Dietrich

I agree, SlapHappy. As in climbing onto the tank, yanking open a hatch, and hauling out a guy by the scruff of his neck, a la Chewbacca in Return of the Jedi? =P Seriously, though . . . I think having a volley of grenades from a nearby infantry squad equal instant brew-up for a tank or APC is not the best reasonable simulation. What about like in CMx1, where you might see a squad throw a single grenade at tank, you hear an explosion, it says "Hit", and the tank is immobilized? Speaking of explosives, when a squad is executing a Blast command, why is there no cry of "fire in the hole!" or some such? Isn't it standard operating procedure to give some warning when explosives are about to be set off, even if said explosives are at some distance?

I didn't mean that I think in a state-of-war situation Americans would forgo killing each other so as to band together and concentrate on attacking the invading forces; I just meant that there would be no shortage of people in the US ready, willing, and able to engage in guerilla warfare against foreign forces. The typical American may well assume that anyone who willfuly combats Western forces in Iraq or Afghanistan (or anywhere else, for that matter) is 'just' a fanatical, bin-Laden-loving, Saddam-worshipping, "Allah hu akbar"-screaming Islamist, but if the US were invaded by foreign troops, Americans might well do not-dissimilar things themselves. At the risk of using hyperbole . . . were a foreign army to invade the US, I reckon we would see guerilla warfare on at least as scale as there has ever been, and just as vicious. There are a lot of gun-toting lawless people out there. Too bad so many of them call "the land of the free" their home. If rule of law were to break down in the US . . . I would swim to Europe. =P

Well said. A close friend of mine always plays the devil's advocate vis-a-vis things I say about any and all matters military, as if he inherently knows more than me about said matters. The way I see, though, that can't possibly be the case, as he never researches anything, he merely has watched more History Channel and Military Channel than I ever have, whereas I not only actually search for information, I seek out multiple sources about the same battle or tactic or piece of equipment so as to have a more complete understanding thereof. And besides, the truth could easily be misunderstood by the average newspaper or blog reader, whereas a veteran or a military historian or someone who at least knows something about combat and about how a military force functions has a context for understanding. "War is hell" is one of those quoted-almost-to-death lines, so often repeated as to be banal and thus strip it of the visceral warning it ought to convey. One key thing that people in general evidently fail to understand about the quote is its context. William Tecumseh Sherman's words actually were: "You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it." He wrote this in a letter (dated September 12, 1864) to the City Council of Atlanta, which city was put to the torch on his orders. One can imagine Sherman thinking those words as he scowled at the sight of Atlanta burning. (Though he may well have ordered the city burned and then went purposefully on his way; I don't know the specifics.) Which point, I think, could be added to the list of factors which contribute to the grenading-civilians-in-their-own-homes thing as happened in Haditha. True; but I didn't cite the Kriegsberichter as examples of accurate and timely reporting -- I meant merely to point out that they were generally officers rather than corporals. If I were a college teacher and a student of mine handed in a paper that had journalism of quality equivalent to Corporal Mercure's article, my response would be something like: "You cited one book and then cribbed the rest off Wikipedia?!" lol Reminds me of the Stephen-Ambrose-plagiarizes-in-multiple-books-which-all-become-bestsellers scandal a few years ago. Whoever thinks Stephen Ambrose is a great military historian ought to read John Keegan. Honestly, 20 kills (at least the bulk of which the article claims were scored "during a critical point in the eight-hour battle") sounds more like a first-person shooter game (such as Call of Duty 4). The thing that leaves me ultimately disatisfied with most any first-person shooter game I've ever played (though Crysis is a notable exception) is that no matter how immersively realistic the visuals are, no matter how accurate the weaponry is modeled (both in terms of looks and ballistics), and no matter how good the AI is, it 99 times out of 100 ends up seeming merely like a shooting gallery in which the targets shoot back: no enemy makes good use of cover, showing himself only as long as it takes to fire an aimed shot or squeeze of a brief suppressive burst. The enemies are always plentiful, they're always easy to spot (unless you happen to be facing away from one that scores at hit on you) . . . and they never surrender or are merely wounded. Overall, FPS games actually mispresent the tactical realities of combat even while striving to be as realistic as reasonably possible. A good example of that is, I think, eastern Europe/western Russia in WW2. Overall its the Germans versus the Soviets. But take out a magnifying glass, and suddenly you see tens of thousands of Ukranians volunteering to work for/fight alongside the Germans, Red Army troops surrendering by the hundreds and thousands (while in many instances a few as half a dozen men would fight to the death and consquently tie up an entire German company for hours or even days), then later you see partisans beheading Turkmen manual laborers who were working for the Germans, people of all sorts of ethnic groups volunteering for the once-racially-strict Waffen-SS . . . an at times mind-boggling complex of actions and motives. Many Westerners may well think Middle Eastern people innately uncivilized or even savage because many individuals there are willing to grab an AK or an RPG and attack Western troops. But wouldn't many (if not most) Americans attack -- viciously and ruthlessly -- troops of a foreign army which had invaded and was occupying the United States? Put yourself in the insurgent's shoes, and it ain't quite so baffling, if nothing else.

