FM Paul Heinrik
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Posts posted by FM Paul Heinrik
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Yep, stuff like that happens all the time and I guess with software it happens much more frequently, hence the proliferation of the attached files instead of nicely bound manuals.
Is there going to be a 3rd ed.?
What we do at our company is issue overlays (stickers) with the current text and let our customers insert them if they wish but, more importantly the customer is made aware that there are changes that took place that is not represented in the book.
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JasonC,
For the most part I agree, "annihilist" (is that a real word?) warfare is the surest way to win a war. But, it is not so clear cut as just engaging the enemy army and defeating him. There are great risks involved engaging the majority of your troops into the fray, the best results of course result in a decisive victory and the route of the enemy. If you commit and lose, that's it, game over and I think that is the single most important concern of a stragegist. Manuevering buys time and improves intelligence but there is a window of opportunity that opens and closes. Winning through annihilation means you just bust the "window" open and try and win by shock, speed, and the opponents lack of abilities to deal with it.
You referred to classic military actions in which the aggressor won and the "manueverist" lost. In Gen. Lee's case I agree he tried to manuever too much and did not simply commit to battle when he had the advantage, which in hind sight costed him the war. But, with regards to Germany's 1940s Western Campaign it was not that the Germans won decisively through aggressive annihilation of the French, British, and Belgium forces, but the Germans actually "lost" by not being able to out manuever the British forces to annihilate them. Granted the entire blitz tactic is to win by annihilation of the oppossing force but remember that the german command halted the advance to destroy the British because the British managed to retreat faster than the Germans wanted advance, meaning they started to get cold feet, not wanting to commit. It was Rommel (a great maneuverist) that wanted to continue and catch them.
On a side note; this is what I really luv about this forum. There is actually a lot of really good "war" discussion going on here more so than on other military sites. Usually, the other sites seem to bog down into the history or the politics of war instead of the actual war/battle itself.
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Hinkar,
That situation is called "bad luck". I'm very surprised that the 3 Stugs didn't immobilize or panic and have the crews bail. I know I've had jadgtiger crews bail when a lowly T-70 tapped it from 1000+m (I had that crew transfered to a pz II assault team).
I've played using Stug III's against T-34/76's and had them whoop me in a slug out. So, they are not invincible.
I thought that the Stug's were built as a mobile (to keep up with the infantry) infantry guns. Only later did Stug crews discover that their afv was the best armored thing the Germans had at the moment. Remember Wittman took out 6(?) T-34s in his Stug III in a single engagement.
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I'm going to verge on impoliteness here and say, you are out of your freaking mind! In the majority of battles the highest rank you play is Captain. If you think a Captain could say "No sir, I have decided not to take that objective." your wrong. The history of war, not to mention WWII, is absolutely packed with stories of commanders being required to fight in utterly hopless situations.Originally posted by willbell:Juachim,
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> IRL you don't attack in a place where your troops will get slaughtered when there are places better suited.
Charge of the light brigade? </font>
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I guess I had already answered the question. It's a game. It is sometimes fun(?) to play a battle in which all odds are against you. You do learn how to play better in those situations.
Sometimes I get caught up in the reality of the game and I don't want to put my men through a needless meat grinder if I could simply reposition and come in at a different point on the map or at night. I realize that when on the defense you don't have a choice on where or when but on the offense you should.
Winning, losing, it's all good watching the little animated stuff getting blown up. Just makes me turn my head when it's "my" guys
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Madmatt says the data is current....so which is it?? Is the data current to ver. 1.03 or is it off? I want a correct unit guide too.
I'm in the publishing/printing business so I know that even the slighted mistake is unacceptable. But to Battlefront's defense they don't charge very much for the guide and I reckon they aren't making much if any profit from it so it would seem that they made the guide more so for their customers enjoyment than their bottom line. The author might be getting the majority of the sales and the rest to the printing cost. Battlefront might not even have had a hand in the entire production of the guide except for making info available to the author.
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Foreign languages are a beeawwtch, I've been studying one for awhile, and you do a better job than me. That was a pretty good review (unless you are from a native English speaking country).
Simply, was it good or bad? Did it have a listing of all units and their data available?
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This is a game, not real life. In real war people die under harsh unwinable conditions. In real war you can't sit there and pick and choose what type of units you want to select and use. In a game it's not fun if you can't win and it's not fun if you can't lose. That's why it needs to be balanced.
