Chelt

As the player you can see a tremendous amount of information, but you are not God; you know only the sum of what every soldier on your side knows. As others have suggested in older threads, it might be more accurate to say that the game is set at company or battalion level, with the player taking the role of every commander engaged: every section leader, every platoon commander, every company OC, right up to the battalion CO. And that argues against radical changes to the command model. Certainly a divisional commander, say, knows nothing about the circumstances of a particular tank crew up in the line, but he aims to understand the fortunes of the brigades and battalions under him. More than that, he does not need to know, because everyone down the line is a living, thinking person, able to make decisions on his own. In fact, more information would prove paralyzing. The problem with CM is that the AI simply can't equal a human's cunning and reasoning. That's why a player has to take on all of these roles - fun and games aside. Here's a solution: roleplay. We humans can outfight the AI, and we can imagine and reason better as well. Say 3 Platoon, out of touch on the right flank, is being overrun. As the human player, you know what is happening, but now put yourself in the company commander's shoes - you would hear the firing but that's all! So, instead of sending 2 Platoon to counterattack, you might just send an imaginary runner to see what's happening. Or a freakishly lucky pilot drops a bomb bang on top of your Battalion HQ party, just after your troops step off from the start line. Happened to me in a recent scenario. Imagine what might happen - chaos, confusion, someone from the rear rushing to take command. For now, your companies push on according to plan, but respond more slowly when the picture changes. You might even have different companies acting at cross-purposes. All of this you can do right now, just with the power of your beautiful human imagination. It's good fun against the AI. Maybe I'll even work up a rule-set so that one can try this with a trustworthy human opponent. I've had notions of figuring out a way to encourage players to behave more cautiously, too, so that games don't disintegrate into "victories" with one side wiped out and the other one straggling on low on ammunition, with 80% casualties - one does read of such victories but not as a rule. Kind Regards, David

More than anything else, I'd like to see small houses that touch one another - separate houses, walls between, that behave exactly like large heavy buildings, only one-sixth the size. This is Europe, after all. And attached houses are the rule throughout most of the continent. I offer an example from North Africa: (from WWII Vehicles) And from Italy: (from tuscany-apartments.com ) Streets of this sort are common throughout Western and Southern Europe - certainly in France, Italy, and the Netherlands. (And in the UK, should anyone care to model Op Sealion.) One might expect to find a mixture of detached and attached houses in the usual village, with the densest settlement toward the center. I'm not talking about large communities here - a hamlet of a dozen houses can run along a single road without a gap between walls. Movement in this environment differs profoundly from movement in a village with detached houses. No more can tanks scurry to cover between two houses, except along the odd side road; no more can troops bring the adjacent house under fire. Plus, all these neat rows of detached houses along roads just look wrong. It's so suburban American. David

Thank you all for these suggestions. In case you haven't cottoned on, there's a new version of the scenario that tweaks the Finnish OOB, deleting an ATR and adding a machine gun. It also fixes the mysterious file-not-appearing problem. Most importantly, this new version dumps the Finnish forces in the naive positions that our thick young subaltern first selected. http://millinfo.org/cm/pohlersilta.zip I will be posting a further revision that tries to make the southern side of the village more defensible: http://millinfo.org/cm/pohlersilta2.zip [Edit: this file isn't up yet. Try back in about nine hours.] Also, we're having a lively discussion over email, so if anyone who I BCC'd would like to join in, just drop me a line: trapone@millinfo.org. SPOILERS ' ' ' ' ' Those two tankettes from the south do seem to become troublesome. I'll take a look at Mr Gregory's Map, see if we can't force the tankettes to follow the road. Ought I to remove the tankettes entirely? They don't appear in the original story; I've only put them in to force the player to attempt an all-round defense. Would we be better off with 37-mm armed BTs than with these 45-mm examples? Two platoons of infantry instead of three? Kind regards, David [ June 24, 2003, 11:04 AM: Message edited by: Trap One ]

There's a thread on this subject over in the Tech Support forum, so click here to get huge - er, that is, to tackle the problems with the scenario file.

