costard
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Posts posted by costard
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If they haven't run off the map, they should redeploy "ok". They might not be "in command", depending on the way the ground breaks at the front line i.e. isolated tiles of terrain with single units occupying. These tiles are usually the same colour as the main body of ground you occupy so you can gather your platoon, but you lose ground / field position in doing so. Not such a problem for units panicked well back from the front line - sometimes an advantage.
That's the way I recall it anyway.
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My experience is that the smoke from larger shells lasts longer and that arty barrages against pillboxes just don't work.
CMBO "Clash of Eagles" you get to throw 14 inch against AT pillboxes...
At least you have your first priority of the op. established - looking forward to your report
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off topic a bit, but
JasonC, do you know if the production of bucky balls / nano-tubes can ameliorate the costs of the coal-to-fuel process?
I know the demand for these isotopes is small so far, and industrial scale production of them non-existant; I was wondering if coal might be a better stock feed for the process?
cheers
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I searched Tricky Ballistics in BO and came up with scratch, so here we go - a hymn to the game.
You learn from experience to get down at ground level to do the "scout" - with the number pad it is a trip, one of the really good bits of the game. Much, oh so much better than walking over that same ground. And you're not being shot at.
You're scouting for - good covered lines of advance,
observation points (both for you and the enemy, these depending on what you know of the starting conditions for the map) , avenues of attack (long clear lanes for mg's, light mortars, etc). In most maps, as the attacker, you're then left with a choice of "choke points", areas that must be gained to your progress in the battle. The defender can (and probably should) plan for these same choke points (a TRP on the probable patch of trees, mines and wire, covering mortars (for tree bursts, especially) and mg's in trenches with good reverse slope protection. This position becomes sought after by the defender - the ballistics of the artillery shell make the likelyhood of a hit low. Tank guns, in particular, fire fairly low, flat arcs, so its at least good against armour. A squad pinned in impervious cover recovers from the pin quicker, too. Mortars of course have the high trajectory ballistic arc - good for getting into trenches.
The tricky part goes something like this.
I love the german 155mm field gun. There, admitted it. "Bang for your buck" aside, it throws a big, heavy shell on a fairly curved trajectory. Taking the gun on the attack can be quite a risk if you haven't seen the map, and often I've found myself having to compromise on the placement of the gun to achieve some degree of cover for its crew. (Else its taken out by his mortars in two).
I've found that by placing the aiming point on a high point of the ground along the path of the shell, I can get more than the occasional miss to skim on further and fall where I want it. I took out a mate's MG bunker once, skimmed the shell through the firing slit.
Thus, it is possible to use the gun to good effect against a reverse slope defense, with the application of tricky ballistics and a good scout around.
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Maybe the 251-16 was pointing directly at the target, the forward machine gun taking it on, the flame units unable to swing around?
I've only had success with the highly mobile flame units in situations where they come in to a firefight fast, and clean it up. If you put an experienced crew into the middle of a situation, you can expect them to make the correct decisions most of the time. The morale effects of the flame give a relatively quick pin / flee and multiple units (say an enemy platoon in range, and a platoon of your own infantry starting the fight) can be dealt with effectively, at least, when you have the two gun halftrack and a fair dose of luck. He can be knocked out quickly by two AT rifles at good range tho' - easy to lose one without it having contributed.
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I've found crews to be quite handy holding in good cover. You can get as many as six? from a largish gun, hiding in a foxhole at the back of a patch of woods. They might just be holding a corner of a defense position, but in command they can help by providing another squad/obstacle for the opfor.
If the position is hopless, not worth traipsing them halfway across the map, better to send them off.
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Hear hear!
Much appreciated by those who don't usually take the time to post their thanks
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Apologies for the embarrassment Antman - it wasn't my intention to snipe. God forbid I be called for references: um, er, I think, maybe... hours of work trawling through texts.
Losing a good library to the garage sounds familiar - either congratulations are in order or your mother-in-law had her mortgage foreclosed on, in which case commiserations. I'll check out the foxhole book - I've also been reccommended "India's China War", by Gavin Maxwell as an interesting read.
I remember reading an account of a WWI British soldier being court martialled for executing a prisoner on the way back from the lines. It came out that his reasons were along the lines of "It was cold and wet, I was tired, and peeved that this bloody hun was getting out of it, back to safety."
Cheers.
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An elite cult of death - perhaps the non-combatant's translation of the effective trooper doing his job - surviving. Eliminate every threat, make the decision and judgement of that threat with maximum effect. Only targets, no people. Enjoy the experience - if you're good at a job, you enjoy doing it well.
Eisenhower was probably simply enraged - how dare these men kill more of his troops through simple stupidity, an unwillingness to accept defeat or surrender. With that in mind, Antman, do you have the reference for Ike's intentions? It'd be interesting to place it in context.
These men - and don't forget that they are men - are recruited from a society that has required them to belong, to identify with the rest of the mob, share its hopes, aspirations and values. The common behaviors of the members of that society are represented by the rules: laws, taboos, conditioned responses. If there is hope of peace, then these people need to be able to "rejoin", be other than efficient killers and victorious soldiers. It's hard enough to do without the lasting effects of some extremely stressful conditions in the arena of modern battle. The modern male has 150 000 years of development as an efficient killer/survivor - how many times have you needed to control your rage at an ineffective piece of technology, for DARING to not function? I mean, the odds are stacked against us.
Unless, of course, you have 100 million spare men - with no prospect of having a child through a lack of available women. A cult of death makes some sense with that scenario.
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Without the infrastructure in place to manage prisoners, plus the means of establishing a dialogue with the end result of trading them in for some meaningful concession, it would seem unlikely that AQ would be giving quarter. At least, this would appear to be the case when your leadership claims not to negotiate with terrorists, ever.
It might have the happy result of leading to fewer fraggings in the allied armies - fewer instances of grunts supposing that they value their lives more highly than their leiutenant does (a given) combined with the supposition that the enemy might also value their lives more than their leiutenant appears to.
I suspect that it would be difficult to establish the practice of systematically killing the captured enemy survivors of a battle - the US had to go through a number of nasty lessons in the Pacific in WWII before it became common. Note that the surrender of Japanese became more common as the war went on; their mythologies, established by saturation propaganda, were ablated by the realities of experience. The difference between shooting someone shooting at you and shooting someone with their hands up would be too close to the difference between lawful killing and murder for most civilised peoples (for a given value of civilised - how about recognising a concept of unlawful killing).
Knocking out 75mm AT Pillbox
in Combat Mission: Afrika Korps
Posted
Thanks Kingfish - I was to some large, very large extent, exaggerating the facts. I wuz wrong. Long live the freedom of the press and it's true critics!