Erik Springelkamp

[Wrong thread].

Grossman was a great writer, but he also became a senior player of the official Soviet propaganda machine.

That would be a problem, because that is the way the game is designed.

My father was rounded up with his school class in April 1945 to dig trenches for the Germans in the South of the city of Groningen. Because the ground was extremely marshy, instead of digging gullies, they constructed two parallel earth walls to serve as trenches. These trenches only held out for a very short time, because once the Canadians approached it at one point, they could move along in cover along the outside of the construction. (plus they put very low quality railroad soldiers in those trenches).

How about reading the other forum thread about this subject? Yes.

Did the Canadians have the freedom to chose their own strategy? From a few fragments I read in that linked Canadian war history I understood that Montgomery decided where to attack in force. The chapter about the North and West of the Netherlands describes how the Canadians were about to advance into Holland proper (the West of the Netherlands) when Montgomery decided that the Canadians were to proceed to Hamburg and Schleswig in order to support the offensive towards the Elbe. A decision that undoubtedly was part of the Cold War, but that cost many civilian lives in Holland (*). That race for Berlin that was developing also cost the lives of an extra million Soviet soldiers I guess, but that is another topic. [edit] (*) but it may have saved the lives of a lot of prisoners, well, what use is a what if?

There is a whole grey area between a cheap trick and an unpleasant surprise, and in my mind a good scenario has a few unpleasantly surprises in stock, but of the kind where you can blame yourself for not having thought about it - or you can congratulate yourself for countering the threat.

The 'scenarios' that I make are artificial lab situations where I can observe the different unit capabilities. I cannot make scenarios that I like to play myself, because for me the best thing about a scenario is that I have no idea what I am up against at the start. The revealing of the enemy force, even at its cost. One can only play each scenario once that way. I probably lack the imagination to create such surprises for others.

But only the clock is a valid trigger.

In CMSF I consider Quick Battles as training, but a good scenario is something different: enjoy a beautiful map, discover what is going on, try to overcome the challenge. I have played H2H, both CMx1 and CMSF, but I don't always like the extreme pressure of a human opponent. It is good for an adrenaline kick, and very satisfactory when you win, but it distracts from the 'story' that is unfolding when playing the AI. H2H and AI are just two completely different experiences, both with their own advantages. And I think they have very different requirements for a good scenario.

When I play against the AI (and not in a campaign), I don't care about the victory conditions. They might just as well be absent.

Actually, that is not correct. The Dutch fire-team B does have a radio of its own and is in command when otherwise isolated from its platoon HQ. But a British fire-team B does behave like I described it above. I wonder if this mirrors the real world, or that it is the consequence of the bugfix for Dutch units missing all their radio's in the original NATO release. The US Stryker squad behaves like the British section: when split into teams, only the A-team is in command, when the HQ is out of range, the B- and C-teams are out of command. I can't imagine that the Dutch army has a C2 system superior to the British and US army, so I think that patch has something to do with it. In that case I think a request for a bugfix to upgrade the US and British C2 system to the current Dutch system would be a good thing. (and similar for the other armies).

Interesting differences in CMSF between different nationalities, when you look at it close up. British AT platoon(?) consists three vehicles, a HQ, and two javelin sections(?) each consisting of two teams. The individual javelin teams don't have a radio, so when they are outside the range of their HQ, they are out of C2. And I always divided the unit up into 4 different teams, distributing them among the company so I would have some AT protection everywhere. This however produces a very bad C2 situation for the teams. Now a Dutch AT platoon, consists of six Fenneks, a HQ team, an XO team (both have Gill launchers themselves, so they can contribute to the firepower), and 4 teams with a Gill launcher. Each team has a portable radio, so you can divide them up among the whole company, giving you essentially 6 independent AT teams, and they are all in command. Now take a look at infantry sections, British and Dutch. They all have portable radios, so they can take up rather isolated positions and still be in command, but when you split such an isolated section into two fire teams (to occupy two adjacent rooms in a building for instance), the B-team loses C2, even if it is right next to its A-team.

A historical novel is a prototype of a semi-historical story.

