Broken

You really need to write a book or seven, Jason. I don't always agree with you, but your prose is always highly readable. Better than Paul Kennedy's "Engineers of Victory" I am currently reading.

Yes, the Robert Leonhard maneuver fetishists all wanted to be Erwin Rommel 24/7/365. Jason, on the other hand, tends to be more Bernard Montgomery. There is a happy medium. In the Combat Mission series, theory doesn't really matter if your tactics are winning your battles.

sburke's example showed that direct fire against a hedgerow defender at a higher elevation is pointless, no matter how much of a firepower advantage the attacker has. If he has no indirect HE, the attacker's best recourse is to maneuver to outflank the hedgerow. To maneuver without taking heavy casualties, the attacker must either suppress the hedgerow or advance on a route out of LOS of the defenders. The attacker might use smoke to block LOS, provided he has enough. I could send you a screenshot of a smokescreen used in School of Hard Knocks, if I had any decent screen capture software. All I have is Snipping Tool, which is useless with CMBN.

That is a good example of the need for maneuver. Many defenses one encounters in CM are "linear" as opposed to "defense in depth". Often the best way to attack a linear defense is from a flank or rear. To get to a flanking position requires maneuver and a good linear defense will be designed to prevent that maneuver. A well placed smoke screen can often defeat the defender's efforts to to protect his flanks. As sburke's example illustrates, an attacker may have an overwhelming advantage in firepower, but the defender's position blocks that firepower, negating the attacker's advantage. Using smoke to blind some of the defenders may increase the attacker's advantage even more, but it is a useless exercise if he cannot harm the defender. Maneuvering to a position where lethal damage can be inflicted on the defender becomes the attacker's best course of action.

Heh, heh. Jason has been, and apparently still is, a die-hard believer in Attrition as opposed to Fire and Maneuver. There have been endless debates on this board between him and various proponents of maneuver warfare. Just warning you. I have to shake my head about this particular belief of his, but Jason is an excellent writer and brings a valuable perspective to discussions on this board.

No. Jason specifically expresses the belief that smoke should be used to isolate sections of the battlefield to achieve overwhelming fire advantage. He said:

I have to disagree with you there, Jason. Smoke in CMBN works quite well in masking movement, as Bil has already noted. In the infamous 'School of Hard Knocks' scenario in the C&F campaign, use of smoke to mask movement will save you a lot of casualties, as womble said. I do agree with you that smoke is used to "shape the visual landscape", but it can be used for more than LOS isolation prior to a fire-fight.

I lost 120 casualties attacking with infantry, but got a total victory anyway. I sent two platoons plus 2 Eng sections along the far river bank to the right map edge and then up that map edge to attack the German fortified ridge from the flank (with some 105mm tenderizing). Most of the casualties were from mortar fire on my support MGs and mortars, and from one platoon which made an abortive attempt to drive across the bridge and up the middle. I did succeed in getting three semi-functional Shermans across the bridge, which greatly aided the flanking infantry attack.

I am playing the Vierville scenario in response to this thread and you are mistaken about the size of the German force. (spoilers below) In this battle, the High Ground objective is occupied by an infantry platoon plus HMG and panzerfaust team at the least, not just an HMG and HQ. I don't know if that is all the Germans forces there because I have not finished the scenario (25 minutes left in my game). In any case, it is not surprising your 15-20 rounds aimed at a minority of your opposition did not suppress or destroy the enemies you are unaware of. Practice better recon.

Not a D Day site but definitely a Normandy must see, Mont Saint Michelle: http://www.damncoolpictures.com/2011/08/mont-saint-michel-castle-france.html Kids love it.

I do have to agree with him that the UI is clunky, the load times are too slow, and the graphics not top of the line. On the other hand, the tac AI is the best I've seen, the modelling is great, and the physics exquisitely detailed.

I have had a problem where the surviving crew member of a knocked-out US 81mm mortar would not share his mortar rounds.

Are you using version 1.01? This problem appeared in version 1.00 and was supposedly fixed.

Sure, and if an AT gun starts sniping your tanks it is a good idea to react in a "hurry". What I meant was that your overall plan in School should not be hurried, but patient. You have an hour and a half. If your plan is to hurry large concentrations of infantry up the middle against intact German defenses, you will get slaughtered. Yeah, I suppose if someone happens to find a workable solution to a particular CM "puzzle", they get some satisfaction from playing it and it is therefore a "good" scenario. However, I disagree that finding a "key" to School of Hard Knocks renders it trivial. I think your overall complaint is that messing up in School pretty much makes the rest of the Fortitude campaign a nightmare. If you pass School in reasonable shape, the rest of the campaign is not real hard. So, maybe the challenge is too front-loaded. In which case, perhaps campaign designers should always make the last scenario in a campaign the most difficult.

You hit the nail on the head. Patience is definitely key in winning School of Hard Knocks. It's 90 turns long! The only time you need to hurry is at the beginning to take advantage of the cover of darkness. There are other approaches to School besides "Hey-Diddle-Diddle, Straight-Up-The-Middle". Frontal assaults with infantry are notoriously bloody, so why be surprised if the results resemble WWI? It really doesn't take much infantry to win this scenario. Just because you get an entire battalion doesn't mean you have to send all of them into the meat-grinder. Womble won this game by focusing on getting his tanks across. I was successful by getting two platoons through the swamp to the right map edge and then flanking the German positions. School is a puzzle. Not figuring it out doesn't make it a bad puzzle. It might not be some player's cup of tea because the amount of patience and care required simply isn't fun for them.