c3k

Oi! I'm right here! My approach has been to eradicate every last one of your men. If all your men are dead, it will be much easier for me to capture the ground. Or, maybe I'm only saying that to lull you into a false sense of expectation? Back to GaJ/Bil: Bil's been a bit quiet lately. Perhaps readjusting forces for the next phase of the attack. I like how GaJ is moving up a bit, trying to stay engaged with Bil's forces. That does two things: it prevents Bil from having a free hand to reposition, and it gives GaJ some much needed intel. Ken

Nicely done! Now, go shoot something!

I am too easily swayed by what I read. I used to think the Mr. Emrys was right. Now, I see that other people thought he was right. Feet of clay, unshod, trod upon our battlefield.

That was an enjoyable read, but there is something that fairly screams against using the experiences of the 501st and 503rd French Regiments as a hard baseline. First, I FULLY agree that the final drive was a weakspot for Panthers. The Germans admitted it themselves. (They blamed the lack of rare minerals needed to create a stronger gear steel alloy. They did not blame the design. They eschewed a simpler design due to the disruption to production.) The French Panthers came from a group which predominantly were abandoned due to mobility issues. Be that caused by fuel, final drive failure, or some other reason. If most of them had been abandoned due to final drive failures, well, what are the French going to replace the failed drives with? The Panthers with "good" final drives were not abandoned. As a study, there is a serious feedback loop present. Ken

And, were the bolded part true, how would GaJ know that? C'mon, this is not what you should be saying. Your statement may skew the battle. If GaJ believes your statement, he may change what he is doing in order to increase his battlefield surveillance. If GaJ dis-believes your statement, he may do nothing different, but the THOUGHT that it MAY be true could change how he approaches the battle. If GaJ does not read your statement, then no harm. FWIW, I do not understand the basis from which you synthesized your statement. NO, do not try to explain it. That would only be digging your hole deeper. Ken

Credit where it's due: that grenade instructor certainly deserves some kudos for his reactions!

I like it. I like it a lot. I'm going to keep my eye on you... Ken

Yes, but is it an INTERLEAVED machine? And if not, why not? Is it faster that way? Or just cheaper to make? FWIW, what brought this up was the realization that the US Army has about 2,500 Abrams and does NOT want to upgrade all of them to the highest standard. Given the ability to spend a lot of money on chassis which stay in use for DECADES, I'm aware of the sensitivity towards maintenance costs, but also aware of the ability to tweak existing designs to an apex. I don't think the (modern) US Army has ever shied from extra maintenance cost if the design brings more capability. (Or, more profits to the contractor. I guess it depends on how you define "capability". Yes, that was a cheap shot, but how could I not take it?) The ability to put 1,500 hp to the track solves a LOT of problems. If that power were used more elegantly, could the tank gain better protection or armament? (The old triangle of weapon, protection, manueverability.) That's what got me thinking about the German tanks. Each allied army kept refining its last design. I really don't see much cross-pollination from one Ally to another, nor from their vanquished foe. (Sure, sloped armor and high velocity guns: but those were applied to current developments, not lifted and taken in toto.) The Germans saw an advantage in the interleaved system. I'm still curious how and why it disappeared and how a modern version would far vs. independent roadwheels. Mud, ice, and rocks between them: similar to the tales of woe inflicted upon the German dual rear-wheel trucks vs. the British single rear-wheel trucks in the desert. Why, then, are dual wheel the rule? More maintenance, hard to get to the inner wheel, etc., etc. Ken

That picture of the grenade toss is a great one! (JK: look at a picture, not film, of any pitcher at the back of his windup: the arm SEEMS to be in an impossibly contorted position: it is not: the dynamics of body motion are far different than the static poses would lead one to believe: <-- an extra colon, just because. ) Ken

I am sceptical of some of the propellant weights. Some weapons discussed have two charges; an initial accelerant, then a sustainer. (The sustainer may only fire for a fraction of a second, but it is more of a rocket/booster rather than an explosive which is what the initial accelerant is.) Some projectiles get a "boom" to get them out of the tube, then "whoosh" to get them up to speed. Let's try to keep apples to apples.

