Barleyman

I'm not sure what to think of the moratorium on FlaK guns .. I can see why you might want to be rid of the flakwagen which is clearly modelled badly by CMBO engine. But why a blanket ban on all towed pieces? AFAIK it was hardly rare to assign FlaK guns to shoot at tanks, people, etc.. In fact, I do think there's a german heavy FlaK gun that was very good at this role..!

Keith, You *do* remember my standing orders regarding sharpshooters? Words "Entrails", "Neck" and "Wrapped" were featured, as I recall. In any case, I don't have any games going on right now, ladder or otherwise. So if anyone cares to test their theories of military science in the crucible of battlefield .. I play by the P-76 rules and Rugged defense ladder.

bump

Hmmm. Didn't even think about that one!</font>

Yes, very nice. Still doesn't mean this info shouldn't be available inside the purchase screen One important piece of information you're missing there is the time it takes to set guns up. RR is quite fast. I can also see why some people bitch about 75mm infantry guns. I think I'll be using them in my next attack.. And, oh, everyone should try towing some guns across a moist ground in a truck. It builds character!

Are we going to be able to check out unit data inside the force selection screen in CMBB? Right now you have to make a dummy QB to check out which of the PanzerJägers was which.. Unless you know them all by heart! I was thinking of the mind-numbing selection of tanks available in Ostfront..

You can buy 3 RRs for each Tiger, so maybe you'd care to reassess the estimate of ability to deliver fire on target per turn.. Also, I see tiger as an overpriced eggshell :-b That's what the assault howitzers were there for. They did perform pretty ok, too, until taken out by OPFOR TDs. Again, an RR is much cheaper than StuH42. You see, they'll shoot smoke even if the infantry is far away. If you put a Wespe and a 105mm RR side by side, wespe will use HE, RR will probably use smoke. If you don't assign targets manually, both will use HE. It's just a bug.

That setup sounds a lot like what I blasted to gooey parts in my defensive game. But they just kept on coming..!

105mm RR has a lot more punch than a Tiger. A lot cheaper and more difficult to take out too. See the movies, RRs were delivering fire through the very last turn while all of my panzers were smoking wrecks. They'd be even more deadly if there was not a *BUG* in TacAI that makes towed artillery shoot SMOKE instead of HE at infantry. Looks like they enjoy shooting HE at AFVs instead of HEAT, too. Stu42H + Hetzer can be had for about the same cost as a tiger and it's much better in many ways.

A minor point which did not make it into the AAR. I was mortally afraid of AT guns in my left flank. Hence the careful advance from one overwatch position to another. This was also partial reason for the dubious choice of panthers, which could've shrugged off 6pdr hits.

If I may have my say.. The battle proceeded pretty much as I had envisioned it while selecting my forces. Perhaps that means my plan itself was faulty. The attack on the right flank was never meant to succeed. Just to generate as much noise as possible and to tie down defender's resources. I assigned a panther there to make it look like a real thing. On the left flank my probe was wiped out by arty as I suspected. The main effort was following up in anticipation of defensive arty running out of ammo. However, splitting probe into teams would've given more targets to shoot at. Maybe even as far as to the fords to give arty spotters targets earlier on. All in all, I would have needed at least company worth of extra infantry and mech recon to save time. Extra time would've been handy at the fords. I really like towed artillery, they're difficult to deploy, but once in place they're very deadly. Far more difficult to destroy than SPA and they can generally take on any comers. The movie clearly demonstrates a *BUG* in TacAI as the RR on left hill puts one HE after another into a howitzer carrier even as they had plenty of HEAT left.

CMBB will probably just make it to the Xmas shopping craze!

From experience, guns seem to give high preference for smoke over HE whenever they're ordered to fire at infantry. Maybe they're afraid of small arms fire or whatever. I like towed pieces, even if they're much harder to deploy, they're much harder to take out once in place. So I see this behavior quite often.

It's fixed? Great. Too bad they didn't make a 1.13 with that fix.. What with the retail version and everything. Okay, so when's the CMBB coming out again ]

Is it just me, or is it a bug? It seems to me that a towed gun will always prefer firing smoke over HE if ordered to fire at infantry. If you target a house, you get HE. If you target infantry inside the house, you get smoke. Also, in tournament game I witnessed my 105mm RR shoot one HE shell after another at an enemy SP gun, which was strong enough to shrug that off. US Howitzer carrier actually. The RR gun had plenty of hollow charges left, but still they used only HE.. Why? Is this actually intentional.. Or is it a "feature" of 1.12 that will be fixed in CMBB?

