Mark Dutton

What bothers me the most about the sub issue is that we are forced to maneuver a single unit representing a wolfpack around the map. German U-boats always deployed singly or in small groups. Wolfpacks were assembled on an ad hoc basis by radio commands. The simple fact is that submarine warfare cannot be adequately modelled in this game if you are going to have individual units moving around the map. We are forcing a square peg (individual submarines) into a round hole (army/fleet scale). It makes more sense to have an off-map subsystem where the Germans devote MPPs to building, deploying and maintaining a U-boat force. The Allies can devote MPPs to building, deploying and maintaining ASW ships. By deploy I don't mean moving actual units, instead each side would designate what percentage of their fleet was deployed and paying an MPP cost based on the percentage. The higher the percentage deployed, the higher the potential casulaty rate (combat and operational losses). The amount of economic damage done to the Allies would be based on the relationship between the Axis/Allied investments and deployments. This gives each side a strategic choice without having to mess with individual unit icons. Since research is handled off-map, I don't see why submarine warfare can't be handled that way.

I've tried attacking fleets with land units (a weird concept when you think about it, as if a fleet would stand still for artilery batteries to emplace and then fire long enough to inflict damage on heavily armored battleships) and never had any success. One reply alluded to what happened at Caen. But that was against units defending against an amphibious invasion and the targets were within 20 miles of the coast. Given the scale of the hexes in this game it doesn't make sense to assume that the unit in a hex is crammed into a 20 mile strip along the coast. I understand that there is a certain level of abstraction to this game but when the abstraction yields widely ahistorical results, it begins to look like computerized Axis & Allies.

Fleet units seem overly powerful. I lost a German Tank Group (strength of 6) to a single air attack followed by a single bombardment from a fleet unit. Given that maximum battleship gun ranges are about 20 miles and that hexes are bigger than that, how can a naval unit inflict such damage on a highly mobile unit? Naval units also sit on the coast for weeks at a time muching on a land unit, slowly wearing it down. This is highly unrealistic given the way that all admiralities feared air attack on capital units. The only surface bombardments that I'm aware of in WWII were during amphibious assaults, once the troops moved inland, the battleships departed.

The question is: Does CMBO model Lawn Mowers properly and will it be fixed in CMBB? I understand that the Soviets tended to operate their Lawn Mowers in brigade size units

I had a PBEM game where I used the nebelwerfers to clobber a road I suspected my opponent would move down to get into position to assault me. The randomness of the rockets caused some havoc for my opponent who wasn't clumped together but spread out somewhat. He lost 2 towed AT guns and several squads. I also suffered some light casualties on short rounds but it was a net gain. From a psychological standpoint they can be unnerving. You see the first round impact and you know there is no place to move your troops to, unlike regular artillery which tends to fall into tighter patterns.