gcrain
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Posts posted by gcrain
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Here is a 750 point artillery barrage with the Russian 82mm rockets. The Germans immediately surrendered. I turned smoke off for the screenshot.
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Has BFC seen this? If not how do we bring it to their attention?
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I think the issue of whether Rockets in general are underpriced is a separate issue from the 82mm Rockets. In general Rockets are one third less than their mortar counterpart. While they are less accurate they do have some pretty good advantages. You can unload half your arsenal in a matter of seconds. This means your opponent cannot hightail it out of there, look for better cover or even use the hide command. But I am ok with rockets in general being a little less. However the 82mm Rockets are one tenth of two thirds. There is nothing about the 82mm Rocket that justifies this decrease. I would absolutely rather have 10 Rockets than 1 mortar round. If I am choosing between 4 82mm Mortars with a total of 640 rounds vs more than 7500 Rocket rounds that is a no brainer. That is not even a lot of points. In a large scenario you could easily buy over 25000 82mm Rockets. Accuracy becomes completely irrelevant, you obliterate every living thing on the map along with most of the buildings and foilage. If you don't believe me just try it against the AI real quick. They are not only good for pre-plotted use either. Once battle lines become established they can be even more effective. Now I am only playing on Veteran mode so maybe the delay is quite different in Iron man but in Veteran there is not a big difference in delay between regular artillery and rockets, in fact I am not sure there is any difference at all. It really seems to me somebody misplaced a decimal, I think when comparing to the other Rockets they are off by a factor of ten. I think the evidence is compelling that the price is way off and needs to be corrected regardless of any previous policy. Right now they are so broken that if you use them it ruins the game and if you ban them then you are omitting a unit that should be in the game.
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What is up here? I searched this forum for rockets but found 0 posts.
Russian 82mm mortar with 120 rounds 109 points
Russian 82mm mortar with 160 rounds 143 points
Russian 120mm mortar with 60 rounds 181 points
Russian 120mm mortar with 180 rounds 517 points
Russian 82mm rocket with 192 rounds 14 points
Russian 82mm rocket with 384 rounds 22 points
Russian 82mm rocket with 384 rounds 29 points
Russian 132 mm rocket with 120 rounds 263 points
German 81mm mortar with 100 rounds 98 points
German 120mm mortar with 60 rounds 179 points
German 159mm rocket with 180 rounds 349 points
So roughly:
80mm mortar rounds are 1 point each
120mm mortar rounds 3 points each
132mm rocket 2 points each
150mm rocket 2 points each
82mm rocket 0.07 point each
Seems to me all the 82mm rockets are off by at least a factor of 10.
Pretty big difference in an opponent who has 3 batteries of rockets vs 30 batteries of rockets.
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FYI - There is a pretty nasty Mac bug. CMRT appears to quit but the process is still running. You can make it quit with Cmd-Opt-Esc and the computer will not restart. It has to be manually powered off. I have not seen any other application that can do this to Mac OS X. I'm on version 10.9.4. It is not easily replicatable. When I quit the game and the UI quit but I see the the 2nd CMRT icon still active on the dock I know it has happened. I can actually launch CMRT again and play a game but I can't make the other process quit. Eventually when it's time to restart or shutoff the computer I have to do a hard reset. I haven't seen any clues in the console as to what is going on. If nobody else has reported this let me know and I will try to gather more info.
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I learned about tactical warfare on the East Front from reading books and playing board wargames. Advanced Squad Leader is a game that I played for almost 20 years.
The reason why my first impressions of RT are surprise and mild shock is because I don't believe that my "education" was very sound. Reading books and ASL? ASL didn't model tactical war on the East Front with nearly as much detail as CMRT.
When you get your main impressions of East Front tactical warfare from Advanced Squad Leader, which was designed back in 1985, it's no surprise that I am surprised and a little shocked.
Yes, I do need to plan more for flank shots. In ASL, the Panther and the JgdPz IV are invincible in a front on front battle with T34/85. That's probably a wrong lesson that I learned.
Thanks to the poster who mentioned that the game scenarios don't happen at ranges that allow German tank guns to shine. That is a Truism that I will have to remember.
My impression has been the opposite, in fact we had to ban the Panther and go to short 76 rules because we felt the Panther vs the T34/85 was heavily imbalanced in the Panther's favor.
My editor tests seem to confirm this. With experience, morale and leadership equal the Panther wins handily. Also at equal morale levels the Russians seem much more likely to jump out of their tanks and run for mother Russia.
It's almost a no win scenario, if you go for high experience T34/85s they seem to get more turret hits and much better chance of penetrating. But since the Germans still have the edge you need greater numbers and therefore lower experience but then the results are even worse. As you may have gathered the Russians need to hit the turret where the Germans can penetrate the T 34 just about anywhere. Also the Panthers seem to fire quite a bit faster so after the initial salvo the odds tip even more heavily in the Panthers favor.