Here's a new file: Pohlersilta02.cme.zip It will uncompress as "Pohlersilta.cme". Let's see if that works. And I was wrong - no, there ain't no name that you specify in the editor. Is renaming scenario files a no-no? [Edited to appear less obnoxious.] [ June 21, 2003, 10:12 PM: Message edited by: Trap One ]

As a bit of background, I created the scenario in question under CMBB 1.0.3 on MacOS 9.2.2. It's completely new, not a modification of an existing scenario or map. I may have started work under 1.0.0 and converted later, but I doubt that. (For the record, the name of the scenario file is "Defense of Pohlersilta.cme" and the title entered in the editor is "Defense of Pohlersilta".) The file's been flying about the Internet as a .zip, created in DropZip, and I have changed the title within the editor "Parameters" section more than once. And I've changed the filename from its original too. How odd! Any suggestions? David

Designed for play as Axis vs AI. It's a challenge, too, as Allies vs AI, and perhaps player vs player, but I don't know if the Russians' problem with ATRs and morale is exactly interesting. Computer sticks to default setup in any case, this being a tricky map for the AI. I'll email a copy to those who responded - thank you. Kind regards, David

In the 1930s, H.E. Graham wrote a tactical primer in narrative form - a series of dreams, actually - in which an inexperienced subaltern learned how to defend a bridge against a mechanized attack, using the meagre forces avaliable to him. It's a fine piece, well worth reading. (You can read an HTML version here. ) I tried turning this tactical problem into a scenario, but spotting problems and the general heaviness of forces meant that it wouldn't work in CMBO. Now I've just created a CMBB version, and I think that it's successful. The scenario is set in June 1941. I've turned the British defenders into Finns, and the attackers into Russians. One can indeed defend a bridge with an infantry platoon, a light anti-tank gun, and support weapons, but it's a near thing, and the scenario os playable from both sides. Bowler Bridge, I've rendered as Pohlersilta, and I've otherwise Finni-fied the names. The original villages were named after hats, so a comical effect isn't all bad, but I would appreciate help with my Finnish. Anyone, anyone, Beuler? Regards, David (trapone@millinfo.org)

Does the greenery look like this (original page)? Then we're looking at hop plants. Used in the making of beer. [Edit: hop cultivations are called "hop gardens."] Regards, David [ June 13, 2003, 08:20 AM: Message edited by: Trap One ]

Goodness, I hope for thoroughness from scenario designers, but making up resumes for individual soldiers seems a bit much, wouldn't you say?

Flamethrowers are fine for suppressing defenders, but doesn't this tactic tend to set the building alight, making storming it a bit difficult?

For a social history of a regimental depot town, you might look at Geoffrey Moorhouse's Hell's Foundations. Moorhouse examines the history of the Lancashire Fusiliers and their home town, Bury, focusing on the effects of the regiment's heavy losses at Gallipoli.

I'm looking into making a series of scenarios based on the Finnish novel The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas in Finnish), by Vainö Linna. Trouble is, I haven't got a copy of the book at the moment, and I need help with names from someone who does. Some may consider the following a spoiler for the book. Maybe. A good starting point, I think, would be the attempted break-out of Battalion Sarastie, after the Russian column flanks them and overruns battalion headquarters. I remember the circumstances, the terrain, the outcome, and the key characters: Kariluoto has one company and overall command, Koskela has the other infantry company, and a few men of the machine-gun platoon join in. I can't quite place the minor characters, though. Who of Kariluoto's and Koskela's original platoons figure in the scene? Are any other characters mentioned by name? Viirilä maybe? Who's the Regimental commander? Can anyone help with those details? Thanks!

That would give a whole new meaning to the term "doo-dads."

