Der Alte Fritz
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Posts posted by Der Alte Fritz
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One of the design issues with chosing this as the first outing on the Ostfront/Great Patriotic War is the fact that most of the Geman side was infantry units and the odd Panzer Grenadier as the Panzer Divisions were held back at AG Nord Ukraine.
However all is not lost as you have interesting units such as 78 Sturm Division and Army level Panzerjager units equiped with Nashorns.
On the Soviet side there is their quite limited range of armour T34/76 T34/85 KV1 and T70 but also in this area were units such as 5th Mech Corps armed with Shermans and other armed with Valentines. Of special interest were T34 armed with mine rollers who saw their first use here.
Another challenge is the heavy scale of Soviet artillery
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No my objective is to upgrade to a new PC (which has to happen anyway) and one good enough to play CMX2 Eastern Front (when it arrives) but not lose CMBB in the process since it is the breadth of coverage that I like and CMx2 is never going to move out of 1943-4.
Also I want to run those huge maps that George Mc produces for both games and so need some serious number crunching power .
Since I run multiple copies of the game for different 'mods' I have tended not to put them into the Program File since it is easier to find them in their own directory.
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Hi
Am planning an upgrade of the PC and need to know if 64 bit systems work with CMBB.
Does anyone know?
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@Alte Fritz - good tohear from you again. Cheers for the info. I steered clear of being too specific although the map is the same one used for Strachwitz at Kharkov in CMBB - although a wee bit reduced. I suspect the modules could come thick and fast once the BFC guys start going - lot's of shared units for 44/45 stuff. Guess the earlier periods may take longer (assuming BFC do 1943 and earlier etc - hope they do).
Here's hoping. Being quite a newbie at this CMx2 lark (bought CMSF to support BF but could never get into it) lets hope we get plenty of scenarios written. How does your CMSF Scenario Designer Manual relate to CMBN and will we get an update?
My main research recently has been into late war German defence techniques and tactics - how do the trenches in CMBN work out, are they quite accurate or just foxholes?
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Hi George
Good to see you back in Russia. Will dl your scenario and give it a run through.
I think there are possibilities here, the Sherman M4A2 with 75mm (and 76mm guns in Nov 44) were sent to the USSR with the 1st, 3rd, and 9th Guards Mechanised Corps and of course their Recce Units would have used White Scout Cars and Half Tracks.
In June 1944:
1st GMC - Stavka Reserve - very dull
3rd GMC - taking part in Operation Bagration engaged in tank battles around Minsk against 5.PD and 505 Schwere Panzer Abteilung
9th GMC - part of 3rd Tank Army and taking part in the Lvov Sandomir operation and of course you have lots of scenario material from the D. Loza book.
I well remember in the "Count" series a square full of Shermans being bombarded by Prinz Eugen. Happy days!
I think it will be while before we get an OstFront CMx2 game as they have to do the SS, British and then the late 44 game before they are slated for a Bagration game. So something in the meantime would be nice!
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Russia just gets under your skin....the scale is so vast...the terrain so varied....endless actions to be re-created......probably the greatest war in history. Just cannot leave it |I am afraid will have to wait for CM2 Bagration
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I have but am not near the right computer at present. You should be able to find your list at Green As Jades MOd site, I am fairly sure we move a list over to it after the CMMODS shut down.
cheers
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Great action and I was able to follow most of the battle which was great.
Where did you get those cool explosions from - looked like miniature mushroom clouds?
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The other factor to remember is SPACE (the final frontier.....)
Look at a map and you think - what a vast area. Get down on the ground and you quickly realise that on most terrain, there are only a few possible routes across that map, difficult terrain such as woods, forests, fences, rivers, streams, etc break up the terrain into fairly small chunks. There are exceptions to this such as the steppes but even here the very deep balkas that cut up the steppes mean that if you want to cross in a vehicle you are limited to one or more crossing points.
The result of this is that in any given area there are one or two routes across it or one or two choke points. So even a small group of tanks is likely to meet another small group of tanks because that is the only place for them to go.
This is the reason why if you study an area such as northern Italy which has had centuries of wars fought over it, the same places have battles time and time again. The terrain determines the campaign and battlefield options and limits them to a few choices.
In the olden days of wargaming before computers, games were produced that did not use 'maps' as such but took this concept and produced a map rather like the London Tube map. It simply showed points of significance, say towns, defensive positions, choke points etc and connected these by lines which corresponded with the number of routes available and showed the time each route took. It stripped the 'map' back to its barest essentials.
For example. If you looking to cross the Alps, you can look at a pretty map with masses of detail but the reality is that you have three options corresponding to the three passes.