So, now I have a company, with 3 infantry platoons and a weapons platoon with 4 MMG teams and a HQ. I often designated the MMG teams to different support positions to assist some of the platoons' actions. Now the weapons' HQ can only be at one of those positions, and at the other position my B-team is out of C2. Is it unusual to split the weapons platoon, and should I put all four MMG sections roughly at the same spot?

In my CMSF battles that 'long range fire support' has always been less than 1000 metres. I probably just meant an overwatch position. A small local network would still allow the exchange of vital information, wouldn't it? It just seems weird to me that a MG team would not be in communication. Even when it is together with the team that does have the 'real' radio. But you are the expert. If you say that it really is common to be out of C2 in those situations, then there is no bug, of course.

There are command indicators in the lower display that give you information on the state of your unit's command chain.

C2 is a whole subsystem in CMx2, that can be rather complex. In short: there is a chain of command over which information is exchanged. Each unit can use different methods of communications to keep in the chain: voice, sight or radio. From teams and sections to platoon HQ's, to company HQ's, to battalion HQ's. Top level command can be off map, but still play an important role in distributing information. The most important effect is on spotting, as units get information about enemy positions, so they are prepared to look at those locations. It also has effects on morale, but that is more difficult to measure. And calling in artillery requires a C2 link. There can be direct links between forward observers and their batteries, or they have to go through intermediate command if support is called by general HQ's. (I don't know how this works out with on-board artillery and a caller from a different platoon than the support unit). I don't know how good the communication channels are in this WWII setting, but voice and sight will be equal to CMSF and CMA, radio will probably be a bit unreliable. I also wonder how fixed telephone lines are represented for a defensive force.

For the final bugfix release. Allied squads generally have radio's at the squad level, but not at the team level. I am not sure about the overall situation, but I have always seen TV footage in Afghanistan where even individual soldiers have voice communication equipment. At the moment in split sections only the A teams have C2 over radio (or some other electronic device). I have often sent a MG team to a favourable place to provide some long range support fire, and then discovered that they do very bad at spotting, because they are out of C2. Even placing them in the middle of an ordinary squad that has C2 doesn't improve their spotting. I can't imagine that in real life they wouldn't have some gadget to communicate with their platoon. I read about Dutch soldiers who 10 years ago privately bought communication equipment on the consumer market, because the army itself was still gathering in political committees to consider buying an official system.

No. (but that answer is too short for this forum).

So, after looking at the same thing in CMSF, it appears that radio's are never in the inventory panel, but only in the communications panel, and only when they are in use. In US Stryker infantry or Dutch YPR infantry, every squad has a radio, but not every team. If you split a squad into teams, only the A team has radio contact, the B team is out of C2, even if close to its own A team. In MG teams also only the A team has a radio, B team is out of C2 when not in range of its platoon HQ.

A high level of anticipation usually comes with all kinds of worries. But you have to configure your firewall. And every buyer will immediately close down the sharing program as soon as they have their file, in order to play the game, so most seeds will dry up before they have finished delivering. Imagine all the support calls of customers who have technical problems, that is expensive. A friend of mine worked a few years on a system of video-delivery based on the principle of file-sharing (but with a lot of encryption and security). In the end they just drove the system by supplying massive amounts of direct server bandwidth. A world of technical inept consumers works different from a community of hobbyists who accept hiccups because it is free. On an absolute scale in today's internet world it is still not very much. When they just make a deal with some companies to provide the bandwidth, all will be much smoother.

And I hate it when in the section with the RPG a guy with a rifle will prematurely open up fire before the rocket is ready, when you break the covered arc by manually targeting a vehicle.

I wish it for the Battlefront people, but old farts usually fade away.

I had a few out of memory exceptions in Quick Battles in CMA, when the system gave me 6 companies of Russians plus assorted attachments, while the Mujahideen probably even had more men. Then, when I ordered 15 batteries of artillery fire onto the same mountain top halfway the game, it crashed when the volleys would be coming down. I have a modest rig with 2GByte memory, a 1GByte graphical card, Windows Server 2003 OS.