Der Alte Fritz
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Posts posted by Der Alte Fritz
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Looks like 4.5-6 Gb of data each for CMBB and CMAK. That is 7-10 CDs per game.
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No I did it the old fashioned way.
I will start burning disks but you are looking at quite a number. Will post how I get on.
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Well I now have a complete file dump of the site for CMBB and CMAK plus index. I am happy to burn onto disk and send to one person.
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It has nothing to do with range really as both sides have decent supply systems. It has to do with the ease with which units can travel around the place. Look at the well documented problems of the Russian 'mixed units' making a tactical move. The T-34s would arrive first, then the T-60s, less capable cross country and then the KV-1s which could not use the bridges, whose weight broke up the roads and slow overall speed. Any 35 ton plus tank moving in Russia requires Pioneer and bridging support which makes moving around more difficult.
Likewise. thin tracked vehicles such as the PzIII/IV are more road bound, especially in soft ground conditions.
Strategic mobility is similar, it is about moving a unit hundreds of miles which requires good tactical mobility, low maintenance requirement, high reliability and a robust vehicle. In a days march with a tank unit you would leave behind a trail of broken down, disabled and bogged vehicles along the route. How many depended on a variety of factors but some of which are related to the characteristics of the vehicle.
Take for instance 6th Panzer at Kursk. After a long rest and refit in preparation for the big day, the move forward to their jump off point. The Division starts with 105 tanks but by the start of the next day, having moved behind their own lines and not encountered the enemy they are down to 82 tanks. Those 'lost' tanks will re-appear from the workshops later but are not in the battle.
In 1940 British units expected to lose 25% of their tanks even on a short march, just from breakdowns. Likewise in 1941 Russian units lost more tanks from breakdowns than they did from enemy action. Even short tactical moves could be crippling as they lacked rear services.
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To be fair the original question was answered many pages ago and the general consensus was that it was the Panther.
But from this emerged a couple of things about the Panther that I thought investigating further.
Then a new question was posed which what was the most suitable tank for Germany's late war period.
To my mind the PzIVJ has many good qualities but it lacks the cross country ability and strategic mobility of tanks such as the T-34. The Panther is pretty good but being so heavy and complex again it lacks tactical and strategic mobility, so my money now is on the original Panther prototype.
Not sure how we ended up on a discusssion of the Soviet economy but I am learning lots and having fun it breaks the boredom of downloading from cmmods, so what the hell.
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The solution is relatively straightforward as Battlefront are offering to host them in the "Repository", the issues are:
1) How are the mods organised.
2) Who is going to upload the 60 Gb worth of mods on cmmods.com
My suggestion is that they are uploaded in groups, by country and type, with one or two top designers like MikeyD with their own set.
So That would give you:
German Tanks
German ACs, SPG and SPWs
MikeyD's mod set
Terrain and User Interface
each set would come with a text file listing the name of the mods (just as on the cmmods site) and then people would be able to add individual ones which were missing.
What do you think? Any volunteers?
Other issue is the copyright one as there is always someone who complains if the authors are not contacted, written authority given, blah, blah, blah. These files are almost all free to use and most contain a text file that has the authors details in them. So they should avoid this.
cheers
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Hey Earl Grey,
Germany is not that far away!
Well, there was a chap on the forums recently who claimed to have downloaded all the cmmods material and it took him weeks. And you are talking Gigabytes here! I have about 12 Gb of mods and that is only about 25% of what is on cmmods. Even my modest collection would amount to 16 CDs.
Probably the easiest way to get them back available again is to bundle them into series like "Terrain mods", "German tank mods", "MikeyD's mods" and then let individuals add the missing items.
Problems of copyright abound. Someone over at the Repository just got shouted at for posting a 'collection' of scenarios and has just withdrawn them. But all the material over at cmmods is 'free to use so long as you quote authors name'? I remember a lot of it was copied anyway from before the BIG CRASH.
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the reality is that cmmods.com hosts
2,709 CMBB mods
2,056 CMAK ones
so there is not way that the BFC site is going to have those uploaded by anyone.
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it was extremely hard for intelligence to penetrate Stalinist USSR. the glorious strategic insight praised by JasonC estimated USSR would fall in just a few weeks. they based it on intelligence data they had collected and all sorts of production, logistical & such calculations. they all failed to see the full industrial & military power of USSR. they simply did not know what USSR was.