It's worth remembering that settlements in Europe look nothing like their American equivalents. American towns tend to be more dispersed, with lots of space around individual houses - even more so today in this suburban era. Village types vary enormously by country, and then by region. But the present villages do not resemble villages in Western Europe. There, most villages, particularly the older parts of villages, have houses adjoining one another or very nearly so. In some cases you couldn't get a tank through there unless you wanted to demolish foot-thick stone walls. Also, gardens and stone walls are often common - there's much more cover around a house than CM suggests. And streets tend to be narrower. The Finnish villages I've seen were more like CM villages, open, with space between houses. Then again, I've only been in the southern part of the country. This does affect tactics. There's is much less cover now than there should be, and as others have pointed out, you can approach a village from too many directions. But villages are about the right size now. A few hundred people would have been pretty common for a farming community in the earlier part of this century.

On a related note, has anyone been able to Panzerfaust-jump up onto that ledge in the S'pht'Kr level, the one right after you encounter that mess of evil Bobs? What's up there?

It might also be that this is another case of abstraction. The idea of a ten-man foxhole is a pretty absurd one; that's called a trench. Much more sensible to dig a cluster of smaller foxholes for two or three people.

Some of these figures are rounded-off numbers chosen for convenience, and they do not match the actual size of the round. From WWII Vehicles One of the web of notes in the back of Churchill's The Second World War indicates that when the British recieved a quantity of American .30 calibre rifles through Lend-Lease, they painted the barrels to help soldiers distinguish them from the usual British .303s. David

I'm fond of the Archer. It's got its quirks - heck, it's got a rearward-facing gun - but learning how to use it is part of the Archer's appeal. It's under 100 points, and it's got a low profile and a gun that'll kill a big cat from the front. Just had one take out two Panthers and two StuGs in a QB. If I remember correctly, the British kept the Archer in service into the 1950s. David

Rackum-frackum double-posts. [ December 16, 2002, 11:47 PM: Message edited by: Trap One ]

At the height of the Cold War, the British forces in West Berlin painted their vehicles in an odd-looking disruptive urban camouflage scheme, because the usual rural paint stood out in the city. (Remember, Berlin remained under tri-power occupation until German reunification, half a century after the end of WWII.) From the Ex-Military Land Rover Association. Quite a British name, isn't it. David

Do the CMBB Finns really swear that much? David

I think that you might be asking too much of the AI, if you expected the TacAI to guess where enemy units might be, although the Strat AI does just that when it places its own units. Anyway, it's a programmer's question. I do like the way that TacOps handles units coming under fire. In TacOps, you can tell the AI what to do if it comes under fire, by assigning an SOP to any individual unit, or to any type of unit, maybe "all Bradleys." I can tell a unit to pop smoke, reverse 100 meters, and disembark all passengers, if it comes under fire. Or I can tell it to stop and shoot back. David

I think that you might be asking too much of the AI, if you expected the TacAI to guess where enemy units might be, although the Strat AI does just that when it places its own units. Anyway, it's a programmer's question. I do like the way that TacOps handles units coming under fire. In TacOps, you can tell the AI what to do if it comes under fire, by assigning an SOP to any individual unit, or to any type of unit, maybe "all Bradleys." I can tell a unit to pop smoke, reverse 100 meters, and disembark all passengers, if it comes under fire. Or I can tell it to stop and shoot back. David

Brings to mind a passage from Vaino Linna, The Unknown Soldier. I'm paraphrasing from memory, so perhaps some Finn would have to help out: On the first day of the Continuation War, some cook can't catch up with his company at the jumping-off line, so he hitches up his field kitchen and clatters along the road, and catches up with the men deep in the woods, just as they're approaching the Russian frontier. Along comes a battalion commander, who explodes, bawls the cook out for being such a fool as to bring a field kitchen up here. The already-nervous horses bolt and away goes the whole ensemble. The battalion's men didn't connect this incident with a story that grew up, about how their commander, in a show of bravado, sent a field kitchen to head their advance across the Russian border - and how the Russians mistaking the vehicle for a tank, fled in panic. The tale grew to the point that soon a young subaltern wrote his mother in Helsinki, to say that he had been one of the first across the line, riding on a field kitchen with "Wild Kalle" himself. Of course, this is a legendary account reported in a fictional work, so its value to an historian would be, roughly ... nil. David