Peregrine
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Posts posted by Peregrine
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It is pretty difficult to have depth in a computer game without some form of complexity. The complexity usually comes in the form of bad user interface from a control perspective, information overload or conversely not enough information at an appropriate time if the action is happening to fast.
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I wasn't sure I'd like CMSF and am still playing it regularly, wasn't sure I'd like CMFI and found myself enthralled. My biggest issue now is time.
I personally think something about CMSF fits CMx2 better. Not sure why though. And if I could only have Battlefront do one theatre it would be east front (43-44 to narrow it down more).
Time is definitely a factor. I suspect I will get CMFI but most likely as some type of bundle when it (a) costs less, (
comes with something more interesting for me than Italy and © my thirst for something new has dramatically increased. -
It does need to be remembered that Battlefront didn't intrinsically include an LOS tool.
It is more that the target/target light command can be used like an LOS tool from where a unit is or where it is about to be via waypoint selection or more exploitively where a unit may move to based on a LOS result or may never be at all based on spurious waypoint use.
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To a small degree I do sympathise with the thread originator.
CMFI is a rather small leap forward in my opinion.
Ditto. Sort of.
It is a step forward but not as big as many would like to a theatre that I suspect doesn't capture the imagination automatically.
But there is no reason to feel bad about not getting CMFI or that Battlefront has abandoned you (original poster) or vice versa. They have repeatedly stated that they do not expect all customers to purchase all modules/families.
Unless you have fundamental problems with the engine something will come your way again. It is more a time for patience now waiting for this to come again rather than thinking they have lost their way.
The epic time period of the original CMx1 releases are gone, almost certain never to return. I miss them too.
I have made one "support Battlefront" purchase in getting CMSF simply because I liked what they did and wanted to see the Cmx2 engine. The demo and setting did nothing for me but I still found a great game. Left NATO and Afghanistan and now am leaving CMFI. Will certainly patch to CMx2 unless a new release with a bundle is announced then I will get that instead.
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A game that gives a fully downloadable demo is not common. Basically if someone is writing a review that is negative and not stating this then they are not being fair.
Otherwise any review is good as it does advertise the game and anyone halfway serious will most likely download a demo and probably end up in these forums sooner or later and make some sort of informed choice.
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Maybe I am not seeing the picture to scale. The embankment to me looks fairly high and steep (6 feet+ or so) but the shrubbery on top not at all thick and they definitely had gaps everywhere, no dispute there.
But the sort of terrain shown in the picture doesn't appear in many (any?) CM scenarios. There is little real granularity between a basic CM hedge and impenetrable bocage. I suspect that trying to include these levels would lead to countless playability issues. It is sometimes a little painful even trying to see gaps.
The CM bocage seems to be about a 3 to 4 high embankment (cause infantry can see through it kneeling) but much thicker as they have zero chance of running through it themselves. The CM bocage seems a happy (or unhappy) generalisation.
In answer to the original questions while tanks should be able to shoot through bocage it probably shouldn't be as simple and easy as it is to do in CM. (That said I have had a more than a few weird moments with commanders spotting stuff and for whatever reason the gunner not having a LOS and engaging.)
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The picture is an excellent example of a sunken lane but the thick hedges that accompany an impenetrable hedgerow for infantry are absent.
The multitude of progressive steps between a couple of shrubs to a monster mess of thick entangled small trees doesn't exist by default in CM and scenario designers don't often try to recreate it due to the confusion that I think it would create.
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All the operations were conducted with a breakout in mind.
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eeer...yes,I usually use emergency:o (if not always)
That's a big LOL.
50m is actually pretty good for emergency rounds.
It is a good idea to designate a largish area centred on whatever you most want to hit. This gives you the best chance of hitting what you are aiming at even if the fall is off. Don't try too hard to minimise your arty use to exactly what you need to hurt something and not an arty shell more. This can work but often you will find yourself spending alot of time waiting for short barrages that often don't do all that much.
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It was only with the industrial heartland of the Reich under Allied control and the Nazi war machine at last showing signs of loss of will to fight that policymakers could entertain notions of easing off on humanitarian grounds. And guess what, that's about March 1945.
There was concern about Dresden. A lot of people blanched at what happened. Political leaders that were instrumental in the policy distanced themselves from what occurred and had been repeatedly attempting for years and policy changed.
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Are you sure that Goering was specifically due to the bombing or at all. I thought a lot of argument re the top Nazis was simply focused on the final solution policies.
