LongLeftFlank

As a lifelong wargamer and junior league WWII grog, I personally love the game as is. I am also pleased to see that BFC is focusing its further development efforts on incremental refinements of the features that make the game unique to begin with. I also get as much enjoyment out of reading the forums as I do out of playing the game.... the game has attracted an amazing global community of extremely bright and sophisticated (if not always in a socially mainstream kind of way) people. However, all that being said, I can also readily imagine how competitive and fluid the games marketplace is right now. While a lot of grog purists are fighting tooth and nail against any move by BFC to broaden its appeal (and increase sales volume) to the despised "twitch" crowd, consider this fact: Nobody will be well served if sales aren't sufficient to keep BFC profitable and its creative independence intact. (Perish the thought!) they will inevitably either fold up or sell out to a large commercial house that will force the game in the populist FPS direction with predictable consequences ("our users don't care if there were no King Tigers in Normandy on D-Day"). So I believe that it's critical for CM2 to add some "sizzle" that will broaden the appeal of the game and draw in the next generation of grogs who don't have the same childhood/family connection to WWII that most of us do. The essential question is how to do that with without either creating a programming nightmare or turning the current game into another FPS? One "out of the box" idea I had was to build in OPTIONAL media -- downloaded just as mods are now, or sold on a separate CD) that plays brief (2 second) animated audio/ video "clips" when trigger events occur, just as game voices are triggered ("Ich gevunden!") in the replay phase. So on occasion when an artillery shell lands on a German squad, you get a brief clip from some doc footage showing landser hunkering down, etc. Of course you'd need to have a big enough library that the clips didn't get too repetitive and annoying (although the voices do that too sometimes). By now a lot of you are reaching for your flamethrowers, but stay with me just a moment. Yes, this might require new technology investments by BFC that I haven't thought about that might make the idea infeasible. On the other hand, it might create some interesting new opportunities for ambitious modders who want to create cool animation clips (although additions to the library would need to be policed -- no Travelocity ads or porno). This feature would add a lot of visual appeal without messing with the game. More important, it could educate and capture the imagination of younger gamers who never grew up on World at War and have no idea what real landser getting pounded by Katyushas looked like . Hard core gamers and processor have-nots could simply disable the feature (as could those of you who would rather die than look at Anzio footage during your Cassino scenario). A brief stock clip of Stukas or Thunderbolts diving in would also be a lot easier to mod than actual animated planes. Sorry about the long post, but I don't speak up that often. Best regards...

I don't have much to add to what has already been expressed here, but it seems to me that the game will support a certain amount of friendly command FOW as it is now. I recall playing the little CMBO D-Day scenario with the 82nd vs. the Falschirmjager in St. Mere Eglise (?) where the units were dropped all over the board. I obeyed the suggestion in the design notes to use only the "1" level view for my units to simulate their disorientation, darkness and lack of cohesion following the drop. It was way confusing but also a lot of fun to play as my guys blundered about at first, getting shot to bits, but then gradually rallied and overran the enemy strongpoints. Similarly, in the absence of a new FOW option, you might consider some self-imposed house rules regarding views (e.g. use only level 1 or 2 views from the "fixed to unit" tab positions unless, say, you are an HQ/spotter/AFV, have special optics, and are on a hill and not under fire). Also shut off the various path/target lines. This might provide some of the information asymetry and fragmentation that you are seeking in terms of a combat command simulation, even if it doesn't address the borg spotting issues.

Thanks for the responses, all. On reflection and further reading, it looks like my personal perception of Soviet heavy SU capabilities and doctrine is distorted by Tamiya model kits and a misleading Soviet propaganda nickname, not to mention the not insignificant fact that the original AH Squad Leader put a bunch of SU-122s and SU-152s into their counter mix at the expense of far more historically common and significant AFVs. (God bless the AH/SL team, but they gave me some wacky ideas about WWII arms and tactics-- and I'm probably not the only one that's true for on this board ).

Just found this additional info on Soviet SP tactics (if you can call them that), with the SU-76: http://www.iremember.ru/tankers/ulanov/ulanov1.html "The same day we were instructed how to engage Tigers. 2 SPs work together. One SP opens fire, and, backing up, serves as bait for a Tiger. When the Tiger has his side exposed, the second SP opens on him at 300m or less. The trick was so simple!..." "...I thanked him and asked, when I can get a command of SP. The answer was quite simple - when some SP commander gets killed." "....When adjusting the gun, I was first using the periscope, which was not too comfortable, as it shook together with the vehicle when we fired our gun. Migalatiev recommended me to forget this piece of iron and look at the targets directly without any optical devices. First my eyes would close from the blast wave coming from the muzzle brake, but later I got used to it and could make adjustments more precisely." Based on this kind of evidence, I'm starting to suspect that the Germans lost far more Tigers to miring and mechanical failure than they ever did to the "animal killers."

