X-00

Actually Andreas, you do not understand and as Jason argues wilfully misunderstand the very different employment techniques. Bottom-line: 1. Soviet Heavy Artillery was not rare. Certainly if an army was assigned to a quiet sector in the defense it may have its "habitually related" arty regiments and divisions pulled. Conversely, if an army/corps was in the attack/assualt it could count on ridiculously amount of heavy metal. This is not reflected in the game 2. Arty Regiments and Divisions were habitually associated with Armys and Corps for long periods of time. Not reflected in the game 3. On the strategic offensive (43-45), the Russians had the operational freedom to mass their artillery and ammo for tactical effect. Not reflected in the game 4. Conversely, on the strategic defensive (43-45), the Germans did not possess the operational freedom to mass their artillery and ammo for tactical effect. Not reflected in the game Again your understanding of where the line between tactical combat and operational art begin and end is amatuerish at best.

The above qoute exposes a total misunderstanding of how war is waged in general, and artillery especially Soviet artillery was used specifically. German divisions in the defense did not go one on one with Soviet divisions. In other words warfare is not Stratego. A German division in the defense would be taking on a Soviet Army or yes two! The German division would have to cover an impossibly large sector and have great difficulting achieving regimental artillery concentrations. Conversely, The Soviet Army would be reinforced significantly (an Arty division or more). The artillery was centralized to achieve tactical effects and great pains were made to synchronize the fire with maneuver. In fact, Soviet maneuver elements would manuever with great skill through the bombardments as they were falling. You cannot seperate the levels (tactical-operational-strategic) of war. From 1942 on, Soviet artillery was operationally massed in order to achieve decisive tactical advantage at the point of attack. Similarily, the germans operationally massed their armor in order to achieve decisive tactical advantage. Obviously german armor is modelled, sadly Soviet artillery is not. In Attack and Assault games Soviet artillery should be given massive "rarity cuts" and correspondingly German artillery should be given massive "rarity spikes". Especially from 1943 on. This would relect how war is waged not as is the case now how Stratego is played. [ April 23, 2003, 11:58 AM: Message edited by: X-00 ]

First, let me apologize for my poor editing. I posted the original post after a 20 hour day in the sandbox which, is never a good idea. John, perhaps we need a top twenty. But in my opinion the sheaf, pricing and unit of fire are the most important. It is interesting how many people try to separate the barrage from manuever. This reveals a misunderstanding of how artillery and maneuver were are are integrated. Maneuver occurs/occured during the barrage. The infantry/armor does not sit back watch the show, wait for it to finish and then start their walk/drive to the green fields beyond. To the contrary, they take advantage of the barrage's suppressive effects. The period we're dealing with was 1943/4/5 not 1915. Anyway, thanks for the input. Hopefully some of this can be fixed in future patches. Seems to me TRPs, pricing can be fixed rather easily. The sheaf however is what requires the most work. Aloha X [ February 07, 2003, 03:57 AM: Message edited by: X-00 ]

