Alsatian

I want some random amount of fire/interaction from outside the map affecting games. This is the effect that my line isn't in some abstract box, but that there's something going on on my flanks. Let the scenario designer set the amount of "flank activity." Might affect the gaminess of hugging the map edge.

I like to play historical scanarios and tried this PBEM as the Germans. I like playing the histoical scenarios to see if I can do better than history. Locking in most German units in setup may be historically correct, but it severely handicaps my attempt to do better then history. I too could do nothing but set fire arcs and hope the Brits picked the wrong path. Perhaps it's too historically accurate. Unlock the units and give me a chance to play. In fact, my opponent picked the side of the mountain that turns out makes him completely safe from the German's Nasty Surprise. The GNS played no role in the final result. It's too bad that whether or not the game is close essentially depends on the coin flip of which mountain side the Brits assault. For the record, I was crushed 29-71.

30th Infantry Division crossed the Roer south of Julich. Their unit history has an excellent aerial photo (with scale) of the village of Altdorf, just south of Julich. That photo is from their night assault to take the village November 1944. The photo has company boundaries marked on it, and suspected areas of German concentrations. The battle was also interesting because 3 infantry companies assaulted the village swiftly enough to catch 7 panzers there. The panzers couldn't get across the one bridge out of the village to the east. The U.S. infantry spent most of the battle playing cat and mouse trying to kill the panzers before they could escape. After the Buldge the 30th returned to the same front for the Roer crossing. Many other photos (a German 360 mm SP howitzer captured on the Roer drive!), maps and aerial photos.

Here's an even more speculative question. If 3 or 4 U.S. divisions really were to be cut off in a Small Solution operation, would they have surrendered? We all know that Bastogne didn't surrender, but we're talking 101st in a concetrated defense. Would average U.S. divisions have held out as well? If they had, would the German forces have been more at risk of being surrounded themselves when the weather broke and the allies counterattacked?

Hope you didn't mind the four year delay.

OK, I'm terrible with artillery. When I decide to use a pre-bombardment on the first turn, I always pick some spot on the battlefield that turns out my opponent wasn't using at all. It's on target, but it's a big waste of ordinance. When I decide to save my shells for targeting during the battle, and I bring my FO into clear line of site and I call in the fire order, inevitably the fire comes in way off target. I end up killing more of me than of the other guy. So, which school of thought are you: Pre-Bombardment, mid-game spotting, or some combination? If you go either way, what's your thought process on which tactic to use?

Good description of this in Company Commander, by Charles B. MadDonald (1947; reprinted in 1999 by Burford Books: Short Hills, NJ). It's his memoirs from just before the Buldge, through V-E day. I'm reading it now; interesting time period piece. In one company action (23rd Infantry Regimnet, 2nd ID), he describes the effect of a battery of 128mm flak guns used against him near Schkopau, a small industrial town west of Leipzig. "The flak gunners seemed to have discovered our presence in the town. They turned the full force of the twelve flak guns against [one of my platoons], and the streets reverberated with the terrifying crack of the big shells exploding in mid-air to send thousands of deadly fragments whining to the ground below. Tile roofing on the houses clattered to the ground from the concussion. For the first time we realized something of what our flyers had endured, only now the weapons were even more deadly against us than against the targets for which they had been designed." (p. 210) Essentially, his company and another one holed up in the safety of buildings, while it stormed tiny bits of metal outside. They weren't going anywhere. Despite his suspenseful language, his company suffered few casualties, and no kills, from the flak because they were hunkered down pretty well. He does describe some other units taking kills, as well as some officers from regiment too who had come forward to try to get things moving. Simply, MacDonald's company couldn't move until the guns were taken care of. ... "The TDs moved to the edge of town and blasted away at the enemy postiions, but the enemy gunners answered with such deafening barrages of the deadly air bursts that the TDs abandoned the project." (p. 210) Why the flak peppered the TDs with shrapnel instead of trying to knock them out directly, MacDonald never explains, but as you see the TDs were ineffective too. ... Eventually, the Germans spike the guns and withdraw in the middle of the night. When MacDonald's company captures the scrapped guns at dawn: "We came upon the big guns, and I could see their immensity by the smoldering light of the fires. It was no wonder that their barrages had been so terrigying and deadly. The guns were 128mm pieces, and the fuzes in the shells could be set for either air or contact bursts." (p. 214)

Then it was a PanzerSCHRECK. Still pretty impressive shot.

I hate the opposite problem. Advance 50m over open ground with only 5m until you reach cover, then you recieve fire for the first time and they panic and flee back over 50m of open ground. Forgoing cover 5m in front of you for cover 50m behind you seems counterintuitive to me.

Please excuse the mess while I remodel my hypothesis.

Just two very rough theories as to why: 1. Just like field and AT guns, there's a zeroing in effect that as long as the taget doesn't move, subsequent shots get more accurate, i.e. finding range. 2. A squad in open pavement facing the woods has a certain awareness that improves its selection of cover. But while running/sneaking away, with its back to an attacker, its selection of cover is poorer hence they take greater casualty rate as they run/sneak away. Just a thought.

