Centurian52
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Posts posted by Centurian52
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21 hours ago, domfluff said:
Now, what *is* true is that the doctrine around halftrack employment was mostly written in the early war, before effective anti-tank weapons became quite as commonplace (ATRs were the standard). Halftracks are still useful in 1943-1945, but they are far more vulnerable, and have to be used much more carefully.
Honestly if I'm in a halftrack I think I'd actually be more concerned about early-war ATRs than the HEAT projectors of the mid-late war. I've found that while ATRs really struggle to be effective against tanks, even in the early war, they are far more effective against halftracks. The post-penetration effects of ATRs are usually underwhelming compared to HEAT warheads and ATGs. But against a halftrack stuffed full of infantry you can't miss. Each shot can't help but inflict several casualties. Each shot may not be as lethal as a single HEAT warhead, but they come on a lot more rapidly, a lot more accurately, and at much greater range.
ATRs are still crap against tanks. But they work very well against halftracks and armored cars.
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On 4/11/2024 at 7:07 PM, user1000 said:
you must hate history
That's uncalled for
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Now that we have British forces let's not forget that going back to the original CMFB timeframe to cover some of the British actions during the Battle of the Bulge is also a possibility. Bure is surely worth making into a scenario (unless someone already has and I've missed it).
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27 minutes ago, Erwin said:
Thanks for doing those tests. It would have been interesting to know if SPEED made a difference, and also GROUND PRESSURE - ie: lbs/sq ft. Wider tracks on (say) the T-34 should enable it to function much better than a similar weight tank with thinner tracks.
The game UI doesn't tell us what a vehicle's ground pressure is. Perhaps this is part of what is indicated by the "Off-Road" meter? He did say that weight made no difference (given the same "Off-Road" rating and means of movement), which struck me as odd. But it might make sense if the ground pressure is already accounted for in the "Off-Road" meter.
25 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:If I understood correctly speed had no impact on bogging. I think this is what he meant when he said, orders had no impact?
That was my interpretation as well. I assume when he said that the "order given" made no impact he meant whether you gave it a slow, move, quick, or fast order.
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AR has been on a roll with helpful Combat Mission tips videos. His latest one is one bogging, so I think a link to it belongs in this thread.
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Of course just deleting FoW wouldn't be entirely satisfactory. Overhead concealment still works on drones. And you can shoot down drones with small-arms fire, or disable them with EW, which may temporarily blind the enemy in a section of the battlefield (they would have a new drone up before too long, but it may buy you some breathing room). Part of the point of a new modern warfare game would be to try to figure out how you could actually operate on the modern battlefield, and part of that is figuring out how to counter drones. So the drones themselves would need to be included in the game.
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1 hour ago, Probus said:
So effectively you could simulate that by doing away with FoW.
That does seem the be the biggest unanticipated change in modern warfare, yes. And as a direct result of the omnipresence of drones. They aren't calling it "the transparent battlefield" for nothing.
It seems to be a reversal of what happened at the end of the 19th century/beginning of the 20th century. At that time the adoption of dull uniforms, more dispersed formations which made greater use of cover and concealment, and smokeless powder firearms (which both extended firing ranges and reducing firing signatures) were all contributing to make it harder and harder to see the enemy and conduct effective reconnaissance. The result was the emergence of "the invisible battlefield".
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I've noticed that in CMFI on-map US M7 Priests are generally not available for FOs to call in for indirect fire. Perhaps Wespes in CMBN have a similar issue? I don't know if there's a reason for this or if it's a bug. Perhaps @BFCElvis might know the answer?
I can see this being intentional. It used to be the case that CM maps were always so small that there wouldn't be any point in trying to use on-map SP artillery for indirect fire anyway. There simply wouldn't be enough room for the shot's trajectory to arc and get over all the obstacles that would inevitably be in the way of the target. So if you had any on-map SP artillery, there may have been an assumption that you would always use it in a direct-fire role. But as the game has evolved and maps have gotten larger there are now instances where it may very well be practical to call in on-map SP artillery as indirect fire.
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4 hours ago, Vacillator said:
But I also need all the arty I can get, although I'm developing a reputation for dumping it on my own troops
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I did that a LOT when I moved back into WW2 after spending a while in the modern era. Definitely need to be thinking in terms of larger "danger close" distances in WW2.
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On 4/3/2024 at 6:12 AM, Artkin said:
+1 Except I hope it's not drone spam because that wouldnt be fun at all.
I don't think it's possible to give modern warfare an honest portrayal without drone spam. Though I suppose it depends to a certain extent on how many drones are required to constitute a "spam". Based on the Russo-Ukraine war I'd think that one drone active at any given time in support of each platoon would be about the norm. Possibly going up to one per squad in the near future. So that would be 3 to 9 drones in a company sized engagement. 9 to 27 drones in a battalion sized engagement. That's just the quadcopters providing small-unit situational awareness though. Once you start accounting for loitering munitions the number would get higher, but at that point they're basically functioning like cheaper precision munitions.
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I can definitely see why so many people are so enthusiastic for Swingfire. I hope they can figure out how to get it working with a remote operator in-game. Seems like it might require a bit of extra coding. But hopefully not a prohibitive amount of coding.
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3 hours ago, Vacillator said:
So I believe doctrine says Soviets don't dismount infantry for recon (they're probably in too much of a hurry).
I don't think that's true. At least not as a hard rule. They will try to dismount as little as possible, in order to maintain the momentum of their advance. But that "as possible" there is doing a lot of heavy lifting. If the situation calls for dismounting, they will dismount.
