Dave85

Hi guys I've just downloaded market garden and although I'm having great fun with it, there is still a problem which I was hoping would have been fixed by now.... British paratroopers still seem to be armed with about 75% sten guns. While everybody loves an SMG this seems a little over the top to me. I've tried to do some research into how a para section was armed and it seems on paper only the NCO's carried stens, the rest rifles/bren, although each battalion was allocated a large pool of extra stens. Now this in itself wouldn't be such a major problem if it weren't for that fact that my highly trained veteran paratroopers seem intent on rattling off each magazine in a single burst against the side of a building 200 yards away!! Same problem with brens. It seems the MMG crews with their belt fed guns and thousands of rounds seem to use their weapons very conservatively with well controlled bursts while the magazine fed guns with only a 150 or so rounds per gun insist on chewing their ammo up in 5-10 minutes. If this is a realistic portrayal of how British paratroopers fought in an urban environment I'm rather confused about how 2 Para managed to continue the battle for Arnhem bridge for around 100 hours using only the ammunition they carried in on their backs. Apologies for the long rant just wondered if anyone else had any opinions on this matter. I find in the current situation the Brit Para's are virtually unusable.

Thanks for the replies I've not installed any mods just the base game. No patches either. I'm useless with computers and have always had trouble installing these games. No luck with the MG module so trying to reinstall commonwealth now to hopefully get the 1.11 patch

Hi guys I just reinstalled CMBN after uninstalling it some months ago. It works ok but the stangest thing has happened.... All unit, weapon descriptions etc are completely wrong. They seem to be a random assortment of any unit name ever used in a cm2 game including several modern unit names. For example a sherman may be described as a "PZ4H Greyhound" In quick battle when I choose each side...the allies are called 'sexton' and the germans 'eagle' This is not a wind up! It makes it rather difficult to choose a force in quick battle. Just installing Market Garden now so hoping that will fix it but was just wondering if anyone had any ideas.....

Its prolly cause they are REMF's and have never been shown how to fire a weapon.

It's about as likely as seeing a COD civil war game.... If any series is suitable for this era its the Total war series, and even that is not entirely suitable.

I'm very much looking forward to OMG, just hope they have a campaign for the 1st Para brigade (surely they will?) Out of interest, will the first AB carry less stens? Dont get me wrong, I love an smg as much as the next man, but the current paras seem to carry two stens to every lee en' and hose off all their 9mm in no time at all, and of course the vehicles carry hardly any. Anyone know how a standard para platoon was armed during OMG? Im guessing one bren, 3 stens, 6 lee en's or summat per squad would make sense I too agree that CM should really stick with ww2. The only alternative I can see would be a ww3 one, set in europe in the late 40's/early50's which could be great fun. Any actual wars that followed ww2 wouldn't really cut it.... Imagine korea 2 player The chinese player gets infantry machine guns and mortars. Thats it. The US player gets all that + arty, tanks and air support by the bucketload. Not much fun for the first guy The one thing the game cant give the US player is piss poor generals and a self obsessed lunatic as C in C

Another Interesting 'what if' this one. To be honest if for whatever reason (obviously would never have happened) the russians were out of the war by the start of '44, I cant see what the allies could have done short of trying to bomb germany into submission for several years. Could overlord ever have even got off the beaches without the eastern front? not likely IMO. If they had somehow gained a strong foothold in normandy, maybe they could have held it, but could they have broken out? considering how much trouble it was in the event, I cant really see it being possible against an army 3 times the size. The western allies trying to defeat the huns in a land campaign on a single front would have made their casualties in WW1 seem trivial. I struggle to see what possible outcome there could have been other than 'A' bombing germany into oblivion. Take nuclear weapons out of the equasion, god only knows what would have happened. Another armistace? With that lunatic running the show, not likely.

Ok so the general consensus seems to be that OMG was a fairly harebrained scheme relying to heavily on too many uncertainties. So what about the alternatives? What if all available resources had been diverted to Pattons third army to continue his hitherto unstoppable rampage across western Europe? Could the war have been shortened considerably? Although many British and some US commanders viewed Patton with a degree of scorn, many of their German counterparts had him mdown as one of, if not the, outstanding panzer army commander of the war (a subject on which the Germans were undoubtably the better authority)

On this subject, does anyone have an accuratee figure for german casualties in the Arnhem area? Wiki states 2500 but Urquart states in his book "the Germans were openly admitting to taking 7500 casualties in the area" the latter figure seems more likely to me considering the 1st AB were a gang of bloodthirsty killers and the Huns were in a race against time to crush the bridgehead

This really stumped me this one. Having read a lot of accounts of the americans in WW2, the first time I read a book written by a british soldier I was a bit miffed as to why the huns, sorry, krauts had abandoned their MG42's in favour of old world war 1 guns when fighting the british....

