Pelican Pal

Here is a still from a famous German movie clip from BoB. StG44 in and and rushing past a burning US halftrack! Have also seen the MP38/40 carried in one hand.



All in all, I think that one-handed carry for the Germans in CM would be a good thing. Nor is it particularly difficult to show the US did the same thing.

Colorized WW II pic of Marine flamethrower gunner rushing in to attack a Japanese pillbox.



Marine crossing the seawall at Tarawa



Storming the beach! Location not given.



BAR man



Iconic image and sorry for drop shadow!


Have also seen a Thompson SMG carried one-handed but had some tech difficulties and now can't find the pic.

Regards,

John Kettler
 

Yes, all CM modular buildings (not just Shock Forces) are pretty tough & the building textures are irrelevant in determining their strength... although this is no major problem in the towns, cities & larger populated areas.
However, in the 'boonies', it can be a bit of an unrealistic issue... one that is unfortunately exacerbated by the lack of (weaker) independent buildings.

However, we have at least provided a [boonies] tag... which includes a change to the building impact sounds to better match the wooden textures.
 
Additionally, I suspect clever map/scenario designers could come up with some workarounds. Here's two that I recently thought of...
This 'broken wall' hamlet will provide much less cover, be far more vulnerable to HE... yet still provide troops excellent concealment.

This Flavour Object* based hamlet will provide the right amount of cover... yet providing adequate concealment will be an issue.

*(I only have the 'workshop' at the moment... there will be more Flavour Object small buildings come release)

I don't have any articles off hand but from my experience:

Graviteam tactics series:

- Tactical battles require less micro from the player

Troops are more spread out and you have less control over them. Preventing you from microing units a ton. You tend towards giving sweeping orders and then watching the platoons carry it out. There isn't a ton for you to do during an assault - most of your focus is on getting people in the right place. Once your infantry are moving across the map its largely too late to do much.

For example, in Graviteam its on you to get the assault platoons in position, setup the artillery, postion reserves, and support by fire positions. but once you hit the "go" button you aren't going to be telling squad 1 to break off an anti-tank team to move ~50 meters through a field to engage an enemy tank.
- Battles feel more authentic

If you read any number of AAR or personal accounts from veteran you'll read a lot of stuff that Graviteam seems to get right. The biggest one for me is that you will repeatedly read about armor advancing even after their infantry support has been pinned down. This rarely happens in CM (to the player) but in Graviteam you'll see stuff like this all the time.

In CM the player has a ton of control, this can be good, but can also create instances where battles feel too put together. Graviteam does a better job of making battles messy.

- Good campaign system

The campaign system is a strategic map of the battle area where tactical fights are generated by the movements of units on the strategic map. Its fantastic and adds a lot of replaybility to the series. This is the one area where it beats Combat Mission hands down. You are dealing with postioning of units over a period of hours, resupply, recovery of damaged vehicles, etc... I recently had a very interesting Graviteam Tactics game where I managed to win by sacrificing a tank platoon to draw the German Heavy tank unit (Tigers) into a strategic trap.
- You can get more breadth at a lower price

Graviteam mostly focuses on the Eastern front, but you can find Afghan War, Iran-Iraq, Chinese/Soviet Border War, and various African conflicts. These are all relatively inexpensive. This is something I like a lot as they are conflicts that you rarely (essentially never) see simmed and Graviteam does them.

CM:

- More Micro

In CM you can find yourself microing a platoon of infantry and 3 Bradleys to surround a compound that holds 7 Insurgents. And that will be interesting. This makes CM a much better small unit and urban combat game.

I just played a battle in CM where I knocked down a section of wall to give a T-72 a keyhole position to kill an Abrams. That isn't something you could do in Graviteam at all.

- User designed scenarios

While the campaign system in Graviteam is better, the standalone scenarios and the few "story" campaigns in CM are excellent and Graviteam doesn't have anything like it. There are a ton of them and there are quite a few fantastic ones that really let peoples imagination shine.

- More WW2 and modern content

if you want to spend the money CM covers more ground both in WW2 and in Modern.


-----

Generally I play them both.

