Dennis Grant

You don't need a radio message to the tanks to get them to open up. The CC in the tank is much higher off the ground than the infantry, and he has binos. The gunner is midway between the ground and the CC, and he (usually) has optics. Between the two of them, they can see better and farther to the front than the infantry can - at least, until they button up. In a combined advance, the tanks fulfill a sort of "rolling overwatch" job. The rate of advance is much slower than the normal bound->bound speed, so spotting is nice and easy. More time is spent peering through the binos at potential targets, and less time keeping the damn driver from killing you. Furthermore, when the enemy opens up on the pongos, they all fall on their faces. It's the universal sign for "we've made contact" and it, as a CC, has a way of immediately grabbing your attention. As does tracer, muzzle smoke, etc. Not to mention... 200m is not a far distance. 200m is actually really close. And I'll bet that, at the time, visibility forward was really poor. For overwatch to work, the vision limits of the infantry and the tanks needs to be about the same. So in close country, separation distances shrink, and in open country, they spread out. "One Zero, this is One One, contact, wait out!" "One Zero, this is One One, Contact, grid 123456, infantry in treeline, at least one MMG. Engaging, over" "One One, this is One Zero, contact grid 123456, infantry in treeline, over" "One One roger out" "India One One, this is Tango Two One. Is your last contact about three fingers left of that telephone pole on axis of advance? Over" "India One One roger, over" "Tango Two One roger, we'll lay down supressive fire. Got get him!, over" "India One One. Works for me. Lift fire on my call, over" "Tango Two One roger, we'll supress until you call. Out." ...about that fast... DG

...well... In real life, soldiers are trained to report contacts as quickly as possible - and where radios are involved, you'll get a "Contact wait out!" call the second contact is made, and as soon as the unit is out of immdiate danger, a more detailed contact report will be issued that includes a grid reference good to 100m It is standard procedure for anybody on the radio to plot those contacts on their map - and of course, those contacts are being relayed to higher commands. If somebody's contact winds up being in your field of vision, the next thing that happens is an intensive search to locate that contact. While this doesn't happen in RL quite as quickly as in the game, you might be suprised at just how quickly contact information is shared and just how seriously soldiers take reporting, plotting and tracking contacts. Unless the game was called "WW1 Corps Commander" you'd have a hard time finding a place where it would be appropriate. Commanders at anything batallion/squadron sized and smaller are intimately involved with their troops, and will place themselves where they can have the largest possible influence over the battle. Tactical level command is very much a hands-on deal. Uhh... First off, infantry naturally avoid tanks, for a couple of reasons: 1) Tanks are big, noisy, smelly, and attract enemy fire like moths to a flame. They get shot at a lot, often with really big weapons that make really big bangs - and big bangs are not your friends. 2) Tanks taken uder fire react violently. Depending on the terrain, a tank may suddenly reverse or charge forward (seeking cover) and if you are between Mr Tank and where he wants to be, you stand a very good chance of becoming Track Grease. Giving tanks 200m of maneuver room is not at all unrealistic. Secondly, when tanks and infantry advance in concert, the zipperheads are every bit as keyed up as the infantry. They are a little more worried about anti-tank weapons... but even plain ol' infantry will get their attention. If the pongos 200m ahead of you suddenly chew dirt and start putting fire down, you'll probably open up before you even know what you're shooting at. Thirdly, everybody has spent a huge amount of time being taught "action on" drills, to the point where it's almost reflex. Most action on contact drills involve putting out fire in the general direction of the enemy. If I'm a troop leader with 4 tanks advancing in support of an infantry attack, I will be identifying potential trouble spots to my gunner as we move along, and will pre-authorise him to take certain actions. "Gunner, if the pongos chew dirt, open up with the coax on the big bush up there until I figure out where the fire is coming from and give you fire direction" DG [ October 15, 2004, 11:13 AM: Message edited by: Dennis Grant ]

On crews and bailing out: As a Recce troop leader, I used to carry an LMG as a personal weapon (rather than the carbine that was standard practice) I had a number of different reasons for doing so... but one of them was so that if I ever got caught out of my vehicle, I would be able to put out a disproportionate amount of firepower. I didn't have a lot of staying power (my ammo loadout would be a box on the gun, maybe a spare box in a bandolier, and then the typical 4 30-round magazines) but if needed, I could join a fight or cover a retreat. It is appropriate for a vehicle crew to be able to carry on the fight dismounted. Depending on the vehicle and the nature of the knockout, a crew might even take the time to dismount aux weapons and carry them along with them. Their biggest problem is not going to be lack of firepower, but lack of ammo. Secondly, as a commander (or even as a senior NCO) if I bail from my vehicle and am still combat-fuctional, my first priority is going to be getting back in the fight. I will kick junior crews out of their vehicle and take it over, if I need to - I'm more important. I'd expect my Alpha callsign to do the same. There is historical evidence for this practice. A vehicle that is not physically knocked out should be capable of being remanned by a bailed-out crew, and bailed-out commanders should be able to commendeer vehicles. DG

