JSj

(Admin note! - an offhanded comment about a fix coming in 2018 generated quite an off-topic discussion in the 2018 thread.  I moved it here as its own new thread)
Actually, accuracy is what matters when it comes to suppression, not rate of fire. There is a study done on this, I have not managed to find a link to the article online, so I have attached the PDF here.
The real role of small arms in combat.pdf

I dunno what you guys are on about...

I dunno - CMSF has a lot more than just Abrams and T55 - there's a plethora of NATO material, plus there are oodles of interesting scenarios and some quite cool QB maps. Personally I loved playing it until the game engine just felt too old and with the new game engine, more control over QBs and the play enhancements, I think it'll be a great title again.

Sorry to dig this up again but being (again) on the receiving end of Soviet SMGs one thought came up:
HE is nerfed a bit to accommodate the bunching up of pixeltroopers so shouldn't there be a similar mechanic for SMGs?
Obviously any spray&pray type weapon would have an advantage against high density targets. Maybe that is causing the perceived effectiveness?

The Germans never had any chance of winning. When the Germans attacked, both sides had roughly the same number of men at the front lines, about 2 million each. In early December, the German strength was pretty much still that, but they now faced twice as many Russians, about 4 million (the Russians also had about another half million troops in reserve close behind the front. Many of these units were still being formed, but they were still close, and therefore available at short notice should an emergency arise. And many other units were of course being formed too, further inland). And all this in spite of the Red Army losses during the 6 months of fighting, a staggering 4 million casualties.
 
So, even if the Germans had got another few weeks before the rain and mud made the roads almost useless, grinding their offensive to a halt, and even if that had been enough time for them to reach Moscow, it would most probably not have won war for them. They were still hopelessly outnumbered and outclassed in industrial production.
 
Oh, one final thing. The Germans never planned to capture Moscow. Hitler had given orders that the city was to be surrounded and cut off, and no surrender was to be accepted. He was planning to cut off and starve the city, much like what was done to Leningrad.

(yawn)

Lol. 
 
You are living in a fantasy land. The geopolitical situation is absolutely relevant to the definition of victory. People don't fight wars for the hell of it. 
 
If you invade my nation and I push you out, I WIN. You wanted to take my land, and I pushed you out. You failed your objective, which by any sane definition is losing. 
 
Winning a war is determined solely by whether or not my political objectives are achieved. Your army can twiddle its thumbs for all I care If control the territory or resources I am fighting for. Very often, neutralizing your force is the means to that end. But not always. The path to victory is situation based. The massive overwhelming bulk of the Japanese army in WW2 was bypassed. Seizing key terrain isolated entire armies and made them useless. The war ended with Japan having 2 million troops still untouched in the home islands alone. You gonna claim the USA lost? You are trapped in a doctrine vacuum and your not considering the nuances of reality. There is no such thing as a one size fits all military strategy---period, full stop, end of story, THE END. 

Very Clausewitz of you ... "What do we mean by the defeat of the enemy?  Simply the destruction of his forces, whether by death, injury, or any other means—either completely  or enough to make him stop fighting. . . .  The complete or partial destruction of the enemy must be regarded as the sole object of all engagements. . . .  Direct annihilation of the enemy's forces must always be the dominant consideration."   I do think you're enjoying trolling everyone though by refusing to acknowledge any of the other people's points.  Or you're just incredibly stubborn lol.

Since some time I am reading this forum with much interest and play CM since the CMBO days. This is the most informative thread so far and I have deep respect for the knowledge displayed here. Thank you all.

Concerning terrain VL I think, that a scenario can be set up and played like a chess game (CMFI has some), but for me, there is much more fun, when a good briefing gives it an operational context and a PURPOSE and that perfectly fits to a terrain objective.

Imagine, your battalion has the order to block a road to close a huge pocket filled with enemy forces. The objective is not to neutralize the last enemy formation between you and the road, rather to find a bypass or an efficient way through this formation.

The objective is the road in operational context. I enjoy objectives with purpose.

Henning

Absolutely nobody is arguing that you should seize a hill just because the enemy has placed defenders on it. We are arguing that you might take said hill even at a tactical disadvantage because it will create tactical advantage in the future, or because it creates a operational or strategic advantage either now or later. To that end, a scenario designers choice of a victory point on the map does not need to be of tactical significance to justify capturing it as a definition of victory. 
 
 
 
What you are still not getting is the killing the enemy IS NOT the goal. Taking terrain IS NOT the goal. There is only one goal: win. If that sounds vague, its because its supposed to. The victory conditions of every battle in every war are different. They take into account politics, attrition, terrain, time, and any other endless number of factors. Over emphasizing some singular formula for victory is a recipe for defeat. 
 
Wars are not fought for their own sake unless you are some sort of pacific islander tribe. We fight them for things like "terrain" or "morals" or "resources" etc etc etc. To that end, kill the enemy, or take his terrain, as much as I need to to win. No more, no less. 
 
If someone invades my nation, my goal is to repel them. Maybe I push onwards into his nation, or maybe I dont. But I dont have to annihilate his army to win. If I only want to control my own land, then I need only push him out and then sit on my haunches and defend till he gives up. If I am the invader and he has more manpower or industry than I, I may very well need to come close to annihilating his force to win. And we could come up with different situations with different definitions of victory and different methods to achieve those ends all day long. 
 
Even if I focus on the enemy army, It would be sheer lunacy to set out to pulverize said army for its own sake. Like I said earlier, in that scenario my goal isnt absolute destruction of his forces. It is far more likely his army will be defeated because his situation becomes untenable, not because I wiped him off the face of the earth. Very, very, few battles have resulted in complete destruction of forces. My goal is to force checkmate, not kill every piece on the board. I only kill the enemies I need to do this. 
 
I would bloody well love to see you ignore orders on the battlefield as a commander of some sort. See how well that fly's in any army. It wont. 

