestations to the contrary.
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****e****e****e does anyone know how to edit titles?
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Does anyone know exactly how shot traps come about? I ask because while I can clearly see how they might happen on an early Panther, I don't quite understand how the saukopf mantlet stopped them from happening on a JPz IV.
Also (and this is the real topic, but disguised among the obCM -- heh heh --) does the new "Israeli" look, such as that seen on some Leopard A2 variants, and certainly the upgraded M60 Sabra that IMI produces not also produce shot traps, if someone lands a shot on the lower part of the turret?
Consider this:
versus this:
Answers?
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Out of curiosity, how long did it take?
I ask because it took us between 4~8 hours to build a two-man firetrench with overhead shelter (the discrepancy is because we were given all night and it was the first (and last! yay!) time we had to build a firetrench. Some worked harder than others, but we were all entrenched by morning.)
I'm wondering if a bunker takes less time to build and houses more people (but probably is less protective) than a firetrench. (By which I mean something about 160cm deep, with enough room for two people plus an overhead shelter.)
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Just after I finished my conscription, another gun battalion did a live firing in which a 155mm round exploded in the chamber. In the open, with no ricochets, 2 people were killed and 10 wounded. I'd hate to think what would have happened inside a crew compartment.
A friend told me about an Israeli tanker who was killed because a static discharge blew the round he was loading into the ammo racks (which could have been avoided if he'd followed the SOP.) The tank was a write-off.
Bailing from a hung fire round isn't that hard a call. Even in wartime you have to be worried about safety and being killed by your own rounds seems worse than being killed by someone else's.
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Oh, I quite agree. Even as far back as the 1860s logistics was king. Railroads smashed the Confederacy in 1864-5, the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1870-1.
Having seen for myself just how much supplies a single unit has, I'm well aware that pointy hair trumps bulging thews. Those who complain about how much tail there is to teeth in modern armies have never experienced what it's like to be the teeth; having hot food every night does _wonders_ for your endurance.
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My apologies; I should have said the German leadership (i.e. Hitler). You are of course right in that the German army pre WWI led the way in the establishment of a staff. Moltke's greatest achievement was in the scheduling of railways for mobilisation, thereby ensuring a superiority in manpower over the French (both Moltkes, actually, though the second one less so -- still, there exists doubt over whether an extra three divisions would have done that much extra."
As for headlines, it's what your boss thinks that counts... 8)
I'm well aware of the "Genius for War" system; and I agree with your comments. My statements should be taken in terms of authority deciding who to promote.
As for Dietrich... one of the reasons he was so fiercely loyal till Hitler shamed his bodyguard (is it really true that 1SS sent him a used chamberpot with cuff-titles at the bottom?) was that he well knew that he would not have reached his position without Hitler's intervention.
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I think the constant thread through WWII on the German side is how constantly the Peter Principle got violated. Sepp Dietrich, Walther Model, Hermann Goering, Erhardt Milch, Wilhelm Keitel, Erwin Rommel... the list goes on and on and on. Not forgetting the ultimate Peter himself, of course.
I think this had mostly to do with the "warrior" mentality that the Germans had. Warriors are promoted on their ability to fight and inspire personal devotion. But native talent can only take you so far, and worst of all, is unreliable.
Contrast this to the "manager" mentality that pervaded the Allies. While individual leaders were mediocre, in aggregate through consistently superior management of logistics, the pointy-hairs wore the warriors down.
This explains why there are so many people rooting for the Germans; there's a charisma there that none of the Allied leaders except Patton had -- and Patton famously had the same logistical problems as his opponents, but had a better support system that compensated for it.
Too many cooks spoil the broth, just as too few do.
But the ultimate WWII leader still remains Bill Slim, whose constant attention to detail in supply and steady pressure wore down his warrior opponents. I don't think any other leader was as well loved -- not revered -- as Slim. There's a damn good reason why he turned Defeat into Victory.
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Just like in the real world, not too many flight simmers like mudhogging. Ground attack is one of the least pleasant things a flier can do, because those nasty little ants have a even nastier way of plucking you from the sky.
(That's not to say that a game like A-10 won't do well)
But other things aside, terrain is, as far as I'm aware, not that great an issue for flight sims; they typically take place at least 5kft above the ground, at which time terrain becomes almost irrelevant.
