Ruthless

Ruthless, I know you as a bit more clued up than that. Which Red Army would the W.A. be fighting in 1945, that of 1945, or that of 1941? Answers on a postcard, but please stop being ridiculous. </font>

100 miles were done in ~3 days on a regular basis during advance operations in late war. 2 weeks in the Vistula Oder operation in January to advance 500km. Roughly the same rate during Iassy-Kishinyev in August 1944. About 3 weeks to move 5-600km during Bagration. I can think of one time the W.A. achieved these advance rates against an unbeaten foe, and that was for a few days in late August/early September 1944 in France. So, the answer to 'how many months did it take the Red Army to advance 100 miles?' is 0.1. 2 weeks to take Berlin - an advance of 70 km, including an encirclement of half of 9th Army (~100k men give or take inside the cauldron I would guess) followed by a wide encirclement and then reduction of a city of 3-4 million inhabitants that was fiercely defended. There simply is no comparison for this for the W.A. because they never had to deal with this sort of military challenge. I very strongly recommend Christopher Duffy's 'Red Storm on the Reich' and Paul Adair's 'Hitler's greatest defeat' as reading matter. The former deals with the various operations in January to March 1945 in what was then east Germany and Poland, the latter deals with Bagration. </font>

Can you explain please? As an add-on to my previous post. Bagration, Iassy-Kishinyev and the Vistula Oder operation did emphatically not happen against a 'badly battered German army'. The same German army that was given a vicious kicking by the Red Army in the east was giving the W.A. a very hard time in Italy and France in June (and indeed defeated them at Monte Cassino two times earlier in the year, while hemming them into the Anzio bridgehead for four months), beat Market-Garden in September, and launched the Ardennes offensive in December. So by that token, all the W.A. successes in 1944 were also achieved against a badly battered and by that time small German army. </font>

Yes, but even in 1945, how many months did it take the Russians to advance, say, 100 miles? How long to take Berlin? And that is against the very badly battered (and by this point small) German army. My point being that there is, as far as I can tell, no reason to believe the Red Army could quickly push the Western Allies out of Europe. My point is also that the Russians, despite being numerically superior, did not show themselves capable of advance any better than the Western Allies. And most analyses thus far have ignored the strategic level, which IMO is where the Russians are very inferior in this case.

All this nationalistic analysis is just so much rubbish. </font>

Ok, I'll pitch in my two cents from a non-grog perspective, but from I think I know a little about warfare and about WWII. For starters, there's not a clear situation defined here, so there are too many variables to comprehend. When would this engagement take place? Have the Japanese capitulated yet? What is the political will of the president? Of Stalin? Of the fighting men of the countries involved? Who is attacking whom and what are their goals? How much of a factor is partisan activity going to be? Etc. For the sake of argument, let's say that there are two situations: (1) Russians try to take Western Europe, Western Allies defend. (2) Western Allies try to force Russians out of Eastern Europe, Russians defend. (It is unlikely Western Allies would have had the political will nor the military strength to conquer Russia, so I'll forget about that possibility for now.) Now, there seem to be a lot of people that are just about to wet themselves over how great the Russians were on the battlefield (and some doing the same for the Americans, too), but let's face it: Russia didn't and couldn't just "roll over" the Germans even when they were horribly undersupplied, understrength, and vastly outnumbered by the Russians, not to mention being attacked on both fronts. So I don't think the Russians could easily push the Americans out of Europe. Similarly, I don't think the Americans and their allies could easily push the Russians out of Eastern Europe. Thus, I don't think that a short war by the Russians would be possible (probably not for the WA, either.) Neither side showed itself to be spectacular on the tactical nor the operation levels, though both had their share of successes (and failures.) I think it is very unclear which side was superior on the tactical and operational levels, but I think on the strategic levels it is clear (or at least it is to me): The Americans and her allies controlled most of the world, the Russians controlled Russia and Eastern Europe. Russia had--as far as I know--very little naval capacity and this would make them quite vulnerable, as the WA's navies were quite powerful, including aircraft carriers. This would also allow the WA to invade Russian territory from many different places, making Russia have a similar problem to what the Germans had with the Atlantic Wall--too much border to defend. Additionally, Russia was highly reliant on supplies from the USA (everything from jeeps and aircraft to copper and traincars). Further, the Russian economy and industry was not in good shape. I don't really think the Russians--with no assistance from the US--could keep up with the US' production. I also think that Russia's supply lines would be more vulnerable than the WA because they would be vulnerable to attack from multiple directions. And the force levels on each side are, I think, misleading. According to what I've read, the Russian army was large, but they lost a LOT of men in the years of fighting and were down to a lot of old men and children (according to von Mellenthin.) Also, the US had not fully exploited its resources in manpower, which could be brought to bear pretty well within a couple months, probably. So, if the Russians could not get a clean victory in a couple of months, they would be hit with a lot of fresh reinforcements. And in response to someone's comment about the Chinese fighting the Americans in Korea, they should bear in mind that the Chinese lost about a million men just fighting the US to a stalemate in a limited war. We didn't even attempt to attack their homeland, which would have brought a lot more casualties and lost supplies to the Chinese. I do not think the Russians could afford to lose a million men in such a situation, but then I don't think they were as mismatched as the Chinese were, either in terms of technology. Finally, I think the A-bomb, if ready by the time this hypothetical war broke out, would have been pretty much a deal-breaker for the Russians. I think some here are thinking of strategic bombing of cities like Hitler did with Stalingrad. Only those were regular bombs, which left the city broken, but standing. The A-bomb would pretty well wipe it off the face of the map and make the area hazardous wasteland to humans. I don't think the Russians would continue fighting after one of those was dropped on, say, Leningrad. Anyway, that's my assessment. The Russians were in no position to get the WA out of Europe and the WA would have had a bloody time getting the Russians out of Eastern Europe, but the WA had most if not all the strategic advantages and this would mean--IMO--victory over the Russians if the WA had the political will to fight a long, bloody battle.

