Jump to content

Carl Puppchen

Members
  • Posts

    279
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Carl Puppchen

  1. David - this is Carl Puppchen - can you recommend some good CMBB mods? I am a big fan of your CMETO mods. I recently re-installed CMBB in honor of CM campaigns and am going to start building scenarios for CMBB.
  2. Yes - I will build the scenario - it will have to have some sort of "random reinforcement" element, because that is my contribution to the CM ecosystem, so to speak - but I am thinking of 2 scenarios - one with Russians infantry attacking Germans w/armor in mid 1942 and a second with German infantry attacking Russian armor, maybe in 1944 (sounds nuts, but I never claimed historical accuracy). I need to put this together - have you seen the other scenarios on my site? It will take a little while because the Chicago White Sox are in the world series so my available time is taken up with them this week... CM Random reinforcement scenarios
  3. As far as the comment that STUGS can stop an infantry assault, that has been based on my experience. Usually, however, it is that MY infantry assaults (I always play Axis and my opponent always plays Allies) are smashed to bits at the hands of Soviet direct HE fire from SU 122 tanks at the like . It has generally been my experience that well handled tanks can stop infantry assaults unless the terrain is extremely favorable to the infantry (i.e. the city, or a road through heavy woods). I don't know how else to explain it... this has happened time and time again and it is embedded into my playing style. I realize that each person will have their own experiences and mine is based on the scenarios that I set up vs. my usual opponent, or playing famous ones like "Our Backs to the Volga". I don't dispute that others would have different results, but my results are based on hundreds of games, as well. I just created my first CMBB "random" scenario. It features a lot of infantry vs tanks, but not enough to test for this purpose. I will build another scenario and then you can look at it and see how it comes out...
  4. I do like the screenshots. A few points... In this example the terrain seems pretty tough on infantry, not too much cover, so if anything that plays more into your points. The hetzer is not a STUG when it comes to anti-infantry weaponry. They have relatively poor MG fire and less HE stowage... they are primarily an anti tank weapon, and in this regard they are probably better than a STUG. It would be very tough to beat a lot of infantry with a hetzer due to the MG issue cited above as well as the low stowage. The King Tiger, on the other hand, is a good anti-infantry weapon with the solid HE performance and good MG fire. However, they are an extremely expensive purchase and if veteran or above you could buy a mob of STUGS for that cost . A single tank can always be overwhelmed with targets, plus the AI tends to "rotate in place" and not shoot at all when you get a lot of targets, which is a bad thing since the KT doesn't traverse that fast (problem is worse for the no-turret STUG, but you have more of them). Snipers and mortars (smoke) are good against tanks, especially single tanks or tanks with low HE stowage and poor MG firepower. In this battle it seems you used them to good effect. In this scenario I would have taken, as the German, STUGS (of course) with lots of 75mm IG guns (cheap, too) and MG's and infantry, as well. I believe in combined arms like everyone else, I don't believe in the "tank only" school of business. It is strange in some ways that I am taking the German side on this discussion because, if the roles are reversed, I am surer of my conclusions as playing the RUSSIAN player. What if, instead of Hetzers, SU 122 tanks were picked instead? Those tanks are much more effective against infantry. I learned (the hard way) about tanks vs infantry when playing the Russians. My usual opponent also has the (brutal) tactic of running in T34's in my face and "cannistering" my infantry and daring me to bring out my anti-tank assets (which he smashes with his direct fire HE in overwatch). I think what makes the game playable (and replayable) is the variety of tactics that work in different situations. If you take the Germans and play against the Russians, I think that expecting your infantry to stand up to direct fire HE against an opponent that selects many tanks, deploys them well, and has at least adequate combined arms (maybe a bit light on infantry, but not just a bunch of tanks) you will generally be on the losing end of the stick. This is just my opinion, based on my experience. I have made 20 CMAK scenarios - here is the link CMAK "Random" scenario page and maybe I should just create some more and we could fight it out and see whose tactics win...
