Melchior

How can you say things like this and not see the irony? The arrogance? The dismissal? Not one of them???? These countries are already crippled and the gap is merely widening thanks alone to negligence. Conspiracy is not usually necessary and not characterized the way you think it is. You are welcome to pretend that's what i'm saying of course if it makes you feel better.

It's not as if the actual presence of weapons in Iraq was ever going to have any bearing on the Bush Administration's actions. The Bush Administration was so dishonest they didn't even stick to the deadline issued on their own ultimatum to Saddam before they just invaded. The Administration also sought to further public misconceptions about Saddam's non-existent involvement in 9/11 and at the very least made no effort to correct that misunderstanding. Fact was Bush and cronies were invading Iraq, one way or another and sooner or later. WMDs were a window dressing to Bush's supposedly God-given (like literally thought Jesus was talking to him) plans to establish a brand-new US puppet state in the Middle East. See this is how Westerners contribute their share to the problems of the divide between West-Rest relations. Saddam Hussein had a vested interest in maintaining an arms detente with the Iranians, and it just so turned out that allowing weapons inspectors into his country to confirm that he was nowhere near as heavily armed as he liked act was actually not in his interest either. Of course this is only one more example in the West's long history of subtly maneuvering lesser states into political no-win scenarios. It turns out when you constantly push poor, small nations into binary decisions about their security they lash out but i'm not counting on anyone in America to figure out how this applies to the Russians. Whatever. Yet another thread somewhere on the chronically out-of-touch reaches of the internet haw hawing those stupid foreigners.

You think the Bush Administration would've backed down if Saddam Hussein had let the weapons inspectors in? No like you really believe that?

Hope for spalling/concussive effects?

Kornet is no guarantee against an Abrams though. More than once i've seen an Abrams whip its turret around and ice the launcher and its whole crew mid-shot.

This. Skirting the map is a double edged sword. It sounds attractive to advance your force knowing that threats can't attack you from the flank, however you can't maneuver much along the edge. Which means any force you send down the map edge is following a hugely predictable path of movement and is possibly one Linear-Barrage away from "Cease Fire".

I kinda like how easy they are to spot. Enables me to use entrenchments as dummy positions a lot and just watch them soak up fire.

They conducted something like 100 landings during the war. They also pulled double duty as Paratroopers. They weren't as big as the US Marine Corp sure but they certainly did not lack an offensive spirit.

Marines and Paratroopers are usually designated Shock Troops, who are expected take more initiative (get into and win more fights) and have to be a little more self sufficient than the average army grunt. The US Marines for example often took extra liberties with machine guns in Platoon and Company ToEs.

I've found splitting most useful for infantry forces with a wide variety of weapons, like squads having varied assortments of SAWs, grenade launchers, and marksmen. You can construct "task forces" with split teams and tailor a force to a specific objective. If the per-unit leadership and experience modifiers are high this is bound to work well given a proper objective. The modern titles warrant splitting more than the WW2 titles in my experience, since infantry are so much more useful. I don't do as much splitting with the WW2 titles of CM because fact is infantry shouldn't actually be seeing much of the fighting to begin with. Not until after the enemy has already been thoroughly pasted with supporting arms.

Same. You don't seem em on Russian ToEs anymore but i'd go right ahead and pick the BMP-1 even today if it's available. I have a thing for gun-cannons over auto-cannons.

Took me years to figure out CM. A lot clicks the day you realize you just need to stop overthinking everything. Avoid fixation on what individual teams and Pvts are up to and think way more generally. There are no rules. Do what it takes to win.

In which case it would be awesome if the UI would notify you in some way that the selected unit cannot carry out the directed path *before* you hit the go button. I've lost more than a few Shermans to bizarre pathfinding moves when they decided the best way to cross the tiny creek was to take a nice drive down Pak 40 Road.

I know, i'd really love to see a CM game in Poland and the Low Countries. Weenie Panzers ftw.

I guess you're right and if you manage to knick even one Sherman with the thing it's already been a favorable exchange. How long would it just sit in one spot shooting anyway? Its profile is huge and muzzle report gigantic nobody will have any trouble figuring out where to start shooting after it starts Hadokening the valley.

If I could design a reasonable US infantry squad during this era i'd have 10 man squads with at least 2 BARS, a thompson, and a rifle grenadier. Every other squad gets a bazooka. HQ teams get a scoped Springfield. The light mortar teams get knocked down to two per Company, third team purely ammo bearers. One more M1919 added to each Company. The idea here is to make a group that does not rely primarily on the Garand for fire and can guarantee very heavy fire for the length of at least one engagement. I expect they'd be bereft of ammunition after that. But I've really de-emphasized the use of infantry in attacks without overwhelming support nowadays. They just die too damn easy. The Sahariana is nifty to me. It's very vulnerable yes but so are the Jeep and Kubelwagen and everyone uses those for recon. It's all about distance really you just make use of them on maps large enough to justify their mobility. When scenario designers stick me with them on 700x600 maps I'm kind of baffled what the idea was and you really don't have any choice except to just dismount them. The Semovente is cool too, but totally impractical without its companion tender. Even though ammo sharing was never finished in the game I don't think the Italians built many of the tenders in real life either. They only built 30 Semoventes after all and had earmaked only 50ish so guns for that kind of carriage. So it was never going to be a mass production sort of thing. Lacking of ammo is a grim but ultimately pretty typical stipulation of their use.