Thank you. But would said JDAMs would be dropped all at once, saturation-style? Would they not be dropped one at a time on specific targets? I was responding to Lee's assertion ("drop as many bombs on the bad guys as our men could possibly need"), which implies saturation-style bombing. Language shapes thought. Take it from me, a medical transcriptionist -- not only are there many different types of cancer, there are more than a dozen classification systems for cancer types. By way of a surface-scratching example, cancer comes in two overall flavors: malignant (potentially deadly) and benign (not deadly). I used to figure that refering to armed and nominally organized people fighting against professional troops as "fighters" or "militants" was just another propagandistic thing a la "if we call them something other than 'soldiers' we can make the case that the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to them" or some such. Thanks to a bit of research, I now understand that, as Steve pointed out, to give your opponent any ol' label is to misidentify him. I believe that of all the basics about a matter (Who, What, Why, When, How), the most important, the one that enables you to put together all the pieces formed by Who, What, etc., is Why. Determing (to the extent possible in a given instance) the Why of a matter enables you to have a full(er) understanding of the "whole" as well as of the "sum of the parts". Understanding why the enemy (in general and individually) does what he does -- for example, "Why are Islamic fundamentalists so quick and so violent in opposing 'the West'?" or "Why do women Islamic fundamentalists become suicide bombers?" -- is integral to combating him effectively. At least that's the conclusion which my research over the years has led me to.

Bravo, Birdstrike, on an excellent scenario. One thing which hasn't yet been commented on is the briefing. I like the length and completeness of the briefing, which makes sense not only because this scenario has a more definite story than most but because it stands to reason that Delta Force guys would make doubly sure they had all the intel available and understood the plan from front to back. The briefing gave me a more sure sense of the situation; it made me feel more like a Delta Force team leader. (Not that I know what feeling like a Delta Force team leader feels like. lol) ***SPOILERS*** The swarming, guns-blazing determination of the Uncons to get into the police station and take out Bin Wadi reminds me of that level in Call of Duty 4 where you're defending a village against a couple hundred insurgents trying to claim the corpse of the shot-dead militant leader. Overall the scenario also reminded me of Black Hawk Down as far as Delta Force guys fighting for their lives against numerous militia. Anyone for "Alamo 2009"? =P The first time I played this scenario, I sent all the humvees on "Fast" along the road to the police station, but they got shot up on the way and I lost all but one. =( The second time, I moved forward in bounds on "Hunt", and there seemed to be fewer Uncons along the road, though the fire got heavier as the humvee convoy rounded the bend in the road heading into town. How does one read kill stats on a given unit? I suppose it's different from CMx1, where you select a unit and hit Enter.... The last time (so far) I played the scenario, I positioned one of the M240-armed humvees with its rear almost to the wall of the cellblock, but some RPG-armed Uncon blasted it from a nearby rooftop before any enemies even came through the gate of the police compound. Why is an enemy unit's "name" and type visible as soon as it's spotted? In CMx1, with Fog of War at the highest (most realistic) setting, an enemy unit was not identified even by branch until it was fairly close or had been under observation for some time. How would even Delta Force guys per se know that some average-looking guy nearby was in fact an IED triggerman?

In both the examples I cited in my first post in this thread, neither squad fired rifle grenades; they simply lobbed handgrenades onto the BMPs. There was no indication that the BMP was unbuttoned. Indeed, blast overpressure would enhance the lethality of a grenade going off inside a tank or APC (to say nothing of the explosion causing the vehicle's ammo to cook off). If I were in a tank that took a hit and started burning, I'd definitely rather bail out than stay in the tank and either burn to death or simply get blown up when the ammo started cooking off. Seems to me that it doesn't matter whether it's hit by a cannon, an MG, or just a volley of grenades, the interior burning tank is no place to linger in. You don't need to have your morale shattered to realize that. I think it would be reasonable to simulate using handgrenades and other man-portable explosives to harm tanks -- a satchel charge wedged under the turret overhang to damage the traverse mechanism or thrown into the running gear in hopes of blasting off a road wheel, etc. It stands to reason that the crew of a modern tank has at least somewhat better visibility of their immediate surroundings than a WW2-era tank (which typically was blind as a bat, so to speak, when buttoned up), but a reasonably daring infantryman with some sort of explosive has at least a few options to give a tank a hard time. But to have a tank or APC simply brew up at a volley of grenades? *shrug*

