Mark Gallear

My new page seems to have survived the night – despite Geocities closing it down for an hour after only 36 visitors! Seems to be back up this morning. Try and download only the files you need and avoid using DAP etc – they are all small (Even the big files are elatively small in CM mod terms) and you can get them in one go! It is a Geocities freebie site after all! Eden I really like the silver glossy sci-fi look – suppose if I was going to use one should be something Tankie considering my taste in games! As the site has got bandwidth problems – probably best to stick with elegant white. Only just got the star background on the sites front page to work – I used some demo software back in 1998, which for some reason didn’t save it properly and Explorer showed it tiled with visible edges! Took all Saturday morning to do the heading graphic (I was up at 7!) – I then missed lunch doing a diving bar to match which in the end I just deleted! Yep I should have spent the time doing the mods better!

I personally think the graphics are top notch. (Ok I can grumble about anything - they should have put on two side graphics for Russian tanks for the slogans - that was a silly mistake -Battlefront, (yep I know it would have gone from 1gn to 2gb and I would never have got on my harddisk - the water is not as murky and glossy as water tends to be in rivers in real life - the marshes are ok but they just don't hit the spot. Please remember that after all the pro modders have been at it a while it will look a whole lot better. My copy of CMBO now only chugs along - to mod heavy and does not look that much better than CM2. I spelled checked this time

Bu***er Only took 36 visitors to exceed my data transfer limit! I may have to take the big files off - such as the Finnish armour etc. But then again you will all have forgotten my poor little site by tommorrow!

The Mod addition to my web site is up at last. (It has been a long weekend.) Find it at http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/8461/mod.html The CMBB or CM2 section deals with files that deal with the censorship and dumbing down of the game in both European and US versions. I also have files to convert the European game to US standards. (I would be interested to here from anybody who has other such files.) There are some original files by me that puts the Hammer & Sickle the right way round on the hidden unit icons. Juju has given his permission to include his excellent Hi-res Iron Crosses that he did for CMBO which many of you will not have seen before. I have tried to ask permission of everybody to use their files and have cited their work. However I have been unable to contact Marcus Bloess or the creator of the Vapaudenristi Scenario Icon Bar and have included them on the site on the grounds that Mods are supposed to be on the net. I also have mods and scenarios done by me for CMBO and the Steel Panthers series. Many thanks to Eden Smallwood and Gary Krockover for inspiring me to do it. (Not to mention CDV! ) (Don't bother using the email address on the homepage - I only look twice a year. If you want me look up my adddress on the member profile.)

I can see why Battlefront have done it this way and largely approve. I would like to see greater command and control for Russian armour in the early period as they had to wave flags at each and radios were only used to connect them to higher command levels. Not easy if MG bullets are bouncing off the turret. I noticed more command and control problems for the 3 T34s in the demo than has occurred for me so far in the game? Also like to see tank rate of fires lowered for inexperienced crews and tanks are firing far to few rounds to hit the target – whatever the skill level. I suspect tank duels were much more drawn out than the game portrays. As for aircraft is one of the designers related to Herman Goring – and got stats on the effectiveness of aircraft directly from him by any chance? I find hard to believe that a fighter-bomber could even find individual platoons hidden in wheatfields let alone attack them accurately. I admit that the Stuka dive-bomber was the precision guided weapon of its day but were very vulnerable and without having total air superiority risk heavy casualties. The Sturmovick in contrast had a reputation for keeping going and absorbing a lot of punishment. The system particular in operations begs for a system that could stop your Stukas arriving if the Russians suddenly put a lot of fighters in the air over the battlefield or allowed the Russian players ground attack planes to make limited attacks what ever the tactical situation in the air. Well I can hope cann't I

I suggest you look on this thread - try this thread The scenario icon thread is backaways as well.

:eek: I meant 405.bmp - leave the iron coss alone!

They are not answering - if it is really bugging you - put 400.bmp in a program such as PSP and just do mirror and save. (I did a really complicated one first!). I hope to have a web site for a number of small mods including diffrent crosses, stars etc by early next week.

