Kaunitz
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Posts posted by Kaunitz
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Regarding the idea to increase the time intervals between orders:
In fact I wondered what would happen to the game if you increased the reaction interval for ALL troops to 5 minutes (!)? What would happen if players were only allowed to give new orders to their troops every 5 minutes, instead of every single minute? Theoretically, we should end up with a lot of coordination difficulties and friction? And that's exactly what I (and some others) are missing in Combat Mission. Thanks to very sophisticated waypoint system in CM, playing with bigger reaction intervalls would be perfectly viable.
Bigger reaction intervals would encourage you to put a bigger effort into anticipation and force you to make a decision: Do I want to take it slow and carefully or risky and fast (potentially surprising the opponent but with a very messy situation if it goes wrong)? The basic go-to-example: If the infantry support of a tank is stopped in minute 2 of the turn, the tank would still continue to move on for 3 more minutes, depending on how risky your approach was/how many waypoints you've placed. Players could still borg-spot-area fire at targets that the firing unit does not see. However, this cheesy tactic would at least cost/waste a bit more time than it does now.
Once I have a bit more time at my hands, I'd really like to try that out in a multiplayer battle. Are there any volunteers?
As a positive side effect , H2H battles could be played faster? "Have 20 minutes? Let's just resolve the next turn (5 ingame minutes)!" Just load the game, click on finish turn, done, repeat 4 times. You can watch what happened in the individual turns afterwards (reloading the saves). A 60 minutes scenario would just consist of 12 turns. A much more manageable and less intimitating number than 60!
QuoteYou run into my usual objection that it interferes with the ability of the TC to make decision on his own. But since what you suggest is limited and has no cumulative effects (my other big objection to command delays) it might be workable. I would not limit this to buttoned tanks though.
What do you mean by "cumulative effects"?
It's true that the player is also in control of the brains of individual troop leaders. Therefore, increasing the player's reaction intervalls also decreases the level of troop leader initiative. Or at least it makes them more random by applying a variable delay on them. Depending on when the "trigger" happens during the turn, there might be more or less delay on the leader's initiative. I don't think it would be such a deal breaker for me, especially as the basic self-preservation reactions (go prone, pop smoke, reverse, leave trenches in the midst of artillery barrages ^^) are handled by the tac AI.
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So I've spent the last weekend giving Graviteam a real chance for once. I've had MiusFront it in my game library for a long time already, but being the CM fanboy that I am, I never really made a serious effort. But now as I'm growing slightly disatisfied with CM's lack of progress/innovation, I decided to try GT out more seriously.
The bad:
- Graviteam's AI is no challenge. Lacking a multiplayer mode, this means that any fun I might have with the game will be short-lived. This is the single most important point of this review. After one weekend of playing, I'm already tired by AI suicide charges.
- Graviteam's UI is a nightmare beyond description, both in the tactical battles and even more so in the operational mode. I call "fanboy" on anyone who thinks differently on this point.
- Nobody seems to understand how the various indirect fire methods really work. Even the expert tutorials just tell you which combinations of buttons you should have checked, without fully understanding what they do. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Mabye it's bugged.
- The campaign aspect is certainly interesting, but it's more on the "game" than on the "simulation" side of things. They way battlemaps are cut out of the campaign map means that positions that could very well support each other are simply "cut off" (but to be fair, this is even more noteworthy with many CM maps...). Also, the whole reinforcement/battlegroup aspect is rather questionable. Battalions are represented by single companies (the other companies are in reserve, not present on the battlefield).
The good:
- The visuals are more simulation-like: For example, tracer rounds are simulated - these really have a huge impact on the overall aesthetical impression of a WWII battle. Another thing that struck my eye is that tree models are more realistic than in CM (in CM, tree trunks are much too thick). From what I've seen so far, clear areas on most GT maps also feature a lot of small bumps that provide cover to prone infantry. The more realistic impression of GT is also related to the "tight" reaction of individual soldiers. While the overall animations of GT soldiers are a bit clunky at times, they tend to stand up and run faster than CM soldiers, who sometimes seem to react/move in slow-motion.
- GT gives the player less control over some aspects, which leads to command friction that is a bit lacking in CM. For example, GT has an interesting "command delay" system to prevent the player from micro-managing too much. As it has been discussed, friction is of particular importance when it comes to tank-infantry coordination. Here, properly scaled maps also help a lot - tanks are simply faster than infantry! But you will only start to understand the implications of this if you play on realistically sized maps. Graviteam's maps are realistically large. The same cannot be said for CM quickbattle maps.
- Situational plausibility. One thing I particularly like in GT was that both the mix of troops you lead into battle as well as your overall goal for a battle somehow seemed more plausible than in most CM games. The second point is probably related to the campaign mode, which ties the operational and the tactical levels closer together. Due to their fine, time-consuming level of detail, CM battles need to deliver a lot of action in a short time-span to be fun, even if the resulting high intensity of the action is very unplausible. GT is very different here. As they're real time, battles play out very fast. Long periods of "nothing" can be bridged very quickly by speeding up time. This means that GT can portray the intensity level of WWII engagements (with a few exceptions, obviously) much better. Casualties are lower overall, engagements develop slowlier, don't necessarily end in full escalation. Also, in the campaign battles of GT, you never know how many and what kind of troops the opponent still has in petto. You could find yourself in a very asymmetrical/unbalanced battle (it's okay because retrat makes sense and you don't lose too much precious game time if you do it...). In CM, by contrast, the balance lies within a single game/scenario, not on the campaign level.
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It features some details that are missing in CM: e.g. telephone units that lay wires; flares. Also, you can set the density of an infantry formation. I wished I could spread out my soldiers in CM too...
Offside the core functions, one also needs to point out that modding CM seems to be much easier and that CM features an awesome map/scenario editor.
So overall, I would say that Graviteam has a more realistic/simulationist visual appeal, while CM's visuals are a bit more "table top like" (and very detailed at that!) which also has its own charm. In terms of gameplay, the overall combat situation (mix of troops, map size, goals of a battle, intensity of engagements) is more plausible in GT, while the actual mechanics are probably more convincing in CM (precise positioning, effects of cover and concealment, etc). Any advantages that Graviteam might have, however, are strongly mitigated by the lack of multiplayer support, and severely hampered by the atrocious and clunky UI. CM is the much more polished and user-friendly series.
So both games have their merits. I think I will stick to GT for a more "contemplative", laid-back singleplayer experience (let's just watch the action) and to CM for a more competitive, highly invested tactical multiplayer experience.
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[Sorry for the double post, I was not able to put two separate spoilers in a single post]
Interestingly, an account of such a “recon in force” attack exists also from a soviet perspective: Vasiliy Bryukhov, Red Army Tank Commander. At War in a T-34 on the Eastern Front (2013). The attack took place in September 1943, somewhere around Orel/the Kursk salient. The author, by that time in charge of a tank platoon (/I. btn/159. tank brigade/1. tank corps) can’t remember the name of the village.
I have also found other descriptions of infantry-tank encounters. Interestingly, in most cases the tank lack close infantry support. I will see if I will add some more transcriptions of the more detailed/interesting accounts. One factor that strikes me as very important and yet is almost totally absent from CM is that the mere presence of tanks causes fear/suppression.
“A reconnaissance in force by a strengthened platoon is required. I realize that it I a most difficult task, hence I ask volunteers to take one step forward.”
I stood forward with no hesitation. A that point – for the first and the only time in my life – I sensed the glare of my crew on my back, full of hatred. Everything shrank inside me, but there was no way back. The combrig came up to me and put his hand on my shoulder: “Thank you, lad. Take a seat in the car and let’s go to the spot to discuss the way you’re going to attack.”
We rode through the forest up to a grove on a hillock where there was a control-observation centre for a rifle regiment. Our infantry took up positions slightly below in shallow trenches, and the enemy defence line could be seen a kilometer away, on the outskirts of a settlement.
Preparations didn’t take too long. The commanders showed me the direction of movement and set up the objective – to drive a wedge into the enemy defence at maximum speed and force the enemy to reveal its fire-emplacement system. We were not to spare the ammunition. During the night the tanks of the brigade were refueled, ammo was replenished, and by morning they were ready on the starting line. Tanks from my platoon were deployed over a front sector that was 1.5 kilometres long. Kolya’s tank was on my left; I don’t remember the name of the guy in the tank on the right.
It is hard to describe one’s feelings before an attack. There was no fear, which might have suppressed my fervor, but of course I was aware that I might die – that thought kept running through my mind.
A red flare put an end to my anxiety. Having yelled “Forward” to my driver, I moved closer to the dashboard. We passed the thin line of infantry which were supposed to rise behind us and keep up with the tanks, and at that moment our artillery opened fire and struck the German positions. There was no return fire yet.