The allied bombings cannot really be compared to the genocides.
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I understand the frustration of an early enemy surrender. It's like a human oppo who as soon as thing look bad, will ask for a ceasefire or surrender, thus spoiling the enjoyment gained from planning an xnt attack. It's a bit like coitus interruptus.
You clearly like CM more than most.
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I think it is important to remember that Bomber Command was not running awok doing their own thing (target selection, sometimes - broad policy, never).
The campaign was established well before the end of the war. There were arguments whether it would be effective or moral, and the British Government decided it was. The British people had a reasonable idea what was being attempted (I think) and the majority OKed it. There was a definite hunger for revenge. The US joined in when they got to Europe too. Democracies did this because it was popular enough and possibly effective enough to justify it.
The Nazis succeeded in dragging the west towards (not to) their level which happen all too often in war.
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I have certainly experienced problems with LOS from .50's etc once or twice playing versus the AI but never really understood the intricacies of the problem.
I have played heaps and unless you find the thread that explains it explicitly I would just deploy in what you think is the best position and accept that in rare situations you may have to move.
From memory you can't actually precheck the LOS prior to deploying so I think the risk needs to be accepted. I rarely leave stuff not deployed and don't do anything special to avoid it so hopefully you will find it as a rare LOS glitch that shouldn't spoil anything overly.
The above pic is one for conspiracy theorists. The second gunman was behind the wall.
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I am sure that some of the German units have "no driver" jeeps.
Something like the Coy Cmd and XO each get a jeep with no driver and then crew it themselves.
I use the XOs for good old fashioned CMBO jeeps charges. Not really but if anybody has a better use for XOs let me know.
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Only the most die hard air power advocates thought you could win the war from the Air alone and by mid-war, pretty much every one realised it was not going to happen.
Many at Bomber Command felt that it could be won that way. History has coloured Harris so badly that it is difficult to understand what he truly believed in his hearts of hearts but when it came time to carve up resources this was the line that continued to be pushed. This isn't a criticism per se as this is one thing that is common to pretty much all the allied commanders. Funny how at every critical juncture nearly every General/Admiral/Air Marshall always felt the he personally was in the best position to strike the next blow.
Flat out guess but I can't see these wouldn't have been cabinet decisions made post Battle of Britain.
Applying your standard of only judging success based on initial goals is interesting, but by that standard, pretty much every WW2 land, sea, air - battle, operation, campaign was a failure. Does that mean the Allies did not win the war?
It is more that so much of what Bomber Command did repeatedly fell into grey areas.
The premise that they were resourced upon was never realised. Oil was repeatedly referred to as a priority but the carpet bombing aspects had a tendency to the receive the focus. They had no genuine understanding of what they were achieving and this oscillated both ways from massive overstatement to understatement. Made it very difficult to repeat good things and stop the bad ones. Britain had been on the receiving end of a bombing campaign when these resourcing decisions were made yet still did not recognise the difficulty in achieving the goals but attempted it anyway.
The resources used to do this were at the expense of other arms.
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OK Jon, seems like you've hammered this particular nail right through the board at this point. Peregrine doesn't seem like one of those apologists who believe that the strategic bombing was an act of pointless savagery or at best bloodthirsty revenge for the Blitz (i.e. a "war crime"), feeding postwar German neurotic revisionism that "we really didn't behave all that much worse than our enemies." A point of view all too readily abetted by self-hating leftists here in Canada.
I tried to shrug of the initial wild rhetorical responses in the hope of some sort of discussion popping out the other side. It didn't seem to.
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You keep going back and quoting things I have attempted to correct. I did make a mistake. I don't dispute the graphs. I believe that this was identified in Ultra in Sept 1944 and was caused by raids in May 1944. Bomber command therefore had no idea what was being achieved until Sept 1944. At this point it was again reiterated, OIL, not factories should be the priority. This was a pattern throughout the air campaign.
Every other service is judged by what it's commanders set out to do, what their commanders stated was possible, the resources and methods used. You still haven't expressed an opinion as to what you think bomber command tried to do and why it was a success.
Russian comparison. Please attribute the sentence "The Russians were clearly successfully as they the were on the winning side of the war" to me laughing so hard at your introduction of the comparison that I failed to write a coherent sentence. Again, I should have ignored it. I personally don't see how the conduct of the war in the east can be compared to Bomber Command effort but if you want to actually add details as to why you believe they should be compared feel free.
success - grey area - failure
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But that doesn't mean that heavy bombers were a failure.
