Blackcat
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Posts posted by Blackcat
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"difference between organic mortar and any other kind might be"
organic in this context means part of that unit's establishment. A battallion will have a platoon of medium mortars as part of its standard organisation or establishment (T&OE in the American). SO those mortars are organic to the battalion.
Organic suport units tend to be more responsive to the needs of a unit than those that belong to some other, usually higher, formation (because there is a shorter line of communication and the battalion commander doesn't have to ask permission). In the game this can usually be seen by the faster response times of 81mm mortars compared to heavy artillery.
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Follow, definitely follow. Close enough to keep in contact with all the sections but not close enough to be a first target or get caught in a shell burst. My rule of thumb for an infantry platoon: in open country with a line of sight it should be no more than 100 metres from any unit it commands, in close country where you need to rely on voice no more than 50 metres. I always try and fight my platoons as a unit and not let them get mied up with others and those distances enable me to do that efficiently and keep good C2.
For support arms (MGS, engineers, etc.) These I find have to be doled out to platoons depending on the task in hand for that platoon (e.g. take a building by breaching a bocage or a wall will need a section of engineers with demo charges). So support units will not normally fight as a unit under their own platoon commander (exception mortars see below), nonetheless I do keep them within the same distance tolerances as above to the commander of the platoon they are "attached" to.
Though there are situations which demand something else, I normally like to keep my on-map mortars in a group well out of harms way under either their own commander, if one is provided, or a higher HQ. That way I can test all the comms to the mortars in the setup phase and know that they will, nearly, always work when I need them to.
Other players will do things differently, but that is what I find works pretty well.
You might also what to experiment with platoon formations (e.g. 2 up then the HQ then a reserve section), different situations need different solutions but the classic two up one back is a good starting point and on attack or defence it provides a monoeuvre element that can flank or fill gaps as needed.
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"they should never be the initial team to follow through the breach "
You can set up the order so that they aren't. There was a thread around a while back in which a poster detailed exactly how to do this. I tested it and it worked, first time I have been able to do it in CMSF or CMBB. A search should turn it up.
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Coming under fire might have caused my two from yesterday, If they did it was light small arms fire that I didn't notice at the time, but it was possible. The problems really seem to kick in if the vehicle hits the parapet. In the one 105 incident it seemed to strike the parapet a glancing blow then try and turn back into the centre of the road and that was pretty much it.
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There are definitely issues with bridges.
Playing Carbide Carbide yesterday, the first vehicle I sent across the East Bridge was a half track it had a way point on the near bank and another on the far bank, both in the centre of the road and a straight path between them. Half way across it decided to drive into the bridge parapet and then do a little big of turning and shunting before finally making its way across. Once on the other side it cleared the bridge proper then hit the last bit of the parapet on the near side and stuck there. Was immoveable for the rest of the game. Other vehicles crossed OK.
Then my 105 Sherman decided it was going to hit the parapet for no known reason (a learner driver?). That was it, it never moved again, but it did later disappear. Seriously, several turns later I saw that the actual tank had disappeared; its icon was still there, but the tank wasn't. Unforunately its bridge blocking effect was still in operation.
Since the launch there have a steady numebr of players reporting problems with vehicles and infantry getting stuck on bridges. I remember, long ago, Steve saying they were tricky to code and it looks like there is still some tweaking to do. I am sure they will sort it out.
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I thought this behaviour was an acknowledged fault to be addressed.
I thought that too. Something to do with the orders the tank had when it was hit.
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"They only grudgingly accepted "funnies" like flails, flame tanks and mine rollers."
They didn't, at least not for D-Day. See "Cracking, Hitlers Atlantic Wall" (Appendix C) for details. Mind you even if the had, as Einsenhower wanted, it is doubtful that enough could have been produced in time.
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@ springelkamp, That may be true. however we are talking about the sherman being a death trap primarily.
I also think it a little short sighted on the US commands part to say tanks should not fight tanks when they know from experience in other theatres it often happened.
I cannot say it was the wrong decision to ship shermans rather than pershings or t26s from an logistics POV. But from an moral and morale POV it was not a good look. Something that would certainly be frowned upon today in the current theatre of operations.
I am not sure that there is much evidence to suggest that the morale amongst allied tankers was generally low in the ETO. They did seem to fight well and they did win. Was morale affected by the decision not to push the production of the M26 earlier? I very much doubt it. I shouldn't think 1 tanker in a 1000 had even heard of the M26 or knew that a better tank could have been with them if different decisions had been made.
