joesnuffy

Case in point: I just read "The Dirt Road" AAR by Krautman in the CMBB forum. It describes exactly my issue with the time limits. He had a right flank assualt that broke through the enemy line and captured a minor flag. The major flag was another couple hundred meters to the enemy's rear. Krautman was a couple turns from taking the major flag more or less uncontested. But, time ran out. If the attack had been repelled a couple times before the breakthrough, this outcome would be justified. But this was still part of the first assualt attempt. It went pretty smoothly, and yet still time ran out. It just shouldn't happen.

Even if recon has been done, you likely won't know exact enemy positions until you see them for yourself. So you have to do some light recon in every battle. There should be some time for this. Then, during the battle, things certainly won't go as planned. There should be enough time to reposition troops, bring up your reserves, make adjustments, bring up heavy weapons, etc. Otherwise, it becomes a one-shot type affair, where you pick your avenue of attack and try to punch through as hard and fast as you can regardless of what the enemy does.

Also... JasonC has pointed out that his objective is to eliminate the enemy, not to focus on the flags in and of themselves. All else will then take care of itself if the opposition has been rendered ineffective. I personally like this approach because flag grabbing is pretty gamey. With this in mind, longer battles would be better. If the enemy is gone, the battle will end, no matter how many turns are left. Shortening time a bit to add anxiety is an interesting idea, but it won't work in all cases. The nature of a turns based game by definition takes the real time axiety out of it. I'm guessing (having not been in a battle myself) that much of the anxiety comes from plans gone bad and lots of your men dying - basically surprises. In the best case, shortening time will add the desired anxiety. The worst case, you will have an unplayable scenario.

Obviously the objective of some battles is to capture a hill or some advantageous position in a certain amount of time as part of an overall strategy or to delay an enemy attack until reinforcements arrive, etc. However, it just plain sucks on either the winning or losing side when a battle ends simply because time ran out. Both sides have ammo and morale left to slug it out, but the final whistle has blown. It would not be that satisfying to win a battle knowing that a few more turns would have reversed the outcome. If a battle is too long, then someone will run out of ammo or morale and have to surrender. And, if you are playing a human opponent, you can simply send an email saying, "Had enough?" to which he can reply, "Nuts", whatever the hell that means. So it seems like it would be better to err on the side of too many turns as opposed to not enough. On occasion, you can have a battle where time is of the essence and has very specific time objectives laid out in the briefing. But it seems that should be the exception, not the rule.

Forgive me if this topic has been covered before... It always takes me too long to get into position for an attack in CM. To explore this in more detail, I created a scenario where I had one platoon against a single enemy MG. The map size was 800m x 600m or so, light tree cover and gentle slope. The MG set up deep in his setup zone. It took me 33 turns to traverse the map and find the MG and a couple more to take him out. I was moving cautiously using bounding overwatch most of the time, a bit less cautious early and a bit more cautios as I got closer and closer to the flag. There was a constant threat of resistance, but I never actually encountered any until turn 33. Had I encountered resistence, this would have taken much longer. The battles that I have played in CM tend to be less than 35 turns. This seems to be too short and time becomes my biggest enemy. When I see I am running out of time, I start losing my shape and doing stupid things. Does anyone agree, or is it just me?

Does anyone know if there is a PBEM archive around? I am interested in watching battles played between skilled players as a learning experience. If people have had PBEM battles and have all the turns saved, I would be interested in watching them.

The assualt team was a squad. The fire team was the other 3 squads in the platoon. 2 fire squads were within 100m and the 3rd was about 180m away. It seemed to me that direct fire resulted in more effective supression based on one turn being area fire and the next being direct fire. With area fire, the MG popped up 2 to 3 times during the minute and fired. Under direct fire, they stayed down for the entire minute. The effect I saw may have had to do with the timing. It seems that, once cover fire began, it took a few seconds (10 or so) before the MG ducked. Maybe if I had waited this delay before sending the assualt team I would have had better results. Also, if I'm attacking an MG with a platoon, did I partition the assignments properly? Should I assualt with more squads and cover with less? I only had one platoon in my little scenario. I am just practicing this kind of assault, because my effectiveness at this in a more complicated scenario has been poor. I tend to get in position for the assaualt OK, but I have trouble closing the deal. Any comments would be appreciated.

I was assaulting a machine gun with a rifle platoon in CMBB. At the particular moment that I was going to send the assault team over, the enemy machine gun happened to be just a sound contact. I had ID'd it already, but it disappeared from sight briefly as I respositioned the fire team. But, I knew he was still in a particular foxhole. I wanted to issue the following order to the fire team: "Area fire until the MG is ID'd and then provide direct covering fire." I'm not sure how to give such an order. So I targeted area fire on the foxhole and put a cover arc around it, too. This did not work. When the MG presented itself again, the fire team continued to area fire and didn't switch to direct fire. I had to wait until the next turn to issue direct fire orders. Meanwhile, the MG did not remain suppressed and panicked the assualt team. Once the MG was under direct fire on the next turn, it remained supressed for the entire minute. But it was too late. Any suggestions on a better way?

