Polar

Germanboy, Again, what is the point of trying to replay history if you refuse to approach it at a different angle? I posted this before, but essentially what people are saying is "I want to charge my men up Little Round Top... but I want to win!". Very few victories (or whole wars for that matter) are won conventionally. The winner, more often then not, has been the guy willing to do something different. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Here is the thing that I don't get... Why do the "play it right, not to win" crowd even bother? If nothing was ever done differently in the historical missions, why bother playing them, since we already know what happens when you do it the classic way. In QBs, who is to say what the motivation is for any given engagement. Any given "gamey" strategy could have actually happened given the right set of circumstances. Hell, Audy Murphy was awarded a chest full of medals for being "gamey", by these definitions anyway. Just expect that your enemy wants to win at all costs and play it that way. Joe Ps. I'd like to see whether this discussion comes up again if/when we get a Combat Mission: Pacific Theater.... now THAT was anything goes for sure! ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Ok... not a narmor penetration expert... so I have a few questions for clarification. 1) The 88 ap rating at 0 degrees... that is assuming that 100% of inertia is delivered on the target, right? The penetration value of the round, unless I am missing something, should decrease as the approach angle increases (reaching 0 at 90 degrees)? 2) Aren't angles measures in 90=dead on contact, and 0 is parallel to the impact surface? Sorry if these sound silly... but it seems to me that armor penetration conclusions are not as simple as figuring the thickness of armor at angle of contact -vs- armor penetration of round when measured dead-on. Shaped charges (Panzerfaust, Bazooka) are a different story, but these weren't shape charges that they were firing at each other... were they? Just wondering... but it seems most of these discussion are over simplified. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz [This message has been edited by Polar (edited 01-04-2001).]

Well, my point is, until you get a working persisng on one side of a field, and an 88 on the other, and have them duke it out, you will not see one way or the other. And even THAT won't truely measure how effective the armor or the gun would be. The thing about armor is that generally (and esspecially in 1945) the strength is in the angles. If the 88 were to impact the glacis at a perfectly perpendicular trajectory, then the my guess is it would penetrate anything. But it gets tough (esspecially in an abstracted game) what angle it is hitting at... I'll accept that the armor is softer on the glacis yaddayaddayadda.... I just think that this is part of the problem with lack of war games in the market. I could make a near perfect game (as BTS has done) and still get bombarded by demands on changing the color of the stain on the wood stock of the M1 Garand. Nobody who demands that their 4th person interpretation of any given subject is the ONLY interpretation will ever be happy. I think all of us need to realize the difference between bugs and design descisions. And the fact that the Pershing wasn't killed 90% of the time from glacis hits is probably not a bug, and probably closer to reality then what people want here. Live with what the game gives you and build your strategy accordingly. I, for instance, KNOW that I need to pour fire on a Tiger at the expense of all else if I want to knock it out. Why??? Because the more angles you fire on, the less chance of the Tiger reducing those angles (closing the angle to one gun will open it to another). Maybe German players need to respect the Pershing more than they care too. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Free game.. free game.. free game.. Actually, you'd probably still be in the market for a pay game too wouldn't you? Tough to say, I haven't really liked most games lately... I got Sea Dogs for Christmas... but it isn't grabbing me. OH! I know what you would like! Another free game site! Here: http://www.classicgaming.com It is a site where you can download all the old games we played as a kid (well, I played... don't know how old you are Shatter). I downloaded "Mame" the arcade emulator and I am having lots of fun playing all the old arcade games for free! Hmmm... maybe I just don't like BUYING games anymore. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Ooops... That is: http://www.matrixgames.com The current build is 4.5... I am running 3.0 and loving it. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Steel Panthers World at War WAS the greatest (IMO) WWII strategy game ever made... until CMBO of course. The great thing about it, is that it is absolutely free! The bad thing is it is 400+ mb of download. I STILL play it even with CMBO eating up most of my time... because it covers a MUCH wide scope of the war (East, West, Pacific) and have all the trimmin's to play with (Sturmtiger, Maus... etc. ). You can findhttp://www.matrixgames.com Really, really, really good game if you have a fast internet connection, or a friend who has one and a CD writer. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

And and and... I want to be able to buy barrels of oil that I can strategically place on hill and roll down on approaching Panzer columns! Oh wait... that's a different realit..ehh... I mean movie. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

But they will have Kubelwagens with machine gun in the Dirty Dozen game. Speaking of which... I want ex-running back grenadiers that can run through German camps tossing grenades!!! Where are they!? Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