I’ve hesitated to enter the debate concerning Combat Mission Artillery. Many threads have emerged over the last couple months, which are “nibbling” around the fundamental fact that the Artillery is poorly modeled. Sadly, while the armor and infantry models are much improved, the artillery model is not. I wrote the below 10 points over two months ago and it has been on display at Band of Brothers since. Three things to bear in mind before you read the my top 10. A. Many will ferociously argue, “Allied Artillery was an operational tool beyond the scope of the game”. Hogwash. Operational artillery decisions center around the allocation of assets and ammo. Once the allocation decisions are made, the hard work is integrating the assets to support the tactical scheme of maneuver. Artillery was the tactical tool used by the allies to secure tactical success, and hence operational and hence strategic success. General Depuy’s, one of the U.S. Army’s greatest analytical minds, words sum this up well; “I honestly concluded at the end of World War II, when I soberly considered what I had accomplished, that I had moved the forward observers of the artillery across France and Germany. In other words, my battalion was the means by which field artillery observers were moved to the next piece of high ground. Once you had a forward observer on a piece of ground, he could call up ten battalions of artillery and that meant that you had won the battle. (DePuy as quoted on page 88 of Parker’s Battle of the Bulge) While these comments reflect his view of American artillery, they surely reflect the opinion of many Soviet infantry regiment and battalion commanders who closely hugged barrages that suppressed the MG42, enemy ATGs and artillery thus keeping them and their soldiers alive. B. The size and reliance of the Red Army on artillery was much higher than any other power during the war. Over 1 million men were serving in artillery units by 1944. That is one sixth of the entire army, air force and navy combined. By March 1944 there wee 10,261 howitzers in the 122, 152, and 203 range, 2100 additional guns in the 122 to 152 range, 18000 120mm mortars and 3500 M13 rocket launchers. These were organized into 29 Artillery divisions (Mar 44) later expanded to 39 Artillery divisions (Mar 45). They were centralized IOT to maximize the technical skills necessary for accurate concentrated fire in support of tactical schemes of maneuver. During the attack the Soviet maneuver elements were supported by a steady drumbeat of fire, which frankly is not modeled in the game. I’m not arguing for an uber Soviet Artillery capable of rapid shifting of fire, but in the Attack or Assaults there should be a constant rain of shells. C. Finally, in the points below, I’m not saying CMBB is a bad game. It is a good game. So without further ado, the top ten reasons CM artillery is poorly modeled: 1. Sheaf: a. Orientation: Is invariably converged parallel to line of advance (this can be compensated for by playing N-S maps i.e. rotating the sheaf 90 degrees) b. Size: Too, small. Should range from 200 (Width) x 200 (Depth) for a 105 battalion to 400 x 200 8 inch. Artillery sheafs are explained well here: http://www.poeland.com/tanks/artillery/sheafs.html c. Rate of Fire/Density: A 105mm howitzer has a max effective rate of fire of 10 rounds a minute (for 3-4 minutes), 4 rounds a minute sustained. A 155mm howitzer max ROF 8-6, sustained 4-3. Mortars have much higher rates of fire. Additionally, artillery was programmed to fire at intervals to length the time of suppression (1 round a minute, or two rounds a minute). 2. Unit of Purchase/Fire: The standard firing unit during WWII was the battalion (12-18 tubes allies, 12-9 Germans). Batteries fired independently rarely. It they fired as batteries it was usually an act of desperation or poor planning. Firing as batteries is very inefficient. A battalion firing 1 round per tube (12 rounds) is much more effective than a battery firing 6 rounds per tube (24 rounds). Every artillery officer, regardless of nationality has this hammered into him as a subaltern! 3. Purchase Cost/Rarity/Ammunition Loads: Lacks a reasonable rationale. In both BO and BB German artillery get all the price breaks. In BO the Germans got the cost break because Allies had to pay a responsiveness tax. In BB there is no responsiveness tax. Rarity doesn’t give the Russki a break despite the fact that the outnumbered the Germans by an order of magnitude at the points of attack, and didn’t have strategic and interdiction bombing, nor partisans disrupting Soviet ammunition production or delivery. 4. Inability to Shift From Known Point. In CM delay in fire is tied the size of the correction, i.e. any correction bigger than 100m results in a completely new fire mission. This is completely wrong headed and doesn’t reflect reality in anyway shape or form. 5. TRPs/Targets. Not available to either side in a ME, or the attacker in attacks or assaults. Again this doesn’t reflect reality in anyway shape or form. 6. For allies, no intelligence on enemy dispositions prior to fire planning. The Amis, Brits, Russians didn’t attack blind per CM SOP. On the west front the allies had complete air supremacy and the piper cub was ubiquitous. On the east front the Russians were superb tactical patrollers/infiltrators and had partisans to help out. Should a complete picture be available? No. But some semblance of a picture is required for realistic fire planning. This is a QB complaint, and may be difficult to code. 7. One target per unit for pre-planned bombardments. This tied with point number three above is completely ahistorical and really hurts the Russian player. 8. Onboard Infantry (Howitzer) Guns, mountain guns and other low velocity guns no able to fire indirectly on the map. The infantry guns were extremely low caliber (short barreled) and the crews were trained at hitting dead space. 9. U.S. officers and to a lesser extent British officers, particularly Company Commanders unable to call in fire. A CMBO complaint 10. The nonsensical target drift, and sheaf spread when artillery falls out of LOS. Believe the FO spotting correcting routine may be a bug. To reiterate, CMBB nor CMBO before it are bad games. But, Artillery is and was poorly modeled. In closing, the Red Army’s superiority Artillery grew throughout the war. The 99th Guard Rifle Regiment is illustrative in this superiority growth. In 1944 at the beginning of Bagration the 99th attack with 5 battalions (15 batteries in support) not including mortars. The scheme of maneuver had two battalions upfront one in reserve. In 1945, the same regiment attacked into Berlin with one battalion up front supported by: 92 76mm guns (23 batteries), 40 122mm howitzers (4 batteries), 36 120mm mortars, 28 122mm guns (7 batteries), 50 203mm howitzers (12 batteries) and 12 280mm mortars (3 batteries). The game does not reflect this tactical reality. [ February 07, 2003, 02:45 AM: Message edited by: X-00 ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wouldn't you say that if you regullarly game to game found the enemy 100-200m in front of your line, completely unmolested, that either you had the crappiest luck with terrain/unit combos or were not employing sound defensive tactics? