Sardaukar
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Posts posted by Sardaukar
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T-34/85 1944 (late) has also fast turret, very useful against slower rotating German Tigers and Panthers. That's my fav Soviet vehicle.
Cheers,
M.S.
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IMHO, when Germans reduced their regiments to 2 battaillon ones, that was tactically a big change. Since battaillon is mostly the smallest unit to be expected to achieve individual success and usually the bases for Kampfgruppe, reducing their numbers seriously limited the flexibility of Wehrmacht. Less playing chips, less options tactically.
Majority of blame for that can be traced both to Adolf Hitler and OKW/OKH, since even available manpower was extensively used to form new divisions, especially Luftwaffe Field Divisions and Waffen SS divisions.
Results were:
1. Not enough replacements to experienced units, causing dramatic drop on combat capability especially on 1944.
2. Committing manpower to new divisions without experienced core and officer/NCO corps, causing very bad combat experiences for those units.
3. Creating fake situational awareness in higher echelons, not based on true strength, but division numbers.
Well, if Germans absolutely had to reduce the number of battaillons, manpower should have gone into already existing units, not creating new battaillons in new units. Synergy of mixing raw troops with experienced and established organization is obvious, as it was during early WW 2 to Germans.
As it was discussed on this board too, breaking through enemy front lines was not a problem usually, barring difficult terrain and other geographical things or extensive fortifications. Exploiting the breakthrough was. Reducing the number of battaillons divisional commander had, he basicly had nothing to contain the breakthrough. Early war, Kampfgruppe was practical tool for Germans, later in war, it was necessity, since line units had no reserve to contain breakthroughs as would been in 2-1 deployment.
Cheers,
M.S.
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Well, I finally started a campaign usuing Biltaid.
Battle 1: Axis Assault
Got really badly mauled by Soviet defence, pillbox ATG and 3 76.2 mm ATGs in trenches on very open map...yikes. Scratch Core Pz II, III and IV, plus Aux Pz IV and 2 armoured cars...double yikes. Thought that since I still had infantry and couple of ATGs plus both MG and ATG pillboxes were KO'd, tried to overwhelm defense...shouldn't. Since I didn't have arty for smoke, I soon found out that there were few MGs and infantry in those trenches too. WW I, anyone ?
OK, I had to push the attack, since it was first day of Operation Barbarossa. 23-67 to computer. Favour -63...Army Group South loves me
.Battle 2:
Triple yikes, immediate Soviet counterattack when I had half of my company left after emergency reorganization. Fought on random (almost, I checked it was approximately the type that Biltaid gave) QB map from Map Packs and my forces were edited with editor, then imported to QB.
Anyhow, I had only 4 squads, (those that were wiped out remained out of battle, hiding on friendly map edge, since even with editor, it's impossible to simulate emergency reorg).
Anyhow, I got only meager aux reinforcements, all armour and fortifications so I invested on Aux Flammpanzer II, trenches and *lots* of anti-personnel mines. Now it was Soviet turn to run gauntlet with AT and MG fire
Bad day for Soviets, total victory, Flammpanzer fried 77 AI grunts...and since AI came with tankettes only, my reorganized tanks and my still intact HMGs ripped AI to pieces. Total victory to Germans, prodigal son returns, High Command is happy.Battle 3:
High Command was so happy, they ordered Immediate assault...with what, I ask ? And into town too
. Okie...got 1200 pts of arty and such things, on 2000 pts battle Minor victory, didn't dare to push too much, despite knowing that AI was on 10 % ammo. They still managed to KO sIG 150 mm, with HMG, it seems...dang. But, after all got my core units up to strength after that, despite some conscript squad being included Battle 4:
Not yet fought, another Axis Assault, 1200 pts, but at least I'm not too much on minus with favour
Cheers,
M.S.
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Looks good, albeit I agree that Nashorn shouldn't be in "Heavies". It's just an eggshell with large hammer, so to speak
Cheers,
M.S.
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Well, you could also bring in your *own* SMG squads and fight it out.
Or even better..bring in those nasty Sturmtruppen, or German Fallschirmjaeger squads who also have quite impressive firepower. For Russian, their Airborne squads have good firepower and ammo too.
And, as have been said earlier, getting the SMG squads into exteded firefight will lower their capability drastically. And it shouldn't be too hard to walk couple of half-squads as scouts through woods until their locate enemy..and then rain them with artillery. Even 81 mm mortars do fine due airbursts.
Cheers,
M.S.
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I think that Biltong as 2-player is no-go, due to fact that it gives Russian side too much advantage (because, after all, it's designed as solitare campaign where AI needs every help it can get).
But buying and setting up forces to premade map for other player has, IMHO, certain potential. And since it's one-off thing, it's "reasonably" fast and doesn't take too much effort and commitment.
Cheers,
M.S.
