undead reindeer cavalry

excellent! i would have done tests myself but graphical glitches on my Vista computers prevent me from doing them myself (screens like "unit purchase" are all black). will comment this further down. this is far too good. more immobs for early Tigers please it's a bit curious that in the linked thread someone's test gave 10% Tiger I losses for 4 km on open dry ground. i wonder if this stuff was fixed for some CMBB version after those tests. 5th GTA T-34 totals is 0.0073% per km, 29th TC T-34 for 7-8th July is 0.023% per km (the worst data set). so: 4 km, single T-34, single immob chance 29th TC: immob chance is 0.092 % 5th GTA: 0.0292% single test run, 4 km x 30 T-34, single immob chance 29th TC: 2.76% 5th GTA: 0.876% 30 test runs, 30 x 4 km x 30 T-34, single immob chance 29th TC: 82.8% 5th GTA: 26.28% so yeah, ignoring other things, 29th TC data set would imply a single immobilization for your test. paved roads would be rare for the region unfortunately. i'm not actually sure what the weather conditions were on the march route during 7-9th. on Kursk region itself 6th was still muddy, but 7-9th mostly dry. indeed. i find those linked earlier test results a bit puzzling in the light of your test. either something has been changed in CMBB, there's some setting detail that makes a huge difference or immobilization & bogging do not happen on road tiles (which would be very odd if it represent mechanical breakdowns as written earlier).

Steve, i am not suggesting you should base CM figures on higher level statistics. i simply compared clear non-combat tank attrition numbers to reported CM immobilizations. in my opinion it's clear that the comparison shows that some CM figures are far too high. stress of combat, terrain differences, 2 hours vs 24 hours fixing etc can not lead to 1:200 - 1:400 difference. what comes to black & white fixing, i was talking about early war Soviet conditions of zero recovery & repair services and voluntary abandoning of vehicles to save fuel & ammo -- so it actually was pretty black & white in those cases.

i believe those annoyed by immobilizations would be happy if it was made more rare in good terrain. to compensate for it you could make bogging more frequent and perhaps make immobs higher for bad terrain. as modifiers already apparently exist for different terrain and ground conditions it would not perhaps require coding new stuff, just tweaking of numbers that already exist?

Steve, like said, i do understand that point and personally would like to see more bogging and immobilizations in CM what comes to bad terrain conditions. i disagree about higher level reports or diary entires being meaningless though. first, the whole scale of difference is so huge that it's hard to see how the given explanation could account for it. i don't find it likely that there had been around 400 two hour CM level "immobilization" fixes for every single recovery & repair that took long enough to be seen in daily reports. rather, i believe it's physically impossible. even if a division sized armored unit would have only 10 tanks in repair for one day (ridiculously low number), it would mean that there had been 4000 quick two hour repairs. so a 100 tank division would have had each of the 90 not-in-daily-repair experience CM level 2 hour "immobilization" 44 times during the 24 hour period. this is somewhat problematic. secondly (this is just academic, because the first point already proves the impossibility), many of the higher level stuff is about conditions where the units either physically can't or are ordered not to recover any vehicles that are "immobilized". yes, crews could still get some tanks running on their own, after a couple of hours of cursing, but it is a bit questionable explanation as when nobody is going to tow or pull them out or give them tools or spare parts i don't see what much they are going to accomplish during those extra two hours that they couldn't do during the first 30+ minutes. i can understand that they could fix something every now and then, but not repeatedly and systematically to the magnitude required by the difference in numbers. worse still, units often voluntarily cannibalized (to have spares) or abandoned (to have fuel & ammo last longer) vehicles in the name of greater good. still, such conditions lead only to around 0.5% attrition per km (including combat losses etc) at worst early war cases. third, not all the reports are daily level statistical stuff. reports by smaller level units don't descibe the kind of "immobilization" levels as seen in CMBB tests (or at least I don't remember reading such). the worst i remember is the 80% of brand new Tiger IIs breaking down in minutes during a 50 km roadmarch. it may sound catastrophic (and it is of course), but if you do the math you see that it's better than T-34 performance in CMBB.

i understand the point and as such, with no numbers given, i agree about it. i just think that the numbers available are too far apart. if getting temporarily stuck or broken would be that frequent i find it hard to see how an entire tank army could travel 200 km in 24 hours with just ~3% losses. on the other hand vehicles like King Tigers should bog and break down easily, especially in bad conditions. it's not hard to encounter reports with stuff like 75% Tiger II losses after 50km road march. there are Soviet studies about it. in practice tank units had to voluntarily abandon vehicles because there was in practice no logistical tail. no supply for a week makes a bad tank/mech corps. anyway, i think those who oppose immobilizations don't care about wether it is realistic or not -- they just don't want it.