I play Combat Mission when I;'m interested in heavy micro or a good standalone battle. While I play Graviteam when I'm looking for a week long campaign or some weird mid-century conflict. They both play very differently and its hard to compare them directly.

josey Wales has a decent video:
 

RE: Scenario design overall
What building your own scenarios does, at least for me, is point out the limitation more than just sticking with QBs and premade scenarios. Once you start opening the system up and you realize that there is  a lot you can';t do with the limited amount provided. Sure you can do jeeps and artillery if you want, but that isn't particularly interesting. Take 37mm's Heaven and Earth... That is a dramatic change that is only possible because CM:SF has a relatively broad stable of units. CM:SF, in fact, can do a decent job of representing various conflicts outside of its actual ~3 month time period thanks to the existence of so much Cold War Soviet kit. Some of my favorite CM scenarios were African and Middle-East civil war scenarios. These are scenarios which are well outside of the scope of the game as made, but there is sufficent breadth to make possible.

And really what you are doing is using basic building blocks (infantry with Warsaw Pact weaponry, T-55s, BMP-1s, etc...) to create interesting engagements that only broadly resemble the TO&E of any actual Nation that would be fighting with these weapons. In fact you can do a modern battle with "Kurdish" forces using American equipment fighting "Isis" troops with stolen American equipment and various Soviet era vehicles even though there isn't anything close to a well researched layout of these forces in the game.
 

You are ignoring the obvious solution here and imagining that you'd have to release some absurd "uber game". DCS, for example, has a Core Launcher and numerous modules which in the end create a single mega game. The layout of CM, as it stands, would be adaptable to that selfsame system.

Rather than having ~6 families each with separate launchers and separate modules. You would have:

CORE LAUNCHER
Which hosted each family

Family Module
Which would be the base game for each time period.

Child Module
Which would be individual modules that are financially attached to a family module.

This layout is far from ironic and would actual be a pretty rational system if BFC wasn't as far into the separation system that they currently have. Since with a single "parent" you wouldn't have ~6 different engine upgrades and patches but instead just a single. While you could still have CM:BN, CM:FB, CM:FI as they exist.
 

I get the feeling that 76mm is talking more about some of the complete formations. Within the editor there are quite a few formations that you can pick which essentially aren't ever used as a whole within CM, but are instead already being broken up by the scenario designer/QB player.
 
 

That is why many games use DLCs or in BF-speak, modules, to add additional content to existing games.  

Yes and no...according to MikeyD, BF apparently also incurs a lot of brain damage determining OOBs and TO&Es for formations that I doubt anyone ever uses.  I was simply suggesting that they could lighten their load by focusing on the OOBs and TO&Es for the basic building blocks (platoons and companies) rather than a lot of larger formations of limited utility to anyone.  
Not sure with what my front preferences have to do with not liking it when games cover very narrow time frames and only a handful of units?  I'd feel the same way if I preferred Normandy, Battle of the Bulge, or Italy.  Three separate games covering the Western Front:  CMFB, CMFI, CMFB, and in theory, four separate games for the Eastern Front--bleh.  I have no problem with paying for additional content but want it to work together in one big sand box rather than several stand-alone silos.  For me, having an editor is not every useful if there is little to edit.  
You leave a question yourself:  why do you care that I post my opinion of the games here?  I've been playing these games and on this forum for many years, so feel free to express my opinions, and am not very concerned if they don't coincide with yours (the self-appointed "defender of the faith", I see).  Last time I checked, the purpose of discussion forums is to, well, discuss?
Finally, in my view given all of the necessary abstractions/assumptions in these (or any similar) games for vastly more important topics such as LOS, sighting, troop reactions, terrain, C&C, morale, etc etc to claim that failing to use historically accurate officers' sidearms would reduce "fidelity" or "accuracy" in any meaningful way is pedantic in the extreme , unless your aim is to create a firing range simulator.

This is more or less my position as well, although I would add that I'd like full-year weather sooner rather than later as well, and that I'm happy paying for modules with additional content rather than a patch, as long as they are provided in something like a timely fashion.
As a similar matter, while CMRT features lots of units that I'd never consider using in a scenario, it does not include such items as assault rafts.  The Soviets conducted many, many river crossings during Bagration and its aftermath, so their presence is missed.  Yes, I understand that rafts would require oodles of new models/animations, so there is a business case against their inclusion, but I miss them nonetheless.

OK, but it sounds like modelling new weapons is not the only difficulty; rather figuring out exactly which weapon was used by whom, and when, is what takes up a lot of time.