It was when the tanks approached the passes through the minefields that had been cut by the sappers that the Germans opened fire. The infantrymen dropped to the ground. Tanks immediately to my left and right began to lag behind, then the right one caught fire. I dashed ahead of the rest, and of course the enemy fire concentrated on me. Suddenly we were hit – there were sparks and flames, and unexpectedly it became light. I thought that the gunloader’s hatch had been opened, and yelled: “Akulshin, shut the hatch!”
“There isn’t one – it’s gone!”
A shell had hit the hinge and torn it off! We were still about 200 metres from the enemy line when a German shell hit the front armour. The machine stopped, but didn’t catch fire. (After the battle I saw that a solid penetrator shell had been fired at point-blank range, piercing the armour near the machine-gunner/radio-operator – the shrapnel killing him in the process – and going under the driver’s hatch, tearing it off.) I was deafened by the blast and fell onto the shell stack, just as a second shell smashed through the turret and killed the gunloader. I was lucky to have fallen over in the blast – otherwise we all would have died.
Apparently I was not on the ground for too long. Having come to my senses, I saw the driver lying in front of the tank with his head smashed. I never understood whether he had tried to get out and was killed by a mortar shell, or had been mortally wounded inside the tank and managed to crawl out with his remaining strength. The dead machine-gunner/radio-operator sat in his char. I climbed up on my seat and surveyed the locality using the panoramic viewer; two other tanks from our platoon were burning nearby. The Germans were not shooting any more, apparently having concluded that the tanks had all been destroyed. I took the driver’s place, started the engine with compressed air, switched the rear gear and took off. The Germans opened fire and several solid projectiles hit the armour. I stopped moving, deciding to wait until the brigade started attacking again. Soon our artillery began to shell the disclosed enemy fire emplacements, then tanks and infantry began to advance and dislodged the enemy from their positions.
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Thanks for the recommendation for Try Otto Carius: Tigers in the Mud, Bulletpoint! I will take a look!
Here is a description of a "recon in force" attack of T-34s on a german position. The account by Guy Sajer, Der Vergessene Soldat (my own translation into English). The credibility of Sajer's accounts has been discussed ielsewehere n this forum before. I have no real doubts that what has is described could have happened (in contrast to, e.g. Wolfgang Faus's Tiger Tracks). The one thing that I keep wondering about though is how Sajer could remember so many engagements in such a level of detail. Anyone know what that "anti tank MG" is?
Shortly before nightfall we were abruptly roused from our rest. Our pulse racing, we ran over to our battle positions. The Russian tanks had started to move through the snow storm. The frozen earth started to vibrate.
The guys at the PAK, as well as those with the Panzerfausts, had their eyes trimmed on their sights, which were constantly steaming over because of the cold. We had also dug some anti-tank-holes (“Panzergruben”), totally insufficient both in their numbers and effect. If our anti-tank defenses failed, we’d be lost. We knew that and clung fast to our AT weapons and magnetic mines that had been distributed amongst us.
The PAK which we were covering was manned by Olensheim, Ballers, Freivitch and others. The snow storm reduced vision. A heavy MG started to fire somewhere to the north. We could only hear but not yet see the monsters. The sound of battle grew more intense in the north. Despite the fading light and the snow we could now see flashes. The short barking of the PAK whipped across the plain and echoed in a weirdly soft way. The tanks’ rumbling grew louder and felt heavy on our chests. Columns of fire splashed across the plain horizontally. Some also vertically, illuminating the whirling snow. The roaring of the accelerating tanks cut through the night and tormented our ears. Now five of those monsters appeared vaguely before us, rolling parallel to our defensive line. Our chaps at the PAK were already firing. Wiener calmly pressed his MG against his shoulder. I was paralyzed, filled with thousands of indescribable fears. Yellow flashes sparkled on the front sides of the T34s, whose turrets were pointing at our lines. Our PAK had already fired 5 shots, leaving behind white trails in the air, but to no avail.
One of the tanks passed by our position at a distance of 10 meters. A Panzerfaust exploded at the flank of the monster. The tank slowed down, thick black smoke emanating from the chinks in the armor. The smoke was pressed to the ground by the wind. The hatches opened. You could hear screams, suddenly a loud explosion. The turret exploded. Parts of human bodies were spread all over the wreck, their colors changing from dark red to golden. There was no cheering. The barking of the PAK whipped over our foxhole again. The shell hit the rear part of a tank which was now also engulfed in smoke. Anyone who escaped from the wrecks was gunned down. We took a short breath. The fires illuminated the battle field. More tanks, now discernable for us at greater distance, appeared. One of them approached our line. We had goosebumps. The guys at the PAK were on point. In three seconds, they had turned around the gun, aimed and fired. The shell exploded on the front of the tank. Due to the shock, the engine stuttered for a moment, roared up, then died down. On the right flank, we were blinded by two muzzle flashes and explosions. Another tank was firing at us. Large junks of earth were flying about.
At that point, I had no clue what was happening anymore. The tank on our right was suddenly engulfed in flames. “Hurray Panzerfaust!”, someone yelled.
Our gunners continued their fire on the second tank, which had broken through our position and seemed to have had some mechanical issues. I saw a big explosion on its left side. We didn’t need to worry about it anymore. Farther to the rear, a strange scene happened. A T34 rolled through our positions, crushing everything under its tracks. It was pursued by one of our APCs (“Schützenpanzer”) equipped with an anti-tank MG. The crew fired away at the monster, racing behind it. Our lads at the PAK were in troubles. Freivitch was wounded, maybe already dead. We fired our MG at the Russian tank, which retreated full speed back to its own lines. Two shells exploded around the APC. A third shell hit its mark and knocked out our courageous tank hunters. The vehicle, marked with the helmet insignia of the “Grossdeutschland” division, melted away, engulfed in the flames fed by its fuel tanks. The enemy, still feeling pursued, continued his retreat and disappeared in the snow.
The red tanks’ attack was now over. It had lasted for about half an hour and apparently was meant to locate and reconnoiter our defenses. Some of the tanks had been knocked out. Their casualties were much higher than our own. But those numbers counted little. There was still a whole armada forming to attack us. Despite our low casualties, the loss of 4 PAKs in our sector severely weakened our defense.
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Has this already been posted somewhere?
I suppose it will release quite closely to the new module? What a coincidence!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9WyzQLdw6g
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52 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
Obviously it slows down to an appropriate speed to navigate the difficult terrain (the foxholes) - just like in Combat Mission when a heavy tank has to go through a plank fence, it also slows to a crawl
Another reason to go slow is that going fast is dangerous when you're almost blind (if the enemy's fire at your vision slits gets more and more accurate).
Of course there are huge risks in fighting tanks at close combat. And above all, I guess the feats you see in the instructional movies are rather unlikely due to psychological reasons, due to fear. But infantry support for tanks can be lacking. Artillery might drive the infantry away or at least pin it, or the attacked infantry still manages to put some fire down, despite the presence of tanks.
QuoteThanks, very interesting. Much of it reminds me of situations I've seen play out in Combat Mission. From the part where they manage to cross the road under fire, to especially the bit about the two-man "scout team" that was maybe sent out only to draw fire and make the enemy reveal themselves. Thanking my lucky stars I grew up in peacetime.
The thing I really found interesting is that the tank crew acted as their own infantry support, dismounting to peek around the corner. I will see if I can find accounts of actions that are more relevant to the topic here. I.e. tanks (+infantry) attacking vs. prepared infantry. Even though these are just anecdotes, they might help us get a better feeling the "effectiveness" of tanks. In many US accounts, combined tank+infantry attacks are mentioned quite often, but in no great detail. I also found an account by a german parachute engineer who mentions that a single "Ofenrohr-Trupp" (stovepipe=Panzerschreck-squad), consisting of 3 Panzerschrecks, knocked out 13 attacking Shermans... Unfortunately, the action itself is not described in much detail.
I just listed all the points, no matter how "established" they are. As for the fortifications, you probably know my personal opinion. Regarding the MGs, I rather think that non-tank-MGs are a tad too inaccurate. Bulletpoint and I had a PBEM in which his plentyfull light MGs (german Aufklärungstruppen) were fighting three of my heavy MGs for about 25 minutes at a range of 700-800m. I think in total, the MGs of both sides caused about 3 casualties. Now, I'm generally speaking a big fan of low casualty numbers. But here, it seemed a bit too low. All the troops were in the open (but prone), but I have to admit that there were some factors involved that reduced the effectiveness of the fire (my hMG sometimes suffered from a lack of binoculars, the terrain was sloped and all MGs were firing on the opponent frontally). Still it seemed perhaps a bit too ineffective. (Before you ask: the light and medium mortars I had proved highly ineffective against the spread out and still mobile germans; the frontal hMG fire was not sufficient to pin them long enough).
