Secondbrooks
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Posts posted by Secondbrooks
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Should work. biggest troubble is that the Spotter will loose LOS to next barrage place because the first barrages dust and smoke will block the LOS. Only time this can work is if its done before the game starts so its "pre plotted".
I don't see problem here with CMSF. If fires are swifted in one minute intervals then spotting is usually done for both firemissions. Infact "pre plotted" doesn't work for reason mentioned above, delay between firemissions is just too great and resistance will recover from suppression. Some super fast US light mortars could be different thing, but atleast with Syrians it works well "thanks" to long response times. I've done some pretty massive plans consisting tens of tubes, looks nice when company starts it's assault with support of that kind of firepower. And feels great when my plans fit into situation and i don't just slaugther my company.
Granted i'm not totally sure how much different Normandy will be.
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I just don't understand this. We can have like one Mortar platoon firing at spot X for 1 minute. Then another Mortar platoon starts to fire at terrain 100-200 meters behind spot X for another minute while own infantry starts it's assault at spot X. This is very basic method and doesn't demand loads of ammo, just two separate Mortar units. True, it ain't barrage.
More tubes, more ammo and we start to have really good set-up for swifting fires according to plan.
I admit i'm not sharpest tool in the box, but while reading this thread i find my self asking same question time after time after time: "Isn't this already possible?" I did it last time while playing CM Afganistan.
Not entirely as it would go in reality as swifting fires needs separate units, but currently i'm not whining.
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Could see this more as a feature for marching columns and similar job which doesn't include direct combat with hostile... Which again probably won't be focus in here. Atleast when speaking about small arms fire in improvised AA-role.
I'd be willing to see designated AAMGs to do it. Which i believe US tanks atleast had, no? Atleast if they aren't facing hostile ground forces.
About effect of AAMG fire. We did rather good success nailing attack-choppers in 12.7mm NSV AAMG simulator, few hits seemed to be pretty common for past flying choppers at 500 meters or so, by guys who's primary or even secondary training didn't include AAMG.
Ofcourse it isn't totally real deal (lack of recoil being biggest set back), but doesn't seem to be totally off the bat to try to suppress attacking aircraft by AAMG.
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If you're a "bird" then I guess you've proven the Beast's point. But I get the impression you've proven Affie's point.
Well, you know, i'm trying to get in touch with my feminine side.
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I'm guessing Finland is a strange place. I doubt you'd have the same outcome in North America.
But it was french kiss! And i'm sure this happened in sauna with steamy air and sweaty guys.
...mmmm... [drool]
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I must agree with Steve. Vietnam in more wooded areas would be beatch, just like it is in CMSF aswell. This is aspect in which i think CMSF is mostly "broken" or should i say un-refined. CMSF basically is open plains game and Urban game to some degree.
I don't know would any "minor" overhaul do anything good. I'm not happy with infantry behavior, commands, ability to see microterrain under treetops. Basically lots of small things. I like to play in forested maps with approx 90% of tree cover and very limited visibility, but they generally are not very fun to actually play. I also get strong feeling of doubt when those scenarios are over. As i take CMSF as somesort of simulation i rate that doubt as poor thing.
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"but they won't risk all out warfare for three marginal states..."
Well, would we? We didn't for Poland in WW2 either. These places are too far away re logistics and only a hundred miles or so across. Russia could literally walk to the Baltic in a few days.
Would Russia risk war with the US if we created a revolution in a Central or South American state to install a friendly government? Oh, wait, we already did that.
There is the real issue of the massive Russian population that has settled in the Baltics. A political situation could arise where a large % of the pop of these tiny countries appeal to Russia for help etc.
I am not saying this is likely, but certainly my relatives have a real fear of this.
And some analysis which i've read seems to hint that in 10-20 years Europe doesn't have much more than "armies" capable only in anti-terrorist peace enforcing stuff with little conventional warfighting capacity, pretty much all European NATO-countries belongs to this list... Russia then again will keep and develop it's conventional capacity. most definedly not reaching level of good old Soviet days, but then again it doesn't have to as level of it's adversary in-this-scenario has dropped significantly.