You mean mix-and-match, like in forming kampfgruppe or task forces?  Forces were "mixed-and-matched" all the time, so I have hard time understanding what is ahistorical about that?   But if you'd prefer to "break" yourselves by fixating on the formal TO&E of units which have never, and probably will never, feature in a CM scenario, don't let me stop you, although to compare another approach to the inclusion of lightsabers is a bit rich.
Sorry, but in a game featuring up to battalions of digital soldiers in a digital environment built upon many thousands of assumptions and estimates of various degrees of accuracy, to suggest that the range and accuracy of officer sidearms can "make all the difference" is completely ludicrous.  For example, in a "historical tactical sim" I would expect that the TacAI would be vastly more important than minutia such as this, and yet it remains (and given the nature of the beast, will always remain) work in progress.

While I can imagine that determining the various precise TO&E for a wide variety of units over a lengthy period would be a daunting task, I wonder how it will affect BF's decision-making?  Personally I don't understand why BF does not limit their TO&E efforts to smaller units (platoons and companies) and let scenario designers pull together the various components necessary for their scenario (based on their own research).  Just looking at the CMRT units in the editor, how many CMRT scenarios feature entire anti-tank battalions, regimental infantry gun batteries, or mortar battalions (as just three examples)--why even bother to include them?  For that matter, how many scenarios feature entire infantry battalions?  Further, how often did actual TO&E comply with these official guidelines?  Why not just provide the relevant building blocks to allow scenario designers to build the force necessary for their scenario in the editor?
If the alternative is to slice the game to cover shorter and shorter time periods and fewer and fewer units, I'll continue to lose interest in these products.  I would not care as much if the units/maps from the various games could be used in common under a  unified game engine, but having each game both narrow and stand-alone is a huge turn-off for me, especially when the relevant expansion modules turn out to be several years apart.
With all due respect to BF, I consider this kind of thing to be historically irrelevant minutia.  Maybe it's just me, but I'd much rather have a module in 6 months with a standard "sidearm" rather than wait six years to equip my digital officers with the appropriate specific sidearm.

To nitpick here that is exactly what we've been able to do for nearly a decade. You can cook up a scenario with Elite Insurgent infantry riding Bradleys into battle against a horde of conscripted German infantry manning technical if you wanted. The well done Command and Control system of CM makes it a piece of cake too. The real limit is the launcher

Regardless its good to hear that brought some new weapons with them. I was under the presumption that they were fully armed from existing U.S. and British stock.
 
My broader point was the standalone scenarios, campaigns, and master maps are of little interest to me after the base game in a series is released. At which point I would much rather just have access to new weapons and vehicles with which to make scenarios of my own  or play in multiplayer. To the point that I would purchase an "early version" with just a basic availability of new stuff and be fine waiting however many years/months it was to get a patch with the campaign/scenarios/more obscure TO&E.

Because when it comes down to it I'm going to use the baked in scenarios and campaign system relatively rarely compared to the usefulness of having Panzer IIIs in CM:RT.

@Warts 'n' all

Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it.

If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER.  There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem.

---

I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s.

 

Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed.

@Ts4EVER

Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

Pelican,
Given what I have seen from playing GTOS and watching GTMF on YouTube, I think you have covered the issues well.
I remember when I first played GTOS.  I had the style all wrong, positioning each unit and gun while painstakingly check LOS.  (Because I was playing CMx1/2 from inside GTOS.)  But later it did dawn on me that it is a broad strokes game.  One YouTube video I was watching made a good point ... campaigns are not won or lost in tactical battles, but on the campaign map.  I heard that they added WEGO to the campaign options.  I do remember getting myself out of a pickle a few times by the sequence I resolved battles in GTOS.  Not anymore ...
I love the CM movies.  They are very immersive.  And they allow immersion, since you aren't failing to command while enjoying them.  Also, one could argue that you need a more solid system with CM-WEGO than GTMF-RTS, because one can analyze the next minute's orders for 30 minutes.  Although you can pause GTOS/GTMF, you really aren't going to analyze for 30 minutes before revising orders.
I am not sure how I feel about tanks bounding ahead of the infantry.  It seems from watching the game, shaped charge propelled anti-tank weapons had yet to arrive on the scene.  So, with great sacrifice and bravery, you might knock off a track.  Even then, if you held the field, the tank would be recovered and put back into service.

