Broadsword56

Thanks for the links, Byrden! That last link is a great photo -- one I'd never seen before You can clearly see the the "saddle" where the little track goes up through the hills. This is where the US outflanked the right "shoulder" of Hill 609. That's this scenario. Only that little shoulder of Hill 609 appears on my map. If you look to the left you see how steep Hill 609 was on its left side, and that's where those cliffs you show in the closeup would have been. Glad to see there's still some interest in this map/scenario project. Thanks again to Snake Eye, who has coded some terrific AI for the Germans. I had a solo test going (US vs the German AI) and was about 40 min into the scenario when I stopped -- I want to wait for the new CMBN 2.01 MG lethality improvements to reach CMFI and see how they affect Flanking The Fortress, becuse this scenario has HUGE open and long fields of fire for both sides' MGs. The Yanks a have a long and exposed movement to contact to reach Hill 531, so they could be slaughtered if the MGs become more dangerous than they already are. I'm also going to add a lot more offmap artillery for the US (divisional arty) so they can keep much more smoke going for a much longer time. Without continuous smoke cover on the approach, this attack is suicide for the US. Now that I've tried to replicate the battle I'm amazed that the Americans captured 531 with such light casualties. It was a real feat of arms, so no wonder it's still studied today in military classrooms.

I see your points And when it comes to game setups, whatever floats your boat. But, given what we now know about this issue, I'd rather have a house rule for my own battles to fill in what I might see as a realism gap in a particular situation, than to trash the game and developers or demand they do the impossible to "fix" it.

I'd want to hear more specifics of the situation you're imagining, but I'm thinking about the raised portions of Hell's Highway or whatever road is used as "Club Route" into Arnhem... Four minutes for someone in authority to see the problem, issue the order for a blazing wrecked vehicle to be pushed off the road, under enemy fire, with its ammo likely cooking off all the while? I'd be skeptical of that. (If only AAA could respond that well in the peacetime 21st Century!) Maybe pushing a still-flaming wreck off the road with a regular tank might have been considered too dangerous anyway -- XXX Corps had dozer tanks for purposes like that. But, given Murphy's Law, that dozer tank is likely never to be in the place it needs to be when a wreck happens, and probably has to fight its way through a congested column of traffic to reach the wreck site. All of which is my way of saying wreck recovery/pushoffs/dozer tanks are something properly beyond the time and scale of CMBN. Do whatever you like in your games, but in mine I expect I'll be using a "wrecks block roads and single-lane bridges for the duration of the battle" house rule for Market-Garden (depending on the specific terrain and situation of course.)

Awesome. One can really see why this was key terrain in the battle. The horizons look particularly good with these map views -- whose horizon mod are you using?

It would be more of a serious flaw once the series gets to Market-Garden. How do we reproduce the tactical limitations of Hell's Highway if we have a raised road and the Allies can just sail smoothly northward through any wrecked tank or vehicle in the way? One could argue that the clipping represents pushing the vehicle off the road. But that would have taken more time, during which the traffic would back up and remain vulnerable to enemy fire. The limitations of the single road in M-G are as distinctive to that campaign as the bocage was to The Normandy campaign. So I hope it can be fixed. If not, I'd play M-G with a house rule that a vehicle getting wrecked on a raised road blocks movement for the rest of the battle. And raised roads would have marsh or heavy woods tiles (without trees) along the shoulders to prevent vehicles moving off them.

They'd make a nice pairing with US 10th Mountain Division troops -- although I don't know if the mountain infantry regiments had any particular TO&E or kit that wouldn't already be in the game by that point. Does anyone know? The fact that their battles came in 1945 might require some additions/changes, I suppose. (of course they had skis, but they didn't use them in Italy and I'm sure CMFI doesn't plan to simulate skiing.)

You may also be plotting your movement orders in overly long segments with too few waypoints. It's not possible to play CMBN well by sitting up on a high view, drawing long movement paths, and trusting that the tac AI will find the most tactically intelligent movement paths. Get down to soldier's eye level and get a good look at the terrain, and plot a waypoint everywhere the unit needs to change direction -- at least in situations where enemy units or fire may be encountered.

As it says on the news page: "The Gustav Line module depicts July 9, 1943 to June 4, 1944. "

The buried Panther turret bunker was a great surprise. Where did the Germans use them in Italy? Once we have the module, I think I may have to take a new look at those NA scenarios I was developing -- El Guettar (now that we'll have M10 TDs) and the Hill 609 battle now that we'll have Fallschirmpioneers. I just hope the maps will still work OK after the upgrade. Crete also becomes a real option, with CW forces vs. FJ.

Great progress on the map. I can almost hear the cows mooing and the church bell tolling. One small recommendation for when you get to your finer detailing stage: Your bocage looks too uniform and treeless. Consider sticking the occasional low bocage section among the high ones, and vice, versa, to give it a more natural variation. Don't forget to insert bocage gaps here and there, and at logical entrances and exits to fields. Do players a favor and mark most of them with a dirt or mud tile. And don't forget to put some scattered vegetation right in the bocage line -- trees, bushes, etc.