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Interesting... I have the Handbook on German Forces and it has on page 514 an electric chain-saw. I wouldn't consider these very portable, though: I reproduce their stats:
Light power saw:
Weight : 111lbs including fuel
Blade Length: 3ft3in
RPM : 2600
Chain Speed : 21 feet per second
Heavy power saw:
Weight : 172lbs including fuel
Blade Length: 3ft3in
RPM : 2300
Chain Speed : 23 feet per second
The photo makes it quite evident that it's a two man piece of kit.
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And of course, there's TacOps, which has, as has been explained to me, no AI whatsoever. The "AI" simply follows OpFor doctrine _exactly_. Which explains why single play leads to several red company commander faces.
On the other hand, while I _lurve_ Steel Beasts' scripting, it becomes impractical, I think, to have anywhere near that depth of action for randomly generated scenarios. And QBs are one of the major reasons I keep coming back to CM: most people don't make scenarios that appeal to my sub-company scale.
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Lewis, I actually quite agree with you. When you're ambushed squad on squad, it doesn't matter what you do because all of you should be dead in the first volley. And like you said, even if you aren't, when you charge into the ambush the raking fire will kill you.
But most ambushes are hit and run affairs, where a squad may ambush a platoon, or a platoon a company, and then immediately clear the area.
I like your idea about motion dependency affecting behaviour. But then we get back into the problem of what squads should use what drill...
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Should not be running? Should be rushing? Preferred move? Those are value judgements that depend on the context you're in.
As for rushing by half-platoon in overwatch... at 20 metres? After being ambushed? After being ambushed at that close range, you'll be lucky if half your platoon is alive to rush at all. In a WW II context, it makes even more sense because firepower was comparatively much lower.
As for breaking LOS, even when moving through jungle, when ambushed how can you tell whether an opponent has or doesn't have LOS to you? That moment of hesitation while you decide where to go can be fatal. It applies even more to
That's why IA drills exist, at least in Commonwealth armies: to try and remove that moment of hesitation by making men _move_ instantly.
Now, if you're caught at 50 to 100m in the open, and you know that you can break cover, that's different. But that's also a different discussion.
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Overall better tanks for the Americans? But what about the uparmoured Churchill, the closest thing that the Allies have to an ueberpanzer? Or the Archer, which is oodles cheaper than a Firefly, and much more effective on the defense?
Don't forget the 6pdrs either, which are more than powerful enough to kill Tigers and Panthers over the frontal arc if they have tungsten (and they always do.)
When I play Allies, I do my best to play British pattern troops.
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Corroboration for Steve: The instant action drill that Commonwealth pattern armies use for being ambushed at close range is to immediately turn to the source of fire and attempt an overrun of the enemy position, guns blazing.
Close range is defined as 20-30 metres.
I've never had a problem with the "run straight at the enemy when ambushed" aspect of CM, as I assumed that it just reflected SOP. I do remember wishing that the ambushed unit's ROF would go up, though.
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PzKpf 1, as far as I know, the Israeli Centurions in 67 and 73 used .50 spotter rifles coaxial to their main guns.
I know for a fact that 106mm RCL rifles used spotter rifles to help assist in firing.
These weren't MGs, though, but rifles which had ballistic profiles that matched their main gun's profiles.
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While trying to find more indepth information about this, specifically about the bursting charges and effective casualty radius of the 75mm and 37mm HE rounds, I ran across a great site:
http://www.britwar.co.uk/salts/salt5.htm
which, among many, _many_ gems, states that airburst seems to be no more effective against enemies in slit trenches than groundburst.
It also seems to suggest that the 75mm on a Sherman had a reasonable casualty radius of around 28 feet/9 metres.
Unfortunately, the page is pretty poorly organized, so you'll have to dig a bit.
Indirect Tank Fire
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
Michael, I've been in an arty battalion and run 15mm guns. To just get the guns ready for firing without camouflaging etc takes about 6 minutes if you have to embed the gun by digging, and about 2 if the gun is self embedding.
In an SP mortar unit, our time to get ready from deployment was about 1 minute.
I think that's well under a CM timeframe. What the real killer is is the minimum range, IMHO.