YankeeDog

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Silvio Manuel: From what I've heard this week on the forum, Combat bonuses only increase a unit's firepower...in an infantry/rifle squad sense. It apparently does nothing for towed guns, AAA, inf. AT teams, etc. that rely on a Blast Rating instead of Firepower Rating. I'm not sure about this, but that would mean no increase of accuracy? [/QB]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Huh. Now that I think of it, my greater success with Green IAT under command might be due to factors like being able to set an ambush marker so the Greenies don't pop off a shot at long range and reveal themselves too early, not necessarily any real increase in accuracy per shot. They seem to do stupid things more often when they're out of command, plus the command delay becomes unworkable if they're out of C&C. . . Quoting the manual, though, under "Leadership Abilities" (p. 81) "Combat (icon: lightning bolt) Increases the fighting abilities of units under its command (i.e. to-hit chance, firepower)" (emphasis added) I'd be interested to get the answer from someone who really knows.

OK, I'll bite. I'd still definitely call myself a newbie, tho I'd like to think I've progressed beyond the 'beginner' stage to 'advanced beginner' by now. Anyway, this is the story of the first time I really kicked the AI's butt without cheating - it was a scenario I'd never played before, so I had no advantage in 'knowing the map', knowing the OPFOR, etc. Now I usually defeat the AI with ease on smaller scenarios. I'm still learning on the bigger battles, though - just need more practice keeping everything coordinated, I guess. This was the St. Anne's Chappelle scenario included with the CD - it's a short (10 turn) tiny scenario, and I assume most are familiar with it, but if you are not, you may not want to read on to avoid spoiling the fun. I played Allies' (U.S.) defence. My total victory was basically due to the heroics of one unit - Cpl. Riley's bazooka team - my lone AT asset. Over the course of the battle, he knocked out ALL of the German vehicles. Given that the tactical superiority of the attacking Axis forces in this scenario is mostly the three HTs and one AC they possess, this pretty much shut down the attack and doomed his infantry to annhilation. This scenario has one rather small setup zone around the VL for the Allies. There is one heavy building on the VL, plus a roadblock across the road that runs through the setup zone. There is a secondary (dirt) road that runs just south of the Allied setup zone (along the edge of my right flank), at a slightly higher elevation than the VL and the main road. My first success was good placement. Riley's zook was set up on my right flank, supported by an MG and an infantry squad. From there, he could cover both the main road and also the secondary road. As well, from here it would be easy to move him around unobserved - lots of good woods and trees. Kill #1: Early on in the attack, the AI sent a HT down the secondary road to flank my position and offer fire support to infantry units coming up on my left flank. My zook plinked this HT right from his starting foxhole, on this third shot as I recall, as the HT was trying to back rapidly out of the line of fire. So far, just good placement and some decent luck - his armor attack came right into where I had placed my one AT asset. Kill #2: IMMEDIATELY (as in next orders phase) after knocking out the first HT, I withdrew the zook back out of the line of fire, and then ran him across the secondary road and into the woods where I hid him. I moved an infantry squad forward to the zook's old foxhole - I've since learned that this is a neat trick - having two units like a squad and a zook switch places after contact can really confuse an opponent. From his new position, the zook could cover the secondary road, but not the main road. I had good LOS down the main road, though, so I knew nothing was coming down it right away. This was my first use of what now has basically become doctrine for me: "IAT never strikes twice from the same place." Not successfully, anyway. Sure enough, another HT rolled down the secondary road, firing at the foxhole where I'm sure it thought the zook was sitting. It was firing at my squad, though, and while it caused some casualties to the squad, it too got KOed by the zook. True, a little bit of luck (got him in one shot from 100m), but a HT side-on is a big target, especially for a completely unsupressed veteran zook. Kills #3 & 4: By now, I had another problem to deal with: an AC with a 20mm cannon was chewing up my left flank from a small hill in front of my position. My left flank was bearing the brunt of the infantry assault, I doubted it could hold for much longer if it kept taking supressive fire, especially since my .30 cal MG on that side had jammed, and so was not contributing at the moment. Once again Cpl. Riley came to the rescue. I moved him through the woods to a position well in front of my MLR where he could get a clear shot at the AC. On the way, he completely bypassed another HT that was coming down the secondary road. Riley KOed the AC in two shots, and then within 20 seconds of the AC kill, KOed the HT as it retreated up the road past him in an effort get some distance between it and an infantry squad I was attempting to close assault it with. Once the vehicles were gone, the Germans were screwed. I held the VL and the associated good defensive ground. He no longer had tactical superiority, and a quick counterattack on turn 10 forced his surrender - his infantry was already pretty chewed up from trying to attack a prepared position without support. What was lucky? Probably most of all the kill on the AC. This kill was at the longest distance (I think about 120m) and it quickly eliminated my opponent's best support asset. Even if I hadn't managed this kill, though, this attack still would have forced the AC to pull back from its firing position, and bought me valuable time to reorganize my left flank. Given that it was already turn 8 at this point, I still would have won, tho probably not by quite as wide a margin. The kill on the last HT was also a bit of luck, not so much in the kill itself, which took place at only 30 meters, but in that the HT backed literally right by the zook. Then again, that HT had just survived a close assault from a full squad, and I counted at least 4 grenade explosions around it and one demolition charge, so it had already used up alot of it's luck. What did I learn? Well, I mentioned my "IAT never strikes from the same place twice" rule. I'm sure there's a more 'military' way of stating this. I also began to understand the value of higher quality units - Riley was a Veteran zook, and I doubt I would have been able to maneuver him so effectively if he had been a less experienced unit, especially because my orders of necessity took him out of C&C range. You can do this (when necessary) with vet units. With lesser units, you're just going to get them broken (at best) or killed if you try to pull something like this. Now, I really analyze the forces I start a scenario at treat any vet (or higher) units I have like gold - ESPECIALLY vet IAT units. Green or less IAT units seem pretty worthless to me unless (1) they're massed together (at least 3), and (2) hopefully under C&C of a headquarters unit with a combat bonus. In larger tactical sense, this battle was the first time that I began to understand that a successful defence is generally an active defence. I actually find myself taking tactical risks like running zook teams around in wide right hooks on the defence much more than I do on offence - it's well worth the risk if you can (1) throw off the timing of an assault, or (2) take out a major asset that's supporting the attack. If you sit there and wait, you're probably just giving your opponent a chance to line up his support weapory and defeat you in detail. To this end, I now place my units on the defence with much more attention to being able move them if the need (or opportunity) arises. I hope some other newbies contribute to this thread - I love hearing tales from the front.