For the most part the QB presents a balanced map to go along with the balanced forces the 2 opponents picked. But, I'm asking how do you handle a 2 player game when one side obviously has the terrain advantage. Remember you both got the same XXX amount of pts. to spend so it's not like one side has more stuff while the other guy has better terrain. I think the idea that both agree to different maps in that situation is a good idea, or at least if you have the upper hand offer your opponent the opportunity to continue or do a do-over.
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No. Not a frontal assault. I set up near the front and was under immediate mg fire. Game over.Originally posted by Berlichtingen:Lemme guess, frontal assault?
Try using the sighting distances to your advantage and gain the tree lined road between the objectives and hit from the flanks.
Next game, I setup out of sight near edge of map and tried to manuver to outer edges of the map and sneak into the tree line and then flak their foxholed MGs using superior fire power. Took out the first MG foxholes only to be meet with serval Russian squads and mortor fire. Game over.
Next game, I setup out of sight then sneak up right where the ai can't see me yet (but I know where they are) and shoot "indirect" fire on their foxholed positions for several turns. When I think that they should be surpressed enough I assault only to find my men become exhausted after moving 10m and they stop right in view of the rested unhurt Russian MGs. Game over.
I have not found a hole in the Russians line of sight yet. If there is one it is only a "gamey" type scenario where there is a "trick" to winning.
Played as the Soviets....no problem total whoop'in of the Germans. Most of the time the Germans just feel content hiding in the blizzard will I sit there hitting the fast foward button and wait the clock out.
I'm assuming you have won this scenario?
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I do use "Hull Down" a lot but I'm not sure haow the ai looks for hull down. The ai seems to select hull down positions that are too restrictive or try and go looking for one in a bad spot. I as the player just assume the role and place my AFV in hull down positions. It really makes a difference with some tanks. Note that several German tanks have weaker turret armor than their hulls, so it is better to get a hull hit than a turret hit.
The actual map and position of the enemy will determine good hull down situations too. I like to use shoot and scoot from a hull down position. Just pop out a little to get a better view, shoot, and reverse back to hull down.
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CMBB "Winter Wonderland"
That scenario stinks! If the point of the scenario is to put Germans threw a meat grinder then the scenario works beside that it is almost pointless. If Germans set up on the very extreme foward positions they are in los of soviet mg foxholes and have 0 cover and plus can't move well do to the hill and blizzard. It's a complete slaughter.
Ok, so play again and setup in rear/middle area and approach carefully, order indirect fire on suspected (u already know where the ai sets up) Soviet positions. Take out the mgs and have several squads of Soviets open up on you from a few meters behind the MG positions (u can't see them because hiding/blizzard/night time).
If there is a way to repulse the Soviets I haven't found it. You can still win by just sneaking near the objective without tripping Soviet los and the game gives the Germans the flags, go figure.
If you play the Soviets you win no problem and after some pathetic German assaults the rest of the men just spend the duration of the game hiding.
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GJK,
Thanks! That is the funniest thing I've seen in a couple of days.
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My horoscope predicts....sarcasm?Originally posted by Sergei:Interesting and original ideas. I wonder if anyone has ever thought of these things before!
Yep, I'm a noob to CM so I'm sure this has been discussed before and maybe just maybe these projects are already in the works??
Oh another game that would rock on CM would be a Mechwarrior or Star Wars version.
Btw, I realized that I played a demo of CMBO like in '99-'98 and thought it was the best game ever and waited sooooo long for the release that I had forgotten about it. Until I accidentally clicked on the Battlefront forum via The Wargamer. Funny huh.
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There was quite a bit of jungle fighting in 'Nam but most of the famous battles took place on the fringes of cover or out in the open. Vietnam has a lot of variety in terrain rice paddies, swamps, barrain hills (before the B-52 poundings). There was enough open areas that AFV were used frequently. Nothing is as fun/interesting as WW2 but 'Nam was a war with a completely different approach. There would definately need to have a spray-n-pray command where a field of constant fire would be layed down without los.Originally posted by Kobal2:CM:VietNam ? You mean as in "the whole map is Deep Jungle type, with hidden bunkers everywhere and a 10m line of sight" ?
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That is weird because my tanks do stop sometimes and shoot, sometimes they shoot on the move. Usually it seems they will stop moving and shoot when they don't kill on their 1st shot.Originally posted by 37mm:I should say that I almost never see my tanks stopping for tank combat when using the hunt command.
What's more annoying is when they start to reverse 50m to gain cover when there is good cover only 20m in front of them.
