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Steiner14

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    American Bocage Tactics

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Do I dare bite and ask for evidence?

    Purely Normandy, France:

    Heinz Schmolke, Die Kriegsentscheidung: Der Verrat in der Normandie

    Friedrich Georg, Verrat in der Normandie: Eisenhowers deutsche Helfer

    Not only Normandy:

    Hans Meiser, Verratene Verräter

    Allen Dulles, Verschwörung in Deutschland

    Oscar Reile, Geheime Westfront - Die Abwehr 1935 - 1945

    Erich Kern, Verrat an Deutschland

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    American Bocage Tactics

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    I found this highly interresting read about the American effort to develop an effective combined arms tactic for fighting in the Normady bocage terrain. I hope you might find some useful things there to try out when the game finally gets released!

    http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/resources/csi/doubler/doubler.asp

    Interesting read and it shows, how fast the US had to learn/and learned, how to adapt their tactics. I hope the information about the US-Army doctrine and some of their tactics is more factual, than what is written about the Germans:

    The author suggests, that Hitler wanted a static defense and Rundstedt was for a flexible one. But that statement doesn't survive the hard facts:

    The placement of the three tank-divisions in Normandy, was the lonely decision of Hitler, who predicted the correct landing point. Rommels staff did everything it could, to convince Hitler, the landing wouldn't take place in Normandy and to take the tank divisions far away from the coast.

    I'm sure, most of you have never heard about traitors in the german high staff, who they were, where they operated and what they did.

    Although at that night the invasion was identified as highly probable, because of the tide and weather, Rommel left his troops and flew to a birthday party. The head was missing in the most decisive hours.

    In Rommels staff, when Rommel was not present, they called Hitler only the "Arschloch vom Berghof" (the a**hole from the Berghof). And Rommel tolerated that kind of high ranked officers in his staff.

    Can you imagine Eisenhower or Montgomery, tolerating his highest officers calling Churchill or Roosevelt "the ******* in Washington/London" while most important informations and orders are going through their hands? :D

    The alarm of the Kriegsmarine at 2 o'clock, that clearly identified the invasion, was sabotaged and blocked from Rommels HQ (Speidel) and the units at the coast were not put into alarm state.

    One battalion commander of the 21st Panzer recognized - from the kind of radio-messages - that the invasion had begun. The 21st called his HQ for immediate orders, but it simply didn't respond.

    Then the btn commander decided to move his battalion on his own decision torwards the coast. The HQ was informed about his decision, and that the 21st were on it's way to the coast. Suddenly Speidel responded immediately and forbid to move further, claimed everything was calm at the coast and directed the 21st back from the coast, into the other direction where they came from. He claimed paratroopers had landed somewhere in the back.

    Around two hours later the 21st arrived at that place and - surprise! - there was no enemy.

    At that time the night was already vanishing and they turned back again and started to move torwards the coast again, where the own units already were under heavy fire. During the following day, the 21st suffered heavy losses, was shot into pieces from the air and only very few units even managed to reach the zone of the beachhead.

    It's also suppressed, that the traitors were part of the same reactionary political group, that already in 1935 tried to inflict war on Germany, they flew to London and pleaded for an attack on their own country.

    After the war the traitor Speidel was awarded as chief of NATO in Europe.

    Without the traitors in the german high command, the whole 21st Pz. would have been at the coast already during the deep first night. That close to the landing zones (like planned), that during the following day air and naval support would have been extremely difficult, probably even impossible, without causing high friendly losses.

    Without the german traitors, also the german reserves at the canal would have not been kept away for weeks: Hitler, immediately understood at the next day, that the Invasion had begun. Rommels staff and Fremde Heere West did everything, to play the size of the invasion down ("only a distraction", "main force coming over the canal"), to convince Hitler, to keep the german forces away, until the beachheads were too strong.

    The troops at the coast, also witnessed many strange occurences, a few days before the invasion: i.e. the optics of the coastal guns were ordered to be removed.

