General Liederkranz

There have been several good threads on this over the years; searching for the title of hte campaign and the scenario will turn them up. The premise of this scenario is that either the preliminary artillery was largely ineffective, or that you've been knocked off schedule so you're not following closely behind the barrage, which is why all you get is that one rocket mission. Some people have rejected that as unrealistic but it doesn't seem so to me--surely that kind of thing happened sometimes and the battalion commander had to make the best of it.
I''m not an expert on Soviet doctrine but from what I've read, I think you'd see the 3 rifle companies attacking in column, each behind the next, each company with its three platoons on line on a front of about 250m. I do not think the Soviets would keep a whole company in reserve at this level; maybe a platoon if that. All the battalion MGs and probably the SU-76s would support from the start line, then move up. Mortars would be on call through flares or a human chain, which is simulated in CM by the slow call times (I learned the human chain method in reply to a question I posted here a year or two ago--to me the key is that it's not unrealistic or gamey to have Soviet lower HQs call in fire missions, despite the lack of radios). The lead company would advance until enemy fire is so intense they can't move forward any more; then they'd go to ground and return fire while the next company comes up and overruns the resistance. Casualties would be heavy, but a company backed by multiple MGs and SU-76s on a narrow front can put out a lot of firepower. The key is not to get pinned down by flanking fire and to move fast enough to avoid the artillery. When I've tried it this way (with some house rules to limit myself for better roleplaying) I find it works but most of my losses come from artillery hitting my second or third echelon.
 

I agree with @Hardradi and @Freyberg. A steamroller attack on a 250m front, focusing on presenting overwhelming firepower and moving fast enough to keep ahead of the German artillery, works. This does require lots of micromanagement and Target Light commands, but to me that's entirely realistic--platoons are going to have standing orders to lay down cover fire on suspected enemy positions, not just to shoot at identified enemies. The game engine can't do this so the player has to. The force ratios are fine, especially since if you attack on a narrow front you can avoid engaging some of the Germans from the front, or at all.
I flubbed up my first play through, mainly because I was new to CM and should not have started with this scenario. The one thing I think could have been improved--and the one place where I benefited, but realistically, from having played it before--is that there should be some pre-battle intelligence for the Soviet player. They historically would have this and it really helps in picking a general target area for the rockets.

I played that campaign a long time ago and really enjoyed it. The river crossing was the mission I enjoyed the most and the one that sticks in my memory.
It was engaging - there was plenty to do, with mines and interlocking defences to pick apart - but I didn't find it that hard. The Soviets have plenty of troops, plenty of time, and you just keep piling it on (carefully of course) until the German force crumbles. As @Erwin said, you need to choose a flank (I went down the left flank first, but sent a smaller force down the right flank, then reinforced it from the left when I had broken through there).
I found it historically educative, engaging, challenging but achievable, and fun. Admittedly this was quite a few years ago - perhaps subsequent updates to the game engine have upset the balance...

I like playing war games and this is the best tactical 3D game I have found so far. Sure it has flaws like most things and sometimes it frustrates me.
I have reviewed my battle results screen. The odds are 3:1 (649men:200men) in this battle, in the attackers favour. Plus they have armour support.
Your first paragraph above is not factually correct. This undermines your whole view. I can easily pick apart many of your other points from a GAME perspective but I will leave it there.

I recently played through the first three battles of this campaign and I am working through the fourth battle at the moment. The first and third battles are tough principally from a micro management and attention to detail point of view. I also found spotting very difficult.
The campaign is playable. The enemy forces are not too strong. You can achieve the best victory results as long as you are willing to micro manage your forces. If anyone wants/needs a write up of how to win the first and/or third battle then let me know.
EDIT: Cant help with how to conduct a historical attack by a Soviet battalion. 
 
 
 
 
 

If this is the river crossing scenario of Hammer's Flank, that was basically how I played it. The briefing tells you not to worry overly much about losses.
In terms of doctrine, I figure the Soviet forces guide that - they are effective at short range, so I played aggressively to get them within close range, but it was certainly not a human wave attack.