A whole platoon crossing in 3 minutes seems extremely fast to me!
Maybe at some point I can find a volunteer to try out the "greater reaction intervals for tanks" rule in a PBEM.
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Browsing through memoirs in the search for infantry vs. tanks, I found this to be one of the most detailed accounts. Granted, it is not overly usefull for our context here as it all happened in an urban environment. But as it is such an interesting read, I wanted to share it here.
The scene is January 21, 1945. B company, IV. btn, King's Own Scottish Borderers (155th brigade, 52nd Lowland Division) was ordered to attack into the town of Waldfeucht at the dutch-german border. The commander of the company’s 10 platoon, Peter White, has left us this account of the action which highly interesting in its various details for anyone interested in the gruesome combat experience during WWII. It also seems to have made a lasting impression on him, given that he made drawings of the action. The whole memoir and some of the drawings are published under the title “With the Jocks. A Soldier’s Struggle for Europe 1944-1945”. Highly recommended!
Warning: The account is rather graphic.
QuoteWe were immediately ordered to board a group of Kangaroos drawn up in Koningsbosch while an appeal was sent to the gunners to put down a hurried 25-pounder smokescreen to give us a sporting chance of cover from the Tigers on our side of the town as we roared in to attack. Once the Kangaroos had got us on to our objectives, they were to clear out of the Tigers’ range as fast as they could before the smoke blew away. We did not feel particularly happy as we moved off. Quite apart from the prospect of being hit on the way like a can full of sardines by a Tiger’s 88mm, we were ploughing cross-country at full throttle over a possible minefield; further, we had no information at all as to what hellish situation we would be tipped out into at the end of our desperate run. All plans would have to be improvised in split seconds on our arrival as we fell out among the enemy.
My new Kangaroo was named “Annie”. I hoped she had a thicker hide than poor “Lucy” if things got out of hand. The driver got an early scare over the radio of a Tiger somewhere to our left so we took immediately to the fields, the engine racing a power-packed roar as we ploughed lurching sluggishly like a ship in a swell. The complaining engine drowned all sound other than the frightening oscillating shriek of 25-pounder smoke canisters which plumed veils of billowy smoke to merge with the snow.
Soon this lung-biting fog of war, together with the snow, had us enveloped in a swirling world of whiteness, above, below and all around. Because of it we could not see where we were going; wherever it was, we were ploughing and bucking at top speed, crouched tense with racing hearts and the cold forgotten. We were rolling like so many tin cans through the smoke towards the fire. Somehow we hit neither another Kangaroo, a haystack, nor a house.
A sudden spin turn, and we crunched to a stop. Immediately over the radio from the Company HQ tank came the order to “De-bus!”. All in the same instant above the rumbling of the idling engine, we looked uneasily at each other with a sinking of the stomach as the fierce rip of an enemy machine gun and the most almighty crash of explosion enveloped all our senses. Once our heads appeared over the steel rim of the tank anything might happen. I yelled “De-bus! Take up all round positions.” There was fortunately no time to think as we desperately tumbled and scuttled to get clear of the tracks and flung ourselves flat, facing outwards. Already the Kangaroo, revving madly, slung earth off the spinning tracks as it lurched swiftly into the swirling, spark-jewelled smoke. Everywhere were crouched scattering figures, dimly seen in the thinning, flame-reddened smokescreen, yelling voices, the cry of wounded, complete ear shattering pandemonium.
Immedaitely against us on the left were a row of Jeeps, trailers, kit, an ambulance and a house, all burning furiously with a billowy roar of sheets of petrol-fed flame, and dense coiling smoke. Another hideous crash of flame and swift loud rip of machine gun fire through the wall of smoke drew my eyes to fix with amazed horror on the source of all this hell-like confusion. Twenty-five yards away, wedged in the archway of the town wall and just too broad to get through, was a Tiger tank. A venomous spitting wall of steel itself, it was pointing right at the flaming inferno of the road and ourselves! The smoke had just lasted thick enough to save us, and “Annie”, from a far worse fate than “Lucy’s” long-range hit.
A swift painful scramble found us panting with pounding hearts against a low garden wall, and out of the immediate line of fire unless the tank chose to blow this protection to dust. My throat seemed like dried leather, and I felt sure it was not just the smoke. Any paralysis of fear seemed mercifully drowned in the floot-tide of noise, movement and excitement. No stretcher bearers could for the moment get at the casualties farther down the road. Miraculously some semblance of order had emerged and I could see my three section commanders sprawled amid the rubble and along the wall together with men of Company HQ, and these chaps signed that they were in contact with their men, though I could not see them all myself.
Sgt. Johnny Manson grasping a PIAT just ahead of me at the end of the wall on the road started to move forward with the evident intention of crossing the road to outflank the tank and shoot it from the side or rear. He had just emerged from behind the wall when he coincided with a burst of fire and staggered back, crouched, stunned and splashing blood with his hand to his face covering a gaping wound where his jaw should have been.
Colin crawled up to join us, and we crouched below the wall next to Manson who now knelt in silent agony. We obviously had to try to outflank the tank somehow, but it did not seem possible from this side. Colin asked me to take 10 Platoon over the road to work through the houses behind the arch and try at the Tiger from there. Having seen what happened to Manson when he showed himself, I decided not to throw a “77” smoke grenade into the road, as this, through it would obscure us, would most probably draw a steady hail of fire. Instead I had section commanders line their men up four abreast to run flat out across the road at odd intervals. I shall never forget the desperate tension in running over in the first batch. It seemed deliberate suicide, yet incredibly the whole platoon got over without a scratch within about three minutes. It seemed impossible that the deafening, crackling bursts of point-blank fire had been real, for we had literally acted as figures in a shooting gallery. I think what had saved us was the very closeness of the fire, and the consequent inability of the gunner to traverse the gun with each crossing group.
Fortunately the Tiger was too broad to either get through the arch, or traverse the long telegraph pole-like 88mm barrel of the gun far without hitting the sides of the arch, or he might have chased us by blowing down the walls of the lane. Just over the road we noticed for the first time a burned out 17-pounder gunned Sherman tank, the crew, it seemed, still in it. A little beyond, frozen dead in its tracks and also burned out, was one of the two Tiger tanks knocked out by Capt Hunter of the 5th – hit in swift retribution following its victory over the Sherman which had been hit at 35 yards range. We later found other Shermans trapped and smashed deeper in the town.
Crossing the back gardens of several houses warily to get level with the arch, we found the tumbled grey-green-clad forms of numerous German dead, most of them very young, sprawling in and about trenches, tangled in fence wire, weapons and equipment. As we moved forward, Coy HQ and the other two platoons remained on the far side to break their way through the houses parallel to us.
Some figures moving ahead turned out to our mutual relief to be the battered remnants of a 5th Bn platoon. The platoon Commander, a begrimed, sandy-haired chap of my age, came forward to meet me with “Thank God you’ve got here.” I noticed with surprise that though he had lost all his fingers except thumb and index finger on both blood-streaked hands, he still brandished a captured Luger pistol in greeting, held precariously in the stumps of his right hand. He explained his PIAT and team were both out out of action, when after several attempts to fire down onto the rear of the Tiger from an overhanging window, a bomb had exploded against the window-sill from which they were shooting. I crawled up the rubble strewn stairs of this corner café with him after my Platoon had taken over positions from his remaining weary men. This should have enabled us to try our skill down onto the Tiger too if it was still in the same position. The tank commander must have been getting a bit restive in wondering what we were up to for we found the archway empty, and glancing up the road we were just in time to see the tank pulling slowly round a corner out of sight, in reverse.
As we looked form well back in the shadow of the smashed room, two German soldiers with rifles appeared unconcernedly in a doorway 100 yards off and looking in our direction. It seemed these two had been ordered to show themselves to draw fire, thus disclosing our whereabouts either for snipers or for the tank to come forward again. We could see from the smashed state of the house that the Tiger had put several shells through it. Perhaps he was collecting more ammunition. The young 5th chap, seeing I had a rifle, suggested we had a go at them well back to conceal the source of fire, realizing that later it might be them or us if we let them go now. Next came the awful choice – which one should it be? How mad the values of war that I should feel such shame at the thought “fire between them, no one will ever know.” Was the CO right, did this mean I was not “suitable” for this sort of thing? The sight was steady on the left-hand German still looking peacefully our way as I squeezed the trigger slowly. Even as I did so, the full realization that a human life hung on the minute pressure left to my finger made me dip the sights a shade to wound and not kill him if I could. As the rifle kicked in my shoulder and we ducked from sight to avoid being seen, I wondered if he was a married chap, with children at home. Peeping up slowly again, in case we had been seen by a sniper, we just caught a glimpse of two legs and feet trail out of sight, apparently being pulled by his pal.