  5. Thanks for replying. Obviously this is why I continue to play the CM game series, there is a lot of subtle ways that you can keep coming back to the same material and come up with different conclusions. My experiences are based solely upon playing a human player, and we have gone back and forth in literally hundreds of games (the guy that posted up above, Johnstone185). Some of the comments that we have differences on are matters of personal opinion; I have used STUGS in almost all of the games (I hate using UBER tanks because what is the fun in that ) so I can say, from my experience, that STUGS are effective against tanks and infantry if used correctly, and are great against humans because they can respond to a wide variety of possible situations. I can clearly say that in my head to head battles stugs have been very effective, against infantry and tanks. They do have a slow ROF and no turret... that is why they are cheaper than PZ IVG. Plus a platoon is only 3 tanks, so you get a platoon bonus without having to buy 5 tanks like with the PZ IVG. As far as the Priest being an effective weapon when they don't have total battlefield superiority, of all your comments that is the one I disagree with the most. Against a skilled human player that weapon is dead a ton of ways - it has a high profile so it is easily spotted by "typical" AT weaponry from AT guns to tanks, and the open topped feature means that it is highly vulnerable to mortars and off map arty. Certainly infantry can kill infantry quickly, that is obvious. However, the TYPICAL situation will not have a close in SMG platoon smashing another infantry position from 40m - the typical situation will have that infantry pinned, strung out, harrassed by fire from tanks and MG's, etc... However, unless you KILL a tank, that tank is going to maul up an infantry platoon / company pretty quickly, between MG fire and direct HE. In a more typical situation, without strong cover (a city) that tank is going to do pretty well. I am playing with the weapons at hand as an axis player. I am SUPREMELY jealous at the SU 122 and SU 152 weapons that the Russians fielded and the fact that these were WAY better than my semi-pathetic 75mm gun on STUGS. I have to buy a couple of 105mm STUGS just to try to mimic some of their firepower. I wish that the STUG was upgunned and with better armor but, alas, that wasn't reality so I have to deal with it as is. The question, is from the force pool perspective, and assuming you don't want to spend all day driving around in (rare) Tigers and Panthers, are you going to do better with infantry, PZ IV G tanks, or STUGS? If on the defense, I will pick STUGS and try to get flank / rear / hulldown positions and use them for a counter attack if my opponent gets too bold. Of course I buy AT guns and fortifications, too. If you play a 1000 point defense and you buy a platoon of STUGS there is room for other forces, but if you buy a platoon of PZ IV G tanks there is a lot less room. Once again my infantry tactics are colored by the east front; I learned time and time again that unsupported infantry was blasted to bits by direct HE fire, from tanks like the T34/85, SU 122, and SU 152. There is certainly room for differences of opinion; but I see the words "never" in your post which just flat out is incorrect. I play against a highly skilled human opponent, never the AI, and I have seen these situations many times, and they played out the way I said in my post. However, I don't necessarily think that my tactics are the best, but they (generally) work for me, or seem to be the best that I can use given the force pool at hand in the East.
  6. No problem. Those CMETO mods are FANTASTIC. They really make some of those scenarios in western europe a lot more fun.
  7. I usually post over at the more sedate "scenario talk" forum but in honor of my 20th scenario (I know others have done many more, but this is a lot for me) I am touting my free scenario site a bit. All of my scenarios feature "random" reinforcements, which adds a lot of fun to them. They are all created for "head to head" play, preferably PBEM. In the zip file with all of the scenarios I built an excel file with facts about each of the scenarios so that you can view it at a glance and pick the one(s) you like. There is also a "fun factor" rating based upon my experience. I am going to switch over to making random CMBB scenarios now in honor of combat mission campaigns. Here is the link CM Random Scenarios
  8. OK - I am at it again. I posted 2 new scenarios on the site (random of course), with 1 featuring a US counter attack at the Bulge and the 2nd being a German attack vs French forces set in 1940. British troops come to counter attack with the heavy Matilda tanks - it is a lot of fun. The CMETO mods look great with it, too. These are my last "random" CMAK scenarios - I am switching to CMBB in preparation for the new combat mission campaign games. I also put a spreadsheet up there that shows the 20 scenarios so that you can view them at a glance - it even includes a "fun factor" so that might help you decide what to play . Here is the link: Link to Random CMAK Scenario SIte
