Fizou

Inserting 2c on this topic (again)... I don't mind the price too much.  Would prefer it wasn't a separate game though.
 
 
-F

Hi Chris. Since you seem to be the only one who is still communicating at this forum regarding the future of CM, I would like to ask you to give us an updated 'road ahead' for the coming year or so. Especially some news about the next CMRT module would be very welcome.

Battle of the Bulge has so many interesting what if's as well.  But even with the what if's in mind, the historical battles alone are epic.
 
I cant wait for a FOY scenario taking straight out of "Band of Brothers"  where is Capt' Spears!
 
Price.... I hate talking about price... If you have to ask how much, then you cant afford it.  I love playing Battlefront not only because the games are very well done, but the forums and the entire battlefront family if you will have always been helpful, informative and well, pretty damn cool. 
 
J.
 
Semper Fi.

I dont think BF will disapoint and I think its sad when people jump to that conclusion given BF track record.

I dont think BF will disapoint and I think its sad when people jump to that conclusion given BF track record.

Odin,  I am taking a different view, I hope Battlefront put in plenty of new content to warrant the full price game tag.  Info is still quite sparse on the game and they have a history of not commiting to anything until it is definitely making into the the game so I would wait and see.

If the first mortar round hits the branches, it will probably clear them out of the way...for the next crew that shows to take over the mortar from the dead guys.

Yeah sorry the FGM recently dropped it's Download section due to next to no traffic. Mmmm try CMMODS or even the repository here. Fredrocker has probably posted it somewhere else.
 
For what it's worth the Operation Windsor campaign I'm working on will require the Vehicle Pack. Currently making missions, hope to have a playtest version by June.

Cheers mjk. At least that History Degree is coming in handy for something.   Now just need the winning lotto numbers to ditch this job and spend more time making missions and CM videos.

Next set is the StuG IIIG Late
 
As I was making a weathered hungarian StuG for Kohlenklau´s hungarian Red Thunder project I might as well make a  german version too.
 
The set contains four different paint options (including a weathered version of the original Battlefront camo). Choosen ONE of the four.
 
This set is identical to the german StuG for CMRT (so no need to download both)
 
German set
 

Next set ready. This time the StuG IIIG Late
 
The mods in this set have been tagged [hungary] – and thus they will only show up in scenarios with this mod tag (unless your remove the mod tag of course).
 
Hungary set
 
 

Next set ready for Kohlenklau´s hungarian project. This time the StuG IIIG Late
 
And since I was already at it, I also made a set with german decals.
 
Note that both sets contain four different paint options (including a weathered version of the original Battlefront camo). Choosen ONE of the four.
 
The mods in the hungarian set have been tagged [hungary] – and thus they will only show up in scenarios with this mod tag (unless your remove the mod tag of course).
 
Hungary set
 
German set
 

Can you feel the love in here, Michael Enema?
 
(If this doesn't get a reply from him, nothing will.)

If they ever have a Combat Mission convention and said one of the speakers would be JasonC, I'd be getting a ticket.  

There was nothing wrong with Russian interwar doctrine - which incidentally was not copied from the west. In so e ways it was the best in the workd, particularly the understanding of the need to sequence multiple large scale operations, the logistics limits on them, what the role of new mechanized forces was going to be, and the like.n it wasn't as good as the German doctrine in tactical details, combined arms principles, and some of the German maneuver tradition going back to Moltke the elder, but nobody else had that stuff down, either. Tbey had their internal political fights over it - the party basically feared that proper modern doctrine made generals tech heroes in a manner they feared was essentially tied to fascist politics, which was both paranoid and stupid, and they destroyed the brains that had come up with it in the purges, set back training and adoption etc. but the military acadamies had taught it to a fair portion of the senior officers, especially the younger ones who would rise to top commands during the war itself.

