Probus

"Teal Gerbil"

I've never heard anyone suggest this strategy before. This would have really helped the Wehrmacht. Overextending your forces makes them very vulnerable, but would stopping have helped the Soviets more? Why did Germany not cross the river North (and South) of Stalingrad and just encircle the city instead of bleeding it's army dry in city combat? Wasn't their doctrine to bypass strong points and let the infantry deal with them later. I'm guessing a river crossing was not practical?

We can't see your video clip @Warts 'n' all. Hopefully it was appropriate for this age group.

Hi @danfrodo what you say is true, Hitler would have never gone for it. But since this is a hypothetical, The 'evil genius' Hitler recognized that if he could stir up the Soviets against Stalin by helping the Ukraine 'liberate' their lands, He would have: a whole new army at his disposal, Stalin would have one less army His supply lines would be effectively reduced by the width of the Ukraine as that would be friendly territory (1260km). When the war ends, he shuffles off the remaining Ukrainian soldiers to Siberia (or worse). They are still Nazis... If Hitler had played that game, along with fixing Enigma, starting Barbarossa earlier and possibly driving directly to the oil. Would Barbarossa have been a success? Maybe not WWII, but at least Operation Barbarossa?

I don't think that it would be outside the realm of possibility for the 'liberating' Nazis to turn into the 'conquering' Nazis after the war. Goebels could have easily fabricated a reason to turn on 'em. Divide and conquer.

And don't forget the apostrophe either! I still think that if Barbarossa was going to have any chance of success the Nazis should have acted against their nature and went into the USSR as liberators. If Soviet soldiers started to desert and fight with the Germans, that's a 200% change for each deserter. It had already happened once in WWI.

Sounds like government contracts... Prolly only ~3 pages worth of useful non-boilerplate non-legalese verbiage.

I gotta disagree with you @Howler. Now I might be wrong, but this command could really help at the beginning of games. I often get into traffic jams that just compound themselves when in RL, the drivers wouldn't act that way unless they were under fire. This command could get my rear echelon units to their destinations 2-3 turns quicker if there was a Follow AI. Also, this may help with bridge crossings. I also think it would be useful in scenario design for the AI.

Exactly @Centurian52!

Yep. I interpret that as Battlefront is still on the fence. Maybe leaning a bit to the no side, but that could just be my imagination.

Very interesting!

In the spirit of improvement of the Combat Mission games. I thought I would ask a question similar, but narrower in scope, as the general "Engine Improvements" thread. What new commands would you like to see added or added back to Combat Mission and why. Also include a brief description of what the command would do. If you see problems with a suggested command or improvements to it, feel free to add some constructive criticism. If you don't understand an aspect of the new suggested command please ask the author to explain what that aspect. So I will start. Here is an example of the format: COMMAND: Description & Details. Conditionals. ---------- FOLLOW: The unit is commanded to FOLLOW the selected unit at a speed that will catch it up to the unit and then maintain a reasonable distance from it so that the following unit does not have to constantly use the PAUSE command. If the following unit is shot at, it will (stop or continue?) following. Not sure which action would be best. Maybe the algorithm could check the HIDE status to determine what action to take under fire. If HIDE is on then the unit seeks cover under fire. If HIDE is off the unit continues to FOLLOW the selected unit. If the followed unit stops the following unit stops and if the followed unit is knocked out, the following unit seeks cover.

I wonder if Stalin would have accepted a conditional surrender/cease Fire that left him in power from the Urals and to the East. Did/does the Soviet Union have oil to the East of the Urals?

Ok, I lied. It was actually watching two videos, the first by TIK: The second was by Military History Visualized:

@Artkin linked me or told me of TIK's videos and I started watching his channel. But one of his videos reminded me of my WWII class and that's what prompted me to post this thread. Hah! I'll have to see if I can figure out which one it was. That's a great idea and yes, it would be lot of work, but fun! I've heard it said that Germany lost the war at Stalingrad. Because that's when Hitler took control of the army from his generals, and conversely, Stalin released control of his army to his generals.

Interesting. Why do you say that? I've not tried the CMFI campaign.

I wouldn't go so far as that @Bufo, but we are talking hypotheticals. I guess if 'Germany could have kept the USA out of the war' would also have to be added to the list of hypotheticals.

@IanL, Your PBEM tool is awesome BTW. I would love to see one more update with little tweaks for us PBEM junkies. Do you know if the updated version Battlefront is working on for the Steam CMCW will do everything your app will do?

Very interesting! When was that book published? I'm just curious if it was before '89 which is when I took the course.

Cold War has become my new favorite. It is balanced (at least pre-Abrams) and more forgiving than Black Sea. I really like all the Combat Mission games but I would put CMRT at my second favorite.

Do Gun Barrel Hits Always Disable the Main Gun? Not necessarily penetrations but just hits? Would you consider their guns knocked out and make them secondary targets?

So... Get my M60A1 RISE+ tanks on the move as soon as his T-64As start moving. Then stop the M60s in a valley shooting up at the T-64s without the T-64s being hull down. A tall order! Or just flank 'em. BTW, I did get a track hit from the front that disabled the T-64A and the crew bailed. \o/

@Zveroboy1& @dbsapp, I like your arguments but you seem to have not considered my third 'Liberator' hypothetical. That point would have a major impact on logistics and replacements (both green and veteran troops), possibly even reduced casualties. Vernichtungskrieg would therefore, have not been implemented. Also, Halder wanted Moscow (from his experience in France), Hitler wanted oil. They both wanted to destroy the Soviet army. I was taught that Barbarossa was delayed so that these forces could be utilized in the campaign. Bypassing the Balkans may have pushed the schedule forward by a month. If this would have let the Germans surround Moscow, then the Russian winter would have hampered Soviet counter attacks and exasperated the situation inside the besieged Moscow. I don't remember this scenario being mentioned. Do you think the Japanese had a large enough army to start a second front? Were there any resources Japan wanted in Eastern Russia? No doubt that if Japan had done this, no matter what the outcome, it would have delayed or kept the USA out of the war. Might need to add Japanese DLC to RT.

Operation Barbarossa was a longshot at best. I learned in a WWII college class (in the 80s) that if Germany had done a few things different, they may have been able to get the Soviets to sue for peace. Here are the top arguments. Do you agree? If Barbarossa had started earlier (bypassing Yugoslavia for one), the Soviets may not have had the time to move the control of their forces out of Moscow. The Germans could have surrounded Moscow before mud and winter stopped them. Then turned South. When Barbarossa started, German forces were actually treated like liberators in many areas. If they had maintained the image that they were liberating the country they would have had many less logistical problems and a pool of new recruits to pull from, possibly mass defections. (Note, this is 180° against the political goal of Barbarossa, but this is all hypothetical) Switched encoding methods before each new campaign (not relying on Enigma being completely secure). Much easier to win a war if the enemy doesn't know your every move. Not sure if Stalin actually used the information the Allies fed him, so who knows. Or if Barbarossa's primary objective was to secure the Southern oil fields first before concentrating on Moscow (this is actually what Hitler wanted before he was 'betrayed by his generals', believe it or not). This would have significantly reduced logistical problems. So, what do y'all think? This would be sweet if this scenario was playable in a future Red Thunder DLC campaign.

If the tank I was firing at was abandoned with open hatches, is CM smart enough to know that so a flamethrower would be more effective against it @MikeyD?