manchildstein (ii)

i don't know how many of those suggestions have been brought up before, but those are good nonetheless...

uh... how do i make my picturstage fotos visible like that? i started an account and uploaded, but all i can see is an 'invitation' feature.

another thing to consider - at least as soviets - is the use of 'cheap 76mm artillery piece pakfronts.' now the HE-shooting 76mm may seem like nothing, but for the price you can buy a whole lot of them, and several of them combined could cause a fairly heavy tank to be abandoned... and the 76mm is very good against axis infantry, armored cars, guns, and halftracks... also, it is my opinion that practically no amount of 76mm pieces in the direct fire role should be considered 'gamey'... i mean 'eastfront' and 'soviet 76mm' are practically synonymous... to me the key to the defense is that, however you set up, your units have to kill a certain ratio of attackers for you to break even... now as some may have already said the best way to defend could be to concentrate on a small area... on the other hand if you can commit your force piecemeal in the defense... and through a series of ambushes inflict the desired amount of casualties (say 2:1 when defending against an assault) then you're doing 'ok'... it's just that a concentrated defense is usually better than a piecemeal one... of course if you concentrate 'too much' and your opponent hits you with offboard artillery or heavy air attack, then you have another problem altogether.... quick battles are really a series of 'paper, rock, scissors' decisions between the two players, particularly with rarity off... just my opinion...

yes... a tank battle pak sounds interesting... i can get things started... if anyone wants to coordinate this i will contribute an updated 267-9 ... better map, more mayhem than ever...

my 'hill 267.9' has a lot of tanks... let's see.. i think it has 77 german tanks against the soviet ai... but it does have a battalion (60% strength) of motorized infantry... anyway... if someone does a tank battle scenario pack, they should include something about the battles involving the 1st panzer group and the soviets around 'dubno' or thereabouts in the first week of the war... i mean... those were some huge tank-type battles from what i can gather... for tank battles, kursk is always what first springs to mind... but apparently the battles there around 'dubno' - in 1941 no less - were of that scale as well... does anyone know of any other huge tank-type battles?

hopefully the (final) 2.0 is more playable compared to 1.0 [ February 19, 2003, 01:44 AM: Message edited by: manchildstein II ]

look for a 2.0 version of this at the depot. admittedly, version 1.0 may have been 'unwinnable'... among other things the 2.0 version has both an improved map and 'winnability' [ February 19, 2003, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: manchildstein II ]

