76mm

Other books on my shelf include: Red Road from Stalingrad--Abdulin 800 Days on the Eastern Front--Litvin Through the Maelstrom--Gorbachevsky Eastern Inferno: The Journals of a German Panzerjager on the Eastern Front, 1941-43--Roth I haven't read these yet, so can't vouch for them. There is also a two volume set called "Love and War" by Nicholas, who was an American who fought in the Red Army, including in Bagration, as a tanker. Haven't read it yet, either. All of the books above are on Amazon.

LoS too short for much off-board arty, I'd get on-board mortars and cheap armor, either SU-76, or if not much more, T34/76s. And lots of cheap infantry...

I'm in, I'll pre-order now, even if I never use them, gotta have them...

hetzer looks cool and all, but my recollection from cmbb days was that it held very few AP rounds and was therefore almost useless?

There are lots of good acounts, besides Penalty Strike, try Tank Rider by Bessonov and Panzer Destroyer by Krysov. I have several other accounts on my bookshelf which I've not read yet. Note that I'm not sure if these accounts cover Bagration itself, but they are good reading! If you're interested in Stalingrad, there are many many good accounts, from the classic Enemy at the Gates to Jason Mark's "Island of Fire", which I'm reading now.

I guess the green circles and square are your objectives? Map looks kinda tough to defend, pretty broken up, lots of dead ground. I would therefore favor lots of cheap units that you can use to ooze around whatever spots he chooses to defend.

Awesome news about all the new features. But I have to ask about partisans--will they come in via a "pack"? I'm guessing they won't be included in a future module since this game takes us through Warsaw?

I think zombie horses would be a great addition to the series...

This is great news for me, I missed this feature, was always a bit disoriented without it. I like to turn it on at the beginning of the turn to figure out who is where, then turn off.

yes, tell me about it, it is -20 in Moscow now and I'm huddled in the trenches waiting,waiting for news...

Bump for more East Front bones...

Excellent point. The volume and obscenity levels could increase as command delays increase, and at least on the Russian Front, drawn pistols could be used to further encourage especially sluggish troops! Kind of a sad story about Lt Gladly...

Maybe, but not sure. For instance, if you tell conscripts "go to that position", they: 1) might not even hear/see the command, because their head is buried in the dirt or looking straight ahead, etc. 2) might hear/see the command, but not understand what you're talking about--"what position, sir? That wall or those bushes?" 3) might hear/see the command and understand it, but not understand how to do it, at least without further explanation: "sir, do we need to do that bounding overwatch thing again, or can we just run over there?" 4) might hear/see the command, understand it, know how to do it, but just decide that they are better off doing what they're already doing. Also, it is probably fair to assume that the NCOs and officers in conscript units are not "best in class" either, so they are probably not doing the greatest job of giving proper commands or motivating their troops to follow them. Untrained leaders leading untrained troops is not a recipe for crisp execution of orders. And of course all of this depends on what specific command we are talking about, and the situation--are they marching down the road, stationary returning fire, or what? "Command delay", if any, would be different in almost every situation. So it is very possible that having a blanket delay is as unrealistic as no delay; it would be great to have some kind of "command AI" that would deal with all of this in an appropriate way, but that wouldn't be easy, and maybe not even feasible.

Why not extend this great idea to other parts of the game? Let's dispense with all of those pesky C&C rules and just let players decide when/if their troops "should" be out of command. Heck, those LOS rules drive me crazy too, I think I should be able to decide when my troops can see the enemy. I could go on and on, but I think the point is that players should not be allowed (forced?) to make up the rules as they go along on "simulation" issues. The other mechanisms you mention (...overflying enemy positions investigating the terrain...hugging map edges to avoid a flank attack, replaying a move sequence over and over to detect the source of incoming fire...) are totally different in that they are literally "gamey" issues (ie, arising from the game itself) rather than "simulation" issues (ie, rules intended to simulate reality). I'm not sure what the solution is to the lack of command delays, or frankly if a solution is needed at all, or if needed, is practicable, but the lack of any distinction in the responsiveness of conscript vs elite troops does strike me as being rather odd.

Dunno; I hadn't really thought much about this issue until reading the book Panzer Destroyer, but it sure seems rather common from his account, I will have to keep my eyes open for similar stories. I would agree with you about the potential dangers of the tank throwing a track, but it didn't seem to stop them. I would think that for SP guns in particular this might be a viable tactic--the alternative is to sit and pivot and thunk away with a few main gun rounds (no turret and no MG), all the while a sitting duck for the target and any remaining guns--I would think it would be safer to go full speed ahead on an overrun, at least from the flank.

No, it's not moot, because the reason the guns were abandoned was because the crews were about to be steam-rolled by an armored vehicle. Do AT crews in CM flee under such circumstances? Ive just finished the book cited by Vanir, which was interesting for several reasons. In addition to the already mentioned overrun attacks, the author cites extensive use of smoke grenades (for cover and to simulate being knocked out), hand grenades (infantry defense), and a captured MG42 (anti-infantry, air defense).

if you read the accounts it is clear that this was usually, but not always, done when attacking the AT guns from the flank or from a blind spot, forcing the the guns to pivot to engage the fast moving vehicles, which would hardly be easy.

Ok, so no overruns, no horses, probably not even any anti-tank dogs--you call this the Eastern Front?! ;-)

From what I've seen it seems very common on the Eatern front till the end of the war., at least with the SP guns. Given their lack of MGs and lack of a turret, it makes sense that these vehicles would find overrun of AT guns a viable tactic.

I'm reading an account now by a Sov SP gun commander (SU-122 & SU-85) and am struck by how often they destroyed AT guns by literally running over them. Can this currently be done in game?

Excellent, its about time!

отлично, наконец-то!

No I don't, but I didn't say that I did... OK, and you can keep believing that the only relevant factors in this game are those that can be quantified with a ROF chart or similar hard data sets.

i have not gone back to review the old threads complaining about MGs< but do you seriously think that the only problem was rat of fire?? I recall that other issues were just as, if not more, important, such as aiming and suppressive effect, which are hardly quantifiable.

Sorry, I completely disagree. Much of what is in this game is not quantifiable--leadership, spotting, morale, suppression, MG fire, etc. Where are your data sets for all of that? And yet somehow they've built these features into the game and try to get them right. At some point we have to rely on common sense. Sure, thorough testing should be done, but if such testing shows that, say, armor crewmen engaged to the front spot targets to the rear as quickly as targets to the front, etc, I'd say we have a problem regardless of the lack of "data".