In regards to all of this debate about the explosive properties of metallic sodium and potassium -- There is a rather famous (among high school chemistry teachers, anyway) videotape of some teacher throwing bricks (perhaps about a kilo or so) of both metallic sodium and potassium into an old qarry filled up with water that we watched in high school. I think you can actually buy the video for classroom use. The explosive effect is indeed impressive. The sodium kept setting off small to moderate size explosions each time it hit the water. The brick would get thrown back up in the air by the force of the explosion 7 meters or so, and then jump back up in the air again when it landed. It bounced around for a good 45 seconds or so, so if you were actually able to get a kilo of metallic sodium dispersed into the water in a high-surface area form (such as a powder) so the explosive force was unleashed all at once, I'm sure the results would be catastrophic. Metallic potassium is apparently even more reactive in water - in the videotape the initial explosion was forceful enough to break the brick apart, resulting in many little chunks bouncing around the surface of the water - rather likes dozens of little M-80s going off. While it's been a long time since high school chemistry, it seems to me that there are a lot of reasons why metallic sodium would be kind of impractical as an explosive round. For one thing, the metallic sodium reacts with just about anything, including a number of the gases in the air. These reactions with the air are not catastrophic like WP - the sodium just degrades into various salts. I do remember that metallic sodium in the lab is generally kept in kerosene to prevent this. This would make storage of sodium munitions rather a bitch. Also, somwhere in the foggy recesses of what little knowledge I've retained from high school, it think I recall that it's rather expensive to manufacture. . . Why bother? more conventional explosives (and incendiaries) are cheap, give pretty darn good yield, and will still explode or burn on the odd chance they land on shore instead of in the water.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tecumseh: someone should run some tests... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Good idea. . . I might have some time later this week. I'll post here what happened. Cheers.