It still does provide American squads with the MG "reach". I'm not sure it's because the MG34/42 are better machine guns though as much as the US ToEs don't seem to distribute the BAR enough. The BAR is an automatic rifle, not a light machine gun. It would've made way more sense if rifle squads sortied with 3-4 per squad instead of one. From what I heard more usually found their way in the hands of infantry than the ToEs allowed anyway. The BAR gets a bad rap it does deserve somewhat but I think it's mostly the fault of doctrine here and not design. Too much confidence in the Garand and no prior experience with anything like the MG34/42. A family a machine guns that by itself probably bought Germany 6 months. A machine gun is a machine gun. Put them in a right place and clip fed or not the enemy won't be having a nice day. I'm not a big fan of the Breda 30 myself, but the Italians are about as generous with them as they can be and would be more so if they could have. The Italians also have a pretty reasonable HMG, the Breda 37. Though also clip fed that's much less of an issue for an HMG than an LMG. Biggest problem with the Italians to me is the often poor leadership and lack of radios. You have to concentrate an Italian force tightly which creates two big problems. One, tempting target for artillery fires. Two, predictable and unremarkable attacks seeing as once you identify the location of the Italians you've pretty much figured out what they're up to. No surprises in store.

I don't know I kind of appreciate the BAR's extra firepower at close range. I treat it like an oversized SMG and for some reason US Armored Infantry really lack those. Course you can just debark the halftrack drivers who usually have Thompsons. What the Americans lack in the BAR they make up for in the Browning M1919 anyway, which are almost always attached organic to infantry platoons. Also i'm not turned off to the idea of Armored Infantry attacking objectives from their mounts. I've done it before and it's been done to me and it can payoff. It's really great for chasing down stragglers. It just needs to be understood that infantry fighting from their half tracks are only marginally better protected from fire than they'd be in the open. Half tracks are really designed with protection from artillery fragmentation in mind. They're trucks with better protection but the open tops mean infantry can fight from them easily and have higher situational awareness because of standing higher (also making them bigger targets to boot). Context is everything overall. Send in a platoon of mounted infantry to finish off some sporadic rifleman contacts in an open field and they'll probably have a jolly time. Send them in by themselves to take the stereotypical Italian-villa-on-the-hill and you can probably expect a transfer back stateside for, oh, "the duration of the war". As for the light mortars, mixed feelings on them. More often than not they never deploy once and I end up just using them as extra rifles. On the other hand, you'd really miss them if you happen to come across a Flak 36 ominously perched on a hill overlooking your advance. Hell I took out a Nashorn with one once and if that's not clutch I don't know what is.

Depending on the given Army's philosophy towards recon you may want to be careful with *how* you scout. The British and Americans like to send armored cars and teams along various potential routes to determine which one *doesn't* have any anti-tank guns. The Germans are largely the same, with the added benefit of being heavily armed against soft targets so if the circumstances are ideal they can take down AT guns by themselves. The Russians largely don't care, they'll figure out where an AT gun is once it starts shooting and then reward the crew's bravery by giving them a heroic (brutal) death.

American Campaign in Sicily mission 4, the attack on Troina. Briefing warned me about prepared artillery. I get that the Germans have mortars and yes even some field howitzers yeah yeah I was expecting all that. Now here's what I didn't expect. Near daybreak my rally area started getting hit by what I thought for sure at first were meteorites because it was something very big. The briefing warned me artillery was likely but I didn't think falling minivans were too. Does the community have any idea exactly what Dragonball Z fighter the Germans have in this scenario? I'm curious to know.

A lot of video games based on rock-paper-scissors mechanics have led a lot of people to really misunderstand anti-tank guns in milgames. I had it wrong for a while too but make no mistake, an anti-gun is a big, dangerous, valuable weapon system that any force would love to be complimented with. It is literally a tank's gun, just minus the tank. It should really be treated as such. A frontal infantry assault on it is a no-no. Especially if it's one of those big 75mm suckers like a Pak 40 or Flak 36. Whole squads can get wiped in one good hit. At the same time you should remember that because an anti-tank gun is largely static, you can turn it into a big liability for the enemy. Like any support weapon system your first rule should be to avoid its line of sight unless you can simply overpower it with lots of heavy fire. Make it heavy too because most ATGs have bullet shields and can operate through the suppressing fire of one or two mgs. Make it bombs, not bullets. Like others have said artillery is the easiest and best solution for any heavy weapon system. Got a spot on a Pak38 on that hill? Forward Observer -> 105mm -> 1-2 guns -> Light/Long -> Fire for Effect. Failing that, just outmaneuver it. It can't move (easily) and it's perfectly reasonable for infantry to invest a gun position if they can maneuver very close to it. The biggest irony to me about anti-tank guns I've found, is that tanks are actually the best counter to them. All you need to do is find them before they find you, and they're toast.

OH MY GOD YES

Final Blitzkrieg sounds like something out of Square Enix. Where's the title art by Yoshi.taka Amano?

Relax boys, this is just a defense op. Intel says Jerry's calling it Watch on the Rhine.

I'm pretty sure in most areas of the front infantry were lucky if they even had their assigned weaponry. Something like a machine gun was an extremely coveted weapon where ever it went and despite building millions of them there just weren't enough to go around. When you read about how hard it was to so much as get men food and water in some of the most god-forsaken regions of the war you start to pick up on how big the war was. These armies were huge and did not have their allotments even in peacetime. So when the war hit and everyone's forces ballooned in size 1000% it's really not surprising to picture most fronts on most sectors just being lots of infantry. Building 30,000 T34s sounds like a huge number, but that's over a 4 year stretch of war and distribution to a frontline measured in thousands and thousands of miles. It's not much. Then you've got closet-fascists and Wehrmachtophiles who love to brag about Nazi super tanks like the Tiger but when you only build around 1,300 or so of that tank that's just, well, nothing. It is statistically irrelevant in a war of such scale.