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db_zero

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Everything posted by db_zero

  1. Accuracy while important may be relevant. My impression is during WW2 most of the time infantry weapons being fired was just directed in the general vicinity of where you though the enemy was and wasn't accurately aimed but something like snap shots. Suppression was the goal and the vast majority of casualties was caused by the mortars and artillery if available. Machine guns were particularly useful because they could put out a lot of suppressive fire which while not particularly accurate was good at suppressing the opponent. Also being usually crew served, they actually were fired as the crews reassured each other. Many times too experienced soldiers would tell new replacements to fire at areas where the enemy might be, even if no fire or enemy was spotted. Issues of collateral damage and ROEs were generally much looser back then. It was total war. What I find interesting is the modeling of machine guns between Combat Mission and the other hard core game Gravteam. Machine guns in Gravteam are truly frighting weapons, especially the crew served German MG34s and 42s. When mounted on a tripod and I'm presuming using the telescopic sight a well placed MG will easily hold up a company. Even the individually carried MGs in a squad are terrifying. Being under MG fire in CM and Gravteam is a completely different experience. I also have Tank Warfare Tunisia where the American and British are present, but haven't play that as much so can say what the American MGs and Brens are like.
  2. I was told by another player years ago in a h2h game that crews and other specialists were worth buku points if eliminated so it was best not to treat them as expendable, but it never did seem to affect the final outcome and I never bothered to look into it.
  3. You can always implement a house rule to limit what can or cannot be done. There are many documented cases of "non-combat" troops fighting so in the end its all good. If there was some sort of campaign h2h implemented and preservation of specialists implemented things would change quickly.
  4. I'm as guilty as everyone else. Atilla or Genghis would be proud. I'm sure if you're a professional under supervision and being evaluated in all aspects you're going to be more circumvent.
  5. Mortarmen make decent infantry and their smoke grenade capability comes handy. Nobody plays CM realistically in my experience. Crewmen from destroyed or immobilized vehicles as well as drivers from vehicles that have served their useful purpose are conscripted into the fight as infantry or scouts. I mentioned years ago about the pistol packing crewmen who were crack shots and feel like their wielding Glocks. Don't know if that's been remedied in updates. Jeeps and other unarmed vehicles are shamelessly used as expendable scouts. Just as well horses and dogs are not modeled in CM as they too would be shamelessly used as expendables. Its a good thing that surrendered troops captured just vanish as I have little doubt that they too would be herded into unsavory tasks... CM players are a hard bunch...
  6. Fortunately downloading the revised mod solved the issue.
  7. The 6 pounders and PIATs did the job and it was at night.... save often if you do play.
  8. I had the opportunity to fire a Bren Gun as well as a DP-27 some time ago. Also fired a Thompson and Sten. The Sten felt flimsy. Thompson was heavy for a SMG. Maybe one day I'll get to fire a MG-42. I agree in CM the MG42 comes out ahead.
  9. Its a tough campaign made worse by the fact I played it years ago, stopped playing but saved the files so I could resume at a later time. My system had issues so I had to rebuild it and I thought I had the saved campaign files back up only to discover they weren't so I had to start from the beginning a couple of months ago. I find that if you're infantrymen or sniper gets that lucky hit on the well placed MG or SMG toting hiding and shooting from a building, things can go easier, but if not then it can be frustrating. Killing Tigers while not easy is not as difficult as one might expect either.
  10. Been playing this for a while and hate it...frustrating and hard. I often have to quit swearing and restart a save many times. I quit playing for a while then return for more punishment. The other scenario that frustrated me was the one where the British advances down the single road.
  11. Playing a h2h mirrored game and noticed my opponents Sherman tank had the rhino hedge cutting attachment. Then looked at my Shermans and none had it. I'm using mods and only my removing the entire "z" folder did the horns appear on my Sherman. Removing just the Sherman mods folder from the "Z" folder did not work for me.
  12. I’d like to see existing problems fixed. Using latest version and playing a h2h game and the tank rotation problem is still present. Gave explicit orders to move and shoot smoke. Tank ignored order and rotated in direction of enemy tank nearly halfway across the map and wasn’t visible. Ended up with smokescreen in direction that was useless. as for updating to current situation, that would be welcome. Another hard core simulator Steel Beasts has already added drones to the mix that reflect what’s going on in Ukraine.
  13. After losing many vehicles in early PBEM games learning the hard way the vehicles and vineyards don't mix I needed to hit the vino and something harder. Regarding the other comment of how many lines/tiles of vineyards passed it wasn't much. It was a result of the vehicle AI or not enough path setting. Once I saw that the vehicle did cross over vineyards tiles I made sure to path them to avoid. Nothing worse than losing precious vehicles to vineyards.
  14. Just saw the pictures of the destroyed Bradleys and tank. We may have become too accustomed to seeing advanced western equipment steamroller enemies in favorable conditions of complete air superiority with ample artillery support. Western armies have had years to practice and perfect the art of combined arms warfare. Everything I've seen by those who actually practiced it have said it's not too difficult to grasp in theory, but extremely difficult to execute in reality. I've also seen doubts that the Ukrainians have enough of the new stuff to really match their ambitions and sending more as well as the advanced aircraft that many are clamoring for runs into the reality that you need a logistical and support network to support all of this. This might be a reality check, but we'll just have to wait and see.