Just cause I gotta ask, what exactly is your military experience? If the sum of it is some books and a few war games, well I gotta wonder. Captains, Majors and even Lt Cols do not get to raspberry their commanding officers and decide that objective X is not worth their effort. They do not have the full picture to make that call.

Moreover, you are expected to be sitting on that terrain within an explicit time table. It is implied to me in the scenarios and campaigns that these objectives must be seized violently due to a strategic window of opportunity. Circumstances dictate its immediate seizure. Storming an objective with infantry is yes costly and hard but for one reason or another The Brass have told you it must be done here. If they could've neutralized a given objective with corp artillery or mines or trained ninja chimps they would have. Fact is those assets are not available for various reasons beyond your control but this damned hamlet needs to be ours by tonight and it's not because Pvt. Timmy heard they serve great croissants.

What is not being understood here is that "murdering" the enemy force IS NOT the objective in war. Neutralizing the enemy force is. 
 
And no, that is not just semantics. Like Bill pointed out earlier, unless you have a massive advantage in firepower or manpower, you cannot ignore terrain in a fight, and even then doing so would be wasteful in most circumstances. In reality, all battles are won by achieving and advantage of some kind. Whether that is through troop concentration to achieve mass for assault, or bombardment reduce the enemy's ability to resist, or through maneuver to force the enemy into a disadvantageous position that enhances your own forces ability to fight. 
 
Attacking the enemy with cookie-cutter fire and movement is a recipe for suicide. It is very much akin to clearing  a room. NOBODY in their right mind stacks up and breaches a room through weight of bodies if your rules of engagement would have allowed you to satchel the entire building instead. Room clearing or building clearing tactics  are a basis for clearing a structure with the fewest possible casualties by attempting to mass bodies into a room before the enemy can cut you all down. Somebody is going to die though if your enemy is not caught unawares. Same goes with platoon or company fire and maneuver. Im not going to initiate an assault involving suppressive fires and bounding movements when I could just sneak around the back of a hill and come up inside the enemies flank. 
 
That being said, the terrain objectives on a map have to be assumed to have some sort of strategic/operational/tactical significance. Lets just look at another historical example shall we? 
 
During the Mortain Counter-Attack in August of 44, Hill 317 Could not be bypassed because it was an important spotting point for artillery and air support. IE: Terrain dictated the focal point of an entire offensive, and successful defense of that objective impeded the entire advance (among other things.)
 
Bastogne, possessed a road network that was important to maintaining the German advance in the Bulge. Not taking it tied down units that could have been doing other things. 
 
We could also mention the cities of Caen or Saint Lo, or the Rhine as important pieces of Terrain that influenced how battles were fought and their outcomes. 
 
If a mission designer puts a box around a town, it only makes sense that on some level it is necessary. Going beyond that objective, and attempting to destroy the enemy beyond what you were ordered to do would in most cases be stupid. For example, lets say you are orders to seize a high point that overlooks a bridgehead. You successfully do that. So are you now going to assault the bridge on your own into enemy forces that might now have a defensive advantage? What your force even set up for such an operation? Are you authorized to go on wanton assaults you were not ordered to? 
 
It therefore makes sense to push into or closely around Terrain objectives as (as the terrtain allows) because if I get there first, then I can be on defense for the rest of the match. If I ignore the "stupid designers objectives" I will most likely fight myself having to fight and offensive battle that I might have entirely avoided. Commanders issue limited terrain objectives FOR A REASON. By taking important pieces of terrain, I  might force the enemy to retreat to some other place where the battle for the rest of my army will be easier. Its alot like how in  game of chess, you sometimes move pieces into certain spaces just so you can get the enemy to move his pieces somewhere else, some where when you can reap far greater rewards than if you had committed totally on the spot. 
 
So in short: If there is a terrain objective, it is there for a reason. Maybe not for the tactical battle you are fighting, but for the larger war you are fighting in. If I fight for a road junction and lose far more men than my opponent, that is just fine, because at the end of the day holding the junction (perhaps not useful for me tactically) might mean the difference between between resupply or reinforcements arriving. 
 
I cannot emphasize enough that there is no single paramount military objective. In certain circumstances, a terrain feature may be a means to and end. In others, maneuver might be, or in others simple reduction of the enemy force. A nation fights to defeat another nation: not the nations army. If I can blockade you and starve you out, then Id rather do than than fight a pitched battle. If killing the enemy was the only thing that mattered, then any time you came across a superior force you would just retreat. But eventually you would run out of places to go, and would have to make a stand somewhere. So in effect, seizing terrain produces increasingly less realistic options for your opponent. If you do that well enough, they might just give up without a fight. 

To continue my rant, it was the Allies who favoured the use of tanks and other mechanical assistance for the infantry, including tanks converted to carry them, in WW1. Not the Germans who had the same problem as any infantry which was basically a limit to human endurance where transport and other mechanical go forward assistance was not provided. Having a fancy name like 'stormtrooper' made no difference actually, all armies had their attack specialists and shock troops by whatever name and they all could only go forward on foot for a limited time.
 
The relevance of all this is very much seen in WW2 where the Germans used the methodology and equipment types that had been used so successfully aginst them in WW1, they had learnt their lesson well. The rubbish spouted by some about the Germans learning from various self promoting authors just does not make sense when you consider that the stand out German practitioners of mechanical warfare in WW2 had fought in WW1 and would well know what had worked against them.
 
The point about infantry is that they basically should just hold ground which has been taken in all arms actions, while the thought of infantry dashing forward using all sorts of clever tactics may be superficially attractive it becomes casualty expensive where any sort of firm resistance is offered. There are plenty of examples from WW2 of this from all sides if examples are needed, an obvious lesson which is not so easy to always apply in practice.

Any doctrine that views "murdering the enemy" as a objective that occurs within a vacuum is also rubbish.
 
Terrain is more than just cover to defend your troops or block your opponents movement. To treat terrain like a side note is pure fantasy. You are placing a cookie cutter concept  (destroying the enemy force) on a pedestal and ignoring any other possible considerations. Talking about a game of basket ball stating "you only goal is to score points" and ignoring the effect that controlling sections of the court has on that, is crazy.
 
