Peregrine

Jons you have repeatedly seem to attempt to put words in my mouth that are not my opinion at all. I never said they were baby killers or the because they weren't successful they shouldn't have bothered or that they were slackers. They tried very hard for a long time to knock Germany out of the war without using land forces. This was the strategy of the leader and the reason for their initial concept behind their formation. But they did not do this. Based on casualties sustained by aircrews it was almost suicidal at different times to attempt to complete a tour in Bomber Command. The crews knew this (maybe not before they joined though). There is no argument that can be made that can be said that the bombing campaign successfully ended the war from the air. Was Bomber Command doing anything differently in mid 1944 onwards. Not really. The situation changed totally as the allied armies started to move through France. Remember that Bomber Command set out to do it alone. These successes started occurring the same time the allied armies moved into France because this impacted the Germans ability to defend themselves.

I am not sure what you are referring to PaperTiger but saying the Bomber Command air war wasn't a success isn't feeling sorry for the Germans. The Chief of Bomber Command genuinely believed that Germany could be beaten by bombing alone. This was attempted and while it didn't ramp up to the levels Harris felt he needed to accomplish it until late 1943 with the Berlin campaign the result sought never happened. Bomber Command used significant resources attempting this and was not successful. At different times they had successes that did curtail production and twice created devastating firestorms that were disasters in lives lost and cities destroyed for the Germans. But Bomber Command only achieved these firestorms twice. Hamburg in 1943 and then in Dresden 1945. All the big raids attempted to recreate the firestorm that occurred in Hamburg. Repeating this in city after city would surely have seen the end of the Nazis. But this didn't happen. The strategic bombing never crippled the synthetic oil production which from my understanding is the only industry that strategic bombing had a realistic chance of crippling. This did not occur due to a combination of not quite realising how precarious the German position was, inaccuracy in bombing and a focus on city destruction. And even then this only is an opportunity missed in late 1944. That is why I can't see the Bomber Command effort as a success.

Can you maybe throw in a fact that expands this slightly.

Stalin would definitely have been paranoid enough to think that whether it was true or not.

It doesn't scan at all. Comparing the Russian Campaign in it's entirety to the Bomber Command effort was something you introduced which I think is incorrect. The Russian Campaign as a whole was a success. Clearly. The Bomber Command effort wasn't clearly successful. There are many debates regarding it's effectiveness and post-war studies to quantify how it effected Germany. Typically the focus of those critical is the moral aspect and the impact on the war economy when the war was in the balance compared to the extraordinary casualty rates. Oil was a problem for Germany from day one. They were an importer and with all the territory they conquered in the east they never were able to address this is. It unfortunately took 5 years to bite. Bomber Command did hurt the synthetic oil supply from September 1944 onwards but I have never read anywhere that it was decisive enough to make the Bomber Command effort a success.

I remember reading a couple of serious opinions that were published prior to WWII that felt that mass bombing would make future wars a matter of weeks.

That is a totally unfair comparison and not comparable in scale to the question of the Bomber Command. The Russians were clearly successfully as they the were on the winning side of the war and were responsible for the vast majority of the German army casualties. But they still had their share of disasters and a big list of things they could have done better. The battle of the Atlantic could be an example of where the air campaign was a bit wrong. Not sure if this was Bomber Command hanging on to aircraft or Fighter Command or maybe technological development in aircraft range but in a nutshell Coastal Command got more aircraft that had a longer range which when coupled with radar advances finally finished the U-boat threat. <--- from a single source read a long time ago so I might be wrong. It was probably a book critical of Bomber Command though. A quick read of the internet indicates that getting B-24 Liberators released from Bomber Command to assist was the problem I was half remembering. Not verified. Dropping more or more accurately on oil targets is something that definitely would have turned the Bombing campaign into a success rather than something that is so much harder to quantify. I never said they shouldn't have bothered.

Didn't say that didn't think that. I have no idea what the Germans did with their kids but I would be surprised if it was any different than sending the kids to safer areas in the countryside like the British did. But that said the British Commander of Bomber Command did think that bombing cities would lead to such chaos and civil unrest that it would force the Germans to the negotiating table. He started thinking that during/after his experiences in WWI. Bombing simply wasn't remotely accurate so any attacks were bound to destroy large swathes of the Germans cities and this was accepted and became the norm. I don't think you can classify that as a successful strategy though. As you said above, the bombing got going in 1942 and the war continued into 1945. Even after ultra intelligence identified the acute shortages in oil production (and this was something the bombing contributed too that Albert Speer would have been concerned about) Bomber Command still didn't either due to different ideas in prosecuting the war or couldn't due to bombing inaccuracy cripple their war effort. The bombing of the factory workers also didn't force a change of government.

