LUCASWILLEN05

Brings to mind a story about Frank Chadwick, designer of the miniature wargames rules Command Decision. With the 15 minute turns of the first three editions of the rules, the fast movement rates, the double move allowance on metalled roads and double movement allwance granted by use of the Travel MMarch order some poor fool once asked Chadwick if he could take that jeep straight down the road, through the enemy position and off tghe end of the table in one turn. Chadwick's reply "No.But you can try!"

If you don't know enemy location the best course of action is to use the Hunt Command. Best to lead with a single company or even a single platoon wshose job it is to contact the enemy and set up a base of fire aroun which your reserves can begin to manouvre. Generally I think it is a bad idea to lead with tanks in late war games as the enemy are likely to have anti tank weapons of all kinds which your hapless armour are going to blunder into if you send them in ahead. Best to deploy the tanks to overwatch positions to support your infantry who will try to idenify and destroy enemy anti tank guns opening a route for the armour. Otherwise you risk ending up wih smashed and burning tanks and those dreaded columns of smoke blackening the horizon.

We do sometimes get early intel of varying strengh which to me simulates any pre battle recon that may haave been done employing various assets. But this is not the same situation your squad ad platoon commander is likely to experience durig the battle itself. Suppose one of your platoons is approaching a village you believe is held by the enemy in unknown strength. Given the (lack of) information you have you feel it would be too risky to send the whole platoon so you send a squad instead while the rest take up overwatch posiions. The squad is able to use a covered approach but, again, you wish to be cautious and not risk a whole squad. So instead you split off a scout team while the rest of the squad cover them..You end up risking only a couple of men to get you the information you wanted. It does cost you time however. Alternativey you could use the Hunt command which stops the advance for indivuidual units when they come under fire. The downside to that is you come under heavy fire at the worst time/place taking heavier casualties than you might have. At the end of the day you need to make your own decision in regard of the best approach. Naturally, when a firefight begins you want your squads together as far as possibe and co-operating. The deploymeent of your whole force (eg battalion or company is important here. You need to decide how many of your manueveer units (platoons, companies) yo want in the front line when you contact the enemy and how much manuever flexibilty you want at that stage. The more companies you have i reserve the more manuever options you are likely to have. If you have a four company batalion for instance a two up, two ack configuration is probably ideal although there are other options.

I agree with you Jock which is wht I, perasonally would be cautious about changing the battlev duration. Plus of course the wider issues of realism given your superiors require that you complete your missin within a given time frame. It might be your plan that is at fault (perhaps you are much more cautios than the scenario designer thought you would be. Or perhaps the scenario designer is at fault in not allowing sufficient time. In whixch case the AI plans also need reconsidering.

In gebneral my practice is to keep squads together using the Assualt order a lot to maximise firepower and manuever. But there might be times when splitting into teams is a better (less risky) option. What you do depends on the immediate tactical situation. For instancce I could use the Assualt Team option to lay down covering fire using, th BAR, the Grenade Launcher and half a dozen rifles while a four man assault team mount the assualt itself. Or I might want to recon a position withou sending the whole squad and jus send a two man scout team instead to check to see if that village is occupied

If you really feel that strongly that the time allocated to you for a scenario by the scenario designer is too little (or indeed too much) there is nothing stopping yo from going int the scenario editor, loading the scenario data file, selecting the data option under mission and simply changing the length of battle o what you think the duration of the battle should be. If you are only playing the AI there is really no problem. My personal view however is that your mission is being conducted in co-orsdination with those of other units off your map. If you fail to accomplish your objectives by the time specifed by the scenario designer (in the role of your superior officer) that is going to have a severely negative impact on the wider battle plan. Just like what happens in the work place when someone fails to meet a deadline. Someone else was depending on that piece of work to do their job and since they now do not have the information they needed they now cannot do your job. Similarly your battlegroup failed to clear the position you were supposed to clear in the scenario on time and took heavier losses than anticipated. Brigade and Division battle plans are now badly screwed up and they might well have to commit reserves to do the job you were supposed to have done. Which means hose units cannot now lay their part in the wider battle plan as orginally intended.

Is this an attemt at using rverse psychology on Battlefront instead of the usual cries of "is it ready yet?":D

Quite hard to see out of vision slits but that scout platoon car deseved what they got for being so myopic! Send it to Spec Savers as an idea for their next advert - "They shoud have gone to Spec Savers!":D

June 22 0300

Battlefront know what happens right about now. Releasing the monkeys is probably as good a euphemism as any

Speaking of Poland any chance of Combat Mission Fall Weiss? We all want to invade Poland don't we. Actually they put up one hell of a fight so, joking apart, I really think BF need to do some early war for a change!

It's the silence before the Red Thunder "Storm" What we have not had as yet are he usual cries of "Is it ready yet?" Or perhaps I speak oo soon

And what is the "Hug Cannon?" Oneof Hitler's secret weapons perhaps? You know the 88L71 Hug Cannon!!!

For 1944 there is always the Carpathians for the Russian Front although just a little later. Speaking of Italy as we were earlier take a look at the German propagana on the left hand side http://nuke.montecassinotour.com/THEBATTLESOFCASSINO/tabid/54/language/de-DE/Default.aspx

Arguably economics is what theUkraine crisis is really about.I seems the Russian ecoomy is not in great shape andall those Easter Ukranian gas fields would certainly help. Plus of course the political role of GAZPROM in supporting Putin politically. This may, and hopefully will, remain a political and economicsstruggle but shooting wars have started over this in te recent past. The First Gulf War 1990-1 being a classic example, I would argue tha the complexities of the modern world makes situations like this evermore difficult and potentialy highly dangerous as well.

