LUCASWILLEN05

Artillery of course is also vulnerable to air, counter battery and quite possiblt to UAVs as well.

Here we are talkinng about tanks as a target. Field artillery is but one means of delivery. Infantry amd UAVs are another means. UAVs are of course relatively cheap and disposable which means you can send them into more dangrous environmennts. Another advantage UAVs have is their small size. And there is no reason why they could not be employed en masse.

Certainly you could do that. Or something very similar could be dne with UAVs which, already are being equipped with ATGMs. And, unlike artillery, UAVs have the technology to enable the controller to see the target themselves. Artillery still requires someone or something too observe the target.

I am pretty sure most of those were out of service by 1944 although the Germans would have been pressing anything they could get their hands on in 1945. These would have been individual vehicles and obsolete to be kind. Howeer I reallyy want to see Kursk as the next Russian Front family. Very unsubtle hint to BF

My guess would be early March. Wonder if BF would agree to run a sweepstake. Free copy to whoever makes the most accurate guess as to the release date. I wish! But it could add some fun to the usual round of "is it ready!"

Supposing someone invented an ATGM like Javelin, still easily infantry portable but capable of firing large volumes of Anti tank missiles (either individual missiles or a pod that releases multiple missiles in the air. These could be used en masse to overwhelm the oint defences of whole tank formations and mount lethal top atacks on the top armour. I can see something like that being too difficult/expensive to counter and thus killing off hetank, at least as we know it. The future tank replacemnt mightbe light and high speed, relying on that and, hi tech defence systems stealth technology instead of heavy armour fr protection. And who kows, by that time it might be possible to employ lasers or similar beam weapons on the battlefield. This tank "replacemebnt" might still be like a tank in functional terms but may ve able to operate in theair as well as on the ground or very close to grundd level. I can see something like this eventually replacing the tank. However, I do't see this happeing in the near future. Perhaps during the next extended great power conflict It could well be decades away at least.

It might breach your "operational security" Or you could start posting disinformation for deception purposes!

Fulda Gap would be a great Combat Mission game. Just think of all the Red Storm Rising scenarios we could game, Sergeant McCall's tank battle,, the various Battles of Alfeld... Then there is Larry Bond's Cauldron. If BF produce Germans and Poles we could pretty much game that with BS:D

Yes I have seen units hiding in shell craters plenty of times. I expect it would provide some minimum cover.

Panzermike re your earlier post I could be evil enough to suggest it might have been BF's Secretarial Pool

I am rooting for the "good guys" here. Point the Russian Bear back in the direction of Moscw and let the next stop be Red Square! A lttle "regime change" might be in order:D

It would be a really great feature to have in future BF games so you can develop a good overall situational awareness more easily. Not essential of course, just a "very nice to have"

I'd love to see it before Cristmas but it migh be inhumane to expec this of BF staff Besides our bank balances might not cope with the extra Christmas related strain

In reality it would take a couple of hours to dig a foxhole and I don't see this being done under fire Maybe some sort of shell scrape might be more believable. However thre could well be coding issues connected with this.

I think the tank may well be in a long, slow decline like that of cavalry duruing the late 19th Century considering the new ATGM technologies whch may eventually become too expensive and/or difficult to counter. However I don't see the tank becoming obsolete in the short or even medium term. It may well not happen until a future big great power conflict (one of global proportions perhaps) and even then the right technolgies and circumstances woud need to be in place to ensure the death of the tank as we know it. Rathe like cavalry was essentially rwendered obsolee during the course of WW1. An extended conventional conflict of this nature migh well see a replacement weapons system. Even then taks would likely remain a feature on the battlefield for some time after that.

Those autumn 1944 battles definately need to be covered, either as part of the Bulge Family (Bulge would therefore start in October 1944) or as the last Normandy module. Either would be fine with me as long as the Siegfried Line Battles ae covered in the near future. Given that the Volksgrenadier Divisions were important in he Siegfried Line battles I can see a good case for including that period in the Bulge family. The family would then run from October 1944 to May 1845. The first of the family might last from October to Decembr 1944 ad the second covering January to May 1945 introducing formations such as the 1945 OE and new equimpent on the Allied side such as the Pershing and the Germa jets.

Just a small point, noting the proximity of the battlefield to a place called Chernobyl isn't the area going to be a tad, well, radioactive, But then that's why you have NBC suits! Just saying

I like the idea of including hese personal stories in the AAR. Reads likethe late Tom Clancy or Larry Bond at their best. Will these guys survive he coming battle? One question out of curiosity. The gridded map. Is ths a ew game feaure we are going to be seeing or is it sometihing you prduced? I look forward to seeing how this battle goes.

I recently met a man who served in the Scots Guards during the Falkands War. I am informed enough to know that he must therefre have fought at Mount |Tumbledown, smething I knew better than to ask about because I am aware it must have been a horriffic expereience and questions might give rise to bad memories of the battle. However, I also found out that the man shares my interest in wargaming. As a hobby wargaming can and does stimulate an nterest of or investigation into a whole range of other issues. It can, among ther things leasd us to look more deeply into current affairs such as the current conflict over Ukraine. We can look into the causes of the conflict by being aware of the history involved, the ecnomic issus (raw materials and industry in Eastern Ukraine etc) Wargamers can be, and often are much better informed than others. I have run into some real idiots in debates on Huffington Post for example. They are virulently anti American, blaminfg the crsis on "US Imperialism - there is to them no such thing as Russian Imperialism, no such thing as the Eurasian Union project - and Putin/Russia are "competely innocent" of any wrongdoing at all)Actually it soon becomes clear they don't know the first thing either about the crisis or about the dangers it poses to world peace. Nor do they recognise how the lessons of the 1930s can be applied to today's situation. Politican rant over - i ids just there to lllustrate a point :-)

Just up for information purposes Mikey. Not for political discussion as per the forum rules

An interesting security analysis of Putin's geopolitical objectives http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/06/russias-eurasian-union-could-endanger-the-neighborhood-and-us-interests

Wargames teach you something about war and may well lead you to research some of the political background and other related issues, In my experience wargamers are often better informed about these issues than many civillians. On other forums I have cme accross some real idiots who, as well as being virulantly anti |American obviousl don't know the first thing about how global geopolitics (they often don't know what this word even means) or about how war & conflict works.

You are never going to get a realistic simuylation of war and, even if we could do it , it would not be desireable to do so. We can havwe reasonably authentic combat results falling within a range of possible paramers. Outr troops can become pinned and fire ieffectively or even run away. We would not want to actually experience any of this in rrealiy which is why our wargame is, at best, a authetic simulation of some of the reality without the fear, the mud and the death/destruction f a real war. And, in the context of BS nobody is going to launch the nukes at some point which might well happenif this war were ought for real. Essentially what we are doing is gamming a reasonably authentic simulation of tactical combat.

To be fair I am a Russia Front fan first and foremost so would like to see that 1943 - 4 family sooner raher than later. However I would want to see Red Thuunder progressed further first inrducing SS, Romanians, Hungarians etc, taking the war into Eastern Europe, covering the autumn and perhaps the winter of 1944 - 5,peraps just up to the end of December. The final module would then cover the Soviet January 1944 offensive and the final fighting for Berlin and Hungary/Austria.