  9. I appreciate that there are differences in styles but I don't think I would conclude that infantry wins games based on this analysis. The tanks to pick when you are facing infantry in the open are not the tiger - they are expensive - but I would have picked a platoon (or more) of the STG III variety with 75mm HE and MG's, plus some 105mm STG variants. These are cheap and carry a lot of HE rounds. I would have 3 tanks for the price of one tiger (if you factor in the platoon bonus). The MG's pin the infantry, agreed, but the HE kills them. Direct fire HE is the quickest, cheapest and most effective way to squash a platoon. Unless you have good cover (say, lots of buildings or a big forest) one STG III should be able to hold off a platoon indefinitely, and a platoon (3) should be able to hold off a company. The other thing is that you could get a green platoon of STG III tanks and hold off a regular or below bunch of infantry just because of the time nature of the scenario - they don't have to kill everyone, just keep them going to ground and then they won't be able to form up for a decent assault. In an ME a tank platoon is way faster and able to firefight much better than a company of infantry. This is a substantial advantage because they can race to a good vantage point early and choose the location for the battle. Priests will be very nasty against infantry, but you can only use them when you have total armor superiority because their poor armor and high target size will have them destroyed in no time. The STG III variant is effective because they can be good tank killers (only the jumbo really stands up to them) and they can also stop infantry, while a platoon of STG III tanks would wipe out Priests / Stuarts / Greyhounds (don't forget that 37mm w/cannister can also maul infantry) generally without a scratch. The benefits of direct fire HE are even bigger if the infantry is on defense in a trench - in which case they are virtually invulnerable to off-map artillery or on-map mortars, and very hard to dislodge with infantry weapons. But a couple turns of direct fire HE from 75mm or higher and they are usually running. A lot of my tactics were also honed on the Eastern front, where my opponent (he always plays Allies, I always play Axis) used their SU 152 and SU 122 and the JS2 tanks to just pound the crap out of my infantry from distance. We called it "rubbling" where you would just start leveling the buildings that they were likely to hide in from the start. And unlike the relatively puny guns in the west, the SU 152 and of course the JS2 tanks have strong armor and can hold their own on the battlefield against AT, and a 150mm (roughly) caliber gun is WAY more effective than a 75mm gun (it is exponential not linear) so the effects on unprotected infantry are even worse. What I guess I am saying is that the "infantry heavy" battle was a loser for me against my usual opponent (we have played 100+ games so far) especially in the East where the direct fire HE weapons are awesome. This is how I came up with my "strategy" - I was pummelled time after time after time. If you have conscript or green SU 152s (platoon) and not a big forest or city (i.e. some cover, decent cover, but not wall to wall cover) they will smash a company of infantry to bits.
  10. That scenario is a crap shoot. I played it as the Germans and the rockets knocked out a couple of my own tanks and smashed the front edge of my assault. If you are more chicken you might want to put the aim point further back from your soldiers, which will also have the likely effect that a bunch of the rockets will fall off the far board. Still, the odds are overall in your favor with the rockets and since it is Stalingrad, everyone is going to die in the end anyways, so why not roll the dice
  11. Agreed that infantry can beat direct fire HE from tanks, but it does take a lot of effort and some cover terrain to hide their tracks. My point was that if you have an infantry heavy force and the opponent has direct fire HE chuckers and isn't very outnumbered, the infantry will have a very difficult (and painful, in terms of casualties) slog to win. I haven't even taken into account the power of cannister - which I found out first hand in "our backs to the volga" where one T34 whom I just couldn't knock out slaughtered almost a company of my engineers at short range. After that I really treated cannister with more caution, I was clearly being reckless during that scenario, but with MG fire and cannister taken into account it is even rougher to win with infantry vs. tanks. One other element is that it doesn't take much CM skill to demolish an infantry attack with a tank (just sit there and blow up everything in range, and pull back a bit when they get too close) while it takes a bunch of CM skill to stealthily pull off an infantry assault on tanks. Maybe more skill than I typically have , similar to the fact that I never can seem to do jack squat with Marders and others seem to have good luck.
  12. I find that infantry gets completely routed if the enemy has direct fire HE from armored vehicles and a reasonably clear LOS. If the enemy can achieve armor supremacy on the battlefield and has decent HE (75mm plus, 105mm even better) infantry has little chance. Leave a platoon for a couple of turns in reasonable LOS from an HE chucker - they will be routed and running cover with heavy casualties. This doesn't apply in dense woods or city terrain, hence the LOS disclaimer. A big chunk of the game in ME is guessing the terrain and picking forces that favor the terrain. If it is pretty open you can also get a good bang for the buck with guns, especially IG's which are cheap and can also rout infantry. Unless infantry has trench cover (no fortifications in ME's) or heavy buildings direct fire HE is murder.
  13. Our Backs to the Volga was an awesome scenario. I was literally exhausted after plotting attacks as the Axis. More of an endurance contest than anything else.
  14. ME's can be fun. Ignoring how realistic they are (I think they are VERY realistic in the desert - excepting attacks on fortified positions there were a lot of mobile battles in the desert, although it is not clear whether taking ground or smashing the enemy is the objective) - I think that the "rush to the flag" group vs. the arty group depends on the type of terrain. If LOS is blocked you want to rush the agenda. In wide open LOS it pays to hang back and shoot it out from cover. I have seen a lot of ME's against humans where there is NO activity for a few turns while both sides wait for the other to venture out and play their hand. Certainly ME's vs the computer aren't that much fun because the computer isn't very smart at these types of (more) subtle situations.
