FlemFire

A lot of the German tanks get analyzed in the context of an already lost war where resources/stockpiles are drying up and the German army is operating on the backfoot. In that context, all those heavy tanks and unique designs are clearly not going to work, but neither is anything else. The unsexy answer is that a 1,000 more basic PzIII's in 1941 would have had infinitely more influence than 5,000 more PzIV's in 1944, because in 1941 there was an hint of winnability still left in the war. I think that winnability evaporated the moment they invaded Russia because they did not, in fact, have those additional tanks.

A lot of the German tanks get analyzed in the context of an already lost war where resources/stockpiles are drying up and the German army is operating on the backfoot. In that context, all those heavy tanks and unique designs are clearly not going to work, but neither is anything else. The unsexy answer is that a 1,000 more basic PzIII's in 1941 would have had infinitely more influence than 5,000 more PzIV's in 1944, because in 1941 there was an hint of winnability still left in the war. I think that winnability evaporated the moment they invaded Russia because they did not, in fact, have those additional tanks.

22 years. That's a great run, fellas.

22 years. That's a great run, fellas.

#1 would be dynamic campaigns. Even something simple like the way the Close Combat series does it would be nice. I think it's the biggest thing missing by far.
 
"Nice to have" would be something like a replay feature that lets the player watch the whole battle once it is finished.
 
Better vehicle dismount/mount rules for interactions between infantry and vehicles.

Now this fight club, I'm vaguely aware of its rules, but how do I get in?

War, Economy and Society, 1939-1945  by Alan Milward.
 
Not exactly a thrilling book by any means, but an enjoyable one for those who like to look at modern warfare as more or less extensions of flexible industrial capacity. I might be a bit biased though as I'm a full believer in certain deterministic aspects of WWII tailored mostly to the economic strengths of the fighting nations.
 
The Redundancy of Courage by Timothy Mo
 
Basically a fictional book about the non-fictional war in East Timor. I reference it because it's exceptionally well written, yet largely unknown.

I had two of these happen in the same turn in a PBEM match. Mine was from Shock Force 2, a bullet caromed off a building, crossed the street, hit a wall there, then dipped into a hidden insurgent spy who died instantly. Sometimes it just has your name on it. Elsewheres, the same thing happened to a Syrian soldier hiding behind a destroyed VIED, was less dramatic though, mostly just a quick pingpong that nailed him. I've moved countries but if I ever get around to setting up I'll fetch the videos (looks like streamable took them down). Yours is extremely dramatic cause it looks an NBA play haha.
 
I actually think it might happen more than we realize, but the shooting is so chaotic (a given) that we probably don't even notice half the time. The craziest 'ricochet' I've seen was actually a Panther's round that skipped off a Sherman's glacis and spiraled way over the battlefield and hit a crop of trees, instantly killing an entire mortar team I had moving beneath it. They weren't even close to the action so I was initially befuddled as to how they disappeared from the map. You can imagine my unraveling the mystery in reverse like some wayward battlefield Columbo heh.

Once you get past like 1943 the up-gunning is winning the armor battles to the point where getting hit at all is pretty bad for your health and things like fire control, range finding, accuracy, etc. begin to take primacy. I think it was in one of Glantz's books where he stated by that year the T34 was getting penetrated something like 90% of the time at ordinary ranges whereas earlier in the war it was more like 30%, then 50%. So if it's late war my choice would be one of the American tank destroyers, as the doctrine was typically fire support & counter-attacking instead of head on mano y mano. The M18 also looks sexy, if we're going by which metal coffin is most aesthetic.

#1 would be dynamic campaigns. Even something simple like the way the Close Combat series does it would be nice. I think it's the biggest thing missing by far.
 
"Nice to have" would be something like a replay feature that lets the player watch the whole battle once it is finished.
 
Better vehicle dismount/mount rules for interactions between infantry and vehicles.