The "Zvierboy" (Animal Killer) nickname for the SU-152 is quite evocative (and the Tamiya model I built in childhood, complete with Cyrillic slogan on the side looks like one bad*ss fighting machine) but, propaganda aside, how would the independent ISU/SU brigades actually have operated on the battlefield after Kursk. More to the punkt, how would they have gone about actually stalking and nailing German big katz for a living given their many inferiorities in ROF, optics, muzzle velo, etc? (Keeping in mind the immortal words of OddBall "The only weakness of a Tiger is its ass") 1. Are there any historical info/refs I could use in designing a relevant scenario? 2. What was the SU organization at company and below level? What support units would one expect to see operating with them vs. armor? 3. In spite of the Guards designation, would their crews have been elite relative to other Soviet tank units? 4. Any tank killer aces known on the Soviet side, given the occupational hazards of this work? I've searched through various threads here, which led me to the following link -- http://www.battlefield.ru/isu122_152.html -- which gave me the impression that the 1944+ SU/ISU brigades were basically mobile assault arty that would also occasionally be called upon to knock out some stubborn dug-in panzers, or occasionally to repel a counterattack.... implying that the vaunted "animal killer" role was more incidental than deliberate for these brigades (and that their antitank tactics would be similarly ad hoc and situation-dependent). Anybody have any illum rounds to shed on this (large) target? Many thanks.

Interesting. Now that I think about it, I don't recall ever seeing a photo/newsreel of a Soviet AFV in action without being buttoned up (although others will doubtless have seen more than I). I suspect that this was standard doctrine, but also a practical matter of battlefield survival, regardless of impact on C&C. (And by the way, I kinda liked some of Carrell's stuff when I read it back in high school, even though it'd make you think that the only reason the Germans ever lost was that Hitler was personally nailing his generals' feet to the scorched earth. But then again, Manstein made more or less the same kind of claims in his biog.) "We caught them... and we shot them... using Rule .303!" Breaker Morant

Hell, why not just put the show in Yugoslavia or Congo and have the tribes stalking and slaughtering one another for real for that $US 1 million prize (equal to the GDP of their entire provinces). They're doing it anyway-- why not do it for our amusement? Have helmet and gunsight minicams and require that all action be captured live to count for the prizes. Bonus points for good slaughter footage of innocent civilians. What the hell, lets just bring back gladiatorial combats or tournaments a la outrance for the entertainment of the masses. That's what the mob really wants to see, after all.... and how can that possibly be wrong???? Man is a wolf to man....

AGAIN with the negative waves, baby! There are portrait mods at http://www.combatmission.com/mods/mods.asp I recall a mention of such a campaign a few weeks back. Get thee to the archives. Roof roof roof!

This is very much a nit and rightly should sit low on the CM2 design priorities list, but is there any way that the infantry figures could be drawn -- at least in Sneak mode -- to look like actual soldiers advancing under fire, i.e. hunched over double, heads down? Or perhaps units who are Alerted, etc. might appear like that to provide a quick visual cue on their status. After reading earlier threads, I appreciate the need to minimize use of polygons (the same reason for the Charlie Brown/South Park spherical heads), but it seemed to me that an economical solution might be found to enhance the "heat of battle" look of the game. As a hardcore infantry geek, I'd vote for any aesthetic improvements to be in this direction, rather than rotating idler wheels with flying muck and exhaust fumes. Roger McGowan's exquisitely realistic counter art in Squad Leader added a lot to the tactical feel of that game when contrasted to the sterile map symbols used in previous games. Looking forward to the Linus and Cartman face mods, ummkay? ("Dude, like this Zippo Sherman thing is toetally weak").

The Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack from "Patton" still can't be beat, music-wise. I often listen to it when I play CM. You might also sample Prokofiev's "Alexander Nevsky". (If some of it sounds Star Warsy, that's because John Williams plagiarized Prokofiev's works wholesale for his film scores). Doldinger's "Das Boot" work is also cool, though it's quite nautical (and just why is that I wonder?)

Yeah, and reversing a tank out of a bad situation can't be all that easy to do, especially while BU. You're peering through a letterbox the wrong way!

In the autobiography of Petro Grigorenko, the dissident Russian general, he speaks with a Red Army sniper in Hungary 44 who only shoots people in the legs because he doesn't like to kill... as I recall he had shot several hundred however. Takes a pretty good eye to hit people in the legs. As I noted in an earlier thread re incidents of lone BAR gunners holding off enemy attacks all night in the Bulge and Korea, the pinning effect of a single weapon in a commanding position can be quite powerful in tactical actions. It can totally throw off a timetable. Especially when green troops are involved, or it's April 45 and you don't want to be the last guy in your outfit to "cop one".