Maybe they can even hire a 3D programmer or 2 with the money from CMBB.. Or maybe they'll just retire to southern pacific?? It would be a goodness to have different people concentrating on eye candy & game mechanics full-time.. So we'd get relative spotting & european sparrow instead of the north american one!

Back when I was playing soldiers, I managed to commit a suicide with a LAW. Except that it was a dummy one for training. You see, the sight is above the tube and while I was looking thru the sights toward the APC, the tube itself was pointing at a mound of dirt about 20cm in front of it. ouch Seriously, if you're scared ****less of the all-too-near tank which is shooting your pals to marmite and have slept three days ago, a little bit and eaten nothing since yesterday .. Your hands might shake a little, yea?

20mm AP is way too big for killing human beings, tho. So the real beef here is that CM models tank/crew being disabled by small-bore gun bursts.. But it does not model crewmembers being decapitated/severely wounded by schrapnel resulting from said penetrations.. Neither is modelled "minor" damage to tank equipment which would make crew bail out but would probably allow tank to be restored in a week or so at the yard? Hm, I'd rather take the "ignore soft targets" command for CMBB

Gentlemen. Not wishing to take a stance on the whole "there should be difference between brewed up and slightly broken!" issue, which is only really relevant as for how many weeks the tank will spend on yard before becoming operational or even if it'll be worthwhile to fix it if it's captured.. But come now, 20mm is NOT, repeat NOT a popgun! :eek: Have you actually ever held a 23mm AA gun round? It's a big brute of a shell, I'd just plain HATE the idea of being anywhere near a crew compartment of any armored vehicle if 3-4 of those things were bouncing incide with a liberal helping of schrapnel! Sure, it's not going to do such catastrophic damage to the tank equipment as a 76mm tungsten round. It's still going to break many things, beyond the obvious watery sacks of meat'n'bones..

Andrew, I had too much time on my hands today, so I made CM Mod manager-compatible versions of your uniforms.. Point & shoot interface's nice sometimes. If you're cool with it, I suppose other people would like that version, too..

Top the charts!

Run away! Run away!

Oh-oh! I read the CMBB FAQ, and are they ever including covered arc! Cool! And assaulting! Oh god.. Flashbacks of basic .. I always thought it's a joke you become so exhausted you cannot lift that dinky 3-kilo assault rifle .. but after doing the jump up - run like hell - hit the dirt - fire couple of rounds - repeat routine for half a click.. Syöksyyn .. Mars! In any case, even if you cannot give quick orders to a T-34 separated from it's platoon, it'll still automagically know where the StuG-IIIf is that blew rest of the platoon to smitheerens. Still on the subject of backwards compatibility.. Maybe it'd be reasonable to ask for scenario converter, so we could play CMBO scenarios with CMBB and/or CM2 engine? That way you'd give bonus to people who buy both, but no free lunches to anyone.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: Well, I completely disagree here. There is nothing special about the Eastern Front compared to the Western Front that makes a difference in terms of spotting. So while EITHER front would be better simulated using Relative Spotting, neither one suffers more than the other for having Absolute Spotting. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, how about longer engagement ranges, severe comm problems with early-war soviets and so forth? More panzer vs tank action in general? "Radios? What Radios?" Anyways, just since wego represents a radical improvement over the traditional ugo-igo counter pushing excercise .. I see no reason not to go the whole nine yards and throw out some more oddities from boardgame heritage

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: This Relative spotting system can work and is a huge, fundamental improvement over Absolute Spotting that we would be fools not to implement it. However... we would be fools to attempt to do so for CMBB. It will probably take us about 2-6 months to get Relative Spotting working as deeply as we want it to. And that is with a complete engine rewrite. So it will show up after CMBB for sure. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Steve, You have this sudden urge to release CMBB Elite Edition with relative spotting engine.. Seriously, I don't think Kursk op etc will be very well simulated at all with absolute spotting. Other people have pointed it out that boilerplate for boilerplate, soviet gear was very good, but their C&C absolutely sucked. So just to dismay certain revisionists it'd be very nice to see eastern front game with relative spotting .. eventually. Of course I'll buy the game as soon as it comes out in any case! On the topic of relative spotting, it might be useful to assign broad vectors to watch for. Actually this would work just fine with absolute spotting engine, too. I'd just like to tell panzer battalion Ohra that a T-34/85 was spotted on hill 274 and they should be on a lookout for them. And not go rotating the ...damn turrent to blast some dismounted crew! More experienced crew would be more likely to follow orders, naturally.