Blackcat

OK, Mr. Burke, even though this thread has bugger all to do with CMBN, I'll bite. Montgomery was feeling no heat over the Falaise Pocket affair - he and Patton wanted to do the long envlopment to avoid the problems that led to it happening in the first place and, if successful would have netted a much bigger catch. It was Bradley's lack of bottle that led to the Falaise battle and Bradley got it wrong. Everybody wanted the war to be over ASAP and there this airborne corps hanging around in England doing nothing. Lots of schemes had been cooked up for them, but none had come to anything. Everyone, including the airborne, thought this was a waste. Along comes a bright young staff officer with an idea that could unite these two threads - give the airborne something to do and finish the war quickly. For reasons that will never now be known Montgomery buys into the idea even though it goes against everything he had done in WW2 to date and went against the lessons he learned from WWI. Eisenhower, desperate to finish the war sees it as a gamble which if it comes off would save many lives and finish the war, of which he was heartedly sick, earlier than anything else on the table. So he goes for it. Intelligence comes in that suggests it might not work because of German units re-fitting near Arnhem. However the airborne (especially 1st Airborne Div) are desperate not to have another mission cancelled and the top brass still see this as a gamble with a good pay off and nothing serious to be lost. So the intel is ignored. It goes ahead and ends up as a cluster f*ck. Nevermind it was worth a try, revert to Plan A. Now if someone could explain any sort of reasonable logic behind the Hurtgen Forest Campaign, I'd be grateful. That has always struck me as a war crime committed by the US army against its own troops.

Mr. C., We will just have to disagree on this one. The success of the deception operation was such that for many weeks the Germans thought an invasion in the Calais region was on the cards. It was a masterpiece of allied work. I think you are crediting the Germans with more accurate information than they had and as a result giving them less credit than they deserve. How overwhelmingly obvious was the map at the time of Cobra to them at the time, I wonder.

"that they could make fire adjustments as quickly as they did with no sort of computers " But they did have computers; manual, analog ones - you know slide rules, or perhaps you don't. Great bits of kit and for the purposes of calculation in practice not that much slower than the modern electronic stuff, maybe just a bit more prone to human error. There must be a few old 'uns on this site who remember using slide rules.

The wonderful thing is that in the Neatherlands you don't have to they all speak good English (better than some English oiks, in fact), unless you bump into some of their new entrants in which case Urdu is a better bet.

Well done, Mr. Springelkamp. Quite right to correct us ignorant non-Dutch people.

Well, I finished Le Ham with a German surrender with just two minutes left on the clock. As fights in this campaign go I didn't think this one was too bad, I took my time went for a long left flanking move to hit the defences from the rear as far as possible and let the artillery do the heavy work. It came as a bit of a shock to find at the end that I had taken 22 casualties (11 dead and 11 WIA). My units are now starting to look very thin. The preceding battle ("Holding Action" - which was a sod, harder than Hell in the Hedgerows) left E company of 2/505th barely combat effective. Though I think, with one possible exception, I have kept below the 10% casualties those one in tens mount up after a while. Can anyone tell me how many more fights there are to go? I have to say that this campaign has been superb at every level. If CMBN consisted of nothing else but "The Road to Montebourg" I would say it was worth every penny, and it's re-playable against different AI plans. Brilliant stuff, Mr. Tiger. P.S. It might be observer bias, or the luck of the draw, but I think Paper Tiger has a bias for the off-side. Most of my best performances have come when I have gone for the left hook (Hell in the Hedgerows was very much the exception).

Mr. C., I agree with all of your points but this one, "Freezing 15th army in Pas de Calais. Later they ran reckless risks, but on this key item they were both easily misled, arrogantly sure of themselves, hopelessly wrong and entirely too conservative." I think you are being too harsh. The allied deception effort was enormous, deep, complex, long lasting (the setting up of turned German agents as totally reliable by the XX Committee started before even Cossac was formed), and very well done. To write-off the German response to the most brilliant example of maskirovka of the 20th century as being, "Easily led" is unfair on both the Germans and the deceivers.

Some changes to the way artillery functions in the game could be justified on the grounds of realism, but my worry would be making that arm even more powerful in the game than it is now. There is a gameplay issue that has to be kept in mind.

I am trying to test a scenario which involves mines. I have found a minefield by walking into with a squad of engineers. What I can't work out is how to clear/mark the mines. The engineer squad now has the "Mark Mines" command enabled, if I click on it it seems to want me to give them a location. As I am already in the minefield this seems a bit odd, but whatever direction I choose nothing seems to happen, except that the squad gets very tired after a few turns. Can someone please explain how this mark mines lark actually works?

True, Mr. Emrys. I am sure I read somewhere that there wasn't enough explosive in the allied stockpile to blast all the holes that would be needed, even if there was the time. The amount of explosive needed to blow a decent hole in a ten foot high, six foot thick earth bank reinforced with two hundred years of tree roots should not be underestimated. Nor should the length of time that would be needed to set up such an demolition charge. In many ways the problems presented by the bocage hedges have been greatly understated in the game. My engineers can turn up at a section of high bocage and inside two minutes blast a hole in it big enough for a tank to drive through and use just two demo charges in the process. Realistic? I don't think so. However, it is just a game and some allowances have to be made for playability.

Good grief! All that fuss and sweat about how the allies had a "relatively slow rate of advance in the autumn of 1944", allowed too many to escape, never managed an encirclement etc. and the only thing you think they could have done that would have made any difference was charge harder at Falaise! Well, call me unimpressed. I thought you might at least have something to back up your original statement. I had hoped you might have offered some learned insight. But no it comes down to the allies should have closed the Falaise pocket more completely. Sheesh.