Actually this assesment is based on Soviet figures used by Russian historians and working with Western economic historians around 2001.
Who said that? I have no great knowledge of the subject but I would have thought that size of country has more to do with possible collapse. Secondly, that a highly integrated society with JIT etc, and imported food is far far easier to render impotent then a low tech country. Thirdly, form of government and recent history.
Accounting for war Soviet production, employment and the defence burden 1940-45 - Mark Harrison Cambridge 2002.
The reason agrarian societies collapse is because their economy collapses as it is unable to move goods and services around due to poor transport infrastructure. Peasants stop taking their goods to market, the towns start to starve and the population flees to the countryside, leading to a stopping of industry. Advanced agriculture societies are more able to keep the supply of food going into the urban areas and move items around to reduce the effects of shortage.
The USSR of 1941 had a large urban population, essentially peasant agriculture, poor transport infrastructure and a large country to move around goods and services. The Germans were correct in thinking that it was ripe for collapse. The fact that they were wrong was due to other factors.
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JasonC:
two quick points, firstly in my recent reading about the Russian wartime economy, it was stated that the USSR was essentially an agrian economy by the start of the war, with low levels of , industry, communications and peasant agriculture despite Stalins 1930s industrialisation and collectivisation programmes. Agrian societies and economies are very prone to collapse given sudden shocks to the system, far more so than 'industrialised' economies. So there was every indication that the USSR would collapse in 1941. What no-one is clear about is why it survived.
Secondly, I had assumed that the key tank decision point was in late '41 with the 'next' generation of tanks for delivery in '43 but you indicate it was earlier in '41 with delivery of the 'now' generation of tanks. That would certainly fit in with the manpower situation of Germany's Ostheer, 3 million men for Barbarossa, enough replacements to last them to September and the 1942 army is actually smaller as the replacements are still feeding through the system.
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Tux
Your photos have been delete?
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"So why did the Germans not win at Kursk and lose in the post Kursk offensives, the battles in the Dnepr Bend and in the Spring of 1944? The Russian Combined Arms Armies could not have carried these offensives so far and so fast without the tank's support.
What tank attributes were critical for winning these battles?"
Interesting posts and good background about tank design production cycles. But what I was looking for was to use "production" as one metric in comparing the "Efficiency" of German tank designs. Comparing within one country means that prices are relevant, production numbers too. You have to make some comparisons with the enemy numbers but this really just a reality check. Was the Panther the right tank for German to build in its war in the East? Could an improved PzIV done better? Would other designs that never made it to the drawing board have done better? Did the Germans focus on the wrong attributes for their new tank?
Attributes:
Size and weight
Good Gun
Decent Armour
Superior optics and equipment
Good tactical mobility
Good strategic mobility
Fuel efficiency
Ease of manufacture
Low inputs of strategic materials scarce for the German economy
Size is limited by the railway gauge (cf the experience of moving Tigers on railways) weight by bridges so I would argue that around 35 tonnes is the best weight. 75mm but do you need as high a velocity as the Panther gun or will the PzIV version do? Armour distribution in the Panther is pretty good as most tanks are hit from the front but surely less than 80mm sloped armour would have been sufficient? PzIV loss rates were not excessive even in 1944. Is all that extra size and weight really worth the extra 5% loss rate? Panther has good tactical mobility in Russia which the PzIV does not, neither has decent strategic mobility so perhaps a simpler more robust machine is needed? Fuel efficiency is critical in the German war effort even if there are no shortages until late 44. Whether you follow Overy or Tooze does not matter, Germany's level of mechanisation was hindered by lack of fuel availability, reliance on synthetic fuel production ad insecurity of supply. Ease and simplicity of manufacture for series production was not a German forte which was strange given the investment in large new tank factories in Austria for mass production but that was surely what was needed. If you are a follower of Tooze then the need to reduce strategic materials would seem obvious.
I think the Panther a great tank but am not convinced it was the right or most efficient tank. I think a simpler, smaller, less capable version would have suited Germany's needs better, allowed more tanks to be produced and allowed German commanders more flexibility.
Remember that the original Panther designs VK3002 (DB) VK3002 (MAN) and T-25 all had these attributes of 35 tonnes weight, 60mm sloped armour and the 75mm L48 or L70 gun.
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Link is here in the CMAK game section:
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It is easy really.