The tank must have taken this in, for we heard the roar of its engine as it pulled forwards. I realized then that it must have just been the fact that these two men were such sitting ducks which had swayed my thoughts, for I felt no pity for this monster and dashed down to collect the PIAT team, McKenzie, and Syd Brown, to have a shot at it. Clattering down the rubble strewn stairs I found these two and we dashed across a little side alley after peering up and down it swiftly. First, to make sure we were not sniped at by the next house up, I had a quick look over it. It was empty, but revealed no suitable spot from which to fire at the side of the tank as it went past for we would be so close to it that the back-blast from the PIAT bomb would most probably have harmed us more than it would the Tiger. We dashed back to the small alley which let at right angles onto the main road down which the Tiger would come and dropped into the gutter.
The three of us lay side by side, McKanzie in the centre with the projector and Brown his number two, with spare bombs to reload on his other side. Our hearts were pounding furiously. I trained my rifle on the corner 15 yards distant where the tank would pass broadside on to us, intending to hit at least the first of any infantry screen who might advance with the Tiger and peer round the corner. The situation still held a queer cinema unreality to it, but I knew this time that I would not hesitate. It would be them or us. The suspense was terrible. I was conscious of a tense quivering of mingled excitement and fear as our ears detected the distant revving of the Tiger’s engine getting louder, then the clink-clink and squeak of slowly approaching tan tracks, still distant but coming steadily. I glanced behind to see if by chance any enemy infantry might have broken through our rear and was reassured to see we were covered as we lay by several automatics and rifles of others of the Platoon, poking from doors and windows, waiting silent and intent.
Suddenly, in an unexpected flash of blood-chilling sound, our ears tuned from the noise of the approaching tank to a new menace. A faint, whispered moan of a salvo of artillery shells mounted in a split second to an all-embracing hypnotic shriek which we just had time to appreciate was coming directly on us before the whole structure of our surroundings erupted and vomited with appaling blast and indescribable noise as though a brace of super-fast express locomotives with whistles jammed had coincided in one gigantic crash in our midst. The air was swirling with brick dust, powdered snow, smoky acrid yellow-black fumes and bits of heavy rubble and tiles thudding and pattering everywhere, hitting us painfully and whacking with metallic clatter on our tin hats. This sudden switch in climax from our ear-straining tension and concentration on the approaching Tiger had nearly wrought paralysis on our ability to react. “By God Surr! Were those no’ our ane b*** shells, the ***ers!” They were indeed our own 25-pounders. Another couple of salvos followed as unrepeatable words of obscenity and blasphemy also exploded about me. As the dust settled in a pinkish-grey film over the snow, I was staggered to notice that the cause of our being so heavily pounded with blast and rubble was a new shell hole 5 feet above us in a wall beside our gutter. The shell had just penetrated far enough through the wall before exploding for the main blast and fragments to smash into the yard beyond. Whoever had asked for these gunners to fire, most probably Colin at Company HQ somewhere behind us over the road, could have had no idea we were so far forward.
Perhaps this was a blessing in disguise. The renewed revving of the Tiger showed him to be coming forwards again; this time, as we later realized, without an infantry screen, it having, I suppose, been decided by the Germans that we would have no infantry either where our own shells were landing. I was not at all sure that our PIAT would do more than annoy the Tiger if we got a direct hit, but was counting on the fact that the entrance to our alley was rather too narrow for him to swing either his long gun barrel or machine guns onto us without first swinging the body of the tank, which I hoped would expose the thinner side armour to any heavier anti-tank weapon back near the burning vehicles through the arch at the 5th Bn HQ.
The clink and squeak was almost on us now as the Tiger drew up to the corner. Slowly the muzzle-brake at the end of the slim lengthy green barrel came into view, inch by inch, then stopped. Two throughts were worrying me. First, if the tank was not going to come far enough forward to expose the side properly, we would have to move to the other side of the alley to our right. Secondly, I still feared we were so close to our target that we would harm ourselves more than the tank. I saw a convenient doorway a few feet farther back on the better side. The gun barrel was still stationary, so with these thoughts in mind I signed to Mac and Brown and we scrambled into the doorway. Before showing the PIAT I decided to remain hidden and see what it was that had caused the Tiger to pause. Peering through the yard doorpost crack from our new position, we could see both the gun barrel and huge front sprocket. Suddenly two Germans in dark tank overalls, evidently some of the tank crew, dismounted, looked round the corner against the tank, then vanished. I was thankful we had moved for we had not been seen. A few more seconds of tension, then the Tiger revved loudly and clinked back a couple of links, engaging gear, then lurched forwards exposing three-quarters of its flank. “Right Max!” I whispered. He pushed out the PIAT, the three of us crouched at the door, Brown with a second bomb, and I gave the word “Fire!”
“Got the b***! Good shot Mac!” Someone exclaimed behind. The flash of flame had been followed by a billow of blast and oily black smoke which swept back from the top of the alley. For a few moments, during which Mac and Brown excited by the success bungled the reloading, the tank was obscured by thinning smoke. I think we were all three distracted by our success and trying to see where we had hit. The flash had been high near the turret. Three or four precious seconds slipped while the stunned German crew recovered. Gears grated, there was a frantic unexpected revving roar and the Tiger withdrew slowly in a lingering trail of smoke to our distress and disgust. Left lying in the road was a massive chunk of metal which could have come from the gun mantle. Just what damage we had done was difficult to decide. We gradually concluded, in the view of the fact that the Tiger never again came forward or fired the 88mm gun, that we must either have holed the barrel – which if fired again would have split or exploded – or we had wedged the mantle or turret.
The Germans’ reaction was immediate. Within a couple of minutes I was startled to see a group of Jerry infantry moving through the yard of the house on the corner to clean us out. They were near the shell-holed wall. Mac had reloaded the PIAT now so I whispered: “D’you see them Mac? Have a go.” Mac, crouched ahead of me, fired from the hip at the same instant as the Germans saw us, to be immediately enveloped in a blinding explosion as Mac crashed back heavily into me with the recoil. The recoil fortunately threw the bomb high enough to clear the wall. No Germans remained when the smoke cleared. The terrific blast must have accounted for all of this bunch. However, it swiftly became apparent that there were quite a few others. Those left decided on a similar line of attack. As we anxiously watched, a much closer German showed for a moment throwing something towards us. “Look out!” someone yelled. A stick grenade was spinning slowly to drop right on us, thrown from less than the length of a cricket pitch. We dropped frantically for the earth. There was no explosion as four, five, sic seconds sped by. “It’s wedged in the tree just above us Sir … seems to be a dud!” It was 10 feet up directly overhead, held in a branch fork by its stick handle. We had to explode it with a Sten burst for safety in case it slipped later. “B*** me that was close!” said Brown.
“More Jerries coming”, a Jock shouted. We were at a great disadvantage in firing to the right along the alley being all right handed, so with Cpl Finney I stepped out into the alley to fire. My rifle was still in my left hand when Cpl Finney yelled from behind: “Watch out Sir.” At the same moment I saw more Germans, three of them with Schmeisser automatics raised to the hip rushing the 15 yards which separated us. Everything happened in a flash of desperation. Realising I could not hope to get my rifle even part way onto the Germans and into my right hand to fire properly, I shot it as it was from my left hand into the cobbles just ahead of the three in the hope that at least it might disturb their aim. As the bullet whined off the cobbles I threw myself back to try to get trough the doorway before the Germans fired. Even as I fell, Cpl Finney with his Sten tried to beat them to it. His bullets crashed past my cheek and at the same moment a hail of Schmeisser fire swept back the other way. They had evidently withheld to close the gap, realizing our disadvantage. The fire, aimed at me, crackled fiercely past, smashing Finney’s right hand off his Sten. Several bullets passed up his aarm longways from wrist to elbow ripping his arm and his hand to shreds. He reeled back through the door, groaning and streaming blood, while in desperation I fired back as fast as I could work the bolt round the doorpost to the right. I could not get a proper look at where the enemy had got to without showing my head momentarily. I had the oppressive anticipation that my face would at any moment suffer a similar smashing to Cpl Finney’s arm. I dared not look even long enough to see if my shots had found their mark and knew with a ghastly sense of approaching climax that unless a miracle happened Finney and I had had it, for my rifle could not hipe to compete with three automatics from what I knew must be 3 or 4 yards range by not if they were still coming. My heart was hammering so fiercely I felt it would give out, at the realization that had reached the last round in my magazine. How this wild firing had intimidated the enemy I never would make out afterwards, but as I fired the last shot I glimpsed hesitation change to retreat among the Germans who had faltered 8 feet away. While still concealed I desperately fumbled to reload another clip. At that moment Brown reached my side with a Bren gun which he had grabbed and pushing it round the corner he fired several bursts which whined and crashed deafeningly off the cobbles. The Germans’ boots clattered in retreat. Cpl Finney still stood, numb with pain and ashen in the face, his Sten in his left hand and repeating wildly: “The b***s got me!” I put a tourniquet on with a web strap but despite his screwing it tight he was losing blood fast and as he was useless for further fighting, I put his arm in a sling and sent him to find his way back to the regimental aid post.