aar... spoiler . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . the attack was basically out of the default setup, with the tank companies in the depressed field in the ne corner rearranged; the pz 3 and 4 were set in a 'checkerboard' pattern as the main force while the 3 pz 2 platoons - one from each company - were set as a reserve. the infantry was left mostly in default. the first 7 turns saw heavy fighting as the 'schwerpunkt' of some 38 pz 3 and 4 tanks moved out into the open ground just before the church and the square factory to the ne of the same. the 105 mm spotters laid down barrages on turn 1; 1 spotter on the trp in the square factory and the other 2 as 'area fire' (keystroke i instead of t) on the church. casualties were heavy from the get-go as 1 tank was lost even in the initial staging area for that main tank force. in the already-controlled factory areas the tanks of the battalion hq and reserve detachments basically waited back there, with a lone pz 3h from the reserve detachment playing 'shoot and scoot' at the gap between factories near the op. many soviet tanks were discovered across the field to the south; several t26s and t34s. 2 panzer 2s from the battalion hq hunted out to the west and got an early t26 kill; that tank being near the buildings on the other side of the sw-ne road west of the church. after 7 turns tank casualties are heavy on both sides. although my main tank force has dwindled, it has insinuated itself north of the church and has taken out 2 t26s across the field. the kv2s on the hill have accounted for some kills. the 15 pz2s of the secondary main force went to the right and are holed up north of the 'apartment buildings' across that 'main' (sw-ne) road from the church. 9 of 15 are out of action but they have killed some t26s and BTs. infantry platoons are in the square factory - which itself lost two tiles to rubble during the 105 barrage - ne of the church; that square factory being the link between my own infantry jumpoff positions in the german-controlled factory complex of the at-start zone. somehow a quad 20 flak vehicle was lost - probably to sharpshooter fire as those positions within my own start zones may not have been properly mopped up in time. the remaining flak vehicles and tanks from the battalion hq and reserve tank detachment are waiting for the proper moment to stream through that gap in the friendly factory complex and out into the field. i'm waiting for more of the soviet tanks covering the field to be taken out. on turn 8 it's basically a game of cat and mouse between the computer's tanks and my own. 3 pz 3f (37mm) are about to take on a t-34. all but one t34 by the church are taken out; the remaining one is on the opposite (s) side of the church from my tanks. there is still at least one t34 at the 'intersection' - the spot with the good los running diagonally sw-ne by that 'main' road. so basically the bulk of my armor is pinned down and i'm awaiting the outcome of several tank on tank duels which are occurring through the gaps between certain factories and other buildings; awaiting the outcome in order to see what to do next. the grenadier battalion's at and infantry guns are having a hard time keeping pace with the advance; attempting to get into firing positions on my end of that 'main road.' one ig was already lost in transit. to an apparent shot from a kv2 on the hill over a kilometer away. so several platoons are in the square factory and are mopping up a couple of stray soviet squads. some prisoners have been taken and are being marched to the rear. the pioneer platoon is being brought up and is going to be put into position to assault the church. i usually try to keep pioneers out of the early action and throw them into the fray later in a given battle. turn 9: from its starting position the 81mm mortar spotter plots a fire for effect between the woods on the road into the church and the church itself. this is in an attmpt to interdict some of the soviet infantry movement. infantry are pouring out of the church to the north and it looks like the friendly tanks nearby are in danger of being swamped. infantry continue to mop up in the square factory. the t34 which was engaged through a 'slot' or 'keyhole' with 3 pz3f tanks was taken out as a pz3g also joined into the fray. it turns out that even against t34s, 3 37mm and a 50mm combined are not bad odds. it may still be some time before i'm able to arrange my forces to make any further progress. consolidation seems to be the name of the game at this point. as turn 10 passes the fight is difficult. the soviets have all kinds of angles from all different directions. 2 tanks were lost to infantry around the church; 1 to a molotov and 1 to a t34 as it fled the infantry next to it and ran out into a firing lane. that makes 3 tanks lost in fron of the church. i still have a lot of tanks and aa vehicles but getting them into good position is going to be tough. at the gap overlooking the 'killing field' south of my original factory positions, 3 separate vehicles are going to try to shoot and scoot and kill a lone t34; the only soviet vehicle with a 'bead' on the gap at the moment. the infantry have mopped up the factory and are organizing for a push on the church. the t34 behind the church is now beginning to attack around the west side, and some other t34s are moving toward my positions from the other side of the killing field. turn 20: the t34 behind the church was taken out by a rush of about 4 or 5 tanks between the factory and the church. 2 or 3 of those were lost to fire from the area around the road intersection before reversing back into cover. most all of the infantry made a push for the church and by now the large flag there is axis, as well as the small flag in the factory across the way to the south. there are a couple of friendly platoons in the rough south of the church, and another platoon in reserve, with still another in the scattered trees north of the church (inside the wall). the rest of the battalion is fairly well chewed up, with a disorganized group of 7 or 8 squads with between 1 and 3 men apiece in the church area itself. i'm afraid to hit shift-c as i so often do for fear of the kinds of losses it will magnify where i may have foolishly rushed the church a turn or three too early. speaking of the church, the open ground to the north of it is a tank graveyard. i was showing the situation to my nephew over xmas and he basically said, 'what a waste of tanks.' he wasn't too impressed by the kv2s on the hill, saying they were 'only L/20s' and i forgot to mention at the time the deadliness of the 152mm HE, even in 'near miss' situations. as it turns out, the kvs were the ones who destroyed all of my guns as i tried to move them into firing positions at the area overlooking the near end of the road. anyway, the area around the church is a tank wrecking yard. the slot to the left between the factories looking out into the 'killing fields' also has a number of wrecks. in the meantime i have managed to force 8 tanks through on the far left, having wiped out all of the soviet armor in and to the south of the 'killing field.' the aa vehicles are all dead in various locations. the 15 panzer 2s on the right are down to 2. i cease fired and got a 65-35 loss. that wasn't too bad. in hindsight i'm wondering if i should have used my 105mm FOs to drop smoke at the beginning, then made a mad rush into the center of the town area. as it was i got picked apart by fire from all directions. my tanks were pinned in very small areas, and to venture out of these areas always meant more losses. i lost over 50 afvs whilst destroying about 40 soviet tanks. those t34s are murder. i didn't have any tank gun capable of reliably knocking them out with a single shot. the 37mm guns were next to useless. i did wonder aloud to my nephew as to whether i am just a poor tactician, and from what he saw of the area around the church, he wondered that same thing himself. he did ask if i had tried the hill rush with the idea of taking out the kv2s and then wheeling into town from the 'back.' i told that indeed i had tried that once and had lost 15 tanks to 1 kv before having given up. so perhaps this scenario is just a 'tad' difficult for the likes of me. i did have most all of my MG34s still operational, and inflicted 2:1 in casualties; about 500:250. there were however still about twice as many soviets alive. i had my 10 tank hunter teams and the battalion HQ, but figured these were simply too brittle to send in as regular infantry. perhaps i could have gotten this one to 40-60 instead of 34-65 but i could see the writing on the wall. 2 of the 8 flanking tanks were the pzbefwg with only 30 ammo; and that ammo being 37mm. the german infantry battalion is brittle; starting the scenario at 60% means that they can't be frivolously toseed into the fray as i apparently had done. i'll just have to figure that stukas came in and finished the job, and that divisional was able to salvage the wrecks i had made. if anyone else has the penchant for micromanagement and happened to try this one, i would be curious to know how it went. i've got a modified version of this scenario, with less factories and more cover. i found out that my model map was 30 or 40 years too late; that perhaps the area wasn't as built up in 1941 as i had originally thought. for now though this one is on the back burner as i try and recreate something else for the time being. in the meantime, if anyone is interested in an 'easier' version of this scenario; a version with less factories and more tree cover, let me know. without too much work i could release it as '267-9 version 1.1.' part of me though thinks that, even with the built-up map and the clear approaches, winning or losing, this scenario is one heckuva of an exercise in tnt-laden fun.

