Broken
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Posts posted by Broken
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Well, he does have a point here. Maneuverism became something of a fad in the US Army several decades back, and like most fads got extended to the point of silliness. Some believe that it is possible to move to locations that make enemy resistance untenable. If that is true, it is likely that the enemy would have noticed it and taken measures to make that movement as difficult as possible. Which means that you won't avoid a shoot out, may even run into a tougher one than if you had just gone straight at his main position. Depending. Always depending.
Michael
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.
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[broken--but, as a practical matter, getting the smoke in the right place, in SBurke's situation is difficult. ]
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.
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For example in a current battle I have definite fire superiority over an opponent in the next hedgerow. However due to the rise in ground and the hedgerow itself I have difficulty targeting him. When his guys cower, my guys can't see him to shoot on their own, I can't directly area fire well due to terrain blind spots and those that can fire are just chewing up the ground in front of the hedgerow. I could probably spend the entire game shooting up that terrain and only manage to keep him cowering. Barring having mortars every time I have to take a hedgerow, I HAVE to either flank the hedgerow or advance right up to it to see his guys to eliminate them.
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.
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Of course masking for movement is not the only use for smoke... more importantly than that I disagree with Jason on the importance of movement, I think its vital.
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.
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Using smoke in order to mask otherwise unsafe movements is included in Jasons definition IMO. If you smoke an area to mask your troops movement, what you are doing is exactely what he said: isolate the portion of the battlefield you want to dominate. As far as i understood it, it is just that smoke isnt limited to the sole purpose of masking movement.
No. Jason specifically expresses the belief that smoke should be used to isolate sections of the battlefield to achieve overwhelming fire advantage. He said:
Other than Baneman, I consider most of the comments to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of smoke on the attack. It isn't cover, its role is not to protect otherwise unsafe movements in the open.If everyone but Baneman is wrong, who said "I generally use smoke to isolate a section of the enemy line that I'm about to attack", then Jason is including womble, Vinnart, slysniper, Quintus Sertorius and Bil Hardenberger who said:
It is possible to successfully use smoke to gain fire advantage as Jason describes. I use smoke far more often to mask movement, and have done so as far back as CMBO.
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It isn't cover, its role is not to protect otherwise unsafe movements in the open. It is temporary terrain, its role is to reshape the visual landscape in order to isolate the portion of the battlefield you want to dominate.
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.
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No, not the only winning move, but possibly the next most optimal one, if you don't realise your tanks can take the ground without leg support once you've realised that the infantry are just targets for the mortars.
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.
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Your analysis of me is incorrect.
I'd just like the AI to perform the way a human would if they had just received 15-20 rounds of 60mm and 105mm HE mix.
That's all.
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.
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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.
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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.
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This could be important:-
are the former mortar crew all dead or are some wounded?
I have had a problem where the surviving crew member of a knocked-out US 81mm mortar would not share his mortar rounds.
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Are you using version 1.01? This problem appeared in version 1.00 and was supposedly fixed.
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And any time when there might be incoming artillery, which is oh, 95% of the time.
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.
Making a scenario one big puzzle is a recipe for a bad scenarios, IMO. Finding "the key" makes them trivial exercises. Not grokking it makes them "impossible". Scenarios, if they must be thought of as puzzles should be a series of smaller puzzles, where not spotting one key doesn't make or break success.
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.
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I think what some players suffer from is being impatient, which is not limited to, but very much including School of Hard Knocks. I find that if I use the darkness to get engineers to clear the bridge area of mines and wire, and get MGs and Mortars in position, it's wiser just to wait for daylight, when spotting ability dramatically improves. If one can do this, and withhold a major infantry or tank commitment, surgical mortar strikes and massed machine gun fire can keep the enemy surpressed long enough for you to move just a few guys forward. Eventually this will reveal the AT positions, at which point mortars are brought to bear. The tanks move forward and its only a question of time.
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.
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Reckon. Think you just have to get most of your fast-movers off the exit. Don't think any of my vehicles even opened fire, but one got a little confusticated and decided to go for a drive round the square. I Cease Fire-ed once the Greyhounds and other jeeps had exited, and got a tactical.
Interesting. I didn't quite "get" this scenario. Maybe it would have made more sense if I took the other fork.
It's entirely possible that there is a way through that I didn't see.
No, you are probably right. There is only one unblocked route left now.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you find.
There is something that smells distinctly vehicle-like near Crossroads Bravo. I leave for Eastern Europe for two weeks, so I will have to be in suspense until I get back.