As for the moral element, I think it is a capital mistake when considering history to judge the people by the standards we hold and knowledge we have today. Much better understanding comes from considering what they knew and judge their decisions against that. Its also a capital mistake to take any old soldier's memoirs as gospel and Cooper is a case in point.
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Here is the quote from "Death Traps" about the combat losses. I do not know what the Germans losses were like. I was out by a few hundred percent sorry. But the point still stands. That being that the US in one division lost a lot of tanks. They were certainly not likely to survive for long even when the US army had huge superiority in equipment, numbers and logistics. You could indeed say they were death traps as it is likely that every tanker that originally went in got his ride shot from under him.
"the 3d armored division entered combat with 232 m4 sherman tanks. During the European Campaign, the division had some 648 sherman tanks completely destroyed in combat and we had another 700 knocked out, repaired and put back into operation. this was a loss rate of 580 percent. In addition to this staggering battle loss rate of 580 percent in our main battle tanks, we also experienced extremely heavy wear and tear due to the everyday operation of the equipment."
The references to the m12 in what seems to be a direct fire incidence:
"The fighting became so intense that CCA finally brought up some of the 155mm GPFs on M12 chassis from the 991st field artillery."
"At that point, a German tank came through an opening in a hedgerow and encountered and m12 with its 155mm GPF zeroed in on the gap. The 155 let go and struck the tank at the base of the turret, completely decapitating it. the turret and gun were blown off, and the tank stopped in its tracks.
Thanks for providing the source you are using. At least I know where you are coming from.
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Sophistry Dude. The map is still only a grid of squares with each square having a series of attributes for graphics and movement and what ever. BF is not stupid and they would keep it simple for simpler programing and program interface.
BTW CMx2 is not a new program ... they used CMSF coding, most likely why there is a problem with armor being too accurate in CMx2. But the basic's for CMSF came from CMAK, or at least a straw horse outline vastly improved (?) or changed..
Gosh, who to believe? Should I believe the people who designed and wrote the games when they tell me that not a line of code from CMx1 is in CMx2 or should I believe a player's opinion based on his own ideas of programmers and software engineers? Its a tricky one.
P.S. CMx2 is the game engine. CMSF was the first game based on this engine.
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... In general, I try to make sure (a) that my spotter has good LOS not only to the specific target point, but also can see most of a broader area at least 100m radius, and ideally 200m radius from the target point...
Wow, thats quite a big order, 100m spotting radius let alone 200m ain't easy to get on a Normandy map. In fact against a well sited opponent I am not sure it could ever be done. - there is almost always going to be some terrain feature that will block LOS somewhere in that size circle.
I agree with your basic point, but I think you are being too conservative with the clear LOS radius. I certainly get most of mine on target without having that degree of view.
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"the reason the Sherman was weaker in terms of crew survival was its propensity to catch on fire and blow up (well modeled in the game BTW)"
But MkIVs and Stugs seem to catch fire just as often in the game. So the game is modelling them wrongly?
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"800% of original force losses in normandy"
Seems awfully high. DO you have a source for that?
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LookeyLou I think you are talking about the preplanned barrage, the one you can configure in the set-up phase. That has to be timed.
TRPs (Target Refernce Points) are something entirely different. See page 41 of the manual for details.
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On the Ronson tag for the Sherman, I seem to recall someone posting on here the official after battle damage survey figures. I think I am correct when I remember that the percenatage of Shermans found to have burned was not much different to MLIVs and other tanks.
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Probably not, sh!t happens, but there do seem to be some hidden mechanics in the game that help things along.
For example, when I have had mortar or 105mm artillery barrages go astray it does sem to have been when my spotting unti has a very limited LOS to the enemy position. Sometimes this has been a grey line, and sometimes whilst I have had a clear, bright, blue it is to a limited area, that is to say when the target line snaps to the action point it snaps to a point that my spotter cannot see. In such crcumstances the barrage sometimes arrives on target and sometimes it don't.
On the other hand when I gave a nice, clear view of the target area, and in particular to the end of the target line I have never had a barrage go astray.
I have seen some people mention that barrages go wrong when the spotter cannot see where the spotting rounds land. That has not been my experience. I don't say they are wrong but I am sure I have had spotting rounds fall where the spotter had no LOS but as long as he had a god loine to the target the FFE fell in correct place.
The one exception to the seeing the end of the target line "rule" seems to be mortars firing just over the crest/hedge, but even then the seem to go wrong if I dont have a good LOS to my side of the crest/hedge.
That is just my experience, don't know if it helps.
