Der Alte Fritz
-
Posts
1,024 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by Der Alte Fritz
-
-
Have you set the map sides correctly?
Also - be careful at Dubno!
-
Have you set the map sides correctly?
-
I was interested in this account so I did a byte battle as another test.
Reduced company of German infantry holding a wood plus 3 StuG Gs (80mm variety so impermiable from the front) 800 points versus T34 battalion of 10 tanks, plus two platoons of tank riders (SMG variety) plus 6 DPs and a couple of sharpshooters and then four 45mm AT guns in a wood covering the advance. Advantage x1.5 or 1200 points. Open ground in between the woods so deadly to your average T34 force.
What fun! The long line of T34s covered the ground 900m really quickly and got within 200m before the StuGs stopped the front company with one front T34 driving right up to the StuG position before dying. But the flanker companies were now right behind the StuG position, nailed one from the side and the other one got shot up from the rear.
The final one had a dilema, turn and face the T34s or get shot at by the 45mm guns who now had him in their sights. Turn he did and the AT guns nailed him. I had not reckoned on that and it adds another little problem for the German player once the T34s break through his line or even start to flank him.
Final body count 5 T34 and one damaged ( the infantry attacked him with shaped charges!) which is not at all bad. Attack was easy to manage as well. Click on tank, use LOS to find 100m, press 'Q' place your first waypoint at the LOS spot and then more than double it up.
The counter to this is against most gamers instincts - ie spread your StuGs out rather than having them in a tight little bunch.
-
It depends on who you set as the attacker, experience level of the troops, fantaticism and some intrinsic qualitiesof the troops themselves.
I would put the Germans at assault, veterans (lorries included) 25% fanatics and see what happens.
cheers
-
Great stuff, I am glad that someone has managed to use it successfully in a real life situation, all mine have been on the test ground. I might have a look at this scenario and see if I can duplicate your experience.
-
I was one of the original play testers on this.
The point of the scenario is that only the Tiger has the armour to survive the volume of fire (even at long distance) that the Russian side can put down. You have a nice dip on the far side of the river and should be able to quickly move your vulnerable Panthers and PzIII/IV into it. It is then down to your Tigers to advance, spot the guns and knock them out. As you begin to win the fire fight and id the gun positions, you can move your vulnerable tanks into hull down positions to engage the guns with the Panther pointing the right way to bring their frontal armour into play. But the Tigers have to keep moving so that you stand a chance of getting to the village on time so it is a fine balance. And watch out, even though it is the Ai, there are some guns that can even take down your Tigers.
Put your TRPs on likely Russian positions - try to think like a defender and where you would place guns and try to cover dead ground where guns might lurk with limited LOS.
Good luck.
-
With the next CM2 title planned to be Normandy there is going to be a need for an extented range of fortifications other than the basic listing in CM1 or the ditch approach in CMSF where adding sandbags is a long an laborious job.
Fighting positions, deep tank trenches, communications trenches, proper weapons pits (mortar HMG and AT gun (with hide away), should allow the creation of a proper German trench system and then add in your wooden pillboxes, MG and gun type and your specialised concrete structures and dug in tank turrets. A tank pit would be a real bonus and would re-appear in the Operation Bagration game as well so would not be wasted.
Any others to add to the wants list?
-
I am afraid what you are saying does not ring true. Eastern Front veterans (German infantry) always though less of units recently posted from the West because they had not acclimatised to the unique conditions in Russia and so had heavier losses and were less effective. Same TOE but different tactics and methodology - non standard tactics worked but by the book did not.
-
What puzzle scenarios do you have on your listing?
I always like "The Iron Roadblock" which was a real head scratcher for a while
-
It is a Marder III with the gun facing the wrong way.
You often get sounds contacts with 'strange looking' vehicles, anyone else got any examples?
-
Developed after the battle of Kursk during the retreat to the Dneipr, this modification of the basic Marder III proved popular with troops as they fell back to the river line. Able to fire on the move, the light vehicle as able to run quickly to the rear, firing as it went and confused the Soviet commanders. Often reported as an Elephant, it was very hard to destroy because by the time your shell landed at the place you thought it was, it had moved. This invulnerability was reported back to Comrade Stain as immensely thick armour and he immediately ordered the creation of the ISU-152 to counter it. However the slow re-loading and long flight time of this immense shell only made the problem worse and so the T34-57 was re-introduced to counter it. This was more successful and the Spitz (as it was affectionately known) was dropped from the German order of battle. Moving so fast it was rarely captured on film and this is one of the only known examples of it in existence today. An example used by the SS was a complete failure as they only knew how to attack and when moving forwards the gun was rendered useless.
-
The real difference, which I monitored by observation and by noting the outcome is: Does the tank fire from the halt enough. Hit rates while firing on the move are 1-3%, at halt at 600m nearer 35% so this is crucial. Shoot and Scoot seems to encourage the tanks to stop and fire 3 times during a move so you fire as much as a tank using any other command. So you get the best of both worlds, aimed fire and a decreasing range. The downside is that if you creep out of a hole to fire, then you can creep back into it. Driving forward is pretty much a full commitment to I am going to die or you are. Because of this you need to support such a charge, as the Russians did, by covering it with AT guns and mortars.