in the scenario, 'gef' ... er... 'fighting for info'... i ran the stug up to the roadblock and the los tool indicated that the stug had a clear los/lof to a machinegun on the far right. the stug turned and fired at the machinegun, but every round of HE landed in the open ground about halfway (~100 meters) between the stug and the target (~200 meters). at first i thought the stug would adjust its fire, but it never did... i had to leave the mg alone and turn the stug and fire at something else.. and the stug had not been hull down... so if what i saw is the same thing as other people here are seeing, it may be a problem with he fire in general and not always have to do with being hulldown. i must have let that stug fire a good 8-10 times... and it always landed out in the open with no effect... 'trying to dig a ditch' indeed... fwiw

my impression is that, indeed if an afv is using 'hunt' it will probably unbutton... but if you use 'move' or 'fast' it will have a better chance of staying buttoned... this was simply my impression and i noticed someone on this thread mentioned it so i thought i would mention it again... so i'm wondering... if fog of war is turned off... will tank crews stay buttoned?

wouldn't a conscript unit by definition though have low ammo pretty much all the time? ok... supposing i'm completely wrong about this (and it wouldn't be the first or last time)... what about in the editor? an ability in the unit purchase screen to set 'low' 'med' and 'high' or somefink?... this would save me for one a lot of time... it seems to me that would be useful...