Just back up your bmp folder and then copy and paste the new mod into the game bmp folder. If you want to be able to move mods in and out of the folder more easily then go to www.cmmods.com and download a mod manager such as McMMM. Chances of something going wrong are pretty low and zero if you back up things as you go along
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These sites are still good for scenarios:
http://www.the-scenario-depot.com/index.html
Blowtorch scenarios http://www.blowtorchscenarios.com
The Proving Grounds http://www.the-proving-grounds.com
The Scenario Depot II http://www.the-scenario-depot.com HSG
Boots and Tracks http://www.bootsandtracks.com
CMMods www.cmmods.com
Gross Deutchland site http://members.shaw.ca/grossdeutschland/
Japanese War Correspondent http://japanzer.hp.infoseek.co.jp/index_e.html
Spanish Civil War http://cmscw.50webs.com SCW
Byte Battles http://www.kretsen.nu/bytebattler/ Byte Battles
The Mod Files http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arena/8461/mod.html
Band of Brothers http://www.webandofbrothers.de/
Combat Scenario Design Team http://robmin.50megs.com/cm/index.html CSDT
Operation Storfang www.eichenbaum.org
Appui-feu (French site) http://appui-feu.com/
Your most important source of scenarios is the monumental work carried out by philippe_in_exile at the CMMods.com.
1400 CMBB and 1000 CMAK scenarios in zip files for download.
You can also look for my index to scenarios also at www.cmmods.com. Look under Der Altre Fritz under designer.
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I do not think that this view is necessarily correct.
The whole basis of both Ecology and Economics is based upon the idea that billions of individual transactions make up an Ecosystem or an Economy and that the overall trends can be seen and studied using statistics. The outcome of any individual transaction cannot be predicted but with enough of them the likelihood of an outcome can be predicted.
For instance a lioness is stalking an antelope of a piece of veldt. We cannot predict the outcome of the encounter because there are too many variables. But all over Africa this encounter takes place every day, millions of times year and we know that the average kill rate for a lioness is around 30%. That in turn means that a given population of antelopes can support a given number of lions. We cannot see the outcome of the individual encounters but we can see the effect in the broad sense. Introduce another group of lions with a higher kill rate and they will over time displace the original group because they are more efficient and that is evolution.
In the same way military history can be studied. Of course it is easier to do this for air or sea warfare as there are fewer variables to consider but it can be done in broader terms for land warfare. I seem to remember the US Army studying this area since at least the 1960s to produce computer models to predict the outcomes of engagements and to determine the optimum forces to be used. This is the basis for Operational Research started in the Second World War by among others the Royal Navy with real strategic benefits in the fight against the U-Boat.
Introduce the Panther onto the Eastern Front and it has an effect. To be sure there are other variables such as training, supply, command, weather, terrain, situation, etc. We cannot determine the outcome of an individual engagement but we can study the overall effect of lots of engagements.
To take a simple example. The average monthly loss rate in 1944 for the Panther was 12.7%, that for the PzIV 15% and that of medium US tanks around 25%. (US tanks were attacking and the Germans had other advantages.) But so long as the US Army had more than double the number of German tanks they would win in the end. But it took 25,000 man hours to produce a Sherman compared to 55,000 man hours for a Panther. So the Sherman was the more efficient tank using these criteria because you can produce 2.2 Shermans for every Panther. Likewise you can produce 1.75 PzIVs for each Panther but their loss rates are pretty close. If their kill rates are not too dissimilar then there is a real case to be made for the PzIV as the optimum tank for Germany. Germany may still lose the war because the US is a bigger economy and really can produce enough Shermans to kill all the PzIVs. But that would still make the PzIV the optimal tank for Germany to produce.
Tank attributes are not the be all and end all, there are too many other variables and the German tank fleet was not uniform being a mix of Panthers, PzIV, PzIII, Tigers and SP guns. But attributes do contribute and some of them may be decisive.
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Great Stuff! Cannot wait for the first episode.
Where did you get the great 'splash screen'?
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Sorry, doesn't follow at all. The best means to fight a tank can be another better tank, without it remotely being the case that having the best tank wins. Because fighting a tank is one task, and winning a war is another one entirely.
I think this comment gets to the heart of the question. Is the 'best' tank the one in individual combat or the one you need to win the war? Most of the time these discussions founder on this very question because one group of adherents will go for the best combat tank: King Tiger or Panther while the other group go for the best tank to win the war: T-34 and Sherman. The you get mired in endless gun size and production numbers comparisons. So to cut through the Gordian knot, I posed the question - what was the best tank for Germany to win the late war? Using that to draw out the attributes that are needed by the 'best tank to win the war".
