Rinaldi

Sounds like another no -- you keep typing your rants while dodging the fact you throw out immature accusations but lack the fortitude to put your money where your mouth is. Someone is the child here, I'm not sure it's me.

Sounds like another no. Not surprised. Again: put your money where your mouth is, or pound sand.

Put up, or shut up - PBEM me. In your last temper tantrum and departure from the forum you were challenged several times after firing off the side of your mouth about your "tactical excellence." This thread also has nothing to do whatsoever with Black Sea.

Thanks Bil.

Baneman has what appears to be decent BPs for his Leopards, though I'd rate yours as being better; may just be the angle of the photo but it appears you have better elevation. At any rate, you seem to have more masked positions to shift between at present - that is to say, you have better observation on him than he has on you. What is that contact at Farm 011? You probably already mentioned it, so apologies if that's the case.

Apologies for the delay in update, no real reason other than we've just been plugging away with turns. Let's continue. Turns 13-16 Taking full advantage of the arrival of reinforcements and the destruction of Surplice's Wiesel, I push both teams into the attack. The Mech Group advances, despite losing a BMP that is providing support-by-fire to a Wiesel 20mm. Like the TOW vehicles, Surplice is conducting a competent series of battle position engagements with them, and they displace frequently. He chooses a less circumspect battle position this turn for one of his TOW vehicles, perhaps hoping to continue his successful engagement of the stalled-out armour. He gets an HE for his trouble; one of the surviving T-72s engaging it with good effect while the rest of the group begins to take position for their planned resumption of the attack. I basically got this Wiesel TOW for free and it only further confirms in my mind that Surplice's anti-tank capabilities are severely degraded and its time to put the petal to the metal before he gets some of his own heavy units on the field. So the respective groups kick off; the surviving two ZSUs start hosing down the ground floor of buildings to the Mech Group's immediate front. They briefly acquire a 20mm that takes position - no doubt seeking out further targets - but cannot engage it properly before it slips back into the cluster of buildings. The advance of the Mech Group has shifted a little bit further to the right as a precaution against the enemy vehicles, which unfortunately means that the smoke that was ordered earlier, instead of covering the group's exposed flank, is instead masking it's advance. Normally it's a no-no to advance through your own smoke but I want to maintain the tempo of my attack and I can't puff my cheeks and blow all my smoke away, so it's a circumstance I will have to endure. Further reinforcements arrive, or rather come on-call; all my promised fixed and rotary-wing support is now at my fingertips. The SU-25s are being ordered to search and destroy at the opposite side of the map - a vain hope that they will observe and interdict any reinforcements on their own. The Hinds I will, however, husband. I expect that I will need to rely on them to parry any serious counterattack effort, with my own ATGMs running low on ammo (and of dubious capability) and my armor basically destroyed. The lead platoon of the mech group begins to dismount and move towards the first buildings. So far, so good. The armour swings wide and begins to bypass the greenhouses, they take no long range or heavy anti-tank fire, and one of the T-72s belts an impressive shot on-the-move to knock out a 20mm Wiesel in the Mech Group's sector. Overall, some positive signs. Something of a cross fire is developing here and I'm hoping Surplice is beginning to feel the pressure. He's been playing smart since turn 1 and I can do with some pressure-induced recklessness to further even the odds. So far, despite my heavy losses, confidence is building. Stay tuned.

You're wasting your time man. Square peg, round hole, etc. Some people have preconceived notions of this game that are not easily broken. You picked a good WWII example though. 2nd and 3rd Cav Groups did proper Yeoman work in that area.

I'm well aware of what you meant. It appears the concept remains no more clearer to you, however. To put it simply: if recon occurs at all levels and you cannot see how a vehicle (to take the example of the BRM-1) with a literal radar attached to it, or a swift vehicle that balances protection and mobility may not facilitate this, then I, nor any manual may help you understand how to conduct recon at the tactical level.

Recon is an exercise that occurs at all levels of warfare. The horse is quite dead at this point, Erwin.

in this thread: Geriatrics chomp on obvious bait.

There are real reasons beyond basic human dignity for securing friendly casualties. Asides from securing ammunition and weapons it helps to keep your opponent guessing; corpses and critically wounded men can be spotted and a smart player will try and at least keep track. No sense in making their arithmetic easier and getting a better picture for the state of your forces. Clear those losses; use your XO or Company NCO like you would in reality to control casualties and tactical supply.

If you roleplay, you should be competitive. I see no distinction to draw here; consider it a 'pro' of playing a simmish game.

When I'm CMing on my laptop and I start to get that CTD I've been able to solve the problem by tuning the graphics down to potato (re: lowest) settings. I watch the turn in the high-fidelity, give my orders, save it, then fire it back up and send in low graphics. Has worked 100 percent of the time. Side-steps that nasty memory leak problem that usually leads to crashing.

You don't need a precise location to blanket an area in air and artillery munitions. You don't need a target, you just need a target area. The trick is to energize the radar after assembly, during movement to contact. Problem with that is RADAR takes time to energize. No idea how long because it's all esoteric to me, but it does take some measure of time.

Y'all just had to feed him, lmfao.

The 317th Platoon is a masterpiece. Really hard to find online now, but I remember taking out a physical DVD (along with Bondarchuk's War and Peace) from Robarts library's media archive during my first degree. You could tell just by watching that the extras knew what they were doing; only found out after I watched the film that they were all members of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces. Big fan of Beevor; have his Crete and Stalingrad on my shelf at home and have read both a few times. He's ultimately a pop historian but one of the good ones. Obviously he's right about most of the films but the article is tongue-in-cheek, its not like you should feel ashamed if you enjoyed any of them. Movies are movies.