There have been several good threads on this over the years; searching for the title of hte campaign and the scenario will turn them up. The premise of this scenario is that either the preliminary artillery was largely ineffective, or that you've been knocked off schedule so you're not following closely behind the barrage, which is why all you get is that one rocket mission. Some people have rejected that as unrealistic but it doesn't seem so to me--surely that kind of thing happened sometimes and the battalion commander had to make the best of it.
I''m not an expert on Soviet doctrine but from what I've read, I think you'd see the 3 rifle companies attacking in column, each behind the next, each company with its three platoons on line on a front of about 250m. I do not think the Soviets would keep a whole company in reserve at this level; maybe a platoon if that. All the battalion MGs and probably the SU-76s would support from the start line, then move up. Mortars would be on call through flares or a human chain, which is simulated in CM by the slow call times (I learned the human chain method in reply to a question I posted here a year or two ago--to me the key is that it's not unrealistic or gamey to have Soviet lower HQs call in fire missions, despite the lack of radios). The lead company would advance until enemy fire is so intense they can't move forward any more; then they'd go to ground and return fire while the next company comes up and overruns the resistance. Casualties would be heavy, but a company backed by multiple MGs and SU-76s on a narrow front can put out a lot of firepower. The key is not to get pinned down by flanking fire and to move fast enough to avoid the artillery. When I've tried it this way (with some house rules to limit myself for better roleplaying) I find it works but most of my losses come from artillery hitting my second or third echelon.
 

There are definitely game solutions the the problem.
The "super hardcore mode", which I forget the name of, could provide some opportunity. Namely removing 3d models for enemy troops in most situations and replacing them with a confirmed contact marker that is placed in some 20 to 30 meter radius of their actual position. Perhaps actually using 3d models only when the contact is sent up to through the Comms chain to the highest level on the map.

But which house is it coming from? What part of the forest?
If the tank sees enough tracers to pinpoint the approximate location of the enemy, that is what the game represents by giving the tank a contact marker at that location. And then it would be perfectly fine to start area fire.
The game already has such a cool system for keeping track of which units know what, and how that information is passed along and spreads through the chain of command. It would be really great if that system would be used more actively to restrict the player a bit. Then he would have to send a runner to the tank to tell it about the enemy - I actually did that in a recent game, and it was a really fun thing to do, too. Very immersive
 

Broadly I agree with Kaunitz but would take a slightly different tack. Tanks themselves are not overpowered, but Combat Mission does a poor job at simulating their weaknesses for a variety of reasons.
CM does a honestly very poor job with fortifications.
Infantry lack a good ability to safely move from point-to-point in a trenchline Firing steps or even basic keyholing isn't done Buildings cannot be fortified or made part of an overall plan No overhead cover etc.... This just means that defensive positions are much weaker to fire and destruction that they generally were. It becomes an increasingly large problem as your opponent gains more firepower (e.g. tanks),
 
 
The other primary reason is player related, players have too much control. Largely nullifying the negatives of armored vehicles.
Armor always has infantry support I can't really recall the last time I had my armor advance without an infantry screen or recon element. Yet when you read histories you find tons of situations where armor advances without infantry. Its almost a trope. Armor advances with infantry, infantry is pinned down, armor continues to advance into enemy lines, realize the infantry isn't with them, turn around and drive back.
Essentially though communication and combat friction armor should be alone far more often than a player will let it be. Which leads into the next point
Player can borg spot for their armor The player always has a full intel picture and can inform everyone's moves based off of that. Wherein reality your tanks might not know where the forward defenses are because they aren't being shot at by them. They might drive straight through a strong position that is solely engaging infantry, for example.
 
 
 
An example from a large scale 100 player shooter I play called Hell Let Loose. I was the gunner of a Sherman and we advanced forward towards the objective and found a large amount of German infantry to our front. We stopped and began to engage them (range of maybe 125 meters) and after sometime engaged and destroyed a Panther. This whole time we were wondering why our infantry wasn't also advancing up to us?
Finally we noticed that next to our tank (maybe 20 meters away in some fortifications) was a number of heavily armed German infantry. They had no weaponry to destroy our tank, and being focused on the enemy to our front we did not notice them. They were able to keep our infantry pinned far behind us for several minutes until we finally pivoted and engaged them.
 
Essentially a key weakness of armor is its ability to incorrectly interpret what is happening and where it is at.  In CM the player largely nullifies that weakness.

