Tux

Are there any other WWII aviation grogs here? Is it me or have battlefront used a Spanish, Merlin-engined 'fake Bf 109' to represent a '109 in the air superiority bar? I know it isn't a huge issue but surely they could quickly and easily swap that for a photo or graphic of a real, wartime 109?

I have to agree, I'm afraid. I've been moving house myself recently and so haven't had internet access since I last posted. Unfortunately there wasn't a turn waiting for me when I finally got online to check. I'll send Juste another gentle reminder - it's possible he's on holiday celebrating his graduation, or moving house like I was - but I think this will be the last attemp I make to re-establish contact. It would be a shame to have him drop-out. I was really enjoying that game...

I'd love to say that progress was made whilst the forums were down, folks, but I'm afraid it's not the case. I haven't heard from Juste in quite a while now, but I'll annoy him again in a few days' time. Either way I'm not going to be able to play a turn until I return home next Friday or Saturday, so no updates can be expected until then. Hope to continue this thread properly sometime soon.

Thanks, that would be handy for me to start getting to grips with the methods involved.

Precisely. I think the 'chance' factor of warfare is especially well modelled in the CM series, and the immersion is aided by the abstract nature of the graphical interface. In theory, the above manoeuvre was ridiculously unlikely to come off, but the way that events transpired was absolutely believable and, as far as I can tell, realistic because it was left to my imagination to fill in the details.

Just thought I'd share this experience with you all as it absolutely sums up why I love the CM series so much. I was playing casually on my ETO installation about two weeks ago. I took a randomly selected British assault force on a small map to take on a 1000pt German defence. I find that, whilst the CM AI is pretty hopeless at attacking, it is more than capable of putting up a stiff defence, and so is useful for praticing good attack techniques. Anyway, my advance was going well. I'd taken up position on the outskirts of the defenders' town, but behind a ridge that obscured me from LOS and allowed me to get nice and close whilst remaining unseen. I'd lured an SPW 250 and a Marder forwards to kill them with PIATs, and so I began my assault proper. My only 'AFVs' were a Staghound and a Dingo. I moved the Stag up with my infatry to take on the enemy defenders at close quarters, and was suitably alarmed when an 88 HC projectile exploded on the pavement nearby and was attributed to a 'gun?' sound contact 200m away in a patch of brush. A bloody Puppchen! I retreated the Stag and sent a mortar forwards. Unfortunately, the little gun could only be spotted from open ground, and so my spotting Company HQ was unable to remain undetected. A huge bang rang out and a succession of 105mm shells shattered his morale and sent him scrambling for cover. Ok, so I now had a 105 Howitzer and a Puppchen sited next to each other in a patch of brush. Not a problem - I brought my 3in. spotter forwards and waited five minutes for the rounds to start falling right on target. Just as they do another huge bang rings out. The spotter had been spotted! The shell whizzed past his ears and landed in the middle of a platoon of men I had in cover behind him, killing 18 of them. Yep, you've guessed it. There was a Puppchen, a 105 and a 150mm infantry gun all sat right next to each other in position to utterly dominate the fight once it got past the ridge and into the town. My entire load of 3in. rounds landed on them, but failed to knock out a single one, and the 150+105 team were threatening to annhilate my entire force. I managed to spot for my on-map mortars instead, and they emptied all of their rounds on target, but still not a single gun was silenced. I toyed, briefly, with the idea of quitting. I honestly did not see a way to get a win out of this fight without having to absorb sickening numbers of HE shells during my assault. Instead, though, I came up with a rash, stupid plan. Stupid and rash enough that it just might work... Next turn my Staghound and my little Dingo raced along the main road through the town on 'fast'. They survived a hail of Panzerfausts and HMG fire and, as they exited the far side of the town, they swung out into open country behind the three guns. As they got within 50m of the guns the Stag bogged, and the three guns were spotted all rotating to face up and let 'em have it. The Stag and the Puppchen fired simultaneously at each other and both missed. In the next instant the Dingo parked 5m from the gun, and the crew surrendered! During the next minute the Dingo sped up to the other two positions and the Stag engaged the 105 with its turret guns. Both heavy hitters were levelling their barrels to fire when both of their crews also surrendered! A Stag and a Dingo had single-handedly wiped out one of the strongest pockets of HE and AT firepower I've ever faced! The rest of the game went like a dream. The mere sight of my Staghound (by now unbogged again) and Dingo rolling up towards the rear of the enemy infantry force caused an unprecedented number of surrenders. In the final minute of the game (before the AI 'commander' surrendered) I had the best part of an entire Grenadier Company in captivity behind my lines! I love this game.

