jBrereton

Yep, and supposedly the rockets fell out if you pointed it downwards, which meant that ambushes could be a bit tricky.

Well again, JasonC was completely right on this issue. You basically want to either go extremely quickly towards flags etc. at the start of the game with your best troops and keep them by basically being in a position to hold them from a couple of turns onwards (bringing along MMGs and AT Rifles and rocket launchers / light AT guns). OR If a firefight's getting a bit heavy, bring up some good soldiers as reserves by taking them right into the action with your transports and dumping them into safe cover. OR Pinning down enemy troops with tanks and your own infantry, and then "rushing" them with transport-mounted troops, right into their cover so that you beat them in close range combat and take their position very quickly. And also don't forget that since most transports have LMGs, they can be used for overwatching your flags and other important positions.

Rightio - did some testing with Cannister, and whilst at close range it clears out bunkers and pillboxes with no problem, this would never, ever happen in a proper environment, unless one somehow snuck a Russian 45mm gun with nothing but cannister left (somehow being the key word here) in front of a pillbox or bunker with no ammunition left and it hit right in the slit. The alternative is to wonder up to an MG pillbox with a T34/76 when it only has cannister ammo left, but the main problem with this method is that : a) the MGs in the T34 would do just as fine a job and The T34 fires off one shot a turn and you have to manually target the pillbox, hope the T34 is interested on that turn and also hope that the T34 doesn't miss somehow - it happens, since it doesn't simply correct its aim from last turn, it has to start from square one again, vexingly.

A thought occurs - How good is cannister vs. bunkers and pillboxes?

Don't really see why it's particularly 'silly', to be honest. Didn't spotters lay and then thinly bury wire to protect it from MG and mortar fire? That'd be a bit tricky to do off the side of a jeep, no?

Oh good, I thought it was 50cl bottles, it's nice to know that I was correct on the matter. Thank you very much for the site also - some very interesting stuff there.

I believe (although I might be wrong) that the USSR only ever used the 3kg demo charge in any kind of numbers - that's over three times as heavy as a molotov cocktail, and is a more awkward shape, too - round bottle that you can tuck into your coat vs. essentially a supersized stick grenade, with pointy-out bits at the top of no small size. Ehm... there's no reason at all about why it should leak whatsoever, and if the container broke, it would probably be due to being shot, which would be slightly more of an issue than being covered in fuel at that point of time.

No, you haven't. You've said "Molotovs are crap", but nowhere have you proved that demo charges were actually prefered by the average soldier. Please could I get some kind of proportion of Demo charge explosive consumption / Explosive consumption overall so that this can be above the levels of conjecture?</font>

Yes... because they weren't very popular, otherwise they would have been. Please could I get some kind of proportion of Demo charge explosive consumption / Explosive consumption overall so that this can be above the levels of conjecture? They were what was made because they were what was effective. If the Russians had actually preferred to use demo charges, they would probably have actually started to produce them and ship in the materials needed for their production, too. Using a molotov on a tank is fairly easy - light, smash and Bob's your uncle. Demo charges need quite a high degree of training to use properly, and if they're a Kasapano-style charge, they are also relatively bulky and heavy, which puts another burden on infantrymen.

*whoops! - replied instead of edited!*

They were still used far, far more frequently on the battlefield than demo charges - which suggests that they were more effective, seeing as the Russians replaced pretty much anything that they found inneffective when possible. They still have their uses, mainly for ruining peoples' engines, which pretty much destroys a tank's actual battlefield usefulness. Yes, the difference is that it only takes about 6 or 7 hits to maybe possibly take them out rather than 13 or 14 when unbuttoned. [ January 08, 2007, 01:54 PM: Message edited by: jBrereton ]

That's because they are vastly underpowered in CMBB. If you hit an engine block with one, a tank would start to burn profusely quite often. A nasty weapon indeed, especially if they were dropped from buildings into tank hatches (as occured in Paris when the Germans started destroying it after the resistance really kicked in when the Allies arrived).

If you can't preplan fire (it arrives when you set it to) or take TRPs (which mean that artillery only ever takes one minute to arrive) in your current scenario (if it's a meeting engagement, for example), don't take any kind of heavy artillery if you're the Russians. The heaviest feasible artillery for Russian use outside of preplanned or TRP-guided fire is probably 120mm mortar fire, which still has a five or so minute delay.

Talking of guns vs. armour, how do you feel about the safety of Iraq post-Saddam?

Aye, exactly. Usually it was the gunner, IIRC, who had an SMG or carbine for this purpose, and I know that at the very least, the Finns made their own carbine SMG, the Pansaari-Suomi (at least I think that was the name) for this purpose.

Hmm well I haven't played CMAK for ages (I'm a CMBB man myself), so you might be right on the issue of how many soldiers tanks can carry etc.

It goes from nil to nine. Nine is untransportable by the Allies, and only transportable by the German prime mover until such a weapon disembarks, at which point it's stationary. 6 and under is a team or half-squad (so you can split recon squads and put them in jeeps etc.) and 7 and over is a squad. 7 on its own is just the squad, 7 (Full Squad) is a squad plus a support team. The number of transport class for a weapon has to be equal or under the class of the transport it's using for it to be carried. For example, a truck (Transport 8) could take a 6pdr. gun, which is Transport 5 (iirc), or a 17 pdr. gun of Transport 7 (?). A weedy Kübelwagen (Transport 4), on the other hand, could just about manage a 75mm recoilless rifle of Transport 4, and not that much else.

Just keep in mind that many German generals kept tank losses to things like gun damage or track losses and not enough spare parts off the register, as well as playing down casualty rates to impress their higher-ups, who were, after all, a bit paranoid about losing the war, and the Führer was quite inclined to kill off 'failing' generals at this point. Probably the classic example of German crap-talking is at Kursk, with '14' Tiger losses, those were just the ones which were absolute write-offs, not the many other losses that needed re-gunning etc.

Sorry, and did what with it, exactly?</font>

As did the Germans and to a small extent, the Russians (although they were crap IIRC) Although not so much as the Russians, who not only were the first army to form a proper airborne regiment, but also created the system of deep battle, which was tremendously revolutionary for the time.

Due to the engine. You can track the ammo - in a similar way to the MG in a normal tank, but both guns are essentially coded as one, just acting differently from the hull down position. Or that's what I'd assume.

True, but those are rather rare.

Merry Christmas indeed!

*sighs* I was only being overserious! Anyway, have a super merry Christmas.

Because they'd be tedious as hell.