As an aside this is one of the reasons I believe its beneficial for players to also try out relatively "arcade" first person shooter titles. All games do a lot to remove friction, but there is still more of it in a multiplayer game than a single-player game like CM. In my above example, from Hell Let Loose, we actually had an infantry leader on the "radio" telling us that they couldn't come up because there were Germans to their front. We misinterpreted that to mean that the Germans to OUR front were somehow still engaging the infantry.

Agreed, but I've played against Kaunitz a couple of times, and he is definitely a capable player.
So let's not talk about his tactics, but keep focus on his main questions:
Should area fire be restricted to contacts the tank actually has C2 information about? The game has a great C2 sharing system. But it can be disregarded completely for area fire.
  Should trenches, foxholes, and bunkers provide more protection from direct fire?
  And I will add a point of my own: Should tank MG fire really be massively more accurate than infantry MG? That's how it works now, and that also makes tanks (and light AFVs) much more powerful.

When I try to fire a white phosphorous shell at a building, I get the error message "Invalid Smoke Target". How come?
In reality, white phosphorous is a dangerous substance that was often used in an anti personel role. Not only does it burn into human flesh, but the smoke is also harmful to inhale. Firing a WP shell through a window would be an effective way of clearing a building.

I suspect the dismount 2km away will be a function of terrain and what you reckon the opposition has in terms of anti-armour capability?
It's a bit harder in modern stuff as there is so much more out there both vehicle platforms and infantry carried that can reach out and kill you. I still prefer keeping my troops mounted and their rides in cover until I know for 'sure' (not a guarantee!) until I have a better sense of what I am facing. This at least provides some cover from arty - they can quickly bug out if they come under arty fire and mobility which means I can move them to where I need them.
The whole dismounting thing is, I think, when you have a sense of what you are facing and are committing to the attack to seize an objective (as you example shows - infantry make good use of close terrain to close with objective, IFvs stand-oof to make best use of their on-board armament to engage objective with supporting fires.
Ultimately terrain and what assets the enemy has will dictate what you do. Mobility is a weapon too!

Another example of a doctrinal attack, this with a Bradley platoon:


 
Scale here is to dismount about 2km from the objective, outside of the range of RPGs and the like, but within range of the 25mm. The dismounts are dismounted early, and make use of their ability to use close terrain to move up on the target, whilst the Bradleys and artillery provide smoke and supporting fires.
You'll note in both of the above examples that particular care is taken to protect the vehicles. They both offer significant and useful firepower, but need to be used extremely carefully to get anything useful out of them.

That might be no bad thing: send the smoke in one direction and slow move in another. While your opponent is focussed on area firing into the smoke and waiting to see what was behind it, you could be setting up to do your job. Might work once anyway.

Michael

In the "In the Shadow of the Hill" scenarios (4 separate scenarios) I cover a Brigade attack, with the map based on google earth and period maps and the forces at play are as accurate to reality as the game will allow. This shows how the forces were made up based on AAR documents and in all cases the various battalions attacked with only two companies up and with armour and artillery support. 
If you look at the scenarios in detail you will get a good idea of the tasks allocated to the three battalions (4th Dorset's, 5th Dorset, and 7th Hampshire's)
mission 1 & 2:  C & D Co 5th Dorset's, plus supporting arms (armour and artillery) are tasked to capture two farm complexes
mission 3 : A & B Co 4th Dorset's, plus support are tasked to capture a small village.
mission 4: A & B Co 7th Hamp's are tasked to capture a further village.
As shown below each action allowed the next to take place, allowing the Bde to move forward in bounds as it secured it's objectives in turn. Each battalion had roles within the Bde plan, while each company had a role in it's respective battalions plan, (and each platoon within each co and so on)

The master map for these scenarios is 1.6k wide by 4k deep, with the first three missions seeing the forces needing to cover 1.6-2k, with a similar distance covered in mission 4 albeit the start line for the advance is 2k deep into the master map. 
These missions are very histrionically accurate in terms of the terrain and British forces involved, and so give some insight into what was asked of the actual units on 10th July 1944
P

I am trying this in a CMRT campaign. Narrow frontages, and realistic unit boundary lines, so no sweeping lateral movements, the battalion to your left or right has that sector. Your sector is yours. Advance with company through company to concentrate the fire and spread the casualties over the entire battalion so your best companies aren't depleted in the first battle.
Not sure if others would find this fun to play. Control is not that overwhelming because all your force is not moving at once, usually.
I am having fun with it anyway.