I apologize for the delay, both Surplice and myself have been quite busy with finals - but this DAR is far from dead. So let's continue.... Turns 10-12 Surplice's Wiesels continue to displace. He either knows, or anticipates, that I am shifting the weight of my attack and is moving to stop this. This movement is not only observed this time. Despite his effective and aggressive use of mortars to break up anything that remotely looks like a support-by-fire position the bulk of my MMGs and ATGMs are in position. The movement of the Wiesels draws fire from one of the ATGM teams. As the ATGM whines towards its target, a second Wiesel trundles out of cover just behind the first one. He's trying to move them through a copse of trees that is quite thick (by Syria's standards) and the Wiesels jam up on one another...could it be? Two for one! The support-by-fire positions are restricting movement to their immediate front to my immense satisfaction. They continue to take, and lose men to, mortar fire but they are sufficiently spread out in frontage that he can't destroy or suppress all the positions in one fire mission. That means its go time: the Mech Group's vehicles begin to deploy into positions that can lay some direct fire on known and suspected positions. Shilkas and BMP2s from the ATGM platoon lead the way. The BMPs take some fire from light anti-tank weapons and waste no time in returning fire. The situation in front of TAI 21 (if you need a refresher on the key terrain, see here) Of course, things have been going too well for far too long, and Surplice gets some shots in once again. A Wiesel is spotted taking a battle position by several T-72s....who have target arcs that do not cover the Wiesel's position. I can do nothing but watch as the TOW lazily snakes its way to the T-72 and catastrophically destroys it. The Wiesel retreats moments later. Surplice amazes me at how quickly he learns, you can see how he handle his units improving over the course of a battle. Its a tidy little engagement and he doggedly continues to try and bleed me white. This time however, I'm calling his bluff: I know his anti-tank defenses are greatly weakened and am going to push forward; something I can now do since the trailing platoons of both Mechanized companies have arrived. Next update: I intend to continue with the templated plan. With TAI 22 largely abandoned by my enemy I can move forward the Armor Group's weapons and BMPs to occupy it and at least act as a trip wire for any reinforcements that may arrive. The surviving T-72s and newly arrived Mech platoon can bypass the greenhouses (TAI 23), which have German infantry trapped in them. The goal here is to secure the causeway across the Wadi and shift my ATGMs to cover expected counterattack routes. I do not expect Surplice's trapped infantry can survive the firepower that can be brought to bear on their fighting positions, one at a time. He still has Wiesels out there, however, and he may show me my assumptions are based on erroneous math yet.

^This. Once in a PBEM, due to the restricted terrain, I had to force-feed half a battalion through on a relatively short frontage. I went through with column's of platoons, hoping the wall of artillery fire would cover them - and it did, for the most part. One of the lead vehicles in the column got immobilized. Absolute carnage followed for that particular platoon as they all bunched up on one another. Frankly, the result was realistic - while its a pain in the ass to micromanage road marches and columns-of-x it's also part of the strengths of CM: I trust myself more than AI and have only myself to blame when it goes poorly.

It's a good thought. The scenario in and of itself is plausible but I definitely rushed it. I'll likely make the attack closer to dawn so visibility improves generally, and up the quality at the very least of the Syrian armor to T90s. I'm still on the fence about changing the Republican Guard to Mechanized Airborne or SF mounted in a separate Bronnegruppa. Edit: I should for the record state the map was not made from scratch, it's an edited version of The Four Peaks map. Generally made the airstrip look more believable and added strongpoints and enough fighting positions for alternates (which mitigates Fog of War limitations, somewhat).

He's right @IanL- until people are threatening to toss piss jugs at the dev team, you haven't seen anything.

Honestly @CarlWAW I'd insult you, but I'm not quite sure you're worth the effort. You're basically self-defeating at this point.

They're written into the canon; the manual's brief outline of the war mentions Marines landing to block Odessa - presumably they take part in the strategic invasion of Eastern Ukraine during the July-August counteroffensives as well. We've heard hints that the future modules will flesh out the TO&E of the current nations in game to that end, but it's all hearsay.

I have no qualms with Ian - or anyone. In fact Ian and SBurke were the first testers to really get the momentum moving for a patch when we contacted them about the bug. He was just having what I thought was a very human moment and I called him out on it. I expect people to do the same to me.

lmfao... I could've sworn someone a few pages back here was saying something about tabling evidence but being ignored. Starting to empathize. This thread should read "the blind lead the blind." We already have a panic feature; when men panic they will break. The "its not a bug, its a feature" rhetoric has to die. Trained soldiers somewhat in control of their wits do not (a) break under artillery fire when in some semblance of fire and (b) break and run in the face of a tank attack. When they do that, it's called panic. In fact the term "tank fright" was literally coined to capture the type of hysteric irrationality that would be required to do so.

@Michael Emrys - beating a dead horse but; respectfully no: If artillery could shoot entrenched men off positions with such ease; 1916 would have indeed been a good year. ----- Posts like these are why trite accusations of "fanboyism" are tossed around. As @sburke said earlier the 4.0 AI was well-meaning in scope and goal but had some hiccups on implementation. I'm sure it will be brought back to a happy middle ground that satisfies your view and prevent the extreme, unreality that view could potentially lead to (breaking from good cover) from being exhibited again.