The more basic problem on the doctrine side was that it was still just academic theory. It had not had time to reshape the army along the lines of its thinking, and where it had, it had done so in impractical ways, for lack of serious experiment and training in full scake exercises and the like. The army could not implement the mobile part of the doctrine. The officer corps in particular, its lower ranks especially, was not remotely up to the standard of the Germans or even of the professionals of the western armies. In training, education, time in grade, staff work, etc. Bravery they could do, obediance they had done, about all there was to work with. Yes that reflected the purges, but also the scale of the force and its rapid expansion to that scale, its reliance on reserve mobilization (necessary given that scale in any event), lack of wartime experience, etc. at most, a small cadre had some battle experience from Spain or the brief fight with Japan - and the party tended to distrust those with the former experience. The Finnish winter war had been a disaster and showed how unready the force was, and didn't correct that, though a few of the officers involved got started off its lessons.

The two biggest weaknesses were combat service and support (CSS, more on it below), by far the biggest, and poor combined arms handling at the tactical level, particularly all cooperation with armor. They compounded each other, with weaknesses in the former forcing departures from book doctrine on the latter, that then failed. Behind the CSS failures lay inadequate staff ability, the officer management bandwidth to conduct the mech arms orchestra flawlessly. This was made worse by overly large mech formations with an org chart that wasn't streamlined enough and put extra levels of command between the key deciders and the execution, by lots of obsolete equipment (think early 1930s era T-26s, flocks of them) in a poor state of readiness, by inadequate facilities to keep anynof it working, and by lack of realistic large scale training (as opposed to unit level training or carefully staged set pieces).

On the org aspect, a prewar mech corps had two tank divisions, each with its own brigades, and those tank heavy. It had 2000 trucks at TOE, and 600 to 1000 tanks, depending on the makes. There were dozens of these. A huge portion of the tanks were old T-26s and the types were mixed, as were the truck types. To get a formation like that to move over a limited dirt road net from point A to point B with gas for everyone where and when they needed it, without traffic jams and without roads blocked by broken down tanks, with repair and spare parts to get the fall outs moving again, and then exoecting them to arrive with all arms together and coordinated, in communication with each other across weapon types, form them up into fighting combined arms teams, and go in to a schedule to hit the enemy in a well coordinated way - all proved beyond the capacity of one schooled muckety muck and his staff of four high school graduates with a pack of index cards, a phone and a couple of pencils. I exaggerate slightly for the sake of clarity.

What actually happened is they didn't manage it, one column got stopped by a T-26 regiment running out of gas, holding up 200 trucks behind, carrying the infantry expected to be part of the show; the other tank division got a brigade of newer BTs to the jump off point and looked around for all the folks supposed to attack with them, waited three hours, finally heard they wouldn't be ready until tomorrow morning, thought "that's crazy, this battle will be over by then", and drove down the road unsupported and attacked off the line of march as best they could. After scaring the German front line infantry, lost in the defended zone, they blundered onto a gun line and lost a bunch of tanks. They try again with minimal changes an hour or two latter and the Germans are readier for them than ever, and fails. The next day, an infantry battalion detrucks and tries, but expects the BTs to lead and do things for them; the try and fail, the infantry presses, and gets killed too. Nobody has heard from the artillery, which is 20 miles away in a traffic jam.

The CSS failures are huge by western or even later war Russian standards. A third of the tanks fall out on a road march. There are not planned arrangements to pick them up and fix them. The front moves and a road is cut. A full brigade worth of tankers get out and walk, in retreat, leaving their broken down hulks just sitting there. Another brigade follows the wrong dirt track, runs out of gas, and the trucks with the gas went someplace else, and by the time it is even sorted out whar did happen - let alone what has to happen next - there are Germans across the intersection between them.