Sardaukar, I know what didn't happen, what you seem to be saying is that once the allies were out of Normandy and pursuing accross France and Belgium they should have been able to encircle the retreating remnants of the German army. If that is what you think then please tell me how you think this could have been achieved.

Yapton, is the Maypole still going? I remember it as a good pub, but so many country pubs have closed in recent years. I am further East near Hurstpierpoint.

I really don't want to get into the Falaise argument - it is one of those subjects were myths are more believed than the history. However, as a counter-factual thought experiment one might consider the plan that Montgomery AND Patton thought would be better - the "long envelopment" - which Eisenhower vetoed, on the advice, probably, of Bradley. That said, I am still keen to learn from Sardaukar his ideas of what the allies should have done/could have done better.

Mr. Marlow, I know about Falaise, thats why I said once the breakout had occurred.

Sardaukar, I am intrigued. Once the breakout from Normandy had occurred, in what way did the allies allow the Germans a measured retreat? What do you think they should have done differently?

"demo charges against tanks at distances of up to 15 meters" Throwing a demo charge 15 metres? That is nearly 50 feet. I don't think there were many men around who could manage that, if any. Are you asking for a form of abstraction whereby infantry can go from one action spot into another and back again without anyone being able to fire on them?

The red marker relates to the unit below it. So a red marker next to the platoon HQ means that the selected unit is out of contact with its platoon commander. Then a red cross beside the Company HQ indicates that the Platoon HQ in not in C2/Comms Link with the company commander. Thus a red cross beside the battalion HQ indicates that the company commander is out of contact with the battalion HQ. What the quantifiable effects are of being out of the C2 loop are only BF knows. Spotting is an effect one can easily see, though with the players God's eye view and the ability to area fire anyway - discussed on here a week or two ago - its impact is uncertain. The ability to call down artillery support fire is also compromised. Other than, that who knows how much it affects morale and fighting ability? You could play a few games ignoring the C2 aspect and see how you get on. If you do, please be sure to let us know the results.

Actually it seems that you were in part correct. According to Buckley* from the war's begining until May 1943 (the decision to scale back tank production in the UK) the Brits produced 3,000 more tanks that the Germans did. Of course, most of them weren't upto snuff but that is another matter. We live and learn. *British Armour in the Normandy Campaign.

Costard, that all makes perfect sense. Certainly on that occasion when I moved the mortar away from the edge it functioned very happily thereafter. The bocage examples were also resolved by moving the units, just slightly, maybe they were too close to the hedge for their crews to deploy properly - though that seems unlikely for an ATG. I have still got the saved game of that somewhere, when I get time I'll dig it out and check.

I have had this problem several times and it never resolves itself. I have also had this with ATG guns. The only solution I have found is to cancel the fire command and move the unit (just a few yards seems to be enough). What causes this I don't know, but with one exception, the units that had this problem were hard against low bocage. My current theory is that it is something to do with a blocked LOF from the gunner's location, possibly by a tree. However, I don't know that for sure and haven't done any testing. I first posted about this problem a few weeks ago in a thread entitled "Mortar Doesn't Fire" (or something like that) and it was suggested on that occasion was that it was caused by the mortar being sited too close to the map edge. I have raised the problem twice more since then but not received any suggestions as to what might be causing this to happen. Maybe your thread may tempt someone who knows to comment.

Did we really? I never knew that.

Mr. Emrys, I know from your signature that you have a history of being correct in your judgements (six times in eleven years is no small achievement). However, I beg of you to consider PBEM games are not always meeting engagements. Give me 15 minutes as the attacker on most maps under the proposed artillery memory arrangements and I'll be abe to drop shells pretty much anywhere I please for the rest of the game. As the defender I'll have every route in covered with, effectively, TRPs. As you say the proposal is not just to be able to repeat the last mission (we can achieve that effect already by specifying a longer mission and then cutting it short) but for artillery units to remember what the "co-ordinates" were for a fire mission on a particular place/area and to be able to repeat that fire mission with a much shorter delay time. More realistic than at present? Yes of course it would be. However, if we wanted realistic artillery in these games then we could have predictive fire. It was developed and polished to a fine degree in WWI, but even in CMSF we didn't get it because it would ruin the GAME. Artillery we all know is (whisper it in case Trail Ape is listening) the Queen of the Battlefield. However reducing the game, even further, to exchanges or mortar/artillery fire will, I suggest, not improve the experience (unless you are a TrailApe).

"What a brilliant idea CM was and still is. A perfect use of a computer" A perfect use of a computer. Yup, that sums it up for me. When I first found the demo of CMBO, it was many years after I had started gaming on computers (Commodaore, BBC, Atari(s), IBM PCs etc.). I downloaded the demo and thought, "Yes! Someone has finally worked out what a personal computer is for". Years roll by, technology and personal circumstances change, and now, when I think about it, I could cheerfully dump my PC - except for CMX2. Combat Mission, it is what personal computers were made for.

I wouldn't disagree with much of that. I do worry about game play, however, and at the end of the day this is a game. In my PBEM games too many dissolve into a mortar/artillery fest as it is. The effect of "repeats" would I fear turn the first five/fifteen minutes of any game into an artillery registration session and thereafter the role of infantry into targets - advance small teams, the enemy open up, splat pre-regsitered artillery land on their heads, rinse and repeat. It might be more realistic to have mortar artillery teams to remember where they have shot before, but what would it do to the game experience?