Wisbech_lad

Burning ones... Haven't faced jagdtigers, but jagdpanthers seem a waste. 88mm is too much gun against allies, long 75 will do. So a waste of points. 17lbers can even defeat them frontally. (80 mm armour at 55 slope, but 85% quality = 68mm, 17lber can go through 60mm at 60 slope or so at 500m) Hetzers & Jpz IV are better value IMHO as ambush TDs. Drawback of Hetzer is low ammo. Overall, the Hetzer, a good example of how to alter otherwise obsolete chassis to be an effective weapon.

The German totalitarian regime was run somewhat on the lines of a gangster operation, with intense infighting between the "barons". Any organisation that could have been an alternative power base had to be "nazified" or destroyed (unions, churches, political parties, police, armed forces, even boy scouts) The SS were set up by Himmler & Heydrich as a counterbalance to the SD street thugs, (which the Heer demanded be liquidated IIRC). Later the Waffen SS were a counter balance to the Heer, to prevent them ever becoming a threat. Army Intelligence especially was seen as suspect. This infighting was also the reason for the Luftwaffe divisions, Goering refused to release "his" resources to other branches. Many like to build "what if" scenarios, what if Hitler had listened to OKW more, what if resources had been rationally allocated, what if ME262 had been a priority. All somewhat misses the point. Germany 1933-1945 was an insane, irrational regime. Speculating about rational behaviour during the war is impossible, a rational regime wouldn't have started in the first place.

Operation - so no flags. Map was 800 x 1400 Destroy operation, so German AI has option to attack Yes, best to dig in until more UK troops on board. As it is, the AI is good at using its 3:1 odds in the second battle to counterattack. Doesn't help that it is fanatic Vet SS vs Regular UK. I am/ was trying to show an attritional slog - thus the mud. UK gets 3" and 25lber FO quickly, so needs to locate AI positions and invoke the god of war. UK player will both be cursing and thankful for the mud (it immobilises counter attacking tanks & half tracks) I was trying to get a "yet another bloody day reducing this pocket" feel to it. The UK tactics should be to isolate and eat up the forward units in each battle, and blast away with arty, until OPFOR is attrited down enough (and short enough on ammo) to break open. On the German side, futility. Yes, local counterattacks should usually succeed, (and if you can kill the FO's quickly you will probably win) but as each battle goes by, another platoon/ company is probably no longer combat effective. Inspiration came from TOAW D-Day, where I often found Commonwealth forces surrounding tough SS units, and just having to attack for 2/3 turns until it disappears Anyway, this now belongs in Scenario talk!

Operation - so no flags. Map was 800 x 1400 Destroy operation, so German AI has option to attack Yes, best to dig in until more UK troops on board. As it is, the AI is good at using its 3:1 odds in the second battle to counterattack. Doesn't help that it is fanatic Vet SS vs Regular UK. I am/ was trying to show an attritional slog - thus the mud. UK gets 3" and 25lber FO quickly, so needs to locate AI positions and invoke the god of war. UK player will both be cursing and thankful for the mud (it immobilises counter attacking tanks & half tracks) I was trying to get a "yet another bloody day reducing this pocket" feel to it. The UK tactics should be to isolate and eat up the forward units in each battle, and blast away with arty, until OPFOR is attrited down enough (and short enough on ammo) to break open. On the German side, futility. Yes, local counterattacks should usually succeed, (and if you can kill the FO's quickly you will probably win) but as each battle goes by, another platoon/ company is probably no longer combat effective. Inspiration came from TOAW D-Day, where I often found Commonwealth forces surrounding tough SS units, and just having to attack for 2/3 turns until it disappears Anyway, this now belongs in Scenario talk!

Crocodiles in the town. Sexton/ Priest located outside the town, methodically reducing it block by block.