(When writing the first version of this post, I accidentally hit "Submit Reply" instead of "Preview Post", and then I failed to finish editing the first version within the 30-minute time limit.) Not so very. Operation Cobra opened on July 24, 1944, with carpet-bombing west of St.-Lo by 335 B-17s which dropped 685 tons of bombs, some of which landed on the US Army positions 1,200 to 1,400 yards from the bombardment area, resulting in at least 100 killed and over 500 wounded. The next day, the Eighth Air Force dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs on more or less the same area, but again a fair number of bombs fell short, again killed over 100 US troops and wounding almost 500. And sure, technology has improved the accuracy of even 'dumb' bombs at least somewhat, but if I was on the ground I wouldn't want any "strategic bomber" (i.e., a B-52) bombing within two miles of me. Is it not, in effect, necessary that a military force slant the truth in its favor just a little bit, both because the public wouldn't really understand the truth and/or might lose confidence in said military force as a result? In other words, even state-of-the-art democracies produce propaganda. When I first read about the incident in Haditha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_killings), I was inclined to condemn the US troops. involved However, the research I have done into the psychology of combat and other aspects of how war affects the mind in the couple years since I first read about that incident has given me insight into the situation which enables me to be less judgmental, if not more sympathetic. When you train a young man to be aggressive and to kill, give him an M16A4 and half a dozen grenades, then plunk him down in an area which is on the opposite side of the planet from his homeland and in which virtually any person not dressed like him is a potential insurgent who could open up with an AK or set off an IED, it's almost inevitable that incidents like what happened in Haditha will occur. (Of course, not that I think a professional soldier who kills civilians can go unpunished.) Agreed. My previous post was not with a view to arguing with you, Bigduke, but simply with a view to playing advocātus diabolī (devil's advocate). I believe cynicism must be tempered by a seeking for the truth. Have not military journalists traditionally been officers? I don't know the current term for it, but in the Second World War German Kriegsberichter (which basically means war correspondant, but they were military personnel) were typically junior officers, whereas US Army combat cameramen were generally NCOs or enlisted men. It just occurred to me to wonder: Was the designated marksman of this Marine platoon the only person the corporal interviewed about the event or simply the only person he quoted? Did this corporal just happen upon the aftermath of the battle, think "Hey, I'm curious about this", then question the first soldier who would give him the time of day? If I was a military journalist (for lack of a more accurate and official term), I wouldn't just look over the scene, interview one person, then go off and write an article about it. I would want to interview the platoon sergeant who (according to the article) "personally led numerous attacks on enemy fortified positions while the platoon fought house to house and trench to trench in order to clear through the enemy ambush site." What he did (insofar as the article can be believed) was, I reckon, rather more dangerous than what the quoted designated marksman did, despite said DM's claimed kill count. This ties back in with the troops-almost-always-overestimate-the-number-of-enemy-troops thing. John Keegan, in The Face of Battle, described wasting ammunition as being "for decades the cardinal military sin", but I didn't think it could be called ungodly. =P It's easy for a war correspondent or some other sort of reporter to write something to the effect of: "During an eight-hour battle...." The vast majority of people who read that will in their relative and understandable ignorance suppose that during said eight hours there was near-continuous trading of fire between the opposing forces. But the reporter's statement of "fact" leaves out so many details which the "sum of the parts" (the tactical realities of the battle) is greater than the "whole" (statements like "during an eight-hour battle..."). Of course, a single battle can last even longer than eight hours, but during said eight-plus hours, there could be lulls in the actual fighting of anywhere from several seconds to almost an hour, during which there may be only a sporadic trading of aimed shots between opposing forces while men on both sides catch their breath, send for fresh ammo, etc. I understand that this boiling-down of reality into readily processable facts is a given, since even accurate news reports can only be so long. I'm just always keen to gain a more complete understanding of a matter than can be gleaned from a single source. I cited the Battle of Mogadishu not so as to provide an example of US infantry superiority over a numerically superior force; I cited it to provide an example of how simple statement of facts (in this case mere statistics) can lead whoever reads said statement to remain ignorant of the truth -- a more complete understanding of what actually happened. Similarly, I'm inclined to reckon that troops who are even better trained and more veteran (i.e., actual Special Operations Forces) know that to fail to respect to your enemy is to be all the more vulnerable to him -- underestimating your foe can be disastrous. Plinking at bottles is one thing; popping out from cover just long enough to take actual aim and then shoot while bullets are flying all around is another. (Not that I've had much experience with either. =P) It's taken as read that any given front-line infantryman is trained to hit his target out to, say, 200 meters (especially given the optics M4s and M16s are fitted with nowadays), but is not the value of even a sniper in typical tactical situations as much in suppressive capability (one guy gets hit, and all the others nearby dare not show themselves for fear of getting hit too) as in, say, scoring headshots?

Not so very. Operation Cobra opened on July 24, 1944, with carpet-bombing west of St.-Lo by 335 B-17s which dropped 685 tons of bombs, some of which landed on the US Army positions 1,200 to 1,400 yards from the bombardment area, resulting in at least 100 killed and over 500 wounded. The next day, the Eighth Air Force dropped over 3,000 tons of bombs on more or less the same area, but again a fair number of bombs fell short, again killed over 100 US troops and wounding almost 500. And sure, technology has improved the accuracy of even 'dumb' bombs at least somewhat, but if I was on the ground I wouldn't want any "strategic bomber" (i.e., a B-52) bombing within two miles of me. Is not that effectively true of any military force? When I first read about the incident in Haditha (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haditha_killings), I was inclined to condemn the US troops. However, the research I have done into the psychology of combat and other aspects of how war affects the mind has given me insight into the situation which enables me to be less judgmental, if not more sympathetic. When you train a young man to be aggressive and to kill, give him an M16A4 and half a dozen grenades, then plunk him down in an area which is almost as different from his homeland as is possible and in which virtually any person not dressed like him is a potential insurgent, it's almost inevitable that incidents like what happened in Haditha will occur. (Of course, not that I think a professional soldier who kills civilians can go unpunished.) Agreed. My previous post was not with a view to arguing with you, Bigduke, but simply with a view to playing advocātus diabolī (devil's advocate). I believe cynicism must be tempered by a seeking for the truth. Have not military journalists traditionally been officers? ... ...

