Blackcat
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Posts posted by Blackcat
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Well spotted, Mr. Emrys. What I meant was precisely the reverse of what I actually wrote! I think it would be reasonable if a green team were slower than a regular team.
*Blushes with shame"
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I must be mistaken then. To be honest I haven't really studied the manual yet. Unit has red cross to company commander, and a green light to the divisional representative on the map.
That means the company commander has comms with the higher command not the selected unit.
Sheesh, Mr. Stanbridge, you post elsewhere how you are not doing so well in your battles and now you tell us that you haven't got round to reading the manual yet. Have you considered that these two things might be linked?
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Fuser,
I just finished my first go at this - a major defeat. Basically I ran out of time.
**** Spoilers ******
I tried a wide flanking move around the right - 1 platoon to seize the woods on the hill and then use a platoon mounted in half-tracks to grab the far objective. Meanwhle he third platoon, plus the late arrival tanks pushed up the far left flank.
Clearing the woods took too long (that damn Stug), nearly 15 minutes - though the Panther died without causing any casalties. However, once they were clear I was horrified to find that there were no, that is to say not one, openings in the bocage around the end objective! The left flank just got bogged down, cleared the woods but not the town - minimal casualties but also not enough progress.
I can testify that under 1.01 trenches provide much better protection than under 1.0.
Thanks for a great scenario, I'll try again.
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Does a green mortar team respond faster than a regular mortar team? Dunno, but it seems reasonable to me.
"However it still has C2 links to the division" I am confused by this. How do you know? If you are looking at the red crosses/green lights in the bottom left hand corner, I fear you are misreading what that actually means.
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Yup, I have seen this feature since CMBO. It has always annoyed me. If I can see the doorstep, how come I can't see the door?
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Regarding Paper Tiger's post above, a word to any new players that might be reading this.
Mr. Tiger does design exceptionally good scenarios and campaigns. What makes them so good is not his ability to produce finely crafted and beautiful looking maps. No, it is his ability to put together AI forces and plans that use those gorgeous maps to their full advantage.
So when Mr. Tiger says he has produced a short scenario with everything set for you to go now with your attack - no need for recon or manoeuvre - what he means is you are going to get absolutlely hammered and should expect to take 50% casualties even if you manage to scrape a win.
As you sit staring, dumbfounded at the ruin of your troops you may well hear the faint sound of demonic, cackling laughter. That will be Paper Tiger celebrating yet another victim.
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Steiner,
I have read your post five times and I still come back to the question you pose yourself.
"Steiner, what are you talking about?"
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"In other words, where did they plan to stop? We all know the usual pitfalls that befell Germany but knowing what they wanted to ultimately achieve would help in figuring out what they had to do to get that done."
I don't think Hitler (and his was the only opinion that mattered) had an ultimate aim. Even if Russia had packed it in in 1941 I think he would have carried on finding more enemies to fight, invading Persia and India perhaps, who knows. I think that perhaps war had become the aim. That would certainly explain his lack of overall strategy.
Some years ago at a conference I chatted this point over with two psychiatrists and a psychologist. The consensus of their views was that Hitler was totally bonkers and what he ultimately, and subconsciously, wanted was what he got - Götterdämmerung.
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Aha, got it Blackcat, my mistake. Was it ever conceivable that Caen could have been taken on D Day? I need to read more on this campaign but are you saying the modern historians are overly critical or stripping aways years of official propaganda (I read it's one of the reasons why Patton and Monty disliked each other, they both asiduously cultivated a media image)
Could Caen have been taken on D-Day? I don't think so. Leaving aside any German response, the practicalities of getting the units through the beach zone, formed up and moving in time to march to Caen were such that the task was impossible. Then there is the issue of the training and experience of the units assigned to the task.
I am not sure how much Montgomery really believed in the possibility of his deep armoured thrusts on day 1, but we will never know.
As to the historians. My view is that history has fashions and historians have axes to grind, papers to publish and books to sell. So the perceived wisdom goes in cycles for a least a generation or two after the main players have died (and sometimes for centuries). I fancy the Normandy campaign is undergoing one of those swings where the likes of D'Este, Hastings et al are regarded less highly as another generation of scholars go back to primary sources and re-evaluate what went on and why. A good example would be John Buckely's book "British Armour in the Normandy Campaign" (ISBN 0-415-40773-7), which lucidly and convincingly comes to very different conclusions then the previous generation of historians.
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I'm painting with a very broad brush, of course. And, as I briefly alluded, the Allied plan for how to get out of Normandy changed over time as the situation on the ground developed, some objectives were attained, and others were not (or were attained much later than anticipated). No plan survives contact with the enemy, yada yada.