Great maps but they don't allow you to zoom in and get any details. I will spend more time on the site and maybe figure out a way to get clearer identification of units and details from the maps. Thanks for the help. Panther Commander </font>

Here are the daily situation maps from the 12th Army Group, D-Day through Falaise Gap. Hosted by Library of Congress. Shows daily position of 271st I.D. as far as allied intelligence thought. Just browse through til you find the date you want.

If no units target an ambush marker for a few turns, the ambush marker goes away on it's own. You can't just erase it yourself.

Buy it!! It's a classic. Going back and forth between the Mk I, Mk II, and Mk III versions of CM, CMBO stands out. With just a little modding, it's aesthetics almost seem crisper and purer than the high flying details of BB and AK. Call it quaint, call it simple, call it lacking, however you qualify it, it was a pioneer and it is a classic. If only Microsoft would stop cramming new machines down my throat, I could dream of introducing my kid to CMBO someday, years down the road.

What with the rainbow of nations fighting on the Italian front (don't forget the Poles, Indians, Anzacs, etc.), the geography and the terrain, it kind of makes you think of the Korean War. Then you throw in General Mark Clark to boot. Wasn't he allied commander for both?

Neat stuff. Eventually found the Hellcat article in the archives and that linked to a website for a guy in Holland that not only has 2 Hellcats for sale, but a German 88. If I could have one of each that might make firecrackers in my model USS New Jersey look like, well, child's play.

What's Italian for uber? Maybe my gameplay so far is limited, but does anyone else think trucks are unrealistically impervious? Seemed like in Fort Nebeiwa, Italian trucks would take 2 or 3 turns of solid MG fire and several AT hits before they'd abandon. Maybe not having HE had something to do with it, but regardless those were almost uber-trucks.

Love the Depot. Love historical scenarios. Like to find scenarios with no reviews and give em a boost if I like them. Would love (despite it's virtual impossibility) to have an uber-site where scores could be posted for scenarios. With enough game results, you would start having par scores for games. I would have enjoyed much less frustration if I knew par for the Finns in Retaking Viipuri was 30. My keyboard wouldn't have been smashed to bits in utter--I mean violent--despair either.

The more the merrier and no more borg spotting. That really is the biggest point of making it multi-multi-player.

This tournament sure did have legs. Surprised it's still going. My two cents says Sword Point was the best scenario I got to play.

As the American's in the Tunisia demo, there's a headquarters squad. That in itself is new from the American formations of CMBO. Question is, why is the squad represented by only one figure when it shows 12 men in the weapon box. If it's 12 men, shouldn't/can't the on screen unit be a group of 3 men and not just 1 guy? I thought that was incongruous.

Dorosh has already addressed the speed of movement of individuals in a trench. But however quickly an individual moves, it requires not only his time of transit, but the last guy in the line as well to satisfy the movement model in CM. Look at it this way: Say you were tasked with figuring out how long it takes for a train to go from St. Louis to Chicago. The time required is inclusive of the time the engine pulls out of St. Louis to the time the caboose pulls into Chicago. Thats more time than just the engine going from point to point. In other words, if you were sitting by the track with a stop watch, you would be timing how long it took for the entire train to pass your point. I hope you get it this time. I don't think I can make it any clearer in words. Michael </font>

I like the conversation about trenches....because they piss me off and I am the AI's bitch on Cemetary Hill. Damn the mailman for bringing me this game last week. Anyway, I think trenches in CMBB are counterintuitive. If I'm in the same trench as you, neither of us should get much protection from each other. We're shooting straight at each other at the same level with nothing in between, unlike all the bozos shooting at us from outside the trench and frontally. Walls are modelled this way, so why not trenches? If you're behind the wall, you get its protection, but if someone is shooting you from the sides or above the protective factor is lowered greatly. Trenches were zig-zagged to prevent trenches from being rapidly rolled up once they were breached. But CM should model trenches like roads and not like woods. That is: in roads, if you see the road is straight, it's straight. If the designer wants to put a bend or corner in the road he uses an angle or intersecion tile. Woods, as we all know, don't model every specific trunk and branch. What you see is not what you get (specifically speaking) with woods. Right now in CMBB, if the notion is that I see a straight trench, it's really zig-zagged, I don't like it. The trenches should be of a decent length and cost during force seletion that as a defender or designer I can choose whether or not to zig-zag my trench. That way, straight is straight and if in laying out my defenses I want to stretch my trench line across the entire map, so be it, but I risk getting rolled up if I'm breached. If I want to protect from being breached, I zig-zag my trench line at the expense of having a shorter perimeter. And as for movement within the trench, the point that it takes a while for a squad to "get in line," is a good one. But once in line, shouldn't they move along decently. That's the Pause concept in CM. Receive orders, process, organize, moveout. The more complicated the order or formation, the longer the pause. Ordering a squad to move inside a trench should cause a long pause, but then once it starts moving it should have a decent speed. That's the way it should be modelled: long pause then go, not the way it is now where it's sloooooooooow as mud the whole time.

There are no others like CMBO or CMBB.