76mm

Dear Michael, I appreciate your points very well, but if I had to bet, I would say that--at least until the recent spate of WWII shooters--your average youngish American had no idea that the Soviet Union fought in the Second World War at all, would have a 50/50 chance of picking which side they fought on, and would certainly dispute the notion that their contribution was a decisive one (after all, they weren't involved in D-Day, were they?). This comment obviously doesn't apply to anyone with even a passing knowledge of WWII, but I am usually shocked to find out how little Americans know about history. I wonder how many people watching today even catch the gag line in "Animal House" about the Germans bombing Pearl Harbor...

In response to Sergei's questions about documented examples of tanks firing through buildings: on page 394 of the CMAK companion book there is an account of such an attempt in Italy. A Tiger was "lurking near a large mansion", and "attempts were made to fire an AP shot through the building into the Tiger's weaker flank." The attempts failed, but they at least tried to fire through a large mansion.

CMC does not auto-generate any CMBB maps; the campaign designer needs to specify which CMBB maps CMC should use for each CMC tile. The campaign designer should use hand-crafted CMBB maps to avoid the issues that you describe, but given the volume of CMBB maps required for a CMC campaign, designers may be tempted to use some auto-generated maps for out-of-the-way areas.

JG, hmmm, I must have misunderstood and read too much into the title of thread. I don't have any coherent thoughts on the particular topic you've raised, so 76mm OUT.

JasonC, thanks for the response, but let me ask this: I agree with what you say about the disadvantages of defending urbanized areas from their interior, but I thought I'd read somewhere that at least in the latter stages of the war, it was German SOP to do so--presumably to avoid getting crushed by long-range fire from guns, tanks, MGs, etc. This would presumbably also allow German infantry to destroy more Soviet armor with shreck/faust weapons. So the question is whether this was indeed German SOP? If so, it sounds like the Germans had to choose between a rock and a hard place, and chose the hard place...

This is a very interesting thread, although I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion about reverse-slope defenses. If done correctly--and terrain permitting, of course-- doesn't a reverse-slope defense go along way toward taking the overwatch element out of the attack? In my own (rather limited) experience, reverse-slope defenses have either succeeded brilliantly or collapsed like a house of cards. My experience with "urban reverse slopes" (ie setting up in the interior of an urban area rather than on the edge, to avoid devastating long-range direct fire from attacking elements), has been almost uniformly dismal.

JG--I don't see the statement above as a convincing--or logical--argument not to conduct human-playtesting prior to an AAR. The main point of play-testing at this early stage is to determine whether the game works at all without glaring bugs, not whether every possible contingency and outcome has been covered in the auto-resolve feature. Sure, while you will be able to play CMC on a stand-alone basis by auto-resolving all of the battles, that's not the point of the game, and its not how it is intended to be played. The whole point is to use CMC while resolving the battles in CMBB. If the interface between CMC and CMBB is not rock solid, then the game doesn't work as intended and there is no point to continue on to see how the game works if you auto-resolve all the battles. Properly testing this interface will require some amount of human play-testing, if for no other reason than you can't resolve the CMBB battles AI vs AI. My point being: let the AAR come out when the developer thinks it ready, and let's drop the requests for some half-baked AAR which would be unsatisfying at best and misleading at worst.

Sounds like an excellent reason to avoid Winter operations!

Thanks for the replies. Sounds like one per company should be the max number for defense. For offensive use of sharpshooters: I'm not a WWII tactics grog, but I didn't think that it was common practice to send single troopers out in front of an advance as scouts. And even if this was done, their parent formation would not get the instant benefit of their scouting activities, as in CMBB. Another way of putting it is that it seems awfully tempting--and gamey--to me to send that sharpshoter on a suicide recon mission into the heart of the defensive zone. While the same issue arises to a certain extent with using half-squads as scouts, at least this use seems more tactically sound and at least slightly less prone to being thrown away on gamey suicide recons. Or am I being too conservative?

The whole point of CMC is to provide an interface between the CMC campaign and CMBB battles. It seems pretty pointless to conduct "play-testing" that only involves auto-resolved battles. While you might want to play-test a specific campaign in this manner (several times) to get an overall feel for campaign balance, it doesn't achieve much for determining how well the game itself will function.

I have a home-grown campaign system that I mess around with. The OOB consists of numerous platoon-sized units. My question is how to incorporate sharpshooters into an OOB in a generally realistic way for both sides througout the war. Currently my rule is that every platoon-sized infantry unit on the defensive which is at least "regular" is assigned one sharpshooter, who is one grade better than the platoon which spawned him (ie, a regular platoon gets a veteran sharpshooter). Units on the attack get no sharpshooters, because they would probably be used in a gamey way as scouts. Two questions: 1) Does my allocation for sharpshooters on the defensive seem about right? 2) Does it make sense to deny sharpshooters to units on the attack? Thanks!