Personally I think it should be seen as “Company Mission” – I try and always have a company as a base unit. I find my favourite scenarios and QB’s are at the reinforced company level. Bn level is usually too much for me to cope with. Made easier by my preference for Commonwealth – a regular UK company comes in at 379 pts, allowing plenty of headroom for customisation. Must admit that I am perplexed by people splitting platoons, I get worried if I see any black command lines. Each platoon has an objective, rather than each squad. But then, regulars lose a lot of effectiveness if ever out of command, if you use Vet+, this is less of an issue. The Co. commander helps in this, usually used as a firebase commander of any support weapons, rally point, and if things really get desperate he can sneak forward with a PIAT team to try and take out that last tank with a flank shot – I find regular AT teams are much, much more likely to be successful with a Major 20 yards behind them giving kind words of encouragement. Mr. Crawley, are you accepting more players? I tried to design a destroy operation versus a reinforced SS battalion in bad weather. The idea is that the first battle, you have recon element only, then reinforced company fed in, and so on, until you are fighting at parity, with decent supply, but the AI is on short rations. Unfortunately, the AI tends to redeploy, making the recon info not as useful as it should be. And the first company gets overwhelmed by a Bn+ counterattack, the AI not knowing its meant to cover the entire sector over a period of days! (those 120mm mortars hurt bad). I’ll try and tweak it, but Ops are hard to design.

Personally I think it should be seen as “Company Mission” – I try and always have a company as a base unit. I find my favourite scenarios and QB’s are at the reinforced company level. Bn level is usually too much for me to cope with. Made easier by my preference for Commonwealth – a regular UK company comes in at 379 pts, allowing plenty of headroom for customisation. Must admit that I am perplexed by people splitting platoons, I get worried if I see any black command lines. Each platoon has an objective, rather than each squad. But then, regulars lose a lot of effectiveness if ever out of command, if you use Vet+, this is less of an issue. The Co. commander helps in this, usually used as a firebase commander of any support weapons, rally point, and if things really get desperate he can sneak forward with a PIAT team to try and take out that last tank with a flank shot – I find regular AT teams are much, much more likely to be successful with a Major 20 yards behind them giving kind words of encouragement. Mr. Crawley, are you accepting more players? I tried to design a destroy operation versus a reinforced SS battalion in bad weather. The idea is that the first battle, you have recon element only, then reinforced company fed in, and so on, until you are fighting at parity, with decent supply, but the AI is on short rations. Unfortunately, the AI tends to redeploy, making the recon info not as useful as it should be. And the first company gets overwhelmed by a Bn+ counterattack, the AI not knowing its meant to cover the entire sector over a period of days! (those 120mm mortars hurt bad). I’ll try and tweak it, but Ops are hard to design.

At least the Peng threads are imaginative in their insults… As for USMC, that is a relatively lightly armoured force, that is designed to see combat at the “edges” of major theatres, e.g. Northern Norway rather than the Fulda Gap (no offence meant to the USMC in this) I would expect them to have a different doctrine at an operational level to (say) BAOR or the Bundeswehr, who expected to face Warsaw pact in a two week frenzy before supplies ran out/ it went nuclear. But at a platoon level? Uhm, no. What Bullethead said I think would go for most platoons, of any nationality, at any time in the last 50 years. Implemented with different skill and conviction, maybe.

BT tanks: Unless CM somehow severely handicaps early war Soviets (Green or lower only? Command rules for tanks?) these will come as a surprise. Fast, and reasonably gunned SU and JSU 122/152s. AT and AP power BA64 - its so ugly

I find everything normally has a use, depending on the situation. But an Archer on the attack is VERY annoying Otherwise: groans come from Churchill VI - if you are going to be slow, at least have the armour Wespe - where's the ammo? Mortar carriers - no indirect spotting. M10 - A US TD without a fast turret?