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13 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:
I noticed I see a lot of "stair stepping" on maps. It's caused by the way the map editor models the terrain between two manually set elevation levels. If you don't put in a lot of control points, you tend to get jagged hills that offer a lot of dead ground in between. The observer "|" gets dead ground at "x":
Yep. I've encountered that problem as well in my "vast valley" map. Preventing this kind of accidental/unwanted dead ground unfortunately requires quite a lot of work in the editor. This also occurs on otherwise very realistic scenario maps.
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Thanks for all the interesting input so far, guys! I can't answer all the individual posts, instead here is a quick update of the points that have been made so far, in no particular order:
- Lack of protection for infantry (the current fortifications don't offer sufficient protection, we can't fortify houses, can't move along trenchlines, fortifications give away positions earlier, etc.)
- AT fortifications (mines, at obstacles) are overprized in quickbattles (these should be cheap enough to funnel tanks into killzones; right now, the funneling costs more than the actual AT assets...)
- plausibility of force selection (tanks in CM always have infantry support)
- tanks are too aware of their surroundings/ease of tank-infantry coordination (borg-spotting, area-fire, sound "spotting")*
- tank MGs are too accurate
- map size (engagements on quickbattle maps are practically all set at point blank range)
- No threat of surprise, once you've overcome the enemy (Anti)Tank assets, you're realtively free to roam around
My initial point about the lack of close combat anti tank weapons for infantry was wrong. At close quarter, infantry is very effective against tanks with its grenades (which also represent mines, Molotov cocktails,...).
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9 hours ago, MikeyD said:Most CM tanks on most CM-scale maps are basically firing at point blank range. No need to estimate and adjust for range when the target's that close. That's why they're so accurate. With the rare maps that give you proper combat ranges the first shot is likely to go high and need to be adjusted. If you're in a duel with a hull-down opponent you're probably going to see 2-3 rounds buried into intervening terrain before you finally connect with his gun mantlet.
Who finds it easy to spot AT gun? Claiming that enemy AT guns (properly positioned at proper combat range) are too easy to spot goes against my own playing experience.
Good point about the engagement ranges we typically see in CM. I'm still on my campaign for more realistically sized quickbattle maps. Scenario maps are much better as they're based on actual maps/landscapes. But the quickbattle maps are much too dense and compartmentalized. My suspicion is that they got stuck in Normandy, while the CM titles moved on to less restrictive terrain. Many quickbattle maps don't even offer positions suitable for basic support weapons such as hMGs, as the lines of fire are simply too short, and the terrain too hilly/wavy (severely hampers the usefullness of MGs, lack of grazing opportunities). In general, I don't like what the forced point blank range does to the game (takes away from the spotting mechanism, ambush situations everywhere, no option for retreats --> implausibly high casualties, small engagement "theatres/compartments" can be controlled with ease by few assets, speculative arty barrages can be too effective if terrain features are very small, etc).
13 hours ago, IanL said:This, so this. It is one thing that holds back realism. It is a really big one. @Bil Hardenberger came up with some simple rules to help with some of this. I do like playing with them but I am not sure if it would totally solve the problem. Check it out here
That might help - see Hard Cat rules above. Not sure how possible it would be to implement them in the game itself.
Yes, the rules about limited waypoints and limits on area-fire would perhaps help a bit. But they don't really tackle the core of the problem imho.
What about the suggestion I've made: (buttoned-up) tanks may only receive new orders (including target orders) every second (=even minute) turn. I think this rule would help to make coordination between infantry and tanks a bit more difficult/brittle? Tanks would of course still react by means of the tac AI (pop smoke & reverse...). Area fire would become a bit less effective: You typically don't want to fire at a single target for 2 full minutes as this wastes ammo and makes you vulnerable, so you're more likely to use target briefly commands, which means that the rate at which tank support "develops" is slowed down a bit? Also, it would slow down the tanks' rate of advance (if the infantry happens to get pinned, how far do you want your tank advance alone/isolatedly during the next 2 minutes?). And it would make tanks a bit more vulnerable in close combat (enemy infantry approaching? You want to reverse? You can do so ... in a minute.
).
I think that tinkering with reaction intervalls is the best way to simulate a tank's lack of awareness and mitigate the player's god powers when it comes to coordination. It's the only way I see to add a bit more chaos to the game. You let unforeseen situations develop and simmer for a bit longer, so to speak, take away some power from the players who otherwise have an easy time to jump out of/break off unfavourable situaions. You add a bit more "real time" aspect. On the other hand, it might just make players overly cautious with their tanks. Maybe an even higher reaction intervall would encourage players to risk their tanks more? If the reaction intervall is 4 minutes and you're overly cautious with your tanks, you're basically wasting them. With just two minutes, by contrast, the balance between "keeping the tank alive" and "exploiting its offensive power" is still too good? I think "slowing down" tanks would also be a good way to represent the awareness problem and the communication issues betwen tanks (communication via radio also takes time...). It could even give a defender time to move an ATG into position (for various reasons, including the player's reaction intervall, this is not really possible in CM - the ATG will get knocked out before it is in position).
In quite a lot of eyewitness accounts, tank attacks seem to have been far less carefull than what we typically see in CM. It was more like "make or break". And it was not uncommon to see tanks (accidentally, due to the speed difference?) lead the infantry (in CM, it's always the other way round). But of course that might also be the case because in a CM game, you simply know that some form of ATGs will be present on the battlefield.
QuoteWe get a form of "time compression" because of the inherent ability of the player to coordinate better. [...snip...]
Understood this way, I'm perfectly fine with time compression. Basically what you're saying is that the time in between the "action" (reorg, take a breath, update status on radio, etc) is compressed. It reduces the opponent's time window to react / shift reinforcements a bit, but that's not really a big problem given the rather small scale of CM battles.
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2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
Yes, I understand, but I was not talking about area fire, but about accuracy when firing at actively spotted enemies. It looks like shooters are actively trying to miss.
And the relevance to this topic is that when tanks fire, they behave differently: They actually aim straight.
You don't see a tank fire a shell that hits 30m to the left of a target, then 30m to the right, then left again, before finally after several minutes, randomly just get lucky and score a hit. Tanks fire a couple of shots to get the range, and then they are usually bang on target.
Just because you're mentioning "shells": For the main gun, it would make sense if tanks get good results very quickly (gunsight)?
But for the tank's MGs not so much? I'm not really informed on the sights that were used for MGs on tanks (if any). Both types would also use tracer ammo to observe the fall of the shots? So I guess that both infantry and tank MGs would be "on target" with their beaten zone rather quickly*.
But the problem with infantry MGs seems to be that they never reach the point at which they are "on target", if I understand Bulletpoint correctly?
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* This also opens up another faintly related question, namely at what distance the beaten zones of MGs are "best" in terms of the effectively suppressed area. There is a reason why MGs are best used at larger distances or from enfilading/oblique positions with grazing fire. It's worth mentioning that some tripods had features to modify the beaten zone. (Search for "Tiefenfeuerautomat" on wikipedia's MG42 page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MG_42)). It's also worth mentioning that it seems as if hMGs may sometimes still have been used as they often were in WWI, indirectly from defilade positions quite far behind the frontline, a bit like artillery. I wonder if this was particularly true for dedicated "MG battalions". What about "offmap hMG" units?
Diagrams of beaten zones and various distances can be found for the Browning Machine Gun here: https://www.bevfitchett.us/browning-machineguns-m1919a6-m37/chapter-introduction.html
Recommended reading: George T. Raach, A Withering Fire. American Machine Gun Battalions in World War I (2015). It includes a chapter on the "theory of fire".
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Quote
Also keep in mind, ALL things in CM happen too quickly (more of a time compression) giving 3x fold more casualties then there should be...
To be honest I don't buy the "time compression" argument anymore. If time was compressed, then why don't units run out of ammo three times faster, why don't units reload more quickly (cover narrow arcs of fire more reliably), why don't they move three times faster (is space compressed too? If so, many things don't make any sense at all...), etc. etc. "Time compression" is just the standard go-to argument whenever the topic "excessive infantry casualties" pops up. But this is not the result of time compression. It's the result of many factors, some of which are discussed here.