Terrain effects nearly every facet of combat, tactical/operational/strategic. It determines engagement ranges, choke points, avenues of approach, mobility, etc, etc, etc. In many ways it is like having a 3rd army on the battlefield, which opposes both sides. A lot like the weather actually. It is a heck of a lot more than simply defense for your units and places your can block the enemy.

Combatintman asked me to provide some input on the "other side" of this scenario as part of his final analysis. I'd like to give some of my overall design philosophy for all of my scenarios and some specifics for this scenario, hopefully it's useful for future scenario designers:

I almost always start my scenarios with a vignette I've read from a tactical or personal account. From there comes an idea. The details generally don't matter too much to me; whether it was Regiment A attacking Town X isn't important, what matters is the tactical task a unit had to perform. I like to focus on company and below stuff - everyone already makes scenarios about the famous clashes, I want to make scenarios about the day to day stuff everyone forgets about. In this case, it's the taking of a step off position for a later attack. An action that would have barely warranted half a sentence in a larger narrative, is the perfect size for a Combat Mission scenario. Once I have my idea, I find a location in reality that would suit my situation - once again the details aren't super important. I rarely use overlays anymore, I just put Google Earth on my second monitor and let the in-game map become it's own place.

Once I have my map built, I integrate my situation into it. I almost always start with the enemy side (since I only do Human vs AI). In this scenario, as it is a German attack, I started with the Soviet defense. I look at the map, figure out the required amount of forces to achieve the enemy "mission" that fits the situation, and start building the enemies plan. I never build my maps around the unit or task - this almost always ends up feeling canned and puzzle-like. In real combat, you don't have the power to level hills and move forests (unless you have good engineer support). You take the forces you have and use the hills and forests to your best advantage to build your plan. The small copses of trees in the wheat field isn't there because it would make for a good MG position, it's there because I thought it looked good when I was making the map. Now I (and the player) have to build our plans around it. About the only concession I make in this regard is adding terrain later to block LOS to at least part of the player's setup area. No one likes getting shot on turn 1.

For the Soviet side here, I decided a platoon with attached HMGs would be the best force to serve as the blocking/delaying position that fits the scenario. I built the defense to accomplish the mission I gave it, as if the scenario was designed to be played by the Soviet side. I utilized the terrain as best I could to create 3 mutually supporting positions with interlocking fields of fire. If one position was taken, the other two would be able to lay fire down on the one just overrun. I envisioned that most players would choose to attack the position "head on" in some fashion, either taking the town first then the position on the Soviet right, or the outpost position on the Soviet left, attacking over the open ground. Any Germans attacking would have a hard time indeed, and need to coordinate their fire support well to accomplish it. However, the one course of action I did not take into account for my defense was what Combatintman did right here in this very thread! Only one of the Soviet HMGs was looking into the open wheat field that he advanced so boldly through. Surely no player would push his infantry through such a large open field to be slaughtered! What spelt the Soviet doom was that I did not do a proper line of sight analysis - if I had, I would have realized that the critical HMG defending the entire left flank could not see the whole wheat field, and that so called open field had undulations in the terrain (again, something I built into the map BEFORE I started building the defense) that would have allowed a whole company to advance sight unseen deep into the Soviet rear. As such, I did not plan for the eventuality that the Germans would bypass my carefully developed, mutually supporting positions with barely a shot fired. Truly an example of the enemy "having a vote", and my future scenarios won't be so assuming. Next time I will be more complete in my planning. Blame Combatintman for the lesson learned and any increased difficulty.

A quick note on doctrine, because I saw it brought up - I am not a student of any WW2 military doctrine, so I built my defense based on what made sense to me and what I have seen work, not anything historical. I do use the built in TOEs to help pick my forces though.

To touch on the German side of this scenario, for my missions I try to pick a force that when handled properly, will defeat the enemy even if the player suffers some setbacks. In other words, you don't have to be perfect. I feel that most people play scenarios to win, and if they feel that did everything almost right but still lost, then I have failed to provide satisfying entertainment (some would disagree on this, but it's just how I feel).  Usually the degree of victory and casualties taken is the distinguisher between an ok plan and a great plan for my scenarios. A 2 to 1 advantage with supporting arms will generally provide a respectable challenge against the AI while still being able to be won by most. The ratio here is more 3 to 1, as open fields and long sight lines requires more firepower and bodies to absorb casualties. I try to not to force a plan on the player, instead giving them a properly balanced force to execute a variety of actions. I also believe in simple briefings that provides truthful information the player can use to plan, while not giving away the whole show. Everything I wrote was truthful, but it's up to the player to fill in the gaps. Combatintman took the info given, executed a solid plan here and was able to wipe the Soviets off the board with very minimal casualties.

So the 2 cents that was asked for is more like 20 cents, but I thought it would be beneficial to explain my overall theory on scenario design and not just this one specifically. I like to create simple, straightforward scenarios with a realistic enemy on beautiful maps, and hopefully I've succeed with this one in that regard. Combatintman definitely executed a great plan that exploited the weak point in my plan. Great thread and thanks for picking my scenario to do it with!

0755 TO 0800 HOURS – TURNS 55-60
 
SPOILERS FOLLOW*****************
 
Significant event  0756 hrs. The Maxim HMG spotted at Grid 157224 at 0751 hrs has engaged the lead element of 1 Zug inflicting 2 x WIA. The Maxim HMG on Objective DIETER is bugging out.
 
Significant event 0757 hrs. Mortar missions are ending and in the light of the Maxim MMG movement on Objective DIETER, I have decided to launch 2 Zug across the open ground to clear that objective.
 
Significant event 0800 hrs. The Maxim HMG at Grid 157224 is now also bugging out.
 