A couple of my platoons were still a bit too beat up for me to think a molasses attack was a good idea, so I used the long field down the right (largely because I felt it got my tanks the furthest forward).
Heh. That's good, molasses attack. Seems to work in flanking those damn bocage strong points which otherwise take a million rounds of ammo to suppress.
That's a puzzle then
Maybe there is some strange interaction when two mortar sections direct-fire smoke (Target Smoke) at the same time. The total rounds of smoke fired were 10, which is the maximum for one section. After that, no more "Target Smoke" was allowed for the mortars in either section.
What speed does Quick go, if I may ask?
In daytime dry conditions, Regular squad, I got 38 meters/minute and the squad went from rested to tiring. Average of two tests, so probably some slop in the numbers. Scout team units seem to go slightly faster than full rifle squads in clear terrain, but I didn't test scouts in swamp. How much ammo the squad is hauling may effect things as well, but I didn't test for that either.
My feeling is that the arty isn't in your CUF, so will always be a fresh, full, mission.
Figures. I guess I should have been less frugal with my 105mm.
Important note: in the Razorback Ridge briefing it does mention that you won't have time to incorporate any new replacements before the finale at La Haye, but what it neglects to mention is that you will receive no resupply at all before the assault. You get a load of trucks and jeeps in RR, and if you pillage them, I'm pretty sure the ammo carries over. You also get some jeeps and trucks in La Haye du Puits which can top off your ammo. But if you fire every unit dry, including the resupply ammo off the trucks in RR, you'll be using harsh language only at the beginning of La Haye...
Thanks for the tip! I will be sure to leave no truck unpillaged.
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'New' isn't necessarily 'better' and IMHO, in this case it definately isn't.
There is an inate logic, something no doubt to do with the complex laws of physics, that a larger, heavier and more powerful entity can push a smaller, lighter, less powerful entity out of the way. A Sherman tank would, under most circumstances, have little trouble in bulldozing a jeep out of the way and quite probably a truck as well.
I have had no problem with tanks pushing past jeeps, halftracks, other tanks, etc. The AI does it all the time (try the Huzzar scenario). If anything, it is TOO easy to get past immobilized vehicles (version 1.01).
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I've had tanks squeeze by immobilized tanks through gaps I thought were way too small. The AI is almost Jedi-like in it's ability to squeeze tank after tank through piles of burning vehicles in it's relentless attempt to reach an objective.
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Indeed. The decision mechanism AIUI in Crossroads is set up so that if you leave via the 'direct' route, you don't get any VP for exiting (though the Germans don't get any VP for the units you do exit). So if you don't hang about and eliminate the opposition (which, though your orders are to disregard 'em, you can garner 100 VPs for), the Germans end up with some VPs for holding their terrain objectives (? and for some unexited units like the mortars ?), and you end up with very few, so you 'lose' and head to Bolleville. It is entirely possible to make your recon pull towards Bolleville and drive off the Germans, killing enough to get a victory so that you 'win' and end up going to Bumper Cars anyway.
I tried to be a good boy and do as the man said, so I only shot as many Germans as necessary to get off the right fork exit. That amounted to four small German units for the price of an MG jeep. I got a tactical victory, so that must have been enough.
It's certainly a bit of a maze. My recollection was that there was no way to get the Stuarts past a certain point anywhere on the width of the map, but their guns (popguns though they are, they have a lot of ammo and useful MGs) can reach useful targets.
So far, I haven't been completely blocked off, but new tiddly-wink barriers pop up on a regular basis.
[Whistles innocently] You might think that. I couldn't possibly comment...
A tip, if you want: go at it quickly down the right. I got a surprising result by siezing the initiative... Hopefully, that's not so vague as to be counterproductive.Heh, heh. It wouldn't be properly evil if there wasn't something nasty waiting for my armor, but no exploding tanks just yet.
Since you get five rifle platoons in Bumper Cars, I have them making a broad front push down every available avenue, with the armor and FOs lending a hand where necessary. As you said, the map edges seem to be offering the least resistance.... so far.
Did it have HE left? Arty 'smoke' shells are better thought of as 'Smoke Options' for an equal number of HE rounds. So if you only had 2 x 81mm HE at the start of the Smoke mission, even if you had the standard 10 smoke rounds per section, you'd only get 2 smoke rounds fired.
My 81s had their full load of HE and smoke. One section fired eight smoke and then stopped. The other fired only two.
