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Ultradave

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Ultradave last won the day on June 6 2023

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About Ultradave

  • Birthday 10/20/1956

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  1. Need more info to answer properly. What version are you currently on? There are all in one downloads for the current version and your license key will still work. Or there are updates up to the current version. However, to do those, you need to be on version 4 of the game engine. How old is "this old game?" and then we could point you in the right direction. And no, there is no automatic update download unless you are on Steam, and I'm guessing you don't have it installed there due to your "old game" title. Dave
  2. Along with this I'd like to be able to click a sound/tentative contact and have it highlight which of my units has that contact, just like it works for a solid contact. That would tell me who I need to maneuver to get a better contact on it. I think this is realistic. For example, a squad gets a tentative contact. Squad leader splits off a scout team "See if you see what that is." As long as they still remain in C2, that would then tell me what I'd need to do to fire on it. Sometimes it's only a small change in position or cover, but right now we don't know WHO needs to do that. We just have lots of tentative conctacts and have to guess who MIGHT have a LOS to one. Dave
  3. Its maximum range is in that order, however it has a significantly smaller effective range (like about 1/10th the max range - roughly). It's a recoilless rifle, so that is correct. Dave
  4. I remember one scenario from CM1 where you (if I remember right), the British airborne troopers dropped into Normandy and trying to assemble and take a few houses. You were only allowed to use view 1 - the eye level view - and just tab switch between each unit. It was HARD. Lots of view blocks, so it was really difficult to form up or even determine where the objective was compared to you. I thought it simulated the confusion of the first period after the airborne drops pretty well, minus actual bullets flying at you. Dave
  5. Easy answer. It doesn't have more HE. Scroll back a bit. A 155mm howitzer shell has over twice the explosive weight as a 120mm mortar round. In general terms a mortar is going to be less accurate than a howitzer. The velocity of the shell is lower, the trajectory much higher, making it susceptible to winds aloft more so than an artillery shell. That's something that can be calculated for and input corrections, IF you have time for it. The artillery battalion Target Acquisition Battery will fly a weather balloon a couple times a day and report direction and speed at various altitudes. You (the various fire direction centers) use those to look up deflection and elevation corrections to add/subract to the firing data, based on your expected direction of fire. Now obviously 2x/day still only gives a rough idea and weather and wind can change, so even those corrections are ballpark. In the game, I use mortars for a few things. 1) Against unprotected infantry they are good, or in trenches you'll get the odd direct trench hit which is great, and even if you don't it usually keeps their heads down. 2) Short harassing mission against armor to make them button up. 3) Smaller mortars especially are great for suppressing MG or AT gun positions and are usually quick response. Against buildings or anything substantial, I leave that for the field artillery, unless mortars is all I've got. Mortars can do pretty well against pillbox positions too. They probably won't knock them out, but they can suppress them. Nothing like a couple dozen mortar rounds landing on the roof and all around to disorient them and give them a headache. It helps anyway. Dave
  6. This probably isn't really accurate either. FOs or FISTs are well trained to do so, and have the radio nets "dialed in" and ready to go. The "almost any unit," whoever they may be, will have varying levels of ability to effectively call for fire. Variables like map reading ability, knowledge of the TRPs in the fire support plan (they may or may not depending on the level of command), being able to quickly switch to and make contact with the battery by radio, and their proficiency at using a call for fire, which has a specific format, and how good they might be in zeroing in on target with adjusting rounds, all play a part. It takes some practice to learn how to bracket and estimate distances well. Every battery and mortar section does some training on how to coach an untrained observer, but that adds time to getting the mission going, so mission times for FOs are justifiably shorter than infantry HQ units or whoever else might be calling. So, yeah, the general answer is that artillery call and adjusting in CM is quite abstract and generalized across periods, and some things don't carry directly from real life experience. This was my job for years, so I have a lot of detail in my head. Do I need it in the game? Well, I probably would have fun with it as an artillery simulator. Others might find it tedious In RL, a 120mm shell does in fact have a lot less explosive power than a 155 shell. I was in the Airborne and our direct support artillery was 105mm howitzers, rather than 155mm. In that setup, a 120 and a 105 are roughly equivalent. Roughly. A 105 also has a lot less explosive power than a 155. Hope that helps. Doesn't change anything of course. And my experience is Cold War era, which pretty well translates to WW2 with better comms. There were the beginnings of computerized fire calculations and GPS, but we didn't have those. TACFIRE was a computer based battery fire control system, but it came in 5ton trucks. Can't airdrop those. We had a digital-analog computer that used paper punch tape input (yeah, a dinosaur). It hardly ever worked right and it weighed 400 lbs, and usually broke if you airdropped it. "Charts and darts" (manual paper, protractors and slide rule calculations) were faster anyway. And those methods have changed little since WW2. The physics of ballistics are a constant Dave