So here is the situation map:
 

 
Here is the Friendly Force Tracker:
 

 
Here is the Enemy Force Tracker:
 

 
Significant event …. GERMAN ARMY MAJOR VICTORY
 
Which is nice …
 
Scores on the doors were:
German 736 VPs
Red Army 39 VPs
 
Here are the screenshots:
 

 
 
So my thoughts on the above …
 
I’m not going to say too much at this stage because the next stage of the thread will involve analysing the thing in its entirety. However, naturally I’m pleased that I saw this through to a victory and, while I didn’t execute my plan as I intended, the plan appeared to be sound.
 
More detailed analysis will follow in due course but I would be grateful for any thoughts or observations from those that have been following this thread. One thing I can promise is input from the guy who made all of this possible … SeinfeldRules. He has very generously offered to provide his scenario designer’s perspective (in essence the view from the other side of the hill). So there is plenty of life in this yet and I hope you stay onboard for a while longer.

What bite and hold is is cautious. The British were loathe to repeat unprecedented disasters like the Somme.

The British saw armor like metal cavalry for too long and often just charged tanks into heavily fortified (and mined) defensive positions. The British believed through the entire war for some reason that the German defense line was always just a thin crust of gun positions with nothing behind them. That the German defense line at Alamein wasn't 1 km, or 5km, or even 25km but 50 kilometers of overlapping positions was what the British failed to appreciate. Note the Germans ran into the same kind of problem at Kursk. You can stop armor with a thick enough defense line but that calls for the enemy to sit totally idle while you prepare it. (Which the Germans obliged to thanks to Hitler's delays.) At circumstances like Kursk the most successful vehicles were usually the heaviest ones and suddenly the value of weapons like the Tiger or even partial insanity like the Maus suddenly don't seem so crazy anymore.

Really ? That's what you got from this informative thread about how the Germans used their forces differently to other armies ( and with useful CM-applicable tutorial ) ?
 
See here for the Soviet fanboism then : http://community.battlefront.com/topic/120450-russian-doctrine-in-cmrt/

Geez, the German fanboism is strong here, everyone else must have been stupid by default too. 

sandman - I can talk about US doctrine, sure.  I am not going to put it into its own thread here, because it isn't really about CMRT and it also isn't one of the "ideal types", like Russian attrition methods and German maneuver methods.  It is closer to the Russian way of doing things but with some specific differences, and also with the US Armor force more inclined to the German approach.
 
First some background.  The US army was relative young in WW II, as a major conventional war ground force.  The US learned most of its military doctrine from French models at the end of WWI. Many of the force structures, tasking, even specific artillery pieces and their roles, came directly from French models.  In the interwar years, the US army was very small, but retained a professional officer corps of WWI veterans and active military schools.  Those tried to learn the lessons of WWI, including places where they saw a need to depart from French methods, and to keep abreast of developments in military strategy elsewhere through academic study and liason postings of officers and mutual observers and the like.  The US was blessed with some particularly sound characters in that effort, notably George C Marshall, the chief of staff during WWII, who basically ran the US infantry school in the 1930s and oversaw its doctrinal publications.  Meanwhile men like Patton were experimenting with the new armor warfare methods during peacetime maneuvers.  There were some weaknesses in US doctrine at midwar - early for the US - but those had largely resolved by the time of the ETO campaign.
 
The next bit of background is to understand some of the strengths of the US force structure.  The US emphasized the firepower arms, which effectively substitute money spent on munitions for blood or brilliance.  Send shells; its only money.  This reflected logistics being a very long suit for the American armed forces generally, and the army specifically.  The US air force was the best in the world, and the US artillery arm was also arguably the best in the world, when the manner in which is could be coordinated was tied to its logistics and supply, etc.  So there was a definite and justified tendency to lean on fire support and let it do as much of the job as possible.  The US army also had a lot of armor by the standards of other nation's forces, with even its infantry divisions well equipped with supporting tank and tank destroyer battalions, as well as truck mobility lift.  Nearly the entire army was mechanized, by the standards of German or Russian contemporary armies.  Culturally, the US army didn't have any of the class or political hierarchies of other period armies; it was more level and the officers relied on voluntary cooperation of the men to get things done.  Initiative at the lower levels was good, discipline and subordination were not, by the standards of the martinets of other armies.  This put a premium on doing things the safe way, the way that was cheapest in blood, not cheapest in time or forces committed, ammo expended, etc.
 
With that as background, I will first describe the typical way the US infantry division force fought, and especially how it attacked.  (Mostly it was attacking, from the overall strategic situation etc).  That system can be described as persistent nibbling, endlessly repeated small probes backed by firepower.  These methods were frankly a marginal updating of late WWI practices, in which "artillery conquers, infantry occupies".  One veteran described his role as an infantry officer fighting clear across Europe as that of a glorified forward observer, whose constant mission was to get close enough to the enemy to call down accurate artillery fire on his positions, and little else.  That's an exaggeration but not a misleading one.
 
The typical tactical unit for infantry division missions was the infantry battalion, but it rarely used all of its component companies in a single attack.  Instead the normal, almost formulaic tasking was to have one company "in assault", a second "in support", and the third "in reserve".  The support company occupied the start line and held it.  It would observe the attack, fire in support of it, shelter anyone who had to retreat, and fight off any local counterattacks if those occurred, but it was not expected to leave its cover and advance, until the immediate objective of the attack was taken.  Then if would move forward to relieve the assault company.  The reserve company didn't have frontage assigned, typically, and could be half a mile behind the support.  It was deliberately left out of action to give the commander flexibility to meet any contingency, and also just as a deliberate "rest" period of less exertion for the men.  They would reorganize, take replacements, restock ammo, repair damaged equipment, etc.  Their primary mission was just to be ready to fight *tomorrow*.  Meanwhile the assault company got to deliver the attack for the whole battalion, as a modest probe.  Yes they would occasionally depart from this normal usage to put 2 or even all 3 companies "in assault" while some other formation stood as reserve, but this was the typical daily way the formation fought.
 