The thing is, most of what you hear and read about weapon performance is either exagerated for dramatics, or taken from the performance of a gun under optimal conditions, etc. If an 88 can punch through x amount of armor, that doesn't mean that a glancing blow won't bounce off. I have always had a sneaking suspission that most of what you read in these "Aromo(u)r or WWII" books wouldn't be replicated if you saw the stuff in action in the actuall war. But then, most history we read is a bit skewed to the mythical. But it has always been that way, for as long as we recorded history. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Download Steel Panthers: World at War for free!! That is, if you haven't already. ;^) Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

I think it was the Villers-Bocage mission... but I remember a recent mission where a mortar team took out no less that TWO tigers... very close range (for the mortar) and grouped together. Quite silly actually.... but I didn't see my men complaining. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Ok... I had a really cool battle last night, so I'll tell you about it. The Setup: QB, Large, Large hills, village, clear, March 1945. Meeting/Engagement- 3000 pts. I played Combined Arms allies, CPU was Combined Arms Axis. My major armor was 2 Super Pershings, 2 Churchill AVRE... Support vehicles were 3 Wasps, 4 Grey Hounds, and 10 M3 Halftracks... 1 105 VT spotter, 1 4.5 in Rocket spotter, and 12 rifle squads (and cooresponding HQs). During setup phase I scoped out the landscape and found two nice perches for my Pershings. ABout 150m off of the front line, and 5 levels above the town, they had a great view of the slopes leading to the town on the other side of the map. I figured that the PC would choose to place it's armor their. I grouped all my fire teamsput them in their half tracks and started. I was right... on the opposite side (about 1600m) I was able to pick out 1 Panther, 2 hetzers, and a slew of half tracks... all under the grim gaze of my Pershings 90mm gum. Buy the end of turn 1, 5 halftracks, 2 hetzers, and 1 AC were in flames, my pershings emerged unscathed. The Panther popped smoke 3 seconds into the turn, and high tailed it. Round one to me. Next, I raced my half tracks down the valley to the town... all was relatively quiet for about 4 turns. My Pershings would fire on tank crews etc. that were left on the opposing hill, but that is about it. Then all hell broke loose. A German colum came screaming down a paved road that stretched the middle of the map along the deepest point of the valey. My Men and half tracks tore into them as the tripped the ambush sites along the road... this might have been a mistake! The town drew the attention of the German observers and smoke and fire rained on the town for 6 turns. half the town was descimated, half my men were dead, the rest held their ground with their fingernails as the German infantry slowly gathered themselves and started moving up the 100 meters of hill between the roadside littered with burning half tracks and the town littered with bleeding GIs. In boxing terms, we had just traded body blows. As the fight grew ever closer to the town, and the German troops started to slow under ever increasing fire from the town, my Churchills crawled slowly westward to the town in support. The Pershings were sitting where they started, clear field of fire over most of the map... hitting rogue half tracks now and again as the crested the a small hill in the valley road heading east. Clearly this was the German focus... clearly they were bent on grabbing the largets and esiest defended objectives first... or so I thought... Just east of the city was a rather steep mountain that rose sharply of the allied side, and then gently sloped for about 500m into a pack of incredibly dense forrest; between the crest of the hill and the edge of the forrest sat a small farm house and a major objective flag... on the other side of that forrest was the valley road... just 200m east on Valley Road was the edge of the map. My Churchill AVREs crested the hill, and for the first time I had direct view of that farm house, and the forrest beyond... ....You ever see Aliens? Where ther guy grabs the flashlight and looks above the cieling tiles and sees the aliens slowly crawly towards him en masse? Well, picture aliens with rifles, and that is what I saw on that slope... Next turn I swung my Churchills around and targeted the field where the Germans were swarming... and if you have never seen the effect of a 290mm round on exposed infantry, maybe you shouldn't... it's gruesome. The Churchills caught 7 rifle squads in the open, a two in the farm house. When the Farm house colapsed, the Germans began the retreat to the tree line. The tree line was targeted by my 105VT and 4.5in rockets. The timing was perfect, as soon as the last surving squad fell back into the woods, the bombs started dropping. The vice was closing, and it wasn't going to be pretty... I raced my Wasps to the western objective and parked then near the tree line... and set the forrest ablaze. When the smoke cleared I would count no less than 12 eliminated rifle squads... neatly butchered and Bar-B-Qued. Karma is a wierd thing... without the Churchill support, my men in town weren't fairing so well. The bombs kept falling, houses kept collapsing, the whole town was in flames at this point. There was only so much I could do to hold the line. I kept backing up, he kept moving forward. At this point I wasn't confident enough to pull the Churchills off there current patrol, so I left it to the Greyhounds and the remaining Wasp to snap the German advance. I russhed them up to the front and parked them in what could only be described as mainstreet. My wasp then went on a house to house burn. THe Germans started falling back, my men advanced through the alleys catch the Germans as they pulled back. Again, the tide was turning in my favor and *POP*... my wasp explodes. Wh-what?! I though to myself... I couldn't see where the shot came from. I was focusing on the troops watching them route the infantry. I rewound the tape and replayed the death of my Wasp. I figgured it came from the west.. I looked down the street and... ooooh..... craaaaap.... A Tiger Tank was slowly moving it's way down the street. The road he is on sits below my local Pershings arc of fire, and he will need to do some manuevering to get down off his perch... the second Pershing is over a click away.. he may get a shot when... when... I mean IF the Tiger continues down the road. If he turns left back into the valley I will have a real problem on my hands. He will be flanking my infantry, and it'll me a slick trick to swing my Grey hounds around to his rear. Want to know what happens next? ME TOO!!!! I didn't get a chance to finish I still have 20 turns left... and with numerous half tracks probably still roaming (I can only assume with the sheer number of German Infantry)... The 5 or 6 Rifle squads in town, the Damn Tiger and.... ooohhhhh F%$#@!!! That friggin' PANTHER still on the prowl... Crap! Not to mention that I probably have some war crimes in my future for my actions on Widows Peak (as I cam to know it)... What a great game!!! Joe

