Ike

I would rather like a regiment-level campaign that replays some of the battles in the approach to St. Petersburg .. erm ... Leningrad. I believe that the terrain favors relatively small units and the logistics situation was not utterly hopeless for one side or the other as was true in many of the operations early in the war. That might be nice. Also, I would like to see some kind of a ladder campaign or perhaps a team-tournament format where teams of players play over the same terrain with - for instance - a regimental combat team with four to seven players per team. Played as either round robin .. sorry, single elimination or double elimination or points depending upon victory/defeat level for a final score for the teams. Also the formation of more or less permanent "Combat Teams" - read "clans" if you prefer that term - who would play as either Soviet or German forces as a team for a relatively long period of time, either in challenge campaigns or tournament campaigns of relatively short duration and small size. <shrug> Just ideas and idle thoughts.

Thanks, Sergei! I've been looking for two days now.

If you've battled over that particular piece of terrain before, you should have taken one or two screen shots and turned them into maps for yourself.

Yes, fierce, a devil ... large .... teeth! LOL But, unlike CMBB, real armies require those things. Someone once wrote: "Amateurs talk about tactics; professionals talk about logistics."

My nickel goes to "Mapping Mission". I down-loaded it over the weekend when Sergei first posted about it. Printed out the Manual, read it, tried a bit of messing about, etc with the program. Sunday, about 4 p.m., I created a nice map in MM and loaded it into CM:BB and if I do say so myself, it looked okay. No rough spots where the "edges" didn't fit or places where - after I fixed a tiny typo in the height # in MM - the "hills" looked like lizard spines. Nice. It was only a 1 km by 1 km, but a good test of the principle. My problem is going to be finding maps of - for instance - central USSR with topography circa 1940 - 1946 - in about 1:50,000 or thereabouts. But MM gets my vote as map maker to the gods.

The CMC part should be conducted in PBEM. This gives the opposing "Generals" time to reflect on what they should do. The CM:BB games likewise "should" be conducted via TCP/IP play, precisely because this gives the opposing tactical commanders little or no time to reflect on what they should do. Just like the real thing, eh?

Hey, in real life, in the Army Reserve, it is part of my job to worry about where the "Sanitation Unit" has gotten to and the "Laundry and Bath Unit" and the "Wheeled Vehicle Maintenance Unit" and the "Tracked Vehicle Maintenance Unit" and the "Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch Repair Detachment" and ... erm ...But I guess I can forego the pleasure of doing that in CMC. But I expect a patch later on!!

David Chapius: I don't know what programming might be in the CMC to keep a player from exiting off the CMBB battle-map on turn 1 each time. I suspect that such a strategy would lose the campaign, especially if that player's opponent were to pursue vigorously. [guess mode on]At some point, after a certain number of such retreats, the pursuer's forces would destroy such a retreating force. For various reasons, this is what would happen in a real life campaign and I find it easy to believe that some kind of game effect on the retreating troops - morale loss, fatigue increase, inability to rest and recover from morale and fatigue losses, abandoned equipment and guns, just to name a few - would cause the retreating force to fall apart or be quickly and easily destroyed by a vigorous pursuit. Further, such a retreating force would need to retreat across the entire CMBB map, under constant attack, unless CMC allowed it to be set up right at its own friendly map edge; that is, all the way across the map from where it entered after leave the first or prior battle.[/guess mode off] That's my ignorant guess on the question. (No sarcasm intended; I know nothing more about the game than you fellows do and some of that is bound to be incorrectly understood by me.)

Sergei: Sorry, my friend; my misunderstanding and failure to communicate clearly. I had forgotten that CMC will come with several campaigns all ready to play. Yes, the Campaign Designer(s) of those campaigns may certainly be trusted. In my excitement about being able to create our own campaigns, I had forgotten that. So, yes, you are correct: the pre-made campaigns that will be contained in CMC are certain to have such limitations built in to them by the Campaign Designer. My posts were - I apologize my friend - directed toward a campaign which one of us would create on his own, separate from the pre-made ones. I hope that makes my thoughts more clear. Renaud: I agree, unless we have several players on each side to fight the battles. Even so, like you, I tend to lean toward a smaller campaign in terms of forces: a Soviet rifle brigade battlegroup against a German infantry regiment kampfgrupp, each with a small armored reinforcement, perhaps only 40 or so tanks, including light armor for recon. Those forces with a relatively large map and well-defined campaign objectives that neither side has sufficient force to control or defend would be fluid and exciting. And, yes, I agree again that a larger campaign would require an organizer or GM - I am referring to such a person as "Campaign Coordinator", even though that is likely to be the person who designs and builds any new campaigns. Even the pre-made campaigns that come with CMC will, in my opinion, require a GM or Campaign Coordinator to make them run smoothly. The actual schedule of battles, I believe, is taken care of by the CMC program itself. The Campaign Coordinator's (CC) role would be to make sure all other aspects of the campaign work smoothly.