In CMBN and CMFB the weapons platoon leader does have a radio, and so does his top sergeant in the HQ support team. This may represent an improved TO&E in 1944-45 compared to the 1943 version in CMFI. The weapons platoon organization changed significantly from 1943 to 1944 so it's possible that the army agreed the old organization made it too cumbersome to use the mortars. In any case I believe the SCR-536 handheld radios were issued at the company level, so the game programming must be making some guesses about how they'd be allocated to platoons. 
I seem to recall that in some previous version of CMFI, maybe 3.0, the 4th platoon leader *did* have a radio, and that this changed in 4.0, but I don't know if this is deliberate and I may be remembering wrong.

In CMBN and CMFB the weapons platoon leader does have a radio, and so does his top sergeant in the HQ support team. This may represent an improved TO&E in 1944-45 compared to the 1943 version in CMFI. The weapons platoon organization changed significantly from 1943 to 1944 so it's possible that the army agreed the old organization made it too cumbersome to use the mortars. In any case I believe the SCR-536 handheld radios were issued at the company level, so the game programming must be making some guesses about how they'd be allocated to platoons. 
I seem to recall that in some previous version of CMFI, maybe 3.0, the 4th platoon leader *did* have a radio, and that this changed in 4.0, but I don't know if this is deliberate and I may be remembering wrong.

If not done already the aquiring mortar in carrier issue (the one that was solved through changing the mortar to the airborne type) requires reopening also. That was also fixed in one area but not another. Was fixed for the mortars that are in the Carrier Platoons vehicles but not fixed for the mortars that are in the Anti-Tank Platoons vehicles.

The ability to watch and re-watch cool moments like that makes WEGO worth every penny of development time they dumped in it. That's one little moment in what's probably a 30 turn+ battle, so imagine ALL the other stuff that is going on during the fighting. CM is one of the very few game titles that actually affords you the means to enjoy ALL the graphics and not just the stuff you are focused on at a given moment.
I've said it a million times and I'll say it again. What is the friggin' point of having all these cool graphics when you can't enjoy them because you have to play the game at nose bleed altitude so you don't lose. It's idiotic and infuriating all at the same time. Anyway, CM doesn't do that. You'll see stuff so cool you'll want to alt-tab out so you can start a thread and tell everyone about it.
 
Mord.

According to BF, that issue now only exists in CMBN due to some conflict between a certain type of bocage and the retreat logic code.  Since none of the other CMx2 titles have bocage then it should not be seen in those other games.
Currently playing a CMFI scenario and have so far not seen it. 

Hey there, sorry that no one has replied to your post yet. I just noticed it myself. The community is very helpful but sometimes we get caught up in our own real lives and things fall through the cracks.
Now on to the question. No, it is not supposed to do that. But I guess you know that already. I cannot get my copy to replicate that error. So that seems to indicate there is a fault with your files. 
How about patches? Do you have any of them installed and where they activated in the correct order? All I know about the patches is what is indicated in their release notes. Some corrections are prominently listed. Others are more vague unless I guess you know the system. So the correction to this problem may be in a file that one of the patches address.
If all else fails I would suggest saving any maps, mods, current battles you are doing and delete it all from your drive and reinstall. I know it is a complete pain to do so but it may be the only solution.
So let us know what happens with this,  hang in there and don't get discouraged. When you're at the bottom the only way left to go is up.

 
 

I've been under small arms fire a small number of times. I never got up to run in any direction, or even crawled to better cover  - I just tried to press my body as deep into the ground as it could go, eyes closed and whimpering to myself, 'God, God, God.' I wasn't special forces or SWAT; just a basic infantry soldier. Might be better if the game sprites just froze in place like me; 'suppressed', as the old infantry tactics manual describes it.

The "personnel" rounds are indeed air bursts, but they are timed fuses, not VT (influence) fuses. If you watch closely, you may notice that the timing is off on some of them and they actually function as contact fuses.
Michael