I have noticed that the hammer & sickle on the star icon for hidden Russian troops is the wrong way round when viewed in the game. The BMP about 405 I think is fine. Is this a weird programming mistake for this icon that you are shortly to correct. I have got a mod that will fix this. However, not got my site sorted out to host it yet. If it is a strange short-term program thing about to be corrected then there is not a lot of point confusing everbody by issuing it. (Didn't what you use the raz thing for so I thought I would give it a spin!!)

:eek: opened a big can of worms on 88mm - clearly evidence it was used. I was questioning the crews ability to hit targets with it compared to trained tank and AT gunners. (Was fair put in Desert Experience.) Clearly everbody thinks they can. I was hoping people would comment on the kill potential of the diffrent German guns as against the early Russian tanks. I may have not got this right compared the figures to stated CMBB armour. Made it clear do not how in simple/general terms curved and rare "critical hits" work in system and if they change these guidelines geatly.

Sorry about that I seem to have posted before I was ready! Hope you forgive any all typos and mistakes - and things I could have put more diplomatically!!!!

37mm L45 AP 48mm at 100m 45mm at 250m 39mm at 500m 34mm at 750m 30mm at 1000m Data developed by converting 30° figures in Jentz Panzertruppen to 0° using slope multipliers and armor hardness effects. Projectile metal in 37mm AP appears to be very inferior to 75L43 APCBC. Turret front successes against T34 will be severely reduced. 50mm L42 APC 75mm at 0m 71mm at 100m 66mm at 250m 58mm at 500m 45mm at 1000m Data lowered to be more consistent with American and British estimates. KV-1 75mm armor vulnerability reduced significantly. 50mm L60 APC 99mm at 0m 94mm at 100m 88mm at 250m 77mm at 500m 59mm at 1000m Data lowered to be more consistent with American and British estimates and German tests against KV-1 75mm/30° during spring 1942 (round succeeded at 100m and failed at 200m). 75mm L24 APCBC 50mm at 100m 49mm at 250m 47mm at 500m 46mm at 750m 44mm at 1000m Following changes follow from analysis of data in Jentz Dreaded Threat and American/British data on Flak ammo: 88mm L56 Flak (up to spring 1942) 123mm at 100m 121mm at 250m 116mm at 500m 112mm at 750m 108mm at 1000m Early war large HE burster capacity ammo 88mm L56 Flak (spring 1942 and beyond) 149mm at 100m 145mm at 250m 139mm at 500m 133mm at 750m 127mm at 1000m Gun 37mm L45 Kills BA6/BA10/BA20/T26 all types/bt-2,Bt-5,Bt-7, All tankettes at up to 1000m on Front turret. T34 M40/41 Possible Front turret kills at 250m (How much does the curved armour make that unlikely?) Can still bounce at point blank. T34 M41 Cast turret – not normally possible to penetrate even at point blank. (Assume you have a critical system for extremely lucky hits on weak points such as ports, etc. KV1/KV2 Cannot normally penetrate turret or Hull at point blank My perception of these figures is that they are about right – no complaints. 50mm L42 APC Kill standard light armour out to 1000m T34 M40/41 Possible Front turret kills at 1000m T34 M41 Cast turret Possible at around 750m KV1 1939/40 Not possible to penetrate turret at point blank Only possible to penetrate hull at point blank My perception of these figures is that the T-34 did a lot better than this – I would say maybe 50% of hits killed at 500m of the top my head. 50mm L60 APC Kills all standard light stuff up to a 1000m and beyond. T34 M40/M41 all types killed in front turret at 1000m KV1 1939/1940 Front Turret Kills at 100m Hulls kills at just above 500m KV2 Front turret immune at point blank. My perception is again a bit extreme on T-34 I would have thought surviving 50% of front turret his at 750m of the top of my head. I suspect some T-34s survived front turret hits at 500m and below. 75mm L24 APCBC Kills light armour at any range. T34/40 get front turret kills at around 850-900m if indeed it had any hope of accurately put its rounds that far! T34 M41 cast turret – survives turret hits at point blank KVs survive at any range. My perception - Um on this one! 88mm L56 Flak (up to spring 1942) Kills anything up to 1000m Except front turret of KV2 and that will be about 980-990m! It very hard to say from Russian experience. If I remember rightly when Germans 88mm L56 Flak (up to spring 1942) first encountered KVs which held up their advance they called in Divisional artillery assets to blast them – they did not bring up 88mm guns. I know that the Luftwaffer crewed them and were trained to rapidly put shells in an area of space above them – they do not have proper gunsights to hit tanks but unlike 3inch British aircraft gun which had them separate they were at least on the gun. Gun commander could watch the fall of shot through binoculars and been 88m he should be able to see something. The model in the Tiger 1 would of course have had proper sights, as would later models of the gun. Rommel used them first in France at Arras. From battle descriptions they tore apart the Matilda 1s which were immune to everything else. It was apparently possible to see a tank moving in the desert which was kicking up a dust cloud out to 3000yds (2730m) and the British perception was that 88mm could hit and kill British tanks of this period at this extreme range. Poor British tankers in these conditions had no where to hide they could only advance and hope they would get in machinegun range (No HE on early British tanks) or bail. Not sure how keen there Luftwaffer crews would be to engage with tanks in Russia – they were big target as well and they could not rely on Desert conditions to pick of the enemy at extreme ranges. There are stories from Normandy of a German infantry officer telling a 88mm crew that you will engage those tanks and get a medal or I will shoot you with my pistol! I suspect they were not entirely the wonder weapons people think they were. I think we have to have a simple laymens understanding of what advatage curved armour gives in the CMBB system and how you determine if a critical part of a tank is hit and how often this happens. Then you get a better figure of when T-34s and KVs will start to die in the game. What are peoples thoughts on this then? (Ps I hope you are modelling riveted armour problems on Czech tanks in German service, that also plagued early British designs.) Different subject - but you may be getting the wrong idea of photos of killed Russian tanks with multiple hits. Seen close up pictures of T-34s where it looks as if every shot went through from the depth of the scoring - up close you could see that only one hit had actually gone all the way into the tank. The other possibility is that the German Tank crews were not sure if they had made a kill or not so kept putting rounds into it. You got this effect in the Gulf War when dead Iraqi tanks were killed again and again - as US and British tankers were not sure if they were really dead.