That's why I said "partly by accident". If I wanted to belabour the point, I could have explained that during the course of Barkmann's aforementioned solo excursion, he was heading along a road near some American tanks and a jeep drove toward him with the passenger waving his arms in warning (evidently mistaking the Panther for a Sherman); Barkmann charged the jeep, and when the jeep caromed off the Panther's front the German tank crashed into a Sherman parked at the side of the road. But like I said, I didn't want to belabour the point. =P *sigh* I was not among those saying it happened even infrequently, let alone often enough to be worth simulating in CM:Normandy (or in any WW2 combat simulator, for that matter). *shrug* That's the only incident he had that I have ever read about. According to the accounts of that incident, at the collision the Panther's engine stalled for a few minutes. Apparently neither the Panther nor the Sherman it hit suffered any actual damage.

Okay, so it's effectively propaganda. I was tempted to say as much after reading the article but thought it more judicious not to. The suspicious "even"-ness of the number can be supposed to be the sniper (who is referred to in the article also as a "designated marksman", which is not the same thing as a sniper) simply rounding his actual kill count up or down. Maybe the entire platoon rounded the body count up or down. "During the battle, the designated marksman single handedly thwarted a company-sized enemy RPG and machinegun ambush by reportedly killing 20 enemy fighters with his devastatingly accurate precision fire." 'Company-sized'? Would even an understrength company really be "thwarted" by losing 20 of its men, especially if they're fanatics? And wait a minute...there was an ambush after the ambush? (See, I can be cynical too. =P) After the initial ambush they would have taken cover, right? Once having taken cover, they would be all the more alert, right? 250-versus-30 is no doubt an oversimplification. If 250 AK-, RPG-, and MG-armed Taliban were shooting at the 30 Marines all at once...well, I don't right know how it would have gone, but the Marines would have definitely suffered more casualties. However, the report says: "The vicious attack that left...several of the Marines pinned down in the kill zone sparked an intense eight-hour battle...." The report does not say that the Marines were 'under fire for eight hours from 250 Taliban'. The report says that the Marines had arrived at Shewan when the ambushed was launched. Thus it stands to reason that there were buildings and/or walls or at least the Humvees which the Marines could have used for cover. Speaking of the Humvees, were any of them armed? Do not some Humvees have 50-cal M2 machine guns? Would not a 50-cal MG's bullets punch right through the walls of a typical Afghani house? (It stands to reason that the ambushers were firing from within buildings or behind walls, while there were evidently trenches in the area.) In short, what the report does not say/include can be inferred to be not unimportant when correlated with what it does say. Just because the USMC reporter said the villagers told the Marines there were 250 Taliban in the area doesn't that's what the Marines (the ones in the battle, that is) actually believed. Are not troops inclined to overestimate the strength and firepower of the opposing force, especially when said troops are (or so they believe at the time) fighting for their lives? Mercure writes: "Reports indicate that more than 250 full time fighters reside in the city and in the surrounding villages." Is it plausible that the Marines took a head count of those shooting at them from and windows and doorways and over roof ledges? Or is it more plausible to figure that they took a hurried (and thus somewhat approximate) body count, compared that with what they had been told by the locals, then, in the flush of having survived an ambush, concluded that there must have been that many of 'em. No doubt the Marines were trained to search enemy corpses for intel, so the absence of any mention of enemy dead might seem peculiar. But just because the report -- which is concerned with the supposed heroic-ness of the Marines in the battle itself -- doesn't mention enemy dead doesn't mean there weren't any. The report claims that "many of [the enemy] dropped their weapons and fled the battlefield" when the Marines pushed forward. With their firepower reduced by casualties from Marine return fire as well as at least some of their number saying (in effect) "screw this, I'm getting outta here", the Taliban fighters' ability to keep the Marines pinned would, I reckon, by attritionally reduced. After recovering the Marines trapped in the kill zone, another platoon sergeant personally led numerous attacks on enemy fortified positions while the platoon fought house to house and trench to trench in order to clear through the enemy ambush site.Based on the limited information claimed in the report, I propose a chronological sketch of the battle: 1. Taliban launch ambush, immobilizing one Humvee and knocking one Marine unconscious. 2. Marines dismount and return fire, suppressing the enemy and causing a few casualties. 3. Individual Taliban flee the scene are pinned, reducing the Taliban combat strength. 4. Having gained some semblance of initiative, the Marines use fire-and-movement to push forward. 5. Taliban fall back, thrown onto the defensive by the Marines' counter-attack. 6. Over the next 7-1/2 hours or so, the Marines battle with the Taliban through the village, outmaneuvering them and driving them back in house-to-house fighting. The Taliban probably were expecting to simply overwhelm the Marines and wipe them out. When their poor marksmanship preventing them from concentrating their firepower on the Marine and their vehicles, thus in effect allowing the Marines to gain the upper hand, they were probably thrown back on their heels, so to speak, which the Marines probably took advantage of and routed them. What if the only actual casualty the platoon suffered was its radio? Or does each squad in a Marine infantry platoon typically have a radio? (If they were indeed on patrol, as the report claims, it stands to reason that they would have as close to plenty of radios as they could manage.) Perhaps part of those eight hours was spent fixing whichever radio(s) they had which had taken a hit. The report claims that the battle lasted about eight hours. But it does not say when during those eight hours the called-for air support actually arrived. Thus it may in fact have been as you reckoned, Bigduke, that Cobras were overhead as soon as a half hour into the fight. As I said, not only is "30 Marines fight 250 Taliban in an eight-hour battle and kill 50" an oversimplification, but it obscures many of the tactical aspects one can infer about the incident from even a propagandistic, one-sided report. (I'm not saying the report is even mostly accurate; I'm just trying to be neither gullible nor overly cynical.) To provide a parallel example: "On July 10, 1943 near Psyolknee in southwestern Russia, Waffen-SS Tiger tank commander Franz Staudegger faced 50+ T-34s, knocking out over 17 in a two-hour battle." What that statement doesn't tell you is that Staudegger and his crew encountered the T-34s in several small groups at first, then ran into the bulk of them. So a one-sentence summation of combat can easily be misleading, even if it is are in and of itself not inaccurate. A more relevant example, the Battle of Mogadishu: 160 Rangers and Delta Force troops (with limited attack helicopter support) versus 2,000-4,000 Somali militia (with limited mortar and 'technical' support), 18 killed versus an estimated 200 to 500 killed. What those facts fail to clarify is that the battle was a collection of smaller-scale combats, whereas face-to-face 2,000 would obviously overwhelm 160. Is it not plausible that perhaps the 30 Marines were shooting at and/or receiving fire from, say, actually just 30 to 60 Taliban at any given time? With that Marines-to-Taliban ratio, would not the Marines' superior marksmanship and (qualitatively) superior firepower be decisive? Are not Taliban just the kind of scum-of-the-earth guys who count on either being within spitting distance of whoever they want to shoot or simply overwhelming the enemy with massed (though inaccurate) firepower? "Fighters" they may be, but I doubt any given Taliban guy has the even half the time spent on any sort of shooting range that a typical Marine has. Please feel free to contest any of the points I make -- my assessment is merely my assessment.