Sovies actually made a number of studies about this stuff, but i have none at hand at the moment. i do remember that in 1941 some of the mech corps suffered around 50% losses for every 100 km they travelled. it was largely because of total SNAFUs like simply running out of fuel, though.

those numbers serve as a good upper margin for breakdown percentages under combat conditions exactly because they were seen as outrageously high. it tells us that normal expected breakdown rates in combat would be well under those given for these early Panthers.

i am comparing to immobilized, not bogged. yes, a vehicle that is not available for use that day is listed as a vehicle not available for use that day. it doesn't matter what the cause is. the only differentation is between damaged and destroyed (includes abandoned) vehicles. so i do not know wether a T-34 became listed as damaged because it run out of fuel, threw a track, broke its transmission or drove into a lake. however i do know that they were not attacked by enemy forces. yeah, i have no idea how many were bogged only temporarily. the distance travelled & the time it took & the size of the units does tell something about the speed of movement though. it's listed as not available for use and it's listed as damaged and then it stays listed as under repair until it finally is listed as returned and available for use again. for example that KV-1 that was "damaged" during the road march of 7-8th doesn't return to service until 10th. in between it's "in repair". recovered, repaired and returned back to the formation already during the same day? while one third of a T-34 force is lost for every 10 km it moves? my bet is that the service troops shoot themselves after the first 2 hours.

BTW, to give a higher margin of strees caused on badly designed or otherwise weak tank components in combat conditions, Panther's notoriously weak transmission during early days resulted in 5% transmission breakdowns within 100 km and 90% within 1500 km of combat. so even notoriously weak designs would take relatively good amout of driving in combat conditions before a breakdown would be experienced. the test results from the linked thread of 10% Tiger I losses for driving 4 km on flat ground on dry conditions is pretty extreme in the light of Panther transmission breakdowns.

fast vs move etc doesn't really make such a difference in CMBB tho, which makes it an issue for some (too high randomness, lack of control). me neither and personally i would prefer more bogging what comes to bad terrain and bad vehicles, but a multiplier of 400 is a bit too high and i can understand that it annoys some people.

OK, i really should drop sarcasm. for an example reference, 5th GTA at Kursk. between 7th and 8th of July it travels 200 kilometers, on tracks, in 24 hours. its 29th TC's losses are 4.6% for T-34s, 5.9% for T-70s and the only KV-1 it has (total armored losses 4.2%). its 5th GMC losses are zero, so combined 2.2% T-34 and 3.8% T-70 losses (2.3% total armored). then on 9th it receives orders to travel further 100 km which it does during the same day, again on tracks. 28th TC losses are a single T-34s and 5th GMC again loses nothing. so T-34 losses per km is about 0.0073% even with these quite extreme distances and speeds. even for just 29th TC for 7-8th July, just for T-34s, you get only 0.023% per km. to achieve 23% losses you would have to drive 1000 km. compare to CMBB with 25% losses for 8 km (125 times shorter distance and higher losses, or for 5th GTA totals 3000km to achieve 21.9% losses equals 375 times shorter distance and higher losses). yes, simplistic math etc etc but still.

what i love about this place is the rationalization and denial of obvious errors. it was found in Soviet studies (http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=443704&postcount=104) that 4 out of 15 T-34s (> 25%) would experience an immobilization due to breakdown after driving some 8 km under stress of potential combat (in contrast to 5-10% losses on 300 km roadmarches). their 100-200 km deep armored penetrations were made possible only by the development of various synthetic hallucinogens that made the drivers unaware of the potential threat of combat.

still, historically you have stuff like a tank army do a 300 km road march with 5-10% breakdown rate. in CMBB you get as many breakdowns for 1% of that range. tank immobs are realistic, but so are a multitude of other things that are not included in CM series. as i wrote, i personally don't mind immobs and have in the past spoken for more immobs (though only what comes to specific terrain types unsuitable for armor), but i understand people who would prefer it to be one option amongst others. i also do understand that you can't have option for everything (a bit like that options screen in Steel Panthers) and if there was tank immob option undoubtably people would like to see options for things like MG jamming as well.

