DerKommissar

Just realized my picture of Model was a broken link.

Ironically enough, I liked the Warhammer Fantasy mod for Medieval 2 more than the official standalone title. There's games like Arma 3 and Men of War, that I never play vanilla. Bethesda games often feel incomplete without mods. All the while, I haven't ever modded CM. Arma, old Total War, Men of War and Elder Scrolls are franchises that are built from the ground up for modularity. New games still carry over the old scripting systems, that the community, and devs, are familiar with. Current CM engines are quite unique, and fairly monolithic -- from what I understand. The big question is how feasible it is to start from scratch on a script-based system. Build their niche game on a completely new and foreign foundation?

Awesome to see you guys constantly improving, can't wait for the preorder.

I hope this means the Siege of Budapest is featured in the module. Fingers crossed for Hungarian or Romanian units.

I'm guessing by "discounted 100$" you mean one of the bigger bundles. It's some of the best value on the market. - There's no game on the market that models as many units or equipment, with as much fidelity as CM2. All infantry are highly detailed, and all vehicles have interiors (with realistic damage modelling). Every unit is well researched, and reflects a plethora of soft factors. All weapons are faithfully available, with their appropriate ammo types and quantities. - There is no shortage of campaigns, and scenarios. Each game comes with a couple of full campaigns, and each module features a few full campaigns, on top. So, with a bundle, you should have 5 or so, full campaigns. There's also dozens of standalone scenarios coupled with a Quick Battle Generator (build your own force). - There is a huge database of community campaigns and scenarios for every title, if that's not enough. 100% completion is pretty much impossible. There's also multiplayer, if you're into that. - The devs are incredibly dedicated to maintaining CM2 games. Each title is updated to the latest engine version, with the tragic exception of CM:Afghanistan. They even remade the first one: Shock Force 2. Last module was released in December, and another is currently on the way. The devs post status updates on this forum, when they can. - The games are fairly accessible, compared to most of its competitors. Just place waypoints, and your troops will do the rest. You can also manage inventories, place troops in different rooms/levels of a building, instruct tanks to assume defilade positions and direct artillery. Easy to learn -- difficult to master. I started collecting these games, while I was still in university. At first, the price tag was daunting. I started out with the Black Sea base game. Once I got into it, I realized that it's more bang for your buck than most games on the market. With today's 80$ games, pre-order dlc and season passes, that's even more true.

Couldn't have said it better, myself. The L7 was designed to take on T-55s, T-62s, and maybe early/export T-72s. Any 3-rd generation MBT, should shrug it off (provided its not flanked). The MGS was simply not designed to engage modern tanks. It was fashionable to ignore conventional peer-opponent requirements, at the time.

ATGMs are filling the anti-personnel gap that recoil-less rifles and field guns left, when they fell out of vogue. Only makes sense to use these big boom missiles to counter infantry in hard cover. They're not recon vehicles, that's for sure. Probably would do well to have a recon team in contact with them, as if they were old school batteries. I've seen many Bradleys spot an AFV, launch a TOW, and then get hit by a supersonic shell. The result is a burning Bradley, a crater and a safe AFV. This makes it doubly important to obscure your launcher in foliage.

I think the best way to deploy them is far to the rear, behind hills. Treat them like direct-fire AT guns, don't bunch them up, deploy them with good LOS but try to conceal them. I wouldn't use them in maneuver, I doubt they can fire on the move. Range is your best friend -- try to keep the T's and BMP's, at arm's length. If the maps were bigger, you'd have more opportunity to flex that advantage. You can also use them as precision bunker-busters, which I found useful in CM:SF2.

Oh, cool. These things can be used to scan for AFVs, from defilade? I just thought they were dedicated artillery observer vehicles, and used them as such. Handy little things to keep, behind the line of skirmish.

Thanks for the update. I've been playing a lot of RT quick battles, recently. Holding out hope for more QB maps, especially Large and Huge ones. Keep up the good work! Special project? Must be CM3: Fulda Gap -- with a dynamic campaign, multi-threaded 64-bit engine and aircraft models! xD

I find ASSAULT is a good choice for advancing into hostile territory. It rarely tires out the troops, because they can take a breather between bounds. It's faster than MOVE, and safer than QUICK. My problem with HUNT: my troops will often keep HUNTing, even after 7.92mm bullets zipped past their heads. It takes a second or so for them to drop, presenting tall bunched up targets for enemy ambushers. Does anyone else experience this, is this normal? I don't understand why SLOW is so damn exhausting. I often need to wait a couple of minutes for sappers to rest, before they can crawl another 10 meters.