OK - this was bugging me so I ran a test. It took a long time to set up, I expect to be thanked 😛
Scenario file attached, play with it yourself.
Test settings:
CMFI, clear day Base terrain 'hard' Spotter, with binoculars, Regular, 0; spotter has 2m elevation advantage Spotter has 10 min to observe (no enemy troops on map, just fortifications) Results:
1) Control, no cover (terrain file 'hard')
Foxholes no longer visible at ~200m Trenches no longer visible at ~600m Sandbags no longer visible at ~800m 2) Extra long grass tile, fortifications placed one tile back from front of cover tiles
Foxholes no longer visible at ~200m Trenches no longer visible at ~600m Sandbags no longer visible at ~900m 3) Light tree cover - light forest tile, tree type A, one tree per tile, fortifications placed one tile back
Foxholes no longer visible around ~200m Trenches no longer visible at ~500m Sandbags no longer visible at around ~900m  
OK - so this is a single vanilla spotter, with binoculars and 10 min of uninterrupted observation on a clear day.
For those who say 'these things are too easy to spot', do you drive, do you ever visit the country or go to the beach? 100m is literally 'just over there' - I can spot a sparrow in flight from 100m, without my glasses on - and it doesn't take 10 min.
I may (or more likely may not) do other tests with different elevation, but this is my preliminary conclusion.
Summary:
Foxholes are quite hard to spot - camouflage seems to be assumed More robust entrenchments are not easy to spot until you are well within heavy weapons range. A high elevation advantage may make a big difference, but it should; more eyes and more experienced eyes may make a difference, but they should  - feel free to play with the file and change terrain types.

 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9yvjmwddqiyv0eu/000 spotting A2_L.btt?dl=0
 
 

500m+ is very, very far. Considering people who are shooting at each other are usually doing so from prone positions and/or behind cover, I can't imagine the targets to hit being particularly easy. My understanding is that they learned very quickly during WWII that such engagements weren't worth the effort. As the fire support tech got really advanced, it became extremely problematic for defenders to engage at such ranges. After all, if you shoot at someone at 500m, and that someone has a radio who can chit-chat with a guy who has a much, much larger gun than yours, or perhaps even an airplane or jet, then you should probably not take that 500m potshot. And so all those visible fortress networks which dominated defense budgets leading up to 1940 quickly fell out of use by the time 1945 rolled around. With static bunkers going the way of the dodo, defensive engagements turned into close-range ambushes or fluid skirmishes meant to draw attackers into counter-punches.
 
As someone who just plays Normandy & Shock Force 2, the primary thing I notice is that the lethality of ambushes has ramped up considerably (which I think is what you're referring to about guys being minced very fast). However, I think you might be running into a smaller scale instead of sheer lethality by itself. Getting shot at in the open is bad for your health whether it's an MG42 or an M249, and the end result as a basis of time when being ambushed by WWII tech or modern tech is mostly a matter of seconds. SF2 feels particularly punishing because the assets on hand aren't so 'epic.' You probably feel the sting of those short-range firefights because you're often operating within the constraints of a smaller engagement, as opposed to Normandy where a typical battle has you maintaining large tactical reserves just cause there's so many bodies available. After all, it's extremely common for SF2 bluefor objectives to be, in essence, don't lose a squad. This is actually why I find the Cold War setting rather appealing -- because we'll basically be seeing those two elements being smooshed together. So instead of fearing lethality, I'm curious about lethality + large peer-to-peer engagements. My opinion, of course.

This is something I threw together in my own time. Please remember that this is from a beta build of the game and is subject to change. 

Part of the Marine Corps Hymn is "From the snows of far off northern lands, to the sunny tropic scenes, you will find us always on the job, the United States Marines." Yes, you're all correct about Norway. I went there from Wichita, KS with my Marine Reserve Battalion on a NATO exercise (Operation Teamwork) in September 1976. We were told that it was the first time Marine Reserves were in an exercise outside the U.S., and at the time, it was the largest NATO exercise ever held. We operated north of Trondhiem, about 200 miles south of the Artic Circle. Our Allies were Norwegian Light Infantry, and the Aggressors were British SAS. I think the whole thing was on a hair-trigger as the Soviets massed troops on their northern border with Norway, and we had our ammunition ships sitting just off the coast from us to supply us at a moment's notice. I must admit that I was not impressed with the Marine planning staff that supposedly prepared our participation. Just before we left the states, we were issued Poplin Jungle Utilities that the U.S. troops had worn in Viet Nam. The advanced party to set up our base at Oerland was sent without the proper "colder weather" clothing or galoshes. Some ended up with trench foot so bad that toes had to be amputated, and about a dozen cases of double-pneumonia so bad they had to be medivac. We went from being used to 30C temps in Kansas and Missouri to 10-15C temps in Norway in jungle camos. Flying home, our Company was so ill that one of the flight attendants asked me if the men were really Marines because no one had made a pass at her. I explained that we had just been through a tough exercise and were all sick.
The bright spot was that the Norwegian public treated us fantastic (something we weren't used to just three years after the war ended in Viet Nam}, and they were astonished that we were in the reserves because we wanted to be, not because we had to be. They constantly expressed gratitude that we were there, in there words "to protect them when we didn't have to be." I still have a warm spot in my heart for the Norwegian people.