"unlucky" shots are pretty silly sometimes though. takes a special skill to miss a tank size target from 200 meters.

i don't mind random bogging & immobs (and it's not THAT random even in CMBB -- your decisions DO matter), but i can understand people who do. CM is a game of tactics and players like to be able to make choises and decisions, realistic or not. compare for example to Steel Panthers where decisions about risking immob are made quite clear. SP's model is simplistic but it doesn't matter that much because it's just a game and the subject is marginal for simulating company/battalion level combat. it's enough that it includes terrain types that tanks can't pass or which can cause immobs. what comes to realism, the probability of immob while veteran crew is driving slowly on hard surface is something like having your arty barrage be 100% ineffective because the shells are flukes due to sabotage at a factory line. or lose a random man per every x minutes due to sickness or self mutilation. have a whole company exit the map because they misunderstood commands. randomly have all your "victory points" nulled at the end of battle because YOU (the game character, not the player) misunderstood the mission and your whole battle was just a mistake. get strafed or bombed (say, 20 tons worth) randomly even when neither side has CAS assets. receive 60 minutes of offmap fire at your men because a friendly unit mistook you for an enemy. have command delays measured in tens of minutes or hours. and so forth endlessly. it's realistic and more likely to take place than that veteran crew immob while driving slowly on hard surface. that type of stuff is not in the game because most players would find it just annoying & stupid. some players find random vehicle immobs annoying in the same sense.

at north they never broke thru the tactical defensive zone. at south they had two penetrations thru the tactical zone, but would have faced further defensive belts.

it was easy only when the defences were weak, and not necessarily even then. exactly. but fighting thru some outposts & roadblocks into the defensive zone is no breakthrough. it's actually fighting thru the tactical defensive zone into enemy operational depth. AT guns are naturally just one part of an AT defence. yet it's not notable when at the same time most allied operations in Normady fail to achieve it as well? BTW if you are after "killed & missing" Bagration did have favorable ratio. it's the "sick & wounded" which tilts it the other way. which is quite different to tanks always being able to break thru enemy defences with great ease (as long as they are not Soviets).

i quickly browsed some books but couldn't find anything about un/observed fires. i don't have Glantz' old symposium book about the frontier battles though, it might have something eventho it is written from German perspective. i couldn't make myself look at smaller studies and papers which might include reports of that level.

his point is that Soviets sometimes keep too much armor in the 2nd echelon, waiting for the breakthrough, instead of committing it to the breakthrough battle. it's a valid point and sometimes a very clear error when those armor assets are just waiting while infantry is losing in the grinder. at worst those assets are committed a day or two later anyway with the result that both 1st and 2nd echelon is wasted, and up to an entire front is in practice consumed. it doesn't mean that Soviets wouldn't understand any of it, wouldn't be able to practice their doctrine or that their breakthrough operations would be clearly inferior to everyone else (for who it would be trivial). Berlin is the worst case to make any sort of generalizations of, as it is clearly a case of stupid final rushing commanded from the very top. at breakthrough sectors rifle divisions have 600 METER sectors, and there are only 20 tanks/assault guns per km (while it was not that rare in other operations there to be 70+ tanks per km).

i agree about the massing of infantry causing high losses, no argument there. it's not about breakthroughs solely though, but in general. what adds to it is enemy ability to read Soviet low level (e.g. division, regiment) communications. so you get a combo bonus of the defender massing arty fire on enemy infantry concentrations deploying for attack. that's not all there is to it, agreed. a big factor is the whole Stalinist control hierarchy, which causes a huge pressure on all levels for unnecessarily high aggressiveness. it leads to stupid desperate stuff in the sharp end and loss of c&c at the higher levels due to distorted reports. in any case, Soviets did understand the role of armor in breakthrough attacks. typically they have 40+ tanks & SUs per attack sector km (not all in first echelon, but still). all those breakthrough tanks & assault guns were there for a reason. as for comparing to other nations, i have trouble seeing it. who are these "all the others" who knew how to do it easy & fast with tanks? yeah Mars was a mess and the encirclement of Stalingrad hit weak spots. at the same period you have allies at El Alamein with 500 000 shell arty fires lasting for hours & hours, still lead with infantry, have burning tanks fill the horizont and it is still taking days. when Soviets have the post-Kursk breakthroughs Allies have Italy. wow, what stunning excellence in Itality, makes one speechless. Bagration is costly, oh dear. at the same period you have western allies in Normandy doing marvels. reading about allied tank-lead breakthrough attempts like Goodwood makes my eyes bleed. and the glorious Cobra with stuff like strategic bombers, leading infantry divs, taking days against a totally shattered defender in a situation you have 4:1 theatre wide odds (and uh oh, and what's this stuff about armor waiting in 2nd echelong for exploit). and then the hard part is said to be the enemy armored counter attacks. the German armored counter attack to Cobra is a joke, only ordered by a coward who knows it's all pointless but wants to please Hitler so that he doesn't get hanged.