QuoteYou are allowed to do what you want, anywhere, at anytime (this goes for both Armor & Inf)...ex, Armor can be too deadly at range (not enough cover for Trenches), but in turn Inf will become too deadly just by throwing a few hand grenades at armor at close range, and KO'ing within seconds.
The idea behind this thread is exactly to discuss this very question: Are infantry and tanks in a good place right now in regards to their "deadlyness" (against each other)in specific situations? Arguments can be based on both, realism and game balance.
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Sidenote: I also forgot to link the most famous of these little instructional videos, "Men against tanks".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykb6Bdb6bcI (info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Männer_gegen_Panzer)
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I thought I need to post this separatedly, as it is so important and I can't edit the initial post:
My point about the lack of AT close combat means is not valid. As it turns out, ordinary grenades are very effective in close combat against tanks in CM. 2-3 grenades will destroy the tracks and may even knock out a tank. In my quick test (US infantry in CM:FB), 3 ordinary HE grenades knocked out a Tiger somehow. I'm not quite sure how, as no hit info shows up in "grenade close combat" and the only damaged/destroyed part of the tank were the tracks. Anyway I think it's safe to conclude that weapons for anti tank close combat (mines, cocktails) are represented by ordinary grenades?
25 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said: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:
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Should area fire be restricted to contacts the tank actually has C2 information about?
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Should trenches, foxholes, and bunkers provide more protection from direct fire?
- And I will add a point of my own: Should tank MG fire be massively more accurate than infantry MG?
Thanks for the support. It's not my intention to make tanks worse because I suck at fighting them (which may still be true, I'm afraid). I'm really more concerned about how the game plays, whether what we see is "realistic", encourages players to use proper WWII tactics and/or makes for a good game. But it was to be expected that most answers would give me tactical advice.
Regarding your last point: Are you implying that tank MGs currently are more accurate than infantry MGs? It depends a lot on what type of infantry MG as light/medium/heavy infantry MGs differ a lot in regards to their accuracy and rate of fire over distance in Combat Mission. It's just that this difference is hardly ever noted except on large/open maps.
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Should area fire be restricted to contacts the tank actually has C2 information about?
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6 hours ago, MikeyD said:
I just did a test, ordered my bog standard CMRT Russian infantry to close assault a Stug III. Lo and behold, one of them tosses an RPG 43 at the tank and knock it out! Apparently RPG 43 is listed generically among 'grenades' in the weapons menu.
6 hours ago, nik mond said:Grenade attacks on tanks are very effective in this game. The grenades represent an inclusion of RPG, gammon bombs, stick bundles in the mix in which case its possible to disable a tank, or KO. Although anti personnel frags shouldn't do anything to a tank that's buttoned. It often comes down to last tank standing. But they still have to keep their distance from infantry to stay alive. Its difficult to maneuver suicidal infantry attacks on a tank but there are ways with a little distraction and luck.
I was aware that the soviet AT teams had special grenades that do not show up anywhere in the UI (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/133362-tiny-details-you-might-have-missed/. But I didn't know that all infantry units have them? If so, I have to delete that point from my list.
Hold my beer, I need to run a few tests...
3 hours ago, Ithikial_AU said:Tanks may just feel overpowered partly due to the timeframe the WW2 CM titles portray.
I'd also love to see an early war title some day!
For example, I love all the goofy stuff the Italians have in Fortress Italy. But generally speaking, I think that players can coordinate tanks and infantry too easily in CM. It's not just related to area-firing at targets the tank crew is unaware of. It's also about reacting to friendly and enemy movements. E.g. let's assume a tank's "support infantry" suddenly stops because it gets pinned down by small arms fire, does the tank automatically stop? If the tank crew can't see its friendly infantry in this very moment (because the tankers' eyes are directed towards the enemy in front), then it should probably move on! I've stumbled over quite a few instances in eyewitness accounts in which this kind of infantry-tank coordination failed quite horribly. But it's hard to recreate this in Combat Mission games. There is nothing you can really do about the player's god powers in a game. An idea would be to somehow implement different reaction intervals for tanks (e.g. 2 minutes?) and infantry (1 minute, as usual). This would also help a bit against the area-fire problem. Note that tanks would still react to threats and retreat by means of their tac AI. One could even link the reaction intervals to equipment (telephones for infantry support, radios for tank-tank-coordination) and tank status (buttoned up or not). I think such a limitation would resemble the difficulty of coordination better. Any volunteers for an experimental test battle with this rule? ("You may only give new orders to buttoned-up tanks (or delete old orders) in uneven minutes.")
1 hour ago, Bozowans said:I do agree that tanks are overpowered, but everything else is overpowered too IMO. I don't think this is an issue with tanks alone. Foxholes don't provide that much cover from even small arms fire. There is not enough fog of war in the game. [...snip...]
I think the tank issue can be solved if the game just had more mystery to it. Enemy locations and unit types need to be much more vague. You should not be able to tell that an enemy unit 1000m away is an HQ team located in that one precise action spot. You should only have a general idea that there is enemy infantry "over there" somewhere. That way, battles would be decided by throwing suppressing fire over a large area and then assaulting up close, instead of pinpointing the exact action spot the enemy is located in and then just hammering it with HE fire from tanks and artillery until everyone is dead.
I'm with you regarding fortifications not providing nearly enough protection against small arms fire (and artillery) either. Good point about sound spotting, which unfortunately is not part of the Fog of War in CM.
Interestingly, I find that playing larger and more open maps help a bit with the overall feeling of the engagements and also with tank combat. If you're used to playing mostly quickbattle maps, then they usually feature very dense terrain with short lines of sight. As a result, there are relatively few positions from which the enemy can see you and fire at you at any given time. These few positions can be controlled with relative ease. Things change when you multiply the number of potential enemy positions, as it is the case on a larger/open map. You can't deal with all positions at once, there is an overflow of potential targets and greater distances mean that spotting is less reliable. Spotting and targeting becomes more "chaotic" in general, casualties more "attritional" rather than "shock". Advancing with infantry is a question of the incoming enemy "volume of fire". In these circumstances, it's actually a bad idea to let tanks area-fire (i.e. focus their attention on one point, so to speak), as there are many possibilities offsides your tanks current angle of vision for new threats to show up. Also, thanks to greater distances (=lower lethality), you have a chance to set up support weapons even when the battle is already on, because chances are high that the enemy is still firing at some of the many other targets. Under short LOS conditions, by contrast, fire fights are decided by elimination in a matter of 2-3 minutes. Anything that "arrives late" is spotted instantly and knocked out.
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Hey Hapless! I love your videos. And I've linked your video about "Bunkers for dummies" many times in many forums.
Many of your questions are linked to each other, so let me present my thoughts summarily.
Positions become "exposed" to direct tank fire once the enemy has beaten your long range AT assets and can therefore let his armor advance far enough to get LOFs on your enfilade defensive positions. Must something have gone "wrong" for this to happen? I don't know. Sometimes you lose the long range tank combat, sometimes you win. It's also (not exclusively, of course) a matter of luck and force selection. You've bought many smaller calibre ATGs and the enemy shows up with 1 Tiger. Good luck with keeping the Tiger at bay (if you find a way please tell me
)! You've bought a single large calibre ATG? Now you are more of a threat to the Tiger, if your gun is positioned on what happens to be the right side of the map and can see the Tiger that is! Unfortunately, good ATG positions are preferred targets for speculative arty barrages, and you can't do a lot to protect the ATG. Fortifications are not reliably, and moving the ATG into position only once the shelling is over is bad as the gun loses its camouflage bonus (and also it might be too late!). And if your enemy brings 6 light tanks instead of 1 Tiger, then good luck with your single ATG.
This is also the reason why underpowered AT assets sometimes need to engage overarmored tanks. As demonstrated above, sometimes your (A)T force selection is no match for your opponent's (A)T force selection. This doesn't mean that your force selection is neccessarily bad. Just that it is bad against this or that combination, and good against other combinations. (A)T force selection is often guesswork and can have a big impact on games. From my own experience and also from watching CM AARs, I often get the impression that (anti)tank duels are decided one way or the other at some point. There is hardly ever a stand-off that lasts until the end of the game - at some point the attacker will need to attack and both players have to show their cards. This decision then quickly shifts the balance of the game. The idea for this thread here is also to make games last and stay interesting beyond this point. If the attacker is out-armored by the defender, then it's obviously game over. But a defender could very reasonably keep kicking from his prepared defensive positions, try to seperate the tanks from the infantry. Under the current conditions, I think this is not possible.
PS: Forgot to add the american "Crack that tank" video: https://youtu.be/EngDMNRoqvE
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I think our ideas of the overall capabilities of tanks differ a bit. To get us on the same page, I'd want to emphasize again that It's about WWII tanks, not Cold War era or even more modern tanks.