Nothing to do with the game this one, but this forum seems to contain some of the best WW2 minds on the interenet so was just wondering what the experts thought about this subject. So the general consensus I've found is that market garden was destined for failure before it started....But could it ever have acheived success if things had been done differently? What if the army corps either side of xxx corps had pushed hard aswell? What if the 82nd and guards armoured brigade had made an immediete dash for arnhem after nijmegen bridge fell? What if the huns hadn't found the full operational plans in a glider? And as for the battle for Arnhem itself... Could the 1st airborne not have been landed closer to the bridge? Could both ends of the bridge have been siezed by a glider assault as with Pegasus? (this is what Ambrose has suggested) Maybe the 82nd and 101st initial drops could have been staggered to allow extra planes to drop the 1st AB en masse? What if the radios had worked? Urquart hadnt gone missing for days? It strikes me that a crack parachute division,unexpected, consolidated, properly deployed in a defensive perimeter studded with AT guns, dug in and adequatly supplied by air, would be a very tough nut to crack in 7-10 days. Now obviously a lot of the bite was taken out of the 1st airbornes rifle battalions in the first couple of days in their haphazard uncoordinated, futile attempts to relieve the 2nd battalion. The last thing an airborne unit should be used for is daylight attacks on open ground against armour. Its suicide. Am I right in thinking it was the RAF who refused to allow closer drop zones? Obviously aircraft losses would have been huge but surely it would have been worth it? Any input would be much appreciated

I have often found the last member of an AT crew to be virtually invincible to point blank smg fire and grenades

I've been thinking a realistic way to nerf the SS über fighting capabilities would be that when you occupy a village with them you should have to watch them go through the laborious process of rounding up all the women and children, putting them in a barn and burning it to the ground thus giving the allies a chance to catch you off guard with a counter attack. Of course then any SS men captured by the allies following said massacre would be lined up and machine gunned costing the allies valuable time in exchange.

I agree that there should be more large scale surrenders during battles. The morale of green troops only seems to be effected by casualties or suppression, not by finding enemy soldiers directly in their flank or rear. I would imagine that IRL poor quality troops who have taken a beating would quite happily surrender in platoon or company strength on discovering that the enemy has got behind them. I also find the AI has to be virtually annhialated before a battle is won. You can of course get round this with the ceasefire button but IRL a battalion on the attack would be mad to contiue its attack after taking 50% loss without moving the enemy from his positions, yet in the game it usually has to receive about 80% before the battle is over. I'd like to see the enemy have the option to withdraw instead of surrendering.

There has to be an officer and a radioman in the team as far as I know

Hi lads Im just in the middle of 'the mace' and Im loving every minute. I had been reading about the hill 262 battle on wiki and thought "hmmm I bet theres a scenario for this in CMBN." I really enjoy these big battalion+ sized historical defensive battles where commonwealth forces are hammered by wave after wave of german combined arms assaults, my other favourite being 'breaking the panzers'. Just wondering what tactics people use in this style of battle and if anyone knows what the british doctrine of the time was, main issues being: Hold fire or let em have it? Is it worth staying hidden until the huns get real close then have a whole company open up at once? Its not something I have been doing a lot but seems like a good idea because It denies enemy FO's the chance to soften me up before the infantry come, but on the other hand a german is a pretty dangerous foe when he gets within arms reach... Occupy forward positions or stay back? Im usually tempted to deploy a whole company in their forward foxholes but they tend to get pretty pasted by the inevitable stonk. Is it better to just put a few spotters in the line until the enemy get close, before moving up the rest of the men? Sometimes I keep 3 man bren teams forward and have the rest of the men come up to patch em up and take over the guns when they get hit. AT guns-keyhole or wide field of fire? Obviously AT guns are very effective in the keyhole role but its kinda putting all my eggs in one basket and tends to leave the enemy undefended avenues of attack. In wide field of fire positions they tend to suffer to small arms a lot. Also is it worth keeping most of my 6 pdrs limbered so they can be rushed to hotspots and also avoid being stonked early on. Vickers guns-Foxholes or buildings? I am often tempted to put my MG's in tall buildings to get a good field of fire but they are pretty vulnerable to tank shells like this. In foxholes they tend to suffer more to mortars. Withdraw battered platoons and replace with reserves? If a platoon has taken a beating and are tired and scared I sometimes like to pull them out of the line and chuck a fresh one in. I know a lot of this stuff depends on several variables and some of it is just personal preference, just interested to hear peoples opinions.... One more thing... AT guns...aaarrrgh Why oh why can I not get a camouflaged gun emplacement as a fortification? Why can I not have a crew go and hide in the rear when the spotting rounds come in, then go back to the gun after the barrage? Why can I not man a gun with another crew or even regular infantry when the crew gets killed? The lack of all these abilities really nerf the effectiveness of what should be one of the Brits most valuable infantry weapons during this campaign.