Evidently supports Clausewitz's assertion that defensive fighting is tougher than offensive fighting. And if the defenders are more aggressive, better trained, and well led(not to mention qualitatively better armed), the attackers' superior numbers and quantitatively superior firepower may well fail to be decisive.

The British tank commander Andrew Wilson reportedly said, "All you saw in your imagination was the muzzle of an eighty-eight behind each leaf." Perhaps Allied tankers figured they were being fired on by Tigers when in fact it was just 88mm flak cannon. It's certainly possible that there were more 88s than Tigers in Normandy. The one discrete instance of tank ramming I have read of (in multiple non-online sources) is when German tanker Ernst Barkmann rammed a Sherman (partly by accident) during the Battle of the Bulge while on one of his seemingly charateristic daredevil solo excursions. It pains me to see even my abstracted pixeltruppen get wounded or killed. When my 1:1-simulated troops fall (in CMSF or even ToW), I curse my tactical ineptitude. In fact, when playing CMSF I find myself compelled to ensure that all my wounded get "buddy aid" (as it's called in the field manual) and that even the killed get carried off the battlefield, in accord with the principle "leave no one behind".

Combat Mission: Shock Force models that more or less correctly -- you see an explosion (or any boom-producing thing) several hundred meters away, and about a second later you then hear it.

Thanks, Heinrich505, for the insight. I'm not discounting it; it just hadn't occurred to me before, even though I've been playing CM for a couple years now. With your suggestions, I'll definitely be subjecting this tactic to more thorough tests. =)

I don't know the thicknes or quality of a Stryker's roof armor, but I don't suppose a mere standard-issue frag grenade's blast would be able to penetrate it. According to the CMSF manual, a Stryker can travel short distances with all eight wheels flat, thanks to the run-flat core of each tire.

