Bubba883XL

I have conducted some research about B-4 heavy guns in Berlin assault, so 102nd, 104th, 120th and 124th high-power artillery brigades were involved. In street fights for direct firing were used 38 B-4 guns of theese brigades. They turned out single weapon system, wich could defeat extremely strong stone buildings in the Berlin center. Germans also blocked streets with heavy barricades, built with massive blocks, so for its destruction also used direct fire of 152-203 mm barrels. If direct fire with heavy guns wasn't possible, 280 mm Br-5 mortires (34th sep.high-power artillery battalion, 6 barrels) and 305 mm howitzers mod.1915 (322nd sep.high-power artillery batalion, 6 barrels) were coming to game. Was enough 1-2 305 mm shells to collapse heavy fortified building. 
As told memories, using of heavy guns for direct fire also had a next reason - artillery spotters often could't see places of indirect fire shells impact because of high density of tall buildings and couldn't ajust fire. Indirect firing also couldn't supress enemy strongpoints on lower floors of buildings. Also bad communication between infantry and artillery, fast changing of tactical situation caused Soviet artillery and rockets often hit with indirect fire own troops, sufferng to them heavy losses and foling further advance.
Here some examples:
1. Assault group in 80 SMG gunners and riflemen, having in support 4 tanks, 6 76 mm guns, 4 45 mm guns, 4 120 mm mortars, 4 82 mm mortars, 2 152 mm howitzers had a task to advanse in Alexanrowplatz area from the crossroads of Fridenstrasse and Lansbergstasse. During advansing the group encountered that crossroads was blocked by heavy barricade and main buildings turned out in fortified positins. In the night B-4 has arrived and set up in front of barricade road block. On the morning the 20 minutes artillery barrage was conducted on nearest deep of enemy defense. Under artillery cover, part of the guns, appointed for direct fire, rapidly moved forward. B-4 with several shells wiped out the part of barricade. In the hole Soviet infantry rushed, supported by tanks, arttillery pieces moved with infantry by pairs  - all forces mutually covered each other.
2. Rifle unit couldn't take a heavy fortifierd building. All attempts to blow up the walls by sappers failed, because from the deep of the street this building covered by MG nests and snipers. B-4 has arrived. Infantry moved two regimental guns, which opened fast fire along the street in direction of MG nests. The street LOS was closed by smoke and dust and in that moment loaded B-4 moved to the street and hit the building.
3. During the fighting in Warshauerstrasse area, Soviet infantry was stopped by heavy resistanse - Germnas turned out dozens buildings in deadly fortress. Artillery of assault groups was useless. Even support fire of 122 mm barrels didn't give anything. Then four B-4 were moved there and they during 20 minutes from 200 m distanse complitely destroyed 11 buildings - infantry moved further.    
4. One Army, which operated in Berlin on the front of 3 km, used during several days for street fights and direct fire 14 203 mm howitzers, 34 152 mm guns and 12 152 mm howitzers, not counting barrels of less caliber.  
In most cases big guns were taking own positions after meticulous recon and as a rule under the cover of darkness, rarely in the daylight when it was extremely needed. Before opening fire, guns covered behind the buildings, covering by its walls. In some cases guns deployed in rubbles, behind ruined walls (its height adjusted if needed by crews and sappers). Range of using was 150-300 m, rarely 500-600 m. For the covering of guns infantry commanders detached special groups. Guns almost didn't fire in spotted targets, they often fired in middle part of buildings, causing severe destructions. As a rule about 7-10 203 mm shells was enough to destroy heavy building. More strong churches and stone buildings demanded 9-12 shells. 
Though were single fortifications in Berlin, which couldn't be crushed with no one of Soviet heavy artillery system - that are Flack-towers. Their walls has 2,8 m of thick, overlaps had 4 m, windows had steel plates 50-100 mm. For example flack tower in Tiergarten (Zoo-tower) was shooting out with 152 mm and 203 mm guns from 200 m but shells left only dents in the walls! 

New module will cover time span where Red Army was involved in bloody assaults and sieges which don't limited only Berlin operatin. Poznan, Kenigsberg, also more early operations in Lithuaniua, Western Ukraine - in all these operations Soviet troops encountered with extremaly strong buildings and heavy field fortifications, which successfully resisted to all types of heavy infantry support guns, even 152 mm. Thus, Soviet command was forced to use for direct fire in urban combats and positions breaktrough high-power artillery of High Command Reserve.
Beacuse of this theme summoned discussion,  I am opening separate thread and transfering my previous posts here. I hope BFC will follow historical developments and will include at least 203 mm  B-4 howitzer in the game as well as super-strong modular buildings and fortifications, almost invulnerable for infantry support guns.


B-4 on the Berlin street, towed by Voroshilovets heavy artillery tractor

 
 
 

Your math is basically correct. Can I give a +1 for some heavy artillery? The 105's we have these days feel like popguns.
 

Too bad I was hoping to roll one of these up to a Berlin block and redecorate. Basically an 8" howitzer fired direct!  I believe its 203mm though I could be wrong.

Sadly not, I believe.....However there's always the possibility they could be added in a future vehicle pack.

i see this is about to be closed, and saw big guns mentioned. and not fully reading every post, i will just ask lol...
will we see the likes of the russian big beast 1931 210mm gun? usually seen on its own treads etc...?

George,
 
  The map looks very impressive.  Very expansive - your line of sight will give some great long-distance engagements. 
 
Heinrich505

Some new impressions...