Lol. I'm sure he has his reasons. He's finished his work now, so hopefully I'll receive the file soon. I bothered him again for it ten minutes ago.

Sorry Earl Grey, I didn't see your response at the top of this page until just now. I've just downloaded MikeyD's tutorial. Thanks for the info. I would find it very difficult to choose between those two schemes. I think, in the end, I would prefer the hard-edged job on the second profile. Nice and striking.

It would, yes, but 75mm HE doesn't hit particularly hard. Not compared to 105 or 150 anyway. The germans have a few heavy SPGs that are more thinly armoured than StuHs, but they tend to be vulnerable to ATRs and HMGs as well, so I'm not sure they'd fit your 'survivability' requirements unless you were happy to use them very carefully. In my experience indirect high-calibre fire is very, very effective. Direct fire from comparable calibres is at least as effective though, provided you keep the chucker alive long enough. It is, in fact, far more useful for quickly knocking out particular problem groups of enemy infantry, since it can be reliably aimed at pinpoint targets.

StuH 42s are pretty good for that. It's just a late StuG with a 105 howitzer instead of the 75mm gun = good survivability and excellent HE firepower. 150mm infantry guns are good too, but harder to keep alive after the opening shot. For the soviets, I reckon T-34s are about as good as you'll get for cheap HE chucking. The SU and ISU gun carriages pack excellent HE loadouts, but they're usually quite expensive. As always, other, more knowledgable people will be in soon to add to/ contradict my suggestions.

I love gridded terrain. It detracts a little from the realism when I decide to watch the action from 'ground level' and at 1x magnification, etc., but if you're going to play a game that allows you to make a (theoretically) infinite number of orders within a single minute of battle then I think you should be ok using a gridded terrain map to facilitate your judgement of distances/ elevations, etc. For me, gridded terrain also compensates for the lack of a 'remain at least 26m apart', order which I would otherwise issue to my squads. In a game in which 26m is always far enough away to avoid the effects of fire at an adjacent unit I am willing to accept a similar level of 'facilitated approximation' to avoid those effects.

I'll bother him again now for a file, but basically I'm still waiting. Sorry for the delay. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, I'm as anxious to see the outcome of this fight as you are!

Patience, my friend. I have been promised a turn within the next day or so. It'll take me longer than usual to issue my orders because I'll need to refamiliarise myself with the situation, but I should be able to post a bried update before long. Either way it's the next minute's action we're all really looking forward to, and that's two email exchanges away!

Hi. No I have every faith in your ability to produce good-looking Jagdpanzers. By 'layered template' I meant a file such as a Photoshop file or .psp Paintshop Pro file that allowed the camouflage to be painted onto a layer beneath all of the details. If I were to paint camouflage onto a flat, 'virgin' bmp I would have to deal with painting over the details of the vehicle structure, which would then have to be re-drawn. I was just interested because occasionally I get the urge to produce my own set of skins so that all the vehicles in game 'fit' with each other. As far as known schemes go, what is the most common scheme that there is evidence of? Was time found to apply an 'ambush' scheme to most JPz IVs or did most make do with dark green or brown patches, etc.?

How easy is it to produce several different base colour schemes? I ask merely because back when I used to skin aircraft for the IL-2 series the creation of the detail template layers was always the time-consuming bit. The paint jobs themselves were relatively quickly and easily applied. Personally, I like plain Dunkelgelb vehicles but I also like the Red Oxide Primer schemes. I like the idea of AFVs in late war scenarios having been rushed to the front in nowt but a coat of primer, with no-one having/ taking thwe time to apply proper camouflage. Did that ever occur in reality? By the way, does anyone put layered templates for CM vehicles up for download?