Up at the operational level, a full mech corps hits the German lines, two days of confusion are reported, the corps is now a brigade, and the Germans resume their march. The Russian officers report losing their tanks to swamps (the swamp monster, I call it, because it appears over and over in these excuses). It fiesn't help that the Luftwaffe is strafing the columns making traffic jams worse, and German signals intel locates every radio with a range of more than a few miles and has told the Luftwaffe and army artillery where the Russian HQs are within hours, whenever they switch the set on. So soon the officers are trying to coordinate this sprawling mess with dispatch riders, who do or don't arrive with orders hours old that were issued without a clear picture of everything in the first place, and were nonsense on stilts two hours later. Then every muckety muck tries to clear it all up with their own orders, and the regiment commander has one order from brigade and another from division and a third (12 hours okd) from the original corps plan, but his (tiny) staff is telling him he can't physically do that anyway, because support X hasn't cone up and route Y is clogged and there is only enough gas to reach Z.

Now decide. You have five minutes.

It all goes pear shaped pretty quickly.

Some of this clears up as the decreipt T-26s drop out of the force. Some as the screwiest commanders ger killed. Sone as people learn their jobs better. But above all, the army reduces its ambitions and goes to tank brigades and gets thise working, the recreates division sized tank corps with a much flatter structure only after those are working. The types get more uniform, with the reliable and cross country capable T-34 becoming the workhorse. They only go back to trying to run tank armies after all those are working properly, and they use thise only with a lot more planning, and only a handful of them (with lots of independent division scale tank corps working for combined arms armies instead). The staffs get bigger and much more professional, and it all gets real and realistic. Just, a ,ot of poor slobs get killed in the meantime.

FWIW.

Aured - Did the Russians use the same fire and maneuver tactics with typical triangle tasking used by the US in WW II?  No they did not.
 
Did they understand the basic principles of fire and maneuver, sure.  But the whole army was organized differently, tasked differently, placed less reliance on close coordination with artillery fires, wasn't based on small probes by limited infantry elements to discover the enemy and subject him to more of those fires, etc.  Basically there are a whole host of army-specific optimizations in US tactics that just don't apply.
 
The Russian force is divided into its mechanized arm and the rifle arm (called "combined arms" at the army level, but still distinct from mech).  Each had its own specific mix of standard tactics.  There are some common elements between them, but you should basically think of them as two distinct doctrines, each tailored to the force types and operational roles that type had.  Conceptually, the mech arm is the arm of maneuver and decision and exploitation, while the rifle arm is the arm of holding ground, creating breakthroughs / assault, and general pressure.  The mech arm is numerically only about a tenth of the force, but is far better armed and equipped, and controls more like 2/3rds of the armor.
 
The Front is the first element of the force structure that does not respect this distinction and is entirely above it, and Fronts are not uniform in composition, but always contain forces of both types (just sometimes only limited amounts of the mech type).  From the army level down to the brigade level, the distinction applies at one level or another.  Below that level it still applies but cross attachments may blur somewhat, but normally at all lower levels one has clearly either the mech or the rifle force type and uses the tactics appropriate to that type.
 
The army level is the principle control level for supporting elements and attachments - much higher than in other armies (e.g. for the Germans it was almost always the division level, with little above that level in the way of actual maneuver elements). The army commander is expected to "task" his pool of support arms formations to this or that division-scale formation within his command for a specific operation, depending on the role he has assigned to that formation.  This can easily double the organic weapons of such formations, and in the combined arms armies, is the sole way the rifle divisions get armor allocated to them.  What are we talking about here?  Independent tank brigades and regiments, SU regiments, heavy mortar regiments, rocket brigades and battalions, antitank brigades and regiments, motorcycle recon regiments and battalions, extra pioneer battalions, heavy artillery formations from regiment up to divisions in size, etc.  Basically, half of the guns and all of the armor is in the army commander's "kit bag" to dole out to his divisions depending on their role.  A rifle division tasked to lead an attack may have a full tank brigade attached, plus a 120mm mortar formation to double its firepower at the point of the intended breakthrough.  Another rifle division expected to defend on relatively open ground, suited to enemy tanks, may have an antitank artillery brigade attached, tripling its number of 76mm guns, and a pioneer battalion besides, tasked with mining all likely routes and creating anti tank ditches and other obstacles, etc.
 
