DougPhresh

Target, Combat Mission Red Thunder. Quick Battle, September '44, Soviet Rifle Battalion (44).

*Coughs in Romanian, Bulgarian and Hungarian* *Coughs again in Romanian* (And apparently again in Bulgarian too! Did anyone know about this ?)

Seconding this. I've had tanks with severely damage optics drive up to buildings occupied by my troops, issued fire orders and watched the infantry (with 13 grenades!) sit for minutes until they were eventually spotted and machinegunned. e: In built up areas, especially with a height advantage, dropping grenades, especially the shaped charges from height would make the most sense both in game terms and reality.

It just might be the soviets are the most sensitive to infantry behavior around tanks because they don't have the PIAT, Bazooka, Panzerfaust or Panzerschreck. Doing a bit of reading, the Soviet infantry were tank killers. Their tactics were very different from Germany and the Western Allies however. The RPG-6, RPG-43, PTRD and PTRS were deadly all of the way through the war, though their use is very different from the other side's AT weapons (There's no "target optics" command for AT rifles ). Similarly, those 45mm AT guns proved useful enough to drag all the way to Berlin at least. In any case, I hope this gets looked at, even though I think we might see captured Panzerfausts in the upcoming Red Thunder module.

I'm looking for some Battalion sized engagements. It's hard to do in QB since there are so few Huge maps, I feel like I've played each of them a hundred times. The Large maps end up disrupting the unit density, and without reinforcements it's hard to get everything moving smoothly without a giant mess of units at the start line. I think I read that map size is limited by the engine, but I hope that the open terrain and large engagement ranges of the modern titles inspire some changes to that. For WW2 scenarios, some maps are large enough. It's just tricky because without reinforcements everything is on the map at once, which is not ideal.

Just wanted to say I really appreciate what you've done here and hope Battlefront takes notice when working on the new Black Sea module!

Yes they were. I thought they could still throw their AT grenades while inside buildings. Is that not the case?

I might just be nostalgic for Barbarossa to Berlin, but if this is the finale to Red Thunder, could we see Soviet VDV , Naval Infantry, etc. ? Did any NKVD divisions fight on to the end of the war?

With Polish voices in other titles, will we see the Polish People's Army (LWP)? And a quick quality of life request - Could Soviet Cavalry uniforms be set as an appearance option available to Soviet Cavalry formations rather than a mod tag? It's only fair since Panzergrenadiers can do it.

Fired up Red Thunder for the first time since the last patch - I'm having difficulty getting Soviet squads to close assault German tanks. Squads with good morale, experience, hidden, not suppressed, with ideal shots at tanks within the 5-30m throwing range are not throwing grenades, despite fire orders. I remember previously if a tank dared get that close, especially with infantry in trenches or buildings it would rain hand grenades and more importantly, anti-tank grenades and molotovs. Similarly, sappers within 1-5ms of a tank are not using their satchel charge, despite fire orders.

I've edited some files - I have no idea how to do mod tagging! More to the point, I'm not as talented as the BF art team, and for them to make the troops of the Herman Goering Division display the correct white Waffenfarben and to add the cuff title to their uniforms would be very little effort. Similarly, they can both add and support Appearance options better than I could implement mod tags. This seems like a pretty quick fix - just a uniform option like Greatcoat/Camouflage/etc. that substitutes white collar badges for the green and adds cuff titles for Luftwaffe troops during the dates the HG was involved in the campaign. Call it "Herman Goering" or something in line with the Gebirgsjäger option added in Rome to Victory. Mixing in some splinter camo would also be very straight forward and I think is already done in for the Field Divisions. With Rome To Victory, the elements of these uniforms all exist in the files already. It's just a matter of a more talented artist and researcher putting together Appearance options for Herman Goering / Herman Goering Greatcoat / Herman Goering Mixed Camo (Luftwaffe and Heer Splinter with some Italian?) / Herman Goering Oakleaf / Herman Goering Winter or whatever the options end up being. Here are the modded files: https://www.dropbox.com/s/fpb5v0343pc6iid/HG Skins Test.zip?dl=0 and a preview:

In Fortress Italy, the troops of the Herman Goering Division display the correct white Waffenfarben in Fortress Italy, but in Gustav Line and Rome to Victory bear the green Kragenspiegel of the Field Divisions. Simply, the tropical uniform in Sicily is correct for the HG Division, but the temperate uniform for Italy and Northern Italy is, I would venture to guess, ported from Battle for Normandy or Red Thunder unmodified. The cuff title is also present in FI but disappears in the later modules. This seems like a pretty quick fix - just a uniform option like Greatcoat/Camouflage/etc. that substitutes white collar badges for the green and adds cuff titles for Luftwaffe troops during the dates the HG was involved in the campaign. Call it "Herman Goering" or something in line with the Gebirgsjäger option added in Rome to Victory. I have included sources below. I think a simple swap of the collars would look a bit like this: Compared to a Field Division Troop: That's a quick fix and would be entirely satisfactory. However, if BF wants to go a step further, read on: Working from these sources I have quickly put together some HG troops in M43 with Luftwaffe/Heer Smocks, Italian Camouflage Pants and the SS Oakleaf Smock. Official support would obviously be easier to use, higher quality, and make sure that both Field Division and HG troops can be fielded. With Rome To Victory, the elements of these uniforms all exist in the files already. It's just a matter of a more talented artist and researcher putting together Appearance options for Herman Goering / Herman Goering Greatcoat / Herman Goering Mixed Camo (Luftwaffe and Heer Splinter with some Italian?) / Herman Goering Oakleaf / Herman Goering Winter or whatever the options end up being.