It's hard to cater to those that adopt the German 88 uberkiller doctrine and make a game that is fun to play. I am not well versed on the whole glacis plate -vs- 88 at x range debate... but I wonder exactly what people want here. Everyone who plays the Germans wants super German optics on 88s that can reliably target and penetrate a Super Pershing at 2000 meters. Well, 88s in practice were no where near that super human. Reliable? Yes. Versatile? Definitely yes. But it was NOT a dead cinch killer... or at least to the degree that many here seem to think it was. Hell, if it was that good, they would have won the war! Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Jeremy Sadler: "What're ya legs?" "Steel springs!" "Where they gonna take ya?" "Down the track!" Pick the movie... Answer: That would be Galipoli (sp?)... Joe <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

And that, as Paul Harvey says, is the rest of the story. 2 crack crews, 4 shots each at stationary targets in hitting in the rear? It doesn't sound so absurdly lucky anymore. Yeah, the ROF may be a bit high... heck, those guys were probably bobin' up and down out of those foxholes like wacka-moles! ;^) But hey, where were those infantry scouring the woods ahead of the column? Doesn't sound like it is ALL the games fault! ;^) Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Agreed!!!! It is silly... just plain silly... to complain about such a small and improbable occurance simply on the basis that it probably wouldn't happen in real life. MUCH of what happens in CM wouldn't happen in real life. But that's becuase you are essentially the tactical brain of EVERY unit on you side. There is no room for error (or very little)... THAT is unrealistic. How often do you think people will encounter some massed crew rush when they themselves are woefully short of ammo? One in a million? Should a major reworking of the game be based on one occurrance that is not only wildly improbable, but essentially ineffective? Hell, I'll complain that my three weapons companys should have stopped running when that HMG opened up on them in my game last night... shouldn't they have run away??? Then they fix it... and someone complains that they break too easy... so they fix it... and the German player complains that they don't break easy enough... or not enough are dead... Yadda yadda yadda.... It must be a damn fine game if all we have to discuss is that unassed tank crews are being used as cannon fodder. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Oooops... WW I... you're absolutely right. And no, the guy in the knife fight was different then the prisoner (who IS the guy they let go after assaulting the HMG). But that is the silliness that I mentioned... first they show guys killing Germans on the beach after the D-Day invasion and it's an atrocity. Then the heroes let a guy go under similar circumstances and they are shown to be (as a group) vituous. Then the weeny coward shoots the guy anyway at the end after he kills Tom Hanks .... not fighting, but unarmed just like he was before... but now it's some kind of vituous act??? And what's the deal with letting the guy go anyway? The HMG shows clearly that they are in a VERY grey area when it comes to battle lines. Are they taking the German at his word that he wouldn't head back for HIS side? They were being stupid. Joe

JUst part of that Cold-War propaganda.... They tried as hard as they could to link all things allied to Germany. :^) All of our carried German sounding names... Jow