  7. The question you asked was real life tactical use of the 120mm mortar. So I provided some real life background.
  8. No. A 155mm howitzer shell has approximately 2 - 3x the warhead charge of a 120mm mortar. (comparing a US 4.2" mortar HE shell to a US 155mm HE shell). I'm sure other country's ammunition would be in the same ballpark. Battalion mortars are more versatile, are under the infantry battalion's direct control, so therefore can be more responsive to the infantry. They are also less susceptible to counter - battery fire as they can pick up and move and then re-emplace faster than a howitzer battery. This becomes more important the more modern the era. It is also more of a difference with towed howitzers than with SP howitzers. Even so a 155 battery is a lot of stuff to move and it's all heavy. In the Cold War period to the present, there is usually a 155 (or 105) battery dedicated to each maneuver battalion, and that association is permanent, so that units train together. Obviously that can be modified depending on circumstances, so there is usually a dedicated direct support artillery battery as well as battalion mortars, so response is fast. In WW2 this wasn't the default organization, so call times to the artillery would be a little longer, not even counting the advances in comms since then. A 155mm howitzer has significantly longer range. While that may be important for targets of opportunity in the rear areas of the enemy, for CM game purposes it doesn't matter much. The normal real life doctrine would be to select firing positions for both mortars and howitzers so that the expected ranges to targets fall at around 2/3 of the max range of the weapon. Mortars then, would be placed closer to the front lines. In game purposes, if you have off map assets, then they are already placed appropriately and can reach the whole map. If you were playing a game a scale level higher, where you control the batter position, it matters more. One last pretty important thing. A mortar section can put A LOT of rounds on the target in a short time. The sustained rate of fire is faster than a 155mm howitzer and they can keep it up longer before having to slow down. A 155 can fire at a high sustained rate but not for very long, if you want to use it again. It just takes longer to load and fire as well. Dave
  9. I've been in a M60 tank buttoned up and I can say spotting anything is hard. It helps when the other guy fires Muzzle blasts and smoke puffs make things easier. But just seeing things tucked in a treeline? That's really difficult. Sights improve, for sure, with the development of thermals, but thinking more of the TC or driver being able to see and ID things out the ports? That was hard. Never been in a WW2 era tank, even in a museum, but I can't believe it was better. It's probably STILL just as hard today. Just a lot easier to hit and kill something once you do locate it. Dave
  10. All I can say is that George's scenarios will challenge you at every turn with surprises. It's not unreasonable behavior. A unit on the attack is going to plaster any suspected enemy locations either by direct or indirect fire, whether or not they spot anything. If nothing else you keep their heads down. Treelines are obvious targets where enemy might be expected. Dave
  11. Steam versions are Windows only. So are Slitherene/Matrix versions as far as I know. The only way to get a Mac version is through Battlefront. Keep in mind that the PBEM++ feature is only available in the Windows versions, not the Mac versions. Other than that, there is no difference. That's no big deal for me, but it might be for others. For Mac, PBEM still works the way it always has. Dave
  12. My wife and I lived in England for several years. We watched ALL the episodes. Dave
  13. It's a fun little scenario. I've played it a number of times, and it's a good one to micromanage everything as you don't have a large number of units to control. I agree that as long as you are careful not to get your Stuart in the way of that AT gun, you can use it for covering fire to advance your men. Go down low to level 1 and 2 and take a good look at the terrain. There are areas where you can approach behind cover. Dave
  14. The AI force picking was greatly improved back a while ago, HOWEVER, it still does bizarre things, and it gets weirder as the battle size gets smaller, like small and tiny. Still needs work. One thing they are good for though, is to practice tactics. Set up the AI played side as defense and pick their forces, pick your own offensive force, and practice a company assault with a few supporting tanks against a village defended by a platoon with 2 AT guns, for example. You'll know what they have, but not where they are, although you can guess likely locations, which in a lot of real life cases might not be that far off. If you pick reasonable forces for the AI, it will usually do a halfway decent job of setting up, I've found. Or even if it doesn't, you won't know where they are until you find them.
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