  15. When you say run combat mission that can mean a lot of different things to different people. Keep in mind that when you install all of the combat missions as well as mods that can eat up a lot of disk space. A SSD with low space can get eaten up fast with all of the Combat Missions installed and when you start adding mods to the equation a small SSD will become a problem. Keep in mind that you also need to account for OS as well as disk cache space. So a small SSD becomes a factor, plus will you be adding any other programs? I play at 4K. When I had a system with an older processor and a 2080 graphics card the larger battles would see lags. I could play but had to accept shortfalls. Now that I use a more modern processor and 3070 and 3080 GPUs things are much smoother. On my laptop that had a built in 1TB SSD drive CM was a disk space hog-keep in mind though I have other things loaded. I ended up getting a very fast external SSD drive to solve the problem. Unless you're ok with long loading times going with a decent sized ssd drive is the only way to go.
  16. Depends on what acceptable to you. What resolution will you play at? You're probably going to see long loading times and slowdowns in map scrolling with larger battles.
  17. I bought a MSI GE66 with a Intel Core i7, RTX 3070 with 32GB of Ram a while back. Had weird graphical issues with just Combat Mission. Text was off. When I hooked up to large screen monitor everything was fine. This was a $1700 laptop at the time. YMMV
  18. This has always had a reputation as being a difficult one to win. It took me numerous tries when first released to win as allieds. I just started a mirrored h2h game. Should be interesting.
  19. When CMFI was first released I discovered to my dismay that any vehicle entering a vineyard would be immobilized. I've since made sure to avoid them. Now with the latest update it appears that vehicles can now rumble through vineyards and not be immobilized. Was that changed in an update?
  20. Corruption is one part of larger problems. In the west the move from agrarian to a industrial to an information based economy and society has been a gradual change. There was time to assimilate and absorb the changes. China not so much. It was rapid. There is also a huge demographic shift taking place in China. I've seen estimates that any serious invasion of Taiwan would involve more troops than Operation Overloard and be more difficult. The Allied forces had plenty of practical experience before Overloard-Torch, Sicily, Anzio and seabore landings and operations in the Pacific before undertaking Overloard. The Chinese navy and army lacks that sort of practical experience. I would guess that an amphibious assault the size and scope of Taiwan would be a huge ask for even the US Marine Corps which has the know how and experience to pull something of that scope off. China projects a very strong image. The massive victory day parades, the large naval maneuvers, the firing of missiles. That's the image they want to project. What that means in practical terms is anyone's guess. Wars are won by people at the lowest common denominator. In the US and the west in general responsibility and initiative is given at very low levels. In the West the focus is on the individual. It the east its often on the collective. I can't say I know just how much individual responsibility and initiative is granted to the lower levels of the Chinese military. Given the political climate and tightly controlled nature of China, I would venture to say its low. Much is made of the Chinese economic juggernaut. We've seen this sort of thing before. In the late 70's, 80's Japan was viewed as the existential threat to America. Their manufacturing prowess, fueled by a weak US dollar caused great concern in the US. Then when US dollar got strong, the Japanese used this to start buying up real estate in the US, including some notable landmarks which cause further resentment in the US. Then the Japanese real estate and financial bubble burst. You don't hear much about Japans economic prowess anymore and they like China are facing a massive demographic time bomb.
  21. Couple of items... China has been touted as an economic and military miracle. However all is not as it may appear. There is a problem with what has become known as "Tofu Building" construction. One now has to wonder is this also applies to other parts of China, including the military. Rapid and unprecedented growth comes at high risk. China has gone from a largely agrarian society to a modern high tech middle class society in a generation. I saw the same thing as a teenager in the late 70's when we moved to the Middle East. The region was basically a medieval society that suddenly found itself awash in petro dollars and suddenly made the shift to a modern society. There was a lot of turmoil and unpredictable results during the rush. They've had a few generations since then to absorb it all. Overall IMO, US intelligence is very good at counting things, but is lacking in the intentions and deeper non quantifiable assessments. Perhaps it a case of they keep that under wraps and/or things have become politicized over the years. There are a lot of competing interests at play. This is on my get list:
  22. Its been and will continued to be wargamed out on an official level as well as by think tanks and other institutions. China and other nations no doubt are up to the same. There are also wargames for Iran and Korea too. Hopefully deterrence will prevail. A strong posture by the West along with allied's in the region will prevent any conflict. A lot of the regional nations are very upset with China. Its expansion and things like fishing rights have come to the forefront. There's also history. On an informal level both sides, especially the militarizes who will be the recipients of any hot conflict know just how destructive and deadly it will be so hopefully it will just stay at rhetoric. I would hope that Xi is more rational than Putin. Most though Putin would never actually launch a full scale invasion of Ukraine, though.
  23. A blockade of Taiwan in the future seems more plausible than outright invasion. Recently elements in the US have questioned involvement in Ukraine and if it continues and gets stronger could be interpreted as weakness and unwillingness to get involved in Taiwan. Right now the battle is over Tic Tok. I have strong feelings and beliefs of the privacy, security and influence of social media apps and the companies behind them all-US as well as foreign owned. Ive found my life is far better once I deleted all social media apps. ymmv. Unfortunately the youth as well as others are hooked on it. In China where all media is tightly controlled they impose very strict limits on social media usage by youths as they deem it harmful, yet are happy to spoon feed it to the rest of the world.
  24. I signed up for the P500 reprint of Combat Commander. I started collecting games. Seems like their value hold up or increases over time. Some of the games I owned when I was into board war gaming are worth $$$ on EBay. I’m now learning Empire of the Sun. I also bought Pacific War and The Third World War reprints as well as other stuff on EBay. Seems like vassal is the way to go if you want to play other people. Finding players nearby is a challenge. I went to a local board gaming get together and they were into the the newer Eurogame type of games. a lot of the newer wargames have good solitaire playability and some have bots for solitaire play. I’m having a lot of fun with Warfighter which is primarily a solitaire game. I’ve been playing a lot of Undaunted with my wargaming friend. Eventually we’ll get to Empire of the Sun. Don’t know if Pacific War or The Third World War will be doable for him. It would also have to be on vassal for space reasons too.
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