The village of Wolowicowce





Tiger waiting for victims at the eastern edge of Racicze



Regards
Frank

@BluecherForward LOL. Jesus...Those weren't jokes about rape. It was @PIATPunk's way of saying the thread is about to be locked...as in "hi mom". And me agreeing. You know, because if there is one thing game forum owners want being discussed on their GAME forum, it's rape.
EDITED: Sequoia back doored me...without my consent.
Now, THAT was a joke.
Mord.

Many people seem to have this strange idea that if rocket artillery is used in a scenario, it's an automatic instant win. But that's not the case. I've played several scenarios that gave me rockets, and I still found the battles difficult.
A lot of battles on the Eastern Front should start with a shower of rockets.

Memoirs as a whole are generally rather poor sources, being entirely subjective in perspective.

Pretty much.  "Tigers" and "88s" just everywhere!

There is a second option and that is to download and install a local copy (they say no auto updates then but I cannot imagine any updates are coming).
Then you can mod it using JSGME for example. Mods at http://cmx1mods.greenasjade.net/mods even though sometimes I have got error messages there.

Lets hope so

Same here, I was disappointed when I heard about the no tank riders decision.

I miss tankriders for BN and FI too. I hope this will be added at a later stage. I'll pay for it.

RockinHarry, it seems that they have been looking at that bug for years... 😛
I hope we get a patch to fix this and the bocage "run towards the enemy" bugs soon!

Try "special editor overlay.bmp" without the quotes.

Note the absence of '_' characters.

In my experience, the "3d model quality" setting is the one that has the biggest impact on FPS.
 
You have to experiment with different settings to find the sweet spot. All the settings from "Balanced" to "Best" use the same LODs, the only difference is the distance at which it draws them.
 
 

Players crying for huge highly detailed maps, dense urban areas or thick forests, huge force levels, weather effects, smoke and haze, detailed animations, with all their graphics card features turned up to max and magically fast framerates are deluding themselves. Tell us which of those you DON'T want and maybe BFC will discard it for you. Are you asking BFC to reduce soldier model polygon count by half? Framerate for a standard movie is 24 fps. If you can live with that watching Marvel superhero movies then it shouldn't be considered a particularly onerous burden playing CM.

I am a little skeptical that its all related to the calculations on the fly.  For one, it seems to make no difference in realtime or wego play.  Most of the calcs should have already done for a replay, but I see no difference in fps.  For the second, in wego, I run tests where I have not moved a single unit just to see what happens.  No perceptible impact on FPS.  
I am sure the calcs plays some role, but I am not sure how significant it is  

I recently bought a G-Sync monitor -- and had in the back of my mind the idea that maybe, just maybe, this might improve things with CM's terribly laggy performance.
In short, for anyone contemplating a similar purchase for similar reasons -- it does not. In fact, I now disable G-Sync and use the Adaptive V-Sync (half refresh rate) setting when playing CM.
I have tweaked CM's settings and the settings in my Nvidia Control Panel a million different ways in a vain attempt to find the 'sweet spot' for good performance. I'm convinced it doesn't exist -- EXCEPT for one setting:
3D Model Quality.  Set this to "Fastest", and your game will suddenly perform as you might expect it should. No more dipping into 12-15 FPS for simply panning your camera. Changes to 3D Texture Quality seem to make no difference -- I keep it at "Best." But for whatever reason, 3D Model Quality dropped to lowest setting, Fastest, makes a very big difference. And I honestly cannot see any difference in visual quality between higher settings and Fastest. Vehicles and troops look the same.
It seems like 3D Model Quality at lowest setting is disabling some graphics feature that (A) is *intensely* demanding and (B) makes almost no visual difference in the game. I don't know what it's supposed to be doing, but whatever it is, it's not worth the literally 20-30 FPS cost of keeping it on.
The only other intensive graphics setting is Shadows -- turning shadows off generally yields a 5-15 FPS benefit. But I can't disable shadows -- it makes the game look considerably flatter and worse. So setting 3D Model Quality to Fastest has for me been the best solution.
For anyone interested -- here are my settings in Nvidia CP. I have a fairly robust PC:  i7 3770k oc'd to 4.6 GHz; Nvidia GTX 780 Ti; 16 GB RAM, Windows 7 x64. With these specs I can easily run other graphics intensive games at high or ultra settings. For example, by contrast, I can run Graviteam Tactics at a constant 100 FPS --
INGAME SETTINGS:
Vertical Synchronisation: On
Antialias/Multisample: On
High Priority Process: On
3D Model Quality:  Fastest
3D Texture Quality: Best
Nvidia CP:
Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
Antialiasing - Gamma Correction: On
Antialiasing - Mode: Override any application setting
Antialiasing - Setting: 16xCSAA
Antialiasing - Transparency: Multisample  8X
Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: 4
Power Management: Maximum performance
Texture Filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Off
Texture Filtering - Negative LOD Bias: Allow
Texture Filtering - Quality: High quality
Texture Filtering - Trilinear Optimization: On
Threaded Optimization: Auto
Triple Buffering: Off
Texture Filtering Anisotropic Filter Optimization: Off
VERTICAL SYNC:  ADAPTIVE (HALF REFRESH RATE)

I think I'm failing because I'm playing this like Men at War: Assault Squad 2. Trying to push up, flank and stuff.
A problem I'm having is that fire starts getting exchanged incredibly early, when I'm not ready for it. Either my units are opening up, or the enemy is, I'm not sure. I'm not able to advance to the first bocage up north without taking fire from an unknown direction. What's the best way to work on my engagements? Any advice?

Confirmed and reported internally. QA 8089
Confirmed and reported internally. QA 8090

Just bear in mind, that a lot of people who enjoy creating scenarios, need BFC to give 'em the tools to do it with. So stop chafing at the bit, and wait for those guys to give you Chaffee's to play with.