LongLeftFlank
-
Posts
5,412 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
15
Posts posted by LongLeftFlank
-
-
Great stuff in this thread -- just checking in. I've had so little time for gaming lately I haven't even downloaded the patches for CMBN or CMSF yet. Gonna be that way for a while I think....
-
NATO member Turkey is a vastly more likely cobelligerent than the Italians or even the French, at least under the circumstances described in the CMSF backstory. Their equipment is about as obsolete as Syria's for the most part and the AFV matchups would likely be competitive, assuming some Republican Guard armoured formation somehow got overlooked by the higher tech Western forces....
It also provides an additional "Red" option, although I personally wouldn't care to fight Turks under any circumstances, much less on their home turf. They are a VERY different people than Arabs, a lot more like Westerners in terms of their will and ability to organize en masse for things like, oh say, a savage total war in defense of the homeland. Loyalties are to nation/ethnicity more than to family/tribe. Think Russians or Vietnamese (on home turf) -- high motivation and resilience at the individual or small team level more than offsets leadership incompetence or corruption. Much respect!
-
Also, check to make sure there isn't some kind of map obstruction that stops them from using the door you ordered them to use.
For example, if the door's on the left side of the building face and you also have a diagonal wall sticking out from the same corner of the tile, it makes the door impassable to the pixeltruppen even though it looks like there's enough space for them there. I think some of the bigger flavour objects also create obstacles.
Note: the above is based on CMSF experience. Haven't seen this happen yet in CMBN.
-
Hmm, just got back from a monthlong absence and whaddya know -- 2 patches!
Interesting thread. But how about a little "Spatial Inhumanity" counterpoint, lest we forget the subject matter we're dealing with here. And whom it was that the GIs -- to quote Patton at KZ Ohrdruf -- were fighting against. The Poles certainly have not -- this digital recreation took hundreds of programmers, and years to complete.
By January 1945 85% of the buildings were destroyed: 25% as a result of the Uprising, 35% as a result of systematic German actions after the uprising, and the rest as a result of the earlier Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the September 1939 campaign. Material losses are estimated at 10,455 buildings, 923 historical buildings (94%), 25 churches, 14 libraries including the National Library, 81 primary schools, 64 high schools, University of Warsaw and Warsaw University of Technology, and most of the historical monuments. Almost a million inhabitants lost all of their possessions. The exact amount of losses of private and public property as well as pieces of art, monuments of science and culture is unknown but considered enormous. Studies done in the late 1940s estimated total damage at about $30 billion US dollars. In 2004, President of Warsaw Lech Kaczyński, later President of Poland, established a historical commission to estimate material losses that were inflicted upon the city by German authorities. The commission estimated the losses as at least US$31.5 billion at 2004 values. Those estimates were later raised to US$45 billion 2004 US dollars and in 2005, to $54.6 billion
-
Great thread - very useful! Thanks, all!
-
The other obvious fix for this is better survivability of entrenched and hunkered down (Cowering or Hiding) infantry against artillery non-direct hits, which I gather BFC is looking at.
-
Paestum here we come!
-
Groovy. The easternmost settlement appearing on my map is St. Gerbot, and it's less than 100m from the east edge. However, I did ensure the map had room to grow in all 4 directions.
I've stayed away from the highway tile because it doesn't resemble anything that would have been in Normandy -- except for an airstrip perhaps. My "main highway" is paved road and all others are dirt tracks.
-
As I navigate the bare-bones map at ground level, the fiendish nature of this terrain becomes evident. Even with no bocage and no vegetation, the natural undulations of the ground, rising gently from the Vire river, compartmentalize this battlefield into distinct zones, with little direct LOS between them. Except, that is, for the 70m rise around Le Carillon (farthest corner of the map in the screenie above), which can see pretty much everything.
No wonder pretty much every American attack petered out within an hour or so under a lethal rain of Nazi mortar and SP gun fire. And while the sunken lanes, rail cuts and creekbeds offered good cover for movement, these spots were also well known to the Germans.
P.S. I misspoke above regarding the map dimensions. The pictured map is 2800 N-S by 2750 E-W, basically the entire frontage of the 137th Infantry.
-
Been a while since I checked in -- a lot going on right now and little time for gaming.
This is the 1750 x 1750 map of the La Meauffe - Le Carillon area (sorry about the blurring). The contours and watercourses are more or less finished except for tweaking, there are placeholder buildings marking nearly all the settlements and I'm now building the road net, including the railway line. Once that's done, I'll outline the patchwork of fields/lanes and begin detailing the settlements and farmsteads.
So this monster map doesn't totally crush my machine, I am putting in very little vegetation, bocage/walls and doodads (only what's adjacent to the buildings) -- that will be up to the scenario designers to add on the smaller carve-out submaps.
-
It's amazingly hard to come up with period photos of Normandy with crops in them.... And damned if I know whether they're June, July or August.
-
This is another one of those topics that comes up constantly. Ambient fire effects aside (I'd like to see some), pretty much any kind of game functionality that allows for arson will be abused. Deliberate fire setting as a historical battle tactic is rare mainly because its effects and timing are highly uncertain even in favourable weather; it takes patience and some freedom of movement to do right and units under fire typically have neither. Burning out diehards implies the game is pretty much already done while any "scorched earth" tactics would be implemented by the defender prior to the battle -- clearing fields of fire being far more useful tactically than having flaming (and smoky) obstacles obscuring LOS.
-
I "mist" admit to being a bit disappointed by the fog effect; I had hoped for hedgerows wreathed in wisps of vapor, more akin to the existing look of dispersing smoke, but slower to burn off. Instead it's just a uniform haze. I suppose it's another CPU hog, like illums and billowing wreck fires but too bad since it's clearly within the abilities of the game engine.