Oh, one other thing the final FFE point seems to have no relationship to where the last spotting round landed. Yesterday I was desperately trying to take out a very pesky ATG, to which I could not get a clear LOS from any spotter. I had three succesive barrages miss. In the last one the final spotting found landed anout 100 metres due west, the FFE came in about 150 metres to the Nort East.
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"As a general comment about printed manuals... we're trying hard to continue offering printed manuals to the early customers who want them. But it's becoming a bigger and bigger problem with each passing year. There's already very little wiggle room for making this a commercially viable option for us in this world of every escalating costs and ever decreasing customer interest in paying for them. We're willing to stick to it as long as possible, however, since we know that theoretically the interest in printed manuals exists. When theory and reality diverge a bit more than we'll be going download only for good.
Steve"
Go now, Steve, go now. The days of the printed manual are over. If you free yourselves from the shackles of dead trees you could afford to pay someone to write a comprehensive manual, available in PDF only, and still have lots of money left over.
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I used to reckon on a ration of 4:1, so a 30 minutes scenarion would take me 2 hours to play. With CM:BM I can comfortably exceed that. Playing Carbide Carbide in WEGO against the AI (1.5 hours game time) took me closer to 12 hours real time, for what is basically a re-enforced company siezed action.
If one isn't single this game could be a relationship killer - just like the original.
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For what its is worth, my only beef with the manual is that it is too short. As an aide to get a new player into the game it is very good. As something of longer term use that explains things in detail - the sort of thing one might need having got over the inital hump - it is sadly lacking.
I am sure that there all sorts of good reasons why the manual had to be of the size and page length it is (cost and fitting inside the box are probably good starters), but, and you call call me Mr. Picky if you want, it really is more of an introductory guide than a user manual. Good job we have the internet and can ask the questions here that the manual doesn't answer.
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Thanks for owning up, Mr. Mc. I don't know whether I want to beat your brains out with a large haddock or buy you a succession of very large drinks. Probably I want to do both, but as I can't do either I shall just have to content myself with cold sounding words of thanks.
Thank you for giving us a beautifully crafted, carefully balanced, frustrating, oh-FFS-where-did-that-come-from inducing and enjoyable scenario on a really spiffing map. I dread to think how long it took you to make this masterpiece, but I am very grateful for all you time and effort.
The game was nearly spoiled by the bridge problem. My 105 Sherman got stuck on the East Bridge for no known reason and then disappeared. The icon was there but no sign on or under the bridge of the tank. I managed to squeeze a half track past this bit of ghostly armour but when I tried to get another Sheramn past it that got stuck too. So my follow on forces had to take the long detour via the ford. Aggravating but not your fault and not as it turned out critical. Hopefully BF will sort out the bridge bug soon.
Thanks again for a really, really good scenario.
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Isn´t that George MC. It certainly takes place on his Huzzar! map.
M.
Thanks, Matt,
Paging GeorgeMC, paging GeorgeMC.....
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Message to thread-starter Sandy
My sympathy--but at least you know your "steal box" has arrived in UK---no news whatsoever of my preorder (shipped 18 May) ostensibly for Brighton UK . Could be in Mars or up Uranus by now.
I also notice you mention "Parcelforce or farce" but I thought they were being delivered by DHL --they are the company Battlefront indicated on purchase document.
Could you or any other favoured UK Stealbox recipient confirm carrier please.
Mine was delivered by my local, happy, smiling postman and not a courier company.
However, mail in the UK is not a simple thing these days. Delivery companies like DHL, often subcontract the actual delivery (the so called last mile) to the Post Office who then charge them (at less cost price thanks to our idiot regulator). Why in some areas people are being hammered for an exhorbitant charge, far more than one would expect from reading the web sites, and others like me are charged nothing God only knows.
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The Carbide Carbide scenario has no designers notes and as far as I can tell nobody is claiming credit (accepting the blame?) for it. I should very much like to say a few words to the designer; so would anyone like to say who was responsible?
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Winecape has just posted on another thread that BF have said that Armoured Cover Arcs are definitely out for the Normandy series. So, I think it would be a sensible idea to forget about this issue for the next 18 months or so.
C2 -- sorry to be a noob..
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
The two up one back would look like
Squad ------------- Squad
-----------HQ-----------
---------Squad----------
So if the front two hit trouble on the advance they can pin the enemy in place whilst the third section does an "end run" to get onto their flank. You'll get the idea.
Unless assigned in the editor, MGs sections are not organic to platoons. If you want to assign a MG section to a platoon just keep it within the platoon commanders command range (see above) and it seems to get most, if not all, of the benefits of being within C2.