Really great feedback, thanks. It must have been a chore and half to comb through the records to pin down the various Canadian, British, and South African formations. Were the Firefly troops an administrative unit and attached to troops of IIas or 75s, or were they employed tactically as an all-Firefly unit? (i.e in a QB do I delete the troop and add single vehicle Fireflies to the remaining troops?) I was! It's hard to find something concise outside of reddit and axishistory posts, which obviously are always kinda dubious. Here are the illustrations from the Osprey title "Men-at-Arms 385 - The Hermann Göring Division" :

Are the Polish Armed Forces in the East and Armia Krajowa expected in the module? I'm also hoping that the Volkssturm opens the door to the addition of partisans to Fortress Italy and Red Thunder.

At the Operational level, casualties among Commonwealth infantry in Normandy rivaled the hardest fighting in the First World War. It was no doubt a huge consideration for how the Commonwealth forces fought, down to the tactical level. The war-exhausted British, with officers who had been junior officers at The Somme, were appalled by the high casualty rate for their own men and junior officers (Something like 90% of junior officers in some British divisions became casualties). Monty's veteran troops from North Africa, particularly the 7th Armoured Division were noticibly less aggresive in Normandy than they had been in the desert and even less willing to attack than green formations seeing action for the first time. For the Canadians, with a memory of the conscription crisis that had divided Canada in 1917, keeping casualties low was incredibly important. Canadian soldiers could choose overseas deployment at the time of enlistment and that limited the manpower available. More than that, Canadian formations had been decimated in Hong Kong and Dieppe, and the Canadian public was not willing to throw away another generation of the country's youth. I know that the South Africans in Italy had similar considerations, with very few South Africans choosing to serve outside of Africa. Polish formations in either theatre had no way of replenishing their manpower, and intially, the Free French had the same dilemma. The solution in Normandy was set-piece battles with massive artillery barrages and limited objectives. The fighting for Caen was incredibly tough and bloody, but reducing casualties was a high priority. I don't know enough about tactical combat in Italy to comment, but even at Monte Cassino and Ortona, commanders were not spending the lives of their men cheaply. I also don't know how the Italians, Americans, Heer and Waffen SS thought about casualties. What I would say with all of that in mind, is that the nature of war games make casualty modelling difficult. I don't believe that many players are willing to spend 6 hours to clear a crossroads, or to call off attacks at 10% casualties. Some Operational games, like Command Ops 2 have started to better model these considerations but I don't know how to do it on a tactial level.

I'm hoping the community catches on to RTV because the mods for BN and RT are amazing and comprehensive and it will hard to go back to vanilla.

I really like the mods the community has put out these past few years, but I have to admit I think Aristoteles' are the gold standard. I don't think he's been active in a long while, and so far as I know he didn't get around to Gustav Line. His skins from BN weren't suitable for the early Italian campaign, but now that RTV has brought the fighting to mid '44 and the close of the war, I was wondering how suitable his BN and FB mods would be, in light of most vehicles being olive drab in Italy from this point on, if nothing else. Beyond that, what differences in uniforms and vehicle markings would have to be taken account between RTV and BN and FB?

I don't know if this is just a case of differing sources, but this is generally a very good reference for OOBs and it looks like Commonwealth Forces in '44-'45 could use some tweaking regarding the availability of Sherman IIa, Ib and Firefly. In simplest terms, it seems like 3rd troop of South African armored squadrons should be able to have Sherman IIa's as the Firefly Substitute > Medium Tank in addition to the Sherman V, as is the case with the Medium Tank option for the first 2 troops. I would need the opinion of someone better informed on how common Fireflies and Sherman Ib's should be, but it appears like the rarity or even availability of Fireflies differed between Commonwealth forces. e: With the SS now in game, I'd like to see the Herman Goering troops in Sicily and Southern Italy with the SS Plane Tree and Oakleaf smocks.Many of those were traded in for standard Luftwaffe ground smocks later. Also in Sicily and Italy, the HG were known to wear whatever they could "liberate" from stores and captured supplies, like Italian camouflage items. Some good references on the HG Division: - Kurowski, Franz: "The History of the Fallschirm Panzerkorps Hermann Göring" ISBN 0-921991-25-8 - Otte, Alfred: "The HG Panzer Division" ISBN 0-88740-206-2 - Bender, Roger James et al: "Hermann Göring: From Regiment to Fallschirmpanzerkorps" ISBN 0-88740-473-1

That's the nature of attritional combat. Not particularly fun for many wargamers who would prefer to turn flanks and maneuver in exciting ways rather than use supply and artillery to push the line back. IMO from the Corps to Platoon level, the Commonwealth sector of Normandy was intense and is interesting to study, but many war gamers would rather not spend hours gaining a few hundred meters of closed terrain. And as for BFC making tactical wargames on the basis of casualties, we could expect the next title to be The First Day On The Somme or Passchendaele, but I don't think that would be what many players want.