Every division is given enough of the supporting arms to just barely fulfill its minimal standard role, and everything needed to do it better is pooled up in the army commander's kit bag, and doled out by him to shape the battle.  Similarly, the army commander will retain major control of artillery fires and fire plans.  Those are not a matter of a 2nd Lt with a radio calling in his target of opportunity, but of a staff of half a dozen highly trained technicians drafting a coordinated plan for days, all submitted to and approved - or torn up - by the army commander.  This highly centralized system was meant to maximize the impact of very scarce combined arms intelligence and tactical skill, which could not be expected of every green 2nd Lt.  
 
Within the rifle divisions, each level of the org chart has its own organic fire support, so that it does not need to rely on the highest muckety-muck and his determination that your sector is the critical one today.  When he does decide that, he is going to intervene in your little corner of the world with a weight of fire like a falling house; when he doesn't, you are going to make do with your assigned peashooters.
 
The divisional commander is assigning his much smaller divisional fires on the same principles, with the understanding that those smaller fires become not so small if the army commander lends him an extra 36 120mm mortars for this one.  The regimental commander may get his share of the divisional fires or he may get nothing outside what his own organic firepower arms can supply - but he gets a few 76mm infantry guns and some 120mm mortars and a few 45mm ATGs so that he can make such assignments even if he gets no help.  Frankly though the regiment adds little - it mostly assigns its battalions missions, and the regimental commander's main way of influencing the fight is the formation he assigns to those component battalions.  Formation in the very simplest sense - he has 3 on line to cover a wide front, or he has 3 in column on the same frontage to provide weight behind an attack, or the 2-1 or 1-2 versions of either of those.  It is not the case that he always uses 2-1 on all roles.  The most common defense is 2-1 and the most common offensive formation is column, all 3 one behind the other on the same frontage.  Notice, this isn't about packing the riflemen in - those will go off in waves at proper intervals front to back.  But it puts all 27 of the regiment's 82mm mortars (9 per battalion) in support behind 1 or 2 kilometers of front line.
 
The fire support principle at the battalion level is not implemented by having one of the component battalions support the others by fire from a stationary spot, with all arms.  Instead it is a combined arms thing inside each battalion.  They each have their 9 82mm mortars and their 9 Maxim heavy machineguns organized into platoons, and the "fire support plan" is based on those infantry heavy weapons.  Battalion AT ability is minimal - 2 45mm ATGs and a flock of ATRs, barely enough to hold off enemy halftracks and hopeless against whole battalions of tanks.  But that is because the higher muckety-mucks are expected to know where the enemy tanks are going to come and to have put all the army level ATG formations and their own supporting armor formations and the pioneers with their minefields and obstacles, in those spots.
 
Down inside the battalion, the same formation choices arise for the component rifle companies as appeared at battalion, and the usual formations are again 2-1 on defense and all in column on the attack.  And yes that means you sometimes get really deep columns of attack, with a division first stepping off with just a few lead companies with others behind them, and so on.  This doesn't mean packed shoulder to shoulder formations, it means normal open intervals 9 times in a row, one behind another, only one at a time stepping off into enemy fire zones.  These "depth tactics" were meant to *outlast* the enemy on the same frontage, in an attrition battle, *not* to "run him off his feet in one go", nor to outmaneuver him.  The later parts could be sidestepped to a sector that was doing better and push through from there.  The last to "pancake" to the front if the other had all failed, would not attack, but instead go over to the defensive on the original frontage and hold.  One gets reports of huge loss totals and those "justifying" the attack attempt when this happens - the commander can show that he sent 8/9ths of his formation forward but they could not break through.  It is then the fault of the muckety muck who didn't gauge the level of support he needed correctly or given him enough supporting fires etc.  If on the other hand the local commander came back with losses of only his first company or two and a remark that "it doesn't look good, we should try something else", he will be invited to try being a private as that something else, etc.
 