-
Isn't there a "pool of blood" casualty unit base mod out there somehwere?
Put me in the "dirt, yes: gore, no" camp.
-
Just curious: what's SUB 35?
Shouldn't those US units be lettered companies of 1st,2nd or 3rd battalion of the 320th Infantry Regiment, 35th ID? or sumfink....
-
I'm still savouring the irony that a poster named MCAULIFFE dared to start a thread with the title "How to Retreat".....
-
Great work, Vanir.
It also makes me curious whether infantry prone behind bocage embankments are better off than those behind the walls. Must test that sometime....
-
We can make all sort of informed guesses about what will panic a tank crew in a given circumstance but none of us have actually been there to say what we did on the occasion. We are left with anecdotal evidence and our best WAG's of what is most likely. A somewhat liberal (and statistically variable) estimation of the range of likely crew behavior would seem most reasonable to me. Steve and the BFC guys seem quite adept at sorting out this sort of question. I can live with what they come up with.
Agreed. However, from various tank crew memoirs, plus the (generalized) observations of a good friend who counsels veterans (of all wars) for PTSD, it seems that a major fear for tankers is burning to death while trapped in your tank. So if on top of the loud bangs and shudder, limited situational awareness and perhaps impaired mobility, your nostrils then fill with, say, the smell of burning petrol (severed fuel lines? jerrycans? Molotovs?), that could also create a tipping point into panic -- better to risk a bullet in the fresh air.
War is hell.
-
Not that most posters here need any convincing, but I would be delighted to take this force into action.... Yes, I know that it didn't arrive in NWE until the end of October '44.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/761st_Tank_Battalion_%28United_States%29
And soldiers don't get much braver than this:
http://www.761st.com/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=82&Itemid=89
On November 10, 1944, Sergeant Warren G.H. Crecy fought through enemy positions to aid his men until his tank was destroyed. He immediately took command of another vehicle, armed with only a .30-caliber machine gun, and liquidated the enemy position that had destroyed his tank. Still under heavy fire, he helped eliminate the enemy forward observers who were directing the artillery fire that had been pinning down the American infantry.
The next day, Crecy's tank became bogged down in the mud. He dismounted and fearlessly faced anti-tank, artillery and machine-gun fire as he extricated his tank. While freeing his tank, he saw that the accompanying infantry was pinned down and that the enemy had begun a counterattack. Crecy climbed up on the rear of his immobilized tank and held off the Germans with his .50-caliber machine gun while the foot soldiers withdrew. Later that day, he again exposed himself to enemy fire as he wiped out several machine-gun nests and an anti-tank position with only his machine gun. The more fire he drew, the harder he fought. After the battle, Crecy had to be pried away from his machine gun.
Unless it's the regiment's CMH winner.....
Rivers' tank hit a mine at a railroad crossing while advancing toward the town with his company. His leg was slashed to the bone in the explosion, but he refused a morphine injection and, as many would do in the 761st, he also refused to be evacuated. He would refuse numerous evacuation offers over the next few days. Taking command of another tank, Rivers advanced with his company to take Guebling the next day and directed his tank's fire at enemy positions east of town through the morning of Nov. 19, despite the company losing three of its five tanks in the town to antitank fire and one to mines. One tank crew acquired a replacement and returned to the town.
Continuing the attack east toward Bourgaltroff Nov. 19, the company was stopped by enemy fire. Capt. David J. Williams, the company commander, ordered his tanks to withdraw to cover, but Rivers radioed that he had spotted the antitank position. "I see 'em. We'll fight 'em," Rivers said, and opened up on the enemy tanks, covering Company A's withdrawal. Rivers' tank was hit, killing him and wounding the rest of the crew.
-
It took me about 8 hours to trace all the 5m contour lines, water traces and major settlements and landmarks on a 2 x 3 km area around Le Meauffe using this method. One thing to check carefully is that the projector image dimensions match the ones on your laptop -- otherwise the map will be "stretched" horizontally and the E-W distances will be off.
I will take a look at that "transparency" app later.
-
A projector borrowed from work used to superimpose an IGN map with a perfectly matched grid over the game map.
-
I've been away for a week on work matters and this is my first visit back. Also, I created a new thread relating to this project on the Maps and Mods subforum....
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=97115&highlight=carillon
-
Also a FOW enhancer. I don't like having such certainty of enemy casualties, especially when they're in cover or buildings, and would be willing to lose the friendlies info for it. +1. I've long forgotten how to alpha channel...
-
You can "sink" the bunker into the ground (change elevation of terrain) to lower its profile to something more like a roofed entrenchment Doesn't look great and distorts surrounding terrain but you can't have it all.
I am definitely thinking that the blast effect (i.e. "cratering"'impact on terrain, not the lethality against unprotected pixelflesh) of the regular frag medium mortar rounds is overmodelled. Light and medium mortars would be over 90% of the arty that a tactical leader could hope to have "on call" for non preregistered targets in the timeframe of a typical CM scale battle. Were it so easy to obtain annihilation fire with mortars against dug in infantry (i.e. basically exterminate them instead of mainly pinning them down), the AARs I've been reading would be very different. I will test more but something seems off....
Petition for more rail curves!
in CM Normandy Maps and Mods
Posted
Someone (not me) could always try modding the wide highway tiles which are pretty rare in 1944 Normandy and which offer 90, 45 and 22.5deg options into railbeds. Unfortunately, they'd still behave like nice smooth boulevards for vehicles to zoom down, which railbeds certainly are not in RL.