The assault company was thus supported by the full battalion's mortars and all available artillery fire support.  It would also get at least a portion of any supporting tanks, typically a platoon of Shermans or perhaps of SP TDs, and sometimes twice that.  The assault itself was not much more than a reconnaissance by the standards of other armies.  A few scouts leading, their squad behind them, their platoon behind that in a wedge, and the company's platoons and weapons typically only 2 up and 1 plus weapons supporting.  Thus a small number of scouts and a few skirmish lines walked toward the enemy.
 
But they had God Himself on the radio, and called his Wrath down on whatever messed with the scouts.  A US infantry division had 12 155s and 36 105s in its divisional artillery, and another 18 105s in its regimental cannon companies.  Corps level artillery groups added another 36 155s or larger per division slice.  An intantry division would typically use 2 up 1 back deployments at the battalion level and sometimes also at regiment, so that only 4-6 infantry battalions were sending forth these company sized probes at one time.  The support of a single company level probe was thus frequently 1 or 2 *battalions* of artillery fire support - plus the infantry battalions own 81mm mortars, if those had any ammo.
 
And that's with even tasking.  But they didn't use even tasking, they let every 2nd Lieutenant with a radio call for anything he could, passing fire mission requests up the divisional command nets.  This could even cause large scale problems down the road because they could fire off all the ammo that could be trucked up to the guns, if let unchecked - the artillery "pull" appetite was practically limitless.  The aggressive and capable FOs and infantry officers got more than their share of support, and sometimes the others heard that the guns were busy or ammo dry.  But the amount of firepower that *could* wind up supporting each little company probe topped out at wrath of God levels.
 
Of course, it wasn't always trivial to make use of that.  Fire at unlocated enemies or enemies deep in their cellars was wasteful and ineffective.  The infantry had to create the threat that made the enemy stand, man his forward defenses, and fight.  And the enemy could "go thin" to fight with just the infantry, not giving the guns enough to chew on, by using scattered small MG nests and snipers and the like.  Against those, the infantry and its armor support had to make their own way.
 
The fundamental approach, though, was relentless artillery pounding ahead of those endless small infantry probes.  The rotation system was designed to ensure another one could be launched on an hour's notice, and another the next day, every day, with all the men getting enough reorganization and rest to keep it up indefinitely.  They were not trying to win the war today, or even tomorrow.  They were trying to take yet another very nearby terrain objective, and get the artillery some nice shoots if anyone tried to stop them.  That artillery shooting was conceived as protecting and supporting the *movement* of the infantry, and the fact that the infantry was sending a pittance was conceived as an economy of force measure to limit losses on any given fearsome screw up.  The whole line of nibbles was also supposed to find softer spots in the enemy defense and advance more surely, if not appreciably more rapidly, in those locations.  The harder spots could stick out into the advancing line and worry the higher commanders, but would call down upon themselves more than their share of artillery pounding, in consequence.
 
That pretty much describes the US infantry force's way of war.  It has similarities to the Russian attrition method, in its emphasis on just finding the enemy and then clobbering him by fire.  It doesn't launch wave after wave regardless of losses to ensure advance, though.  It backs off from anything too hard and just lets that place hold, though plastering it, and expects somebody else to efficiently advance elsewhere.  Anything left relatively undefended, it will find and pocket pretty cheaply, and the whole thing is a broad front ratchet washing over the enemy.
 
The US armor force way of fighting was different, however.  Its standard operating formation was an armored task force, which means a battalion sized force created by cross attaching tanks with armored infantry or the other way around.  They could vary from 2 to 4 companies in maneuver force strength, but 2 tank and 1 infantry company or the reverse were the usual amounts.  They would then have additional smaller attachments, platoon sized typically, of other supporting arms - cavalry, TDs, engineers, etc.  They might also have a battery of 105mm self propelled, or just have a battery to a battalion of those on call, instead of co located with the task force.
 
A task force was conceived as a force for, and operated along, a single major road or direction.  It might split off minor pieces to recon or block flanking routes, but the main body was a one road affair, and normally stayed together for the most part.  Once it finds the enemy, it deploys to fight, off road, and leads with the appropriate arm for the terrain and enemy.  A task force expected all of its elements to fight; any reserve was strictly local and temporary.  In other word, they didn't leave out of battle a third or two thirds of the force to fight later.  (The whole armor division could and did, as a "combat command reserve",  but the committed task forces were themselves all committed to action).
 
Their methods were much closer to the German way of war, described, with special emphasis on flanking and bypassing the enemy.  Something would find him, much like the German scouting wave, and try to fix them.  Another element would then flank them, and either destroy them by doing so or secure a way around them that was safe from their fire.  The whole task force would then exploit any such wedge or entry into the enemy position, with only minimal elements left to "mask" whatever they worked around that way.  The 105s in support would plaster the bypassed, but the task force itself moved on to its next target.
 
The firepower, especially the soft or anti-infantry firepower, of a US armored task force was very high.  The tank component was usually very close to TOE, 80 to 90% of strength being typical, much higher than the running strength often found in German or Russian armor (outside of the very beginning of an offensive, in the latter case).  All the infantry was halftrack mounted with a plethora of full machineguns, both 30 and 50 caliber, mounted on those vehicles.  Every halftrack carried at least 1 and sometimes 2 bazookas.  There was little that a full armored task force could not simply outshoot, locally, outside of a company of German armor and even in that case, only the superior types would be likely to check the task force.
 
Tactically, they could lead with dismounted armored infantry squads when the terrain was close, and with Shermans when it was open.  A little economy of force for scouts, then a main body dominating enemies found by direct firepower.  They were perfectly willing to use recon by fire, as well, with the Sherman coaxials liberally spraying the countryside as the formation advanced.
 
The basic idea was to smash anything small by just hitting it with way more armor than it could handle ,and bypass larger forces after "blunting" their edges or outposts in the same fashion.  The bypassed are just shelled and follow on forces from the same armor division encircle them, or leave them to infantry division forces to mop up later.  In the meantime, "bypass and haul ass".  
 