One thing I did notice was the T 34/85s seem inconsistent in their penetration and they don't carry any sort of sabot round. Apparently they have different kinds of ammo and it does not show in game so you never know what they are using.
My recollections from that scenario was that it was the SU 76M sabot round that caused me the most grief. I lost the Panzer IVs but my Panther's decimated the T34/85s.
I dont recall the 76mm sabot round being as deadly as it has been to me in games. I now worry ore abou those more than I do the 85mm gun.
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After 2-3 ranging-shots you should be hitting the target.
Even a conscript should be hitting after that number of shots against a stationary target, even at those ranges.
I can't speak for the penetration of the 85mm or where it hit, but I'm sure someone else will come along and discuss that.
I disagree, given the cost difference I do not think a Conscript should be able to zero in the range that quickly at that extreme distance.
I also don't think it should be able to penetrate at that range but here I would also say more tests are needed. There seems to to be a very small chance of firing a magic bullet that will penetrate no matter how unlikely it seems.
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I couldn't find anyting with a search, is there a way to increase the point limit beyond 7k for meeting engagements?
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Steve pretty much nailed it.
LL was 7% of Soviet wartime output by value. The mix helped too, filling weak spots and relieving bottlenecks in Russian production, notably nitrogen fixing shortages that limited total explosives production, and providing communications gear (both radio and land line, infrastructure like switches etc) that it was hard for the Russia economy to produce in volume. Everyone knows about the trucks and most about the prepared food, which made it possible to draft a much larger portion of the peasantry - though in the worst period 42 etc the rear areas were still starving.
But the scale of the other major effects needs to be understood. The Germans physically occupied territory responsible for 40% of prewar industrial output. Some was evac'ed to be sure, but that number is over 5 times the scale of the LL contribution. Retaking lost ground was more vital than LL, basically. Similarly, mobilization produced year on year changes in narrow armaments output around 40%. Being one quarter faster on that trigger matched LL. Of course it didn't raise capacity, it used it and diverted income from other uses (some of the former, lots of the latter). But the point again is the scale of the changes from economic management decisions and operational ground control, was bigger than the scale of LL.
The biggest things the Russians had going fir them were German hubris as Steve says, and the bare fact if the western allies being in the war. The latter helped not just through LL but by keeping German divisions in the west, by engaging most of the Luftwaffe, by straining the German war economy to produce planes and u boats and bomb repair and aid to Italy etc, that would all have been pointed at Russia instead in a one front war. Both were vital, LL was a modest part of the second.
But no, to the original poster, the early Russia counterattacks aren't really evidence of the conclusion. The outcome of the 1942-3 winter campaign yes, the small 1941 local stuff no.
I'm sure you know a lot more about he Lend-lease program than I do but it seems to me that you are probably underestimating the importance of filling in weak spots.
Also total lend lease vs total output isn't that relevant, would you happen to know a year by year comparison?
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Which factors contribute most to the size of the ema file? Size of the map. amount of terrain or number of units?
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This reminds me of the old "Road to Wiltz" original Squad Leader scenario. Always thought that was a great idea.
Well hello Mr. 10 -3
I actually took Greup's counter out of my game and kept it around as a keepsake.
I seem to be having issues with big maps right now. Probably because my monitor is 2560 x 1440. Does anybody know which terrain is the resource hog in CM3? I suspect it is the trees but since we have been using only custom maps I'd like to make sure.
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I have no issue with the Gog and Magog map on the best settings. However when trying to load a map that is about 20% bigger my computer completely bogs downs. It takes over 5 minutes just to load the map on even the lowest ettings and even once it is loaded it is quite slow in game. Is their a technical limitation on how big the map should be?
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No my in game tests have always been as expected. It was the calculator that was giving me some strange results. I used it again a couple days later though and it appeared to be giving me similar results to in game. No idea why I was getting such strange results before.
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What 122mm-armed vehicle are you using to test, and what are you testing against that gives differing results than the calculator? You may have discovered a vehicle in the game that uses uncapped AP, which I was not sure existed.
The results I got previously were the 122mm AP penetrating Tiger II and Panther, both Turret and Hull at all angles. What was even more bizarre was the 88mm L71 was showing as less powerful than the 75mm L70. However tonight they are giving the expected results.
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At the risk of feeding a troll, the obvious question arises: do you have information which would prove both assertions? Do you have information which would prove the assertions wrong (if true)? Or, at least, any kind of information which would be able to cast doubt on the in-game armor?
FWIW, supposedly late war German armor suffered from brittleness, due to Allied bombing of the specialized quenching facilities needed to create the proper steel characteristics in early-war German armor.
As for Soviet armor, this is the first I've heard that BFC has it too strong. I -think- the behind armor spalling of Soviet armor is higher than other nationalities. This is done due to the extremely high Brinell ratings of Soviet armor tested during and after the war.