It makes perfect sense. BFC model probably (this is a guess) has a table of firepower vs. range for different units and that represents the density of bullets at a particular range (SMG at close range would be very high, at long range, very low...something like that) and the exposure represents the effects of cover. So, you'd take the firepower at whatever range and combine it with the exposure value to figure out the hit probabilities. ---edited to add: the "exposure" value also likely takes into account the units stance (running, pinned, hiding, moving...) [ September 26, 2003, 09:52 PM: Message edited by: Ruthless ]

BUMPING this thread with this quote from a very old article written by Bruce Geryk from gamesdomain.com about CM (back when it was just a twinkle in Charles' eye): Interesting, I thought...

Plenty of game companies charge full price for an "add-on" which will give you maybe a night or two of playing (maybe a week at the outside) for something like your average FPS. I think we can all vouch that CMBB gives years of playing as will CMAK, though my understanding is CMAK will be less dramatic a change than CMBB was from CMBO. I think it probably cost BFC quite a few man-hours to research and model all the new terrain and units for a new theatre, so I can fully see a full price. This isn't like a wargame where units just have attack/defense strengths. Each unit has to be modelled in detail. Also, I'm a big believer that companies need to be smart in their pricing: If it costs you $X to produce a game and you expect to sell Y number of units, you need to charge at least $X/Y to break even. I see this all the time in communities like the combat flight sim community. A modern combat flight sim is probably just about the most complex game you could make and the most manpower intensive, their market is small, and they still charge the same as an average FPS. Bad business model! [on soapbox] There are a lot of discussions right now in the sim community about what direction sims are headed. Lock-On is supposed to come out in a few months and many simmers (myself included) who come from Falcon 4.0 are concerned because it appears it will be less detailed and ED/Ubisoft have already admitted they are trying to target a wider audience than just combat flight sim enthusiasts. So, their game will certainly be pretty, but it will have less accurate/less detailed avionics than we've seen in previous sims, they will try to reach the mass market, and they will charge the same as for an FPS. To me, this sounds like they are making the product mediocre so that it will appeal to masses (like a sitcom or somefink.) I for one do not want to see BFC change their business model if they are making a profit and they are focusing on more and more realism per release. To me, that is the RIGHT way to go. [off soapbox]

I believe BFC actually already gave a pretty good answer to this in a thread several months ago (do a search on Borg in the thread body and you might get it to come up.) Might be in here: Borg spotting But I don't think your concern is going to be addressed. That is, they are not going to hide information from you any more than they do now. I believe the solution is that they simply do not want, once an enemy is spotted, to be immediately known to every unit simultaneously which is what happens now, so units will have to spot for themselves. They may (speculation) be able to share information with other units, however(?)