Sorry I didn't respond to this earlier. I was out of town and away from my PC for a while. Your point about larger buildings is well taken. Thus far I had only gotten as far as planning the technique for smaller buildings. I'll have to think about that. . . I totally agree with you that the best way to deal with an enemy unit in a building is to blow it up. But I am also interested in the question of how to assault a building when HE is NOT an option - either because you lack it, or because of other restrictions. I have read that allied forces, for example, were extremely reluctant to blow up civilian buildings in Holland during operation Market Garden. "No deliberately blowing up buildings" would be an interesting restriction to have to work around for a specific setup. . . Cheers.

I agree with the above. Never attempt to run a squad into a revealed enemy occupied building unless the unit in the building is suppressed. The few times I tried this before I learned my lesson, the squad broke and ran away before it even made it into the building, taking heavy losses. 'Human Wave' type assaults against a single rifle squad could probably work (i.e. rush one squad with a whole platoon), but you'd probably take considerable losses. Better to have two squads hang back and establish local fire superiority, and then rush in with the assault squad. It's best if the assault squad can rush the building along an approach vector approximately 90 degrees to the direction of the supressive fire - that way the supressing units will be able to continue firing until right before the assault squad enters the building. In my experience, the 'run to the edge of the building and then sneak inside' technique is best is you think there might be an enemy unit inside, but you're not sure, and you're pretty sure that any enemy unit inside is waiting for you enter in order to ambush you. Sneaking units get better spotting, so they're more likely to spot the enemy unit before it opens fire on them. Of course, one of the best ways to establish whether or not there's an enemy unit in a building is to hit it with a few rounds of DF HE. You may not always have the HE to spare, though (or you may not want to reveal where your tanks are. . .), so sometimes you just have to peek inside and see if anybody's home. Here's another techinque for checking out possible occupied buildings with infantry I've been fooling around with. I got the idea reading about modern U.S. Marines urban assault techniques. This is my adaptation of the technique for the CM battlefield, not a literal description of the actual Marine doctrine. This is a work in progress. I've managed to use it a few times, but nobody's been home the few times, I've tried it, so I'm not sure how well it works yet. Any feedback would be great. It's really an extension of bounding overwatch, adapted to the combination of long LOS (ex: along a street), and very short LOS (ex: within a building) present in urban combat. To do this you need at least two units. Three (or more) is better, though. Three squads works, but two squads and an MG (or tank!) is even better. If you have three or more units available, one unit serves as overwatch for the entire process. This is where an MG or a tank is most useful. It should have clear lines of fire to the building to be investigated, as well as any other nearby likely hiding places for enemy. Obviously, the more overwatch firepower you have, the better. If you only have two squads available, though, the initial overwatch job is covered by one squad (From now on, "squad B"). Once overwatch is in place, one squad (from now on, "squad A") runs to the nearest corner of the building and stops there. Make sure their facing (using the Rotate command) is into the building to be assaulted. If the enemy opens up on this unit from inside the building (or another location nearby), your overwatch firepower should allow A squad to withdraw to nearby cover without too extreme casualties, and then you can open up on the revealed enemy with everything you have, establish local fire superiority, and then assault them as usual. If A squad doesn't draw fire, and also doesn't see any evidence of enemy inside the building, then B squad runs forward and enters the building from a corner 90 degrees to the corner A squad is overwatching from. This way, if there is an ambush set inside the building, A squad can provide supressive fire through the windows for B squad's entry, but friendly fire problems will be minimized. As noted before, B squad can perform overwatch as A squad advances, and then run forward to assault under A squad's overwatch, but a really good enemy sitting in, say, the building across the street might anticipate this and wait until both squads were just outside be building to open fire. I'm not sure how one would execute an ambush like this in CM, but I'm working on it (ideas, anyone?) Anyway, this possibility is why having a third, dedicated overwatch unit is better. Like I said, this is my own adaptation, and while I've been able to get CM units to go through the motions, it hasn't really been tested under fire yet. It is based on real doctrine, though, and it makes sense to me. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.

Yep yep yep to all the above. An additional little note that confused me for a while: A squad that is out of C&C of it's own platoon commander (but the commander is still alive) will still show a black 'out of C&C' line to said platoon commander even if C&C for that unit has been taken over by a nearby company commander. If you click on the company commander, you will see a red line to the squad, showing that it is in C&C.

