BletchleyGeek

I guess Elvis isn't defending forward. Separating those tanks from the infantry can be an interesting tactical problem to solve. How prone is infantry to dismount from the tank? I mean, jumping off a moving tank probably means you sprain an ankle more often than not, so I'd expect them to hold to its back while the tank speed is "too high".

I need glasses

I know, I am not sure either that will fit on 3500 points. But QB purchases points are sometimes rather... ehm, surprising. Taking into account how awesome can sometimes be 105mm indirect fire in CMBN and CMFI, I think that the 122mm variety of ISU is a good compromise between points cost and effectiveness. Well, I was close to the mark - let's see if Bil can fit more armour within those 3500 points.

You both need to look closer at the screenshots, guys. I've spotted several PPSh-41 and PPS-43 on the hands of pixeltruppen.

Assuming that Elvis can deploy AT guns on 0505 or 0506, I would take a battalion-size infantry unit (the infantry doesn't need to be all of it very high quality but the assault group, with engineers and SMG-heavy units with high motivation) supported by two platoons of armour (one SU's the other T-34's), and plenty of 82mm mortars, so you can assault and overwhelm those two areas and open up the map. If he needs to be further back, pretty much the same infantry force, but armour support being fully composed of fast and nimble T-34's.

I was wondering, because the firefights so far have been quite one sided

The timing was almost too good, but I'm not sure it was purely coincidental either.

That would be very nice. With Ken stalking Panthers with his AT rifle teams

That would be a long narrow road indeed. Would come in handy to test off-road vehicle reliability, though

Thank you akd

Did this happen on our game, DB?

The feature list is indeed very nice, but it wasn't until I reached the bottom that I read what I was expecting: This is just great. But makes me wonder what does this "less reliable" remark mean exactly: is this that Russian squad 'teams' are prone to have bad morale effects - red marquee around the unit morale modifier in the info box - more often regardless of their level of motivation, training/experience and leader quality? Or rather it does mean than we can expect delays or mix-ups when carrying orders? What does this mean? That platoons without their HQ teams will have one of the squads designated to be the command group? Is this something meant to be used by scenario designers, or it can happen in the field (say, the HQ is on-map but gets hosed and then the command is passed)?

Too bad that "focusing on East Prussia" meant "focusing on cutting off" the forces involved in Doppelkopf. I'd be quite interested in seeing what's Niepold argument supporting that statement, but the book has only been published in German as far as I know. And to be honest, I have the sensation this is a what-if that would be preferably explored by war gaming. Maybe WitE could be used, but I find many things in that engine to be very dubious. And OCS Baltic Gap is kind of cumbersome.

Fair enough, H1nd. Zetterling & Frankston do a quite thorough "AAR" of the Korsun episode in their book, discussing at some length and depth what were the consequences that "moral" - in Manstein words - German victory. I can't find any reference focusing on the plight of 1st PzArmee shortly after Korsun, maybe some forum local can dig up something. And I can't get hold of the OCS Hube's Pocket wargame, I remember its designer notes' being quite good and full with pointers. Regarding the possibilities of the AGN doing a fighting withdrawal with one flank hanging out in the air, I'd recommend you look up references to the "Baltic Gap". There aren't many books in English making more than a passing reference to it, but maybe there's more substantial stuff published in German. But my remarks about the difficulty of such an operation are based on the remarks - scant - about what I've read about the discussions of the idea (probably in Ziemke's "Stalingrad to Berlin") when Doppelkopf managed to re-establish land communications - for a very short time - between Third Panzer Army and AGN. EDIT: You can find the designer's notes for Hube's Pocket from page 17 onwards on this PDF http://www.gamersarchive.net/theGamers/archive/ocs/OCSHubes/hubesPocket.pdf But I see that no bibliographic pointers are given. Unreliable memories and all that...

You got that kind of backwards. 6. Armee was destroyed a second - and final time - because the Romanian army, again Romanian troops were holding its flanks now that's some irony, was in the process of dissolving/changing sides. If I recall correctly, in the two weeks before the start of the Soviet operation against the 6. Armee, a coup d'etat had toppled Antonescu, German attempts at strong-arming the Romanians failed (they got away with that in Hungary) and the Romanian government quickly agreed with an armistice with the Soviet Union. It's perhaps one of the few examples in WW2 where a quickly shifting political situation has an obvious and decisive effect at the operational level (along with the Italian armistice, yet it didn't convey the catastrophe that was the loss of 6. Armee). I'm also left to wonder whether this was the outcome of a well designed strategical-operational plan. I reckon Romanians had been approaching the Soviets for a deal for some time, as yet another sizeable chunk of their Army was sacrificed in the Crimea, and the German collapse west of Dnepr in the Winter of 1943 - Spring of 1944. If anything, the political situation had been quite uneasy for some time. All the Axis allies - Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Finland - tried to get out of the war as the outcome of the late 1943 campaigns sank in. In Romania, the German position held up as long as Antonescu remained in power. In Hungary, Horthy was also toppled, but the close proximity of Hungary to the Reich, allowed the Germans to quell the whole thing before it had untoward consequences. Almost at the same time, a quite big uprising in Slovakia required the deployment of a corps-sized German force, which got tied down for quite some time in combat operations there. The Finnish were also seeking terms with the URSS, but Hitler's political and economic strong-arming tactics managed to delay the inevitable until July: the realization that they just couldn't sustain the kind of losses they suffered as the URSS could devote some attention to them as German power waned. Regarding the original question. I can't be sure how much of a difference would have made for instance, to evacuate AGN rather than leaving it there to rot. If we look at two smaller examples of similar situations like Korsun and Hube's 'mobile pocket', in both cases the Germans managed to extricate most of their personnel, but very little of their equipment. The Germans had time to reorganize that personnel into existing or new units and replace to a great extent the equipment lost, but I wonder if they would have the time and resources to do the same with a similar level of success with the AGN personnel. And the units resulted from that 'reconstruction' process were clearly inferior to the outfits that had been basically destroyed. AGN should have been retreated to a less exposed position well before summer of 1944. As soon as Army Group Centre collapsed - and that happened remarkably quickly, in less than one week - the AGN simply didn't have a right flank any more. In those circumstances, trying to pull back hard and fast to the west would have probably ended up in a disaster, as the Soviets would be fresh and ready for a pursuit battle in optimal weather conditions: the AGN commanders weren't in the same league as Hube was, nor had the same opportunities offered by the weather as he had.