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I too would like to see a sim like that but there are some big trade offs I foresee. One major problem would be the time frame of the game. As CM is 1 min. turns a 20 turn game already takes an hr or so to play in real time. If battles are fought too realisticly then there has to be a more realistic time frame. There shouldn't be such a time constraint on "winning" the objective. I could see a situation, much like in real battles, that lines become drawn and stalemates occur.Originally posted by JasonC:OK, I will jump into this disaster of a thread in progress and attempt a hijacking.
Instead of speculating about other companies and eye candy and the state of the art (yawn), I will just bring up something I've never seen a tactical game get right, CM included, and put it on my CMx2 wish list.
First I will explain the motivation, the bit of military history that makes it clear to me something is not currently modeled and mattered in some tactical situations.
I've been rereading Bernard Fall. In his Dien Bien Phu book, he describes numerous occasions early on where recon in force through the jungle runs into enemy infantry positions, gets pinned down, takes disproportionate casualties. And part of the problem was clearly the size of the units (full battalions, sometimes a couple of them), plus the way that interacts with the terrain, and with movement.
The issue is mostly concealment vs. cover. But with a twist. CM already tracks that as a difference in how the two forms of protection work against HE. But treats small arms FP as all aimed. That is, concealment works against bullets but not against shells.
This may be a reasonable first approximation when one rifleman is shooting at another. But when a platoon with automatic weapons is firing out into brush etc, and there is a whole battalion out there, it is not a good approximation anymore.
The issue is that fire can hit things the shooter can't see. Concealment blocks LOS. But a blocked LOS does not mean bullets hit a lead wall and ricochet into the ground. This was critical in the cases Fall examines.
Why? Because the detection range in continuous woods was quite short - short LOS, check. CM has that right. This allowed the units to get quite close to each other before anybody fired. CM gets that right too. Naturally, the up front shooting is pretty nasty when the range is so short, even when both sides barely have LOS. But the leading units quickly shoot one or the other side down.
And in CM, the units 40m farther back are completely immune. They don't care a bit that there is a ferocious firefight going on less than 100m away. Because "there is no LOS". But in reality, bullets go flying through the whole area. They penetrate much deeper through the cover than light does. A leaf will stop light. But it won't stop a bullet.
So what happened tactically in these cases, is not only did the front guys get hurt, but the whole battalion pinned. They were too dense, so they took incidental casualties, too.
Beaten zones from MGs are the same sort of effect. But those are generally modeled in the open. I'm talking about the equivalent of beaten zones, from all fire, passing through concealment rather than cover.
One of the reasons this can be nasty is the guys with full concealment tend to move about more confidently. Upright. Big targets for stray bullets - until they pin.
In Fall's cases, this was made worse by the height differences, too. The defenders were typically up on a hill, and in foxholes or better. The attackers were approaching, without any improved positions, moving. In pure concealment terms they had fine "exposure".
But when lead starting raining, they could not easily put solid ground between them and the shooters higher up. On mostly level ground, a modest rise might give real cover. Same on the part of a slope that is bending back toward level. But not so when one is on an "accelerating" slope.
This sets up interesting tactical effects, if modeled at all realistically. Movement is high risk, and especially so in certain areas. Approaching an improved position in concealment terrain is not the cake walk it can often seem in CM.
That is all motivation. So, what is the wish? That when small arms FP is dished out, it attenuates with range and *cover* (in the strict sense). But doesn't care about LOS. Apply the concealment portion only to some fixed extent. Have there be a lower bound on the firepower, reflecting random hits on targets of typical size. Even better would be tracking some of the dispersion, so that denser enemies would face more "residual" this way.
If done right, beaten zones for MGs would be an automatic byproduct.
Also if done right, friendly fire would be more of a problem, especially when trying to use "mob" formations.
Surrounding an enemy too closely could result in the famous "circular firing squad".
Lots of realistic effects. I'd love to have them.
And when one scanned a battlefield for approach routes, the leafy scattered tree highway wouldn't look quite so much like a purpose-built traverse trench in a seige (promised delivery of nearly the entire force to the objective intact, unless massive arty intervenes).
Also, the trade offs between HE and bullet FP would be more realistic. Right now, HE vastly outperforms against units in good cover. Some of that should remain and will. But e.g. approaching a wooded hill on the top of which 4 heavy machineguns are continually sawing away unsuppressed, would not be the cake walk it can be today.
I think a game like CM is much better the smaller the engagements are and hence quicker the outcomes. Already most of the fun of the game comes from seeing if your los checks and predictions are better than your opponents. I think that if you make firing more realistic then squads in CM would get pinned and do nothing (awaiting addtional support or artillery) much like in real combat.