Thanks -- but you don't have to re-create it from scratch, you can experience it yourself because we posted a DL link to the Hamel Vallee game files: https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0B7QDFjCzWAgybm5pZzZfU0JoNGs/edit?pli=1 It was created in an older verison of CMBN, though, so while it will run, you are likely to see some uniform weirdness and other visual oddities. But you can at least run it and see the terrain and the forces, etc. We didn't post a DL link to La Luzerne, because it too was from the older game and we weren't sure if others would find it fun to play. The La Luzerne map was the first I'd made that had sunken basements as important features of the town.

Yes, 3:1 is a good rule fo thumb for an attack to have a good probability of success. I'd say 6:1 if it's against a fortified position. But I think these general assumptions scare many CM players away from situations that can actually be more fun and more fluid than they might have appeared if you looked only at the force ratios or OOB points. A good map, lots of dug-in positions, and a creative use of "soft" factors can all serve to put play balance into a battle where the force ratios are quite lopsided. In fact, one of the reasons I really like playing CMBN with a boardgame op layer is all the fascinating, oddball battles and situations that it generates. These can be surprisingly fun, even when the terms of battle might make a QB player blanch. Just to mention a few examples from the operational-tactical Saint-Lo campaign that sburke and I recently concluded: July 16, 1944, Hamel Vallee, battlefield 1120m x 1120m, rural with heavy bocage (an AAR of this was posted): US force (attacking): Infantry Battalion (100% of TO&E, Green, +2 Leadership, normal motivation, 1 company Fit and 2 companies Weakened) + Sherman company + Stuart Company + Engineer platoon + 12 x 105mm offmap artillery at full supply German force (defending): Panzergrenadier battalion (60% of TO&E, veteran experience, -2 leadership, Poor motivation, 2 companies unfit, 2 weakened); StuG III company; 2 x 88 Flak, sniper teams, foxholes for everyone, 12 x 105mm offmap artillery with "adequate" supply, 3x FO teams, and plenty of TRPs. It looked like a bet worth taking for the US, on paper. The Germans were not only outnumbered and outgunned but the "soft factors" for them were horrible, simulating the effects of an all-night prebattle bombardment by divisional and corps artillery. But the result was a gain of two or three hedgerows, nearly 40% US casualties, and the attack fizzled out, resulting in a German victory. This seemed like very realistic outcome and played in a fashion eerily similar to what we've read about the bocage battles. (The situation was resolved operationally the following day, as the Yanks sat back and called in an air strike that wiped out the defending Germans -- also quite realistic, showing how the Allies so often could lose the little battles and still win the war) 17 July 1944 -- La Luzerne, battlefield 800m x 1200m, mostly urban (ruined and fortified village): US Force (attacking): Infantry Battalion (100% TO&E, veteran experience, normal motivation, 0 leadership, full supply, but all 3 companies "unfit" due to a long prebattle approach march and having to go straight into a hasty attack); 3 Sherman companies; M8 Assault Gun platoon, Engineer platoon, 3 x FOs, 12 x 105mm offmap artillery with max ammo. German Force: 1 Panzergrenadier company (60% of TO&E, weakened, normal motivation. +1 leadership, adequate supply); 1 StuG III platoon; 2 x 75mm AT guns; 1 sniper team; 1 Pioneer platoon; 1 FO team, 12 x 105mm offmap artillery with adequate supply; and LOTS of fortification goodies: 40 barbed wire, 10 sandbag walls, 10 trenches, 10 mixed mines, 5 AP mines, 5 AT mines, 6 wooden MG bunkers, 3 wooden standard bunkers, 10 foxholes, 10 trenches, and many TRPs. Result: The US did win, but only late in the day and only after an extremely bitter fight and 29% casualties in the infantry battalion (15% casualties among the asset units). The Germans had only moderate casualties but chose to surrender after they lost their last StuG and their final defenses within the town were collapsing.

Quick! Get outside and record some scrunchy snow sounds while it's still wintertime...

Since we're on the subject of East Front TO&Es, I'd be curious to know how far different the German and Soviet units and equipment would have been in Spring 1943 vs. the Bagration period? I realize that 1941 and 1942 would be too great a difference because those years were before the massive Soviet shakeups and equipment improvements that preceded the final capture of Kharkov (spring '43) and then Kursk (summer '43). But would Spring '43 be too far from Summer '44 to pull off using what's likely to be in the Bagration module we're going to get? Fore example, Would MK III tanks for the Germans be totally gone by summer of '44? It's always easier to modify the game OOBs to remove things, since we can't add anything new. So I'm just wondering how close a little subtraction tweaking could make the CM 1944 forces in the East come close to what would have been likely on a battlefield in Spring '43.

Oh, for crying out loud. Really? Does every thread about future modules have to degenerate into a CW vs. Yanks pi**ing contest or a neo-Nazis vs. Stalinists reunion?