Sergei: I agree, but the campaign designer would in any event have to take care to be certain that the teams are limited to both the unit types available to - for example - a Russian Rifle Division as well as to the number of tubes of 152 mm field guns/howitzers. I am not certain as I sit here now that the CMC program will keep track of those force totals or in some other way insure that the players don't have a "division" in the campaign, but a Panzer Armee's worth of supporting tanks and artillery, nicely split up among their battlegroups. I'm am also not certain that the players will be able to change the OOB, but they may be able to designate what collection of CMBB "units" are included in one Maneuver Element. Maybe it's just the words. I'm thinking that a ME is going to be something different than a battlegroup in the CMC program. Perhaps I misunderstand what information we have available. Shmavis: I much prefer the fife and drums of the Soviet Guards Bands. <laugh>

vincere: I think, based on my reading of the FAQ etc, that once any units are retreated off a CMBB map edge, they're back in the hands of CMC. [guess mode on]CMC would move or place or position such a retreating unit according to its movement rate, fatigue, morale state, etc (whatever it uses to determine positioning within any CMBB map that a unit moves onto in the campaign/operational part of the campaign). And that means such a follow-up attack or pursuit would be conducted much like real life, with rear guards desperately trying to hold off the pursuit -or- pre-positioned ambush forces previously held back and hidden because that's what the retreating commander planned from the beginning of the last battle -or- no rear guard and your pursuit runs right up their .. erm ... the unprotected rear of the retreating units. In short, within the other limits of CMC and CMBB, it would be like a real life battle from which a loser attempts to retreat and break contact with the attacker.[/guess mode off]

Easy-peasy, Shmavis: a "pram" is a "perambulator". Known in more civilized and less obtuse locations as a baby-carriage. <laugh>

So the question is: if this were a board game "in the day", what are the units ZOCs and what is the ZOC's effect on movement, etc. I infer from Moon's last post that movement stops when enemy units enter the other's ZOC. So, having an answer to that question, there remains: What is a unit's ZOC? How many Squares on the CMC map? To quote a King novel: "M-O-O-N; that sure spells zones of control! My lawds, yes!"

Sergei: I'm uncertain how that would work, in detail, in CMC. From the standpoint of a team of German players vs. Soviet players, I would think that they - each team - would want some imput into how the battlegroups are made up, as well as how the MEs are composed. Guessing that the Campaign Coordinator would enter the force composition choices in CMC, I would also expect the players to want to make up their own kampfgrupp compositions. One of the potential problems is players stuffing a division's worth of rifle battalions (9) with an Army Corps' worth of artillery and ATG assets. This would be my proposed solution to that potential problem. Trying to address campaign issues and/or problems in advance.

Something like that second one, but if I were the Campaign Coordinator, I think I'd put some type of limit on how many Battalion Battlegroups get a pair of SU-152, -100, -76, etc. Probably by requiring each team/side to get all of their equipment, vehicles, AFVs, guns, etc from a division-level TO&E from history ... or ... from a division-level TO&E that the Campaign Coordinator makes up prior to the start of the campaign. Of course, if you're doing a brigade-level campaign, then you're limited to brigade-level assets plus one brigade's share of division-level assets, etc. Just my ideas on it. I don't mean to say that I believe that CMC will have these things; only that I see this as a potential problem and I'd solve or forstall the problem in the way I wrote above.

Liebchen, I'm surprised that I can remember the QFtHG at all, since the last time I saw it was when Carter was President of the U.S. <laugh at myself>

Find the TO&Es for Soviet Rifle Division, Soviet Guards Rifle Division, German Infantry Division, etc etc, then the fun part: start working up combined arms battlegroups/kampfgruppen from those TO&Es, based around the principal line battalion. So, for tanks, your core unit is a tank battalion, etc.

Thank you, kindly, Sergei. spawseebaw, I think it is.

Thank you, Sergei, for your courteous reception.

And from "Quest for the Holy Grail", if I recall correctly. The scene at the foot of the "French" castle. Oh, and the quotation from the tomb of Lucius Cornelius Sulla is, "No better friend; no worse enemy."

Great news! Now I have something to ask for as a birthday present.

And if the answers to his questions are that CMC doesn't handle supply beyond the bare-bones set out in the "Features" section, can we modify files by hand (or however) to reflect campaign-level logistics activities? Will we be able to create MEs made of up trucks and maybe one Hq team to use as logistics units? Will such logistics MEs be useful in that CMC will keep track of carried supplies of Beans, Bang-bangs and Go Juice in such Logistics MEs?

But what might be the answer to the question of whether the quality of these leaders will improve as the campaigns go on? Or, is the campaign length as the programmers/designers see it, too short to allow for such changes?

What Steiner14 said! How about it?

And I suspect that's why some of Moon's responses to questions about maneuver element sizes in CMC contain "...company or platoon sized ...", 'cause you don't want as the ambushee to have your soft-skinned "Wait; I need fifteen minutes to unlimber and get into battery" units unescorted and maybe even with flank and advance guards. Ah, a genuine light cavalry role for the T-70s!!