What is expected of the lower level commander in these tactics is that he "lay his ship alongside of the enemy", as Nelson put it before Trafalgar.  In other words, close with the enemy and fight like hell, hurt him as much as your organic forces can manage to hurt him.  Bravery, drive, ruthlessness - these are the watchwords, not cleverness or finesse or artistry.  
 
What is happening in the combined arms tactics within that rifle column attack?  The leading infantry companies are presenting the enemy a fire discipline dilemma - how close to let the advancing Russian infantry get before revealing their own positions by cutting loose.  The longer they take to do so, the close the Russian infantry gets before being driven to the ground.  Enemy fire is fully expected to drive the leading infantry waves to the ground, or even to break them or destroy them outright - at first.  But every revealed firing point in that cutting loose is then subjected to another round of prep fire by all of the organic and added fire support elements supporting the attack.  The battalion 82mm mortars, any attached tanks, and the muckety-mucks special falling skies firepower, smashes up whatever showed itself crucifying the leading wave.
 
Then the next wave goes in, just like the first, on the same frontage.  No great finesse about it, but some of the defenders already dead in the meantime.  Same dilemma for his survivors.  When they decide to hold their fire to avoid giving the mortars and Russian artillery and such, juicy new things to shoot at, the advancing infantry wave gets in among them instead.  And goes to work with grenade and tommy gun, flushing out every hole.  The grenadier is the beater and the tommy gun is the shotgun, and Germans are the quail.  Notice, the firepower of the infantry that matters in this is the short range stuff, because at longer range the killing is done by supporting artillery arms.  The rifles of the most of the infantry supplement of course, but really the LMGs and rifles are primarily there as the defensive firepower of the rifle formation, at range.
 
It is slow and it is bloody and it is inefficient - but it is relentless.  The thing being maximized is fight and predictability - that the higher muckety mucks can count on an outcome on this part of the frontage proportional to what they put into it.  Where they need to win, they put in enough and they do win - hang the cost.  It isn't pure suicide up front - the infantry go to ground when fired at and they fire back,and their supporting fires try to save them, and the next wave storms forward to help and pick up the survivors and carry them forward (and carry the wounded back).  In the meantime the men that went to ground are defending themselves as best they can and sniping what they can see;  they are not expected to stand up again and go get killed.  That is the next wave's job.  The first did its part when it presented its breast to the enemy's bullets for that first advance.  The whole rolls forward like a ratchet, the waves driven to ground holding tenaciously whatever they reached.
 
That is the rifle, combined arms army, way of fighting.
 
The mech way of fighting is quite different.  There are some common elements but again it is better to think of it like a whole different army with its own techniques.  Where the rifle arm emphasizes depth and relentlessly, the mech way emphasizes rapid decision and decisive maneuver, which is kept dead simple and formulaic, but just adaptive enough to be dangerous.
 
First understand that the standard formation carrying out the mech way of fighting is the tank corps, which consists of 3 tank and 1 rifle brigade, plus minimal attachments of motorized guns, recon, and pioneers.  The rifle brigade is 3 battalions and is normally trailing the tank brigades and holds what they take.  Sometimes it doubles their infantry weight and sometimes it has to lead for a specific mission (force a river crossing, say, or a night infiltration attack that needs stealth - things only infantry can do), but in the normal offensive case it is just driving up behind something a tank brigade took, dismounting, and manning the position to let the tank brigade go on to its next mission.  It has trucks to keep up, and the usual infantry heavy weapons of 82mm mortars and heavy MGs, but it uses them to defend ground taken.  Notionally, the rifle brigade is the tank corps' "shield" and it maneuvers it separately as such.
 