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Actually, Steve, IRL and in the game I much prefer having solid positions on a reverse slope. That sometimes means that the enemy can approach to within 100-200 meters unmolested. Once the enemy crests the hill WHAM. IRL there is the added benefit that it is extremely hard to coordinate an assault on a reverse slope defense. In CM, the you see we all see, and perfect command and control makes it much easier to successfully assault reverse slope defenses. I'm truly bummed and feel unlucky in CM when I'm forced by Victory Flag's to assume positions on forward slopes Yes, this allows for long range fires with MGs as you suggest in your lengthy post above, however, it exposes the unit to return fire, particularily DF or Indirect (on or off board) HE . This means in the Game and IRL you expose an unit you're really going to need when the enemy is within 50-200m of your fighting holes. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Anyone who has ever fired or been fired upon by MG's I think would disagree. The noise alone is enough to frighten a man to the bone until he is acclimated. Small arms do not produce the same effects <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Amen, Abbott. As you suggest this is not a "irrational" fear. I would add that the survivoring soldiers have actually seen what a properly sighted MG (light or heavy) using grazing fire can to do to a unit which carelessly (runs) crosses a danger area whether it's 20, 40, 100 or 200m wide. So when they hear the "rip", it's find a dip (in the ground).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: What Should we Change about MGs? Possible MG Behavioral Changes Grazing Fire - CM's current treatment of Grazing Fire, which produces a Beaten Zone, is not as good as it should be. There are internal coding reasons for this, and we hope we can overcome them for CM2. At least we hope to make improvements over the current model. Firelanes - we most likely will be implementing some sort of ability to designate an arc for a MG unit to stay focused on. We have to be careful to not make this too ridged, but we think we can do this with through a bunch of testing/tweaking cycles. Seperate Morale Effect - one thing that talking with veterans and reading their stories has got us thinking about is a SPECIAL reaction that soldiers have to MG fire. There seems to be a case here that the sum of the parts does not equal the whole. What I mean by that is 20 rounds fired in quick succession from 20 rifles is somehow less "scary" than 20 rounds fired from a single MG. The poorer trained/experienced the unit, the more this factor comes into play. We are not sure if we can get this into the existing Combat Mission engine (there is NO support for this at the moment), so this factor might not come into play until we rewrite the CM engine. However, we feel that a combo of the other effects might make this factor rather unimportant in terms of producing the same results. [ 04-12-2001: Message edited by: Big Time Software ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Steve, Thanks for addressing the only "complaints" I have about Machine Gun Modelling. I for one do not have any complaints about the actual firepower factors of the Machine Guns. My concern is how that firepower is applied. Like you I do not believe the machine gun is an "uber-weapon". It is however awesomely wicked in certain situations. Especially the situation depicted in the diagram I posted earlier this week. Your opinion that a defender "screws up" if he allows the enemy within 100-200m is a gross oversimplification that doesn't take into account a variety of variables particularly terrain. There are many instances in warfare (reverse slope defense, defense in close terrain, cross-compartment defense, consolidation in preparation for a counter attack) where that is going to happen. Anyway, thanks again for taking time to address the three core concerns about machine guns. While I'm not a computer programmer by trade, I can understand the difficulty in coding any of them let alone all three. That said please don't underestimate the importance of these issues, they are vital to the proper modelling of machine guns and eventual perfection of CM.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann: How about T and E 0331s 0302s and 11Bs I've got absolutely no bloody idea what X00's talking about! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> LOL Sorry KR, 0331-United States Marine Corps (USMC) Military Occupational Specialty (MOS)for Machine Gunner 0302-USMC MOS for Infantry Officer 11B-United States Army (USA) MOS for Infantry Man T and E- Traverse and Elevation Mechnicism used with a tripod. It stabalizes the a machine gun on a tripod and allows for accurate shifts in range and deflection. Sorry for your bloody confusion.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David Aitken: It takes a couple of seconds to line up the gun before you pull the trigger. You pick your target and line it up. Your target ducks, whether in reaction to your fire or through sound tactics. Elsewhere another target gets up and dashes. You line up the new target and fire. All along, you are struggling to get in any kind of effective fire while your target is exposed. All along, there are other targets moving while you try to hit the current one. This is a constant process which repeats in the space of seconds, and your targets are rapidly closing on your position.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Dave you're missing the point about machine guns. The machine gunner isn't firing on individual targets. His mission particularily on the defense is to deliver grazing fire along a primary direction of fire (PDF). You accurately describe the "three second" rush. But against grazing fire a soldier is defenseless if runs across the PDF when there are bullets passing thru it. He could get lucky. But if 2 or more machine guns (talking guns in Marine vernacular) are covering the area he needs to cross his odds are seriously reduced. If he tries to cross the Final Protective Fire Line, he will be crossing essentially a steady stream of grazing fire. My point is veteran soldiers know this and would be doing a lot of crawling. This gets to the heart of the matter you mentioned: the time it takes a squad to cross open areas covered with grazing fire. It currently takes a squad (regardless of experience and incoming fire)about 30 seconds to cross 100 meters of open ground. This is a ludicrously short period of time if as you suggest the units are using an abstract form of the "three rush second drill" once they come under fire. Try this experiement: Get a buddy and go down to a football field. Start alternate 3 second rushes. You'll notice two things. One, it will take a hell of a lot longer than 30 seconds to 100m and you're not even being shot at.. And once you get there you're totally gassed. Record your time. After that stay up for 24 straight hours. Get a backback and put 20 llbs of sand in it. Get a 10lb length of steel to simulate a rifle. Put on wet boots and socks. Go on a hike of 5 to 10 miles thusly equipped. End the march at the 100m course. Then conduct another alternate three second rush drill. Compare times. You'll be shocked at how long it takes and how completely gassed you are.