This thread made me realize that behind all these nicknames and stuff there's real people, with real problems. All the best to both of you Meach & Mishga For real.

Well the drill seems to be like: 1) Teasing trailer/screenshot. That's the "look, we got something" stage. 2) Four to six weeks later, we get the official announcement, with screenshots, feature lists etc. and we can place pre-orders. That's the "we know for sure what features we will be offering" stage. 3) Four to six weeks later, the game gets released. That's the "we're happy with the stability and functionality in the latest build" stage. So between the teaser and the actual delivery, anything between two to three months can elapse. I'd be expecting step 2) on Friday evening US Eastern seaboard time or early next week (unless some of the new features is causing trouble), and the actual release by the end of February, early March (if testing doesn't uncover something critical). Even if Steve commented that Bagration was close to be released last year, I reckon they've decided to include some more features as they were going to miss their internal deadlines for that anyway. Of course, the above is pure speculation.

I need to present my excuses to you, Mr. Mord. All that talk about Arracourt is just distracting Steve, and that is obviously causing substantial emotional distress to you and your browser reload button.

I'm with Kensal regarding the personnel training being a 'mixed bag', but I 100% agree with rest of what you say here. My take is that Panzer Brigades attempted to make virtue out of necessity, very much as the Red Army did when it was decided to drop the concept of Tank Division in favour of Tank Brigades in 1941. I agree that neither were the most effective of concepts. In any case, this was a discussion about hull-down and spotting

Yes, the dismounting and doing recon sounded good, but here the idea was to jump on the Cromwells while they were "busy" slaughtering those beautiful Pz II Lynx and other fancy German recon vehicles. So time was a factor here, but perhaps not so much as I thought while playing this particular situation. Actually, pnzrldr pointed that out on his post on Bil's blog and I'm trying to get used to do that. Indeed, there's no spotting bonus per se, other than that of having the crew "probing" a narrower frontage. They were hull down, if you check the map, the location of the Pz IV's was right behind the little crest dominating the bridge in the middle of the map (on the German side of the map). By the way, it's one of the most interesting maps I've ever played in CM (Thanks GeorgeMC!). On the other hand, it's true that since the Cromwells were stationary, there was indeed the possibility their location was given away by the sound of the engines - thus attracting the attention of the Cromwell crews earlier than I would have liked to. What you have said, really. Deploying armor in hull down is indeed a viable and effective tactic. The question was that this variability in spotting kind of offered a better explanation than anything else for that particular episode. Well, maybe Barre can confirm my memories. Which as you say, are faulty by definition Hey, I will admit readily that I made a mistake. I didn't make that comment to cast doubt on the model you have in the engine (i.e. "Ye Gods didn't smile upon Me that day"). But rather, as an example of how tactically important is this spotting variability. And also, a little reminder that tactical principles - such as deploying tanks in hull-down position - aren't just trump cards you pull out your sleeve (ahem, deck) to stomp your opponent. Things are more complex in CMx2, and that complexity, even if it bites your rear, it's what makes this engine interesting. This is not Conflict of Heroes

I've been looking quite a bit into Arracourt - as I'm looking into modelling that battle in an operational level engine - and I kind of agree with that assessment of yours regarding experience of crews not being a deciding factor, which was very low specifically in the Panther Battalions. The 4th US Armoured Division was also quite raw, since they had arrived in Europe the only thing they did was to drive across Brittany and then east to the Moselle overrunning disorganized and scattered German units, but it looks to me that even that (limited) experience, allows to qualify American crews as more experienced than those of the hapless Panzer Brigades (I'm thinking of the first day in the engagement). Indeed, what carried the day for the US armoured forces in that crucial first day was superior command & control. I am not contesting the level of training, but the level of experience of the crews in a combat situation. And I had the organic Panther Bns in the Panzer Brigades in mind, when thinking about "raw German crews". As I understand the soft factors in CM, "Green" corresponds with a mixture of training and experience. To what extent the lack of experience impairs the effectiveness of what crews learnt during training, or to what extent training makes for lack of experience, when those crews are under real fire, is yet another topic of discussion. Taking an "average" of both "ratings" can be a useful abstraction, but I can think of situations where the relative "weights" given to each rating can be very different when it comes to quantify likely troop effectiveness. Fair enough