Pretty clear answer--thanks!

Hi, can't find an answer to this quesion in the manual or in a forum search... I notice that when a scenario has "Frozen" temperate the water tiles are shown as ice. Can the ice support crossing troops? Vehicles? Armor? And what about when the temperature is "Extreme Cold"? Same questions. Thanks

Hmm, that's strange--I have had exactly the opposite experience. If ground conditions are muddy or worse, I am afraid to move tanks off-road at all, because if they move more than a couple of hundred meters they start bogging one by one. This is generally with early-war tanks rather than KTs, but you think they'd be better in mud rather than worse.

I agree with LongLeftFlank that it is not implausible that the Russians would back the Syrian govt/army--it would salve their wounded pride over losing their superpower status, and if they did it right, they could expect that their participation would impose real constraints on, if not preclude, US action against "Syria" (again, not clear which Syrian factions the US is acting against). I don't believe that the US has any significant economic leverage over Russia right now--they've got the oil and the petromillions, although if the oil price crashes they could be in trouble. But depending on who the US is fighting, it also seems just as likely that Russia would be an ally of the US. Given the constant "small scale" terrorist attacks in Russia itself and the instability of their southern border region, the Russians fear Islamist fundamentalism as much as, if not more than, the US does, and I can't believe they would side with them. Sorry for rambling, I just want the back story to be something plausible! TMR

Not sure what the back story is for this game, but rightly or wrongly I have assumed that at least the insurgents fighting the US in CMSF will be pretty much Islamic fundamentalists. If so, I think that the Russians would think twice about doing much to strengthen or encourage them, as this would only increase the Russians' own problems in Chechnya and other places along Russia's southern rim. I am pretty sure that Russia would not want to do anything to increase the chances of a fundamentalist Islamic uprising in Uzbekistan or Tajikistan, for instance.

I haven't read all of the posts--are the scenarios posted on a website yet? If not, I could probably do it. Let me know! [ December 03, 2005, 10:35 AM: Message edited by: 76mm ]

cassidy, I think that your Russian phrase is an altogether different obscenity...

I think I've got to nominate this thread for the "Weirdest Thread Ever" award.

To ensure that the AI doesn't smash itself too completely in futile battles during home-brew campaign games, I have taken to hitting the "cease-fire" button at the beginning of every scenario against the AI. This way the AI will take its licks but at least some significant portion of its forces will live to fight again another day. I am also curious about the effect of the four quadrant victory flags on AI behavior--I've never played with that victory flag configuration and am curious if it will trigger any weird(er) AI behavior.

Just to keep this rather futile discussion going, I don't think it's realistic to only give access to the CMBB maps to both players or neither player. At least in an established defence, the defensive commanders (including the operational level commander) would presumably know the terrain in the sector much better than an attacker would (since the defender is, well, occupying said terrain). In any event, I'd be surprised if anything other than house rules will determine how this will work...

OK, I've got to call you on this one. While I rather doubt that the "majority" of German heavy arty units defended themselves fiercely (not to mention effectively) when overrun, I can't disprove it. But to suggest that using heavy guns in a defensive direct fire role must have been correct and rational because Hitler would not have "tolerated" something that was otherwise is really kind of funny. This is the military genius who instituted the "no retreat" policy that went a long way toward the German defeat.

I think the issue is more that a lot of these guns were not designed to be able to swivel, etc. to the extent necessary to readily engage targets that were not obliging enough to approach from head on. Similarly, I think that for indirect fire reasons, batteries were typically laid out in lines, which would make it very difficult to defend from a flank attack. Finally, most such big guns were probably dug-in in positions that allowed them to fire their indirect missions, but not necessarily conduct an all-round direct fire defense. If someone were foolish enough to attack them from the front, yeah, big guns would probably be able to defend themselves to a certain extent. But if attacked from the flank or rear, or under poor visibility, I think big guns would be pretty much screwed. I have never really focused on this issue, maybe one of the forum grogs could make an informed contribution here?

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The lack of heavy arty in CMBB is a pain; from what I've seen on the forum, if a heavy arty unit is overrun in CMC, all that will appear in CMBB is their transport, rendering the guns rather vulnerable and making it a very wise idea to keep them far to the rear. Not the most satisfying solution, but nothing can be done since the guns are not available in CMBB. Also, I wonder if it is not realistic--if a 152mm battery was overrun, would the crew stick around to fight, or try to flee with or without the guns? I would think that in most cases, the guns' ability to put up effective resistance would be limited.