Yes, in at least a couple of important ways: - US squads can split into fire teams and/or detach assault or anti-tank teams, whereas Syrian squads and Unconventional (insurgents, 'combatants', etc.) forces cannot. - US forces can request artillery and air support more quickly and receive it more quickly, thanks to the state-of-the-art communications technology (i.e., practically every unit has a radio, and most vehicles have both a radio and GPS tracking); whereas all but the best-equipped Syrian units have to rely on relatively few radios, so it isn't so easy for them to request support and it takes longer to receive it. (Besides, Syrian artillery operates on more or less Cold-War-era Soviet-style inflexible centralized doctrine.) Agreed. Did not German small-unit tactical doctrine call for fire to be opened first by the LMG, while the riflemen held fire until the enemy was close unless ordered otherwise by the squad leader? Was not the MG-34/-42 the key weapon in the German infantry squad, whereas the BAR in the American squad and the Bren in the British section played supporting roles? Whether in defense or offense, being able to open fire just with a squad's LMG would both conserve the riflemen's ammo and help them keep unspotted. CMSF improves on CMx1's targeting options (despite the lack of the "Use Main Gun?" option) with "Target" vis-a-vis "Target Light", which limits fire to a few aimed rounds from an infantry unit or MG fire from a vehicle. Considering that the UI allots a whole tab to targeting options and that the available space is only half used, why not an even wider range of targeting options? For infantry, the options could be "Target" (with all weapons), "Target with designated marksman" (i.e., whoever in the squad is the best shot), "Target with MG" (handy for long-range recon-by-fire; this could also apply to vehicles), "Target with grenades", etc. Not that I know of. Unlike CMx1, CMSF does simulate 'cook-offs', especially when a tank brews up. In a scenario with armor vs. armor, you hear what sounds like tank cannon fire but then realize it's just the ammo of brewed-up tanks going off. Like I said, it's one of the gamey tactics which should die a horrible death once the nature of CMx2 tactics sinks in. I've never used crews of knocked-out vehicles as disposable recon units (then again, I almost never play QBs; I much prefer historical scenarios), but I've read on forums about its use. If I were sharing a foxhole with one or two other guys and they got killed, it wouldn't be no five minutes before I snagged their ammo and grenades. =P No command delays? Doesn't seem that way to me. In CMx1, if you tell a tank to target something, it starts bringing its gun to bear more or less right away, but in CMSF, when you specify a tank's target, it can take a few seconds before it brings its turret around, which to me reasonably simulates the time it takes for the tank commander to specify the target ("Gunner - second floor balcony - 11 o'clock" etc.) and for the gunner to acquire said target. Agreed. In CMx1 the only options were "fire on this area" or "fire on this area" (with one arm waving). In CMSF, you can call for fire on a point, on an area, or along a line (which is handy for bombarding trenches, treelines, rows of buildings, etc.). You can specify approximately how much ammo you want expended in a given fire mission, and you can specify the rate of fire. And, of course, you can call for smoke instead of HE. In CMSF, pretty much any US unit with a radio can call for artillery support. But CMSF does (I think) a good job of simulating the advantages of using forward-observer units for requesting artillery: the requested fire support comes more promptly and is definitely more accurate when you use the right sort of spotter.

Is sneaking (i.e., using the Sneak command) valid on the battlefield in CM? German infantry tactical doctrine, for example, called for a squad to go prone upon coming under fire. CM models this appropriately -- infantry units 'go to ground' when the lead starts flying round their ears, especially if they're in the open. German troops, however, were known (according to some sources I've read) for literally sneaking up to enemy positions even in broad daylight by crawling and using all available terrain cover. (Of course, if you asked German infantrymen on the Eastern Front, they would say that it was the Russians who were really good at this.) However, is their much (or any) advantage to be gained by having your infantry Sneak toward the enemy, in particular if there is minimal terrain cover available? The über-knowledgeable JasonC (http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=38765) stresses using the Advance command, in conjunction with proper spacing between units to minimize effects of incoming fire and to ensure that units remain 'in command', in advancing infantry across open ground under fire. I downloaded JasonC's Russian Training Scenarios (http://www.blowtorchscenarios.com/Jason%20Soviet%20Training%20Scenarios/Jason%20C%20Russian%20Training%20Exercises%20Details.html) and played numerous times the basic "green infantry platoon advance in the open under fire" scenario, but I could never achieve the result (getting close enough to take out the lone MG-42) which he himself claims is perfectly possible if one sticks to the tactical principles he outlines. I would try the just-sneak-up-on-'em tactic, except that the HQ unit in this scenario is Green and has no bonuses.* Thus I wonder: What is the viability of the Sneak command in getting one's infantry to within, say, hand-grenade range of the enemy? Has anyone tried this in particular? If so, has anyone had any success with this? The optimal situation -- in an attack on known enemy positions -- would be for your infantry to sneak to within grenade range of the enemy positions while mortars and heavy MGs to lay down suppressing fire, so as to make the enemies keep their heads down, thus minimizing their ability to spot your approaching infantry. * I'm in the process of finishing a fictional-but-realistic scenario in which a July 1941-era German infantry company, while advancing along a road through wheatfields as the Spitze of its regiment, comes under fire from a manor house (which has been turned into a strongpoint manned by a reinforced Soviet platoon) at the edge of a forest. Without the firepower to destroy the building itself, the German infantry must cross 400 meters or so of more or less open ground to either get within Assault-ing range of the manor house or reach the concealment of the woods behind and on both sides of the building. In playtesting this scenario, I've had my (the German) infantry sneak across the open ground to the forest (with a view to encircling the manor house and assaulting it from two or three sides simultaneously), and they go pretty much unspotted by the Soviets in the house at least until they're a sprint or so away from the woods. Aiding this, though, are (1) the time setting of Dawn, (2) the presence of a battalion mortar battery FO to provide a concealing smoke barrage on the manor house, and (3) the Veteran platoon HQs with either +1 or +2 Stealth bonuses.