Do they actually get those 2 APs per turn in swamp? I was "Quick"ing with a minute's rest when they hit "Tired". Too long ago now to remember how far they got on a moving turn...
A while back I tested movement rates on all the terrain types and made a little chart. 16 meters/min is what I get for squad MOVE in swamp, not counting stops for waypoints. It took 1/2 hour from start-of-game to reach the far edge of the swamp and recover from Tired, so it must have taken 20 some odd minutes to cross the swamp.
No, it was pretty good in 1.0. I only used 105mm for the last couple of strongpoints because I'd run out of 81mm, having not gotten resupply for my offmaps between firing them dry in Over Hill, Down Dale and School.
Yep, I had run my offmap 81mm completely dry as well. Lesson learned, I only used up half my 105mm in School. I am sure you will now tell me that the 105mm is completely resupplied before it's next appearance, but them's the breaks.
I wish they would give you a hint in the scenario briefings. Something like, "We don't know when we will get our next resupply, so use ammo sparingly" would be helpful.
No, but their inhabitants can. One of those foxholes that got turned into 4 shell holes had had an LMG team in it that ducked out early, and caused me an amount of grief when I finally got infantry within small arms range of the trenches.
Why, that's not sporting at all. Proper Wehrmacht infantry should take it's obliteration and like it. I was going to say if I waste a few spotting rounds chasing infantry from their foxholes, it's well worth it. But not if they run to even better cover!
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No, they don't
http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1298881&postcount=24
but I've not heard anyone ranting about how hard Bolleville and N803 are
I've gone back and 'thrown' Crossroads so I get to see the alternative approaches to La Haye and the different final battle; Bolleville is the next scenario I'll play.Thanks! Good to know I didn't take the wrong fork at Crossroads. From your chart, it doesn't seem to matter which fork unless Crossroads beats you. I'm midway through Bumper Cars. It is another highly bottle-necked scenario. The armor has only two narrow channels to the other side of the map (maybe less if there are more tiddly-wink obstacles than I can see so far). Probably well covered by German AT, I'd wager.
Once the tanks were across the bridge, I could use their smoke pots to give the infantry some cover once the 81mm smoke was gone.
That's a good use of the Pop Smoke command for this scenario if you were able to get enough mobile tanks across the bridge, which you succeeded in doing. One of my 81mms refused to fire smoke after two rounds- hence the title of this thread.
I never managed to get a platoon in working order away from the bridge in that direction. I wasn't ruthless enough in pushing them laterally and started wasting movement time firing back at the forward german positions too soon, so their mortars caught me...
Without the tanks support or using 105s there was no way I could generate a smokescreen to cover the geological epoch it takes to get troops through the gloop, or that was my thinking. And the 105s were far better used hammering the trenches at the back.My two platoons + engineer squad hugged the river bank very closely. Some of the troops were actually wading in the river. Lost three men to mortars, three to MGs, and one idiot to mines when he took a very original interpretation of the waypoint path. I used some 105 smoke to exit the swamp and dash to the 50mm ATG woods. Lost very few men after that.
Absolutely, it took a "geological epoch" to cross the swamp. Quick tires the troops quickly and Move is only 16 meters a minute. Still, the first platoon exited the swamp with one hour left on the clock.
Indeed. I used a couple of short missions to kill smaller infantry positions before I let 'er rip on the trenches. Seeing foxholes turned into shellholes was quite sobering, even if I couldn't see the Germans sitting in 'em cos they'd cowered (or scarpered).
Did you find the US 81mm a bit ineffective against the foxholes? I did in version 1.01. I think I will be adding the 105mm to my QB buying list, especially against defenders who put everything in foxholes or trenches. The 6 minute delay (Elite difficulty) used to scare me off, but foxholes can't run away from spotting rounds.
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I figured the same. I think all the mines in School are mixed, and made sure that my tanks were never the first over any given AP. Where the infantry had gone and been safe, at least I knew there wasn't a 'Mixed' tile...
I don't know how to tell if mines are mixed or not, except by the obvious method. The after action map views don't help.
I'm right with you there. Tougher scenarios? I don't think so. RR is 'crackable', though if you just go with the straightforward approach, I think you'll risk gimping yourself for La Haye.
Do all paths lead to RR? How can you be sure to get to that scenario?
The mortars slowed down for me once I started popping smokescreens to advance tanks and infantry "in perfect harmony" down the road once over the bridge. And they stopped for a while, or at least stopped hitting anywhere I couldn't handle, once the 105s started shellacking that trench complex. I don't think it would have been so, were it a human opponent, as they would have thrown missions at 'best guess' TRP locations, even if they'd got no confirmed sightings, whereas I think the AI won't shoot into smoke. Or maybe the mortar ammo isn't actually inexhaustible...