I was the fellow who simply mentioned that I wouldn't have launched Citadel if I were a manouevrist (can we all get the spelling right please!) Actually, I wouldn't have launched Barbarossa, or invaded Poland. I wouldn't have killed the jews. I would have stopped after Anchluss, had babies with Eva, and die peacefully in my sleep like Franco. Not fighting in WW2 would have been the most sensible option. Franco, a pragmatist, saw that, and died in 1975. Mussolini, a "romantic", got caught up in Hitler's madness, and died young because of it. By Summer '43, the Germans had lost, and the only way out was a negotiated peace. But the Nazi philosophy made that impossible. Even better strategy (retreating to defensible lines in Russia, moving to mass production of war material earlier, focusing on a few systems rather than wonder weapons) would only have led to a German surrender in August '45 when atom bombs start dropping on Germany. Anyway, has got nothing really to do with CM. At the end of the day, I would rather serve under Bradley, Slim, Schwartzkopf than a Rommel/ Jeb Stuart type. Give me a commander who wants all the odds stacked in his favour over someone who relies on a risky plan. And if you need manouevre to have any hope of acheiving victory, then don't go to war in the first place - as Tojo forecast, 6 months of whirlwind, then guaranteed defeat. Rather stupid Germans. Could have all stayed in Munich, drinking good beer. But nooo, had to all go and die in Stalingrad. Or before that, could have all stayed in Munich drinking beer, but nooo, had to go and die at Ypres (Kindermord den Ypern, 1914). Sheesh, still, they seemed to have stopped for now. The old lie - "Gloria et dulce est, pro patria mori"

3. 1)4 2)11 3)7 4)3 5)0

Surely a manouevrist would simply claim that Kursk should not have been fought? A campaign that was brilliantly won by "manouevre" would be UK's biggest ever military defeat, (Malaya/ Singapore 1942). Not that it helped the Japanese much in the end. Israeli army? I remember playing modern minatures in the past, and giving up in boredom. With modern systems, if you see something, it dies. This lead to chain reactions, like the girl swallowing a spider to catch a fly: A) Bradley makes a move aha! My T80 takes it out! A) Yes! My Apache pops up and gets the T80 Alrighty, my SAM gets that Apache A) Yey, my ALARM gets the SAM So the only way to get anywhere vs a modern army is total overkill, that starts with total air superiority. And faced with such overkill, opponents quite understandably revert to guerilla methods of warfare (you could call this manouevre, the Intifada is a good example of outflanking the Israeli army, they may have the best tank corps in the world, but that doesn't help much against snipers in the West Bank)

5. 3 4 32 14 15

In QB, you can only choose between two levels to avoid undue "gaminess" This is because, as many above have pointed out, quality matters much more for some units than others. For AT units, armour fighting armour, sharpshooters, getting the first shot, and hitting with that first shot, is key. What you have are eggshells armed with hammers For most infantry, arty, FO's, and armour vs Infantry, volume is usually more important, as one shot will rarely kill you, or what you are aiming at. Getting the most shots in for your purchase cost is therefore more important With free choice of levels in QB, my guess is that you would see (for example) crack Hellcats and green Priests/ HT's, or crack 6'lber AT guns with Green 3" mortars.

IMHO, it also depends on the length of the battle. Whatever the quality, the ammo load out is the same. Once a battle gets to 35, 40 turns plus the first echelon of troops is pretty much guaranteed to be low on ammo, and even tanks (that have lasted that long) will be low, especially of HE. I find that in these cases, the quantity of Reg/ Green troops comes into its own, as your reserves can be that much larger. In short battles, this is not a factor.

British: Centurian, Churchill 6'lber (still around in 44, if a bit undergunned...). The Funnies. Bishop USA: M-16 German: PzIII N (75mm inf spt) Russian: JSIII, the early KV with the 152mm howitzer, hell, anything with that 152mm gun. French: Char 1 Italian - CV tankette In CM3 will we have a "rule of 0.303" to give balance to the Italians? I can see it now, epic QB clashes of Italian tankettes, Pz I, British Matilda I (MG only) and Vickers MkVI. Stalking AT teams with their trusty AT rifles... Yes, some of the above (Centurian and JSIII) missed WW2 completely, but would certainly remove German Panzer envy.

