Broadsword56

I agree with you completely, Schultzie. But unfortunately, anyone who wants to try to create a playable grand tactical level to work with CMBN, using a battalion-level board wargame (as I'd like to do), must address these two questions in some way: 1. How do casualty-reduced battalions at the end of a CMBN battle get translated back into the boardgame (i.e., at what point does a certain level of casualties cause it to suffer a cohesion step loss)? 2. How do battalions in a "reduced" cohesion state in the boardgame get translated into CMBN factors when making an OOB for a tactical battle? It certainly can be done; the only issues are how to abstract it, and how realistic the effect of the translation might be when applied in either direction. Testing it is probably the only way to really find out. But I'm so impressed by the depth of knowledge here on these forums that I always like to ask for all the help and info I can.

I always wanted to go to those SPI tests, but my parents wouldn't let me go into the city at night (I was in my early teens then too -- I think the fact that they called them game "orgies" had something to do with it). Had to content myself with my bimonthly game/magazine fix through the early 70s...I think I spent more time setting the games up and studying them then I actually did playing them, for lack of live opponents. Thank heaven for Cyberboar, the web, and Battlefront's CMBN! Glad to see y'all here.

Among US units in Normandy in the St. Lo Bocage campaign, very few of the original men who landed on Omaha Beach were still in the rifle companies by the time St. Lo fell in mid-July. So on that time scale, the Bocage casualty rates may have been as great or greater than the 3 para regiment you cite. But how would 60% casualties over 9 or 6 weeks of intense combat compare to casualty levels on the CMBN battle scale of just a few hours? That's really the question I was posing at the start of the thread. As days go by, replacements can come in and maybe even some parts of a regiment could rotate into reserve. But I'd expect 60% losses to be far more devastating to unit cohesion if they happened in an hour or two. So a lot depends on how fast they happen.

Thanks Sergei. Do you make your grid 8m x 8m so it corresponds to the tiles in CMBN? Just wondering...

I must say, after reading the manual now, I'm completely blown away by the thoroughness and thoughtful design of the map editor! The contour drawing feature for elevations is a fantastic addition and a huge timesaver. The only thing I could have wanted that I don't see (or might have missed in the manual) is any way to import an image to use as a tracing layer reference -- hugely important if one is trying to reproduce an actual place and get the elevation contours/terrain types/objects placed where they need to go. Too bad...

I'm probably in the minority, but I try never to play as Germans, as a matter of principle. Always prefer Allies.

Also, I when I read about the Normandy bocage battles, I see participants say over and over again that such terrain, each battalion fought its own separate little war. Units routinely got lost, turned around. One unit could be just a few hundred yards from another unit and have no idea the other unit was there. So, as Steve says, why presume there's an enemy unit off the mapedge ready to engage you on the flank? Seems more likely to me that he'd be occupied with his own battle, and even if not engaged he probably wouldn't even see you.

If you've got more sources to add to the discussion, let's hear them -- No one's interested in verbal duels here or scoring ego points. I've got no personal interest in any particular percentage figure, from any particular source. I'm just trying to get to a useful abstraction for this particular game design purpose, and inviting anyone interested in passing the time with a constructive idea to join in.

Aha -- thank you Ryujin. So we'll have to play CMBN awhile to see this for ourselves, but it's sounding to me like (all other things being equal) maybe 60% casualties CMBN could approximate 15% casualties real-world. So, when I use Balkoski's St Lo boardgame as an op level, for example, one cohesion hit to a battalion reduces it, and the second cohesion hit eliminates it. If I play out a battle in CMBN, then at battle's end any unit having lost 60% casualties would go back to the operational game with a step loss, I guess. And then maybe 80%-100% becomes the level for 2 step losses. What do you think?

See my post #49 referencing Joseph Balkoski's recent e-mail on this discussion page -- he qualifies the statement, making clear that it's not any kind of hard-and-fast rule. But it's been a good starting point for discussion: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=95693&page=5 (This is his life's work, and he's probably studied it more than anyone)

I kind of expected a sensible answer like that, and naturally we're talking gross generalizations here -- but let me try again, putting it in the negative... In CMBN, will we possibly see units having suffered 15% casualties continuing to fight effectively? 20% 30%? 40%? At what level of casualties would the game engine likely say "no way they're still able to fight"?

