Steve McClaire

A minor issue, but I thought I'd throw it out. I've noticed that when a unit tries to move into an area that's already occupied by another friendly unit, the occupying unit is (always, if not almost all the time) 'bumped' out of the spot. Now I can't complain about this when I plot such a move, but it can have some very weird and irritating consequences when it's the AI making your units bump each other. Example: I have an M3 Halftrack in the road, and a little ways behind it, a US Engineer squad hiding in a foxhole (this is in the Engineer 'training' battle that comes with CMBO). A German armored car comes within LOS of the halftrack and knocks it out, causing the sole surviving crew member to bail out. This one crewman flees back to the foxhole (seems like the right thing to do) and promptly SHOVES an entire squad of engineers out of their foxholes and into the road. I'd love to see this changed so that units are no longer bumped into inferior cover, if at all possible. Or at least not by much 'smaller' units. And no arguments from the peanut gallery about how US halftrack drivers were historically trained to throw around entire squads of engineers, please.

If anyone is still interested, here's the URL for the interview I paraphrased in my earlier post: http://www.geocities.com/jeffduquette/Depuy.html It was not by the Dupuy I was thinking of, which is why I couldn't find it again. I'm not sure if he was influenced by SLA Marshall, or vice versa, but he seems to agree with the general conclusion. As a side note, Jeff Duquette's site has a lot of other interesting info on WW2.

Well, I would think they would have avoided each other, if they could. What was your mortar team doing up there? But the odd situation aside, in 'real-life' each of those teams did have their personal weapons (rifles or carbines, plus grenades I would assume) and they could have shot it out. In CMBO they don't have anything but their primary weapons (a panzerschrek, or a mortar), neither of which is very useful for shooting enemy soldiers who are within a few meters of you. Personally, if it was my mortar team, I'd be happy that they didn't engage the 'shrek guys in hand-to-hand combat. I do think it would be nice if personal weapons for these teams could be modeled in a future version of CM, though. At least these teams wouldn't be quite as helpless. [This message has been edited by Steve McClaire (edited 02-14-2001).]

It's my understanding that US rifle squads were (by doctrine) supposed to fight in 3 teams -- a scout team w/ 3 men (including the squad leader), a 'fire' team with 4 men (including the BAR), and a 'maneuver' team with 5 riflemen. The scout team would locate the enemy, the fire team would suppress them, and the maneuver team would close and finish them off. I get the impression that this tactic wasn't used that much in practice, as I've read comments from WW2 commanders who said that the squad leader often ended up being pinned down with the scouts, and unable to command the squad. As for splitting fire, I suspect it was usually more a matter of what individual target each soldier picked to shoot at, at least for the US Army. I've read that the US squad (and even platoon) leaders tended to spend more of their time shooting then directing the fire of their unit, and that they thought the Germans were 'undisciplined' or 'green' because they could hear the German NCOs constantly yelling commands / encouragement to their men -- something that the US army seems to have decided is a good idea, I believe. But from a purely historical point of view, I actually think most simulations infantry units a lot more effective fire then usually dished out in actual combat. From what I've heard / read, a few of the soldiers tended to do most of the real fighting, while the rest tended to just keep their heads down and would only take direct action if they had to (i.e. a direct order, or an enemy right in their face). A lot of this comes from an interview with a US WW2 commander (Dupuy, I think?). I'll try and find the URL again and post it here. [This message has been edited by Steve McClaire (edited 02-14-2001).]

While the example that started this thread is pretty much a foregone conclusion (that squad was toast), I do think Lugnut's point about granularity of fire is one that should be looked at for future versions of the game. I suspect the attack L4Pilot described couldn't be stopped in CMBO without close to even numbers of defending units -- even though (if WW1 is any sort of example) it should only take a few (two or so?) well-situated machine gun teams to stop this sort of charge. Has anyone tried this sort of thing in a test case? I'm curious how it turned out.

This is just something I've noticed more on 'feel' than on actual verified testing, but a split squad does seem to 'fight' better if facing one unsplit squad, due to the way CMBO handles infantry fire. Infantry units all fire as one group, at one target -- in a squad of ten men you can't have three of your men firing at one target and seven at another; all ten fire on one target. So if a split squad is facing one unsplit squad of enemy infantry, you have two units targeting one unit, and the full squad can only target one of your half squads. This leaves the other half squad unsuppressed, and its fire will tend to make the enemy squad duck, relieving some of the incoming fire on the half squad it is firing on. Net result is that your two units seem to be able pin down the full squad and shoot it up, because it's outgoing fire can't effect both half squads at once. Before anyone gets started, I am not lobbying for individual-soldier-targeting. Just pointing out a situation where it is advantageous to have two half squads, rather than one full squad.