Rented the color Stalingrad 9 months ago -- the first 30 minutes were not bad, raising my hopes that it would be a Guy Sajer type of memoir. Unfortunately, it didn't stay that way. At the risk of starting another thread on war film conventions, it seems to me that the filmmakers were aiming at an Apocalypse Now or Cross of Iron-- a stylized/surrealist nightmare version of the war tinged with Vietnam-era squishiness. I was also irritated at how they painted the politics of the time such crude terms -- Landser=good working class fellows Russians=good working class fellows Officers= bad, effeminate, cowardly, corrupt and responsible for all the bad stuff the Nazis did (so most of the parents of you ordinary Germans in the audience weren't really to blame, you see. We're all victims, after all-- typical 60s moral relativism). And the pointless S&M/bondage scene toward the end with the Russian POW girl simply reinforces nasty stereotypes about German psychology.... Denouncing war while titillating your audience is about as low as you can get. If you like this kind of kinky stuff in a war film, Cross of Iron did it better. A lot of grogs like COI because, frankly, there haven't been many other Western films dealing with Our Favourite Campaign, but IMHO that film is kind of overrated too. So if the 60s Antiwar War Film convention has run its course, let's see what the James Cameron Historical Epic With Androgynous Haircuts style does with Drang Nach Osten. Flame away, kids

Respectfully, I'm not convinced of the independent fighting abilities of partisans compared to those of trained regular troops. You might get elite groups of hard core partisans with outstanding tactical and combat skills, but the broad mass of these folks are badly inferior to regulars in a sustained firefight and they know it. "Kill and get away", as the old Cossack saying goes. This was exactly the tactic employed by the irregulars I spoke to in Asia... set up an ambush zone, shoot off two mags and then get the hell away before the Burmese regrouped and counterattacked. Roger Hilsman (a longtime professor at Columbia University) who led these same tribesmen against the Japs in Burma as an OSS officer, told me that his people used the exact same bump and run tactics, as do special forces units today. And it's still two mags and beat it into the trees so the enemy counterattack hits empty scrapes. CM partisan engagements in open country would therefore assume a pattern where the partisan sets ambushes, shoots like crazy for a turn or two and then spends the rest of the game trying to withdraw before the enemy can inflict even greater losses on him. In a larger bump, he might set up smaller secondary ambushes to whack the pursuing enemy. The Partisanjager on the other hand would need to deploy in such a way as to minimize losses in the ambush zone and read the terrain so as to envelop the partisans and mow them down with MGs.... Then massacre the inhabitants of the nearest village in good Kurt Waldheim fashion.

I kind of liked the "shadow" approach used by Talonsoft in East Front where when you click an "LOS filter", everything not in a designated unit's LOS appears in shadow. But then, that game's graphics aren't as demanding as CM's. The current system works well enough.... While I too have experienced the annoyance of taking multiple turns to get a unit into an effective position, I just think of it as them being being slowed up by some random shots, or just the plain old pucker factor.

I seventh (eighth?) the motion to include partisans. Partisan "bumps" and hit and run raids make great little quickie infantry battles for those of us wage slaves with not much time to game. Curious to have the Grognard Collective's thoughts on how partisan tactics and organization would differ from regular infantry as modeled in CM. I had the opportunity to hang out with some irregular units fighting in Burma (Karen insurgents and Shan/Kuomintang opium guerrillas). Based on that limited experience, I'd suggest the following: 1. Smaller squads -- Use half squads that can't recombine. 2. No organic support weapons. All support weapons would be found in separate teams. 3. Far fewer leaders, with far less command control for a player.... Perhaps only a single HQ to control an entire company-sized group. If possible, partisan HQ units should be very difficult for the enemy to distinguish from regular partisan half-squads. 4. Less ammunition and a lot less firepower to reflect lousy marksmanship. Partly offset this with more snipers though! 5. Not sure whether concealment or woods movement abilities should be enhanced. They did it in Squad Leader, but I can't honestly make a case for why this should be so. Experienced regular troops are pretty woodcrafty and local trail knowledge will only get you so far. Punt....

“Zaphod put on the glasses. They were a double pair of Joo Janta 200 Superchromatic Peril-Sensitive sunglasses, which had been specifically designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might harm you.” -- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the end of the universe

First Hamster Guards Army? Although their parade discipline really isn't very good.... presumably a lot of hamster conscripts there. "One dead hamster is a tragedy... A million dead hamsters is a statistic...and what do you do with all the little exercise wheels?" Stalin "...And by the way, how many hamsters does the Pope have?"

My mum read the review in the New York Times, figured I'd like the game and got it for me for Xmas. Good thing too -- I was getting a bit tired of East Front II. I wonder if the Talonsoft (ex-AH) designers are secret admirers of this game.... wouldn't be surprised. Thanks, Mum! (no, she's not on the board, at least not as far as I know).

