sburke

Just finished "Dying for St Lo". Honestly not sure how much I can credit some of what is quoted there, but the casualty rate for US units in the St Lo campaign was quite high and the units were not really pulled back for rest. For example the 29th ID fought from the beachhead to St Lo before finally being pulled out of the line on July 19th. German unit figures are likely much harder to come by and units were quite scrambled together in front of St Lo as the Germans patched together whatever they could to hold back the American drive. The end of the book has a fairly good OoB along with unit commander names where they had records. This would probably be very useful at developing a campaign that was more personalized.

very interested. I have a few odds and ends like DIV/Reg HQ unit emblems for the rest of the US Army Divisions in ETO if you are interested. I owe the credit for that to my wife who is a photoshop wiz. Some are a bit rough based on the source material I had available, but my attempts in crayon were less than satisfactory.

Actually N44 might work very well with that as it has 2 hour turn increments in daylight with additional night turns. You can also edit both the X,Y axis to only use a portion of the map as well as edit your OoB down to platoon level if desired. It is possible though I would tend to agree with others. I expect I will be spending time trying CMBN before I would be ready to commit to an endeavor like this. Something smaller in scale similar to the TCS series by the gamers might be more workable. By the way your Ramadi scenario and map is awesome. It has resparked my interest in CMSF. And yes the 1:1 scale really does make one react more as you see your pixeltruppen getting gunned down in the alleys versus just the stooges doing the jerk routine.

Not sure of the scale you are looking at, but you could create one large map, save multiple copies and then edit those down to a usable size for smaller battles. For example you create a 4x4 km map then save A, B, C and D. Then edit those down by deleting appropriately to have each represent a 2x2 or even edit it and create 16 1x1 maps. Alternatively you could have different scenarios of different size using the same 4x4 original. In hedgerow country that is quite a large map to start from. Not sure if this is goes toward what you were thinking or not, but hope it is helpful.

Stifle Michael

Sometimes you guys are just too diplomatic. It is appreciated by those genuinely interested in the game, but some posts you can look at and pretty much guess the OP never intended to be swayed. They just wanted to take a shot for whatever reason before they wander back to whatever forum they learned that level of behavior from. Really is a shame as I just downloaded LongLeftFlank's scenario (USMC Ramadi (Iraq): Relief of JOKER 3) and it has me playing CMSF all over again. I am still in the first few minutes and I have to say the scenario is pretty darn impressive. I expect that CMBN will provide much more of the same from the community.

Hell I would skip the metal case if I could get it now. That was pretty cold Other Means- hope you get stuck sharing a week long car ride with son of diablo so he can tell you how stupid your game is. >:-D

I was one of the 20....but not one of the 10 sadly. Though it was really perty to look at.

This is also available as a free module for Aide de camp program, though I still prefer the HPS games as the OoB goes to company scale and lower and can be editted. Do like the Heer symbols on this as well. Took a little getting used to but very informative.

After D Day by James Jay Carafano. Best book I have read in a while on Normandy with some interesting new insights and alternative perspectives. Dying For St Lo - Just started reading and haven't yet formed an opinion, but the pictures alone are pretty good.

I expect that while generally they should be similar, there will be some differences as now you have ammo carriers and the 1:1 design can allow for better detail on the Battalion organization than the older CMx1 structure. May have to just wait until closer to release to see.

Yes they do, but in those days, not so much on indoor plumbing. Digging latrines would have been a common activity for soldiers. For country dwellers it would be something they would be more familiar with. It is a little (very little) known fact that the German defeat before Moscow was due to their inability to find public restrooms. Barbarossa was planned on reaching Moscow before the soldiers had need of restrooms. The offensive collapsed when the soldiers had to wander off looking for acceptable public facilities. This is also the root cause of the failure of French strategy in 1940, the French assumed the Germans would not be able to transit the Ardennes fast enough and would be denied proper rest room access. A major failing of German planning through 1940-1944 was in not preparing hidden rest rooms in the Ardennes to support the Bulge offensive. On the other hand city dwellers were far more familiar with indoor plumbing and tended to get picked up by the engineering units as the demands after D Day for proper rest rooms exceeded allied planning. Plumbers would continue to show their critical role in history during Watergate and later during the 2008 US presidential campaign.

Can dead cows be a "flavor item"? If so can they provide cover? :-D In the case of living animals, would my country boy pixeltruppen be distracted by some particularly cute sheep? Dang I should have asked that in the discussion about who made better soldiers, city slickers or country folk.