Relative Spotting Command and Control for tanks (i.e. modelling tanks without radios) Trenches Field telephones (FO that can't move?) Partisans/ Ski troops Larger buildings/ row houses Will the Italians be included? Will be interesting. As infantry will have very little ability to kill tanks in 41/42/43, apart from engineers in close assualt, AT guns will become more important in the defense. And Hill 621/ The Tractor Works (the two best SL scenarios in my opinion)

Of course, a Zen answer would be that the probability of a hit is either 100% or zero once the gun is fired. As the situation cannot be reproduced, we can't find out by estimation either. At CM ranges, scatter from one round to the next is (I guess) not material compared to the size of the targets. Most shells will hit the aim point, or close enough for a hit against a tank size target at 550m (given range correctly estimated) Therefore, whether shell hits the target (or not) is dependent on the crew estimating range correctly, actually having the target in the middle of the sights (especially tough when you or he is moving), has got correct shell in the spout etc. I.e. the main driver of a shell hitting is not ballistics (95% plus probability of hitting a 2m square, if that is what you have aimed at correctly...) but whether or not the gunner has got his aim right in the first place. So in Rexford's case, 95% chance of hitting 2m target, 67% chance his gunner has got that 2m target correctly aimed at? Now, thats much more difficult to model, and CM probably does it right by doing it randomly. But should such data be known to the player? Would a gunner tell his TC "I've got a 63% chance sir" or "I can nail this sucker" I would rather in CM2 that to hit be shown in the same way as "to kill", i.e. good, poor, excellent etc.

I found this very useful, and tested it three times (admittedly against the AI, but with modifiers) Total victories everytime. On medium size, medium wooded, large hill maps. My typical 700 pt force was taken from: 1 x mountain company 1 x ‘schreck 2 x HMG 1 75 mm IG 1 75/50 mm PAK 1 105 RCL (or 50mm PAK) 1 20mm flak 4 x AT mines 4 x AP mines 1 x wire Deployment as you suggest, with sometimes a platoon at the back of a “hanger” (wooded area on a slope), with AP mine or wire at the front of the woods – nasty! The incoming infantry make a beeline for cover once they crest the ridge and the HMG’s on the flanks open up, and that cover ain’t friendly. CO HQ directed 2 x 81mm mortars. Not as effective as an FO, but I found that you can usually spot areas close enough to the enemies approach march to harass them. Once the enemy crests the ridge, the onboard mortars are very accurate, and can put down fire very close to your own troops in foxholes The AT guns (whether 75 or 50mm or RCL) against the AI acts as an arty magnet once it uncovers, as you say, this is extremely useful in keeping it away from the infantry. AT mines effective in forcing abandonment of tanks (even a Jumbo on one occasion) 20 mm keeps away HT’s. Only having one ‘schreck and hoping that at least some enemy armour will hit a minefield is risky, but... Mountain troops are lethal at close range, a platoon can chew up a company in a matter of minutes. I’m not sure how I would attack such a defence. I think I would scout ahead over the centre of the ridge, to try and locate the centre blocking platoon and AT mines there. Then dump medium arty on it (25lber/ 105mm), quickly moving in infantry (engineers?) and close support tanks behind. (Sherm 105/ UK 95mm tanks) “over the top”, and blast out with direct HE fire the second echelon, and any counterattacking infantry from the flanks. Then bypass the other infantry platoons that didn’t counterattack to hop to the front of the next ridge and set up a reverse defense of my own against counterattacks, now if the enemy wants to withdraw he is in trouble. Of course this is a bit artificial as it presupposes I can commandeer inf support tanks. It is also very reliant that your arty will disrupt the centre block long enough (or force it to move enough) that you can get enough units over the top to crack the defence. Sounds all a bit WW1 to me, I’ll try this weekend though.