Today there's one country with 5 million people which has one of largest armies in Europe if measured in manpower or artillery, 10-20 years back it still was pretty small army in European scale. Yeah, it's not nearly best method of calculation warfighting capacity, but idea is to show that there has been some pretty drastic changes during last decade... And which probably doesn't end there.
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Well it does happen IRL, and it's not uncommon in my experience.
When a trooper gets a target in his sights then adrenaline and training kicks in (and there are rarely trees in the middle of the gunnery range).
I saw a trooper shoot a 203 into the branches of the tree that the squad were grouped under. Luckily it was just a smoke shell during training so all they got was a little sparkling shower but the squadleader got pretty angry and said he'd never go to war with that soldier in his unit.
I also saw a AT-4 bounce off a tree when a soldier was tracking a moving target (also during training). And I've also seen a tank aiming right at the trunk of a tree (about a foot from the muzzle) and an IFV tracking a target with the barrel in a bush.
The parallax between the sights and the actual weapon as well as IR optics (which sees right through some foliage) doesn't make things easier in that kind of situations.
Sure mistakes happen, tries for lucky shots exists as well. Then again they happen far too often in game, at easy stationary targets just sitting there. My rough guess would be that 80-90% of projectiles gets sucked into trees and bushes.
We trained alot in wooded terrain and we didn't have problem to evade trees with bullets or projectiles. If such mistakes would be bound to happen often i'm pretty sure military would cut every tree in training fields in name of safety and screw the requirements for realistic training.
I'm sure that M203 is beatch in wooded terrain due it's trajectory. As are hand grenades to some degree as well.
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I regard this as bug, even rather major bug under certain circumstances. It's as if troops are unable to say can they shoot past tree or is the tree in way.
Friendly losses due firing over own troops isn't such big problem as at this point commander has made risky decision to order his fire support to fire over his own troops.
More problematic problem are most clearly AT-weapons which often are burdened with both slow rate of fire and low stock of ammo. When T-72 could spent several HE-shells in attempt to get shells behind trees (or even better pepper it with MG), AT-troops don't have such luxury yet too often they seem to score hits just in trees.
I like (or liked) to play in heavily wooded terrain and this is one of those things which i my mind sets armored vehicles way above their league in that particular terrain. Yes they aren't supposed to be totally useless but it's almost as if they become far more competent than what they are at 100-300 meter distances. Against armored vehicle inside dense trees hand grenades by my experience are most useful weapons in platoon armament... Not because they are really effective, but because use of them tends to lead atleast to some results (crew bailing out). AT-weapons tends to blow up in half way to target with out causing any damage to vehicle.
Seeing Kornet crew getting wiped out by premature expolsion of it's own missile (contact in tree, brush, bush) aint' funny either, cladly those aren't happening very often.
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Actually, fire discipline with automatic weapons is far, far more difficult to achieve than with single, semi-auto, or burst fire weapons. Which is why the US military moved away from full auto to burst fire. Having more ammo on hand doesn't do squat if you can squirt 30 rounds down range in a few seconds. Which is exactly what soldiers tend to do unless VERY well trained.
I think most of us have seen the footage of US soldiers in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive. The footage I'm thinking of involved a tall wall and several soldiers putting their M-16s on the top, OVER their heads, and blowing off a whole clip, sitting down, reloading, and then doing it again. When the interviewer asked him what he was shooting at one of the soldiers said "I don't know". Now, try blowing through 60+ rounds like that with a bolt action rifle and you'll for sure find out what you're shooting at. Either because you see a target or you get shot in the head.
Fire discipline amongst Middle East militaries is notoriously horrible. A US trainer of Iraqi Army soldiers called their behavior "Death Blossom" after the fictional weapon in the movie Last Star Fighter. Basically, it's spraying all of an AK's bullets in a huge arc due to lack of control.
Steve
And SLAM is held responsible for such behaviour because of his fixation with volume of fire and what his effect was in training provided to soldiers.
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Or he made up more data to prove that the conclusions and changes resulting from his first data set were correct. Oh what tangled webs we weave, when once we set out to deceive.
Silly me.
