Austrian Strategist

Now here for some good news: Everything well in the game between Pawter and me. Maps look GREAT; we have arrived at turn 5 in both scenarios, and are having a lot of fun. (Mostly we are firing jokes at each other, not many shells yet, because our forces have some difficulty finding the enemy; this will soon change, I suspect.) [ June 28, 2002, 08:13 PM: Message edited by: Austrian Strategist ]

Elite LMGs: I think they can be useful to cheaply stretch your line. Here is an example of what I mean: x x x - o o o - x x x - o o o - x x x Mines Platoon Mines Platoon Mines - 1 ----- o ----- 1 ----- o ----- 1 LMG -- HQ -- LMG -- HQ -- LMG ...and so on. [ June 28, 2002, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: Austrian Strategist ]

Not so sure about the LMG. Hard to kill, very cheap, even if Elite. Adding an Elite LMG to a platoon can definitely strenghten that platoon. Or put an Elite LMG into a foxhole in trees or wood; it will delay enemy infantry and soak up a lot of small arms ammo, before it dies. It can also be reasonably useful as an observation post, instead of a half-squad or sharpshooter.

Did you get up with the wrong foot today? Probably C. was joking, but say he did discover a cheat, this would be important info for the CMBB crew. Hardly irrelevant.

I have to say that I think this is a bit of an unfair question. C. could be of the puzzle-solving type who is simply interested in the matter as such. He could also be concerned about the possibility of others cheating him. So I don´t think posting about a topic like this is entirely illegitimate.

Uh Oh. German Army: No Fallschirmjäger. July 44: No VGs, I think. Nice try, though.

Not really. Real life differed from CM in (mostly) one thing: At the tactical level, when attacking, you tried to have 3:1 or even 5:1, not just 1,5:1. And this allows for less subtle tactics, because with such an amount of superiority, you can attack with tanks only, for example, and still overrun a defence. CM only simulates relatively balanced engagements, for obvious reasons. But balanced engagements, at the tactical level, were unusual, because irl you try to attack with overwhelming force.

More could, and did, happen. Here is a little war story from my father, Russian Front, 1942: A single Russian Officer with a Machine Gun stopped the advance of an entire Batallion for half an hour (a full game of CM ).

. Sure Seph does himwelf wear the Armour Underwear he talked about. If not, his posting tactics were a bit rash, perhaps. :cool:

Hmmm; maybe random maps do look good, and QBs with reinforcements are in; who knows?

Not just now; tourny has started, and is occupying most of my CM thought.

Oh no. It´s fun to pick your own force. And in the final analysis, I will be happy with any pricing system that comes close to giving historic results. If 'Rarity' does that, I give it my blessings. Edit: Btw, back to the original topic: What spectacular new Fortifications are in? (My favourite would be the 4-storey-deep super-bunker-systems of Sevastopol; to knock them out we would also need the Railgun Dora; how about that? ) [ June 20, 2002, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: Austrian Strategist ]

Yankee has good points; on the other hand I do not understand the two problems above. -Do you mean that fighter bombers would be very common? They were: The main reason why the Allies won the campaign. Goering probably should have come up with a set of Fionn Rules. -All units in a CM game are 'rented'. Therefore: Artillery = price of the Battery; yup.

I don´t think it would be so unbalanced. Equal price tags should mean similar combat effectiveness most of the time. If it turns out one side is disadvantaged, give them more money (similar to Attacker getting more money).

Actually I would prefer unit prices being directly related to production costs. This would be- 1- More realistic. 2- Solving the issue of 'Rarity'. Those items that were common were so because they could be produced cheaply in large numbers. 3- Solving many play balance issues. King Tigers and such would be insanely expensive.

Count my vote for 'Tis being a totally irrelevant feature.' As long as most historical situations are covered with realistic units, rules and formulas, I will be happy.

This leads to another interesting question: What should the American player buy, really?

If only it were that simple. Jackson is not available in July. Your best Tank Destroyer is the M10. Otherwise, some great ideas and analysis, as usual, in your posts. [ June 19, 2002, 04:15 PM: Message edited by: Austrian Strategist ]

Good luck, Patgod! Be careful you don´t lose your Elite King Tiger in turn 1!

:eek: Please make this two large grins, Cpl, so I can be assured you are not meaning it. I never play TCP, and with Pbem a game can easily last 4 weeks.

I think my original plan looks still good. ---------------- 1x Security Pl (Crack) 1x Mot Inf Pl (Crack) 1x Mg42 light (Veteran) 2x Mg42 heavy (Crack) 1x Panzerschreck (Crack) 1x Flak 88mm (Crack) 1x Artillery 75mm (Veteran) 5x AP Mines Redwolf: I think 2 88-Flaks are overkill. Note: Attacker must use Combined Arms Limit, too. He won´t be able to afford too many Shermans. And a Crack 88 can definitely kill ~3 Tanks/Vehicles in a single turn.

To put it differently: There is a category of units that are 'common-but-in-limited-quantity'. Treating such units as 'uncommon' would mean overpricing them. Treating them as 'common' would mean you could get too many of them. With such units, a pool would definitely work better than rarity. This is very different from the issue of rare tanks, for example.

I think you didn´t quite get my joke. Engineers and such are an asset of every Division; therefore not, in any sense, 'rare'. The comparison with HQs served to illustrate my point.

There could be a problem with units that made 10% or so of most historical forces. Such units were not 'rare' in any historical sense, but they were 'rare' in a purely statistical sense. This could sure produce pretty counter-intuitive results. Did you think of that? Any official word here?

Woohoo! Thanks, and good luck, everybody!