I've recently purchased Island of Fire and began reading it. I'm enjoying it a lot: lots of pictures, first-hand accounts and maps. I read a story where an officer was directing fire for an sIG33b slipped and fell -- at the exact time the self-propelled infantry gun was turning! Never considered how dangerous of a workplace Stalingrad really was. The other head scratching moment was how the Red Baron's cousin, Ulf von Richthofen, convinced Hitler to send a bunch of pioneer battalions, instead of the infantry divisions Paulus needed. Someone must have realized that was a recipe for disaster.

Not a huge fan of Saving Private Ryan -- but a huge fan of Deer Hunter. IDK if I'd call Gone with the Wind a war movie. This applies to a few of these... Just because it's set at the same time as an armed conflict, doesn't make it a war movie? I mean, if they're going this way -- where's Barry Lyndon? Where's FMJ? Apocalypse Now should be up there, for sure. Paths of Glory wasn't nominated for anything, AFIAK. Though, it is a personal favourite. RIP Kirk Douglas. This being said, I don't want to give the guy too much grief -- I'm horrible at making "best of" lists, myself. Yep, and the miniseries is AMAZING. I've never seen the movie, is it any different than the miniseries?

The level of realism would depend on the type of grenade used, and the type of damage inflicted. A powerful explosion beneath a tank can cause catastrophic damage to both tank & crew. Think of a big IED that explodes with great force, and breaks the commander's neck. Tracks gone, systems damaged, crew bails -- tank knocked out.

As with any design decision, there are a plethora of variables that factored into the 90 degree sponson armour: a. The M4 was an improvement over the M3 -- which was the first Medium that the US produced in large numbers. It was relatively expedient to switch the production lines from the M3 to the M4. The M3 was built as a tall tank, with a massive drive shaft running through the bottom of the hull. One detriment was that the M4 was narrow, tall and had the aging bogie suspension. b. The M4 had a 3-man turret. Which means a bigger turret ring and more hull space used than a T-34/76. The US doctrine was big on ammo capacity on their tanks. With the driver & bow gunner at the front, and the drive shaft below -- where else are you going to store the ammo but the sponsons? c. The irrelevance of sloped side armour. Keep in mind, that only the top half of the T-34 side armour is sloped. If an enemy is attacking from the side, all they have to do is take out the track. A mobility kills turns a tank into a pillbox, easy pickings for infantry, artillery, aircraft and other tanks. This is how the Germans killed T-34s in '41. Sloped side armour is an exception, rather then the rule. It offers the disadvantages of limiting the turret ring diameter, internal volume and adds weight, for a practically irrelevant advantage. The Soviets ditched the idea, as soon as they could -- with the T-44. As did, the French -- with their 1-man and 2-man turreted tanks/cavalry vehicles. It just doesn't make sense for a vehicle with a 3-man turret. Look at the KV and IS -- they don't have it, either. Note: 22 is the front propeller shaft and 20 is the turret basket.

I'd like to see a North Africa module for Fortress Italy. Most of the factions AND equipment are already there. I would like for less families, and more modules for existing families. Giving each game more stuff to play with. Not sure how this would look on the software side. From what I understand, maintaining a large number of families is a bottleneck. Hopefully, CM3 will be one family, one love. Here, here. Growing up, I was taught that Monty rescued the Allied situation in North Africa. Wavell and Auchinleck were seen as tired, dusty, and obsolete generals, that had let the situation deteriorate to a fiasco. Yet, it seems that they sowed the seeds for victory at El Alamein. Now, I hold Wavell in high esteem. After a bit of reading on Market Garden, I do question Montgomery's decision making. All this being said, all these great generals and marshals (including Zhukov) were just men. During the war, propaganda made them seem as titans -- after the war, as legends. In reality, they sometimes made uninformed decisions. Often, got involved in sticky politics. Right place, right time. Wrong place, wrong time. Reality is very complex, and it's hard to attribute "good" or "bad" without a specific context. My favourite US general of WW2 happens to be George Marshall. I don't think he won a single battle.