The business end of the tank corps is thus its tank brigades, which are its weapons.  Each has a rifle battalion organic that is normally physically riding on the tanks themselves, and armed mostly with tommy guns.  The armor component of each brigade is equivalent in size to a western tank battalion - 50-60 tanks at full TOE - despite the formation name.
 
I will get to the larger scale tactics of the use of the tank brigades in just a second, but first the lowest level, tactical way the tanks with riders fight must be explained.  It is a version of the fire discipline dilemma discussed earlier, but now with the critical difference that the tanks have huge firepower against enemy infantry and other dismounts, making any challenge to them by less than a full panzer battalion pretty suicidal.  What the tanks can't do is force those enemy dismounts to open fire or show themselves.  Nor can the tanks alone dig them out of their holes if they don't open fire.  That is what the riders are there to do - kill the enemy in his holes under the overwatch of the massed tanks if and only if the enemy stays low and keeps quiet and tries to just hide from the tanks.  That threat is meant to force the enemy to open fire.  When they do, the riders drop off and take cover and don't need to do anything - the tanks murder the enemy.  Riders pick their way forward carefully after that, and repeat as necessary if there are enemy left alive.  This is all meant to be delivered very rapidly as an attack - drive right at them, take fire, stop and blast for 5 or 10 minutes tops, and move forward again, repeating only a few times before being right on or over the enemy.
 
So that covers the small tactics of the mech arm on the attack.  Up a bit, though, they are maneuvering, looking for enemy weak spots, especially the weak spots in his anti tank defenses.  And that follows a standard formula of the echelon attack.  
 
Meaning, the standard formation is a kind of staggered column with the second element just right or left of the leading one, and the third off to the same side as far again.  The individual tank brigade will use this approach with its component tank companies or pairs of companies, and the whole corps will use it again with its brigades.
 
The first element of such an echelon attack heads for whatever looks like the weakest part of the enemy position - in antitank terms - and hits it as hard as it can, rapidly, no pausing for field recon.  The next in is reacting to whatever that first one experiences, but expects to wrap around one flank of whatever holds up the prior element and hit hard, again, from a slightly changing direction.  This combined hit, in rapid succession, is expected to destroy that blockage or shove it aside.  The third element following is expected to hit air, a hole made by the previous, and push straight into the interior of the enemy position and keep going.  If the others are checked, it is expected to drive clear around the enemy of the harder enemy position - it does not run onto the same enemy hit by the previous elements.  If the enemy line is long enough and strong enough to be neither flanked nor broken through by this process, well tough then.  Some other formation higher in the chain or two grids over is expected to have had better luck in the meantime.
 
There are of course minor adaptations possible in this formula.  If the lead element breaks clean through, the others shift slightly into its wake and just exploit - they don't hit any new portion of the enemy's line.  If the first hit a position that is clearly strong as well as reasonably wide, the other two elements may pivot outward looking for an open flank instead of the second hitting right where the first did, just from a different angle.  The leading element can pull up short and just screen the frontage if they encounter strong enemy armor.  Then the second still tries to find an open flank, but the third might slide into reserve between and behind the first and second.
 
The point of the whole approach is to have some adaptability and flexibility, to be designed around reinforcing success and hitting weaker flanks not just frontal slogging - all of which exploit the speed and maneuver power of the tanks within the enemy's defensive zone.  But they are also dead simple, formulas that can be learned by rote and applied mechanically.  They are fast because there is no waiting for recon pull to bring back info on where to hit.  The substance that needs to be grasped by the leader of a 2nd or 3rd element is very limited, and either he can see it himself or the previous element manages to convey it to him, or gets it up to the commander of all three and he issues the appropriate order downward.  They are all mechanically applying the same doctrine and thinking on the same page, even if out of contact at times or having different amounts of information.  The whole idea is get the power of maneuver adaptation without the delays or the confusion that can set in when you try to ask 3 or more bullheaded linemen to solve advanced calculus problems.  There is just one "play" - "you hit him head on and stand him up, then I'll hit him low and shove him aside, and Joe can run through the hole".
 