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If you look under my name at the Scenario Depot for the Sorted Scenario Packs you will get all the old CMBB scenarios in just a few down loads. About 2000 in total.
cheers
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JasonC
I seem to remember that you were working on a project on the Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev. Is this correct?
If so did you come across any good German accounts of the fighting?
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Lots and lots and lots of British Artillery.
Realistic trench systems
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Good operations are rare because of the inherent problems in the set up in between battles. The only good ones I kow are George Mc's ones but they are mainly set in winter
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Coe
If you go to the Scenario Depot and look under my name you will find
1) A Scenario listing of all the major CMBB and CMAK scenarios
2) Sorted Scenario packs for both CMBB and CMBB which give you all the older scenarios (about 3,500 of them in total)
3) Newer scenarios are of course on the Scenario Depot website itself individually.
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Infantry seems to be quite different in CMAK as it is much harder to drive into cover but seems to die faster. Getting infantry forward in CMBB is a major art form but seems quite easy in CMAK.
I find I play more CMBB than CMAK but that has more to do with the history than the game. The Germans seem to master the Western Allies easier unless they are completely out numbered or out gunned. And the Western Allies are very similar in organisation and outlook to the Germans. On the other hand in the East the Germans often seem up against it and the Russians play a very different style of war. I think that is why I keep coming back to CMBB for all its faults. I even toyed with the idea of an Eastern Front mod for CMAK, you could use a particular mark of Sherman for the T34-76 but how would you replicate the SU76, SU122 or ISU152?
I think this would be the easiest mod to make as you could just swap renumbered bmp files from one game to the other.
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Yes the Panther was prone to breakdowns throughout most of its life. This was mainly due to the overloaded engine/transmission. The original design was about 10 tonnes lighter but did not have the very thick front armour.
German commanders reckoned you need to use trains to move Panther unit more than 100km.
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It is to do with the settings that you used when you converted from MP3 to WAV.
The settings you need to use are:
Audio Format = PCM
Average data rate = 176.400 Kb/second
Sample Rate = 44.100 kHz
Audio sample size = 16 bit
Channels = 2 (stereo)
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By and large the sound maps are the same, the main changes are in language numbers as there are more in CMAK.
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This is quite common, where bit of skins from one vehicle are used on other vehicles. So you will have to live with one or the other I am afraid and use a good Mod Manager to switch in and out of your Romanian mod.
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The section I am thinking about is in Army Group Centre and was in much the condition you describe when the German forces arrived there in Oct/Nov 43 after falling back from Smolensk. (Raus describes it as being that way.) The Panther-Wotan line at this point held against numerous highly unimaginative attacks by the Western Front until April with little ground being given (Glantz's Forgotten Battles describes some of these attacks.) By that point the Germans had reinforced the position and added up to 6 lines behind it. So come 22nd June the Russians are facing quite a tough nut which they have failed to crack several times before. Certainly the attack on the Orscha road stalled and was only rescued by success on the flank. The 5th Army attack on Vibtesk did much better but then again they were trying to defend a salient which is never easy.
But I have yet to find any German maps of AG Centre for this period.
cheers
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Yes that is true but the other option was to use SCATTERED TREES as the lateral trench (attributes : restricts sight by enemy, allows some movement, can be crossed by tracked vehicles, affected by artillery) but whereas infantry behind a wall (regardless of whether they are in a foxhole or not) get 30% exposure, foxholes in scattered trees get 24% exposure and tree bursts make artillery fire on anyone not in a foxhole deadly.
Also there was the consideration that Scattered Trees are a common type of terrain whereas stone walls are rarely used, so one could 'mod' a stone wall to look more trench like without it affecting the game too much.
So really it is making the best of a bad job. I want to use these to 'build' a heavy German tench system like the Panther-Wotan line to show how they were laid out and to give some approximation of how they worked in my German Defense series. Trenches are a very laborious way of doing this and terrain features would be far easier, give a better result and not use so much computing power.
BY the way, do you have any information about how these sorts of line, Panther, Gothic, Marenth, etc were laid out. I have several books about how the actual trenchs were built (enought to build one in the back garden if I had a mind) but there are very few about how they were all connected. There is an article on the Lone Sentry website and I have a couple of maps from the Russian side. But no German maps. Any ideas.
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I have been doing some experimenting with various kinds of terrain to see which would be the best fit for the kind of trench I am looking for. I take your point about foxholes but the distinction I am trying to draw here is between a foxhole, or fighting position and a deep slit in the ground which is only vulnerable to direct hits.