I have copied this lot down and will get back to you - on it. (More for people to understand what the figures will mean in game terms rather than to say hey I have seen these figures which are better). Got to warn you that I have issues with accuracy, number of hits it is taking to range in to a target and rate of fire. Although not that bad as to be unbelievably possible in most circumstances. These for Regular crews in the game appear to be more like very experienced test crews firing at paper targets on a firing range which have perfect weather conditions and are as flat as pancake - rather than pretty average crews that facing people trying to kill them possibly with bigger and better guns and are hiding behind better armour. With all the vagaries of terrain, etc which the game maps do model well. If you cannot see the shot fall - you have to fire again until you can. Maybe obvious for an 85/88mm gun but the little guns? The limit to this falls off long before the theoretical range of the best WW2 guns.

Yea we know - you got version from paranoid German company - think maybe they could be prosecuted for corrupting young with swastikas - any bodies. Get scenario icon - from thread on scenario icons that will correct one part of your problem. As web site with files now gone - you are going to have to ask a nice American to email you the Finnish armour files - they were listed on an earler thread - maybe some site will host them again soon?

Many thanks Eden. I understood the first bit copy your code. I can manage that I think! Second bit about map your hard-drive for the files seemed a lot more worrying - At the moment I have all my html,jpegs, giffs in one folder uploaded onto the Yahoo space - each page just calls what is needed. Can I just do the same for the files to be downloaded. I understood the ftp bit - suppose this will prevent me putting up very large files - like mods of tanks - think this is beyond my purpose anyway! What will happen if every CM fan in europe wants to down load my icon bar - this does seem extremely unlikely however - what customer load do you think I will get away with! Mark

It is very nice and a great orginal idea to have an icon for each troop type rather than just a nationality. Get it. :cool:

Eden - don't know if yoiu are going to spot this one now - but can you advise me on how to get a file put on a web site downloadable - know I should go and buy a book on HTML. I have a yahoo site figured out all the code some years ago not done anything since It is here: Dirty Mark's Game Design Site I may as well do something with it such as give small mods away Although I think you should all be looking at this site - Russian Battlefield