... this is pretty much right on the money. Riflemen don't really need to hit much of anything to achieve decisive results. Suppression is more important - and far more achievable - than ballistically induced apertures. It's more important because it's achievable.That's what fire control orders and fire discipline is for. Incidentally, I don't understand why it was more important with bolt action than semi- or automatic weapons. I should surely think that working the bolt tends to put a natural brake on the rate of fire?
From where we get to point when suppression isn't suppression but just firing for instinct gained by training. At worst this means unaimed shots done in fashion where guy rises his rifle atop cover, ala African style. Sure it gives sound but that is pretty much what it does. At prolonged contact it generally means that men have shot most of their ammo and are starting to look for escape route. Infantry fights as long as it has ammo. I just wonder how many often men did their unit actual disfavor when they didn't fire their weapons blindly back in ww2?
Thing with bolt locked rifles and typical loads of that era is that there isn't that much ammo distributed to troops. Now days amount of ammo seems to be alot more. Sure fullautomatic firearms can empty magazine just like that, but from what i've gathered men will start to conserve their ammo when they have magazine or two still at their disposal. Which is as much as guys in ww2 probably had initially.
But this is just the other side of issue... On other hand your totally right
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... OR if you assume that SLAM over-egged his pudding to make a point.
SLAM viewed soldiers as binary entities - either they participated fully everytime, or not at all ever. Wigram didn't see or describe that kind of on/off duality, I don't really believe it, and the studies on combat exhaustion don't support it.
I believe SLAM's Korean and Vietnam war's statistics are accurate, and not made up like ww2 statistics. In which there is clear rising pattern (korea 50% Vietnam 75%... or something) in how often soldiers fired their weapons, thanks to improved training. I guess he had point, somekind point atleast.
SLAM was fixated with volume of fire. Soldiers needed to start firing. If they don't they dont' do their job. If they shoot, however unaimed and inaccurate, they do their job. Which is partially good thing and partially bad thing... Depending of point of view. There seems to be lots of claims against SLAM's mentality, because it leads to wasting ammo (which in bolt locked era was pretty big concern) and not being able/willing to much anything else that to fire weapon in stress conditions.
It's juicy subject indeed. But i believe that it's has been barely scratched, and there's lots of variables. One such is gutful guys: Some people seems to suggest that sheeps will also provide also reserves from which gutful men will emerge. Maybe there's social psycological reasons, there's certain amount of alpha-males in human group. If alpha-male is removed some other guy will take his position. Common statement that it's always best who get killed first, yet there's quite often leaders doesnt' seem to run out of determed guys who are able to do their job. Small melted units can reach almost same (if not same!) results as far bigger units. Partially this can be explained by fact that leading processes gets easier, but still unit which had lets say 20 gutful guys should have about 2-4 left (30% casualties which consists large amounts of gutful guys, as they tend to end up KIA/WIA first), based on statistics presented here these kind of units should not be able to shoot at enemy or fight in any determed style... Still quite often these melted units do perform rather well. Some Germans even claims that regiment commander is at his best when is leading batallion sized units (their melted regiments).
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Huh, you've got to admit that pretty acurately mirrors CM. If your assaulting infantry starts exchanging fire from a distance the assault is basically doomed. The ideal situation is springing on top of a supressed enemy. These are of course offensive tactics where the MG supports the (primary force) infantry. The question is on the defensive is the MG considered the primary force and the infantry a support element?
Yeah it's true. For pixelriflemen good assault seems to be pretty easy job. I must admit i fail pretty often to suppress opposition so well that riflemen wouldn't be forced to shoot back
There's not much talk about use of different squad's weapons in defense. In short: company's HMGs/LMGs are backbone of defense. Squad's LMG covers closer distances which artillery and HMGs can't, and that everyone in squad starts to fire enemy when it starts to attack (possibly means charge). Riflemen are naturally used in counterattacks, while some LMGs could be used as "silent guns" waiting enemy to be exposed and opening fire from very close ranges. And that's about it.
Overall guidebook seems to be pretty LMG centric and it discusses of squad leader's relations to squad's LMG pretty much. So MG is quite clearly German squad's main weapon.