A German position should consist of fighting positions - which pretty much equate to the ROCKY terrain idea above - as they were quite open. Connecting these positions were deep 6 feet plus and narrow 2.5 feet wide (to allow tanks to pass over) lateral trenches. These provided better protection from artillery, especially splinters and lighter 76mm and 105mm shells, they ideal to attack tanks from providing total cover but they are vulnerable to heavy calibre artillery as the trenches are not supported in any way.
I found the problem with ROCKY was that you were spotted at about 50m even when at two levels down and were quite vulnerable to light artillery fire. Likewise BRUSH and ROUGH. SCATTERED TREES did well if the infantry were in foxholes and allowed AT attacks and were not spotted until the last moment. But Tree Bursts were a problem and made the infantry very vulnerable to light artillery fire. I found RUBBLE to be excellent (esp the flat version) but it blocks vehicles and was too obvious. The best fit I came across was a WALL. It offered complete concealment, allow tank attacks, tanks were able to cross with ease, offered some protection against light artillery but was vulnerable to heavy.
So my best estimate of a German position would be sunk down 1 level with ROCKY fighting positions joined together by walls and then using trenches as heavy weapon emplacements or as dugouts.
Not ideal by any means but a good approximation.
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I discovered this vehicle effect of rough late last night.
All of this begs the question about the level of protection afforded by a trench system and the different types of trenches.
A German fighting position would have lateral trenches about 2 and half feet wide, deep at around 6 feet so they offered full protection from being over run by a tank but no real fighting value. Artillery had to land pretty close to collapse one.
Fighting positions were specialised trenches about 4 feet deep and 4 feet wide or larger still for MGs, mortars etc. They branched out from the lateral trench about 50 feet.
Dugouts - I read that it took a timber roof and 1 meter of soil to provide protection against a 105mm shell and 3 metres against a 155mm shell. (US Marines at Khe Sanh). So a major construction but still able to be built by troops using their own resources.
Communications trenches were often a bit wider than lateral trenches to allow passage of supplies and depth depended on time, probably 5 feet to allow use as a fighting position to contain breakthroughs?
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In the WW1 thread it was mentioned that rocky in a depression could be used as a communication trench.
I am interested in alternatives to trenches as trenches, foxholes, craters are all images, hard to place (ie not from editor but within the game) and use up a lot of processing power if used in large numbers.
I looked up on Old Spikes article and came up with the following exposure/spotted range data:
rocky = 50%/100m
foxhole/crater = 44%/20m
rough = 28%/20m
foxhole in pines = 14%/20m
foxhole in scattered trees = 23%/20m
trench = 9%/20m
which would seem to indicate that for both visual effect and a decent communication trench a dip 1 step lower with rough would be best. Any other ideas?
The Road Ahead - Operation Bagration
in Combat Mission Fortress Italy
Posted
To date Battlefront have kept the scale of their horizons really very small, 3 months at most (I reckon they will stick to June/July) and quite a limited vehicle range, look at Normandy and the new Sicily. Of course this time around they already have much of the German forces and so only have to add the new Soviet ones. So we should get all of the tanks plus a good smattering of SUs. Unit wise it would be Rifle Divisions, Airbourne Divisions, Tank Corps, Mech Corps with US style lorries, Guards Rifle and Guards Tank but I do not think that we will get Cavalry/Mech units as they cannot do horses. Likewise Flamethrowers can't be done. So I bet they will stick to the north and so avoid the horses which were more towards the Pripet Marshes.
The shame is that the only terrain you will get is Belarus with its heavy woods and wooden houses not at all like the south.
I doubt if you will get the Final Battle for Germany and there is no way that you will get 1941! Battlefronts game plan is to re-use as much material in new games as they can, as with the higher grade graphics, it is quite expensive to add even one new vehicle. 1941 would be a completely new game, vehicles, TOE, etc literally from scratch. The Normandy game seems to be developing Normandy to Battle of the Bulge so you might get Vistula–Oder Offensive.
My best bet for the three 'games' would be Bagration, Kursk (again initial work done for Italy would seem to indicate this - also sales wise this is a no brainer) and Stalingrad.
The latter one may be too early as the German forces would all have to be made again (PzIIIJs for instance) and different TOE for the Russians (and another T34 turret). So they may go for the Lvov-Sandomierz operation - southern terrain or an operation in between Kursk and Bagration (so using the German Italian graphics from 1943/4) so guess Korsun Pocket. They say the new games will come out quite rapidly, so this is my idea of what would be easy to produce. Once they have the basic Soviet line up post Kursk, the main variants would be the terrain and extra German units or they may add in some Allies for flavour - Lvov would allow some Hungarian units with a few new graphics for Turans, etc.