Number One tactics-limiting thing for me is inability to fire with certain weapons only. That said, CMSF makes quite an improvement over the CMx1 games with the option of "Target Light". (Though many have pointed out the absence of the "Use Main Gun?" option.) In playing the scenario "Breakout!" (I can't recall if that one came with CMSF or if I downloaded it from CMMods), I too had the problem of squads effectively in the same place being unable to spot an enemy unit. I found that liberally equipping my scout squads with Javelins and then allowing them time to scan the terrain yielded several BMP-3s knocked out with no casualties to my troops. Once a squad spotted a BMP, it was just a matter of time (less than half a minute) before the squad's Javelin-armed soldier went ahead and used it. Speaking of units in buildings being un-spot-able.... The scenario "Ambush Tutorial" has no Blue setup zones, so the Blue player has to make do with the default positioning of his units. When the Uncons came swarming down the main street, my forward-most infantry squad came out of hiding on their own and were wiped out, as was the squad in the adjacent building. (The fact that the Uncons suffered 100% casualties was little comfort to the majority of the men in my platoon who were killed or wounded.) "Un-acquire" would be helpful. Up until a few days ago, I always wondered "Why do my M249-equipped squads always start out with no MG ammo?" But this was because I thought the M249 uses 7.62mm ammo (like the M240); so before dismounting a squad I would have them grab at least 500 rounds of 7.62mm ammo. Then I realized that the M249 uses the same ammo (5.56x45mm) that the M4 and M16 use, hence the seeming lack of MG ammo. Silly me. =P

What about how Humvees rotate axially as if they're tracked vehicles? =P

Isn't CM:Normandy (or whatever it's called) going to include Commonwealth units? And didn't 12. SS-Panzergrenadier-Division "Hitlerjugend" counterattack the Canadians on D-Day+1? What I'm curious about is how the game will handle simulating the troops of German 'fortress' divisions and/or Ost battalions vis-a-vis 'standard' Germany infantry as well as Fallschirmjäger and Waffen-SS troops.

Am I misinterpreting the simulation, or are Marine infantry (and, for that matter, Stryker infantry too) equipped with some sort of anti-armor grenade? (I don't recall seeing such a type of grenade listed in the field manual....) In one of my many attempts at cracking "USMC The Old City V1" (my company suffered nearly 40% casualties in my one "victory" to date in that scenario), a Marine squad on the 2nd floor of a building spotted a BMP-3 on the street below; then they lobbed half a dozen grenades down onto it, and the BMP just started burning. In playing a meeting engagement between opposing armored recon platoons racing to capture a small farm in mountainous terrain (I forget the name of the scenario), I made the mistake of rushing all my Strykers into the walled enclosure of the farm, leaving my vehicles and troops with hardly any room to maneuver. I dismounted my squads and rushed them into the two buildings for cover before the Syrian BMP-2s arrived. The farm's walled enclosure had only two entrances/exits; the first two BMPs to try entering the enclosure got knocked by one squad's AT4, and a third evidently suffered enough rifle grenade and point-blank 50-cal. fire from one of the Strykers that its crew decided to bail out. I had two of my Strykers pop smoke, and with that concealment I sent two of my squads running to take cover among the trees in which the Strykers too were hiding. As soon as the smoke cleared, the squads had LOS to the fourth BMP; then they rained grenades on it (just a few rifle grenades, as I recall), and it started burning. Is this a case of overoptimistic simulation (which I don't necessarily think it is), or are grenades supposed to be this effective against light armor? (I haven't had occasion to test regular grenades versus actual tanks; in fact, I've only had the game since last Thursday, so I have much to learn yet.)

The current maximum map size is reasonable, considering the maximum number of troops allowable on a map at any one time -- a reinforced platoon per side. However, since ToW is a platoon-level game, the amount of armor on each side in a typical scenario creates an inordinate armor-to-infantry ratio. With no more than a platoon of infantry and a platoon of tanks (four or five), it always feels to me like the infantry platoon is 'standing in' for a larger unit like a company. In the Second World War, the armor-infantry ratio was more like 1:3, with a platoon of tanks working with a company (i.e., three platoons) of infantry, or a company of tanks working with a battalion (i.e., three companies) of infantry.

So many times, in playing a scenario in ToW, my troops wipe out or otherwise rout the enemy infantry and knock out almost all the enemy tanks, but then that last surviving enemy tank just happens to knock out my last surviving AT gun, and then it proceeds to gun down or steamroller all my remaining troops (and in many cases I had suffered relatively light casualties from the enemy assault as a whole). To put it in clearer context: Sure the T-34 was the bane of the Wehrmacht wherever 88s or heavy artillery were not to hand, but there were plenty of instances were German infantry took the initiative (and took advantage of the characteristically poor visibilty from inside a tank) and dealt with T-34s (as well as KV tanks) with grenade bundles, demo charges, or even single grenades tossed into unlocked hatches or thrust down cannon barrels. In ToW, though, there's nothing can do against even light tanks without an undemolished AT gun to man or a Panzerschreck (with ammo) to pick up. Even in the great JSH mod, which provides German infantry with grenade bundles, the geballte Ladungen just bounce off, and even when they explode near the running gear, they don't break the track or anything helpful. What makes this helplessness of infantry vs. tanks really painful is that it's as if tanks have infrared optics -- I have my infantry hide and hold fire, but that darn tank still hunts them down and guns down or steamrollers every last one. And there's nowhere for my troops to go! At least in CMx1 you can flee off the map, conceding the entire map to the enemy but saving your troops (whether they've been decimated or not) from being wiped out. (Of course, in CMx1 tanks have pretty much the same capabilities and limitations as real-life tanks. Tanks in ToW seem unduly quick to suffer a shot-off tread, yet when intact even Tigers are capable of what looks like 40 mph off road, and even the lightest armored vehicle can push over dozens trees in succession and only be slowed down momentarily.) And what if you're willing to sacrifice virtually all your troops (there has to be at least one guy left standing for you to win, or else . . . what happens?) to achieve the scenario's win conditions and you then lose all your troops? You have to do it all over again! (Unless if you have "Ignore Campaign Loss" checked, but that means starting the next scenario with effectively green troops.) I know that casualties are inevitable if you want to have any hope of prevailing, and I'm . . . but if it pains me to see my guys fall while charging across an open area in the course of an actually successful attack, can you imagine how I must feel when the enemy's armored reserve arrives without infantry support and kills my troops to a man?! (*clears throat* Please forgive my outburst. It won't happen again.) That said, panicked units can go beyond the playable map area . . . but even that doesn't necessarily save them from enemy fire or from enemy tanks hunting them down. John Keegan in The Face of Battle (he makes a mind-blowing number of insightful points in that book, though I wish he had included a battle from the Second World War among those he dissected) elucidated the sad truth that troops can be most vulnerable when running away from the enemy. So I don't think it would be reasonable that a "retreat" or "withdraw" battle-ending option would make it as if the troops of each side were teleported consequencelessly off the battlefield. I think conceding a battle should come with a small penalty in casualties, though in the end it saves the bulk of one's force for future battles. ("He who fights and runs away . . .")