Up at the full division level, the armored division is attacking with 2 combat commands of 3-4 task forces each, and reinforcing success, shifting away from failure.  It finds or creates routes into the enemy defense, then through it to his rear area, with bypassed "cells" of holdouts just left in the division's wake.  The objectives are terrain ones - gain ground, get through the enemy, keep moving - not focused on the destruction of enemy forces.  That will come, if the division as a whole gets around or through them.
 
If the division hits serious enemy armor, but only then, it has to get more circumspect about its attacks.  Then it cares about maintaining a line and a reserve, and attrites the enemy by putting armor on armor, with TDs and firepower arms helping.  It still tries to envelop that enemy.  The effectiveness of all the division's armor increases significantly if they get on 2-3 sides of the enemy.  They also try to win the soft firepower, HE war, to strip the enemy of his infantry support.  That is a matter of divisional and higher level artillery, tank and assault gun fire, and air support; L-5 spotting aircraft also direct artillery fire and add to an intel differential.  The assumption is that winning the soft firepower war will deprive the enemy armor of its "eyes", and that then maneuver to its flanks and cutting its road routes will render it immobile and impotent.
 
I hope that helps understand US tactical methods, and how they differed between its infantry division and armor division components.

Are you advancing mounted or dismounted? You have not advanced very far in these ten minutes, and it looks like only around 150 meters (or so) in the last five...

The one team you show in the images is dismounted and appears to be on Move orders? I don't think I actually saw a scheme of maneuver, from the assault platoon's point of view, as to how they were going to advance (I am of course especially interested in your assault element).

I would have thought that speed would be important with this risky COA... yet I sense an almost calm stroll across the fields.. could be wrong, but that's how I read your first 10 minutes of action have played out.

I would have my assault element rolling across those fields at speed, led by one or two halftracks to scout for hidden enemy positions, with another on the left for flank protection. With this slow pace, and if you were playing against a human opponent you are giving the enemy time to shift his combat power to block your movement, easy for him with his internal lines.

In the thread on Russian doctrine in CM, we went through how the Russian attack, especially their Rifle formation branch.  That method applies the principles of attrition warfare, depth, firepower, relentlessness, last man standing stuff.  German doctrine on infantry attacks was entirely different.  SlowLarry asked about it in the previous thread, and rather than bury an answer there, I am moving that part of the discussion to its own thread, here.
 
Elements of German attack doctrine apply to panzer forces as well, but the focus here will be on infantry division attacks.  Which may include StuG support or similar, generally divisional artillery FOs, battalion and company mortars - and squad infantry up at the pointy end.  Obviously there are some requirements of overall odds, suitable terrain, fire support, and enemy strength that are needed for infantry formations to attack successfully.  But the German doctrine uses everything differently, because the focus of their attack doctrine is positioning and articulation of forces - maneuver warfare stuff  - not primarily force ratios and losses and attrition thinking.
 
In the German doctrine, the chief element of the offense is surprise.  The idea is always to hit where and when one isn't expected, to catch the enemy napping, unprepared, with the wrong dispositions to deal with your chosen point and method of attack.  To achieve that, the focus is on information on the one hand, and adaptation on the other.  Adaptation includes mobility, heightening your own safe, feasible shifts of forces and weights, and restricting those of the defender.  Those can then all be used to arrange many on few fights at chosen points, which once won, further disarticulate the enemy force.  His elements are supposed to become less able to help each other, to find their proper combined arms targets, or to have the conditions of terrain and range and such they need to fight effectively. Some local advantages may be "cashed in" for dead enemy to move the overall forces in your favor, but most will be focused instead on continually reducing the enemy's options and moves.
 
In the ideal case, this ends with a surrounded and trapped enemy unable to move an inch without taking murderous fire.  Fire lanes into open ground wrapped around an enemy position are like ropes binding his legs.  Once all sides are covered around a given enemy this way, his "movement allowance" has been reduced to zero.  His ability to pick what firefights he will engage in has therefore disappeared.  You can decide whether to engage him, and he can't make an equivalent decision.  By fire and movement principles, that is as good as a kill.  An artillery barrage can then be laid on that immobilized enemy to destroy him at leisure.
 
In short, the idea is to surprise the defender, hogtie him, and fight the remainder of the battle with him in that condition.  Needless to say, this places considerable greater demands on the attacking commander than the comparative straightforward methods described in the Russian doctrine thread, and it can readily be screwed up, and will fail if it is screwed up.  The German approach in the matter was to take risks and generate chances for lopsided wins, and expect enough of those to pay off, to defeat the overall enemy more efficiently than the attrition method. The Germans don't ever want to fight fair - meaning no even engagements of like arm vs like arm without a big edge in their favor from one factor or another.  If there isn't yet such an edge, maneuver for one before engaging too closely.
 
That difference in approach is easily stated, but what does it mean in practice for infantry attack methods?  Three ways, really, each with some variations and subject to mixing with the others, at different distance, time, and force scales.  The three ways are (1) broad front, recon pull, aiming at envelopment (envelopment for short), (2) the coup de main, which is effectively trench raid tactics on a grander scale, and (3) infiltration tactics proper, which stresses getting well into the enemy defended zone, by slow and stealthy processes, before the main engagement occurs.
 
Broad front recon pull means that a skirmish line of infantry sweeps forward like a single wave, and finds *all* the enemy positions.  Not just one or two of them to chew on, but locating the entire enemy front line.  Weak outposts are driven in by this wave to find the real enemy positions, the ones with enough strength to stop a single thin infantry wave.  Besides finding the enemy, this leading wave is expected to pin him in place, to "find and fix".  That works by not pressing hard anywhere, sitting down in the cover nearest the enemy but not physically held by him.  Then reaching out by fire - from the LMGs the squad infantry brings forward, first of all - to cut up the enemy side of the field with fire lanes, around each body of cover on his side of the field.  The goal is to freeze in place as much of the enemy force as possible, by making lateral movement far too risky, several hundreds yards deep into his own positions.
 