Very nice, Earl Grey, I look forward to the finished item. As an aside, I've never really used JPz IVs much in CM - they seem very expensive the whole time. The same applies for StuG IVs. How widely used were these two types in real life, as compared to, say, StuG IIIs, Marders and Hetzers? Also, were JPz IV(70)s at all numerous or were they very much outnumbered by 75L48-armed versions?

Yup, so, judging by the exhaust it's either a Pz IV (up to, but not including J?), a JPz IV, a Wirbelwind or an Ostwind?

All in good time. I'm glad I have this thread to refer to - it's acting like a combat journal. Otherwise I fear I may have forgotten what's going on by now! By all means discuss the merits of flame throwers meanwhile, it's interesting.

Looks like the rear of a Panzer hull to me. A Panzer IV variant, maybe?

Just waiting for Juste to send back a file atm. I've just finished my final exams but I think he may still be in the middle of his.

The fight you intend to participate in, GenSplatton, is historically irrelevant and difficult only for artificial reasons (lack of proper combined arms, possibly being forced to advance in order to capture flag points, etc.). I think JasonC prefers to use CMBB exclusively as a proper war game/ simulation, as far as possible, and so your question has pissed him off. You won't get anywhere by arguing so I think you're probably doing the right thing by ignoring him. From the instant that you posed your question however, the rest of us have simply decided to to consider CMBB in its game form - something that is perfectly acceptable and enjoyed (at least occasionally) by the vast majority of users. Bearing that in mind, then, you must simply remember that it is very difficult, but not impossible, to overcome SMG infantry with similar numbers of german rifle infantry. See 'Turn 20' and 'Turn 21' here for one example. All you need for this trick to work as many times as you like is a good, well-positioned body of cover, with a stretch of open ground ahead of it, which your men can occupy before they make contact with the SMGs. Obtaining LOS to open ground, and open ground only, from deep within good cover will all but nullify the advantage held by his soldier's armament. If he wants to fire effectively at your troops he must halt his own in open ground. Pack your squads close together so that they can quickly combine to rout an exposed SMG squad and I can't think of anything short of HE fire or massive, ammo-draining area fire orders that will uproot them easily. How's it going so far?

Good luck. Keep us up to date with your progress, won't you?

If it's infantry only then I think you're in for a rough time. If I were in your position I'd set up my men defensively in the best cover available. They should be deep enough into cover that they can only see to the edges of the body of cover ahead of them, but not actually into it (at the back of houses, ~25m into woods, etc.). This way you should be able to ambush the Russian troops and hit them hard as they cross the open ground ahead of your troops, whilst the latter will be immune from direct, targetted overwatch fire from other bodies of cover. You can see a very small example of this tactic working very well in my AAR against Juste on these forums. I was scared of his SMG troops so, where possible, I didn't let them fire at me from anything approaching adequate cover. Also, as others have mentioned, maximise your combat ranges where possible. You want to be fighting his squads at 150-200m, at which ranges rifles will dominate SMGs every time. If you have to move forwards do it with half squad scouts first, covered by massive rifle overwatch from 150m back. If you move all your men up together and they uncover an SMG platoon or two they will get beaten back very quickly.

Blitzkrieg Boy, I don't think you can get scenarios or operations here. Try http://www.the-scenario-depot.com/ and http://bootsandtracks.com/ .

Aye, I have yet to lose an AFV. I have had a StuG immobilised though, and since Juste started the fight with 8 full AFVs to my 4 (I can't really count the FPz IIIs since they're almost useless in a tank-on-tank fight) I think he still basically has a slight advantage in the armour war. If he drew them all together and advanced his SU-152 towards my Tiger whilst flanking it with two T-34s on either side I don't know how I'd counter it effectively without losing most of my own tanks. I think his relatively piecemeal deployment of armour thus far has made it far, far easier to handle it all. As for buttoning, I actually still have all the AFVs who can be unbuttoned. They are all fairly far away from the nearest enemy infantry, so I need the spotting capability. I would have had that FPz III commander buttoned if I'd realised he had LOS to the forest from which the shot eventually came. For Juste's units to survive at B he needs to kill my FPz III. I feel fairly safe in assuming that his infantry won't manage that, so then it's down to his T-34 and SU-152. If they are to knock out my FPz then they first have to face down two StuG IIIGs along the road. Should be fun... [ May 13, 2008, 02:51 PM: Message edited by: Tux ]