Little known fact (although I don't remember the source off the top of my head) - Stalin almost surrendered. He was right on the verge of doing so when Hitler ordered the change of axis towards the Ukraine instead of Moscow. Had Hitler kept his focus on Moscow, it is entirely possible that Stalin would have capitulated. Had the weather been better earlier and allowed Barbarossa to start on schedule, he may have even reached Moscow before doubts started setting in. Assuming Stalin surrendering, what happens next is anybody's guess. Would Russia respect the surrender, or would Army units continue to fight on? Would there be a powerful Russian Resistance, or meek acceptance of their new German overlords? And with Russia out of the fight, do the Western Allies ever even attempt to open a Western Front? Impossible to guess. All we know with hindsight was just how close we all got to the brink. DG

I gots a story about that. My unit went to Ft Knox to use the Yank tank simulators there, and we were practicing in the simulator. My troop was in Bradleys (Recce forever!) while the rest of the Regiment was in M1s. We had gotten to the part of the battle where the sabre squadrons had advanced through Recce lines and was beating the hell out of the enemy. This was an opportunity to take a bit of a breather (the point where sabre moves through Recce is always a little nerve-wracking, because the gunners in the tanks don't always take their AFV Rec vary seriously and fratricide is a very real problem). Normally Recce moves to the flanks for flank surveillance at this point, but I had been told I could leave them there so we just sat tight. Then I get a contact report over the radio on a grid square a good deal closer to me than expected. I plotted all contacts as a matter of course, and this one was right in front of me, in a wooded area. The software at the time represented woods with a kinda domed structure with a wooded texture mapped onto it. When you drove into woods, it was like driving into a big tent - you couldn't see in or out of it. So it was entirely possible that somebody had slipped through and had been seen driving into that wooded area. Normal SOP was to smoke hell out of the woods with arty - Recce only uses its integral weapons in "holy ****!" moments - but the battle was winding down, and I've got this 25mm chain gun.... So what the hell. I called in "60 Engaging" and started firing 25mm into the woods semi-indirect. Now unbeknownst to me, with the battle winding down the BC had decided to prank the DCO, and had called in the contact on the DCO's command tank. I was thus busy engaging the DCO - remember, all I can see is the "woods" tent thingy. Well, the simulator speaker system makes no distiction between getting hit with 125mm or 25mm. There's a great big honkin' subwoofer deal in the sim, and getting hit sets off a hell of a "boom!" But the ROF of 25mm is a LOT higher than 125mm, and it turns out my blind-fire was a lot more accurate than one could reasonably expect. The hammering noise in the DCO's sim was so bad that the crew bailed out in order to get away from the noise. So I guess we have a real-world example. DG

Hmm. Movement. I have a couple of problems with the current movement speed system, although they are pretty minor. The existing system isn't bad. If I could redo it myself though, it might look like this: Vehicles: 1) Road March: follow road tiles to waypoint. Top speed of vehicle, poor (but not no) spotting. Enemy encounter not expected. 2) Move: Slow speed (about infantry advance speed) good spotting. Engage infantry/soft vehicle targets with no break in movement. Engage armour targets and stop. Engage "scary" armour targets and reverse back along previous path to hull down. 3) Bound: Maximum safe vehicle cross country speed, varying on terrain type (driver slows down to below "throw track" speed) Spotting slighly poorer than "Move". Action on contact same as "Move" 4) Fast: Same as "Bound" but do not stop on contact - priority is to reach waypoint. Fire on move for vehicles capable. 5) Sprint: Maximum vehicle speed. Poor spotting. Do not engage. Run like hell! 6) Contact: As per "move" but stop on contact. Heightened spotting. 7) Hunt: Slower than "move". Very good spotting to front. Expected contact with armour, so gunner ready to fire immediately (smallest possible fire delay on contact) For infantry: 1) March: Fastest possible speed with no fatique increase. Upright and walking. Contact not expected. Spotting poor. Density high. 2) Double Time: Faster than "March", slow increase in fatigue. Contact not expected. Spotting very poor. Density high. 3) Advance: Slighly slower than "march". Spotting very high. Upright and walking, but scanning for the enemy and contact expected. No increase in fatigue. On contact, drop to ground, fire off a burst, and then crawl to cover. 4) Run: As per current. 5) Assault: "Up he sees me down" WHILE PUTTING OUT FIRE (ie, half the squad/half squad puts down supressing fire while the other half moves) In game terms, this could probably be represented with a burst of fire, then run 10 metres, then a burst of fire, run 10 metres etc. Spotting poor to the flanks, but very good near the waypoint, and if enemy spotted within 10 metres of the waypoint, shift from area fire at the waypoint to aimed fire at the unit. Perhaps "Assault" is a FIRE order, not a move order. DG