In a CMBB QB I was playing, I discovered a wooden MG bunker. I decided to use my off-map 82mm mortar battery to target this bunker. Someone mentioned that the mortar wasn't enough to take out the bunker. I would agree in the case of a concrete bunker, but I figured it could seriously damage a wooden bunker. I was having trouble with targeting and never got a direct hit. Anyone know if this would work or not?

sorry to send this in pieces. Also, this has happened to me twice in seperate QBs. In both cases, the rounds landed beyond the far left corner of the map relative my point of view. It seems a stretch that this would be a coincidence.

I also thought that the guys wouldn't fire unless a successful target was achieved. So, if the off-map arty spotter is not able to use HQ LOS, why did the off-map mortars fire? Isn't this a bug?

Flaming K, Thanks for the advice. Your comment about LOS and off-map arty does make some sense. It does seem a bit strange to have an HQ spotting for a spotter. This would be indirect indirect fire. However, I was under the impression that, when you are targeting, the text next to the target line tells you if you are successfully targeting or not. If it is NOT successful, it says, "sight blocked." But, in my case, it said, "area fire," which I thought meant successful indirect targeting. Please correct me if I'm wrong. secondly, the bunker was wooden, which I thought would be susceptible to mortar fire.

The spotter didn't have LOS to the bunker, but his HQ did. I understood that this indirect fire method simply results in less accurate area fire, which means the spread of rounds is wider than direct LOS fire, but should at least be centered more or less on the target. But in this case, the rounds are landing off the map literaly hundreds of meters from the target. It's not like some land far away and some land close; all the rounds land in the same area hundreds of meters from the target and don't even make it onto the map. It seems like this has to be a bug. It's incredibly frustrating. I don't have a lot of time to spend playing. To invest a couple of hours and then have something like this happen is a complete waste of time. If it is user error, I would like to know what I did wrong.

I was playing a CMBB QB the other day. At one point in the battle, I had ID'd a wooden bunker with a machine gun. I had my 82mm spotter target this bunker indirectly using the LOS of the HQ. A target line was placed right on the bunker, and "area fire" was indicated. A few minutes later, when the mortars began firing, I noticed the rounds were landing off the map . I could see the rounds exploding off the actual map, hundreds of meters from the target line. :mad: Minute after minute went by with the rounds landing in the same general area off the map. I tried to reposition the target on the bunker again or somewhere close, but this would take another 7 minutes to set up. By this time, the battle was lost; the MG in this bunker was well positioned and ripped me to shreds. This is the 2nd time this has happened to me in CMBB. Has anyone experienced this before? Is it a bug or something I did wrong? :confused:

My point simply was that you are doing the same thing that you are accusing others of doing. You were questioning the game modeling without really knowing what is realistic or not, and others were defending it. What's the difference? And besides, some things are very difficult or impossible to prove or disprove, such as the modeling of pace and fatigue when running in snow. How is anybody here going to say, "A fit rifleman can run 35m in light snow before tiring instead of 30m?" That's just not going to happen here. Anyways, we are beating a dead horse. You made some comments. I chimed in to disagree with you, as did others. Yes, it was without facts and data to back it up, but it was based on my general feeling from what I have read, from playing the game, and from my own life experiences. You seemed to have a problem with that, and I don't understand why. Enough said on this subject. Enjoy the weekend! :cool:

Anyone know where I can find more already played PBEM battles/operations like this one?

But you are using your opinions, as opposed to facts, to back your points as well. Have you tried it? A 100 yard dash in shin-level snow with a few pounds on your back? That would be tiring, at least. This is your opinion, which several people have disagreed with. You might if you were given a direct order so as not to disobey your superiors. Or if you were out in the open and were running towards cover, I imagine you would keep going as opposed to stopping and hiding in the open. Sneaking is low on the fatigue meter in CM. All of this is opinion. Most of the stuff that goes back and forth here is opinion. Many issues in CM would take significant research to prove out, which the CM guys have probably done. All that we have is opinion and conjecture on many of these issues. That, by the way, is part of the fun. So what exactly have you proven?

It seems that this would be easy to figure out. One could just jump into a scenario and try it. I'll see if I can do it this weekend.

Them's fightin' words, Red. :mad: Well, taking into account the water content of the snow in the Russian winter of 1942, factoring in wind speed, assuming early onset of dysentery... um let's see... carry the seven... divide by 6.4... um ... square root ... the answer is: light snow - kinda far; medium snow - not very far; heavy snow - going nowhere fast.