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That's great idea, Cpt Kernow!
On additional thought, it might alsobe beneficial for players to have human buying units and setting up the battles as scenarios using map packs. I think esp. in attack AI would benefit more "organized" unit layout and composition on map. And in defense AI is not too hot placing mines, trenches and barbed wire either.
That would not take very long compared to playing campaign as PBEM
, but would add more variation in battles against AI. I think human mind is still more devious than AI I'd offer to do that myself if I had time
Cheers,
M.S.
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32 turns, if I recall correctly
But it made me think I'll never finish that game.. 
Cheers,
M.S.
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IS-2 is good infantry tank...and for swatting occasional German heavy too. Only thing to worry is that you usually lose any gunbattle against German 75L48 and up from distance due their better ROF and optics. Front turret is vulnerable for 75L48...so IS-2 is better as infantry support tank...used like SU-152/122 assault guns. It has crappy number of AP too.
Cheers,
M.S.
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I've seen similar things, but either it was before patches or after 1.01 patch. And also seen "turn 2 of 1285973490+" then (just an example).
Cheers,
M.S.
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Well, IMHO troubles with artillery were :
1. Not being able to bring enough tubes to battle, problem with horse-drawn artillery during fluid situations.
2. Not being able to bring enough ammunition to tubes that were capable to engage (very glaring deficiency in Finnish arty during Winter War due ammo shortage)
3. Not being able to bring artillery to bear due C&C difficulties while theorethically able.
4. All above
Cheers,
M.S.
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There is actually more supressive effect with semi or full automatic fire than with slower firing weapons, due to volume of fire, IMHO. There are some quotes from Germans thinking sometimes that they were facing whole platoon, instead of actual single US squad, just because Garands were able to put more lead on air than bolt action rifles, at least momentarily.Originally posted by Michael Dorosh:I'm getting nothing done because of you guys.
I didn't mean to say the MG did "all the work", but in essence, that is, I think, what usually happened, in terms of actual effect. In terms of perceived effect, I don't see that a guy firing a couple rounds from a semi-auto is necessarily any more or any less scary than someone firing a bolt action rifle at you - or more importantly, an entire squad or platoon firing one weapon vice the other. You're going to react defensively in pretty much the same manner.
I think advantage is mostly defensive, albeit the supression works also with attack. If I was German platoon leader on East Front, I'd sure be happy if everyone was carrying MP 44 with few MG 42s too while facing Soviet infantry assault with large odds against Germans. In that case, MP 44 would have been bit of "force multiplier", but only in small unit scale.
With artillery, tanks and air support thrown too against Germans, it was almost as hopeless in operational scale if they were indeed carrying pitchforks.
So, my opinion is that while MP 44 in large quantities would have had *some* effect in combat, in larger scale it didn't matter that much.
Cheers,
M.S.
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There is also some info here:
http://www.saunalahti.fi/veijju/mil00.html
This would be THE book for Finnish armour, though:
Suomalaiset panssarivaunut 1918-1997 (The Finnish armoured vehicles) by Esa Muikku and Jukka Purhonen (Apali Oy, ISBN 952-5026-09-4)
Excellent reference book with over 340 black and white pictures and 16 colour pages. All information is both in Finnish and English
Cheers,
M.S.
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Since IS-2 turret front is vulnerable to 75L48 shots, I dislike them as tank killers. Majority what Germans have can take them out. Superior optics and rate of fire will make you regret you got IS-2s. They usually don't get killed outright, but tend to get "hail fire" from even AI tanks, resulting to lot of partial penetrations from long range.
Cheers,
M.S.
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I think Pz III J up-armoured model was called Special in North Africa. It was very tough for Brit 2 pounders to crack during that time, and packed a punch with 50L60 cannon.Originally posted by MikeT:IN Africa, the IVF was the most advanced model, if memory serves. It was called the special.
MikeT
Cheers,
M.S.
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I think atiff's idea of having HQs to get exp from battle result is quite good one. It'd be easy to implement too.
Cheers,
M.S.
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It won't work when double-clicking, but with "Open with.." it works. But it opens the biltaid.sit file strangely...there is no biltaid.jar, but biltaid.1 and lot's of subdirectories with filesOriginally posted by Seahawk-vfa201:Weird, zip and rar should simply state the archive is not what they do expect rather then expand it.
Anyway, good you got stuffit and run BiltAid fine.
But since Stuffit is only 8+ megs, no big deal. Great program you made, by the way.Cheers,
M.S.
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Interestingly, WinZip and WinRAR open Stuffit file just nicely, but totally differently...and it won't work. I downloaded Stuffit and managed to make newest version of BiltAid to work fine.
Cheers,
M.S.