You see, that's just it - in RL, a Platoon HQ doesn't _need_ to issue all those detailed orders, because the subunits are (to a certain extent) autonomous. Even in my own callsign subordinates didn't need a ton of direction: "Driver, see that little brown patch about 4 fingers left of that big tree about 600 metres out?" "The tree with the kinda yellowish bush at the base?" "That's the one." "Yup. Got it" "I want a turret-down right about there. Best ground. Driver prepare to advance, driver advance" And then my concentration would go back to the radio/scanning the ground around me for bad guys. I didn't need to specify the driver's exact path, because she knew what she was doing, knew where we expected the enemy to be, and could be trusted to find a path that would keep us concealed and (as much as possible) keep the thick armour towards the bad guys. My full awareness wouldn't really come back to the movement of the callsign until it was time to adopt the turret-down - because it was my eyeballs that needed to project above terrain, so the driver physically couldn't tell where to stop. CMxx isn't like that. When you, as a player, click on a unit and start issuing movement orders, for that period of time you're actually the DRIVER more so than the commander. You "become" that unit, and as such, the level of control you get is entirely appropriate. With that in mind, I don't think ANY movement delay is appropriate. It doesn't accurately represent command and control issues, because when an order is issued to a unit, the play "is" that unit at the time. DG

Something that has to be kept in mind with some of these suggestions is that the CM games are "God Games" in so far that your job is the control of all the units on your side. You aren't playing the role of a Field Marshal or some other very high ranking officer - such a role would involve only selecting objectives and letting the local commanders figure out how to accomplish them. Even the role of a batallion commander still winds up delegating a good deal of the battle plan to subordinate commanders. For example, as the troop leader for Regimental Recce, I'd get boundries, phase lines, an idea of what the objective was likely to be, and a description of the commander's concept for the operation, plus the usual command/control/service/support information. How I arranged for my troop to carry out the recce mission was completely up to me. In a game context, this would require handing over a lot of control to the AI. The higher your "rank" in the game, the more control over the action the AI gets. This might be interesting from a historical modelling standpoint, but I doubt it would be much fun.... Accordingly, the requirement to give the player control over everything limits the amount of realism that can be worked into the game. Things like "Borg spotting" are a necessary side-effect of the requirement for player control. I can't tell you how many times in RL I had to leave a perfectly wonderful position because I was in some sort of odd radio shadow and couldn't talk to everybody I needed to talk to. Those sorts of problems don't model well in a "God game". If I lost contact with a patrol, he was for all intents and purposes GONE (unless somebody I _could_ talk to could talk to him, and could relay). But in game terms, a unit out of contact with his commander is not out of contact with "God", snd can still be manipulated. The trick to play balance is to ALLOW micromanagement if you really want to, but not to REQUIRE it in order to function well. You can make units do formations right now - you just have to do all the waypoints individually, which is tedious. Formations, road following, unit following etc are houskeeping shortcuts that reduce the amount of micromanagement that the player would have done anyway - and that's goodness. DG

Another new feature: LOS "paint" that shows all the areas a unit can/cannot see at one go, rather than dragging the cursor around with the LOS tool activated. As for wire... wire is a SONOFABITCH to deal with. Removing it under ideal circumstances (assuming it has been staked and wired in, tanglefoot is wired up, etc) is a job that takes HOURS, not minutes. Doing so under fire.... not likely. Even artillery and explosives don't necessarily do the job. It tends to throw the wire around, tangling it worse, rather than actually cut it. I've seen hasty wire (a couple of rolls of concertina dropped over a couple of pickets) stop tanks and APCs. It gets jammed into tracks and sprockets, and gets worse with time, because the tracks crush the wire into the moving bits. I remember in particular a Leopard that needed to have the drive sprockets removed from the tank and then the wire mass cut away with a torch.... DG