***SPOILERS WITHIN**** Ok, just a few points that haven't been covered yet: Time limits on the attack may need to be beefed up a bit on some scenarios, but this of course then takes away from the defender. In many scenarios the defender can only win because of the time limit as their forces are only enough to slow down the attacker. (Note: I don't want to sound like I'm whining--these are just observations about how scenarios can play out. I just play for fun, not for trophies ) However, some scenarios I've played, it seems that if one side picks the optimal strategy, the other side has a very low chance of winning no matter what strategy they take. For example, I played as the Russians in a PBEM "Approach to Sevastapol" ****SPOILERS**** * * * * * * * * * and gave my opponent a serious beating. It didn't seem to me that he did anything wrong, it was more a matter of I did it right; and I made probably a lot more mistakes than he did. But my positions were more or less impregnable given the forces he had to work with. In that particular scenario, however, air power matters a fair bit and his air power did not help him that much. Air power was just about the only way he could have dislodged my KV's from their hull-down hilltop positions that allowed them to cover pretty much they entire enemy approach. In the valley were most of the rest of my armor, as well as anti-tank guns sited for side shots. He quickly realized that if he tried to move forward, he would be chewed up badly, so he (wisely) chose not to try after losing several tanks in a probe. In a similar way, playing "Action at Manutchskaya"*****SPOILERS*****, * * * * * * * my opponent (wisely) chose, as the Germans, to split his forces and attack the village both from the south and from the east (IIRC). Lack of hull-down positions and total lack of cover for the Russian armor (I quickly found out that the trees on the map in winter time would not provide me with any useful LOS blocking) made the scenario a quick bloodbath for my poor tankers. In the end, I certainly could have prepared a better plan as mine was flawed in many ways, but the point I would make is that in that scenario, as in the previous one I described, one player doing a particular strategy can make it extremely unlikely that the other player's strategy will work. Now I don't want to fault either of those scenarios in general because I thought they were fun, especially the latter. But I would like to point out that in some scenarios, if one player figures out the "optimal" solution to the scenario, the other player may not have any "optimal" counter to it which would make it reasonably likely to win. As for "Our Backs to the Volga"***SPOILERS***, I am playing it now in PBEM, as the Germans because of this thread where it was argued that it is impossible to win (or at least unbalanced) for the Germans. I have not played all the way through yet, so I can't say whether or not that is true, but I am a bit concerned that even with almost a 3-1 ratio (I think 18 full squads to 7 squads) in a factory, my guys are getting mauled terribly. My opponent has sited his units, I think, very cleverly especially his anti-tank guns, and so this may be a tough one...

Without posting any spoilers, can anyone give me any advice on attacking (as Germans) in this scenario? IIRC, the Germans started out with a lot of relatively fixed positions, so I couldn't (easily) mass my forces to one area, but am trying to do so in a few different areas. However, I find that even in a particular factory, having approximately a 3-1 ratio of squads, with my guys half way through the factory, the Russians opened up and as I advanced and assaulted their positions in the factory, my men were pretty well ground up to hamburger. So, anyone have much luck with this scenario as the Germans?

Sorry, I don't see it in his emblem. Also, I see those same German emblems you circled in the game CM. It is my opinion that is he interested in German WWII military, but I have not seen him making mention of Hitler, Nazis, the Reich, Jews, or anything else that would make me think he is anything other than interested in WWII German military--not unlike many people who play this game. If someone came on and had similar things for the Russian WWII military, would you immediately condemn them as a communist? Until he starts saying things that are offensive, I won't condemn him. It is possible that he has an inappropriately romantic view of the Wermacht or what have you, but so far he has failed to offend me with it.

I can't say I see the swastika in that pic, but that aside Eich' has never said anything that I am aware of that would make me think he had such...err...leanings. If he is a Nazi enthusiast, he is hiding it well... Not sure why there is so much animosity directed towards him in this thread. He posted things he'd like to see in the next version of CM, some agree some disagree, but I see no reason for so many people to be jumping on him...am I missing something(?) (P.S., yes I realize horses and what-not have been brought up many times before on these forums, but not everyone who visits here is aware of all the topics that have been discussed already.)

Ok, since this is now the Wish List thread, I'll throw mine in and--I think I'm reasonably accurate when I say--this one should not be that hard to implement, even for 1 programmer: Allow the export and import of scenarios in a format which is readable by humans. That is, put all the data the game saves about a scenario (and a game which has ended) into a text file in a format that can be easily understood by someone so that people can make their own campaign engines (unless BFC plans to do that themselves in CMAAK.) This would not require any proprietary information to be provided, just the names of the units, their type, casualties, their positions, the map, and the results of battle. I know most of this is already in some format (I imagine the map is saved as a 2-dimensional array of values which index types of terrain and heights or somesuch), it just isn't readable by anyone. Anyhow, this idea's been mentioned before, just like most of these ideas...

Your setup should be plenty, I think. Judging from A1 (the only one I've played so far, but just about to move to the next) your turn processing time should take just a minute or maybe two. I'm on a P 1.8 with 512 MB RAM and 128 video card and the scenario is a little slow for me, but perfectly manageable. "To the Volga" is another story...

