BletchleyGeek

Santa is calling out targets for corps 155mm pieces over the radio in his sleigh ?

Merry Xmas Bil!

Merry Christmas and all the best for you and your families guys

That was quite an explosion, is that monster knocked out?

Good news to see you back in the saddle, Michael

I am not sure that two M18 make a M36

I would say that the new US Army toys - the M36, the up-gunned and up-armored Shermans variants - served equally well both purposes, showcasing and winning. I do think as well that Baneman's center of gravity are his very limited armored assets, but I would say that the Panthers are more valuable than the JT in this context.

He did state his intention, but not really explain it, Holien I am skeptical it would have worked very well, those Hellcats were easily over 1,000 meters of Panther-1, and even with an oblique engagement angle I don't see how the Hellcat gun could stand a chance unless hitting the side turret amour of the Panther (Vanir can probably say a lot about what would be the chances of that). I still think that he saw what he thought was a bumbling and - in his eyes - somewhat shambolic infantry heavy attack, without pausing for a second that his opponent may be covering his advance as well on the center... and jumped forward to strike decisively and stop Baneman in his tracks. Now he has the info... and Baneman's too - just checked his thread. I am pretty sure it won't take long Baneman to realize that with five different Hellcats, and a Sherman, there's not a lot of points to spend on infantry... Yet I do agree with you that Bil will come on top

As Pak40, I think that Bil made a mistake - probably he was overconfident. It made no sense to engage any German "state-of-the-art" armour frontally with his Hellcats and Shermans. That's not going to work very well, unless the Germans are conscript, have damaged optics or are led by the AI that woodenly follows a pre-set plan like a cuckoo clock. I sincerely thought Bil would try to engage Baneman on his left flank in force, and told him so... that was what made sense. He felt he lacked intel in that area... which he could have gathered easily with those recon teams doing a song and a dance to implement a maskirovka (which has by the way worked, Baneman advance on the left is going to take ages if he's going to bound all the way through Cobru). I think we're seeing here Bil's IPB training in action - which sometimes is very conservative, and I am not sure it works very well out of the box when one side armaments are substantially superior to the those of the side doing the IPB. This is no T-72 vs. M1 match up, but more like a T-72 vs. M60 match up or even T-72 vs. M48. Intelligence is an enabler for success in the battlefield, but if you get wrong the assessment of your combat power, it is not going to help you. He also got the timing wrong. If you want to engage laterally an advancing enemy, you will probably need to wait for him to advance a bit past your "holding" positions. He sprang too early those Hellcats on Baneman's left flank, resulting in yet another quasi-frontal engagement with a Panther doing flank security duties. That engagement hasn't gone very well, either. Indeed, he says he want to engage the JT laterally, but if you look at the tactical situation, I cannot see how can that happen. The forest is teeming with AT-rocket equipped Volksgrenadiers and to the left the map ends. He's basically run frontally into the Jagdtiger in what looks like an alleyway. In any case, I think that now Bil has a near perfect intelligence picture of Baneman force - if he recognizes that Baneman has no platoon of Panthers out there. That may constitute a force multiplier, if he isn't too rattled by his losses this turn (and doesn't seem to me so).

Pretty much sums up my thoughts on this matter.

Hmmm, are they headed to adopt firing positions along the line between 10,24 and 13,28 to hit Baneman's left flank?

Thanks for confirming that akd.

Indeed, if Phil has managed to have shadows like that on reasonable hardware, it is quite an achievement. High quality shadows in games with cameras that are unrestricted as in CMX2 are hard to get.

Look at the outline of the shadow the tree projects on the house walls. It's on Bil's and Baneman's screenshots that I have seen shadows like that in CMx2. What kind of card do you need to get that? I've got a NVIDIA GTX 670 and I don't get shadows like that on CMBN, CMFI, CMRT or CMBS. I am not saying that a hardware upgrade isn't warranted, though

Another (I think) new thing fished from Baneman's AAR (although I saw it first on Bil's): soft shadows I don't think I have seen these on Black Sea...

You may find these useful

Nope - I think you're mixing up CMx1 with Close Combat :-)

Thanks for letting us know and happy to hear you're both back home to gather strength for the upcoming festive season!

Baneman just showed to us that we have a new terrain feature available in the editor - streams. This is a quite significant new feature (code in the engine handling its implications for pathfinding, cover, fire effects etc.) and content (textures, shaders, etc.). NB: Adding it here for the benefit of peeps missing out the brief exchange on Baneman's AAR. Godspeed to BFC setting up the site for presenting CMFB in a "proper" way!

Nice new feature - stream terrain tiles... Thanks for the screenshots Baneman!

The caption on the right is some pretty inspired writing. Too bad the book costs a little fortune in OZ dollars now It does look very interesting, Bil. Comparing two notorious formations over very specific and interesting case studies is something we seldom see. Curious spelling for Panzer-Lehr, though.

That image is one of the most dramatic and clear examples of the power of screening enemy movements. You already know a LOT about his dispositions and I would bet my avatar's helmet he knows nothing about yours And what about that soft shadow projecting on the house facade? Nice one, Phil.

All the best Bud to your wife and you, Bud.

Wow, this is going to get really loud...

Useless stuff that slows you down while charging