A key part of this is to not have 100% of your force positioned such that their fire only stikes one aspect of the target. If something big & nasty wanders into your kill zone, you might wind up bouncing all your shots off the heavy armour, giving him the opportunity to pick you off one by one. You want to try and place tanks such that when the target is head-on to one fire team, he is presenting a flank to a second. Don't be afraid to shoot & scoot, especially if your "fire team" is only a tank or two. Also don't forget to keep a reserve. If I have 3 troops of tanks to work with, 2 will be up on the kill zone, and the third will be held in reserve. DG

Found the problem. A background program called KBD.EXE was somehow interacting with the installer (and doing much else bad besides) Disabling it allowed the installer to run (and did much else good besides) So this appears to be a "my system" problem, and not something inherent to the CMBB Special Edition or CMMOS Incidently, I used a utility called "The Ultimate Troubleshooter" from http://www.answersthatwork.com to diagnose this. DG

When I was on my Troop Leader's course, if, at any time, I issued an order that would present any part of my vehicle save the front towards the enemy, or allowed my driver to do same - instant failure of the trace, coupled with a stick at high velocity to the top of my helmet. Presenting an enemy with a broadside was THE unforgivable sin. Shorly following in terms of sins was was stopping in any position tracks up to the enemy (hull down as a minimum, and turret down as the norm) and not knowing one's current position within 100 metres at all times WITHOUT recourse to GPS. There's something else for the list - I want a "seek turret down" command that exposes only the unbuttoned TC's touque. DG

In a related vein, you might want to read the book "On Killing" by an American army Colonel/Doctor of Psychology. Very interesting - if somewhat morbid - reading. In a nutshell, the is a natural human aversion to killing other humans that is VERY difficult to overcome. Oddly enough, placing men in mortal danger is often not enough to overcome this. DG

OK, my wish list in no particular order: 1) Formations, both infantry and vehicular. More for setup purposes than during combat (formations kinda go to hell once the shooting starts) So I want to be able to double-click on the platoon commander, highlight the platoon, select "extended line" and the facing, and Bob's yer uncle. See the UI for "Total War" (specifically, "Shogun- Total War") for a good way to do this. 2) A "follow leader" command, useful with formations. Double-click the platoon commander, highlight the platoon, select "follow leader" and then all in-command subunits move on a parallel path to the HQ unit, taking on the leader's movement type as well. 3) The ability to define phase lines and/or objectives. (probably only during setup) Draw a circle on the map with the mouse, once circle defined stick a flag (visible only to me) in it. Select units, use a command "assault objective", click on flag. Units now Move towards objective if they don't have LOS, Advance if they do, and switch to Assault the correct distance away. 4) Have a camera position "unit view". Click on unit. Click the "unit view" button, and now my POV jumps to that of the unit. Can tilt/pan the camera, but otherwise can't move it. For vehicles, 2 camera views. 1 for main gunner, another for unbuttoned TC. BONUS: for units with augmented vision (telescopic gunsights or binos) provide magnified view at correct magnification. 5) Visual damage to vehicles. Shell holes on knocked out tanks. Broken tracks on mobility kills. Vehicles sunk into ground on bogged/immobile. Where historically accurate, popped turrets (hatches blown out, or turret blown into the air) Crew bailing out animations. In other words, make it more visually obvious when a vehicle is dead or immobile. 6) Vehicle tracks! Tanks chew up ground and can be spotted that way. Enough tank traffic (especially in wet or soft ground) turns ground into mud or hopelessly ruts it up and makes it Rough for infantry. On harder ground, a tank pushing through (for example) Brush or Scattered Trees makes its own road that is easier to follow in another tank or a wheeled vehicle. 7) Contact reports. When a unit makes contact, pop up a little window detailing who spotted the bad guy and jump the view to where he is (make this an option) 8) The artillery spotting model is overly restrictive. It is historically accurate (for some nations) to allow junior officers to call in and direct artillery via a spotter who could not see the target ("Target not identified send corrections") These corrections could be relayed from unit to unit - if there is a communications path from the unit to the spotter, the unit should be able to direct artillery (perhaps with some accuracy penalty) 9) Medics are a bad idea. Typically, if you are hurt bad enough to drop out of the fight and seek a medic, you ain't getting back into the fight anytime soon. A soldier's sense of guilt/duty/loyalty is so powerful that he will ignore minor injuries and keep fighting rather than let his buddies down. When he needs a medic during combat, he's DONE. After a fight, a medic suddenly has his hands full with all the "fighting wounded" that show up, but during a fight, a medic only sees the combat casulties who can no longer fight. 10) The ability to load in actual terrain profiles - there are several open formats that can be downloaded. Being able to play scenarios on the actual ground contours would be amazing.... That's enough for now. DG