There are some additional principles on defense, the rifle formation forces specially,  where they use 2 up 1 back and all around zones and rely on stealth and field fortifications for their protection, while their heavy weapons reach out far enough to cover the ground between each "blob", and their LMGs and rifles reach out far enough to protect each blob frontally from enemy infantry.  That plus deeper artillery fires provides a "soft defense" that is expected to strip enemy infantry from any tanks, or to stop infantry only attacks on its own.  Or, at least, to make it expensive to trade through each blob in layer after layer, in the same "laying his ship alongside of the enemy", exchange-attrition sense.  Then a heavier AT "network" has to cover the same frontage but starting a bit farther back, overlapped with the second and later infantry "blobs".  The heavy AT network is based on cross fire by 45mm and 76mm ATGs, plus obstacles (watrer, ditches, mines, etc) to channel enemy tanks to the locations where those are dense.  Any available armor stays off the line in reserve and slides in front of enemy penetration attempts, hitting strength not weakness in this case, just seeking to seal off penetrations and neutralize any "differential" in odds or armor concentration along the frontage.  On defense, the mech arm operates on its own principles only at tank corps and higher scale, and does so by counterpunching with its offensive tactics, already described above.
 
That's it, in a nutshell.  I hope this helps.  

So if I were going to make a CMRT scenario showing the mech force type in a hasty attack off the column of march, I'd use something like the following forces and arrivals.
 
At start, set up area to include a road entry point - 2 BA-64s, 5 jeeps, recon platoon HQ and 4 half squads, 1 sharpshooter.
 (HQ+SS jeep really a 3/4 ton "pick up" truck, the "jeeps" are really motorcycles).
Arriving turn 3 on the same entry road - 3 T-34/76, SMG platoon HQ and 2 SMG half squads.
Arriving turn 5 on the same entry road - 4 trucks carrying motor rifle platoon (HQ, 3 squads) plus an ATR.
Arriving turn 7 on the same road, 1 M5 halftrack carrying a company HQ plus a 120mm mortar radio FO (start of support section)
Arriving turn 8 on the same road, 4 trucks carrying platoon HQ, 3 Maxim MMGs (1 with HQ, 2 in second truck), 2 82mm mortars
Arriving turn 10 on the same road, 2 jeeps towing 2 76mm ZIS-3 divisional guns (these would really be 3/4 ton pick up trucks, but closer to jeeps than full trucks).
 
Optional larger scenario - add a second T-34 force just like that given on turn 5, bumping the arrival order of the rest back.
Also add a second motor rifle platoon, so those arrive turns 7 and 9, with the support arriving turns 11-14.
Finally, add a third motor rifle platoon at the tail of the column, arriving turn 15.
That gives 6 tanks and a full motor rifle company, but takes a bit longer to arrive etc.
 
Then have that sort of column fight against - (1) a pure infantry defense (1 75mm PAK as heavy AT), or pure infantry with just one Marder as AT support - about 2 platoons of infantry and a heavy weapons section with 2xHMG, 1x81mm would be typical for this scale, (2) A German "recon" screen force, with SPW 250/1s carrying a single recon infantry platoon, with a pair of SPW 251/9s for fire support, and like 2 PzKw IVs arriving turn 10 or so to support them, with one platoon of Pz Gdrs, or (3) A full German "panzer" force vs the larger column version, with 4 PzKw IVs and 2 platoons of PzGdrs (motorized) present from the start, plus a few HMGs.  A tougher version of (1) (e.g. vs the larger column) might have 2 PAK and 105mm artillery support, but still 2 infantry platoons and 1 heavy weapons section.
 
This variety would be enough to show how the force was meant to function, and how it defeats the most typical forces the Germans would actually need to rely on to stop it.  The recon screen version would be the least common in practice, the infantry version (with no German vehicles) the most common.  But the others are important, to show how the force could exploit through rapid blocking forces once through the front.