From the book Forgotten Sodier by Guy Sajer: "Running in snow isn't easy. In less than 2 minutes one is lathered in sweat..." I was reading someone's memoir of the Korean war. They were sent out to set up an ambush in the middle of the night in snow. After a couple of hours, everyone was shivering violently. They had to abort the ambush because the shivering was making too much noise. My own experience in snow is that, becuase you are so heavily bundled, overheating can be a major concern. Then when you stop running, you are soaked, which chills you to the bone. I would imagine that snowy conditions in general really affect one's stamina, stealth ability, morale, etc. CMBB's modeling of this maybe isn't fun but seems fairly realistic.

I am interested in obtaining previously played battles (CMBB) and loading them to view for myself as a learning tool. I am a newbie and would like to see, first hand, strategy and tactics employed by experienced players. Reading descriptions with an occasional screenshot is OK. But watching a battle for myself played between 2 veterans would be great. If pictures are worth a thousand words, video must be worth millions. If anyone can help me out, I would appreciate it.

I know the Stug is capable of scoot and shoot, it's just not anywhere near ideal for it. If you can come straight at your target, like coming up and over a hill, it's great. But it's terrible for peaking around the edge of a building or woods where it has to turn then fire then turn then reverse. Unless you have completely taken the target by surprise, you are likely dead meat.

I was playing the scenario "B&T Early Whittman" on CMBB the other day as the Germans against the computer. It was a 30+ turn meeting engagement on a medium sized map. I had maybe 8 StugIII's, a few MG'd halftracks, an infintry company, and received 2 PanzerIVs midway through the battle. It was know that I would be significantly outnumbered.There were 5 flags scattered around, 2 major and 3 minor. Because of the size of the map and the lack of numbers on my side, I decided to go after one major flag and 2 minors in order to concentrate my forces. I spent the first 20 turns scouting a bit and approaching my objectives cautiously with proper cover and overwatch, a seemingly appropriate thing to do when not knowing where the enemy is; there were lots of trees and hiding places for enemy AT personnel. I accomplished my objectives by turn 21 without having seen the enemy! (yawn) I could have just finished out the game and accomplished a possible minor tactical victory without having fired one round, but what is the point in that; this is a game! So I started moving towards the other flags when I finally spotted a couple enemy T-34s. I figured, what the hell, I'll go after the remaining major flag (what else have I got to do). As I got closer, it turned out that I was up against about 20 to 25 tanks, mostly T-34s with a couple Mathildas and KV-1 heavies. Given my lack of time, I took some risks I wouldn't have taken in real life. I got some good kills, but took heavy casualties in the process. I ended with a minor tactical defeat. I captured 4 of the 5 flags unimpeded and got slaughtered trying to challenge the 5th. The Russians ended up with the 5th flag (a major)as well as most of my vehicles. After this long, boring description, I am really looking for advice on tactics to win this battle and still have fun. My StugIIIs are turretless and are not good for shoot & scoot tactics and are inferior for head to head slug fest The Panzer IVs can hold their own to some degree and are good scoot and shoot tanks (fast turret, good fire power), but can be taken out with one shot from any of the enemy tanks, and I only had 2 of them. My AT personnel are limited and slow. The enemy had so many tanks, they had every angle covered to prevent any flanking attempts. My arty (50 and 80mm mortars) is practically useless against a tank-heavy force, unless I get lucky with a direct hit. My AT guys could surprise a tank or two, but would suffer the wrath of 5 tanks hunting them down once revealing their position. In real life, seeing that I am outmatched, I would have (1)waited for reinforcements or (2) dragged the fight out over a long period of time, using guerilla tactics(the stick and move approach) and attrite the enemy bit by bit over many hours and possibly days. Any suggestions :confused: ____________ "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought. But World War IV will be fought with sticks and stone." -- Albert Einstein

I was just reading an arty primer posted by Gremlin. It says that he believes TRPs are very common in defend/attack scenarios in real life but are surprisingly rarely seen in CM QBs or scenarios. I would tend to agree, which is why I was surprised to not have run across them in CM. If you were going to defend or attack a piece of ground, you certainly would study the terrain and pre-register targets if at all possible, knowing how devastating arty can be. Waiting 2 to 4 minutes can seriously throw off timing and mean the difference between victory and defeat, especially in CM, where battles are short and arty is limited. The situations when I have been able to time it right and have enemy escape routes covered with infantry, I almost feel bad for the enemy. Just think if arty could be delivered instantly and accurately. I would think TRPs would be priority one in drawing up a battle plan.

thanks for the response. So if I'm playing a scenario that someone else designed, how do I know if I have TRPs available or not? I have played several CMBO battles and a couple of CMBB battles and have yet to see one.