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But does this mean that in actual combat Schützen/Grenadiere actually only rarely fired their rifles? True, it would take several squads' worth of riflemen to equal the firepower of a single MG42, but would the riflemen in any given squad generally refrain from firing their rifles aside from in the critical tactical circumstance of protecting the MG or the squad itself? Would a German rifleman's training make him disinclined to add a few aimed shots per minute from his 98k when the squad MG was meanwhile hard at work.
The basic idea was that MG kept firing enemies as riflemen get closer, on offence. Based on German squad leader's guidebook riflemen had to/was preferred to get into charging distance without firing a single shot, while MG remained behind and kept suppressing enemies. From there on riflemen would try to finish the fight with SMGs, rifles, hand grenades, bayonets and stuff. If they had to start engaging their targets sooner, forexample as selfdefence or just because they wanted, their possibilities got much weaker. I would guess this is concept which easily gets understood so that MG is only shooter in squad... Which it is to certain point, but only to spare riflemen's ability to close in, to perform successful charge and finally emerge from close combat as victorious. However i'm not sure how it went in practice, how often supporting elements (including squad's LMG) were able to suppress opposition and grant riflemen possibility of closing in enemy safely. And how often riflemen were actually forced to fire their rifles earlier than preferred.
It isn't anything unique and atleast to me it seems that every nation's small unit tactics basically followed and still follows the same idea. German's just happened to have their beltfed LMGs which were pretty suitable for that job.
About infiltration, as LongLeftFlank said, Germans did try to find openings and used infiltration in bigger units. They rarely if ever tried to infiltrate small units close to enemy, but instead preferred more less subtle methods. I once read point's of view of one German ww2 General who served in ww1 in some crack stosstrupp-unit and he mentioned that he never did see/experienced infiltration at work with small units.
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Very good discussion going on here. However, if I may add my 2 cents, I believe that there is a bit of a misconception... it seems to me that many people assume that the Soviets were running out of men to send to Afghanistan - this was hardly the case in reality. The Limited Contingent of Soviet Forces in Afghanistan had numbered less than 120,000 men at its peak; at the same time the overall size of Soviet Armed Forces was in excess of 5.3 million men. If the Soviets had really wanted to, they could have definitely sent more soldiers into the theater. The reasons for the undermanned status of the battle units in the 40th Army were mainly political, organizational, and.... hygienic; but the Soviets were nowhere close to losing the battle of attrition.
Peace,
DreDay
I think it's not misconception. But same as with LongLeftFlank's Vietnam example: There simply were less people getting into Afganistan because local conscription offices (or what ever they were called) got less man material from which they could distribute less man material forexample to 40th Army. This in potentially one of the factors, others being which you name hygiene, political reasons, organization and so on. Potential because i don't have solid evidence of conscription evading in massive scale back in 80s.
What i'm pretty certain is that it caused problems with lowered quality of conscripts available to Soviet army. As a extreme example only clue sniffers, criminals and poor kids from street ended up being conscripted, while smarter part of youth simply evaded their call for service.
The Soviets were simply unwilling to escalate their involvement in AfghanistanPublically Soviets weren't even in war, atleast not at start. They were helping in building infrastructure and other typical working class stuff. For Soviets offensive wars were always pretty touchy subject, atleast when casualty figures started to rise up and it was getting clear that troops weren't freeing working class, but instead working class was fighting against them. If numbers would have boosted up, this would have been clear evidence for Soviet people what there really was going on.
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Reminds me of U.S. in WWII Europe. I recall once seeing the average life expectancy of a front line infantry lieutenant after normandy. It may have been even shorter than your average B.A.R. gunner! :eek:
Oh these.
Was it something like 20-30 seconds? I think that was the amount of time was told to Maxim-machinegun trainees after ww2 in here. Which is also partially reason for short NCO life expectancy time and very high relative casualty figures: during war dedicated gunner got killed first and then his NCO got killed after manning MG. As usually happened with riflesquads as well. NCOs tend to end up manning squad's best weapon (well by default they had one of those, SMG), taking point, showing example... Which often led to them being killed.Overall those life expectancy times which i've heard are pretty bizzare and logic how they are calculated is mystery to me... Modern FO-officers have calculated that their life expectancy time has reached -5 second
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DreDay,
Ah, my bad. The figures I were looking at lumped all casualties, wounded and disease, into one big figure and then broke out the serious illness as a separate figure. Looks like KIA and WIA accounted for about 10% of all troops who served.
