gunnergoz

Depends on the situation. If you really want to conserve their ammo and not let them use it to lob HE at the infantry opposing them, give them a limited firing arc. Better yet, hide them until some armor comes along.

Yes, and the Germans ran out of tanks and lost. The fact that we won tells me that the people on the scene at the time knew what they were doing and all that we can do 60 years later is stand in their shadows and act like we know what we're talking about.

Jason, with all due respect, I'll take the US Army Chief of Military History's opinion view of the subject as having a bit more weight than anything we here can generate about it. If the army officially concluded there was a WW2 Sherman shortage in the ETO post-Normandy, that's good enough for me. Production figures like we enjoy throwing around here are not anywhere near as relevant as what the commands in the theater were reporting at the time about tanks being available to them. Seems to me that the people on the scene at the time were not just making this stuff up and if they reported up the chain that there was a problem, how can we argue that there wasn't? If they felt that having a solid tank reserve was critical to winning the war, I find I cannot disagree.

I disagree. British experience in the desert showed the flaws in many of their cruiser and light tank designs, to the point they very much welcomed the arrival of US lights and mediums - even the Grant was seen as a godsend. If you are arguing that the Pz III and Pz IV were inferior to equivalent French and UK designs in the 1940-41 time frame, I just cannot find merit in that argument. Pz II and I of course don't count since they were clearly obsolete by then too, other than for very limited duties: the former could scout and the latter (a training tank, really) could help secure supply lines or whatnot. But you are of course entitled to your opinion.

Regarding whether or not there were shortages of Shermans in the theater, the Army's history entitled Logistical Support of the Armies had this to say:

Yeah, but who's going to be around in 10 years to program it? These guys want to retire someday, you know?

After reading some of Hitler's wartime staff conference transcripts, where he and Jodl are in effect arguing whether a certain panzer division had 16 vs 20 tanks remaining and if they had long guns or short ones, and then what that meant in combat values, makes it all kind of fit into perspective.

So does that mean the 1199th Messkit Repair Battalion has to wait for the next module?

Yes, but take some time and look at the state of British tank design in the late 30's and what it generated...TOG for example. Much wasted time and effort on throwbacks and poorly conceived rubbish. By the time the Churchill had evolved and the Cromwell and 17pdr gun came along, the British design establishment had finally begun to pull their collective heads out of their @sses. Thank goodness for that for they eventually came up with the Centurion, one of the classic battle tanks of the second half of the century.

Magpie Oz, I have to concur. There are just too many variables to the whole issue to allow it to be boiled down to simply the "best." The question of "Best at what?" can be dealt with much of the time, but if one considers the "when, where and how" aspect of it, especially as compared to another tank, things get very complex.

When you think of what the Sherman was designed for - exploitation - then its performance in the Normandy breakout phase showed it to be very admirably suited to its purpose. It was pretty quick on roads, reliable, sturdy, stood up to long marches and carried sufficient armament to deal with most threats.

No, HERE you go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZOHY7Z5eaQ

Yes, so many little touches and nuances...makes me tear up in joy (sniff, sniff.) Really, I can't believe the amount of hidden details and capabilities in this game. It is truly sick as the kids say today.

Personally, I find the soldier status list on the left to be very useful. I play WEGO and it helps me understand what is happening in the squads. With vehicles and guns, if I see the gunner "aiming" instead of "spotting" I can rest assured a round is on the way. I can see immediately how many casualties exist and how many men are cowering gives me an idea of morale trend and potential firepower not being generated. All in all it is a brilliant thing to have in the game and I'd hate to give it up now that I'm using it.

I want my anti-tank dogs, attack dogs, scout dogs and guard dogs. Did I mention the mine-sniffing dogs? Them too.

Yep, a day to remember all right. I'll wager not 5% of my countrymen do though. Unfortunate, that.

If you've actually handled one, you may be regarded as some sort of living deity here, you know...can I touch you?

Sure, zonks40, the BFC developers do follow the forums closely and if they see a pattern, they respond. I can't speak for them, obviously, all I can tell you is what I've seen and what they posted that I know about. So no one is saying don't post your issues, by all means feel free to do so - just know that there are ways to bring things to them in a really useful form which may help get things fixed sooner if there is a problem. I was simply responding to your pretty extreme experience and thinking, if there's something behind that that's a bug, it would sure be worth replicating. For a lot of these issues, it turns out that the player wasn't seeing something that was a bug but simply that the game's performance reflected factors that were reasonable, expected and accounted for, but simply opaque to the player and thus seemed arbitrary. There can be issues with line of sight, line of fire, morale, and so on and so on that are not always obvious. I'm still learning a lot every time I play the game. It is a work that took them a half dozen years to field and it really shows it. I hope this helps. I in now way want to dissuade you from contributing and sharing your concerns or experiences. We're all here to enjoy the game and have a good time and maybe learn a thing or two and I feel very lucky to have found this lot.