Put this another war; Liddel-Hart had some very woolly and fanciful ideas about what tanks - unsupported tanks - could do. He was wrong. Without a shadow of a doubt, his ideas were out to lunch. Does that mean that tanks weren't successful in WWII?
There is no "could have" about it. German synthetic oil production was destroyed, and that did shorten the war. Your refusal to acknowledge that blindingly obvious success is baffling.
But ... that's exactly the standard you applied to the Red Army! "The Russians were clearly successfully as they the were on the winning side of the war"
Again never said they were a failure. As per previous post they contributed.
I did acknowledge that oil production was destroyed. I did this also in my previous post. My position is that Bomber Command didn't set out to shorten the war. They set out to win it. They utilised a lot of manpower and production along the way. Again feel free to state what you believe Bomber Command set out to do and why it was a success.
Again with the Russians. Relating the Russian Campaign to Bomber Command was a nonsensical comparison that you introduced with the inflammatory statement the because the Russians were at war for longer than the air campaign they shouldn't have bothered. I should have ignored it.Another example of attempting to plant obnoxious opinions on others that don't exist or are even hinted at.
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Can't specifically speak for Normandy but walking up internal flight of stairs with a medium suitcase is often awkward in the type of French buildings you see portrayed in CMBN. More so the second to third story but I have seen enough tight ones from ground to one.
Deploying a gun on floor 2 would be great for LOLs if your opponent has a sense of humour.
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I have read an account that stated armoured shot had a clearly defined sound if it passed close to their tank (I think this was from a tank commander so no idea what the guys inside might hear). If the tank was in any sort of open area (ie not immediately able to move into cover) this would result in bailing. If the tank wasn't hit they shortly after they would jump back in and continue.
Your pixeltroops are foolhardy brave little souls when under fire. It was awhile ago there are some pretty funny videos of CM tanks taking heaps of hits and continuing on about.
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That's it? That's your whole argument, and your sole definition of success? Because they weren't 100% successful in achieving an impossible goal, they failed completely?
*pfft*
Why didn't you say you were wasting my time?
"Before they joined"? Have you heard of conscription? And even the volunteers had little control over their destiny once they'd joined up. Many a young lad who volunteered with visions of dancing in the clouds piloting a Spitfire found himself instead flying endless hours over the Atlantic in a Sunderland, or flying through tropical monsoon in command of a Dakota. Or navigating a Lancaster over central Europe.
There were also plenty of other jobs that were 'almost suicidal' available to a young man in the mid years of the 1940s.
Yes, quite. Who are you, Worzel Gummidge?
Look, I know you mean well, but you really do seem to be out of your depth here. I mean - you can't even read a graph! (Hint: D-Day was in June. The breakout occurred in mid-late August, and the borders of Germany reached in mid-late September. The production of synthetic oil fell of the cliff in March. March is before September. And before June.)
Never said they failed completely. Never said they didn't contribute.
British aircrews were volunteers, not sure about American. Suggesting that because there were lots of ways to die that running an air campaign with high casualty rates is acceptable as part of a campaign is wrong. These things were dwelt on heavily at the time.
The leader of Bomber Command genuinely felt that they alone could bomb Germany into submission. This is why I can't see it as a success and said so in my second statement. Sorry if you missed that and I wasted your time. Land forces were required and thousands of casualties on the ground still occurred. I am more the prepared to listen to counter arguments but you can't say it was a success by just stating end results. It has to be compared against by what was actually attempted. What in your opinion did bomber command set out to do?
Can you provide a reference for the graphs if they were part of a study that discusses their impacts on the German war effort.
I first brought up the oil issue more as an opportunity missed in FOW and how it was virtually impossible to achieve success but didn't explain properly. It centres around theory that the synthetic oil centres were the most viable target that bomber command could have destroyed that definitely shortened the war. Ultra intelligence in Sept identified severe oil problems from raids earlier in the year. My memory says May but I can't recall accurately. Maybe it was March. It took months to realise that something as definitive as this occurred. Even when bomber command did do things extremely well in a more quantifiable manner than any impacts realised by carpet bombing it was not realised at the time by the people conducting the air operations. The whole of the second campaign in the west still happened after this.
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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.
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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.
comes with something more interesting for me than Italy and © my thirst for something new has dramatically increased.
Need some help
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
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It has been awhile since I played that one. If you post a screenie to refresh my memory I will give it a shot.