Well. . . since you want to know, I am running CMBO on a 400mhz P-II, 128MB RAM, 32MB Kyro Chipset 3D card. The core system is a little over three years old. The 3D card is a fairly recent upgrade. As for performance, I have no problems at 800x600 resolution. I can run at 1024x768, but things sometimes get a little jerky on really wide views of large battles. I've never timed it, but I also don't feel like I have to sit around forever waiting for turns to process. I'm still pretty new to the game, though, so I haven't started installing all sorts of high-res mods yet. . . A little side note in case anyone is reading this who is thinking of upgrading to a Kyro chipset card - as some of the rest of you may have experienced, the Kyro chipset can cause some problems with CMBO, but as long as you're comfortable messing around in regedit, there's a very workable fix in the technical support forum. I for one hope that BTS continues to up the graphical bar for the game, and I will upgrade to better hardware when the need arises. If someday in the future CM3 requires a 64MB 3D card with a 2GHz chip, I'll be there. I have a fantasy in my mind of what this would look like, and it's definitely worth a few overtime shifts at work to afford it. I understand BTS's desire to keep the game accessible to those who can't afford/don't want to upgrade their systems, tho. I guess it's all a balancing act. [ 08-21-2001: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by sturner: Who needs rockets? Six .50 caliber machineguns stop trains right nicely, thank you. My Dad said you could get a very nice steam plume after one or two passes. Then you had a sitting target.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yep. The documentary showed all sorts of great footage of .50cal AP rounds puncturing the locomotives' boiler. Big explosions. Made the claim that lack of functioning locomotives was a major contributor to the breakdown of the German transport system. I assume your dad was a pilot in the war - what did he fly?? Curious. [ 08-17-2001: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

The victory flag you see on your display during the game only shows whether or not your soldiers THINK they have control of the VL. For all you know, there's a big group of enemy infantry hidden around the flag that you can't see, and they're actually controlling the VL. Only the final map at the end of a game shows who actually controls VLs. Nice realism feature, this - prevents just seeing a flag the color of your opponent and shelling the heck out of it. . . Happy Killing. YankeeDog

Corn55- As a newbie to the game (and this forum), I've tried to discipline myself to do more reading and less writing here until I'm more up to speed, but I feel obligated to contribute to this thread. I, too, ordered CM recently but I had a GREAT customer service experience. I got an email confirmation from BTS within a few hours of my order that included, along with other useful information(1) that in stock orders ship within 1-2 business days of receipt, and (2) a list of shipping times to various U.S. and international locations - in my case, for the U.S. east coast, 3-5 days. Simple arithmetic allowed me to conclude that I should expect my order in 4-7 days, and maybe a day or two more if one of the shipping days was a weekend when the post office doesn't deliver. Everyone's idea of "a few" days is different, but I would generally consider 7 days to be more than "a few" - more like a week, in fact... Also included in the email was a sentence stating that "The number of unnecessary emails we are receiving every day is seriously harming our ability to respond to emails that truly need our timely attention", and later another sentence stating "Unless you hear from us about a problem, or your order is significantly overdue(see below) [referencing the ship times], everything is OK!" You must have gotten a different email, because mine also said "PLEASE read this information" at the top of the message. Anyway, my order arrived within expected time frame. I live in New York City and mail boxes are rather small. The day my order arrived, it was about 100 degrees out. Some overzealous Postal Clerk crammed my precious new CM CD into my mailbox along with the rest of my mail. and bent the CD. That's right - bent. I guess the high heat made the plastic supple enough to warp. My CD looked like a potato chip. I actually eventually got the CD to mount by (believe it or not) putting it between two towels and ironing it back flat. before I accomplished this, though (there was a few other, less successful attempts at flattening the CD first) I emailed BTS about my problem, and within 24 hours Matt (I assume Madmatt) responded that a new CD would be sent out immediately (I received it about a week later). They didn't even make me send back the old CD. So I now have two working CDs of CM. Talk about trust. I sincerely doubt Microsoft or Sierra or Microprose would so freely give out additional copies of their software. I do many jobs, but I often work as a freelance public relations representative. I have, in the past, worked for a couple of software game companies. For a 4-man operation that I'm sure can't afford my daily rate, BTS does remarkably well. They may not be able to respond to annoying emails instantaneously, but they get the important things done - they have made an excellent product, and they stand behind it. That's good enough for me. [ 08-16-2001: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