As others have already so stated, the use of was, perhaps, overlooked. Logistics is the key. However, logistics need to be USED. Keeping men supplied with crappy gear is not the way to win. I'm reminded of a quote by Creighton Abrams when he was Chief of Staff of the Army. They were working on the design of the tank which would eventually bear his name. He tried explaining that all the bells and whistles had to take into account how difficult it is to keep things working in the field. He said, and I paraphrase, "you can take a soldier into the desert and drop him off with an anvil. When you come back the next day to pick him up, the anvil will be broken in half. If you ask him how it broke, he'll shrug his shoulders and say it just happened." Back to interleaved roadwheels. In combat accounts, and period testing, they took amazing amounts of hits before they would fail. That, surely, must be worth something, especially with the standoff distance they would create for shaped charge warheads. Ice and mud freezing: the US contractor solution would be heated wheel rims with an active IR cloaking system to hide them from the enemy. <--- See? With all the new design tools, is there any way that ice/mud would not be such a hazard? Obviously, it did not immobilize all the tanks in the winter. Why, then, were some immobilized and some not? Did it take constant work to keep them mobile, or was just a few extreme cases which immobilized them? I don't recall reading anything about the Tigers in Tunisia (or elsewhere, for that matter) having the need to be overly cautious around areas with small stones. (Conflating a big chunk of ice to a small rock.) Obviously, wet material jammed amid the running gear, and then freezing, is far different than a few odd rocks flying about. Do modern tankers NOT have to clean out their running gear prior to sitting in a freezing location if they've been running about in the muck first?

Agreed. If you have a savegame, is it single-player, or hotseat? If you are serious about looking into this situation you have a few choices. Single player: Check your casualty level before that turn, then at the end of that turn. Load the previous turn. Ceasefire. Go through every enemy "kill stat". Load the "murder" turn. Ceasefire. Go through every enemy "kill stat". Kill stat 2 should be one greater than kill stat 1. (Meaning, every single enemy unit has to have their kills added up.) Hotseat: similar, but you can directly check ammunition expenditure. Is some enemy shooting at the Germans? That would probably account for it. A screenshot doesn't show the problem. Ken

Without defending or attacking the spotting model, a few quick thoughts: Bil has German optics. That doesn't mean much, but what may mean something is how MANY of them he has. Does he have more eyeballs on the space he's interested in than GaJ has staring back? If GaJ is spread out, then maybe only one team is looking across all the terrain that Bil is in. Bil's units are concentrated (putatively) and he may have 6 teams all looking towards GaJ's one team's location. The number of eyeballs REALLY matters for spotting. This in no way excuses some of the spotting "issues" we've seen. E.g., finding the bunker so quickly (you can argue that one from either side), or the ATG spotting (again, possible to argue that from both sides). But, yeah, it does seem like GaJ is fighting blind.

Well, there IS a night-time gamma correction. Check the hotkeys menu. I'm not sure how well it works in daylight. It's not the gamma slider that so many other games have, but it improves night games TREMENDOUSLY. As to it being "really easy to implement this feature", well, I'd suggest that it is perhaps more difficult than you think. Otherwise, wouldn't it be in by now? And, yes, I agree that having a rotating 3D picture, with a brief written description, would be awesome to include inside the editor and qb buying screens. However, the manual pdf should be a bit faster than interneting. (Cool: I just made up a word.)

^^^ Great pix, and great use of the long gun.

That is kinda cool, in a detached, "I'm glad it wasn't MY vehicle which got hit" way. Now shake it off and go attack something. You'll feel better.

(Partial quote taken from upstream.) Sooo. If better metallurgy has improved the torsion bars, wouldn't it be even BETTER to have interleaved roadwheels on the big heavies of today? Other than maintenance headaches, I'd think the benefits would still be there. It'd be kinda cool to be able to wave a magic wand and have a couple M1's go head to head (mobility and targeting on the move). One set with standard suspension, one with interleaved. Regardless of how it would fare in testing, it'd look cool. And THAT counts for something on the battlefield.