This is the one I was referencing earlier. It doesn't specifically detail the behavior, but I suspect it may be something very general perhaps calling it in, but not being able to call specific targets. In CMx1 it simply appeared as a reinforcing element and you hoped they actually made a contribution to the fight or at least didn't shoot your own. It appears now you may be able to call it in as artillery, but whether you can cite targets hasn't been spelled out.

LOL chalk it up to pre release jitters, like dating someone for weeks on end and never getting past first base when everything you see tells you this will be the best sex of your life... in game terms.. really... no really. At least you get to go back to your PC and play another round. We all can only look at the centerfolds and drool. Hell we don't even have movie clips. :-P We're jealous- you get to play AND win, so not fair!!!

sounds like your average business manager or perhaps a Transocean executive getting a safety award the same year they turned the gulf into a replica of Charlie Sheen's bath water after his oil massage scrub down.

I'll stick with the Sharks. Baseball is too early in the season and too slow to keep my mind off how close we are to a release date. I really hope they surprise us with a few days earlier rather than a few days later. ...or how about now? Now? now maybe?

Back to the original question - I think my answer was covered by George MC in the thread on Bocage Tactics- There is a risk of friendly casualties. I wasn't asking regarding the use of heavy bombers in Goodwood and St Lo, only P51 and P47 aircraft support are included for CAS. I suppose you could use Naval Artillery to simulate a larger air strike if you wanted to try and build a St Lo campaign, but from what I have read the German front line units facing the Americans in Cobra were not particularly impacted by the airstrikes. They were dug in and outside the main bombing zone. It was the reinforcing units in reserve that took the brunt. Personally I am not real curious about trying to include that. What I would like is the opportunity to shoot down my own planes if the sissy pilots shoot at my ground forces. :-D AND I want the points for it. BTW is there a graphic for my troops to flip off the pilots in these incidents? Guess we will find out when we get our greedy little paws on the game. Will be curious if there are any options to purchase more skilled pilots with less risk of friendly fire, but as that would have been completely out of the scope of what a Company or Battalion level commander could expect, it is likely too unrealistic to bother considering. So now what can we debate to kill time till the release date?

reading the forum constantly going back and looking at the media files reading books on the subject --> just finished After D Day by Carafano --> now reading No Better place to die, yes I really hope we see a campaign developed for the La Fiere bridge --> Eyeing my copy of Dying for St Lo as my next read --> wondering how many books I have left to kill time...

Considering it is implying that Fortitude did not work and it was the German generals who somehow convinced Hitler not to release the troops guarding the Pas De Calais - I'll bite. Can we get any sources? I don't recall Hitler often taking his Generals suggestions over his own opinion.

I would actually take quite a bit of this with a grain of salt. Relations between the 29th ID and 2nd AD were so bad during the breakout that Maurice Rose was actually removed from command (temporarily). There is also some line amongst the 2nd AD to the effect, yeah we fought the 29th ID at Tilly sur Vire and found them to be pretty good fighters.

Haven't seen this applied yet in the AARs and perhaps it is still under development, but am wondering how air support functions in CMBN. In CMSF it is pretty precise, but I can recall games in CMAK where my air support would commit some friendly fire. Frustrating but at the same time pretty cool. Is that going to be a possibility in CMBN?

If we have female soldiers, do they get PMS? Does this make them tougher in combat- sort of a berserker mode?

Possibly by threatening occupation of the VL, drawing the Pz force forward into some kind of crossfire from the M10s. That implies some level of intelligence of what they may have been facing. Getting the infantry into position with some eyes on the field though still back away from the woods edge would at least seem to have allowed Capt to get first glimpse of the enemy while still potentially having his armor hidden. Kind of the interesting thing about the battle was the complete disparity in the force purchases. What we never really got a good look at is the terrain back on the Capt's side. Were there good hull down or reverse slope positions further back to hide movement of his armor? If not the map may have decided a good portion of how this battle was going to go already. It might only have been worse if he hadn't jumped out immediately. At least he was able to get 1st platoon in a somewhat closer fight and do some damage.

So is it just me or does anticipation of CMBN seem to be bringing us out of the woodwork? I would be curious if the site can generate stats on posters to show if there is an increase in activity by members who have been around awhile but not posting. Yeah I am in Telecom and am always getting asked what inane data I can report on so someone can post it in a powerpoint - God's gift to those unable to actually read a document and form an understanding.... see the pretty pictures? I guess BFC may have a better idea based on sales of pre orders.