Then a reserve and assault group, which has been kept back out of that leading wave, picks targets found and isolated by it.  The goal is to find gaps in the defenses already, and to widen promising fissures by destroying specific bits of the defense, to get deeper into it.  The reserve maneuvers in the German "backfield", sheltered by the leading wave and the knowledge it has provided as to which locations are clear of the enemy, which routes already traversed drew no enemy fire, and the like. It sets up opposite its chosen targets.  It brings with it heavier weapons - StuGs, FOs, 81mm mortars - and infantry weight in numbers.  These supplement the fire of the elements of the scouting wave nearest the chosen target, and "escalate" the pressure on those chosen enemies.  Meanwhile the rest of the battlefield is being ignored.  The scouting wave is just waiting in the ground they took and preventing easy lateral movement by the enemy, to help the position chosen for the point of attack.
 
The overloaded point is thus destroyed.  Now a new wave spreads from that point, into the deeper parts of the enemy defense.  The scouts nearest follow in the wake of the now leading reserve, and form a new reserve behind the entry point.  The new spreading wave finds the new enemy positions, and the process is repeated.  The goal is to roll up the enemy defenses or break through them, always fighting only the new few that matter for the moves the attack is making next.  But the attacker lets enemy weakness dictate where those points of attack should be.  Always, hitting where they ain't, and trying to get into them before help can come from either side, or from the enemy rear and reserves.  
 
Speed matters in this, because the enemy learns where the main point of attack is, as it gets going, and he will try to adapt.  The attack wants to adapt too, faster, with better information.  The scouting wave is also a counter-recon screen blinding the enemy as to one's own deployments.  If a reserve is arriving at A, the point of main effort wants to already be over at B by the time they get to the front.  Think of a running back making the defensive linebackers miss - it requires anticipation of enemy moves, faster reaction to new information.  It helps if ranged weapons can also disrupt enemy movements - StuGs get missions like interdicting all movement across a certain road, pairs of HMGs put down fire lanes with a similar intent, an FO may plaster the only cover point that allows movement from the east side of the map to the west side.  In other words, the role of fire is as much or more to restrict enemy movements as it is to hurt him directly.  
 
Every area of open ground on the enemy side of the field is analyzed for its usefulness on cutting up enemy moves, and locations that can see each are determined, heavy weapons teams maneuvered to such positions long before the attacker knows he will need them.  Enemy moves are systematically taken off the board by firepower threats into such open ground areas.
 
Frequently the scouting wave may start with a bias or direction, too.  E.g. as a wing attack on the left 2/3rds of the field, with the intent of turning the enemy's left flank.  Such routes or plans are made with an eye to being the least expected and likely to be the least defended against, *not* on the principle of the most promising terrain or routes for the attacker.  Otherwise put, since the first principle of the attack is surprise, "most promising" normally equals "least expected" - even if it means crossing dangerous ground - as long as that can be done quickly.
 
The infiltration method can be thought of as a more extreme version of this on a wider scale and with less of an emphasis on fixing the enemy, and more on using stealth to find his gaps.  Night actions, fighting in fog, use of smoke sometimes, are used along with this approach.  The idea is to sneak into the enemy position.  As much as possible, as deep as possible into his whole defense scheme, before first trigger pull.  And after first trigger pull, the triggers are used as a distraction - look, look, over here, there are some Germans over here - while the haymaker is winding up from the other hand.  The same principle of removing enemy moves by a tactically defensive stance and fire lanes to cut up enemy positions, executed by advanced wedges, is used here too, just like the scouting wave did in the previous method, once it went to ground.  
 
There is a critical mental shift involved in this understanding of the value of positions pushed forward.  They do not need to assault straight onto enemy positions. They do not need the weight to do so.  They don't need the weight to shoot down enemies in good cover, nor do they need to press home to root him out of his holes.  All they need to do is prevent him from leaving his present positions, without being cut up by ranged fire into the open ground bits he has to cross, to leave that cover and get to some other body of it.  Anything isolated in this sense, by having all its useful safe moves taken away, is "hogtied".  No reason to run up against them or fight that at all.  They are already in a prison cell, and artillery can execute them later if need be.
 
There is also a new principle in true infiltration methods - to just bypass, wherever possible, rather than fight.  Any position that can be ignored should be ignored.  If there is a route that blocks LOS to that position, maybe someone watches it or at least prevents easy moves out of it, but for the rest, they might as well be on the far side of the moon.  Consider anything that can't see you already defeated by poor positioning.  Bypass and press deeper, all the way to the back of the defense.  German infiltration attackers do not expect to keep the enemy in front of them.  They expect to have enemies on all sides of them.  Then blind them and pin them in place, and move between them.  You can see how limited visibility conditions are critical to the full application of this method.
 
I passed over the coup de main.  It is about surprise in the purest sense.  Here, instead of waiting for recon pull to tell you everything about the defense, you need to guess it.  Rapid, more limited scouting may be used, and there are certainly leading half squads going first - the usual drill.  But you just guess where the enemy is and isn't going to be; you pick a key point you think you can get to that will put some portion of those enemies at a disadvantage, and then you drive like hell for that key point.  Faster than the enemy can react.  Others are trying to pin him where he is - heavy weapons from back at the start line, e.g., or a 105mm artillery barrage that discourages anyone from getting up and walking around from over on the right side of the field.  But the basic idea is just "get there first with the most", where you picked the "there".  Win at that point by weight of numbers and the right combined arms brought to that fight for the enemy faced, and do so before the enemy can adapt his positions to that new info about what you are doing.
 
The follow up can be another such adaptation, or just to exploit what was taken in more of the "fixed them, then pick the next spot to overload" method described in the first approach.
 
Coup de main differs from the broad front recon in that it is less driven by what the scouts first discover, more by your command push decision.  But you are trying to base that on a guess as to where the enemy will be weak and won't be expecting you.  If your guess is wrong, you back off and try something else, don't turn it in to an attrition attack on enemy strength.
 
