gredeker

Holien, I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that High Cost of Real Estate probably had something to do with it. I played Allies in that one and got a 51, but that scenario was so unbalanced that my score was the second highest of the Allies. You got an 88 in that one, which I believe was the best anyone did as Axis. Therefore, our Nabla points would be similar (both of us ahead of the curve) but the in-game points showed you with a 37 point lead. Like Nabla, I'd also be interested in seeing the "Nabla point" scoring breakdown by game to get a better feel as to what my score in each game translated to. Greg P.S. I'll try to get you the first turn in our game later today, but the scenario is pretty dang big and I'm still looking at the map. [ March 23, 2002, 11:16 AM: Message edited by: redeker ]

Frankly, I think a lot of that scenario is determined by the German defensive setup. In the game I played, the two 75mm pillboxes were given limited LOS - one was placed in a small draw on the German right, with good LOS to the bridge on that side, but not much else; the other 75mm pillbox was placed in the center near the diagonal road, which served to deny the middle ground to armor that attacked over that first ridge. However, neither of these pillboxes had good LOS to the appearance location of the American armor reinforcements. The Pak40 had a good LOS to the bridge on the German left side, but after he took out one tank he was taken out by a hail of avenging 75mm HE from the other Shermans. On the German right, I smoked the pillbox and close-assaulted it with infantry - luckily a squad took it out just a turn or two before the Allied reinforcements appeared on that side, as they appeared squarely in its sights. My middle-of-the-game discovery of the middle pillbox served to accentuate the flanking nature of my attack. Only one platoon made it up the very center - everyone else went to the flanks. Of course, luck still plays its part. The second Tiger was taken out by a Greyhound who got a weak point penetration as he was starting to run circles around the kitty.

Well, I'm honored to have made it this far. Congratulations to all the other tourney particpants - it was fun. I have this sneaking suspicion that it's now a case of out of the frying pan, and into the fire. Fortunately, there's a chance to win some wine to douse the flames... Pssst... Holien and Capt... what do you think of banding together to form the "Leonard Dickens' Axis of Evil"?

I stand corrected. Back to the drawing board...

I highly recommend "Resolve at Ranville" by Wild Bill Wilder. It starts off pretty small, but builds up to a good size, features a fair number of toys, and most of the action is concentrated in a pretty small area.

I've posted a question on the other thread - go on over and share your experience with Kommerscheidt!

ROW participants, we can now talk about Kommerscheidt! My question to you all is: How many German players were able to take the Kall River Trail flag with the stealth platoon in the American rear? I tried sneaking up close, but I opened up too early on units coming back to claim the flag; Jukka-Pekka and I ended up in a firefight around the flag, which remained under contention. BTW, Jukka-Pekka is very good at block-busting with American armor and artillery. I feel very lucky to do as well as I did (36 to Jukka-Pekka's 58).

Your observations sound pretty close to mine - the rout path needs to be away from all known enemy units (possibly within a certain range), and towards the friendly map edge. It seems like armor has an advantage because it can get closer/behind the enemy unit easier. Also, "Routed!" is the worst morale state, beyond "Broken!". My experience is that units which are "Routed!" must run away if they can, and get into trouble (i.e., surrender) if they can't. I have no idea what effect hidden units have on a unit. Maybe checking for withdraw paths would indicate the presence of a hidden unit behind one's forces???

Take this with a grain of salt... It seems to me that the computer surrenders when the morale state of a unit switches to "Routed!" but the computer is unable to establish a rout path (hmmm, sounds like ASL ). It's like using the "Withdraw" command - you're only able to "withdraw" in a certain arc away from known enemy units. When a unit's withdraw/rout arc has shrunk down to nothing (due to an enemy unit behind behind it), or the unit is unable to move (like a 1-man HMG team) that unit will surrender instead.

IIRC, infantry behind a wall that is given a "Hide" command can't be targetted at all by units at the same or lower elevation. It may also be the same for AT guns, but I'm at work right now so I can't check. I also seem to recall that you can also "Crawl" behind a wall and be immune from incoming fire. There's a spreadsheet floating around somewhere with exposure percentages for various terrain - I recall that "wall" was pretty good (30%?). And definitely set up behind the bocage - it acts very similar to wire, often being worse than open ground for units that are actually IN the bocage. [ March 20, 2002, 02:17 PM: Message edited by: redeker ]

TB, I had only skimmed that article, as I had mentally put most of the GeForce 4's out of reach. However, that 4200 looks very promising. It looks like it may be overkill at this point, but there's something to be said for buying a piece of equipment which will last for a few years. Then again, with 128 megs of VRAM, loading up CMBB with hi-res mods won't be an issue. Thanks for the steer. P.S. Thanks S. for your input also. I know just enough to be dangerous...