I do understand your point that 40th Army introduced changes, but my guess is that the changes were at least some part a reflection of reality rather than some sort of pure doctrinal theory shift. Much like the late WW2 German TO&E shifted around to deal with manpower and equipment shortages, or US late WW2 TO&E incorporated weaponry that soldiers had basically stolen
Put another way, if Soviet units had been able to regularly maintain close to 100% strength and high morale, would they have reduced Squad sizes to 4 men?Steve
This is what i gather as well. Russian and late-soviet military has been in serious problems with finding suitable amounts of NCOs, Junior officers or enlisted men. 90s in Chechnya lack of manpower in units was severe problem and usually there were just few dismounts per vehicle from accounts i've seen with first assault to Grozny. Ofcourse at that point Russian military was in poorer shape than in 80s but still i've read about similar problems with draft evasion.
Soviets did have severe lack with instructor staff. It doesn't really matter is it Junior officers, NCOs, or some other form of low level instructor staff as long as they are experienced and handle their trade. I think it was pretty common that company could have just few experienced staff members (from which one probably was tied to paper works also) who could handle/oversee training.
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Therefore, Blue does not often experience much, if any, degradation of capabilities based on C2 loss. After all, Blue's nations have spent trillions of Dollars over 70 years to have this sort of capability, so why not enjoy it?
I protest! Straight from manual:
This should not be surprising sincethe US military has spent many billions of dollars over many
decades to achieve this advantage.
However this was my most important thing to ask for:
Like any sort of chain, the Chain of Command is only as strong asits weakest C2 link. Having all three methods available to a
unit at the same time allows for the best possible results, while
having none at all means a break in the Chain of Command. A
break means the higher and lower parts of the chain are no
longer connected and therefore unable to communicate with
each other. This can have disastrous game results.
Underline by me. To me this says that different methods have different effects in different volume. Sadly however manual isn't anymore precise. Only thing i dare to guess is that gadgets don't deliver such morale boost as physical presence of platoon commander. But is that right conclusion?
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Again, primarily if you play as Blue with their excellent comms. In my experience with Red, it's really important to keep your commanders nearby.
True. Xomms atleast enable share of data. I just wonder is there different effects of different contact modes? So does being close to HQ give more morale etc. Will green Blue squad still under perform if their only contact to their HQ is by some gadget? Naturally there's no such thing as green Blue.
Green Syrians really needs to be kept in leash of commanders and green commander are to be kept in leash of their superiors: stationing company HQ team to best spot gets real challenging often. Battalion commander must be much more tricky but i don't do battles that big. I think Veteran guys with good leadership are already almost totally independent. Ofcourse even them don't share information with each of other.
I really like the current system. It could be more like CMx1 with fact that in there you could clearly see red or black line running from HQ to it's subordinates... Made things so much easier.
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So far I've found the 1980 campaign quite challenging unfortunately not because of genuine tactical problems but often because of unclear briefings or frustrating scenario design.
I've just finished the Kill Zone mission where you have to escort the convoy, with 15 minutes to go I was finishing off the last group of defenders between my trucks and the exit zone when the enemy surrendered, which gave me a minor defeat! I presume because I didn't get any trucks to the end. The Muj got a hefty 500 points just for turning up.
The mission before that I waited in ambush as the briefing suggested only to find the Muj convoy decided to take a big right turn and exit off the map out of effective range of any of my weapons.
The ambush mission before that in the snow covered mountains ended in a draw as many of the enemy somehow exited off the map no where near the zones shown on the tactical map.
Just needed to vent a bit, hopefully things will improve as I keep playing.
I think middle part of 1980 campaign was bit fuzzy with victory conditions. True it's about asymmetric warfare but still i can't see any logical reason for so high BLUE casualty threshold and overall how easily they score points... Ofcourse as BLUE i'd probably whine about same thing
Still no idea about other campaign or scenarios. Todays i managed to finish 1980, got tactical victory with about 30-40 casualties but i "had" to replay couple missions from middle to get that result.
This far my impressions with game have been that it doesn't suit for that kind of warfare which BLUE tries to utilize. Heart of CMx2 seems to be decisive battles.