Heh. The 81mms sure seem inexhaustible at any rate. You had more success going straight up the middle than I did. The platoon I sent up the middle didn't fair so well.
My main infantry push was two platoons along the river bank to the West (right) and then up the West map edge, with smoke. One platoon flanked the west-side German foxholes and the other platoon plus some engineers flanked the hill. The hill platoon took no casualties clearing the trenches, but they only had to mop up the gibbering survivors of a creeping barrage of 105s. Gotta love those 105s, damn accurate.
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In a recent battle i moved a "Stummel" (light armoured vehicle but with a 75mm HE) behind two enemy ATGs and although the guns were completely surprised and showing the rear and definately no threat for the light amoured car, it immediately retreated instead of engaging.
I tried it to engage the guns several times, and every time the SdKfz preferred to retreat as fast as possible instead of knocking them out surely.
Could it be, that the TacAI of vehicles does not take into account the aiming direction of potential threats?
What are the experience and motivation level for the Stummels? Are they in command?
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It's a shame CMBN doesn't have AT and AP mines (like CM1 had) rather than the generic mine. Until my tanks started getting broken, I assumed that if inf triggered a minefield then it would be safe for vehicles.
Agreed. "Death by Recon" seems to be the primary method of detecting whether the mines are AT, AP, or both.
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I've only dealt with mines prior to the patch, and had assumed that since engineers couldn't detect AT mines, any 'marking' would only apply to infantry movement. So the only secret to passing vehicles 'through' mines which I knew about was simply to avoid driving on the APs where I knew there were mines. I think one of the shermans took some track damage from mines on the verge of the road, in School, once they'd crossed the bridge. I'm sure there are different AI plans which might have some of the mines in different places, and I probably just got lucky that I managed to dodge the sitting bullets
Some of the mines I ran into were "Mixed". Both infantry and tanks could "discover" them.
It never occurred to me there might be alternate AI plans for this scenario. For re-playability, I suppose. Having survived it once, I'm not in a rush to have another go. Besides, I hear there are even tougher scenarios later in the campaign.
Noo. I took a lot more than 15 casualties here. I was, IIRC, about 3 short of the "Casualties" parameter when the Germans surrendered. I took 15 casualties or thereabouts (or was it 15 KIA? - it's been a while) in "Road to Berlin"... I play Warrior, WeGo.
I was quite worried about staying under the casualties limit, too. Fortunately, the "torture by mortar" seemed to taper off after 45 minutes or so, and really slowed down after my infantry tossed a few grenades into the German FO's trench on the hill. The mortars still got 80+ of my guys.
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Re: School: In 1.01, I got 4/4 (surviving) tanks across the bridge after the first AT mine had been gotten rid of by sympathetic explosion when my engineers were clearing wire, and the infantry had detected the one at the far end by 'Size 9 minesweeping'. You can drive round mine squares relatively safely. Or maybe I was just lucky.
Heh-heh. My engineer team was vaporized by the same "sympathetic explosion" while trying to clear the wire at the bridge entrance. This explosion revealed the underlying AT mines, which another engineer team then marked. A Sherman at slow speed attempted passage of the marked mines, but the mines went off, immobilizing the tank and decimating the second engineer team.
My remaining three tanks (the fifth tank was killed earlier by two 75mm AT guns) managed to squeeze by the immobilized tank and onto the bridge. From my later tests with marked mines, this was either very lucky or else the mines had been completely expended. Expended mines turn green, but I couldn't tell since they were directly under the immobilized tank.
The first of the remaining three tanks promptly ran into a mine field at the other end of the bridge (Doh!), but somehow survived with only severely damaged tracks. This tank limped 100m further down the road before it's tracks gave out completely.
The second of the three tanks avoided the new minefield, but caught the edge of yet another minefield to the right of that one, immobilizing it.
The third and final tank managed to run this gauntlet unscathed and went to work blasting Germans out of their foxholes while dodging Panzerschrects fired at ridiculously long ranges.
I am amazed you got four tanks through. Excellent job. What is your secret for passing marked mines? And I think you wrote earlier that you only took 15 casualties in this nasty scenario!? I was quite happy "only" taking 110! (Elite, turn-based)
The relative effectiveness of the allied and axis armies in the ETO
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
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.