@Chibot Mk IXit's the caliber of the round.
 
I frequently run into buildings being shot up for suppression and do not suffer casualties -- if I'm doing it with small arms. However, if you are shooting large caliber rounds then it can kill your own guys. .223, .30, etc. won't do it, but .50, I mean that's something that can punch holes in concrete. To prevent the above, give them a target arc so they're not opening up with your own friendlies in the firing lane. This is true of a lot of stuff. In one of my previous PBEM games I was the assaulting force in an urban enviro. Friendly fire was almost as big of an issue as contending with the enemy itself. But sometimes it's also just... acceptable to eat some friendly fire. (Don't tell the troopers that.)
 
I actually have an example just like yours to show. In this case I'm using irregulars to look for contact. They make said contact, but all the US forces standing by were basically free to fire. What ended up happening was the guys running to the building side got lit up by a humvee's .50 and I believe one got killed by a 25 or 30mm cannon round.
 
Base of fire POV:
https://streamable.com/5lgg4p
 
Irregulars POV:
https://streamable.com/6dnp34

If I have my troops in awkward, hilly positions where their profile is low and enemy armor is either on an even plane or downhill, I've seen tanks sail shots over their heads and generally have a hard time dialing it in. This is true in SF2/BS as well.
 
However, I have noticed that if tanks have the higher ground they tend to be remarkably accurate with the shot placements.

Still persistent issues as this thread has already stated. Not to be a Debbie downer, but this is so far probably the worst "official" campaign across any CM game I've played. I'm shocked this is in the final product, much less an add-on. How do you not even fix the basic stuff like correcting the stated equipment? The campaign in general has a distinct vibe of not even being playtested at all.

Same pathline, though a bit earlier as I rotated to CM with that demo it had back in I think 1999. I wanna say it was a on a PC Gamer disc, can't quite remember. Also wish CM shared Close Combat's eye for operational stuff. A Bridge Too Far's resource balancing was a particular favorite of mine.

I wrote a campaign review thread at SimHQ. It died off since there was no interest or comments. But I covered several CMBN campaigns. Maybe you can take something from it, though I did not consider engine 4 in the commentary.
https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/4490340/combat-mission-campaign-reviews#Post4490340

If you want to communicate it in-game, take all your men and Fast their way to the nearest enemy.

My anecdotal experience suggests that the MG42 is the deadliest MG in the game by far, and I'd rather be shot at by almost anything else (as far as MGs go). It is remarkably deadly, accurate, and suppressive. Again, that's more observational than anything.
 
As for cause of casualties, you have to be very careful with things like that as you're often drawing data from the entire scope of a campaign instead of from the 'small screen' which would be scenarios like CM depicts. From the big screen, where you have interdiction and all sorts of artillery exchanges happening, yes, the vast majority of damage accrued over time would be from explosives and not all of them inflicted on combat-oriented units. We can tell the difference pretty easily by just looking at combat units themselves, which often have egregious lossrates of 50%+, wounded and killed -- basically, being the actual guy doing the fighting is an insanely dangerous job (no surprise). If the army as a whole had rates like that it would be drawdropping amounts of casualties.
 
But as for bullets specifically, John Ellis's book has this remark about it:
 

The only exception I have seen is throwing grenades at open top vehicles from an upper floor.  However, there must be the occasional exception since you witnessed it.  For SOPs in drills I try to use what works best most of the time.  When I find new / better information (often on this forum) I test it and see if it will work most of the time.  I then modify the drill if the new information can be made to work most of time. 
I think it is fair to say for the best results, most of the time, in CQB vs Armor the infantry need to exit the building.  I would never say 100% but probably 95% .  
Speaking of grenades check out the grenade chucking contest below.  Somewhere on the eastern front. 
            

Still persistent issues as this thread has already stated. Not to be a Debbie downer, but this is so far probably the worst "official" campaign across any CM game I've played. I'm shocked this is in the final product, much less an add-on. How do you not even fix the basic stuff like correcting the stated equipment? The campaign in general has a distinct vibe of not even being playtested at all.

This is still in the game, by the way. Was glancing at the Syrian TOE and you can basically get a swarm of Hinds for free. Would have to house rule it so someone doesn't lamely spam you with nonstop air attacks.
You can see the error by the way as the Hind F is listed as 742 points, whereas the Hind D is a whopping... 30.

For 30 points it should be a moderately armed air balloon.