I know I promised not to post again for a long time but Blackvoid has hit the moving target in one shot. I am really glad this thread is going on!!!!! I sort of understand where the Battlefront administrator type guy is coming from two! I like the idea of rarity but not sure you have gone far enough along the road with this one or really made unusual vehicles rare. (Not even sure I understand the concept either – got the Euro manual.) The SU-76 would have been the most common vehicle on the Russian front in the mid to late years – if you want to differentiate the T-34 into late and early models, yet it is not rated common and I have yet to use one or encounter one. There are still gamey choices – I tend to buy the Russian ACs at 22 points for scouting – they would have been rare as hell – a handful per Armoured Division. I liked the fact in CMBO you could not buy King Tigers on the same list as Volkssturm. What happened here? I think the lists should reflect the equipment in the type of division you are in – Armoured, Motor Rifle, Infantry, etc. In CMBO I thought that the problems with Stugs, Hetzers etc were modelled well. In CM2 like everbody else I think they are super weapons. I don’t believe the gun on them is that good. Yes I know about the picture with the Stug with all the kill markings. Ok Michael Wittmann learned how to be a Panzer Ace in one. The Stugs were used in pairs to support infantry. On the Russian side their infantry was supported by tankettes – they are in the list with the trucks – the paper thin things with MG armament and open topped. You could kill one of these things in a Stug by dropping a HE round near it. Later when the Red Army used the SU-76 for general infantry support – the Stug still wins – the SU-76 is opened topped and so can still be killed by a HE round – they are issued only with a handful of AT rounds so will have run out by the time they have ranged in. One historian who has studied Wittmans career believes that the majority of his kills are these Tankette things not T-34s or KVs – he pointedly says they would not have been considered tanks on the Western Front. Some sources add in the abandoned Bren carriers into his kills at Villers Bocage. (In fact they tend double the number of Bren carriers that were there.) His career would have been cut short if a division of these things had come straight at him. Yep, never seen a Tiger II, Panther in an email points game in CMBO – one opponent thought about buying a Jagpanther – I advised him not to bother. (I think it was good and honest advice). Battlefront – would it help if I said pretty please? (By the way the 81mm mortars seem a bit expensive on the Italian list – was this a typo.)

Thanks Pud - Really like the site My coonection ended suddenly and I posted this in the wrong place by mistake - the first time

Thanks Pud - like the site.