It was a fairly opportune time. Indeed, they were in the middle of upgrading. New tank units had not been giving any significant spare parts, training or even equipment (radios, in particular). Such was the preparedness of these forces -- that T-34s were not yet issued to anyone. Pilots had not yet had the flight time to fly their planes. The decision to invade was still made half a year prior. It took some time to get the pieces in place. With proper intelligence and efficient planning, could they have done it sooner? Possibly.

For real. I play SD 2 from time to time. I play on less than half speed and pause to issue complex orders. I don't think it does justice to infantry combat, but it's an improvement over the previous game. I'd definitely pick a Graviteam game over SD2, for operational fun. There's still a lot of micromanagement that goes into SD2, even if they are adding group orders.

I'm a big fan of the Stummel. It's an infantry gun in a half-track. I mostly use them in two ways: 1. Close support for infantry platoons. The opened top nature works great when supporting infantry assaults. It's very quick at establishing fire superiority in an infantry firefight. Especially in an urban setting where a Yank with a Browning would be able to hold of a panzergrenadier platoon. 2. Overwatch. I've seen it work well, when placed slightly behind a hill top. While my panzers advance, any sort of movement is quickly detected and an HE placed on target. Again, an advantage of the open-topped nature. The Stummel isn't an IFV, and it shouldn't be treated any tougher than an ordinary halftrack.

I think Stalin gets too much praise, these days. He was a better train-thief than strategists. You only have to look at his service record in the Russian Civil War to see nothing but failures -- all of which he blamed on battle-tested veterans of WW1. Which brings me to why the Soviet Union was not prepared for WW2: a. The Purges. He murdered a great deal of battle-tested veterans of WW1 in junior and senior rank. Their experience wouldn't only have been invaluable in WW2, but also a political, and possibly personal, slight to Stalin. b. The ignorance of intelligence on Barbarossa. Richard Sorge famously reported that Germany had plans for an invasion, and Japan did not. The most fit troops of the Red Army were on the other side of the continent, when Barbarossa commenced. c. Overproduction. Stalin's Plan was obsessed with quantities. The huge number of BT-7s and T-26s at the start of Barbarossa are but one symptom of this. To him, it was better to produce more obsolete units, than less current units. Barbarossa was launched precisely when the Red Army, in the west, was at its weakest. Their losses in Finland were only further proof. The OKH saw Barbarossa as a sure bet -- otherwise, they wouldn't have thrown themselves off the proverbial cliff. This being said, the Red Army was ready for war with Japan. The Japanese border probing only yielded defeats, and Japan did not throw themselves off of that proverbial cliff. They decided to go to Hawaii for that one. The swiftness of the latter Manchurian campaign is only further proof of this.

I feel your pain. Most open areas in scenarios are carefully set-up kill zones. Here's some advice, from my experience: a. Use smoke. Pop it, or call it in. Smoke will obstruct your ambushers' line of sight and buy you time to advance. b. Use recon teams. It's easy to spot a task force, harder to spot a couple of guys in the grass. Use them as a litmus test for the enemy's firing arcs. Try to cover them with overwatching units (heavy weapons, IFVs, etc.). In addition, have them leap frog -- give one team some time to observe and the other to advance a short distance. c. Recon by fire! Turn the board around and pretend to be your opponent -- where would you place your sneaky crew served weapons? Using area fire from your heavy hitters will cause OPFOR to return fire. Once they do, they are very easy to spot. This worked great for me in the Canadian campaign, in conjunction with recon teams. The last piece of advice is to avoid obvious routes to your objective. Try to take the back streets -- they're surprisingly safer.

Thanks for sharing this. Despite it smelling of White Paper, the stats are perplexing. I'm going to take them with a pinch of salt, because maybe they reflect specific circumstances -- rather than the general rule. Maybe the rules of engagement preferred artillery harassment and static armour, rather than combined arms incursions. I suppose this report implies that artillery is still the god of war. At least, in a theatre with very little CAS. I was shocked by the limited percentage of AFVs lost to ATGMs. Less shocked by the limited IFV/Tank kill percentage. I recently heard that Rommel believed that artillery should engage tanks, instead of other tanks. Maybe he had a point. Still puzzled by the ineffectiveness of ATGMs.

Another advantage of tank riding is the increase of the number of mk I eyeballs on an AFV. Helpful in detecting ambushes, which became more common with HEAT launchers and defensive posture.

Cool video, is that variant equipped with independent thermal imager for TC? I've heard that they had early ones on the UK versions? The MGS concept just doesn't want to die.