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    What german tank destroyed the most allied tanks ?

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    *sigh*

    Yes, we've heard of them. That the German high command still felt the need to apply the 50% haircut in order to make the numbers even vaguely useful is rather telling though, no? Also, as has been pointed out, EVERY time that claims have been compared to losses, the claims have been shown to be inaccurate. And not just a little bit inaccurate, but wildly inaccurate.

    Exactly the same thing occurred with air-to-air claims, and probably for much the same reasons.

    Losses? Did the Red Army have losses at all, with one "victory" after the other?

    Ofcourse, and because of invented kills, the involved German ground troops only dreamt, that Rudel's attacks were highly effective, while angloamerican wargamers know it much better... :D

    And because of the incapability of the Germans, to validate the effeciency of their weapons, the enemies tried to get their hands on all the german ineffective weapons, engineers and scientists they could grab... :D

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    A Quick Battle AAR: Shermans vs Pz IVs, Not Your Fathers Combat Mission

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Very interesting AAR, giving a few looks at the beauty of CM:BN, i had never expected.

    A few questions came to mind:

    1. Is splitting of crews possible? (in reality 1 leaving the vehicle for spotting seems most common)

    2. Will we see flying tank-turrets?

    3. AT-guns/guns muzzle visibility: since with CM:BN a very realistic placement away from the treeline has become possible, are different smoke/gunfire signatures of the guns modelled, when it comes to spotting?

    4. Will we get a few video-bones before the release? :D

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    A Quick Battle AAR: Shermans vs Pz IVs, Not Your Fathers Combat Mission

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    OK, here I am! Before starting I will have to remind people to not get their knickers in a twist about an extremely small sampling of game results from the very beginning portion of a single game. You'd think you guys would be used to the concepts of probability, but sometimes it seems you forget and wander off :)

    I don't want to judge from this small sample, but the results we've seen so far, should be far away from one standard deviation.

    The modeling in CM:BN is far more varied, factually based, and accurate than what we had in CMx1. This may result in some differences in results from similar matchups in CMx1. However, if such differences come about it is more likely than not that CMx1 had it wrong, not CM:BN.

    ...

    Gunnery modeling is quite complex. The PzIV does have some advantages, but most of those are neutralized at this range. We had an EXTREMELY detailed discussion about this internally led by a real life tanker who dug really deep into data to help us figure out what was important to model and how much it influenced the overall outcome.

    At about 700m or greater the Germans had a gunnery system that allowed them to compute range quicker than the US system. Under this range, they were about the same since the US system was optimized for the closer ranges. Which makes sense because the Sherman 75 wasn't much good as a long range shooter. Putting a 10x scope made by Zeiss on a BB Gun doesn't really do much, does it? :D Likewise you're not likely to hit targets at 1000m using iron sights on a 7.62 cal sniper rifle.

    1st hand battle-reports from German tank-gunners describing engagements at closer ranges below 750m, are full of a widely used common technique, to aim at the "Turmkranz" - the spacing between the turret and the hull, if the armour was questionable to be penetrated. This was only possible, because of the gun accuracy in combination with the optics.

    From what i see in this battle, this doesn't seem to be modelled.

    Since only ~17% of German tanks in France were lost due to enemy tanks, that fits into the picture from the 1st hand reports - but doesn't fit very well to the model you describe, Steve.

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    After Action message from Scenario Designers?

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    I'm wondering if (besides the calculated results from the game), there is the possibility, that scenario designers can add descriptive text for a after-the-battle report - depending on certain results?

    Example:

    A text for a victory of Blue.

    A different text for a defeat of Blue.

    Reason:

    The text could explain bigger implications of the result. Especially, if the scenario deals with a historical battle, this could be quite instructive.

    Or a designer could include passwords or links in that screen, depending on the battle's outcome.

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    Full Replay of a combat?

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Yes given that small PBEM files are about 10Mb per minute (i.e a turn) then a 2 hour game becomes pretty big.