And i think that there are few scenario developement brainfarts. I really would like to setup my BMPs myself. Right now often scenarion developer sets imobilized BMPs outside setup zones as dug-in BMPs. If BMP is dug-in then i'd favor that it wouldn't be immobilized and would have prepared hull down positions, instead of being immobilied and often not haveing hull down positions. Game seems to have lots of similar oddities. Not game breakers, but minor nuisances.
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I don't know about the soviet engagement in Afghanistan, but I know that the german army is using both the G36 (5.56 mm) and the G3 (7,62 mm) in Afghanistan today. The G3 was heavily requested by the german soldiers because it has proven to be far more effective in fighting the Taliban.
For me, the simultaneous usage of both the AKM and the AK-74 by the soviet forces added to the realism of CMA.
Again, I don't know about the soviet campaign, but the Bundeswehr is using a lot of RPGs, even the Milan ATGM, to destroy Taliban fortifications.
G3 and AKM are bit different beasts. G3 fires fullsized rifle cartridge while AKM eats shorter cartridges. I can't see much reason to switch AK74 to AKM. In Urban warfare there might be good reason to do that due better penetration in structure and lesser concern of 7.62x39's much more curved trajectory.
Soviet did adopt their RPG-7 usage along the war. It's been years since i last time read about it, but if i recall right Soviets started to use them in massed "poor man's artillery", and also developed HE-grenades. Overall i've understood that along war RPG-7 was one of those weapons which role got much bigger than what it was at start. Afgans used both Chinese and Egypt made RPG-7s, which were very high quality and Egypt made even had bipods. For Egypt made there were many different warhead types from which probably most sophisticated was antiaircraft warhead with timed fuze and fragmentation warhead.
Also i've read that at late war Afgans tend to have 1 RPG-7 for each 2-3 guys in squads (which were easily over 10 men large). I'm still playing 1980 campaign and havent' much looked scenarios or other campaign so i don't know how things are in CMA.
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Rule #1
Conserve your forces as if you, the commander, had to write the letters to the dead soldier's families telling about how brave they were. Always revise and improve your tactics, which are meant to keep your guys alive while neutralizing as many enemies as possible. I know in combat losing men is inevitable, but always work for better tactics. Use cover, covering fire, smoke, airpower, artillery, and speed. Try to have your units working together. Use bounding overwatch when advancing through unknown territory. Suppress known units/unit locations while the other unit moves up. I guess just be careful!
Or
#2 just look at field manuals and copy & paste it into scenario at hand and afterwards claim that it can't be done any better and that the game is flawed. I do always that.
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Funny thing is that PDWs would suit for moving assault soldiers which job is to get close and use surprise and swift action to overcome enemy defenses... Is western soldier already overly burdened for that? Will he be swift and determed for resolving charge after 200-300 meters of crawling? Or will he be just sack of sweat and heavily breathing bones which isn't able to think straight or challenge enemy in close combat. I personally don't believe so, weights have already gone over the top.
Other than that interesting idea.
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I think some of the victory conditions need to be tweaked, but I am looking at the campaign goal as survival instead of trying to win missions.
That is probably very healthy attitude, which i should re-learn. My attitude is too much victory-centric right now.
Small arms AA?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Jets are in range for couple seconds if they fly over and practically impossible to hit, we had those too in that simulator.
I think Stuka dives at 500-600 km/h... Latest tests which i've been reading gives good results at 400km/h flying targets. But this with well trained guys with lots of hours with AAMG simulator and good optical sights on top of MG. Article i read about it mentioned that possibility to use simulators did increase accuracy of AA fire considerably for gunners.
WW2 era guys have much less experience with flying targets, if any at all. And how much there were sights suitable for AA-fires? probably not too much. So in that sense AAMG fires at that time might have been far less effective, maybe even useless.
One problem with ww2 era AAMG-usage is that they are AA-units, and AA-units are always too few. For AA-units 20mm guns are much better as they have range. But every platoon is possessing one or even more AAMGs is bit different matter. Their short range isn't that kind of problem. If dive-bomber decides to bomb one tank or fortification it can be shot at with even tens of barrels by troops in vicinity of that area.