I really do not want to be rude, or pick a fight, do your efforts or the game down - but to be helpful - your mind set is we have got some figures we have put them in a (pretty complicated and sophisticated) ballistic model – it must be penetrating this at this range – the tank has this armour it must have died. Then the gamers are going I don’t believe this – it is going against all our perceptions from what we have read and know and you have to face it is there hobby they have read a lot of books and played a lot of unsophisticated models (wargames) and your model is not getting anywhere near them. Your response is to go our model must be right so everybody’s perception of what happened at the time must be wrong. I am not going to tell you that you are (always) wrong - you could in fact be right. You have given some German wartime figures quoting the 37mm gun been able to penetrate at a close but fairly reasonable battle range. My perception from reading battle accounts is that the German AT gunners called it the “doorknocker” and believed it had no hope of penetrating the front of a T-34 or KV (They would not know what model came at them). There stories of such Russian tanks actually driving over such guns and crushing the crew who gallantly manned their weapons to the last – I do not know if you what to believe them or not they were believed by the soldiers at the time. The fear or maybe it just was that they were just obsolete and useless was such a special round was developed and issued to give them so hope. (Is this what you modelled?) Which is right the German test results or the crew’s perception of what their weapon could do. There are lots of reasons to question any published figures made during the war. Even secret unpublished figures for the German army internal use will have an element of bias, partly to protect morale but mainly because they are biased and proud of their weapons. It would take a lot to shake this view and history shows that the T-34 and KV shook them. Both sides were wartime dictatorships and if Stalin or Hitler said something was so – then your life was on the line if you dared to point out that there is this thing called reality and it was not so. Hence Stalingrad and the Russian debacle at the start of the war when Stalin believed that he had done a deal with Hitler and he would not attack, etc, etc. I think you have big time problems trying to do the representation in such an exact and realistic way or at least treating the result as such. Because of the data you need to have and the possible sources. I have tried to put together an oob on British tanks (For SPWAW on an unofficial basis – so I do not want to claim any game design expertness – OK. CM is my hobby.). I found out the hard way that official British sources from the time could not even get the heights and lengths of their own tanks right some of the time (Well a lot of the time to be honest!). As for the armour there are the (official figures which you are extremely lucky to get at all) which are quoted in all the books but then you will come across a book with figures from a restorer or curator who has actually bothered to measure it and they can be some big surprises. (One armour historian has gone around all the tank museums and after examining their Italian tanks found that none of them were the model the museum believed they were or for that matter the model the British thought they were up against in the desert!) Also the armour on the hull is likely to be a number of thickness depending on what part of the hull you are talking about - if curved armour is involved it gets even more complicated. To get data on ballistics on every gun you have tried to model is going to be a laugh a minute impossible situation. The bottom line is you cannot treat this subject as a hard science. Frankly I would only trust figures for weapons that were used into the post-war period and even then you have to apply more than a pinch of salt. Look at some of todays weapons systems – during the Gulf War the Patriot missile was flaunted as been able to protect Israel from Scud missiles attacks every time no question – the reality was no Patriot hit a single Scud and the only casualties from these attacks was from a Patriot! There is more than propaganda to this - modern weapon makers – to put it bluntly - lie about their weapons performance and effectiveness. Do you think the situation was any different in 1939? If you have to go back pick out some weapons that you have good figures for – I would imagine the 85mm gun on the T-34. I would imagine that AT gun performance improved very dramatically from 1939 - 45. Then take this as a guideline and work back if any figures you are getting look at the main weapon systems and see if they are matching what you think they could be from this. If you are getting performances that are far better or far worse think about and be prepared to reject the figures. Your guess is as good as anybody elses – probably a lot better as you must be experts. But bear in mind that people have a perception of what these weapons should be doing – if your model is breaking these perceptions think about it – there could be good reasons for them. I repeat again it is not a science but an art. The subject of been able to hit a target in WW2 is a whole different ball game and frankly optics can only play a very small part in this equation. Frankly the weapon technology of the day was such that even with the best WW2 guns I do not believe you could hits over 1,250oms without using all the tanks AP ammunition ranging the gun in! Sorry about my English – I have spent more time on this post than I have time for or wanted to make. I promise not to make another post for at least a week!

