Codreanu

Wow, insane battle, 2 whole companies rendered combat ineffective and the third I just stopped advancing because I had no tank support left and would have had to charge across open ground into emplaced enemy guns. Having to use an almost entirely infantry force with no artillery support minus two batteries of mortars against heavily entrenched Germans with machine gun nests and a whole heap of artillery is really something else.

As much as I like the fact that troops are much more likely to stay in cover rather than route into the open, sometimes it really does border on ridiculousness. Infantry platoon with attached recon squad move down the rail line towards the spotted mortar position. The enemy are almost impossible to hit with nothing but their heads peaking up over the embankment but an MG is providing a bit of suppressive fire. heRecon squad frags their position while a rifle squad provides covering fire, their throw is terrible and lands probably 10m behind the foxholes.They pay dearly for their mistake, one is shot and a minute later one of the German ammo bearers pops up and hoses the medic before he's forced back into hiding under a hail of fire.Enough is enough, with an "URAAAA!", the recon team storms over the embankment and assaults the German mortar position, the battle is short but violent with the last of their PPSH ammo unloaded point blank into the defenders. Another squad of infantry goes over the top and frags and fires into the foxholes of the mortar section commander and his staff, they're all killed in their foxholes except one who tried to run and didn't make it more than a couple of steps. Finally, the mortars are silenced.

I'm pretty surprised mine plows weren't added for Soviet tanks at the very least, a way to clear a minefield seems like it'd be incredibly important in the opening stages of the war. FM 100-2-3 says they were issued 1 per company to 1 per platoon depending on the type of plow so it's not like they were rare.

3/167th Guards Rifle Regiment moves through the town of Osintorf. Enemy small arms fire has been pretty ineffective but they must have a whole battery of mortars somewhere on the map, one platoon has been chewed up pretty well and some more scattered casualties throughout the company, with 9th Company's commander even catching a bit of shrapnel. So far the Hammer's Flank campaign feels like I'm just bashing my head against a wall until I manage to break through the German lines, casualties be damned.

It seems like his blog has been mentioned a few times in the past. I have absolutely zero experience in the defense sector or handling classified documents but I feel like most people with that level of experience wouldn't feel the need to bring it up whenever possible, or at least when they make outlandish claims would have some sort of related declassified document they could share. After reading his blog I question whether Rockwell would have even let him past security at the front door.

Oh wow, reading this I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry.

And now I see that there is a quick fix for that in your Mediafire folder, but at least now I know how to edit sound files in Audacity

Amazing pack, I decided to totally delete my old messy mod folder and replace it with yours I liked it so much, with some minor personal tweaks. "russian chatter 39.wav" through "russian chatter 49.wav" and "russian move quick 21.wav" through "russian move quick 50.wav" in "Subdued Red Army voices" seem to be bugged though, with the speed of the files being way higher than they should be making the soldiers sound like they've inhaled helium. There might be more, I haven't gone through all of them but those are the ones I noticed.

I haven't ever heard of the base model of M1 having anything less than 650mm RHA equivalent protection against shaped charges. Maybe it could penetrate the XM1 prototype, but the M1? No chance in hell.

A nice addition imho would be the addition of more Central Asian and Turkic looking faces, at least to games with the USSR if not Russia as well. The Soviet army may have been one of the most ethnically diverse armies in the world but all of the faces in game look very Slavic.

Trick question, he misses with every single rocket.

I tried it up to 8k and VRAM usage didn't budge a bit compared to regular but my FPS didn't change at all either so I'm guessing it just does nothing. I think the unfortunate truth is nothing is going to change how the game runs until there is some serious optimization work done. 10% CPU usage and 20% GPU usage on a huge map with a full battalion of units and can still only manage 20 or so FPS with improved models, more like 15 FPS with it set to best.

I don't think units on Hunt will stop unless they see the enemy or get some sort of visual or sound contact, and I'm pretty sure gunfire doesn't give you sound contacts at all which is stupid. Most of the time you're better off with doing 30 or 60 meters on Quick, pausing for 10 or 15 seconds, and continuing with another 30 or 60 meters on Quick. If you're trying to advance you're really better off doing it like that with bounding movements so if one of your units is taking fire there is another stationary unit ready to return fire instantly.

Not usually the biggest fan of the early Panzerfausts, but at point blank it's hard to miss with them.

Would love to see a Swedish module some day with the BILL and Strv 103. The Swedes had so much cool Cold War kit.

Best mission of the campaign IMHO, so satisfying to use all of that firepower to smash your way through the enemy defenses. The enemy AI felt very realistic too, apply enough pressure and they're often smart enough to surrender rather than die in place, I think I ended it with 40 or 50 enemies captured by the end. So many times I lit up an enemy contact in a building only to realize at the end of the turn they were trying to surrender, oops!

Now if we could only get working MDSh smoke canisters on the model 1945.

Funnily enough the SU-76M does have two smoke shells even though the T-34/76s do not. I guess it could be a doctrinal thing where only SPGs were supplied with smoke shells but tanks weren't, but there's no actual reason why a T-34/76 would not be able to fire a smoke shell.

I suppose the best way would be to set up a very long range map and have one tank shoot at another with infantry around it, the rounds that miss should cause splash damage to the surrounding infantry. Virtually every tank in the WW2 games is firing APHE unless it's British so a Sherman, Panzer IV, T-34, Panther, etc all should work.

I was amazed how good the Valentines were as well, great spotting and the 6-pdr had laser beam accuracy and good HE damage. Personally I hate all the vehicles with the 152mm, so many times I've had them fire into the dirt and vaporize half a squad of friendly troops.

Mission 7 is a lot more straightforward but even more brutal. The mission designer really did an excellent job of his placement of the Volkssturm teams, using reverse slopes and hedges and the buildings to ambush your men at almost point blank range. Even though they're very inexperienced troops, at that sort of range they can really light your guys up with those MP 3008s and Volkssturmgewehrs. Many units break after some sustained fire but others seem to be fanatics who will fight to the very last. Most engagements usually end with one or two of my men being shot before a hailstorm of PPSHes unload on the enemy.

I only managed a draw, so that's pretty good I think, mission 6 was really frustrating with only 3 tanks that have any hope of penetrating the enemy tanks from the front, I ended up losing 7 tanks before cease firing because I just didn't want to deal with playing it anymore lol. One of the Panthers knocked out an entire platoon of Shermans in one turn and the other took 8 or 9 85mm AP shells to the mantlet before sniping the offending T-34.

That was a pretty interesting read, thanks! I'm impressed that it's a roll per soldier and not per unit, really adds in a lot of potential variety to your replacements.

I gotta say, the skin on the captured Panther is just incredible.

Anything with commander's thermals maybe? I'd imagine they'd be better able to pick up stuff at long range if they were buttoned up. Barring that I always keep commander's heads out unless infantry are taking pop shots at them. Besides that I'm not even sure if vehicles even have different values for spotting when they're buttoned up. Can a buttoned up Sherman commander actually find a target faster than a buttoned up T-34, or really any combination of vehicle if we're disregarding ones with thermals? What about gunner's sights with different magnifications and fields of view?