Open letter and personal statement
 
I would like to express a few words on a recent situation that came out in the gaming community: pay for mods. I have no intention to, I never had intention to and I will never ask for money for my mods. I strongly belive that my modding is something done for myself and my tastes (first of all) and for the benefit of the community (or at least those who might be interested in trying/using such mods). I belive that a lot of credit should be given to BFC (in this particular case) for making not only a great game but also a good mod support (instruments for unpacking/packing, file priority upload for the game mods, dedicated modding folder, easy to work with file formats).
I am for FREE modding, I respect those modders who ask, or are open to, donations and such, but I do not support any kind of paywall for mods, which are, in my opinion, a form of player-generated, free content for a game. 
 
I kindly ask not to start a Whole discussion about this matter here, but in case use another forum section. At the same time I had the desire to express these few lines here because I felt as part of the matter in question.

Keep it up Fizou.. quite frankly I am finding your presentation superior to what's going on in the CMBN forum.

Are the two of you just playing the PzC side against one another without a third party (like is happening in noob's AARs)? Honestly, I am finding that aspect less than satisfactory and it seems to be getting in the way, though I understand the necessity in that case. An umpire is not an ideal solution if it can be avoided.

Still, you are doing a fine job and thought I should chime in.

Bil

Good news: The previous battle in Hex (1,7) between mjkerner and ChappyCanuck...I will make that into a scenario for upload to GaJ. I will write it as Allies vs Axis AI.
It will be called "MG Darkest Before the Dawn" and Chappy agreed to write the briefing using the story style he used during the H2H PBEM.
I will try to use all the axis AI plans to move around the defenders and give variety to the defense by "Strafkompanie Burke" and "FlakZug Heinrich 505"

The next work is to link the different areas being seen, the way they are on real pictures.
The last 4 pictures.
 

 

 

 

Last terminal pictures

 

The latest pictures showing the extensive modification. There are still a lot of work to be done to adjust the height difference that might be found on the map.
The urban settlement seen near the airport will extend to to the left and rejoin the Rail station.
 

 

 

 

The Airport Terminal area - since, the ramp has been modified and the old Terminal located on the right has been added. All parking area had some texture work done to simulate the cars emplacements as much as it could be done.
 
 

 

 

No, they're designed for strength, both hardness and toughness. It's possible, with good materials tech, to have metals that are both tough and hard. Simple processes, yes, tend to favour one over the other, but a brittle cast iron penetrator would be as useless as a soft wrought iron one (two use two diametrically different Fe alloys) against good armour plate. The former would shatter before transferring its energy to the target (i.e. expend all its energy breaking itself up), and the latter would squidge into a lump (i.e. expend all its energy smearing itself across the target). So penetrators have to have good hardness and good toughness. Sometimes it goes wrong, and there are phenomena like the "shatter gap", but that's restricted to a fairly narrow set of circumstances. The penetrator-armour battle is a contest of who can build a penetrator that is both hard enough and tough enough to beat the increasing toughness and hardness of the target plate. Sometimes the armour has what turns out to be suboptimal characteristics, as the face-hardened plate the germans used for a while - that turned out to be too brittle for the sake of the hardness.
 
Any material is elastic. It's entirely possible for an AP round to be elasticly deformed by a glancing impact. The energies involved, though, pretty much ensure that any deformation of an AP round striking square and not penetrating is going to be greater than the elastic limit of the materials involved; this is not true of thrown tennis balls. Perhaps the example of a squash ball splitting would be easier to get your head round? Or a table tennis ball denting. You'd have to fire such things at sand pretty fast to plasticly deform them though, and that'd probably bury the projectile: score one for that delivery system in the projectile v armour war. Whether the projectile returns to its original shape or not is completely irrelevant. Any deformation takes energy, and that energy isn't necessarily returned to the projectile as KE, if at all. The energy needed to scoop a dent out of 80mm steel armour plates is pretty large.