Is Combat Mission 2 the best game ever? It really should be considering the man-hours that went into it – which were clearly a labour of love. The choice of tanks and graphics is absolutely assume – the terrain is brilliant – how is any amateur mod maker going to get it better than this? I bought it on its day of release from a shop – I normally never do that I always buy games mail-order for cheapness (I am a hardup Yorkshireman.) when their price is dipping a bit and I know it really is a good game because it sold heavily – and the patches are available for it. Even so only about one in 10 will make me think this is a REALLY good game. So I must have thought that CMBB was going to be something special. For that matter I don’t normally even bother looking at forums let alone post on them. However, the more I play the game the more I have to the conclusion that I am playing Combat Mission: Cross-of-Iron not Combat Mission 2 Barbarossa-to-Berlin. You get these cool Iron Cross icons on the scenario choice screen (They are missing the central Swas’tika and ribbon – if this to simply the icon or censorship). Just like Sergeant Steiner my troops carry Russian submachinguns and can crawl through 3d wheatfields. The wheatfields are cool, having half my troops with Russian submachineguns is bugging me. It just could not have happened – because troops fire on the distinctive sound of their enemy’s weapons. A soldier, who fired a burpgun from the German lines, would cause all his mates to think they were been flanked and they would all let him have it. Only the odd soldier in reconnaissance on both sides would take the risk of using an enemy gun. (Steiner after all was from the Recon Platoon.) CMBO success was about playing a balanced tank-infantry game by email with a human opponent. It was my most played game ever and ousted the ageing Steel Panthers 2 from my hard disk. CMBO’s success was despite not really been a true simulation of combat on the Western front. Shermans seemed to be upped a bit in power and Tigers and Panthers down a bit. There seemed to be a lot of mistakes the British 17pdr was called a 76mm gun in its long form and properly a 77mm in its short form but was only a bit more powerful than a 76mm gun. The usual Wargame HVAP myth that made a Sherman into a Panther killer was expanded despite the tank having no means to judge the range. None of these things were ever corrected or really mattered because that’s not what the game was about. What we had was short 75 rules to make the game even more fairer and gamey and a proving ground for mod artists – making mods is almost as much fun as wargaming even if you have no artistic talent! Is CMBB like CMBO – no I don’t think it is at the moment. Despite having the most realistic simulation of WWII combat ever. The reason is that the capabilities of the Russian tanks are way out The T-34 and KV1 on paper were awesome beasts on paper and were a shock to the Germans. The reason why the German’s victories continued was that they had better organisation, leadership, training and command and control. An ex-SS tanker on the history channel described the shock of meeting T-34s for the first time and the reason why they coped. He described how they beat a unit of KVs, despite not been able to penetrate the front armour in what he described as an almost naval manoeuvre to the enemies side over the Russian steppe. The reason was that Russians still had to wave flags each other, whilst all it took was a simple command down the radio for the SS tankers. I was expecting in CM2 to get to grips with having capable Russian tanks but low command and control and poor bad morale from the effects of poor training and poor leadership on the Russian side. It is just not there. (It was even more visible in the demo!!) Does this matter – no if like CMBO – CMBB gives a balanced email game. I have been player a Russian CMBO player called Ivan he picked a scenario with a large number of T-34s attacking two Stugs. I killed them all with easy – did I do anything really bright no. I would have lost if I taken Russian. If I had played the scenario a few times I might have stood some chance – but this is not what made CMBO successful. This issue is a lot more serious than the WG censorship issue. Ok crawling around 3d wheatfields and pretending you are Sergeant Steiner is fun but is going to keep people playing and inspire them to read books about the Eastern Front in the same way that CMBO did. I really hope so. Somebody criticised my posts by complaining that you can’t have everything in a game – this s of course true. I also believe that computer wargames cannot effect people’s beliefs – but maybe they should. CMBB is a very sanitised view of the war on the Eastern Front – you cannot model troops falling dead at Stalingrad from starvation or have NKVD troops machine-gunned men on their own side who were retreating but it happened and if CMBB was a truly great game it should be implied so we all remember what really happened. I remember a truly great game called Squad leader: Cross of Iron it was ground breaking for its day and took all the elements of micro armour battles and put them in a boardgame – for the first time every weapon was modelled – and we believed it was right, it was a gamey game that gave a fair battle but it also reminded you of the horrors of war even through the movie link. Does anything I say matter or will it make any difference – I am wise enough to know that it doesn’t matter – no body is going to buy the game or not because of what I say in a post. I certainly have no influence on whether people will play CMBB or in the end go away and play PENG. Please prove that I am totally wrong - below here. Dirty Mark

Sorry Amedeo - I should have looked more carefully at your name!

The issue is real ... the game was set in Aug 1942 I had T34 model (1943 early). The german tankis a Panzer IIIJ. I came at him with a platoon of 3 T-34 in from a sort of side aspect - certaibnly target is side at first and he reacted to me. The range is now 1237m it was longer when the kills where made - I think this is extreme for WW2 tank battle. Currently I am getting an 8% chance of a hit and am hull down so is the target. Not sure if this was the case last turn - but terrain is much the same. This occured on turn one - he is in far right corner and I am in far left corner! The german crew must be regular sae as me. I think something is wrong somewhere and it is more than just the T-34 turret size. The Germans seem to have laser rangefinders and battle computers. I think the longest range kill ever recorded in a battle was during the Gulf War by a British Challenger who struck a T-55 in the rear with a HESH round at about 5000m. The Germans have none of this technology just better training and organization - their tanks were considred pretty iffy quality wise on armour, and firepower but beter designed for actual combat use. THE T-34 WAS A MASSIVE SHOCK TO THE GERMANS AND LED TO THE PANTHER AND TIGER DESIGNS BEEN RUSHED INTO COMBAT. Shottraps - 45mm is not that good for 1942 etc just does not cover it. Andreas seems like a serious guy - I hope a rethink is done on this issue and it really is sorted.

It is very late on a Saturday night in England and I am very much worse for waer. I fell off my chair and almost chocked laughing!!!!! Can you be locked up in Germany for displaying such uneutral flags!!! Seriously, how do you do this trick with angelfire and get them to host a mod for free. Is it very technicalkly difficult. CDV seem to be teaching me all kinfds o new skills! Dirty Mark