Ok, tried again. If it doesn't get through then: richard_reed@cathaypacific.com

Sorry Pillar, tried to email you, didn’t get through. I re –read “Quartered Safe Out Here” by George Macdonald Fraser, who was a lance-corporal (2 i/c of a 10 man section) in Burma, 1945, as part of the 14th Army. Valuable, because it is a grunts eye view of the war – at one point he comments that Slim’s crossing of the Irrawady was called by historians a superb piece of manouvre and deception, but to him it just meant four marches and diggings in in 24 hours… Anyway, it has points that support both sides of the argument Anti- Broad screen recon 1) Very few radios. When he goes on a patrol, (4 man) it is to gather info. If they run into trouble, one man is designated to run back to the company and tell them what happened. So I still think that CM gives too much information too quickly to all your units, thus increasing the value of sending a screen up front. Even the platoon commander has a runner, not a radio (but Burma was low priority) At night, OP’s use flare guns as an alert. 2) When enemy position is known (they kill a Japanese officer with a map showing a certain patch of woods is an enemy concentration zone), the battalion attack is concentrated and accompanied by tanks/ aircraft bombardment. No infantry screen goes in first. 3) Non-mortar arty is inflexible, i.e. the idea that your fo’s can change fire mission based on info from one section up front is unlikely Pro Broad screen recon 1) He specifically mentions “Tiger Patrols”, where the object was to locate and destroy Japanese units before they could concentrate enough to attack. This could involve the whole battalion. Essentially, his company would sweep around the country side, spread out, from village to village, trying to get shot at. Once they get shot at, entire company concentrates. Often nothing happens. 2) In a set piece attack on Meitikla, his company has to advance over several hundred yards of open terrain. They advance in line abreast formation, platoon at a time, with 5-6 yards between each man, to try and minimise losses to Japanese arty. This could be seen as broad front recon, in that they know the Japanese are in the town, but not which buildings contain strong points? But they are all in visual contact of each other (it is open ground) Other 1) No Japanese tanks, so they leave the PIATS in stores 2) Japanese have 2-4 man bunkers 3) OP are 2 man units 4) Platoon very rarely operates independently 5) Phosphorus grenades are used for clearing bunkers, not for making smoke.

I agree that in most cases in CM broad recon is the way to go. My problem is that this I think is an outcome of CM's engine, rather than the way a reinforced company would have gone about its task in Europe 44/45. CM's engine gives you much more info than a company commander would ever have had, much quicker. This allows you to use "operational" level doctrines that are very effective, but reliant on a more info and a longer decision timespan than CM tries to simulate - and then you almost end up with CM as an abstract operational wargame, rather than the sim that BTS IMHO intended. BTS built in command delays to try and factor in some of the problems, that 20s delay is while the runner from the leiutenant explains exactly which building he wants the squad to run to. Yes, platoon commanders have radios, but a spread out platoon in N W Europe isn't in great contact with each other, and the sort of detail that CM gives you would take a long time to filter back to the battlefield commander. e.g. Left most squad sees something suspicious. Squad leader decides whether or not to tell platoon commander, and sends a runner (That patch of woods half way up Hill 621 looks like it has a AT gun in it sir) Platoon commander then calls up Company HQ, and BTW, he himself doesn't have a radio, its in the hands of a radio operator. CO major is getting reports from 3/4 platoons, plus a couple of tanks, and orders are coming down from BN. He has to decide what information to pass up and down, and whether to alter his first plan, that all his platoon commanders are working to. And in CM, all this info is distributed to all participants on the battlefield v quickly, i.e squad on far right sees a gun, the armour units one KM away change avenue of approach in a minimum 90S, (if gun spotted at start of turn, plus say 30S delay) and in some cases less than 15S (gun spotted near end of turn, Vet/ elite tank with short command delay) All this while bullets are flying and Murphy's law reigns supreme. Charge of the Light Brigade probably the most famous example, but FUBAR still exists. So yes, broad recon is the way to go in CM, but I think ScoutPL is trying to make the point that in "real life" companies, in the 20 minutes allotted to them to take the hill, with 60 year old radio technology, simply don't send out an thin recon screen because there isn't the time or capability to process the info at that scale. If its is an attack on the run, even co. HQ may not have a good map, look how one scenario depicts the Poles running into the wrong village. I know my wife complains about my sense of direction, can't imagine Sherman tank drivers were much better in a country where they didn't speak the language! (Uhm, which turning should I take for the village Mr German civilian farmer?) At a higher level, yes, recon info is collated religiously, but time scales are longer, and data more abstract (your recon company reports that the enemy is dug in along the ridge, with what appears to be signficant armour support. A soldier killed in a fire fight with an enemy patrol had SS 2nd Panzer insignia) When I read Fionns' AAR, yes I am impressed. I also feel he would use the same techniques whatever the scale of the game, (i.e. if CM was simulating divisonal/ brigade combat) and it is the game that allows such "scalable" tactics to be so successful, rather than such tactics being used successfully in WW2 Essentially, CM assumes telepathy between your units, and the higher the experience rating the less "realistic" the game comes, because the command delays help throw sand in the works. See the CMHQ campaign annex rules, for a realistic attempt of how to simulate the fow at a higher level, e.g. misidentification, they even have probability that your commanders get fragged by their troops, because they think he's a glory hound endangering their lives, or someone just forgot to check if safety was on...

