Doc844

All very good advice and suggestions above, BUT and its a big BUT for me as you can probably tell, the V 4 self preservation changes went to far and as has been admitted, has made morale wonky, ie troops fleeing from incoming whilst in good cover, trenches, buildings etc. They basically get up and run around in the open and then DIE, needlessly i might add. Yes soldiers do break and run thats a fact, but generally not in the way the game depicts it at the moment, for me it has broken it beyond playability, i have had RT, BN, and BS sitting on my PC for almost a year doing nothing because i personally cant play the game like it is at the moment, terrible shame, and i wait patiently for the patch but there it is. So in regards to self preservation and the factors that go into it like, training, experience, morale, they all have cause and effect agaisnt each other but for me, units breaking cover like that is more about leadership than anything else. If leadership is bad a unit will always suffer. In the nitty gritty part of fighting and killing soldiers will stay the course for their mates, 'well, jims not running so im staying to' simplistic but true, combine that with good leadership and you will have a fairly solid and robust fighting force. Change that with bad leadership and you get problems, big, small and catastrophic. In a lot of enquiries regarding units breaking or not functioning as they should most of the time the main problem can be placed at the door of poor leadership, sometimes mixed in with poor training. (A modern showcase for this was Viking company in afghan in regards to LCpl Ford at jugroom fort, bad leadership and training made a **** situation worse, and im not knocking the royals because i have a lot of friends who serve or have served in the royals its just that was the first one that popped in my head and fit the bill nicely). So, self preservation, at a basic level, get contacted, first instinct, hit the dirt, see if you can locate the firing point, then if possible shoot back, cause why wouldnt you, the modern training mantra is, dash, down, observe, sights, fire, that gets drummed into you and kicked into you, well it used to before everyone became snowflakes lol, all the way through basics, guess where most of this came from, yup WW2 experiences, because absolute hoards of data was accumalated and studied and number crunched, alot more than quite a few people realise, this was, over time assimilated into the training and essence/culture of military training, it never happens overnight, its a slow progressive wheel that keeps turning and learning, the military, (british) for me, may seem to take forever to learn a lesson, especially in relative peaceful times, but they do learn. So, having said all that, mr pixel is in a trench with his pixel buddies taking sporadic arty fire, in RL hes gonna stay right there with his head down hoping hes not going to die, because he knows if he gets up hes more than likely going to die and also let his mates and unit down, that is why he stays. In V4 as it stands at the moment, for me any way, this is the exception to the rule, i always see full healthy squads/platoons get up and leg it after being under fire for short periods, and this happens constantly during one scenario. If this was a true depiction of self preservation then what happenend with WW1, the trenches would have been 3 quarters empty. How about normandy, pretty much all the airborne troops dropped were GREEN, with zero combat experience, did they break and run around like ninnys, nope. Seeing units decide they have had enough and wish to be elsewhere should be the exception, the rarity, it shouldnt be where you constantly have to herd your pixeltruppen back into position, its not realistic and its bloody annoying. And rant finished, phew, definetly havent had enough coffee yet this morning, didnt mean to go on but this has been seriously bugging me for a while i could go more in depth, but flogging a horse and all that, i think you catch my drift. So sitting serenly now waiting for the patch.

Thats a damn shame but i hope everything is ok with baneman.

Rome was a good series but it wandered away from accuracy at times, the notion that romans were hedonistic and always up for orgies is mis-placed more so for the powerful families. (Spartacus is utter pish as a view into the roman world, gladiators generally didnt kill each other at games, they were atheletes and very expensive to train and pay). They were actually very conservative and dignitas ruled all, men of power would never compromise their dignitas for anything and that included going against the mos maorium in regards to morals. Also my big bug bear is how they badly miscast Ceaser, of all the descriptions of the man, athletic, lithe, with golden/blonde hair and they cast an overweight saggy actor with black bloody hair. It also shows women as being major players which on the whole is untrue, women were seen as being assets to their family in regards to who they could be married off to so as to forge alliances or marry into money, see old Ceaser marrying his daughter Julia to Marius and thus changing the fortunes of the family Juliia. Phew didnt mean to go on. Still a very good series and worth a watch.

Thanks for the update an info Steve. Truly excited for CMSF2. I have to admit i stopped playing all the other families because of the morale/cover bug so im looking forward to dusting off my games when the patch comes out. I new it would all turn out well in the end.

Fantastic, just fantastic.

Or do a variable tile source, if your close but have no eyes the indicator will be within a couple of tiles of the actual source, the further the distance the larger the tile spread. So at say 1km the ? Icon pings upfor an AT that fired but it is randomly placed within a (i dunno) 20 tile radius, so you can take a swag at it and pummel it with arty but you might be wrooong. To me this would be the best solution.

I especially loved the 40 mm grenade fire. Ive seen the spray and pray with an AK but never a grenade launcher.

He read Liddell Harts transcripts and examined detailed notes of his from when he carried out training exercises in regards to the use of 'armour'. So no Guderian didnt conceive the idea he just built on the original idea.

I definitely agree with the fact that the german wermacht bled itself out on the steppes of russia. However lend lease was a major contributing factor in everything the russians did. Why? Because without it they would not have been able to field the amount of men they did because of one vital resource. Food. Russia would have literally starved without it, in communique's from Stalin to the allies his top priority was never tanks, bullets, bombs, it was food. Always demanding more and more food.

Haha most definetly. Think you have missed the point, hindsight is wonderful, put yourself in the german mindset at the time, you smashed through countless Russian armies caused mass casualties, captured over 2 million enemy soldiers. Your telling me if you were there in command you wouldnt be thinking 'we've done them, no country can possibly absorb that damage and not come apart at the seams'. (Which it could easily have done by the way, it was 50/50 for a while) Also keep in mind that WW1 only ended 22 yrs previously and beliefs formed when young tend to stick ie german generals who fought on the eastern front in WW1. They would have carried those experiences plus their own youthful conclusions of the russian military into middle age. So why wouldnt they expect the russians to capitulate at that point. Obviously the one defining factor was Stalin himself and the governing apparatus that he had built. Think of it this way if Stalin had suffered a massive nervous breakdown, (if he hadnt been a sociopath) he probably would have, then i dont believe russia would have rallied when it did. History can turn on small things and one mans psychological state was probably one of them.

Why would that be a humongous 'if' russia was knocked out of WW1 after suffering between 1 amd 2.5 million casualties. During Barbarossa the russians lost anywhere upto 4 million casualties (numbers have never been agreed on). So as the belligerent force I would be pretty confidant of my enemy folding after suffering losses of that magnitude. Not such a big if really in my opinion.