Gents, The German vehicle designers had a fetish with the interleaved roadwheels that they used on the Tiger, Panther, Tiger II, SPW series, Sdkfz 7, etc. That system had the obvious benefit of weight distribution, as well as a robust level of damage tolerance. The drawbacks would seem to be complexity of maintenance and repair in the field. (It'd be a bitch getting to the innermost wheel.) An ancillary benefit was the protection the unbroken line of wheels would add to the lower hull's armor. Why is this system no longer in favor? In fact, did ANYONE use it post-WWII? Ken

That was funny! Thanks for brightening my morning. To answer your followup, I most emphatically do NOT speak for BFC, however, I think you could reason out the answer to this yourself. Your post strikes me as coming from someone with a very mature perspective. (I stand ready to be proven wrong.) Please recognize that not everyone has as balanced an outlook. If BFC pre-announced a release date, even if by only a week, they'd be held to that date. The outcry, were it NOT to be released, would be huge. (That's not hypothetical: do some deep searches from earlier games.) Why would they miss the date? Well, a LOT of bug smashing and tweaking occurs, especially near the end. "Okay", you say, "just wait till it's done, announce it will be released in a week, and sit on the game for that time." Really? Then there's the saying, "Perfection is the enemy of good enough." Do you really think BFC would let that newborn code sit there for a week, totally untouched, while it's crying out for just one little tweak? Just a dab more dunkelgelb on the Elefant backside? Really, it's a tiny art change with no chance of affecting anything else. Until it does. Oops. All the above is just my .02, offered for free. I'm not sure what that makes it worth. Ken

Bah! Just start area firing on the left and gradually sweep across to the right. The sounds of screaming will indicate the location of hiding infantry. The ricochets will show where his tanks are. Recon by quad .50. Get to it!

My bold. Conversion factor for meters to feet is roughly 3.2808399. So, 8m is approximately 26' 2 61/64". That is side to side. The diagonal distance across the complete square action spot is, very roughly, 37' 1 13/32" . If your man is at one corner of one action spot, and the tank is at the opposite corner of the diagonally adjacent action spot, why, we could be talking about a distance of, oh, about 74' 2 13/16". (Ignoring armor thickness and how that would "push" the vehicle closer to the infantry, all distances being based on unit centers. Of course.) Now, a bit of math. The official world record for the 100 yard dash is about 9 seconds. (This being rough estimations, let's stick with whole seconds. For now.) The diagonal distance, above, is about .24744791666 of the 100 yard dash distance. Given a constant velocity during the dash (I know! This is a horrible assumption, but we've got to start somewhere!), then it should take about 2 1/4 seconds to cover that distance. Now, let's add an allowance in for combat gear and kit, versus track shoes and little flouncy shorts. Say, double the time? 5 1/2 seconds. Rough terrain rather than a springy track? Maybe a bit of wind against you? Let's double it again. Maybe 11 seconds for our running man to spring forward against the tank. Simple to do, then another 11 to run back to cover. (We could reduce that by, say, 1 second, because he is not burdened with the weight of whatever explosive he just affixed to, or near, the tank.) So, 11 seconds there, 10 seconds back. 21 seconds total. Let's add in a factor to take into account the possibility of death and mutilation for attempting this little run... The time needed to screw one's courage to the sticking post? (My apologies to The Bard.) Oh, THAT is a doozy. About an hour. Maybe 4. Heck. The tank's already moving. Missed my chance. Sorry. I'll do it later.

This looks like a great DAR. I love the scale. With all those forces on that map, there will be plenty of mayhem. Thanks.

I really enjoy how Bil is keeping his support tracks back in support. Good armor, fixed mounting, good optics, all lead to the "proper" use being from afar. Nicely done. However, they DO have treads on them. Treads are there to CRUSH enemy infantry! Roll on!!! Crush your enemy! Drive him before you! And lament something... (Where did my copy of "Conan" get to?) Ken

Hmm, does the game model incoming rounds coming INTO an open breech? What if the Brummbar opens its breech just as GaJ is hosing it down with .50? Could an impacting .50, other than ricocheting around the inside, impact the big ol' shell and set it off? Wouldn't that be cool...

It'd be interesting to see GaJ open up with that quad .50. (In CMSF, the quad 23mm Shilka is a BEAST. Tanks get their systems shredded by that thing. Optics, radios, etc., get ripped apart. In a good way. Not to mention what happens to poor infantry that get caught by it.) I wonder if the quad .50 can do similar anti-armor work?