  15. I just added 2 new scenarios to the site, bringing the total to 18. There is a new Bulge assault with action immediately out of the box and special "winner take all" flag rules (you need to have an honest opponent, but that is assumed ). The other scenario is a quickie Crete scenario. Enjoy!
  16. Keep: PBEM Scenario Editor Add: "trusted" PBEM Multi-player capability (i.e. ability to have 3-4 people plot orders and play, some way of delegating troops to different leaders from the same side) A way to change forces / mod forces to cover different time periods such as pre-war (Spain) or post war (Korea, Israel) Keep up the good work!!
  17. It is true that the defender can open up with a weapon system that the attacker can't spot, and like others have mentioned, medium mortars are excellent in this role. But if they don't have a medium mortar with an onboard spotter with LOS to that point, their options are poor. If they open up with OBA like 81mm mortars that is a great trade for the attacker, because the defender is using a big asset on the 150mm gun. And other items like MG's and tanks are really playing into the hands of the attacker, because now you can open up with impunity.
  18. Another advantage of the 150mm gun is its ability to "rubble" enemy positions. If you are on the assault, buy one of these bad boys, and if you are lucky enough to be able to sight it near likely enemy positions, you can start lobbing big shells into their midst. Now the enemy has a tough call. They can counter the IG, but with what? If they shoot tanks / guns / mg's everything on the attacking side opens up in counter and now you have net lost, because the attack has way more weapons at the point of the attack than the defender (since 1) the defender has to spread out 2) the attacker outnumbers the defender anyways). So on attack, assuming you get lucky with decent LOS, the 150mm IG can simply terrorize the opposition, and any counter strikes play into the hands of the attacker. This is a powerful effect and one you can't model with the 75mm gun. Of course I don't think that the 75mm IG is properly priced, either. That gun is good vs infantry, OK vs tanks, pretty mobile, and cheap. As defender or on the attack these guns are a good buy, as well as the 150mm IG. I generally get better value out of direct firing weapons than indirect firing weapons, all else being equal. The direct fire weapons can cause the enemy to abandon a position much faster than the mortars, which mainly cause suppression. It also goes back to the "kill vs wound" thread. The 150mm IG kills, the 75mm IG "wounds". The wound is only good if you follow up on an assault, while dead is dead. Just my opinion.
  19. Not that this is the purpose of the thread but I think the 150 IG is too cheap in battlefront terms if you pick on defense or in QB's. Just like when the 'ol puppchen was 26 points in the original cmbo and that weapon tore everyone up with 88mm fire. If people always pick the 150 IG and the KV 2 then you are playing opponents that you shouldn't be playing. Once in a while, but it is better to try to win with a more realistic mix of troops.
  20. Does this work with the CMETO mods? Sorry if this is a dumb question but I am more of a scenario guy than a modder.
  21. If someone is going to do the work I would be willing to contribute. The admiral had a paypal link on his site, I think that once it is figured out where things go someone should put out a call and then people can donate up front to someone who is going to put in a lot of effort. My 2 cents is that the site ought to start out simple, just a way to get scenarios, and then get more complex. We don't want to wait 6 months to get the site back up again and have it perfect, rather have something workable sooner and then add to it. The review and upload should be simple up front, can get more complex later.
  22. Thanks for the support. It helps psych me up to create more scenarios. I haven't done a random "Crete" scenario yet or much for East Africa, either.
  23. Since the Scenario Depot is down for a bit (thanks again to the Admiral for working so hard and contributing so much to the CM community for so long) I updated my site. There are sixteen "random reinforcement" scenarios up there, with each of them having at least some (usually most) of the forces arriving at random, in a variety of situations. These are designed for head to head or PBEM situations - not vs computer (a few play OK vs the computer, but most stink). Here is the link and feel free to go up there directly and get the scenarios you want. Big fun is the Tiber scenario which is a version of "our backs to the Volga" and Forest Frenzy and Bonkers in the Bocage are a lot of fun, too. Here is the link - CM Random Reinforcement Scenarios
  24. Thanks again for all of your hard work. I had a lot of fun with the scenarios, maps and operations I found at the depot and tried to give something back. You put in a tremendous amount of effort and it is much, much appreciated. I agree that now I am going to go back and tweak my old scenarios to get them ready for re-hosting for whomever is kind enough to take on this type of project
×
×
  • Create New...