Now that the temp has lowered abit I'll open fire. Some Grazing Fire As background I'm a career Marine Officer (15 years). I've been trained extensively on the employment of Machine Guns. This doesn't make me the world's expert on Machine guns but..... The biggest weakness in CM is the undermodelling of Machine Guns. Particularily the impact of Grazing Fire. Many people throw the term Grazing Fire around in this debate but few really understand it. What is Grazing Fire? The DOD definition of Grazing fire is "Fire approximately parallel to the ground where the center of the cone of fire does not rise above one meter from the ground." For Machine Guns in WWII this would extend out to at least 400m and in some instances 600m. So what does this mean? This picture should be familiar to those that have seen the "system" in action. It depicts 12 SMG squads rushing over 80/100m of open space. If CM1 accurately modelled Grazing Fire: MG1 would be having effects on 5 units, MG2 on 4 units, MG3 on 3 units and MG4 on 6 units, at that moment in time. This would be a machine gunner's dream. Since the MMGs are mounted on tripod with T and E, all the Machine Gunners would have to do is bump his gun left (mg 1/2) or right (mg 3/4) to deliver accurate flanking fire. The closer the enemy would get the more effective the fire. 0331s 0302s and 11Bs know exactly what i'm talking about. In the test it took the 12 squads approximately 40 seconds to rush through the open. In every test the SMGs make it across with 10 to 25 casualties. In every instance the vast majority (12 to 9) of the squads make it across, and the battle is over. Should the machine guns kill every filthy SMG toting Nazi. No. But the troubling thing is the force makes it through relatively undamaged and in a relatively high morale state every time. Steve I'm sure my methodology is flawed in some way. After all, I'm just a dumb Marine and not a smart statistician or computer programmer. I don't have detailed stats nor do I know the standard deviation of the casualties suffered. What I do know is that this is a fairly ideal circumstance for machine gun employment and all my training and experience tells me (1) the butcher bill would be high and more important (2) the morale state for this reinforced company would be pretty low and quite possibly turned away. Grazing Fire is the primary reason for the Machine Gun's existence. It is terrifically effective. The inspiration for CM, Squad Leader simulated this very well. CM, though a fantastic game, does not. Now a couple of side points. -When rushing through areas covered with Grazing Fire it doesn't matter if you weeve and bob. The machine gunner isn't aiming at individual soldiers. -It is accurate. If a Machine gun is dug in and sand bagged and equipped with T&E there is very little "muzzle climb". Finally, Steve if you want to learn about machine guns from professionals arrangements could be made for you to observe firepower demonstrations and maybe even get some rudimentry instruction and familarization. Thanks for listening. Like Pillar and others all i'm interested in is improving the game. That said I'm waiting to be chastized for criticizing one part of an overall great game. (you and copy and paste the picture, it isn't showing up correctly on the bbs) [ 04-09-2001: Message edited by: X-00 ] [ 04-09-2001: Message edited by: X-00 ] IT [ 04-09-2001: Message edited by: X-00 ]