Of course tanks were equipped with sights. But the more you zoom in, the more you lose in terms of peripheral vision. If you zoom in, you only see a tiny part of the world outside. Apart from the sights, your only other option in a buttoned-up tank are vision blocks/slits - these were usually fired upon by infantry. So I stand by the point that buttoned up tanks were pretty blind for their more immediate surroundings, which is exactly where it gets dangerous (can't lower your weapons!). As far as we know, CM features an indepth system to simulate the vision of individual crew members, but then fails to capitalize on this awesome feature by allowing players to let their tank (area) fire at targets that the tank crew has not spotted.
Of course attacking a tank in close combat is a risky, suicidal thing. If I had god powers and could change CM in any way I wanted, no matter how diffult, I'd give tanks a psychological impact (+X to suppression meter if within X m of enemy tank). Objectively, we'd need to present figures how often these assaults occured, and in what circumstances. I'm not sure whether either of us has the expertise or the time for that (if such statistics even exist...). I could only search for anecdotal ""evidence"" in the eyewitness accounts/memoirs I own, and may add some to this thread when I feel like it and find the time. But I can imagine that engaging enemy infantry in close combat without friendly infantry support was not a very happy situation for tankers either, so retreating might have been a more comfortable solution (in which case no assaults are neccesary in the first place...). By shaped charge projectors you mean bazookas, panzerschrecks, panzerfausts, AT rifle grenades?
It depends, but I also think that tanks are probably a bit overused in CM. I guess it's the "tabletop" effect: players just want to have a little bit of everything in their little armies. A well "rounded" force, so to speak. This does not always seem very plausible from a realism point of view but is quite understandable. But full tank platoons/troops in support of an attack are not that unreasonable anymore. StuGs in particular seem to have been attached on infantry even in individual vehicles quite commonly.
I don't see how the point about Paks being unable to hit tanks is relevant to the topic.
PS: Just for your entertainment, here are two WWI clips on anti tank close combat. I don't post them as proof. I rather believe that their existence testifies the tanks' psychological effect on infantry.
https://youtu.be/9iL_6IyH9gs (canadian/Walt Disney)
https://youtu.be/uonceDBABAQ (german)
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When I was thinking about house rules for quickbattle-setups, I also noticed how many advantages the CM engine seems to give to tanks in the WWII setting, particularly in quickbattles. Let's discuss!
Here are the points why I think tanks are overly strong in CM:
- broken fortifications (in reality, there was not much a tank could do against infantry in a foxhole/trench, other than trying to "burry" it by spinning around over the foxhole or throwing grenades from hatches; in CM, you can just lob a few shells at the infantry, job done)
- totally overpriced tank obstacles and AT mines, no AT ditches
- borg-spotting/area-fire which helps tanks a lot (the main weakness of tanks was their limited vision; this weakness is inexistent because players can let their tanks area fire at targets the crew has not spotted)
- almost total lack of anti-tank close combat means (in most formations, AT grenades come in ridiculously low numbers; there are neither Molotov cocktails nor mines to be carried on the men - satchel charges are only available to dedicated engineer units).
- lack of a "reinforcement" mechanic in quickbattles, so that a player can manoeuver freely with his tanks once he is certain that he has defeated the opponents (anti)tank assets. There is no risk of new, dangerous units showing up.
- Also, I'd sometimes wish that "underpowered" AT assets would actively attempt to stop "overarmored" tanks by actively targeting their tracks. I prefer an immobilised tank over a tank which has been hit by a deflecting shell (with a tiny or inexistent chance of penetration).
In combination, the following points lead to a loss of immersion/realism and also to a loss of viable tactics. For example, when advancing in combination with tanks, attacking infantry could still be engaged by the defending infantry, because the defenders would have more protection from their fortifications and the tanks would still have troubles to identify targets. So the defenders could try to fend off the tanks' infantry support (note that this usually only works on realistically large maps on which the attacker needs to advance in the open for some distance). If advancing without infantry, tanks could only "pass through" defending infantry, but not defeat it all alone as it is the case right now.
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Uh, I've heard the word Primosole!
Slightly off topic, but if you want more info about the context, take a look at my scenario project: http://forums.lnlpublishing.com/threads/the-battle-for-catania-primosole-bridge-sicily-july-1943.5326/#post-30142 (post with pictures of the actual bridge shortly after the battles)
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Short note on the adjust tool: I had to discover that it unfortunately does affect the overall slope as the editor recalculates all heights after every "height input".
So the way to do it is still very tedious: I first "lock in" the initial (calculated by the editor) transitions (all points where one height is adjacent to a different height). And then I fill in the rest in between them.
I'm a bit busy right now, I will come back to this project as soon as possible.
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On 2/15/2019 at 6:26 AM, Mudhugger said:
Twelve is correct in an Armored Panzergrenadier Battalion.
Remember, the other three Panzergrenadier Battalions in a Panzer Division are motorized, and they don't have Stummels.
I think the Armored Recon Battalion in a Panzer Division had thirteen Stummels, but CMRT gives them six. I don't have CMFB, so I can't comment on how the TOE shows there. If you are seeing too many Stummels maybe play with the foot slogging PzGrenadiers more.
I think this is correct. But don't overestimate the number of PG battalions that were actually armored ("gepanzert"). Most were just motorized, as far as I know.
Do these armored PG btns have a rarity rating?
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From my understanding, Panzergrenadiere are not called "Panzer" (armored/tank) because they themselves were armored (which wasn't the case very often), but rather because they were the infantry that formed part of the armored divisions (Panzer-Divisionen), who themselves were a mix of tank regiments (Panzer-Regimenter) and infantry regiments (Panzer-Grenadier-Regimenter). Accordingly, in the early stages of the war, the infantry in armored divisions were just called "Schützen Regimenter" (rifleman/fusilier regiments) and had the same corps colour as the tankers (i.e. pink). Later on they were re-named into "Panzergrenadiere" and received their own special corps colour (green).
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1 hour ago, RockinHarry said:
the "Sturm-Artillery" concept actually was a german development from WW1. When late in that war germans attempted moving forward small guns (77mm) with advancing troops, likely as part of the "Sturmtruppen" (assault detachment) concept. These were to support vs. enemy MG positions and maybe some hard targets, not to be dealt with effectively with point fire Arty and such. Pre WW2 that concept was introduced again, but the "assault gun" then made mobile by putting it on an available chassis (Pz-III). Again these were to support infantry formations, thus the introduction of beeing part of regular infantry divisions. There were never enough of them to fill out that role and when eastern front tank threats became serious they had to take AT roles additionally.
Well yes, it seems as if many nations had roughly a similar idea. Assault artillery were pretty much the tanks of infantry formations and were often distributed in very small junks - even down to single vehicles! - among individual infantry units. Proper tanks (or the British cruiser tanks), by contrast, were preferably used in massed armored formations as an exploitation force. So it's also an operational difference. Understandably, this aspect is not really present in the tactical engagements portrayed by Combat Mission games.
What I wonder is why it was still deemed neccessary to keep at least some of the weird self propelled howitzers. For example: As a reason for the design of the german Sturmhaubitze (assault howitzer), one can often read that the new, long-barreled StuG-designs could no longer fill their former infantry support role as well as the early, howitzer designs had. So what is it exactly that makes a vehicle better suited for infantry support? Does this just refer to the stronger punch of the howitzer against defensive positions? Was the difference between the 75mm gun and the 105mm howitzer really as big to warrant a separate vehicle?
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I sometimes ask myself how often these kinds of close quarter ambush positions were really used. To me, they seem a bit suicidal. True, you might knock out a few enemies, but your chance to get away after that (or to get away with a crew-served weapon) were probably rather slim? I would not volunteer to man an ATG that was supposed to fire at tanks at close quarter.
Setting up troops in highly "effective" but suicidal positions is something that can't really be prevented in CM. Pixeltruppen don't have a high degree of tactical awareness and no will of their own except when panicking.
That's not to say that it never happened in reality. Fanatic or naive units sometimes did set up in suicidal positions. Some of them were not even "effective", as demonstrated by an example quoted and translated from Joseph Klein's book "Fallschirmjäger", from the chapter on the third battle of Monte Cassino:
QuoteDuring the night, a battalion of parachute troops showed up. They had been sent from the 1st parachute division to reinforce our position and were put under our command. The battalion leader was a "Major" who told us that he been hunting partisans in Yuoslavia until then and that his soldiers had no real combat experience. As he introduced himself to me, I noticed that he disdained being under my (a mere "Fahnenjunker-Feldwebel's") command, even though I had been recommended to him as a very experienced company commander.