I think the problem with the British actions of the bombing campaign is that they well understood that they were just essentially killing civilians (and not really that effectively considering how much they stuff they dropped) and there was no way that this was going to turn out to be a winning strategy. The German army had to be defeated on the ground with land forces. The USAAF bombed during the day because they had better aircraft and actually tried much harder to hit something that would more decisively impact the war. The great irony is the British leadership knew explicitly from their own experiences that a focused campaign on military assets can have a dramatic impact where randomly dropping bombs on cities kills people but doesn't yield significant military results.

You can't attribute these things to the success of the air war as the allies were bombing everywhere as often as possible for years before these things happened.

It is important to also give your FOs short covered arcs to prevent them using their weapons. Trickier in WEGO than realtime but hiding your FOs between calling the arty and the spotting round helps will prevent them being spotted. If they do get spotted then the position is a bad spot. While following friendly troops is a good idea moving into exactly the same positions as friendly troops in front of the FO (especially if they were firing) is a bad idea as he stands a high chance of catching enemy arty while waiting for his own.

Big stretch thinking that the US with the support of allies would be nuking Russia late in 1945 in any situation. Would the West just have just kept fighting after beating Germany? Taken a month to resupply and refit then started a new war? Or done nothing then wait until a weapon was available for Europe late 45 and threatened and eventually use it through escalation? The Russians didn't really start reneging on their side of the European carve up until even later. It took a long time for the US to actively fight for Democracy in Western Europe in the first place. To think they would continue to fight in that period of time for Eastern Europe is not realistic. Russia was an ally.

Are you playing this as the end of the single playing campaign? I believe that you are pre-warned that there are 88s there but can't remember if you get warning via the ? spotting icons at scenario start which does increase you spotting chances. I have spotted them in the exactly the same way as you did when I played the mission. During gameplay it feels more like a unexpectedly successful LOS than any sort of genuine spotting issue.

Do you understand about pre-planned barrages? Pre-planned in the arty set-up phase doesn't have spottting rounds and is accurate. It can fall anywhere and the spotter doesn't need an LOS. Except for emergency all the other calls should have spotting rounds.

"temperate setting for NATO and Russian forces" Where would that be, what time period? I thought Battlefront had zero interest in doing Cold War stuff.

If near buildings or orchards your units also grab chickens and apples and such serving as a type of power up.

Didn't mean that. This was awhile ago and my memory may be a little off or even incorrect. CM:SF originally had a top difficulty level that was similar to the current Iron mode but I believe that even in the order phase you couldn't see friendlies at all. Vast majority didn't like it but still wanted to use the hardest mode. My memory is straining here but the problem was that an equivalent CMBN "Elite" mode didn't exist with the initial CMSF. I think originally CMSF had the "hardest" difficulty lvl with it's slightly awkward friendly spotting and the next level down had no friendly spotting requirements but ALSO had watered down other things (not sure what but probably stuff like arty wait times, C2 sharing etc). Somewhere in it's patching cycle the CM:SF difficulty levels were modified to what now exists in CMBN. Basically an "Elite" level was inserted that had max realism without the friendly spotting requirements. EDIT - Warrior doesn't exist in Marines in CMSF.

For me the Elite C2 is OK realism wise if you play with some sort of self imposed restrictions when playing the AI. I used to play Iron but after coming up with some basic rules to make the game feel more real the spotting of Iron was a bit of a headache. In a nutshell a SQD won't do anything aggresive unless told to by an in command HQ. This forces you when you play to tighten up your platoons a little and slows your attacks down. But doing this at Iron level in WEGO mode there was too much HQ running around to yell at ppl for my liking and I found that playing like that works better at Elite. The way the game is now C2 effects morale only and not the directing of a battle. The borg still exists but if you play with some sort of realism rules on Elite CMx2 feels pretty real without the unpredictabillity of Iron C2. PS Other subtlies pop up as well under Iron and there may be some bugs or unusual happenings as my test showed to me. As you need to spot facing becomes more important under Iron. Two hedgrerows facing each other 90m apart. HQ and Plt facing each other in Iron mode, not hidden spot each other comfortably and are in C2, close visual. Now if you pivot the Sqd 90 degrees so they face parallel to the hedgerow most of the unit will go prone, C2 will be lost EVEN though the UI still reports that the two units can see each other. So if you play with realism rules where it is important whether a unit is in C2 or not before getting orders Iron is actually a real headache. It can be tricky to tell if a unit is about to come it to contact, they can see each other but are too far apart for visual contact or another problem as illustrated above is the issue.