[ April 23, 2003, 07:35 PM: Message edited by: Sardaukar ]
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I should have said, "problem in most games with campaigns is"..Originally posted by Biltong:Hmmm - it does not have to be so. IMHO it simply means the campaign was poorly designed. In the case of CMBB it is quite easy and realistic to increase the difficulty level as time progresses(from the Axis pov).
High casualties (winter/counter offensives) - replacements progressively deteriorating in quality - Allied quality and quantity progressively increasing. No need for boredom to set in at all. Equipment gets better, but on both sides.
In BCR there's also a player experience modifier that kicks you up to a more difficult level if you win too many battles...
Boredom means sloppy design - that's all.
That is the beauty of CMBB, since campaign can be be easily adjusted and in realistic way too. I agree that uninteresting campaigns are poorly designed, but in most games, they didn't have tools compared to CMBB. BCR is very good if not excellent, I have a campaign going on, especially now when Biltaid is going strong Now if I could just keep my forces intact Problem with BCR has been the bookeeping stuff. If it's done manually, rules gets so confusing (while realistic) that it takes so much time to plot next combat. BiltAid had remedied lot of that, and BCRAV has brought another dimension into it
Maybe I'll get my BCR(Tank Commander Variant) ready someday
For infantry guy I like tanks too much Cheers,
M.S.
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Very good points, dw, I agree.
Lethality and casualties in CMBO/CMBB is lot higher and more realistic than in most wargames. Thus, in campaign game you'd have to balance sacrificing your best troops to gain objective against need to save them for next battle.
Problem with most campaigns are that your "core force" becomes ither too experienced or too well-equipped..mostly both..that battles become cakewalk. That's the main problem with keeping campaigns intersting.
Cheers,
M.S
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Priest :
Sorry it I sounded bit harsh, wasn't my best days
I just got bit annoyed about comparison to Sudeen Strike etc. Maybe better comparison might have been East Front/East Front 2/West Front and Steel Panthers series. They are definitely wargames..and contain (while not realistic) campaign that enhances their appeal, IMHO.I think BFC shouldn't take too much focus trying to implement campaign system themselves, since it's lot easier just to allow external designers tools to do that.
We have already tools like MappingMission and BCR/BCRAV rulesets. It would not take lot to have all kinds of interesting campaigns made by groups of grogs
Historical/hypotethical research and design would be responsibility of campaign designers and not burden BFC.Cheers,
M.S.
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This is only second alpha version
All stuff I'm planning into it are not yet implemented. I'm thinking about severe penalties for quality if getting more than 2 casualties in crew, but I have to try to fit it into game system.Cheers,
M.S.
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Well...if you were into ultimate realism, why didn't you join military like me or many others who play this game ? Heck, maybe you did, I don't know you.Originally posted by Priest:If I did not want a more in-depth or lengthy campaign mode why did I bust my hump in CPX and CMMC1?
Anyhow any request you make is more work for BFC, which means more time, and more attention taken away from the core focus of the game. There is also a risk of feature creep and losing scope of the project. There is also the whole "WE MAKE REALISTIC AND SUPERIOR WARGAMES" thing they have going (I am not speaking for them, just my opinion). All this has been said again and again and again and again. Might it happen at some point? Sure. Likely? As far as I can tell, no.
One last thing, if you are so willing to throw reality out the window then might I suggest C&C Generals or maybe Starcraft, Sudden Strike????
Oh one more last last thing, units did not often "Go Away" but there would be no "advancement" on a operational with regards to "experience". And you might fight in Market Garden and then not fight again really until the Rhine, wow two large battles for the whole of the war depending if you got plastered at some point, WOOOHOOO! Not really worth it. (meant to be somewhat extreme). [/QB]
C&C ? Starcraft ? Sudden Strike ? What the hell have those to do with CM ?
BFC makes "WARGAMES", not "WAR SIMULATIONS". Thus, they may listen customer feedback
As to "advancement"...there are loads of WW 2 vets who are quite more experienced in the end than they were when stating the war. You know, even in WW 1, all soldiers didn't die.
Yep, unit may fight in Market Garden, refit and fight on Rhine. So ? That's normal procedure to refit depleted units. How does that prevent campaign ?
No-one is asking to alter the game, just making enhancement to it. It'll never be "realistic". No game will ever grasp sheer horror of combat, I hope.
CM grasps well lot of small unit tactical aspects and especially CM:BB also models infantry very well.
I'm one of those folks who wish for more support to campaign. I'm not asking that BFC should implement it since it'd be waste of resources. I'm only asking to make it easier to make us campaining more fun, since this is game for enjoyment. It's like those folks who do re-enactment, I want to see and act history with all "what ifs".
Call me a romantic, but I wish to have a campaign enhancement addition
Cheers,
M.S.
Biltong's Campaign Rules
in Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin
Posted
Yes, inf only attacks by the AI are a cakewalk - if there is enough ammo.
Gruß
Joachim </font>