Heard and read some amazing stories about BAR gunners though, in both WWII and Korea, basically holding off overwhelming enemy attacks for hours single-handed. With the long range and the bipod it seems you can really sweep a pretty wide area and once the enemy has gone to ground you can keep him pinned there pretty well if you're determined to. I suppose a low cyclic rate has its advantages in this kind of situation, as does a one man crew (less conspicuous?). A lot of CMH winners among BAR gunners. Not a bad combat record for an obsolete weapon. I'll still take an MG42, mind you.... make that two. Reach out, reach out and touch someone.... (oops, showing my age)

Just to clarify... With apologies to the Bersaglieri and Ariete fans among you, my original request had nothing to do with gaming the Italian WWII experience. I don't have a huge fascination with the Desert War either, much less with Graziani's boys' role in it. It's the Italian Campaign itself (sans Italians, except as bedraggled refugees) that interests me... Strategically, this campaign was pointless, at least after Sicily and the Capitulation -- Churchill's "soft underbelly" obsession again. But operationally, it is where the Allied armies really learned to fight and win, the hard way, against the later war Wehrmacht. Anzio, for example, was a hard school whose lessons paid off big time in Normandy. OK, so we're looking at Mark II Shermans with lousy optics and no wet stowage, blah blah blah. Other than that kind of minor nitpick, it's perfectly reasonable to build historically accurate scenarios in Italy 44 with CM-1 and that's what I was looking for here. Thanks everyone, for pitching in.

Wow, Michael, that's one heck of an impressive site you have there, with a fantastic collection of Canadian scenarios. I was kind of underwhelmed by the CMHQ "Canadian" site -- maybe you ought to take the label over. BTW, A number of my family members (North Nova Scotias, Cape Breton Highlanders and PPCLI) fought in a lot of those battles. Also, according to my Mum, who was interested in military history as a girl, they evidently acquired a disinclination to take German prisoners after the Kurt Meyer thing-- used to shoot them in the woods apparently, making no distinction between SS and Wehrmacht. Kind of belies our country's reputation as a nation of bleeding hearts, eh? I'm going to pillage all your scenarios as soon as I get to my T1 connection at work. Many thanks

"... A squadron of Spitfires, Herr Reichsmarschall." (Adolf Galland, 1940) "Lions, led by donkeys." German general's description of the British Army (which war and which general I can't recall) That's the best I can offer. I'd strongly doubt that your quote is authentic, although as a fellow Canuck and the son of an Englander I'd certainly be flattered. Australian troops with British NCOs, German officers and US equipment would be more like it though.... (if I had a division of such men, our troubles here would soon be over). A question in return -- did the Germans have a distinct nickname for the Canadians, or were they simply another type of Tommy to them? For that matter, did the English have a tag for them, like "Diggers", "Kiwis", Taffys", "Paddys", "Jocks", "Yanks", etc?

I'm not talking about Italians actually doing any fighting at this point, other than some partisan raids. They just provided the venue... but that's kind of their fault for following Il Duce. Don't forget, there was a lot of really nasty positional warfare going on in Italy all during the time covered by CMBO. Same armies (plus the ANZACs), and mostly the same gear. General Mark Clark (probably the worst US general of the war... but if you want to debate that, please start another thread! ) got all pissed off because his triumphal entry into Rome got knocked off Page One by D-Day. And at that point they were only half way up the Boot. Kesselring held the Allies to a slow painful crawl with very limited resources right up to the end of the war. Just ask Bob Dole. And from a gaming perspective that's kind of the neat thing about Italy-- at a tactical level, the odds were frequently even or -- at Anzio -- in German favor. The Bulge aside, you don't really get that anywhere else in 1944-45

Does anyone know of any historically accurate CM scenarios relating to the Italian campaign, particularly Cassino or Anzio? A search turned up one fictionalized scen relating to Cassino, but alas the download link didn't work. Also, has anybody done Italy terrain mods (red earth, olive orchards, adobe buildings etc.)? Think Poles, Kiwis and Fallschirmjager at each others' throats in the ruins of the abbey.... Elefants pounding poor old Willie and Joe as they huddle in pouring rain on the Anzio beachhead.... 88s used as monster long range sniper rifles... 75th Rangers taking 90% casualties in a single night... and of course, Audie Murphy slapping the s**t out of Ralph Fiennes who gets horribly burned in Cyrenaica sometime in 1942 and yet takes until 1945 to die in Tuscany in a clean bed tended day and night by a beautiful Canadian nurse while whining about his love life. (Oops, sorry, that's the "Pretentious and Narcissistic Pseudohistorical Movie Remakes We'd Like To See" Thread) Many thanks in advance.