i'm not going to reply by writing a thesis on Soviet breakthrough doctrine ranging from front to company level. i'll just state that Soviet doctrine and tactics were not crude or simplistic. Soviets considered a number of different basic conditions, based mostly on the type & stance of enemy defences, under which offensives are to be fought. they considered a number of different basic types of attacks, with different applications of methods per circumstances (e.g. tactics). these certainly included things like throughout reconnaissance (at all levels), conscious deception thru direct actions (aiming both at attrition and relocation of enemy reserves), infiltration tactics and small level leading shock assault group tactics (e.g. rifle company + engineers + couple of tanks/assault guns + dedicated arty). the biggest danger here, when looking at actual battles, is mistaking cause & effect and intent & deception. e.g. mistaking a tank-based breakthrough for merely an relative accident and the following success as a proof of the merits of tank-based breakthroughs as such, instead of taking it as Soviet decision based on doctrine to use that specific method under those specific conditions. what comes to using a tank force for breakthrough missions there were specific conditions & aims under which Soviets saw it a valid method. what comes to intented breakthrough they basicly consisted of situations where enemy had only weak defences (hasty or mobile type), or enemy had atypically weak AT-defences or conditions favored the use of deep envelopment attack type. Soviets did know how to apply different combined arms elements on different types of attacks. they did not use "one size fits all" methods. they knew conditions under which a tank force could achieve a breakthrough. the regulations clearly state (e.g. in practice i quote the official regulations here) that an attack that couldn't normally be employed by tank force, can be employed when enemy AT-defences are weaker than normal. e.g. under normal conditions, against typical non-fortified field defences, enemy AT assets were so strong that utilization of a tank force for breakthrough mission was not considered sound. EDIT: yes, it included stuff like firing only very short arty fires (just a number of minutes, not tens of minutes or hours), and breakthroughs that in totality took only 12 hours, not days. a two day breakthrough was considered under specific conditions, and it dealt mostly with enemy defences in depth not actual breakthrough of the tactical zone. the three day breakthroughs on wide fronts and just some km deep are exactly the lessons Soviets learned *doctrinally* in Decemenber 1941.

in real world, on CM scale, the defences are not what you are seeing in CM. things were a lot more fortified. the solution was assault groups, not tanks firing from distance.

i was talking about tactical scale and especially considering the original viewpoint of pulverizing positions by firing with tanks from distance. it was never easy even on operational level. it required decisive massing of forces. divisional sectors well below 2 km. and it still was not a breeze. the solution to breaching a defence was not "have more tanks". what they (Soviets, other allies aren't really worth talking about) fixed was they massed & concentrated forces on a narrow sector. armored clashes in operational depth are far more interesting, no question about it. in any case Soviets themselves considered the breaching of the tactical zone the hardest part of an offensive. what comes to enemy counterattacks in operational depth against exploiting forces, doctrinally the Soviets preferred parrying enemy counterattacks in hammer & anvil style. let the enemy armor run into their non-tank defensive front and continue the exploit with their tank force (or work together with the non-tank force by flanking the enemy in hammer style). yes, they considered it hard when the exploit was in final stages, with long fronts, long logistical tails, accumulated losses and committed echelons. basicly it was a reversal of a breakthru attack as the counterattacking enemy forces massed on a narrow sector, creating odds. it's about creating odds by massing forces, not about tanks at all as such. the role tanks play in breakthroughs is that of an support arm. if there is a single arm considered decisive for a breakthrough, it is artillery (superiority of).

i have no idea. are you getting at something with these questions?

i disagree. the defenses were there and they were a bitch to deal with. that's why you do your best to figure out enemy AT positions before the attack and use a great number of arty shells & air strikes at located & potential positions. when you don't or can't, it's usually the attacking armor that gets slaughtered, save for extreme cases. only in the limited few extreme strategic level cases. otherwise it was bloody and ugly. sure it was a bit easier early war against relatively poorly armed infantry, but by late war it's hard.