    With the solution i suggested this is not the case.

    All that is needed, is a frontend playback-module, that loads the CM-game silently in the background and that it displays the available replay-files, like a media-player.

    Since CM doesn't make use of multi-core processors, the player-frontend maybe even could be programmed that way, that it loads another instance of CM with another CPU core, and therefore making almost uninterrupted replay possible.

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    Thickness and penetration data

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    This isn't to say that ammo penetration charts aren't useful or even desirable for some people. I think they are, which is why we will get them into the game at some point. It's just that we feel it's not worth holding the game up for another 6 months to put in various "must haves" that aren't really central to the game.

    That's very good news.

    I think CM:BN will offer so many things to learn and explore, that time will fly anyway, until that will be implemented.

    Until that happens Jeff Heidman's old XLS-files will do the trick as a workaround.

    ps: The XLS-files were necessary in CMx1, too, when units had to be purchased (which is the usual case for ladder players). So that thought could be worth considering, when it comes to the implementation: if the data should be accessible only from within the battlefield, or from outside, too.

    Wouldn't it be cool to offer an extra button in the list to present the game models in all their glory in a dedicated showroom-window, where they are turning and can be watched from all angles? Maybe even with the option of a skin-free, armor thickness color coded view? :)

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    Thickness and penetration data

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Hm, that's a strange logic because the probability stats are not shown and to compensate for them, detailed penetration data of the gun is necessary to see the penetration distance of a given target.

    Without penetration info, how do you setup ATGs?

    "Tiger 200m @ 2 o clock!

    Hm, let's look: ah, a green dot. Small, but green! Our barrel lenght? Who cares! The reference distance for the green dot? Who cares! Damn, we have a green dot, that's all we need to know!"

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    Hardware specs?

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    I'm wondering if the graphic-cards specs have already been nailed down?

    Will highend cards be necessary for absolute fluid high frame rates at highest details @large maps?

    How does CM:BN performance-wise compare to CM:A, CM:SF?

    How much power will good looking water suck up?

    Nvidia or ATI?

    I'd prefer to have the computer prepared and upgraded, when the game will be released.

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    Thickness and penetration data

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Ofcourse it is one of the most important numbers a gunner had to know: the penetration capabilitites of his gun with a certain ammunition against certain thicknesses at certain angles and against certain targets as a whole over distance.

    That means the player needs at least the penetration values of the ammunition-types over distance and angle of the unit's gun.

    The more unbalanced an engagement with a relatively weak caliber against heavy armoured units is, the more important that info becomes.

    Since it can't be expected from a CMx2 player to know all guns, all penetration numbers for all calibers and ammunition for all units, IMO it would be very important to implement some kind of info-tool.

    In fact this would not be a gamey information, it would compensate for the lack of knowledge of the player compared to the real life crew of the weapon.

    And another great aspect of the detailed unit data of CMx1 was, that it educated players. You learnt a lot about every equipment and ammo, just by playing a game. And i also wouldn't underestimate the long-term motivation, that was caused by it.

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    Command Delay. Love it? Hate it? Should it ever return.

    in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy

    Posted

    Most of soviet pows had sadly the fate of a "subhuman". Maybe it was an ostfront limited resources thing but still this shows no respect to the human side of the russian soldier.

    Yes, sadly many died but have you ever heard about the severity of the german logistical problems in Russia and why that was?

    It was not even possible to supply the own german troops as needed.

    Now imagine a crowd of 3.5 million POWs.

    Now imagine on his retreat, the enemy destroys EVERYTHING the own people would need to survive. Even the wells were poisoned by throwing dead animals into! The rural people were stripped of their animals they need to survive. You find nothing but a poor country that additionally has been completely devastated. (what a great ally for Mr. Roosevelt...)

    All you have for the supply are a few railways and - in case they were not destroyed - they have another size. So you can't use your own trains as long as you have not changed the size.

    But you also find no adequate roads.

    And your units need every supply they can get.

    I think now you can answer your question yourself.

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