This is a superb video contrasting common depictions in war movies of how infantry carried their weapons against real period sources and photographic evidence. Has lots of useful pictures, including squad movement through drainage ditches in Normandy, British infantry in assault configuration complete with T-handled full size shovels, GIs advancing, Germans in city fighting and the famous BoB StG44 equipped SS moving past burning US halftrack, plus images and text from German, US and British manuals and even training film. Also describes several sites where excellent information on particulars of weapon handling in WW II are covered. Not only is this information helpful for skins and terrain info, , not to mention potential VO chrome via German command to get down, but I believe it could be fed into the soldier animations. Might be interesting to explore animations for prisoner handling upon capture, too. Have read the GIs commonly cut the belt of prisoners, so they'd have to use their hands to hold up their pants, greatly limiting opportunities for mischief!
 
Regards,

John Kettler

Sure thing but note that not all of them list small arms, possibly due to the amount of buerocratic work involved:
https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/index.php?thread/14672-zustandsberichte-gepanzerter-verbände-1943-1945-teil-ii/
https://www.forum-der-wehrmacht.de/index.php?thread/17343-zustandsberichte-ungepanzerte-verbände-1943-1945/
Also they are in German, obviously.

Christ guys - if you don;t like his videos then don't watch the damn things. So far it looks like TS4EVER is the only one posting anything of interest here. If you are just going to be ****ty about it don't post.

@Warts 'n' all

Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it.

If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER.  There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem.

---

I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s.

 

Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed.

@Ts4EVER

Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

@Warts 'n' all

Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it.

If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER.  There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem.

---

I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s.

 

Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed.

@Ts4EVER

Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

@Warts 'n' all

Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it.

If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER.  There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem.

---

I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s.

 

Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed.

@Ts4EVER

Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

@Warts 'n' all

Ts4EVER mentioned that it would be nice to see more captured equipment in the game. In response to that you decided to fill up the thread with your chaff attacking him for some thing or another that happened on youtube. If you think that is defending BF (or that they particularly need a white knight on their own forum) please stop it.

If you don't like his content go to youtube and dislike it, unsubscribe, post in the comments section. But so far in this thread you are the one making an unpleasant ruckus and not Ts4EVER.  There are 31 posts in this thread - nearly a full 25% of them consist of you complaining. Yet Ts4EVER is the problem.

---

I would like to see far more captured weapons, and hopefully as modules finally release for RT and FB we'll see some. One thing I've noticed reading veteran's narratives are that captured equipment were found almost everywhere - although I'm sure that has a bit to do with them sticking out in the minds of the soldier at the time. Its worth pointing out that someone is using a PPSH, and not so much all the guy with MP-40s.

 

Most of what I've read points to the Germans having a general issue getting supplies to men at the front, and not necessarily an actual lack of the item. E.G. many German units were understrength not so much because there weren't men to fill the spots - but that the men weren't where replacements were needed.

@Ts4EVER

Do you have a link to those reports, I would appreciate it if you did.

Countryside boy here. The game is able to simulate extremely dark conditions, and nobody is saying it can't be pitch black in real life.
However, in the game, you can send a whole battalion of infantry running at top speed through a forest completely blind, yet arriving exactly where they are meant to. But they are unable to figure out there's an enemy team feet away, or that the tank that just ran them over was enemy (despite getting an "enemy contact" marker).
It's this mismatch that's the problem, not that visibility can be extremely low.
So I agree that night battles could use a little tender loving care to make them more believable. A good first step could be for scenario designers to stop making scenarios where visibility is so bad that it would be impossible to coordinate any troop movements.

I think what he is trying to say is that he rather would like to learn something about captured weapons in German use.

Christ guys - if you don;t like his videos then don't watch the damn things. So far it looks like TS4EVER is the only one posting anything of interest here. If you are just going to be ****ty about it don't post.

Christ guys - if you don;t like his videos then don't watch the damn things. So far it looks like TS4EVER is the only one posting anything of interest here. If you are just going to be ****ty about it don't post.

Christ guys - if you don;t like his videos then don't watch the damn things. So far it looks like TS4EVER is the only one posting anything of interest here. If you are just going to be ****ty about it don't post.