In 1940, 1941, 1943 and 1944 the side with superior armour (French Russians Ostfront Germans and West Front Germans) lost the battle. In the first two cases the winning side won by means of tactical advantages and in the final case by economic ones such as completely dominant airpower. But in 1943/4, the Ostfront could have gone either way, the Germans had superior armour since late 1942 and by Spring 1944 had enough numbers of it in the numbers of Panthers to make a difference. This was also the nadir of the Russian tank design. The T-34 design had been 'frozen' at the T34-76 to increase production, the T-34-57 discontinued, the SU-85 just starting to arrive, the T34-85 on the draughtsman boards. Both armies, German and Russian were essentially First World War armies -98% horse drawn infantry supported by dragged artillery -so neither could win a battle and exploit it without the tank. At this stage both sides were pretty evenly matched, about 3 million men in the Ostheer, still good quality, tactics and training advantages, still retain strategic mobility and still retains some airpower and on the defensive. The Russians around 6 million men poor quality, poorer tactics and on the offensive. I would say that was a pretty even line up.
So why did the Germans not win at Kursk and lose in the post Kursk offensives, the battles in the Dnepr Bend and in the Spring of 1944? The Russian Combined Arms Armies could not have carried these offensives so far and so fast without the tank's support.
What tank attributes were critical for winning these battles?
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"From what we have learned from history, the best means to fight a tank is another and better tank, fullstop."
Agreed but to take that logic to its ultimate conclusion, then the King Tiger should have been a war winner and it patently wasn't. So you need a better tank, but you also need it to move fast enough strategically and tactically and you need it in sufficient numbers. So really you need a superior medium tank.
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The fix is in the download section of this site. It works reasonably well but does put a box around the text that may obscure the view sometimes.
Phil stanbridge - does your ATI card work with Vista and DX10 - if so what are the details.
cheers
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Yes
Go to www.cmmods.com and look for Fall Weiss, Sealion, CM West, Spanish Civil War, Pacific. They are all there.
cheers
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If your interest is in Soviet economics, have a lo0ok for this one:
Harrison, Mark (2002). Accounting for War: Soviet Production, Employment, and the Defence Burden, 1940–1945, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-89424-7.
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As to the Russian economic figures, they are hard to read but it has been a popular area of academic study by Western authors who have taken account of these factors. A more reliable comparitor is the US and this demonstrates the Germans 'high costs'. But on the Russian, they may be getting better results than the Americans simply because they have huge factories (Tankograd had 60,000 workers) and very long production runs in addition to the fact that the T-34 was a very basic tank. Often quality suffered, for instance vision blocks for drivers were so yellow that they were unusable and the drivers prefered to keep the hatch open. But as time went on even these things were ironed out. Also bear in mind that Russian labour costs are minimal and the dedication of workers was very high.
I can highly recommend Tooze's book though you should be able to get a cheap version on www.abebooks.co.uk second hand. Not sure about all his trashing of Speer - the man must have had some effect. But very interesting and worth reading at least twice.
I think the main thing to draw from him on strategy is the Nazi preoccupation with fighting an eventual war with America. This meant that they never devoted their full energies to fighting the Russians and so lost. I feel that a 100% effort by German in 1941-1943 would have won them the war in the East and I do not believe that either Britain or the US had the stomach for the kind of casualties needed to wear down the German Army.
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No the figures are simply the amount of 'effort' required to build the thing. For Germany raw materials of all types , even steel are the limiting factor in the economy but a 43 tonne tank does take up a lot of these, so I am sure that you could get 30 guns and a truck out of the same amount.
The other point is that FUEL is the real limiting factor in the German war effort. She has COAL but ever decreasing stocks of PETROL, so can run trains but not tanks. This is important when considering the PzIV and Panther as the former uses 2.4 litres per km and the latter 3.6 litres per km. So it costs you 50% more to get the 75mm gun of the Panther into battle. (Of course the T34 uses 1.6 litres per km!)
CMMODS shutting down...
in Combat Mission: Barbarossa to Berlin
Posted
I have burnt the discs.
Redwolf is doing the USA, would Earl Grey like a set to do Europe and can I have a volunteer for the UK to start the ball rolling.
Please send me your addresses to info@thestrandhouse.co.uk
cheers