I'm not certain how the "log pack" interacts in game terms... but perhaps Real Life offers some suggestions. In Canadian doctrine at least, each unit of sufficiant size (squadron level) carries with it a resupply echelon, the A1 Ech, commanded by the Squadron Sergent Major. The A1 Ech is itself resupplied by the A2 Ech, commanded by the Quartermaster or occasionally the Ops WO, and both Echelons fall under the responsibility of the Squadron Admin Officer. The A1 Ech typically has an ambulance, a wrecker/fitter, an MRT, a POL truck, an ammo truck, and a general stores truck (mostly loaded with rations, but will also carry items of kit requested in adreps) It carries enough (in theory at least) to replenish the squadron's fuel, ammo, and food - once. It then has to go back to the A2 Ech to resupply. In the advance, it follows a few tactical bounds behind the fighting units. Typically, it'll set up a "running replen" (almost like a racing pit stop) and subunits will come to it for resupply. In the defense, the day's adreps are sent to the SSM, and he'll deliver them in his truck to each subunit. The A2 Ech is normally quite a ways further back in some sort of rearward concentration area and doesn't move much; it takes deliveries from Service Battalions. Accordingly, it is often a hour's drive from the A1 to the A2 Ech. That means that in a tactical game, you can pretty much ignore the A2 Ech. Assume that the A1 Ech carries the ammo loadout to (at most) fully replen it's squadron - and that's all it has. Assume that between scenarios in a campaign that the A1 Ech has made it back to the A2 Ech for resupply and so is fully (or less so) topped up. So calculate the supply points it takes to fully reload each unit, and assign that (or a lesser amount) to your A1 Ech. When I say "fully reload" BTW, I mean reload the ready ammo. Vehicles typically carry a loadout of ready ammo where it is easily reached, and a loadout of resupply ammo in external storage. This varies somewhat from vehicle to vehicle, but a LAV-25 would have a full hopper of 25mm, then another hopper's worth of 25mm in cans strapped to the vehicle, and then another hopper's worth back in the A1 Ech. The A1 Ech probably wouldn't have enough to refill the hopper AND the external stores. The other consideration is that certain types of ammo will be in hot demand, and others less so. For an Armoured Recce unit, the demand will be high for 25mm, 7.62mm, and the vehicle mount smoke and antipers grenades. Demand for 5.56 will be relatively low. Hope this helps. DG

My own experience: 1) At the right range (a medium distance) the new CADPAT actually works pretty well. Once you get far enough away, shadow, shape, and silloette start to become more predominant (remember: The Six "S"'s and The Cookie Monster Never Pisses) but in the middle distance, a motionless soldier in CADPAT is actually pretty tough to see. 2) The decision to take rank off the shoulders and place it centre of mass on the chest has to be one of the stupidest things ever done. It is now impossible to figure out someone's rank from behind or from an oblique angle. 3) That the infanty tend to assume the colour of their surroundings is certainly true. That the process is unintentional is pure fiction. I've never met a Pongo that was happy clean. DG

I can pretty much guarentee that the installer itself is not functioning correctly on my system. On a correctly-functioning system, the installer "takes over the screen" for a little bit, and on my system, that never happens. Most install programs unpack the archive into a temp space, then copy the unpacked data from the temp to the final destination. On my system, the first step seems to be happening, but the second never executes, and I can't find the temp space to see if I can trigger it manually. Bottom line is that the actual CMMOS executable isn't being installed to the point where I'd have the opportunity to piss it off by having it and CMBB in the wrong spots. DG

Hey gang, I hope there's a Windoze guru amongst you. I recently purchased a brand spakin' new HP zd7280us laptop, equipped with Windows XP Media Centre Edition, which recently updated itself to SP2. I also just purchased CMBB "special edition" yesterday. The game works fine, but CMMOS refuses to install. Clicking on the icon gets me a little "Unpacking" window which unpacks a bunch of stuff, and then vanishes, never to return. The download of CMMOS V4.03 did the exact same thing. Trying it on my work computer (also XP, but a slightly older version) worked just fine. I've zipped up the folder it built, and hopefully that'll work. Anybody know why the installer might be failing? DG

I bet you're using Mozilla or Netscape. I had the same problem. Mozilla wants to do FTP in PASSIVE mode, and it seems this server doesn't like that. Try using Internet Exploder instead. That worked for me. DG