The coup de main effort can be materially aided by having armor behind it, or as a second best, good approach terrain over a wide area (e.g. large continuous woods or city).  It expects to win at the chosen point by getting a many on few fight there and winning that fight before the enemy can even the local odds.  For that to work, it can't be the case that all the enemy weapons bear on the chosen point.  You need to pick both the concentration objective and a route, such that only a modest portion of the enemy force has any chance to contest your approach, at first.  Then you just want to go down that route so fast that "at first" equals "until the fight for that objective is over", because they only differ by 2 minutes (5 max, 2-3 a lot better).
 
Now, in all of this, you still have to pay attention to combined arms, meaning having 81mm mortars around and HQs to spot for them if there is going to be an enemy gun or HMG position, and a StuG or a panzerschreck up close if there is going to be an enemy tank, and 105mm or 150mm artillery fire if there is going to be a big block of woods full of Russian tommy gunners.  Or you can put HMGs on fire lanes on 3 sides of those woods and just go around them, never into or by them.  Remember, if they can't see your main force, and they can't safely move to change that, they are already dead (hogtied, same thing).  They just don't know it yet.
 
I hope that helps explain the very different way German infantry attacks.

Bulletpoint - a company doesn't use platoons as waves, and won't advance them side by side, and certainly won't stop because one squad takes fire.
 
A company is more like the minimum unit of maneuver for a Russian Rifle style infantry attack.  Sure there are SOPs it follows inside and we can talk over those, but the first thing to understand is that a Russian rifle company gets *one* mission, on *one* axis of advance, as *one* wave.  Not 3.  As for how broad a front that company should advance on is, 400 to 500 meters, tops.  If you've only got one company and the frontage is a full kilometer or more, you might have a small patrol to cover the part of the frontage you won't be using, but almost the whole company will advance in the 400-500 meters you are using.  
 
Such a flank patrol might be a single HQ team, a single squad, split, and an ATR.  Maybe a second split up squad and a sharpshooter in addition.  With like half the battlefield just for them.  They are just eyes they pick forward very carefully (a few movers at a time, max) and stay in cover etc.  They can't attack anything and can't really even defend anything, but they will see it coming and give a bit of warning if the enemy leaves his positions on that part of the field trying to flank the main company attack.  I am just explaining what I mean by a flank patrol, understand.  Better is if the next unit over provides such flank security, but beggars can't be chosers sometimes.  The key thing is *not* to spread out to the full width of the map in an even spread.  That just prevents you having the depth anywhere, to fight the Russian rifle formation way.
 
What is a typical formation for the advancing company, with or without such a slight detachment, in the place where you are actually attacking?  A blob.  Either a wedge with one platoon up, or a square with two platoons up and two following in their foot steps.  One of those could be company weapons or an ad hoc platoon led by the company commander.  Each platoon is then, again, in a blob formation, not a single skirmish line.  There could be several layers to the company as a result, but those aren't really the "waves" talked about previously, they are all one wave.  They are all in mutual supporting distance, a grenade throw or less from each other, similar sight picture from one to the next.  You don't want a single artillery shell to take out too many of them, they maintain their interval in that sense.  But the whole group is still a continuous cloud, not a thin line.  
 
What do they do if a leading unit takes MG fire from a single shooter 300 meters distant?  The single unit fired on hits the deck and avoids fire by crawling to the nearest available cover, more likely back than forward.  Everyone else keeps right on going.  It is going to take a heck of a lot more than one distant MG to stop the whole company.  That's kind of why there is a whole company coming.  If the MG shifts its fire to another, the first rallies and gets back up and comes on again.  The new group shot at hits the deck and crawls to cover and so forth.  Good luck stopping 20 units that way with just 1 shooter.  You probably won't have a good "spot" of the firing MG, but since it can't remotely stop you from getting closer and changing that, there isn't much reason to care.
 
If you do get close enough, it is the company's own heavy weapons that are charged with suppressing isolated, single MGs.  If battalion 82mm mortars back at the line of departure can chime in, great, but not strictly necessary.  None of this counts as the wave being stopped or calls for any pause to fire at the defense with major fire support.
 
If, instead, we are talking about the entire leading edge of the company coming under fire, and shells falling as well, and half a dozen enemy shooters heard (a full platoon position with HMG supplements or similar), then the company wave may stop and fire back and call for fire support.  It uses its unshot elements to reach reasonable cover near where it was first "checked"; it can avoid the fire (everyone prone etc) if it is hot enough and there is going to be fire support help soon.  Or it can try to fire back itself and see if it can achieve fire dominance from its own internal resources.  
 
The key thing there is not to press if it isn't working.  The problem is not one of movement and it isn't a charge; the company either has the firepower to blow away what has confronted it or it doesn't.  If it doesn't, deny closer engagement (cover, prone, short withdrawal etc) and wait for the fire support; the company's mission is to rally in that case, and to hold, ratchet fashion, whatever ground it already covered, that has any terrain worth holding.
 
The whole battalion is supposed to see that company advance result, and assign fire and direct the next company attack wave based on how it went and what it discovered.  Immediately, with no pause in the overall combat.  "OK, you showed me that position to check A company, my fire elements will chew on that, thanks.  Whatcha got vs B company?"  The idea is to induce the defender to reveal himself, to commit his reserves, to show you where his main body is and reveal the whole plan and intention of the defensive scheme.  The attack then directs itself at that scheme, in a "hit them where they are", firepower method.  It is not a hunt for gaps, but for targets, targets that are then plastered, and assaulted once duly plastered.
 
For that to work, the waves have to find serious positions, enough to justify major fire allocations to deal with that.  That is *why* the waves are substantial in size.  It isn't a matter of feeling forward with half squads looking for safe routes or trying to cover ground.  The wave is supposed to be heavy enough that it either goes right into or through the enemy, or he reveals real strength to stop it.  That strength is they directly smashed, by fire and the next assault.  There is nothing subtle about this...
 
I hope that helps.

kevinkin - well you may not be complaining, but I will.  Barren, sterile, pointless, nothing to do with CM, always jumping in and trashing promising threads.  Not referring to any person, just to talking politics at the dinner table.  Give it rest, for the love of God.