Vark

Agree that aircraft should not be bought in single units, but flights which attack sequentially, but they do not attack en masse, unless you want a high rate of fratricide. Historically, there are plenty of accounts of the last pairs of a flight having the roughest time as they flew through a fully awakened AA defence. If you are buying flights of aircraft, perhaps the proficiency of the flight could be an average, with each individual plane having a separate ranking. Even better, flights could be intercepted by the AI CAP (if available, depending on an air superiority rating) and a random number allowed to attack. Talking of AA doctrine, the Germans would vacate any non-AA vehicle and let the specialist units deal with the air threat. The Russians were encouraged to fire everything in the air, which could be surprisingly effective or lead to large casualties, will that be modelled?

c3k would have given the authentic Soviet command experience, including a DAR peppered with exhortations for his troops to attack, attack, attack and setbacks attributed to a lack of moral fibre.

Don't forget Bil's Beholder doctrine, eyes everywhere, then zap, zap!!

Some members of the club used to shoot clays with replica Brown Bess muskets, they never hit one, but sometimes pinged a few pylons nearby!

Interestingly, these courageous and crafty Soviets, of official German accounts, often transformed, in the same accounts, to became vodka fuelled automata. What had changed? The first description was when the Germans were attacking, the second when they were retreating. The Soviets relied on surprise, shock and momentum which will be hard to represent at the tactical level, unless the German player really wants to play scenario after scenario, with stragglers, or dug in units flanked at the start of the game. Or watch his panzers burn as he is forced to attack a reinforced flank of an attack. The Russians knew the war would never be won at the tactical level, so rarely bothered spending precious resources on training, equipping or supplying it's participants. Hence Stalin's maxim, about the relationship between quality and quantity.

You'd think, unless they were .44 ACW revolvers, then, on a still day, you'd pray for misfires! To be honest, any decent breeze would clear the air, but heaven help a gun battle in a bar. No wonder shotguns were popular, point and pull, no need to aim, you cannot see a damn thing anyway!

Until the range officer says, 'clear to shoot' and you have one either side of your booth, by the time the smoke has cleared and you spot your target, you're being told to cease fire!!

Welcome to the Eastern Front, where there are never enough German troops!

Thought the picture showed an M91/30, so wrong bayonet, appreciate it's beta, but it should not appear in the final game.

Looks like it, and the Russians had a socket bayonet attached to the muzzle so it's wrong.

Bil, once you have conducted your terrain analysis will you play like a Russian, trading security for speed and punching after a feint, or play like a capitalist and advance cautiously, trading momentum for troop preservation? Thought the ISU-152 was designed as a stop gap kitty killer, The 152mm HE should obliterate most things it hits, the trouble is hitting things with an artillery piece is tricky.

How much would T-34/85's cost because if he has bought a kitty or two, who will take it out?

I always liked the SU-85's over the SU-122/152's, as the former had a greater ROF, good AP capability and tank riders compensated for the lack of a hull MG. Will you buy some ATR's? Personally, I'd steer clear of the Il-2's as the points could be better spent on FO's , the close terrain invites aerial misidentification and subsequent blue on blue engagements.

Historically, 76mm and 120mm mortars for on call fire, nothing greater if you are talking about dedicated batteries. Can you buy some BA-64/White Scout cars or are your recce elements going to be the T-34's?

So Soviet CAS is identical in nature to CMBB, where it appeared randomly and attacked units. I hope the lethality has been turned down, the rocket strikes seemed overly effective, often KO'ing the main gun.

One Crocodile commander suggested his FT tank was the most humane weapon around. His reasoning was that most occupants of bunkers and fortified buildings surrendered, without firing a shot, when they fired 1-2 rods close to the structures. Chillingly though, the SS often had to be burned out of their fortifications, which he said was a ghastly business.

Flamethrowers were only effective if, a) They were vehicle mounted They were used against pinned units I spent ages trying to perfect the correct engineer tactics, which boiled down to 1. Unload everything fireable on a building so the engineers can close 2. Throw demo charges at max range 3 Your FT teams then are given a fire command with pause and then a sneak back, so they don't empty the tanks 4. A couple of squirts and then several teams assault with the others firing and flaming (You could not be harmed by friendly flames). 5. Rest of the team follows, FT teams trailing as the platoon expands into a building/BUA. If it was timed correctly and the charges hit home it was devastating, if the AI threw a wobbly then scratch most of a platoon of engineers I seem also to recall that FT's were savage in forests and broken ground when in hiding (lost some elite recce teams in the Kharkov Zoo scenario to them). Play a Normandy scenario with a Crocodile and then ask if they make any difference!

Given movie makers want reliability, low maintenance and low build cost, why not custom build a lightweight working chassis and overlay it with CGI? It would stop, bouncing barrel, or pathetic muzzle blast syndrome.

In Normandy, some British officers dumped their SMG's and started carrying rifles to blend in better. Often NCO's get hit because they are up exhorting the troops to advance, whilst the 'sensible' soldiers are hugging the ground, so even if they do, dress down they still risk getting hit.

I got the impression most tank drivers, in whatever tank, relied on the commander to give them, steer to directions when buttoned up. Is there a way to just dial down the percentages to spot and see what that does to game play, or is CM the epistemological equivalent of the Space Shuttle?

I remember in, IIRC, Michael Herr's Dispatches, about a Marine officer, the men disparagingly called, Lt Gladly, because he'd 'gladly do anything the men were asked to do.' He lasted a few weeks before dying, leading his men, from the front. If you have command delays, it should also be related to the unit's morale state, as well as proficiency. For added realism, NCO's could be modelled screaming at the men, 'get up you bleeps and get bleeping moving!'

So a Soviet conscript company, pivots 90 degrees and heads for a new objective with no time delay. This is worse than an artificial time delay, which often forced you to consider where you would be at the end of a move order? If the delays were long, due to troop proficiency, you'd end them in cover, or give singular waypoints, bit more realistic than the first case. Sergei, SP III had a good system, but you could cheat by setting objectives at the opponents base line, thus allowing considerable room for manoeuvre. Still, waiting for my useless PLO command to regenerate CP's, so they could exploit a gap in the IDF's defences after a 130mm bombardment, (CP's were expended for calling in indirect fire/air support)was a revelation. Eventually, he had enough to change the company objective, by which time the Israelis has speedily deployed reinforcements!

I've just read an extract from a Russian soldier, who took several hours to realise why the KO'd Panther, in front of his position, had red tracks!

Mentioning abandoned guns, reinforces the shock value of armour which seem to have been, on occasions highly effective, and apparently absent from CM's morale modelling.

True, and if they retired it could hit morale hard, especially German infantry and their uber tanks. Morale, paradoxically, is probably best represented by games focusing on higher formations as it can be approximated into a binary, +1/-1 morale factor. At CM's scale it seems to be a firepower/CC algorithm, lest it became hostage to too many arbitrary or subjective factors. Yet, one could argue these factors are often the essential factors that determine success or failure at CM's level of simulation. I do seem to remember more hands going up, in CM1, when infantry faced AFV attacks. especially from the flank, but that might just be my memory.