But after a certain point, I think the record shows pretty clearly that, on a strategic scale, the Allies' overall goal from mid-campaign on was a breakout by American forces into Brittany, and that other operations were intended to support this. This is not to say that the efforts of the Eastern half of the Allied line were in any way secondary. In the endgame, sooner or later someone has to actually take the shot on goal while the rest of the team maneuvers to give the shooter the best chance possible, and in Normandy the shooter ended up being the Americans.
I agree with you.
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Did not even go there. My simple question was, was it by design or default that the Commonwealth forces initially tackled most of the significant German armoured assets? Blackcat suggested that YankeeDog's interpretation of events left something to be desired.
Vark, In my experience there aren't many people around who accept that the plan mostly worked, as YankeeDog seems to do. Indeed most modern commentators seem to reject that tieing down the German armour in the East was actually part of the original plan and insist that Montgomery invented that idea during the battle to cover for 21st AG's failure to take its early objectives and to make much progress.
That Caen was a day 1 objective surely cannot be disputed. Whether it ever should have been is another matter. However, it was and historians such D'Este make much of the fact when talking about the British/Canadian armies' failure to stage a breakout before mid-August, and then only because the Americans had done so in the West. Personally I think D'Este, Jarymowycz, Hastings and, the daddy of them all, Liddell Hart over-state their case.
Nonetheless, an opinion such as that expressed by YankeeDog, seems to me to be generous in the current day. I didn't say it left anything to be desired and I am not saying its wrong, just that it is, for modern commentators, uncommonly generous.
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That is quite a generous interpretation, YankeeDog.
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How about, knowing how well the forum search tool works, if you'd just point me to answer, since you seem to know it.
Thanks for the help....
Sorry, I just remember this matter being raised and answered before. Searching for "Screenshot" in the CMBN forums should get you your answer quite quickly.
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Try doing a search of the forum, you will find your answer.
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"I have driven it next to bocage, given move order directly into bocage...no joy."
Have you put the destination waypoint on the other side of the hedgerow? That is where it needs to be.
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"Secondly you can only do the small bocage not the big stuff."
Really? I have been able to use Rhinos to make a path through high bocage without any problems.
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"That would actually be a welcome addition (at higher difficulty levels). A delay between issuing orders and having them received dependent on C2 links, much in the same way that spotting information takes time to be shared."
Maybe, but please not the old command delay rules based on the number of way-points which made road movement slower than moving across country. The effect of such a system now, when we can stack orders at way-points, would be awfull. In fact I would argue that it would emasculate the game.
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I hope development time is shorter than that. I am not getting any younger......
Well, unless BF start contracting out a lot of the work I can't see that there will be less than six months between modules. That is faster than they have managed so far, but they have less fixing of the core engine to do, and it would be in line with their strategy as stated by Steve years ago. They do have Mr. Cuilton on board now, of course, so we might be pleasantly surprised.
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The development plan was announced by BF some while ago, and there is a thread about it if you search.
In short there will be three modules to CMBN, 21st Army group, Market Garden and and odds and sods. Then there will be a new game, also with, I think, three modules to take the west front from the winter of 44 upto the end of the war in Europe. Once that it done East front games will be developed. So I reckon we won't see anything in Russia for at least three years, probably nearer four.
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"I miss seeing after the battle the scores of individual tanks"
Why do you miss this? It is a feature that is in the game. You can even see cummulative scores for a unit in a campaign.
Confused from Sussex
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"Unless of course God is French...which would explain a lot."
You may need to expand on that.
P.S. Sorry missed yor post first time around.
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Jesus, how did we go from talking about knowledge to how much strategic importance a battle had or didnt have over a conflict?
and all this is a mortar thread?
Tee hee! And not only that but the Battle of Cartagena de Indias happened more than 200 years ago. I do love this forum.
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Yes, but the actions in the war of Jenkins ear didn't change any strategic balance. Trafalgar did. From 21st October 1805 until the end of WWII, maybe a bit later, Engalnd could not be invaded.
Now, of course, anyone who wants to could invade - our only defence is that we have nothing anyone could possibly want.
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Wait, I didnt quite get that. could you explain it again?
You know about the battle of Trafalgar, don't you? If you don't I fear we have a great deal of tedious spadework in front of us.
Improbable spotting
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Tree foilage does block line of sight but very occasionaly there are gaps which due to the limitations of graphics are not obvious to the player. This has I am sure been the subject of a previous thread.
The situation above would appear to be an example of this. If you look closely the first trees encountered are low and the Panther would be able to see over the top of them. Behind those there is a low spot between two tall trees and in front of that spot it seems like there is a junction between two smaller trees. To the human player it would seem that there is no gap. However the internal modelling is more refined than the graphics display and so there may well be a clear LOS.
Such situations are aggravating, but in my experience, rare enough not to be a major problem.