1200 from 41 to 45 is a small number, there were even more mine-dogs in the war, and as we know mine-dogs wont make into CM2

Adam, WRT to the M2. The Machine gun itself hasn't changed. There has been some improvement with ammunition the SLAP with (increased penetration) round but thats about it. SLAP stocks are limited however and ammunition produced to WWII specifications and manufactured in the 50s and 60s is still being used. WRT to MMGs/LMGs. The Marine Corps currently uses the M240G. There have been a number of ergonomic changes such as easier barrel change, easier to maintain, etc. The perfomance specifications however are remarkably similar to the MG42, though I think the MG42's ROF is still higher. And as for employment. Any Marine who hit the beach in the Pacific will instantly recognize the employment techniques used and taught today. Unfortunately, in the game, these employment techniques don't work too well. That's because grazing fire applied either obliquely or from enfilade is not modelled correctly. If it were, the 40m rushes from cover to cover that are so common in our beloved game would be much much more scary. If BTS would like a real demonstration on what Machine Guns can do it can be arranged.

My question is where are the duck and geese. You'd think they would include some game birds! They included ponds for crying out loud. Probably trying to avoid the duck call and shotgun controversy which would inevitably arise.

It's late in the war and the section Rottenfurher still wants his Knight's Cross before it's too late.

The irony here is that the United States produced twice as many AA halftracks then Germany. And this caculation doesn't include the common M13/14 dual 50 variant. United States Production M16/17 (quad 50): 1724 M15 (dual 50, single 37mm) 680 Germany Sd Kfz 10/4 (single 20mm) 610 Sd Kfz 6/2 (single 37mm) 339 Sd Kfz 7/1 (quad 20mm) 319 Sd Kfz 7/2 (single 37mm) 123