By mid or late 1944, I wouldn't say that would be 'unrealistic', Steve. A well-documented example of poor quality crews being deployed in major operations is that of the Battle of Arracourt. And probably there are many more similar examples of such raw units being committed to action in the Eastern Front in late 1944. I see many "juvenile" remarks deriding statistics being made here, which make an amusing read, but I think they tend to miss the point of all this experimentation and tabulation. That of getting an idea of the "timing" in one of the most important factors in tank-to-tank combat, spotting. If having your tanks in hull-down positions entails that those tanks will require, on average, a longer time in order to spot an enemy tank, that has quite important tactical consequences. Let me go over a happening in a "CW First Clash" game I had at The Blitz with Barre (hats off to him, by the way). That scenario depicts a meeting engagement between a Polish and a Waffen SS recon battlegroups, where the terrain consists of a quite deep forested valley dominated by rolling hills on each side. Each force has the opportunity to deploy their armour on the high-ground, overwatching parts of the valley as well as the higher-ground on the other side. The German side (this is an subjective appraisal) offered much better opportunities to deploy armour in hull-down position. I was playing the German side and I kept my heavy armour in reserve - relatively speaking, as these were Mk IV's - while the faster, thin skinned German AFV's raced along the main routes in search of the enemy forces. My opponent met the light AFVs with a couple Cromwells, which did indeed have a field day. My opponent had those Cromwells sitting on the open, as he wasn't very afraid. I immediately ordered three of my Pz IV's to advance along a covered route towards hull-down positions slightly to the flank of the enemy Cromwells. They got there and for when the 'contact' icon solidified into an actual tank, the Cromwells - sitting on the open - had already started firing on the hull-down Pz IV's. That was a difference of perhaps 20 or 30 seconds, not much yet crucial, since by the time my crews were firing their first shots - and getting their shots too short or too long, as expected - the Cromwells' crews had already taken those 'off range' shots, and their next shots knocked two Mk IV's in quick succession with turret penetrations (both crews bailed out). I wasn't aware at the time of how important could be that difference - as in allowing the enemy enough time to get a good firing solution before my troops did. In hindsight, if I had been aware of this asymmetry in spotting - which makes perfect sense now, as the Cromwells by being on the open, had more chances to spot than my Mk IV's, by having more "Eyeball Mk I sensors" available - I wouldn't have gambled on taking out the Cromwells (and putting the Mk IV's in hull-down positions, where they're surprisingly yet historically-correct vulnerable).

I think you're right on the money, mate. For a Poisson distribution, the expectation and the variance are the same. Why do you think that's fishy? Spotting is obviously a time-based event: the longer you look into the general direction of an object, the higher the chances of spotting it. Vanir, do not despair. These tests are giving out data with a lot of tactical value. Let's say they're a quantitative view on the very nice write-up by pznrldr on Bil's blog regarding how important is patience when dealing with spotting and recon in general. I've inputted your data for the Panther on a Google Spreadsheet (which you can use if you want): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aq0Fz61zV5lgdEVDTVdmdDhiUEZUWFlacmUyLUpFV2c&usp=sharing Then I went to this other page here: http://vassarstats.net/poissonfit.html#down in order to see if your observed times fit well into a Poisson distribution or not. In order to do so, I took each k to correspond to a 60 seconds interval (a WEGO impulse). I reckon it's not a bad fit. This is tactical signficant since it's telling us, the players, how long we can expect a given vehicle crew to spot a certain object at a certain distance in perfect conditions. Note as well that if two vehicles crews are the ones looking in the same direction, the 'waiting times' for spotting an object will drastically go down. So I'd say that the spotting model in general is sound. Which doesn't really say anything on whether or not the advantages due to equipment are well represented

There are also quite a few interesting operations to be covered, like Doppelkopf http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Doppelkopf which falls well into the time-frame of Bagration (and wasn't minor by any measure, involving GrossDeutchsland). And there are quite a few other counter attacks that can provide inspiration for scenarios. And let's not forget that even if the time-frame is somewhat limited, the CMx2 scenario editor it's flexible enough to depict quite accurately nearby periods (you could totally model Korsun scenarios, if you have mud in the game, for example) or the fight in the Hungarian plain (no Hungarians, though). There are quite a few Lorraine or (early) Bulge scenarios made for CM:BfN, and they play quite well. I am very much looking forward to George MC's scenarios covering the exploits in the Baltic of the Panzer Count

Just read this - rather moving - piece by BBC News on the quite impressive efforts made by teams of volunteers to trace the remains of Red Army soldiers across the battlefields of Second World War http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25589709 Exploration is one of 600 groups of diggers from all over Russia who have found and reburied a total of 500,000 soldiers so far.