Regarding the Sherman 105's, I was under the impression that with the time being pushed past August '44, RTV would also encompass Operation Dragoon and the fighting in southern France - if not by included campaigns and scenarios, then by the inclusion of the Free French, terrain better matching than in BN, the uniforms etc. Would it be possible to allow some TOE that was used in Dragoon but not Italy with no regular availability so quick battles and community scenarios can model that campaign? Dragoon looks like a better fit for RTV than BN

I'm very happy with my purchase. RTV adds a whole lot of content, maps, the timeline etc. I can only imagine how much work went into that, and I especially appreciate it because I know for many people interest in this theatre ends on June 6, 1944. It shows a commitment to the community, and is likely not driven just by sales figures. I would like to say that I would be happy with a vehicle/troop pack to bring in Commandos, 1st Special Service Force, Greeks, Jewish Brigade or whatever odds and ends would fill out the roster. Those French troops come to mind. I understand why they didn't make the cut for such an ambitious module, but I can see the value in them being added later on like the BN vehicle pack. More than that, I would make the argument for a whole other module, similar to Market Garden to add the RSI, Co-Belligerent Italians, Partisans and to fill the Italian roster in Sicily. I would argue for this to be a full-size module rather than a pack because of the large scope and also I would appreciate seeing those campaigns and scenarios designed by the pros, especially where partisans are involved. I hope that Battlefront doesn't see FI as finished just because the timeline is full because I see a lot of interesting directions to go here, and commandos and partisans could easily fit in over in BN and RT, in the same way that the vehicle pack from BN has made it to the other titles. Look how far BN has come: With Commonwealth troops from that module, Funnies from the BN Vehicle Pack, now the Free French in RTV, and hopefully a pack adding Commandos, we are 3/4s to being able to see Sword Beach scenarios, something I don't think anyone could have imagined in 2011.

I see the difficulty. Does the current system cut down on development time for future modules? For example, now that there are Canadian and British forces through '45 in FI, and German forces through '45 in both FB and coming in the new RT module, does that make a Commonwealth module though the end of the war easier for FB? Most of the assets for a Scheldt campaign and Operation Plunder to Hamburg campaign now already exist in-game.

Anecdotally, even though the exercises we go on now are force-on-force and the Battlegroup deployment is to Latvia, pretty much everybody still has their habits from Afghanistan. For example, my last exercise was a mechanized brigade opposed river crossing, which is about as conventional as you get. The mission and doctrine was thoroughly conventional. We fired illum and smoke missions to help the engineers build bridge sections and operate assault boats and ferries, missions we hardly, if ever shot in Afghanistan. We also fired full battalion missions which we haven't done in anger since Korea. We camouflaged the guns, dug gun pits, the artillery recce and OP dets used LAVs, and we took precautions against counterbattery fire - all things that did not happen in Afghanistan. However, in practice anything that wasn't explicitly ordered defaulted to how things were done in Afghanistan. Our road and foot patrols were done how we did them there, the M72s and Carl-Gs stayed packed up in echelon, the battery GPMGs and GMGs were left in the trucks, our medical drills assumed easy medivac and casevac by helicopter instead of road ambulance to a casualty collection point, that sort of thing. Guys still wear shemaghs and don't put on campaint. It's the opposite of how when we first went to Afghanistan, everybody was doing drills from Bosnia or West Germany.

NATO and Warsaw Pact both forecast heavy urban warfare from at least the '60s on. I can only speak of my own experience but I trained in a replica of a "typical" West German town and that has been expanded to include a replica Afghan Village. I'm an artilleryman and we still do extensive CQB and FIBUA training even though you would never place the guns there. I agree that "conventional armies are doomed!" reminds me of the Popular Mechanics hardware fetishism that has been a problem since the 50's. The missile age was supposed to end surface combatants, manned aircraft and AFVs and 60 years latter here we are! A cynical person might suggest that Raytheon, General Dynamics and our other good friends in the MIC like to drum up sales by exaggerating threats and inflating their own capabilities. That cynic might also suggest that the defense staffs might tell the public and politicans that their militaries are doomed without massive spending to protect their own interests.

It wouldn't be a very fun game if we had whole Ukrainian units turning tail . I have read that both Russia and Ukraine use the 2A45M towed 125mm AT gun. How common are these guns and what formations have them?