I do see the currently unrealilistic feature of machine guns that can't hit a column of infantry marching down a road, that is kinda lame. But, supposedly tank shells can penetrate buildings and hit things behind it, but I've never seen it happen nor have seen a tank shoot through more than 1 tank.
BTW, what the heck is up with squads out running hand grenade tosses, or is it just a poorly done animation sequence and the correct damage model is represented?
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A CM:Vietnam would be cool. I think that the Vietnam War scene could work well with CM. Air support would need to be expanded upon.
A CM:US Civil War would be very nice too. I think ball and musket type game would make CM really shine.
Not to mention a CM:WW2 Pacific theater to complete the set.
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No. If you pay for reviews the reviews become tainted and in turn future scenarios become tainted.
If it's a good scenario you will hear very little or nothing in response. If it sux you will get plenty of reviews.
But, I guess it can be flustrating when you want to get some constructive feed back and never hear anything.
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Your right. It didn't do anything. My copy of the files are corrupted on the disk. Again, I state that on MY copy of the CDV special ed., disk 2 has several mods one being cmmos. Mine would not extract properly, I hope that problem is just with my copy and no one else's. I downloaded the current ver of cmmos and installed it with no problem.Originally posted by junk2drive:cmmos is a separate program and should not effect cm
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I have both BO & BB from CDV, haven't experienced any problems like that with XP.....yet.
But...on CMBB the mod CMMOS "core software" would not extract so I had to download the current ver (4.xx?) from the web. The rule sets on the disk worked though.
[ June 01, 2004, 06:06 PM: Message edited by: FM Paul Heinrik ]
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I played a couple of QB in CMBB where I end up getting the poor end of the map. For example, I get the side with the flat ground and few scattered trees while the ai gets the high ground and woods. The middle of the maps have some depressions, woods, hills, ect but I'm usually toast before getting there.
How is this type of setup handled in 2 player games? Do both agree to quit and try a more balanced map? Terrain factors should also be considered in unit purchasing. We should also be able to view the map "before" choosing units. Won't help with unlucky map setups but at least you could pick out better a mix of units out of your battalion/regiment and attach appropriate support. I find it unrealistic to enter the map not knowing the terrain better than a general description.
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Thank you all for the wonder info.
The links provided are very good.
Another, question....
How did appointment to command positions work? If you were a 2nd to the xo (the 2nd over all commander) in a infantry battalion. Would you be promoted to the xo position or would you be promoted and then moved to 3rd or 4th in command of the regiment? Did command positions just rotate around depending on rank, or if you were in a forward combat commmand you usually stayed attached to forward HQ units?
What is more prestigious and career building a col. of an infantry regiment/battalion or being a col. in a divisional HQ.
I guess the ultimate goal would be to achieve 4 star status (US). Which assignments take you there quicker.
Bare with me on the terminology, I'm still trying to get all the lingo down.
Another series of questions....
How much control did a battalion/regiment commader have to conduct war? Was it strictly tactical command? Did the Divisional commander implement strategy or was that the role of the corps or army HQ? At what level did micro managing of companies stop? Was HQ's job to just to keep their "group" cooperating effectively between one another all the way down the chain of command? And I'm sure this stuff is pre-taught at "war college" but it also seems that some of the best commanders did things their own way regardless of what superiors wanted.
[ May 26, 2004, 06:05 PM: Message edited by: FM Paul Heinrik ]
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In the CMBB forum there is a FAQ thread for newbies, it is very good and will help if you don't have a manual and all the key functions are listed in the game under the "hotkey" tab. I don't remember where it is but it's somewhere at the bottom of the screen.
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I found "A Bridge Too Far" to be a better war movie, the best WW2 movie imho. SPR is very intense but after watching it a lot you start to see the special effect setups and you step back from the "realism" and start thinking of all the flawed tactics used for the sake of cinematography. Speilberg put a lot of "hollywood" into SPR and it shows after a couple of screenings. But to the films credit it was very, very realistic for a 1st time screening and most buffs didn't catch the graffs until later reflection.
Is the muzzle blast realistic?
in Combat Mission - Tips and Tricks
Posted
Since I don't own CMAK yet i'm always looking at the screen shots. I notice that all the AFV have huge fireball muzzle blast coming out of their guns, is that realistic? I don't seem to notice that effect on CMBB or CMBO. Or is it there and I'm not paying attention?
Anyway, how much of a fireball is visible in real life?