Hey all. I'm pretty new to this forum (and the game), so I've mostly been lurking around catching up on what's been said, but I happen to have an acquaintance who's a fire chief in a small city in Connecticut. I'm sitting bored at work, so I gave him a call. He loves to talk about fire (a little too much if you ask me. . .), so he was more than happy to give me some information about building and brush fires. My own unscientific experiences with the terrain and climate of Connecticut and Western Europe suggest that they're pretty similar. Anyway, what he said seems to pretty much confirm the general sentiment the way things have been going in this thread. Except in unusual weather conditions or other strange circumstances (i.e., high wind, etc.), a fire in one building wouldn't likely engulf an adjacent building in the time frame of a CM game unless the two buildings are extremely close (like row houses in a city) or extremely flammable (like a dry thatch roof). Brush or Forest fires are kind of a different matter. In Connecticut it rarely gets dry enough for long enough to really build up a 'carpet' (his word) of dry, dead leaves and twigs to get the kind of out of control wildfire like what you get sometimes out west. Obviously, he has no experience with fires started by 105mm HE rounds or Flamethrowers, but he did say they had a fire started in a hay field by the explosion of the gasoline tank on an overturned car. It was very dry at the time, so the grass caught quickly. The fire burned through a couple of acres of hay before they got it under control. Apparently, grass fires also burn out quickly, too, though - there just isn't that much fuel around. About 20min. after the thing started, as long as you were wearing heavy boots you could walk around the area close to the car even though the far edge of the field was still burning. So for limited fires, CM's model seems to do pretty well. With large set fires, though, things change a bit. Apparently, the physics of the whole matter really changes when you talk about some firebug (or Tommy in a Flame Tank), lighting up a whole row of buildings or a large area of forest at once. Large fires generate so much more heat that they spread exponentially faster, and much less predictably that small fires. The updrafts will send large pieces of burning whatever up into the air, where it eventually falls back to earth and starts it's own blaze. From the way he described it, I sincerely doubt an attacking or defending force would want to be anywhere near a blaze like this. Another interesting tidbit I got from him: The smoke from fires is often much more dangerous than the blaze itself. This is why even a relatively small fire in a building quickly makes the building uninhabitable. Also, a fire in one building can make the one next to it uninhabitable if the wind is blowing in that direction. The same goes for wild fires - being downwind of a large forest fire can kill you in seconds from lack of breathable air. In contrast, with relatively small brush fires, as long as you stay on the upwind side and are wearing fairly heavy clothing, you could probably run *through* the fire for 20-30 feet or so and get nothing more than boodshot eyes and very warm feet. Not that I'd want to try it with grenades and ammunition pouches strapped to my body. . . The whole 'gamey' debate is a little bit beyond my ken as I'm still learning how to set up a proper bounding overwatch, but I guess setting a large number of fires would seem to a bit unrealistic unless the commander setting them was planning on getting all of his forces well out of the area, and quickly. Last random tidbit from my friend: Large explosions can actually extinguish fires as well as set them. Blows the oxygen away from the fire. Apparently, that's how they got all those oil rig fires in Kuwait put out after the Gulf War. . .

OK, I'm no grog, but I was watching some documentary on the History Channel recently about the air war in Europe (hardly an irrefutable source, I know. . .). They mentioned that one of the most effective uses of Jabos by the allies was for train-busting - really shut down the German ability to move men and materiel behind the lines. Apparently, in an effort to counter this, the Germans designed rail cars where the sides could be made to fall away, exposing 88mm Flaks on the bed to fire at attacking planes. This would seem to indicate that the 88mm could be effective at closer ranges such as what you would see on the CM battlefield. Frankly, this surprised me because I had always thought an AA gun of the 88mm's size would be difficult to traverse quickly enough to fire at a nearby, fast-moving target like a strafing Jabo. Maybe the documentary got the calibre of the guns mounted on the rail cars wrong. . .