I know CMBN doesn't model unit cohesion directly; just that the "soft" factors like Leadership, Morale, Experience, Fatigue, etc., all can change during combat and affect a unit's ability to continue as an effective fighting force. But can the designers share this with us: At what casualty level (a percentage of losses) would a typical unit in CMBN no longer be able to keep fighting effectively? I assume the casualties alone don't determine this, but that they trigger a number of other decreases in the "soft factors." Still, a ballpark idea? Those of us who are trying to translate between larger-scale boardgames (which model cohesion hits more than just losses of personnel/guns/vehicles) and CMBN tactical battles are discussing this a lot lately. Experts in the field say 15% casualties in one day's fighting did enough damage to the cohesion of a US unit in Normandy to make it have to stop fighting, pull back, and rest for a day or so. But we expect CMBN battles to turn out a lot bloodier than that. So, to make translations work properly, it would help a lot if we could judge what level of casualties in CMBN would correspond to that ballpark 15% figure from real life (i.e. overall combat ineffectiveness).

Can this be done for HQ units, too?

OK, it sounds like June 15 was the cutoff date for availability. But what was "in range" from where the naval guns were? Could they reach all the way to St. Lo, for example? Can anyone show a maximum effective range line on a Normandy map, or quote a distance figure that I could plot on Google Earth?

I'm pleased we'll have the ability to use off-map, offshore naval artillery support in CMBN. But does anyone know specifically how long into the Normandy campaign the naval gunfire was available? Was it just on D-Day and a few days afterward? Or all the way through July? And how readily available was it? After all, there were only so many guns on the ships, and they had to prioritize which support requests to fulfill, when probably there were ground commanders from Caen to Carentan who all would have wanted those big guns on call.

Great idea! Will the CMBN map editor allow this? So the N and S would be the top and bottom of the "diamond?"

After getting to wallow for a while in the prepackaged goodness of existing CMBN scenarios, I'll be making some historically-based ones that get generated from my solitaire campaign of the grand-tactical boardgame "St. Lo." I'll find real-life opponents to play me in various scenarios, then import the results back into my campaign (sharing the results here as AARs, hopefully).

Well done and thank you for the great preview! Question on the tracers: I noticed both sides firing yellow tracers. I thought the US tended to use one color, and the Germans another. Or am I mistaken about that? It certainly would make it easier to tell who's firing where.

One thing I guarantee to any challengers: I NEVER vanish. I may offer ceasefire and concede, but I know what it's like to invest weeks/months in a PBEM game and then have the opponent slink away, just because the game has started to go badly for them (or even just because they might think it's not exciting enough at a particular point).

It might be nice, but it wouldn't be authentic. MG42 gunners were specifically trained to fire in short bursts (hence the "burp" nickname), to conserve ammo, because the rate of fire of the MG42 was so fast that it devoured ammo.

Question for those with more CM experience than I have: Are full battalion-on-battalion scenarios on 2km x 2km maps even playable? fun? I realize they take forever as WEGO PBEM battles, but is the experience worth it if both players have the time and interest?

I agree that the game should aspire to look like reality and not movies about the war. But in my screenshots and AARs I might make b/w photos, just for that WWII newspaper look. That would look cool.

Do you set the polygon's properties/altitude tab to "absolute," or something else? Also, when I type an altitude into the window, like "5m" and then click OK, it defaults back to zero or to the little instructional type about the acceptable range.

People were saying the artillery barrages looked so impressive in the live previews that were held around the globe -- but in the video, they just looked like little brown dust blobs. Maybe it was that they were only mortar rounds, or maybe it was the zoomed-out high level camera view. But it made me wonder what those US battleship shells look like when they hit?

The Allies had total air superiority in Normandy, so AAA effects (while nice to have) would not make much basic difference to the outcome. Those who like historical play can either accept that fact and have fun fighting their way around that historical situation, while those who like a more a level playing field can ban air assets from their games and enjoy it as as more of a sports match. I don't see the problem, really.