i'm not sure you understood what i was trying to say... that's probably my fault for combining a couple of different topics into one post... i would still contend in general that conscripts would have a lot less ammo than other troop types... if this were automatically in the game then you wouldn't have to re-set the ammo for every conscript unit to 'low' or whatever... that is how it is now, however...

i guess it was wishful thinking on my part... a couple of things should have clued me in (other than the 1970-2000 part which i apparently ignored): 1) the maps were free of charge 2) if they were made in '42, how did the soviets know what axis-occupied areas looked like? 3) the extensive waterworks - elaborate canal systems and such - shown in many of the maps... come to think of it, these questions were bouncing around inside my head while i was downloading some of these maps... anyway the maps are quite interesting, even if they're the wrong dates...

i noticed a post in another section about how rough tiles could cause a game to go more slowly? is this true?

bump these were panzerjager 1 no? tia

i think that perhaps conscripts should - by default - be given very minimal ammo when purchased in a qb or scenario editor. ideally, the scenario editor would have a setting for ammo loads... min... med... max... when purchasing units of any type. then the default for crack and elite would be 'max' and green, veteran, and regular would be 'med' and conscript, 'min.' in any event it seems to me that stories abound of soviets in the early going without ammo, or germans in the late-going having only panzerfausts. setting conscripts to 'min' ammo by default would reflect this. late-war german conscripts could have low ammo, but decent amounts of panzerfausts.

here is one way you might be able to simulate permiters in cmbb. for starters, it looks as though, between 1.0 and 1.01 the ai may be now keeping its units for the most part in default positions. this may have to do with whether the human player has taken a flag. for whatever reason though, it seems like the troops stay 'closer to home' on the ai defense than they once did. all of that aside, what you might be able to do is: 1) design a scenario or operation with flags forming a perimeter. set up pockets of ai-controlled units around each flag. 2) put in landmarks (ctrl-click) in the editor which spell out the objectives to the human player. 3) when the scenario or operation is done being designed, release it but tell the people playing it that beforehand they need to make sure that victory flags are off. this way the victory flags won't be visible to give away the positions of the defending ai. to make sure that flags are off, the player might have to go into a game - any game - and turn flags off. once it is certain that flags are not visible (off), then the player can load your scenario or operation and play, and attack toward the landmarks you've given them. this way the ai is in a perimeter, but it isn't obvious to the human player; instead the human player attacks toward landmarks given by the designer, and not flags.

i thought the berkeley maps were from '42? at first i saw... --Gauss-Krasovskii grid projection system based on Pulkovo 1942 datum Krasovskii spheroid-- now i see... it actually reads: 1972-2000 Gauss-Krasovskii grid projection system based on Pulkovo 1942 datum Krasovskii spheroid -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- so the '1942 datum krasovskii spheroid' in no way means the maps are from '42?... shucky darns... makes sense though... [ December 22, 2002, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: manchildstein II ]

does anyone know if this is this rostov? http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/maps/x-ussr/L-37-031.jpg

if you can figure out which river is the don, the maps here might help... http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/EART/maps/x-ussr/ukraine.html

again, after having stared at those freeport-tech oobs for the past few weeks i was simply taken aback at the mention of '2 tank regiments' in the '40 divisions... i had to do a double take...

right... i went to that very site and picked out a '39 division at random... and it had two tank regiments... then in looking at the '41 divsions they all seem to have 1 panzer regiment... indeed it is simplistic as you say... what got me started on this was the thing about '40 divisions (on that other page) having two tank regiments... because immediately i thought about the freeport-tech site and rememeber all of the ones i'd looked at from '41 as having just a single regiment... so i was wondering if, between the french and russian campaigns a lot of the panzer division expansion - increased number of panzer divisions - was (in general) done by reducing the number of tanks in each division ...

1941: were these pz jager 1s? thanks in advance (tia)

bump...

if you design your own scenario you can make the soviets into whatever experience level you like. the easiest way would probably be to fire up the scenario editor, go into the map editor, then use the 'create map' button, then exit the map editor that and go into 'units' and buy units for both sides.