You can apply some self imposed realism rules to limit your presience. Basically when you start every battle each platoon gets a basic mini-mission (ie clear that field, advance to the hedgerow). You need to remember this in your head or jot it down. They don't get to deviate from this unless they take casualties or they spot threats that would alter their behaviour. Once a unit completes it's minimission it can't undertake new offensive activites unless they are in command back to the company commander. Area fire/artillery can only be targeted at contacts or visible units. If you feel the need to use area fire at targets the units can't see then no cherry picking the action square or time. You need to blast the whole area and not just shoot at an action square until an unspotted threat disappears. If you play like this units that are in command and tight perform better because contacts get shared much faster up and down the chain. It also introduces risks if you send lone units of on long solo missions. On Iron mode with infantry you will find Plt Ldr running around to get SQDs moving by reestablishing C2 alot if you spread out your SQDs. If you don't spread out your SQDs you are much more vulnerable to arty.

The manual says this about Iron. "- Friendly units need to be spotted just like enemy units. If you have a friendly unit not in line of sight or in contact with another friendly unit, then the only way to find this unit is by either re-establishing contact with another friendly unit or by clicking through the chain of command in the game interface, jumping from unit to unit." Everything after the first sentence is just an slightly confusing way of saying the UI is more clunky and not really explaining how spotting, not LOS, effects C2. It also seems to say you can't see unspotted friendly units if a unit is selected. This isn't true all the time as all friendly units are visible in the orders phase of WEGO. This description is a bit of a hangover from how it originally working in CMSF before it was modified to the state that it exists in today.

I am not sure if I misread this but Iron mode is completely different to the other modes with regard to friendly spotting and staying in C2. Iron Mode - a unit must spot friendlies using the same (or extremely similar) mechanics that are used to spot enemies. Once spotted C2 does not establish straight away. Note that friendlies can have LOS to each other but still not spot each other making C2 much harder. Elite Mode - units that are within LOS are automatically spotted and C2 is almost immediately established if within the appropriate visual range. Units working closely together (<50m) stay in C2 in Iron Mode OK for the most part because of voice contact but outside of this range CLEAR LOS is critical. A quick test to show the dramatic difference is to have a platoon leader and its SQD both behind hedgerows hiding from each other about 90m apart. IRON MODE - C2 is broken as they won't see each other. 5 minutes of hiding still results in neither unit seeing the other. After unhiding the SQD they still do not spot their hiding leader. This continues for another 5 minutes. After unhiding both of them they spot each other within 15s at the outside. But even though this spotting occurs reasonably quickly you do not get a green C2 for another 40-50 seconds. There may be some sort of memory because if you "fast" the SQD away of out LOS and run them back in again they spot quickly (<5s) and establish C2 quickly (another 5s). If you repeat this several times they seem to always spot and establish C2 within 10 seconds of LOS existing. But if you run the SQD away and pass 5 minutes before running them back then my quick test shows it takes 40-50 seconds to establish C2 after the units have spotted each other. ELITE MODE - Spotting is immediate and they are in C2 within a second. If you move one of the units back out of LOS C2 is broken. Keeping both units "hiding" if you "slow" the unit back into LOS it is still immediately spotted and C2 is established with <1 second delay. In a clear open battlefield this isn't a great difference between Iron Mode and Elite but a spread out platoon under Iron Mode (>50m) in any sort of terrain will constantly be dropping out of C2 because of spotting problems. Hiding units makes C2 under Iron even trickier again.

Have you tried Engel?

I never said it needed tweaking. The way many campaigns are if you use you tanks off road without area firing obstacles first they will not make it to the end of the campaign. It just feels a little dumb shooting stuff down first. Maybe this is what tankers did in real life, I don't know, but it just feels off.

Do you guys that think it is lenient play the campaigns? The original poster experienced his problem playing during the Engel campaign. I from my experience will not drive a tank over any fence in a campaign unless I know that I have repairs available simple because driving a tank over everything insight will result in tanks not surviving 3 battles with anything less than yellow tracks. Anecdotally barbed wire/low walls seems the worst culprits at causing damage.

Don't know how realistic it is but this sort of damage makes my use of tanks in campaigns unrealistic. Unless it is an emergency I don't drive over fences, I area fire holes first. The speed in which tracks pick up damage to yellow makes it a risky manuever everytime you are not driving over flat ground.