We didn't want him and his troops (three full companies) anywhere close to us, so we gave him orders to set up in echelons in the trenches and bunkers to our rear right flank.
During our night patrol around our farmhouse [they had taken up position at a fortified farmhouse at that time], he tried to convince us to set up one of his heavy MGs in the barn right in front of our farmhouse. We explained to him that this was a bad idea as the MG would have no option to retreat and would be in full view of enemy observation. It would be cannon fodder. Enemy tanks would knock it out before it could get off even a single shot. The major listened to our sound arguments but seemed unimpressed. As he was of higher rank, we could do nothing more to dissuade him of his plan. We felt sorry for those poor devils who had to carry out this order. They were doomed men.
Because of their inexperience, it wouldn't take long until the enemy would take note of their position. They would leave their cover and run back and forth. Also, their commander and food runners/deliverers would pay them regular visits. They relied on nothing but a 500 meters distance, which they hoped would keep them concealed from the enemy. We knew very well that the Tommies had already noticed the position and that they would not take any measures against it until they launched their actual attack.
Ourselves, we stayed in our cover throughout the days. I don't think that the Tommies had any idea that we were there.
[...]
At 7 in the evening, when we were already thinking about our meals, all of a sudden enemy artillery started firing at our position and we heard the noise of tanks, coming from the depression/dead ground in front of our position. Then they appeared on the ridge, in echelons with ca. 10 meters in between them. It must have been about 25 Shermans that were coming at us in a line on a broad front. Behind them, partly bunched up, partly taking cover behind the tanks, partly fully in the open (as if they had been on parade grounds!), came their infantry support.
The heavy MG in the barn in front of our position started to bark but was immediately silenced by the bang of a tank gun. Except for the artillery shells, who were starting to fall behind our position as the enemy shifted the barrage forward, everything was silent.
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3 hours ago, RockinHarry said:
think WW2 fuzes generally were optimized enough to reliably (more or less) explode in most common situations. Ground condition is always a matter of concern (mud, deep snow, soft ground generally).
Yes, I spent a bit more time on internet research and, for example, found this info on one of the more common german fuzes, which would also trigger when the shell just grazed: http://michaelhiske.de/Allierte/UK/Handbook/Pamphlet12/12_003.htm
So it seems that close support (i.e. well armored, directly firing) low velocity assets* posess only few advantages:
- higher explosive power - this was their main advantage; they were required to be capable to collapse a house with only a few shots; this can also be handy in CM games against enemy positions behind houses...; in order to achieve the same explosive power with a long-barreled gun, you'd need to bring a huge calibre, which would not fit into any tower or hull...
- firing above the heads of friendly infantry (that's a rather questionable advantage...)
- better at targeting positions on reverse slopes (but again, these assault howitzers were supposed to fire directly...)
Disadvantages:
- less accurate/harder to aim (they would typically "bracket" their target)
- smaller armor penetration power (but they often had a stock of hollow charge rounds; also the high HE power of HE howitzer shells would often manage to disable enemy tanks in some way)
- slower reloading (in some cases, the cartridge and the shell were separate)
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* How common these were is another topic. I'm refering to self propelled howitzers like the german early (short barreled) StuGs (7.5cm howitzer), later on the StuHs (10.5cm howitzer), the Sturmpanzer (15cm howitzer). The Russian SU-122 (12.2cm howitzer), SU-152 (15.2cm howitzer). As an "infantry tank", the early British Churchills (I, II) also came with a 76mm howitzer. The US had their M8 motor howitzer carriage (7.5cm howitzer) and a 10.5cm howitzer vairant for the Sherman.
Generally speaking, the history of "assault artillery" (german "Sturmartillerie", slightly similar to the British "infantry tank" concept?) is a rather confusing topic.
- I understand that these units were more often found as part of infantry formations than as part of tank formations, although by no means exclusively. (Some of the later/long-barreled StuGs were just used like tanks in tank formations; The US. assault howitzers were assigned to tank regiments). They were also organised as artillery, not as tank formations (german StuGs in batteries and battalions)
- They were supposed to support infantry, primarily in the attack. They would target MG nests, ATGs, artillery positions and other positions that prevented the infantry's advance, especially if these targets were for some reason out of the friendly artillery's reach. The StuH proved to be very effective at fighting these positions up to a range of ca. 3.500m. Thanks to their high explosive power, they were particularly usefull against strong enemy positions and/or buildings.
- Unlike "proper" self-propelled artillery, assault howitzers were used for direct firing and therefore had to operate close to or at the front line (--> heavy armor required).
- They were also expected to fill the AT role if needed. While most early designs' howitzers/guns were quite capable of dealing with any enemy tank in the early stages of the war, the armor race meant that assault howitzers quickly fell behind. Some designs (StuGs) were updated accordingly with high velocity guns at the cost of the howitzer's higher explosive power. I aslo suppose that their AT role was more pronounced in the attack - in the defense, the infantry would preferably rely on its ATGs?
- Unlike tanks, assault howitzers were not supposed to carry out an attack on their own. So I suppose they were used in the way that most CM players are already using tanks right now. This also meant that the side armor was not such a big concern for assault howitzers as it was for tanks.
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Here's one more thing I keep asking myself. Again, I have no real info on it except for what the internet tells me. I'm just wondering: Did HE shells fired by high velocity guns explode as reliably as those fired by low velocity guns? The reason I'm asking is that one could assume that the flat angle does not trigger the impact fuze as reliably? I mean the tank's muzzle is quite high up (-->tower), which helps to increase the impact angle? But at longer ranges (angle becomes smaller) or if the target is at the same height as the muzzle, there might have been problems, especially if the ground was soft...? I have no clue at what angles those impact fuzes stopped working...? This would perhaps be an important aspect for the differentiation between high velocity and low velocity assets (e.g. assault howitzers) in the game?
Interesting link on the different explosive charges: https://www.quora.com/Could-WW2-anti-tank-guns-fire-HE-shells-like-normal-guns-could-or-were-they-less-effective-for-firing-this-type-of-shells
Types of fuzes, impact angles: http://www.poeland.com/tanks/artillery/fuzes.html // dispersion pattern: http://www.poeland.com/tanks/artillery/dispersion.html
PS: It seems that some HE shells during WWII were already equipped with more sophisticated fuzes that were also triggered if the shell just grazed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_fuze --> "double-acting fuze"). I wonder how common these more sophisticated fuses were.
). 
)! You've bought a single large calibre ATG? Now you are more of a threat to the Tiger, if your gun is positioned on what happens to be the right side of the map and can see the Tiger that is! Unfortunately, good ATG positions are preferred targets for speculative arty barrages, and you can't do a lot to protect the ATG. Fortifications are not reliably, and moving the ATG into position only once the shelling is over is bad as the gun loses its camouflage bonus (and also it might be too late!). And if your enemy brings 6 light tanks instead of 1 Tiger, then good luck with your single ATG.
CM WWII: Are tanks "overpowered"?
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted
Oh I didn't know that! Thanks for clearing that up.
I don't think that it's technically hard to follow the rules. There is no need to write down anything. It shouldn't come down to role-playing, the intention is just to increase the difficulty of coordination between troops and the effects when coordination goes wrong. Players would just need to understand that they may only give orders on every turn that falls on minute 5/10/15 etc. Accordingly, they need to set more waypoints.
Being "locked" into attacking a village for 5 minutes doesn't sound bad to my ears at all. 5 minutes is not a lot of time, really. Transmitting orders or catching a breath/reorging the squads would probably take at least 5 minutes. Even on a platoon leaders own initiative, instructing his squads about his ad hoc plan would take more time than 5 minutes. I think a 5 minutes delay (at maximum, it can be shorter depending on when a new idea comes to the leader's mind during the turn) is more realistic than the 1 minute twitch reaction. And again, player borg spotting is a real issue. You can make leaders react to enemy positions that should be unknown to them, if it wasn't for the player's god view.
Now, as to whether there are situations in which the players need to interfere in shorter intervalls in order to keep things plausible/relaistic and compensate for "deficiencies" of the tac AI? Probably yes. The handheld-AT-ambush situation is an example that warrants an exception to the rule. But this is the only important situation that comes to my mind where quicker reaction is needed and plausible.
Well, but if the "Hard Cat" rules (which are much more complex) can be observed by gentlemen players, then the 5 minutes rule should be easy!
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The idea is that 5 minutes turns should be a slight remedy against the "borg spotting" problem, i.e. players being able to let units react extremely fast to things the units cannot be aware of. This includes both movements and positions of enemy as well as friendly units. It gives chaos more time to develop before the hand of the player can intervene and re-arrange. As a side-effect, it also makes area-targeting a bit more risky (the longest "target briefly" command is 1.5 minutes, if I remember correctly?).