Thanks Steve. I have also PM'd z1812in case he has certain professional issues. Anyway, moving on Steve raise a number of excellent points. The immediate problem however is going to be deterring Russia from invading Eastern Ukraine (the Russian speaking magority and the location of most of the gas fields) It is likely to be the gas fields that Puti really wants for economic reasons - the Russian economy might not be in as good a shape as we thought. Since Russia already has effectively annexed Crimea it is going to be hard o get them out. Economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure might work in the long term and Putin certainly cannot feel rewarded for his actions. If he is then, like Hitler in the late 1930s he will feel emboldeed to ake further actions 1 He creates issues in Eastern Ukraine to justify sending the military in. In fact already happening at least in regard to the early stages 2 If Putin is allowed to get away with that then who is next? Probably the rest of Ukraie. Putin ca certainly manufacture a suitable crisis and takes over some of the best agricultural land in Europe. 3 After that, assumig the West continues a policy of appeasement the the next victims of an ever more emboldened Putimight be Moldova and Roumania, he Baltic States or Poland. Who are NATO members at which point Article 4 comes into play and we go to war with Russia The correct strategy for the Wes is to deter Putin in the way the old Soviet Union was deterred in the Cold War Now it has been argued that Putin is not Hitler. And there is truth uin this. He is not Hitler yet But, if left unchecked as Hitler was he may very well become one. I think Steve and I both agree that Crimea is a done deal for now at least. But do we draw the line at the rest of Ukraine. If we do NATO membership for Ukraine might well be the best way of preventing more agression from Putin as well as punishing him for his actions over Crimea. The question that must now be decided is where the West draws the lie and how firm we are going to be about that. However, the lesson of the 1930s is that the earlier you take such firm action, and, at this point that action does not have to involve going to war However the longer we leave it the more likely war is, It is also likely that war will be worse than the one you might have fought earlier. Indeed, at this point Putin can still be deterred, In which case there is time for Steve's strategy to work as a similar strategy worked during the Cold War Si vis pacem para bellum. If you want peace prepare for war

Welcome to the board. Unlike several people here I have no military experience to whom I would obviously defer to on professional matters. Hoever I am a keen military history buff qualified to degree level in history and politics.

So take the battle siuatiion as a basis for a battle agais the Syria Republican Guard. Give the Syrians T-90s or the latest T-72s. The US will probably still win so to make a challenging game of it for he US player you will ned to think carefully about the victory conditions of which there is, as you know, quite a range. With some thought you can turn it into a challeging scenaroi. On the battlefield the Syrians will probably still lose but, with carefully calculated victory conditions they can still win in game terms.

Without having Spaeter's history in front of me right now I think tha action was fought in July or early August so should fall wihi the likely two to three month time frame likely to be covered in the original release. he same goes for actions during the Lvov Sandomir operation though we are not likely to see Roumanians in the original release.however, sice the Roumanian amy collapsed during the opening days of that offensive the lack of them in the initial release won't matter too much. Still plenty of Germans around.

Yes. I think you will find that is a problem with many Russian Front sources. You can at least use a source like Hinze to provide background for a conjectural scenario takng place on a specific date in a specific area. There is plenty in Hinze to come up with something of that nature. There are also of course a number of German unit histories although, by eir nature, hse are going to be one sided ansdd it may bwe hard to find a Russian source covering the same action. Because of the nature of Russian Frot historiography it may often be a case of doing the best we can with what we have to set up an action based on historical events but accepting the Russian forces involved are likely to be conjecture. We may know 3rd Guard Tank Corps was in the area on a particular day and 5th Panzer Division fought a battle there on that day. We might be lucky enough to have some details from a German dvisional history. That however is probably all we are going to get to work with.

As requested by z1812 my qoute of his comments in Post 87 I wish to make it clear that his qoute was in response to the original comments of Steve (Battlefront Admnistrator) in ost 84. There was no intention to in any way misrepresent z1812 or his personal political views as he is clearly not responsible, in any way for the qouted comment in question.

There are sources such as Rolf Hinze's book East Front Drama 1944 which provides a very ice and quite detailed account of the German perspective for the battles of July 1944 as Model fought to close the hole in the German front caused by Bagration. Given the circumstances detailed tactical information of the sort we would ideally like is harder to find. There is however a detailed account by Glantz of the first Soviet Invasion of Roumania in Spring 1944 that could generate some useful ideas.

However a big stumbling block would be the Eastern Ukranian gasfields as can be seen on the map in the link. I suspect that the crisis is really about who has access to those gasfields. Putin clearly wants to have those gas fields most of which are in the area occupied by those etnic Russians either n the Crimea or he Donbass region http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-26495378

Hence the suggested dual citizenship.

True but, short of a war we are going to have to deal with the facts on the ground. The Russians have the Crimea and are not likely to be shifted from it without a waragainst a nuclear power. Whether Crimea is worth that risk is doubtful to say the least, The rest of Ukraine may be another matter. Putin would be well advised to negotiate on that and could offer some diplomaatic concessios on the Vrimea in return for a better deal for Eastern Ukraine's Russians. For istancwe, as I suggested earlier ethnic Russians and Crimean Tartars could be allowed dual citizenship of both Russia and Ukraine or move to either country if they prefer