Code13

There is always the question of overpenetration which was a major problem early on in the war. Basically high velocity rounds would penetrate one side of the target, go straight through and out the other side. Cant say where I saw it but there is a documented case of one round penetrating two tanks, first one was fine but the second one goe knocked out because the round had lost enough velocity to be stopped by the engine in the second. The round can happily penetrate, problem is it doesnt realise it has hit anything and so just keeps going and out the other side.

Yeah, could it be that they just didn't have time to react? How far was the tank from the team when they were area firing? Michael </font>

Greens are fine when defending and not having to move anywhere. As soon as you start wanting to give them orders is when things turn into a nightmare. Conscipt T34 having lost its commander, taking over a minute to respond to an order. Sorry, but its beeing kiled 6 times over by the regular pz4 crew over there that, incidentally, the green/conscript crew never even spotted. If I get anything less than regular troops it is because they are defending and I dont care if they die.

I love CAS, its just in most occaisions it is used in the wrong place, QB's, mostly smallish maps. Having used CAS on very large maps they are supremely useful because they never get near my own troops, instead ranging about at the far end shooting up the enemy as they move forward to reineforce the front. Sure sometimes there is a bit of "Blue on Blue" as they say but thats what happened. If your troops are less than a kilometre away from the enemy dont blame the FB if he drops a stick of bombs too close to you, he is moving at 200+ miles an hour, less than 200' up and can only see little dudes shooting at each other, you are the ones that blurred the front line, not him. For evidence at how useful CAS is play a battle on a big map, from the on disk missions Approach to Sevastapol is spot on.

Just to add a note about the Soviets marching troops through minefields, or rather two notes. On another thread it was noted that many vets simply viewed minefields as an irritant rather than a real battlefield killer. As for Soviet doctrine, it was simly taken that if they marched their troops around the fields than the German defences would inflict just as many casualties as if they had just gone through the minefield, so, they went through it, got to the place they wanted and met no defensive forces whilst doing so.

That's pretty fast alright. I bet that would even beat the crew of an 88 getting into action. Unless of course spike is lying. But Spike wouldn't lie to us, would he? Michael </font>

In my experience, unless firing at open ground, or going for area denial, then the best use of off map 82mm mortars and its ilk is for smoke, lays a good thick blanket that is far more useful than the suppresive fire effect of the motar bombs. You want to suppress and area with artillery, use at least 105mm artillery. Killing point targets however is ideally suited to the use of on map motars of any size combined with HMG's

My squads seem to use their fausts at every oppertunity, even in skirmishes with other infantry rather than saving them for armour.

I think the major factor is he designed the map and so knew ever facet of it, which would have meant he knew how to move troops unseen and where best his armour could move from.

Sounds like we all have similar "lets murder our infantry" tales. Mine is using a platoon of german pioneers to assault a building held by some russian rifle squads. A fairly valid plan if they hadnt have been about 2 platoons of SMG squads in the house

The one gripe I had playing this scenario was that when my Sturmovick air support turned up it failed completely to kill any of the German tanks. Trust me send the 122's with a squad riding on them to deal with any flanking infantry dashing up the left flank to the high ground and you can almost be waiting for the tigers to turn up side on.

If you have any arty then use it for smoke, unless it is really big stuff then just lay down fire on any likely bits of terrain they might be in. Other than that I would also tend to rush the defences with my armour, none of this bounding overwatch (which has its place withotu a doubt) but full on high speed dashing accross country, makes it harder for you to spot, but if they arent seeing it anyway what does that matter, but more importantly it makes you harder to hit. Try using the "cover arc" command as that will focus the attention of the crew forwards to where presumably you are being shot from, rather than 360 as usual.

I have got to say I would love to see a Cold War period game, playing board games like MBT and Air Cav really got me into this hobby and the thought a game as rich and detailed as CMBO/BB might be available for it makes me very happy. It would also be interesting to see the shift of power from MBT's to Helicopers to AFV's. Mind you a specific Korean setting game would also be great, tech is advancing just enough to be different from WW2, especially air power.

This must be the first case I have come across though where the vehicle identified was less power ful than it was in reality. Most of the time a has been shown it says "tiger" where there is just a PZ4 there. But I agree with the poster who mentioned the "blue on blue" fire of both gulf wars. Crew with the latest equipment, top grade IFF support and all the vision enhancers you could shake a stick at were still blowing holes in their own side, so looking at that, is it any surprise that some grunts with no binoculars that had almost certainly not ever seen said tank before at all (no matter what their grade) got it wrong. I dont think this is a game bug, just another example of the top grade programming of this game.

Yet there are stacks of photos and footage of Flak and Pak 88's being fired from their limber, without being fully deployed.

I would say if he likes to keep them close together then a fighter-bomber would be ideal, a stick of bombs across them would make them worry.

Never seen that at all before, but I have seen HMG's force the crews of armoured cars to abandon them many times.

Great scenario the key to this one though is the high ground on the left (as allies) seniding some 122's up that way with some infantry will win the battle as you catch those tigers flank on and then get to use plunging fire into the remnants of the town.

My worst gripe with Tac Air support is no doubt a real life one. In addition to them occaisionally straffing my own troops the thing that really annoys me is when either the aircraft just circle overhead looking for targets when there are plenty in view or even worse, ignore the real battlefield threats that they would be best suited in knocking out (Panzers, AFV's etc) and instead shoot up trucks and usually ones that they have knocked out 3 or 4 turns previously.!

I have to agree with those of you that group you smaller on-map mortars into batteries. This to me is the single most effective way of utilising these small but massivly flexible weapons. The number of times I have broken up large attacks of infantry using even 2" motars in batteries is excellent, they can even work on digging out units in buildings if enough are used. A battery of 3" mortars on a reverse slope spotted by an FO can control any part of the battlefield in thier range.