One may see tank commanders standing with their upper bodies (from the waist up) out of the hatch while driving along a road in newsreel footage, but in combat a tank commander (at least a smart or experienced one) would have just enough of his head exposed to use binoculars and to otherwise have a clear view of the terrain, the better to spot targets and such. Thus, if a tank commander gets hit (presumably in the head*), he will just drop into the turret, so the giveaway would not likely be a histrionic convulsion of the torso (along with a cry of "they got me!" =P) but rather simply the remaining open of the hatch. I see greater value, not in wiping out any point unit, but rather in using fire from a flank to mislead the enemy about the location of the actual defensive positions. Rather than setting up HMGs facing forward (i.e., in the direction the enemy will presumably be coming from), try facing them up obliquely toward each other -- thus their fields of fire overlap and each will be able to fire on multiple targets in succession without having to rotate any more than a relatively few degrees (as opposed to firing at a unit on the left flank, then rotating 45 degrees to target a unit directly ahead, etc.). *I read somewhere that in a lull in combat Otto Carius (I believe it was him) had just ducked down to light a cigarette(!) when a shell (he figured it was a 122mm) blew away the entire cupola; so his indiscretion actually saved him from getting decapitated! @.@

Apparently some of those contributing to this thread have not played CM:SF, so the resultant discussion is apt to become inordinately speculative. One gamey tactic from CMx1 that will die a horrid death is using crews of knocked-out vehicles as disposable recon units. Indeed, now that borg spotting is not an issue (in CM:SF), the smaller or less powerful the unit or group of units, the more dangerous using them for recon will be. Platoon-strength recon-in-force with Abrams overwatch! Ooo-rah! =P I have played the CM:SF demo (the full version, along with the Marines module, is on its way in the mail =D). Squads cannot change frontage, as far as I know, but in the case of full-size infantry units, assault and anti-tank teams can detach from the main squad as needed. My current favorite little thing about CM:SF (now that I've figured out how to do it) is getting my troops more ammo and grenades in the middle of a scenario. Tactical resupply! I wish such was possible in CMx1; it's always a bummer when a squad makes a name for itself by staving off an entire platoon of enemy troops but then is useless for the rest of the scenario because it has "low ammo". (Come to think of this, I wonder if the not-really-using-all-one's-ammo thing is included in CM:SF like it was simulated in CMx1?) I've downloaded and played the free demo version of Firefight. I took note of the website's comparison of the game to Close Combat (which I have not played but have heard much about). The 2D Fieseler-Storch's-eye view was for me quite a change from CMx1, but the mechanics of the game and how it (the one scenario playable in the demo version) played out earned my respect. Also, I would have been all too tempted to think "Why can't I do such and such?", etc., had I not read a review of the game on its website which pointed out the wisdom in what the game has left out as well as in what it has included. What I found most interesting about it (to the extent that the one scenario I played is representative of the game) is that, whereas in CMx1 you in effect play not only as the overall commander of your forces but as the leader of each and every unit, in Firefight you play strictly as the on-map commander (i.e., the captain); so unlike in CMx1, you can't issue orders to units which are 'out of command' -- if, say, a rifle squad is not close enough to issue orders to (by whatever means), they will act on their own, and you must bring your command (HQ) unit (closer) to the unit to which you want to give orders. This enforcement of command and control prevented me from trying to pull off tactics which are gamey in a game and would be dangerous or at least irresponsible in real life, such as sending a single squad in a wide flanking maneuver around an entire village. (Sure, a platoon commander could order one of his squads to go all the way around the village to hit the enemy from behind, but then that squad would be where the rest of the platoon couldn't support them, and they might get hit in their own flank on the way there.) Have you played it, Vark? If so, what do you think of it? But I digress . . . Wait a minute . . . "defending against vastly out numbered forces"?