This is a silly arguement either way. To play such a game, you have to suspend a LOT of characteristic actions of independant units anyway. Maybe I should be angry when an opponent does a Wasp rush on my fortified possition... since that is CLEARLY suicide on his part and Wasp commanders wouldn't do something that obviously stupid of his own accord. He does because if one manages to make it close enough to set the place on fire, his approaching troops get a distinct advantge. Did this happen in real life? No... but it can be a VERY useful tactic in CMBO when the terrain allows it. The thing about the crew rush is this... If you want the ability to rush a tank in a potential suicide mission in hopes of breaking the opponents line, you have to allow crew rushes. If you want to start talking "imagine your best friends head just got pasted to the wall by an 88" crap, then just look at some of the crazy stuff people do with MOUNTED armor. Essentially, you need to take away all command or 90% of the command you have over any particular unit if you want "realism". If the tank crews had direct contact with the commanding officer after their tanks were taken out, maybe we WOULD have seen more direct use of unassed tank crews. It's the nature of the beast, most (if not all) of the micromanaging after turn one is essentially "unrealistic". Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Ooops! Maybe that first picture is not a Pershing... What is it though??? Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Very interesting! Thanks Lindan! Isn't it interesting that the only tank in poor condition is the Pershing? And also... do the Russians refer to all tanks as Panzers? Or just the non-russian tanks? Because the Pershing is marked as an Panzer M26. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Oooops... Steele Helmet is Korea I think... Great movie anyway... Joe

In a most certain order: 1) Lawrence of Arabia 2) Schindler's List 3) A Bridge Too Far 4) The Eagle Has Landed (extremely fictional, I know... but some of the best squad level fighting scenes in a war movie) 5) Steele Helmet 6) Patton 7) Saving Private Ryan ... the gest virtual war creation money can buy wrapped arround 40 minutes of silliness (ie. Why didn't they just blow the damn bridge??? It would have taken the Corp of Engineers all of 10 minutes to replece that dinky thing! And my favorite: the coward finally bags an unarmed German and NOW he is a man? :^)) ... Maybe it shouldn't be this high? It's really just a tech demo. 8) Thin Red Line ... if you are going to knock this movie because of the non-reality... well throw out all of the war movies. It's still a great movie. My brain is feezing up... it's sad when you can think of a million war movies, but you can't pick out more than 8 for a best of list... I am sure there are more, but the bad ones are getting in the way. Battle of the Buldge???? God what an terrible movie. Who knew that a handful of guys stopped the Axis push by rolling flaming oil drums on approaching tanks??? What is this... Spartacus??? Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz

Let me preface this by saying that for many years I was a Social Worker, and I have interviewed hundreds of vets in my time... and I have gone through these kinds of discussions with many of them. That said, let me get to my response: The first time I really got a sense of what Mr. Trotter was talking about was when playing Sid Meyer's Gettysburg... and more to the point, the battle of Little Round Top. Walking the fields of Gettysburg gives you an immediate sense of what SHOULD have been done to take that hill... but it didn't happen. When I got Gettysburg IU immediately loaded that scenario and sent Hood South to run a flanking maneuver... and I'll be damned if the Union didn't fall apart when I swung Hood around on their flanks... But there are a few things to consider (and I think they apply to Trotters article)... 1) Most games will tend to weigh heavily towards hindsight. Trotter isn't the only one who has come up with that conclusion concerning Corregidor. The Scenario he is playing probably weighed heavily on the kill-the-tanks-you-win philosophy. As my Little Round Top scenario was weighted heavily on the side of flanking... since in the game a frontal assault was (as it historically was) suicide... see #3 for further discussion here. 2) People involved in these battles have a strong "nothing more could be done" mentality. It is a coping mechanism... esspecially for vets who are involved in a losing battle. But this is more likely not the case. This is not to be mistaken for the "you did the best you could do" stance that we take when consoling such vets. But they tend to see it as one and the same thing. Again, it's a coping mechanism. What the veteran in this situation probably fails to realize is that revisiting history is not a knock on any one individual. For instance, do I denounce the Confederate soldiers efforts in their Attack on Chamberlain? Hell no... I'm sure they faught as hard as they would have had they attacked the flanks. 3) The bigger point here that most people fail to grasp is the exponentially higher amount of info the you get playing a game than you would actually commanding in a real battle (although that gap get smaller by the day). For instance, I can look and a computer representation of Little Round Top and know for certain that that engagement is suicide... but did Lee have access to that kind of hard info? Nope. Sure, Hood pleaded with him to try the flanking maneuver... but given the intel that Lee had to work with, that maneuver had just as many potential drawbacks as his plan. So who can blame him? Mr. Trotter wasn't saying that the individual soldier was to blame for the defeat.. all he was saying is that given 50 + years to sift through the reports, it has becoming clear to him (and many others) what the key to that battle was.. and he tested it in a simulator and it worked. Had he said that "Even if they took out the tanks, they still would have lost" do you think the vet would be any happier? Hell no. The only way to really make him happy is to never speak of it again, and never (under any circumstances) ever ever EVER try to relive it in any way. Joe ------------------ "I had no shoes and I cried, then I met a man who had no socks." - Fred Mertz