Pillar, Yes, but surely only one man in a WW2 squad (or even platoon?) would have a radio. So yes, your 30 men are advancing on a broader front, (say 150m across) and as a group are more likely to spot something or draw fire, but that means the individual who spotted the enemy is going to be further way (on average) to the man with the can? This is going to make early war CM doubly difficult to simulate, where many tanks don't have radios, and many armies relied still on runners or fixed links. Plus many troops green/ conscript - will be very difficult to alter plans! At the CM level your idea of "highly mobile surgical & security units" (elite/ Vet gerbil units perchance) as recon, is a great idea, but, again, taken from a higher level of doctrine, where recon battalions/ companies as a whole are normally seen as highly mobile, have special equipment (armoured cars, light tanks) & are trained for the role. NATO had tripwire forces up close to the Iron curtain for exactly that reason, buy some time, disrupt the Warsaw Pact timing and try and work out which 3rd Shock Army is headed. But in CM scale, you are either fighting with an entire mechanised recon unit essentially as your main force, or you have a plain vanilla line TO&E. It would be very rare (for example) for a line battalion/ company commander to have one platoon specialised as "rangers", if anything he would be careful to rotate platoons on point for morale and fatigue reasons One problem may be time scales. Recon patrols would be sent out before the attack to check out likely enemy locations, route recon etc. (remember in real life you don't have a detailed map...) But said patrol would return back with that info, and commander would plan his attack based on it, rather than acting as skirmish line and being followed straight away by an attack minutes later (as happens in CM) Probably more realistic for an operation, where you can simulate a recon element entering first, followed up by the main body (A Day in the Cavalry is like this), rather than a single battle. Off topic, Don't think the Russians learned anything from Chechnya, it was a bad example, as a thinly spread recon team in an urban area wouldn't work due to the C&C difficulties (unless they check behind every window, a disciplined RPG team will wait for the tanks, and use snipers to pick off the infantry/ officers). What did the US learn from Hue/Aachen, or the Russians from Berlin apart from plaster the place with arty, then some more, then accept lots of you will die? Or just don't bother and go around the city.

I know that this was debated ad infinitum, but: Broad front: Did squads have two radios? (i.e. should a split squad be able to report back decent recon...) Purely personal view, I think it is taking advantage of CM spotting and LOS coding. The "thin broad front" recon doctrine is scaled down from Russian Divisional doctrine. I've seen no evidence that a Russian Co. or Bn. level attack/ defence would use a thin line of skimishers in this same way - (in fact their horrendous losses in Chechnya and Afganistan argue the opposite, at a tactical level they are going straight into very defendible territory with tanks and APC's first, and no dismounted infantry scouting ahead) What I'm trying to say is that you are able to use CM "foibles" to recreate on a tactical scale, with a split squad, what the Russians are doing by using whole recon companies and platoons working together, with the full C&C network, at an operational level. The fact that CM allows a split squad (or single scout car) the same information gathering strength (on a tactical lvl) as a BDRM or Humvee recon platoon (on a operational level) has led to an operational level doctrine being used at a tactical level (and very effectively IMHO) Guess we'll have to wait for relative spotting to sort this out. Must admit broad front usually wins in CM, but not convinced we are getting close to reality as BTS would like... (If only the Allies had sent split squads running and zig zagging from likely ambush spot to likely ambush spot Market Garden would have been a huge success...) On another issue. In "Real Life" do platoon commanders assume the same position as mine always seem to do in CM (i.e. sitting the length of the command radius behind the squads) or does the "command team" attach itself closely to a squad?