The other thing that might work is to charge from dead ground to dead ground. Funnily enough this is due to come up in a scenario that I am writing!
-
If you go to www.the-scenario-depot.com and look under "Sorted Scenario Packs" you will find a series of packs containing every season of the Eastern Front from the Winter War to the Fall of Berlin for CMBB and every Theatre for CMAK, Desert, Greece, Italy, Normandy. That totals about 6,000 just in those packs - I should know I index them! Add in CMBO and the new ones and you get about 8,000.
Look at Green As Jades CMMODS site, 4,000 mods. Virtually everything you see on any of the games now has a Hi-Res improved version.
It may be an old game but there is an active community, a lot of material and it is a classic that has few equals.
-
-
I think one factor to bear in mind is that is you buy the bundled pack, that means you can play games from the Spanish Civil War to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Eastern, Western, Desert, Pacific, theatres in WW2, use virtually any tank and have about 8,000 scenarios to choose from.
CMSF covers about 2 months and has about 200 scenarios.
-
Test Three
6 T34 as before but against a lone Tiger.
The fast moving tanks were a real problem for the Tiger as it took 5 moves for it to finish them off. The nearest T34 had travelled 700m and was within 300m of the Tiger when he died. No tank 'cower' or other problems. The Soviets just kept charging forward and immobilised the Tiger. So a good result given the almost impenetratability of the Tiger.
So this seems to be quite a good tactics for groups of Soviet tanks, they keep together well, cover a lot of ground and yet fire at a decent rate which can make all the difference when you are trying to get to optimum range.
http://i289.photobucket.com/albums/ll207/DerAlteFritz1759/TankAttack.jpg
-
Test Two
Same again only using all 6 Tanks with Shoot and Scoot(SAS) but this time the Germans had ammunition.
Killed all 4 PzIIIJ in 5 moves closing by 675m and suffering no losses.
Repeated using Hunt command:
Closed by 200m, killed 3 PzIIIJ in 5 moves and suffered no losses.
Repeated again in Oct 42 (with higher Soviet command delay)
same result as above if you kept the Soviet tanks moving by the end of their move and hence avoiding the command delay.
-
Test One
I tested out T34-76 vs PzIIIJ (no ammo) starting at 1200m over steppe and advancing firing using Hunt, Fast and Hunt in combination, Shoot and Scoot and Shoot and Scoot over brush.
Great results, the Shoot and Scoot fired as much from the halt as the Hunt tanks plus fired some from the move and covered 840m (690m) to the enemy compared to only 209m using Hunt. The decrease in range meant that the SS tanks killed an additional enemy tank during the four moves.
-
Hi H505
Yes I would. The idea is to keep it simple so that I can apply this tactic to a whole company of tanks advancing in line. Really you need to keep the tanks moving by the end of their move so that you do not pay the command penalty and you then get 1 stationary fire position every move and 1-2 moving fires as well. The stationary one is the most important part of this exercise as your chances of a hit are so much greater. Plus you cover a lot more terrain than if you were "hunting forward". I will try to post a comparative picture.
Of course you must remember that according to the manual tanks should be supported by a gun line. I must find out whether your tankodesanty are better off riding or running alongside.
None the less I reckon it will require a player to have balls of steel to try this tactic out in a game or to have a historical scenario with a big points imbalance.
cheers
-
No my CMBB does not need the CMBB CD. The CMAK one does but it will also accept a copy so I use that and keep the original pristine.
cheers
-
My CDV copy never had any key - I got the three game set off e-Bay
-
You should watch the “panzer grenadier training film 1944” a four part film. Used to be on You Tube.
The main point to note is that SPW are not committed until the enemy has lost its supporting armour and guns. They were definitely used against light opposition only, against flanks or in pursuit. They seem to have used smoke quite freely from their own vehicles to provide cover - something you cannot do in CMBB, just like the Russian tanks do not have access to smoke pots. Have a look at George McCs Peiper series to see just what you can accomplish with SPW. Available from www.blowtorchscenarios.com. I fought a long four battle operation in this series using SPW beating off early war Russian infantry and dodging their tanks. Great stuff where you had to watch your ammo expenditure of your SPWs.
-
The problem ones are pretty much all the outstanding not uploaded mods on CMBB and CMAK. I did let GAJ know about this some time ago but then he had problems with his laptop etc. so I have not pursued it.
So I thought it was time to bring it to his attention again.
cheers
-
Topo grid means there is a square ( or in some cases hexagonal grid) on the terrain which allows you to see changes in the lie of the land easier and calculate distances, etc.
There are very few winter sets
Updating unit images
in Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin
Posted
Yes they have been done and you can find them in one of two places:
1) Mods of the entire User Interface such as Tarkus "Dark Steel"
2) Some mods of individual vehicles have them included.
I suggest that you go to Cmmods or the Repository and have a look at the User Interfaces first. From memory Dark Steel, Red GUI, Westfront, Dirty Olive, Eastern Front Interface, as they may all have what you want in them.