+1 to that. Although of course anyone who takes the time to make a map is free to take whatever artictic license or shortcuts he or she wants...just disclose it in designer's notes or on the forum if it's historical or not. And if it is historical, the 1946 aerials are readily available, and we have overlay capability now, so there's really no excuse not to use them. One of my favorite moments in mapping is always when I place the 1946 image as a jpg overlay on Google Earth, get it aligned just so to match the scale and features of today, and then flip the "transparency" slider back and forth quickly to watch the landscape travel in time and back again. Amazing how much bocage is gone now, and how much more urbanized and suburbanized these areas are now too.

Wonderful! One tip: When you get into the fine detailing, don't forget to liberally apply weeds and brush along fencelines, bocage, roadsides, edges of fields, etc. People sometimes overlook this and the maps come out looking too clean and manicured.

It's a scene from "Springtime for Hitler: The Movie" and the panzer chorus sings* CHORUS: Look, it's springtime LEAD TENOR STORMTROOPER: Winter for Poland and France CHORUS AND STORMTROOPER: Springtime for Hitler and Germany! CHORUS: Springtime! Springtime! Springtime! Springtime! Springtime! Springtime! Springtime! Springtime! STORMTROOPER: Come on, Germans Go into your dance! *Actual lyrics from "The Producers."

I think the kind of warfare your quote describes is very recognizable to any of us who have played CMBN in historically accurate conditions -- that last bit is important because if you take 100% fit units with elite experience, high morale and +2 leadership, buy them weapons they rarely would have had, and play with "balanced" sides on a fictional map not based on any actual place in Normandy... you've got a totally different game experience. Not a worse one, mind you -- just very different. Historical setups aren't always fun as a game. But I think they will show you what the real-world troops faced in the bocage. The only glaring omission, I think, is the game's inability to let the Germans create a true bocage defense -- digging and tunneling right into the hedgerows as they did. We can't camouflage AT guns and defensive works realistically either, so if anything the real-life Americans probably had a much harder time than we do in making successful attacks.

BFC's focus, rightly, has been on the realistic tactical challenge of combined arms warfare. I see it as the PC incarnation of the classic hex-and-counter board wargames, ASL, etc. I think it's great that we have a game family that occupies this particular niche. On the PC, there's a continuum that starts with the totally abstracted, bloodless and chesslike experience of games like Panther's Conquest of the Agean and Battles from the Bulge, and culminates in the adrenaline-soaked, immersive real-time shooters like ArmA2 with all the blood and wounding mods installed. One could argue that everything from chess to pro football to CMBN to Call of Duty all simulate war, to varying degrees. Real war is always hell. But IMHO it's an endless and inconclusive philosophical argument to declare that any a war *game* at given point on that continuum is immoral. I'd submit that in the end, the morality or immorality of wargaming lies not with the game, but with the player. Only you know your motives for booting up that particular game again and again, and where the emotional payoff really is for you. Even if CMBN had flaming soldiers dropping and rolling in horrifying fidelity, I'd probably avoid seeing it because I'm more interested in the tactical decision-making or seeing the realistic uniforms or the sheer spectacle of a battalion moving out. But if you get your main thrill from watching the biggest fireballs or goriest casualties, then you have to look into your own soul and ask why. And yet...we all know that tug of voyeurism when driving past a car wreck scene -- morbidly curious to see something, afraid we might, and ashamed that we've looked. Maybe it's just the basic human need to think, "Thank heaven it wasn't me." Bottom line: If the realism of a graphically realistic combat event in a wargame makes you think "war is hell," then good. But if you stare at that same event and think, "LOL look at that sucka scream and burn! I could watch that replay all day!" then I think you need to take a step back and ask yourself some serious questions. To be sure, some mass-market shooter videogame makers are marketing to the "LOL" crowd and exploiting the graphic aspects for that reason. To me that's immoral. But just because a wargame uses graphic realism doesn't necessarily make the game itself immoral. It depends on why those aspects are there and how they're handled. It's a lot like the debate over sex in movies. Just because a movie might contain scenes that realistically and graphically depict sex, is it porn film? It could be porn or it could be a great love story. Are the filmmakers deliberately appealing to what courts call "prurient interest?" Is there any redeeming social value? Would a reasonable person in that community consider it porn? No one has ever solved this once and for all -- hence the endless debates, rating systems, etc.

Yes, and that raises another argument for not making CM -- even with flames added -- any more graphically violent than it already is: If you make a game more creepy, you attract more players who are creeps. Then the user base becomes creepier, as well as the climate on this forum. The saner users get turned off and drift away, until all that's left are the bottom-dwellers. Eventually the game company might find itself compelled to cater more and more to the creeps just to stay in business.

Splendid, benpark! Can't wait to see them.

I notice you use long, unbroken "Quick" commands for your British infantry in those initial turns. I'm assuming that they must have started the battle in perfectly "fit" condition because -- even then -- in my experience those continuous rushes across two or more fields would have my troops "tired" or worse by then.

Jolly good, benpark!

+1 to the requests for someone giving some modding love to CW uniforms for 2.0, especially the foliage helmets.