This definitely seems to be the hot topic. One comment on doctrine: The way an army plans to fight is not always the way it ends up having to fight. The US Army had a doctrine that said it's tanks should not be engaging enemy tanks -- that was the job of the tank destroyers. Unfortuantely, someone forgot to tell the Germans to leave the Shermans alone and go fight the Hellcats instead. US tanks had to engage enemy tanks as best they could -- all US Army doctrine did was prevent the introduction of better tank-fighting tanks. The doctrine in the German army may have been for panzergrenadiers to go into battle mounted, but I would suspect that they didn't do this very often on the western front of 1944-45. Still, as Olle Petersson pointed out, there's nothing in CMBO that prevents you from making a mounted attack; you just lose a little bit of suppressive fire (the effectiveness of which has been doubted by more experienced posters than myself). If you want to attack while mounted, go for it -- if it fails, I think it will probably be because the enemy had adequate AT defenses or artillery, not because your mounted troops don't fire their rifles.

Michael Dorosh: Looks like you were posting while I was composing. Nothing like repeating more or less the same thing as someone who posts right before you. I don't understand more than a few words in German, so it's hard for me to tell from the quotes given, but I believe the Germans decided later in the war (after Kursk, I think) that making the initial breakthrough was better left to infantry divisions, saving the panzer divisions for exploitation. Punching through with panzer divisions was costing too many tanks and vehicles -- thus the initial attack during the Bulge was mostly made by volksgrenadier divisions. Some of the dates given in the source quotes are 1943 or earlier, and so may be quoting tactics that were no longer widely employed in the CMBO time period.

My two cents: Keep in mind that there are many different types of fighting. From what I've read, armored panzergrenadiers (those actually equipped with halftracks, and not just motorized in trucks) made up only a small part of a panzer division (1 battalion out of 4, or 2 out of 6 for SS divisions). The purpose of these troops was to provide infantry support for the panzers, traveling along with them during a breakthrough and exploitation. Under these circumstances, I can understand why they'd want to maintain their mobility and stay mounted, as long as the opposition was not a serious threat (they are in the enemy rear area, theoretically). You probably wouldn't dismount just to force your way past a roadblock, especially considering you will certainly have armor support. I would also expect that they would certainly dismount to fight their way through any reasonably well-established defenses. Given that the period covered by CMBO doesn't have a lot of mobile German breakthroughs, and that the game play is based on fighting full-scale battles, I don't think CMBO suffers for not allowing passengers to fire their weapons while mounted. It would be a cool feature, but a very minor one, IMO.

Whoops! User error. Offensive operations should have been 10%, not 25%. I don't have any specific data on what cavalry units were doing during the August pursuit, but it does seem reasonable that that's where most of their 'recon' was done. Given that this phase was only a couple of weeks long, I guess it makes some sense that the cavalry didn't have much total recon time.

I've read several sources that talk about how infrequently US Cavalry Squadrons were actually assigned to do straight recon missions. In "Hitler's Last Gamble" (pg 386), Trevor Dupuy gives the following percentages for missions assigned to cavalry units: Defensive operations 33%, Special operations (acting as a reserve, patrolling rear areas, hauling cargo, etc) 29%, Security (blocking, screening, filling gaps) 25%, offensive operations 25% -- with recon operations at only 3%. If completely true, it would seem that a real recon mission wouldn't really be 'typical' of what a cavalry squadron actually did. But I think you could simulate one by setting up a large map, a small US recon force, and a modest sized German force (big enough to be trouble for the cavalry unit by itself). Have a large body of US troops enter late in the scenario, with the objective of elimintating the Germans. Don't leave enough turns for the 'fighting body' to do its own scouting around the map, just enough for it to go straight to the enemy and engage. So if the recon units haven't already located the enemy, the main body can't accomplish the mission.

I'm not an expert on WW2 artillery systems, but a 2 minute response time seems incredibly fast, given what I have read. So I don't think CMBO artillery represents batteries that -could- fire in support, given enough time -- rather I think the FO teams represent those batteries that are -dedicated- to supporting the 'on-map' troops, and are just sitting on the other end of the field phone / radio, tubes pretty much aligned, and waiting to tweak and fire. A US battalion could call in a ton of batteries for an important fire mission, but I doubt they normally had all these batteries, sitting and waiting -just- to fire for that one battalion. Maybe the next rev of CM needs a different type of FO unit, which is slower to respond but which may have more than one battery available? Then again, I know I as a player would get fed-up waiting 15 minutes for my fire mission to start.