I have done a few QB's against AI where I have a veteran company+ of shermans, about half 75mm and half 76mm's against enemy forces composed entirely of either tigers or panthers, usually also around company strength. I generally have far greater success against the tigers, sometimes destroying 15+ for the loss of less than 5 sherms. With the 76mm I seem to be able to inflict a fair amount of mischeif against the frontal armour of tigers from hull down positions while I send more tanks around both flanks for the kill. I also seem to survive more direct hits from the 88 than the panthers gun.

Im sure Ive read about canister being used in the m4's 75mm during the bocage fighting. When breaching an occupied hedgrerow, 3 shermans would drive through in line abreast with the outside two loaded with canister and turrets rotated left and right to blast the hedgrow being breached while the centre tank would fire HE at the next row. Please correct me if I have this wrong.

Cheers Tiger...Just the right amount on info Managed to get a tactical Victory with 10 panthers knocked out for the loss of 7 churchills 4 6pdrs and a 17pdr. SPOILERS For anyone really having trouble with this mission what I'd recommend is having a front line level with the back edge of the left hand V/L and the front edge of the right one consisting of infantry and 6 pdr AT guns in foxholes and have a second line of tanks and 17pdr's behind the bocage at the back. From here they can reap havoc with impunity. I also find a shoot and scoot attack with a platoon and a half of inf and 3 tanks up the far left flank at the start of the game is very effective.

Im 26 and I only play RT single player. Never actually tried WEGO but it looks like battles would take a lot longer and I could see myself getting frustrated when the s**t hits the fan and I am powerless to intervene. Would be nice to watch the occasional replay mind...

Thats the kiddy

SPOILERS Im on mission 13, Grainville, of Scottish corridoor (which btw is probably the best campaign Ive ever played) Anyhow in the breifing it says the enemy has PZIV's...ok no prob.. but when I start the mission the huns have a company+ of PZV's with not a PZIV to be seen. Is this the result of my performance in one of the 'test' missions or just bad intel? Anyway the problem is, how the hell do I win this mission? I have 3 17pdr AT guns but if I put them in overwatch position they tend to get taken out or pinned by small arms, and shooting 6pdr tank and AT guns at Panthers is as effective as throwing Tennis balls at them. There doesn't seem to be anywhere to hide on this map so the panthers just roll up in a line and lay waste to all my churchills and AT guns The only way I can think to possible win this mission is to literally hide every tank behind the back hedgrerow, not use them at all and just hope I can get a ceasefire with the objectives in a state of 'contested' Anyone won this mission? Anyone encountered PZIV's? Any input woul be much appreciated...

It was just a comment I read on another thread. "How to button my TC?" Or summin.... Ive certainly noticed a FAR higher TC attrition rate since the module (I've only played as british so far though)

Im just reading a book about the fighting in north africa around the gazala line in '42 where the AT gun was king of the battlefield. Apparently, having seen how effective the german 88 AA gun was as an AT gun the british high command, having an abundance of similar 3.7" AA guns that would have made good AT guns did what?....They refused to use them in this role instead converting 25 pounder howitzer units into AT units. What a wonderfully British oversight.

Apparently it was part of the CW patch in an attempt to reduce a tanks spotting abilities. I have had the same experience with Brits but you may find its the same for the US and krauts now.