Actually, I don't think eliminating Borg spotting is a small change for BFC. Many many aspects of the program change when you change the way things are spotted and communicated, and BFC only has the one programmer... But I do think it is one of the most important issues to be corrected in CM:AAK (Combat Mission: After Afrika Korps).

I think--and this is just a guess-- maybe part of the reason Eichenbaum wants these units in CM is because of the campaign mode you mentioned. If one breaks through the front lines, one would expect to find rear-area troops, supplies, cooks, ninjas, pirates, sharks riding elephants, generals napping, privates digging latrines, etc. In other words, once you start trying to model something more than just the very front line, you start needing things like supply lines and real reconnaisance, etc. I think there may very well be a place for some of these objects (especially ninjas wailing on guitars) in a later version of CM (certainly not CMAK), but it depends how BFC chooses to model things and what they choose to model. So far, they've done a pretty good job at creating a good tactical wargame for the very front of the lines, but next it remains to be seen in what direction they wish to make changes. I would vote that they should improve their current model first (perhaps include modelling of individual soldiers), vastly overhaul the orders system (add SOPs and more complex types of orders), improve the tacAI, fix Borg Spotting, etc. After that, they can start adjusting the scale and adding units.

Well, I probably know less about WWII than most of the posters here, but since I've had a few drinks that won't stop me from making an observation: Jeeps, trucks, motorcycles, cavalry and horse-drawn units, ninjas, pirates, etc. probably all came into enemy contact in the real battlefields of WWII (ok, maybe not ninjas and pirates...but admit it--you want to see these in CM) however, they were not useful primary fighting forces, correct? It seems to me that some here want them because they really were there and would at times come under fire, others are arguing that they weren't historically used as frontline forces for combat. So I guess I think both sides have a legitimate argument. My 2 cents is that BFC should fix things that they already have before complicating the system with units they don't need: Fix spotting/command problems, fix morale/tacAI/troop rating problems (for example, I think many would agree that CM treats unit statistics--edited to clarify: I mean rating systems for how soldiers and crews will behave-- too shallowly which is why people argue endlessly about not being able to achieve certain things on the battlefield with their men: "They're elite! They should not break in an attack!" Arguments like that lead me to believe the rating system is not taking into account enough variables (for example, there is no separation between a highly-trained green soldier and a regular-trained semi-experienced soldier.)), and one that bugs me most of all: Vehicles do not provide LOS blocking. I'd work on improving those areas before putting horses in. Even if they put horses and motorcycles in, though it might be fun to have them for historical reasons, they wouldn't be fun to have to control in battle because they would be babies you'd have to coddle instead of fighting units. So I don't think people would enjoy having them that much. Just my two cents...now back to drinking. [ August 15, 2003, 12:16 AM: Message edited by: Ruthless ]

I would also like to add my desire to see a Cold War CM pack to the pile. That said, if anyone is interested, I am working on my own wargame/sim and planning to do the first release using modern equipment and theatres. In a nutshell, the idea is to have a very sophisticated game engine that can handle just about anything you want to put in and do so in great detail. I.E., if you really WANT to see how the ancient Romans would fare against the WWII Germans, you could set it up and the game could handle it (though the results would be quite gruesome for the Romans, I think ) The engine could handle tactical battles, operational, AND strategic and all could be connected such that tactical battles could be spawned from the operational level, etc... To say the least, there is still much to be done especially since this is a solo project. Graphically, I believe it will likely be similary to Talonsoft's West Front, but without the hexes and units can move more realistically instead of discretely. I haven't totally decided yet, but since I want to allow naval units and don't want to put an artificial size limitation on anything, plus 3-d is a lot more work, I believe it will be 2-d graphics. All game calculations will be in 3-d space, however, and the terrain will be modelled in 3-d, just not graphically. Anyhow, if anyone is interested, you can drop me a line at chrismw12@yahoo.com I hope to be able to load and to display a map from a file within a few months. I'll post some shots here if/when I am successful at doing that (and if they don't look too ridiculous ) if the moderators don't object.

I'm currently working on A1...should be done in a few days perhaps. I hope you keep working on this project! (I'm sure others are equally interested.)

Did you get a tracking number of the TNT shipment? You should be able to look up its status on the internet.

MasterGoodAle's thesaurus must be well-worn by now... :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

Wow! The MasterGoodale AAR really DOES have more molten TNT than the leading brand!

There are probably about 6 or so BOB scenarios that I've seen of varying quality (available for download, not on CD.) There are a few Saving Ryan's Privates scenarios, too. [ January 06, 2003, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Ruthless ]