I'm going to be buying a new computer in the next month or two, and I'm also trying to figure out what card to get with it. I've done a fair bit of reading online (especially at Tom's Hardware) and it looks like the GeForce 3 Ti 200 is probably the best bang for the buck right now. Is this a correct assessment? Or will the price on GeForce 3's and GeForce 3 Ti 500's be coming down shortly because of the GeForce 4 release? Also, is it worth springing for a card with 128 megs? Tom's hardware seems to think not at this time, but I tend to "buy and hold" when it comes to computer hardware (still using a 16 meg TNT). Any advice and/or input would be welcome. P.S. Games I'm looking to play on the new system include CMBB, IL-2, and MOHAA.

Some of the info in this thread indicates that the 23mm penetration figure is for a modern SLAP round. It's a .30 cal tungsten penetrator in a .50 cal sabot.

My understanding is that the recoilless guns were pretty rare, as they weren't developed until later in the war, when Germany was suffering from all kinds of shortages. Since a recoilless rifle uses more propellant (2-3 times as much?) per round, it was a less efficient choice. It's also my understanding that the backblast on these weapons was something to behold, much worse than a panzerschreck, leading to faster spotting and counterbattery fire by the enemy.

Maybe that was my problem - I was trying to push a Sherman with two Ram Kangaroos. I thought that it would work because of the Ram's higher power/weight ratio, but maybe the computer throws the Ram in the same class as a HT in terms of pushing things out of the way.

I tried pushing a tank that was bogged in once, but it wouldn't move. I think you can only push a vehicle if it has been immobilized as a result of enemy fire. Does anyone know for sure?

I'll agree that it's Kommerscheidt for the reasons that Kingfish mentioned, but I think it's much earlier in the game. I'm going to say it's the beginning of turn four, when the Allied Armor has just appeared on the trail. And I'm pretty sure that the exact location on the map is the east end of that long patch of woods located 40m south of the Kall River trail as it enters the town of Kommerscheidt. The camera is pointing north. FWIW, I had a German LMG team die in almost the exact same location.

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 52

I've just done my part.

130 dB is pretty dang loud. A quick search gave an example of 130 dB being the equivalent of a pneumatic jackhammer from the operator's position - definitely painful and enough to cause short-term deafness after as little as 15 minutes of exposure. It's also a level over which a shout cannot be heard - i.e. the tank commander can be screaming at you, and you can't hear his orders.

No. You drag the waypoint behind the tank, and while it is selected hit the 'reverse' key to change it to a 'reverse' waypoint. Then it's just like it was a reverse waypoint all along. This is another reason to plot multiple "tophat" style maneuvers at once - it gives you more waypoints to play with. You want to keep them close together (keep the path lengths at or less than the distance you can drag a waypoint) to maintain maximum flexibility. This can help offset the inflexibility you get at turn boundaries with no pending orders.</font>

I guess I wasn't clear. I mis-read the question as "how would German armor take out a KV-1", to which I was trying to make the point of the greater tactical flexibility offered by the greater distribution of radios in the German army at that time. However, my view of eastern front combat tends to be colored by my ASL experience. I was just over at The Russian Battlefield, and it was enlightening. The loss rate was actually very high, with the commander of the 10th tank division stating that 56 of 63 KV-1's were lost in June '41. He details the list as 11 lost in combat, 11 lost without a trace, and 34 lost due to technical problems and abandonment by their crews. So I guess the right answer is to wait for the KV-1 to break down. The site goes on to say that 88mm Flak guns could kill them, and that 105 howitzers could knock off a track. No mention about infantry close assault.

I'm surprised that nobody has said this... I would use the radio . Coordinate a swarming armor attack, call down some smoke, coordinate feints and thrusts, coordinate with the infantry, then watch the befuddled KV-1 commander try to figure out what the heck is going on. It'll definitely be interesting to command 1941 Russian tanks with green crews and no radios. :eek:

It's probably just me, but don't the gun barrels look just a llittle too short and fat? Just thought I'd mention it... Michael</font>

Barkhorn, Welcome to the club. You'll find a lot of former and current ASL'ers amongst the CM community. (I myself am in the middle of a Pegasus Bridge CG right now.) One of the things where CM definitely rocks compared to ASL is the spotting - basically everyone starts HIP until someone gets eyes on that part of the board, and even then units may mis-identify the enemy (green troops have this habit of calling every German tank a Tiger or a Panther). Units can also be spotted via sound contacts, giving you an incentive to move that tank slowly behind that line of woods instead of roaring around at full speed. Buy the game, you won't be disappointed. P.S. CM wins hands-down in the setup/takedown department - no Catyushas, etc. P.P.S. Scenario depot has some scenarios (e.g. Hitdorf on the Rhine, Merzenhausen Zoo) which will seem awfully familiar...