All I can say about playing the US side is that speed is your friend. Get them recon guys out there quick, cover all the main roads into the center of the map, try and deny the German recon assets from completing their mission and when you get the US armor, move it forward aggressively to take out the weaker Stugs and almost defenseless h/t's. I ended up with a total victory and the panthers never even came down the hill to challenge me after all their supporting assets had been wiped out. I'll probably try it again some day to see if the German AI has alternate attack plans and routes of advance. I hope so...it is a challenge to "get there fustest with the mostest."

I just had my first encounter with the wooden bunkers. Suppressed them at long range with ordinary rifle and MG fire and polished them off with bazookas and a few well-placed mortar rounds. Not as tough as I thought. But then, the guys in them were not the die hards I'll probably run into later in the campaign...

Its not a matter of doubting your word but the BFC guys have been working on this game for about 5-6 years (on top of the 5-6 the spent on its predecessor, CM1) and have done a bunch of research, programming and testing for authenticity of results. They get tons of questions and complaints about this and that and over time they have more or less adopted an informal policy that gives more weight to people who can, with save files or other data (like test scenarios), show that a problem exists and is replicable. The game does simulate some of the randomness on the real life battlefield and because of that some weird things are going to happen, interspersed with many realistic events. Saves and test scenarios help them figure out if its a fluke or not.

Now you got me curious and I had another look at the photos. The bow is clearly on the left...The sail on these boats was forward of the midsection and this one is on the left, making the left side the bow. Also, on the left hand photo you can see two of the 4 torpedo tubes and the stern only had one. Also, on the far right side of the upper photo montage you can see the rudder sticking out on the bottom of the hull. The boat is lying on its starboard side all right, it just that they've mislabeled the photo on the left as the stern, when it is actually the bow.

All I can add to what I said earlier was that I spent 25 years as a probation officer working with adults and juveniles and over 90% of them were committing crimes unrelated to drug or alcohol abuse but simply as an outgrowth of an undisciplined, self-seeking, self-serving lifestyle with absolutely no sense of responsibility towards themselves or others. That's not to say that every "recreational" user of drugs or alcohol is a criminal, but the frequent abuse of those substances is part and parcel of a lifestyle that places the users needs above all other considerations. Many of these people came from affluent homes and some did not even need to work. The ones who did work, didn't keep jobs for long. The ones that came from minority or economically distressed communities were part of the problem in their own community, taking no positive actions to better their community or help their neighbors. Instead, they opted for a lifestyle involving not just substance abuse but also violence, theft, drug peddling, etc. All the while it was common for other members of their families to be struggling to maintain the family in food and shelter...all without the help of these users who would not lift a finger to help carry the family's economic burden. Much of it has to do with a desire to reject "normal" society and its values and substitute them with alternatives that glorify an outlaw lifestyle of crime, drugs and misogyny. Not every regular substance (drugs, alcohol) abuser is like that but enough of them are and they tend to propagate a toxic lifestyle that has a very negative impact upon families and communities, not to mention putting money into the pockets of the cartels. All so they can justify their highs and tell the straight people to take their workaday world and values and F-off. We all end up paying tax dollars for their rehabs and overdoses and for the price of their criminal behavior.

I was speaking of mechanical and design variations, not armament. The Brits called it The Great Tank Scandal, referring to the question of why the innovations of WW1 were not resulting in GB having the best tanks in the world by WW2 and instead (as many saw it) fielded a succession of mediocre and unreliable designs.

I would think it would have to be the hull MG...if it were the coax, who would aim and fire it with its own telescope? The loader is busy, the commander is too far back and the gunner has his own sight and primary weapon to deal with; I just can't see them giving him a different sight for the coax. On virtually every tank I've heard of, the coax is fixed in place in the mantlet parallel to the main gun and fired by the gunner using the main gun sight, possibly just using a different grid superimposed on the sight reticule. The loader usually takes care of reloading the coax but it usually had a very large ammo supply so that was something that could until after the engagement was over.