Ken
The information I have is all the tests I have done in the scenario editor with Panthers, King Tigers, JS2s , T34s and ISU 122's and the values I have seen in other tank games over the part 35 years. The outcomes bear no resemblance to the calculator. In particular the 122mm gun in game is much less powerful in game than it was in the calculator. Also I was getting some ridiculous results for the 88mm L71. That seems to be fixed now, I'm not sure if it was my browser or the website that was having the issue. I don't have time to recheck everything I looked at yesterday but I was getting some very bizarre results.
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Not sure if I agree with their values. Regardless it won't be very helpful in the game considering Because they downgrade German tanks and upgrade Russian tanks compared to the values in game.
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My tanks can't hit a thing using Fast move. Why can't the AI use the Hunt command?
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In Red Thunder the displayed info for armor and penetration is greatly simplified compared to Combat Mission 1. Does it still use similar information to CM 1? I'd very much like to view that information if possible. I've always found it very interesting going all the way back to the Yaquinto games Panzer, 88 and Armor in the 70s.
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Off the top of my head, Germans can't buy anything better than a Pz IV; Russians than a T-34/76.
The real reason that balancing is an issue, though, is because you're playing MEs, where tanks are significantly overvalue compared to their value in the real world.
In a more historical type of battle (attack/assault/probe), the weaker (in QB terms) side already controls the VL. Tanks on the attacking side have to worry about AT guns, and have a hard time spotting concealed infantry in cover. If they don't have infantry, they can't get to the VLs with their tanks because of the danger of infantry close assaults. And of course if they unbutton too close to infantry, the TC will get shot. And of course there are downsides to buying a good AT tank in a battle where your opponent may not even buy a tank.
In ME's, by contrast, all units except for tanks are mostly neutered. Infantry have to move to get to the VL because they aren't there. If they move, they can be spotted and killed by tanks without the benefits that they usually get from being in cover. (And of course if they are in cover, they may not be in the VL, which won't help them win).
And so many ME's are determined solely by the results of the tank battle; the side that wins can move freely, screen off the VLs, and allow its infantry to leisurely (or quickly) move up and occupy the VLs. The other side is basically powerless.
So in a ME, the most important thing is to win the armor battle, and the best tanks are those which are most effective and protected against the enemy tanks.
In att/ass/probe battles, there are a lot more tradeoffs, which makes the battle more interesting. The ISU is great offensively and defensively against armor, and has a very powerful shell - but it only carries 18 HE shells and no MG. The StuG is good against some enemy armor, and better protected than the PIV - but its MG kind of sucks if there's a lot of infantry, and it doesn't carry that much HE. T-34/85 or T-34/76? 85 is a better tank generally, much better against other tanks - but the 76 carries 70 HE shells.
And the weaknesses of certain tanks doesn't show up as well in ME's - the side armor on the Panther can be a significant weakness on the attack - if a defender sets up an AT gun (even a 45mm one!) at the rear of a copse of trees that you didn't check, any Panther bypassing it is at risk of being knocked out from a side shot. In a ME, it can be a weakness, too, of course, but it is more difficult to get the flank shot.
And for the defender, there is the whole ATG/Tank tradeoff question.
Anyway, I think you can avoid a lot of the need for house rules balancing if you play different types of battles.
Good post. I agree with your points and we don't always do ME. We both find the attacker vs defender types of battles a little slow though. However we have done some custom maps in Combat Mission 1 where the map was essentially split in half by terrain and you were on the attack on one side and on defense in the other. Not sure if that is realistic but it is definitely fun. I still remember our last CM 1 scenario where my flamethrower units had handily won one side of the map only to have 2 Panthers lay waste to all my British armor on the other half.
We tend to use heavily wooded maps for ME's so the infantry isn't at quite as much disadvantage but I agree the tank battle is crucial. We like combined arms so I like your T34/76 and Pz IV suggestion. I will suggest that and maybe we can come up with a way to unleash the big boys every once in a while.
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Yeh they seem to attack my tanks as much as the enemy. Can't see paying for these in a buy your own forces game.
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Still waiting on mine as well. Is there at ETA for those that pre-oredered?
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I haven't seen this question in the forums. I am playing 2 player games with my old Squad Leader buddy. We like to pick our own forces but we are having a hard time coming up with an equitable solution to tanks. Medium tanks favor the Panther heavily and Heavy tanks favor the Tiger II. Rarity doesn't seen like a good solution since rarity has no bearing how how good it is in combat. The best I could come up with so far was one JS 2 for every three T34/85s and one Tiger II for every five Panthers. I'm sure some of the grognards here have come up with something better. We like to play meeting engagements on custom made maps.
P.S. Took me over a dozen tries to the get the captcha right. Maybe the admins should try something that's not so hard on old eyes. This is a WW2 game, some of your customers are probably older than most video game customers.
Rockets
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted
This is what the map looked like before the 750 point Extinction Level Event.