3 hours ago, Vacillator said:And they don't unbutton.
That part is true as far as I know. I think it just comes down to the old debate that comes up on the forums of whether the improved situational awareness is worth making your TCs more vulnerable. And it seems each side of the Iron Curtain reached the opposite answer. The US said yes, it's worth exposing your TCs for the improved situational awareness. The Soviets said no, keep the TCs safe. We'll improve situational awareness by just using mass to get as many eyes looking towards the enemy as possible.
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19 minutes ago, Bannon said:
I'm reluctant to use church bell towers for that very reason!
Yeah. You can get away with it against the AI. But they're almost always one of the firs things I shoot at. One of the lesson's from Monty Python's "How Not To Be Seen" is that you shouldn't hide behind the only bush in the field.
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I like the video overall. It was a plausible version of events that mostly made sense. And putting everything on a map was helpful for understanding what was happening. The main issue was that there are already so many different versions of the story (this is apparently one of the most overstudied engagements of the entire war) that I would have liked for them to provide some arguments for why I should trust their version more than any other version I may have heard. Just hearing them tell their version, without them making any attempt to establish why their version is more credible than other versions, only left me knowing one more version of the story without giving me any real confidence that I now have a better idea of what really happened.
I am still curious about why Wittman attacked with just his own Tiger if he had a platoon of Tigers. Did his radio break so he couldn't order the others forward? If so, why didn't they follow when they saw him moving forward (or did they not see him moving forward?)? Did he order them to remain behind? If so, why? The need to attack quickly wouldn't have precluded calling a simple "follow me!" over the radio. The possibilities I can think of are:
1. His radio was broken, and the rest of his platoon didn't see him moving. I think this would have been perfectly excusable for all parties.
2. His radio was broken, the rest of his platoon did see him, but didn't think to follow him. This would reflect poorly on his platoon.
3. It just didn't occur to him to order the rest of the platoon forward. This would have made him a bad platoon commander.
4. He ordered the rest of the platoon to stay behind to provide security. I don't quite know why they couldn't have provided better security to his tank by staying with him, but it's conceivable that someone could argue that this made sense.
5. He ordered the rest of the platoon to stay behind because he wanted all the glory to himself. This would have made him an abysmal platoon commander.
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Just now, Probus said:
I often use a jeep in this fashion. To probe enemy lines and use it's speed as a defence. It works 1/2 the time. I didn't realize it was 'gamey'.
I have sometimes seen people refer to sending jeeps out front to get shot at as 'gamey'. That caught me by surprise the first time I came across it. Especially since I thought reconnaissance was one of the many roles jeeps were meant to fill. But it does feel like there's a difference between sending a jeep forward to poke at the enemy perimeter and sending a jeep speeding directly through a town that is suspected of being occupied. The latter really does seem like the sort of thing that people might more legitimately call 'gamey'. And yet we have a real world example of it (probably, I don't actually know for sure if the story is true, but it seems like the sort of thing that Patton would do). I suspect that most complaints of gamey tactics stem from people forgetting that soldiers fighting in real wars are often at least as creative and willing to experiment as Combat Mission players.
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Actually it occurs to me that most (though not necessarily all) 'gamey' tactics that are possible in Combat Mission are either real tactics that are formally taught, or really are pretty gamey but still have at least one example of real-world use. I recall someone commenting a while back that one reason Patton wasn't as popular with his own troops as he was with the general public was that he tended to fight like a Combat Mission player (that comment was gold, if only I could find it so I would know who to credit it to). He allegedly once sent a jeep speeding down the main road of a town for the express purpose of seeing if any Germans would shoot at it (IIRC it didn't work, there were Germans in the town, but they held their fire).
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13 hours ago, Probus said:
What is y'alls opinion of pre-planned artillery not in setup zones but on routs of advance? For instance a road through the woods that you are planning on going down or suspect the enemy is going to use to advance to your location? Not exactly 'recon by fire' but could be a tactic to break up ambushes or nail possible convoy routs. Would that be considered too 'gamey'?
The situation I'm considering is a ME in which a small town is the central battle zone. So wouldn't it be wise to blast all the roads into the town with pre-planned artillery?
Not gamey at all. Using fire to deny an area to the enemy is a real tactic. Free Whisky actually did a video on how best to use artillery in Combat Mission. He describes four types of effects that artillery strives to achieve in real life, and which can be recreated in Combat Mission:
Suppress: Keep the enemy's heads down.
Obscure: Prevent the enemy from seeing your troops.
Secure: Prevent the enemy from occupying a piece of terrain by making it too dangerous.
Reduce: Inflict casualties on the enemy.
There's no doubt a similar formal list of effects that you can achieve with direct fire, whether it be from small arms or tanks/IFVs. But as I haven't come across it yet, here's my somewhat less formal (and not necessarily comprehensive) list of what you can do with direct fire:
Suppressive fire: Keep the enemy's heads down.
Recon-by-fire: Find the enemy by shooting at suspected positions, baiting them to shoot back.
Secure: Make a position dangerous for the enemy to occupy by shooting at it.
Destructive fire: Inflict casualties on the enemy.
Fire is a tool. Ultimately we want to use that tool to destroy the enemy. But it has many other uses that can make it easier to reach that ultimate goal, or make it harder for the enemy to destroy you. If you can think of any way to use fire to manipulate the enemy into doing what you want (or not doing what you don't want), then that's a legitimate use of fire, and one that has probably been used at some point in the real world.
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I have to echo @PEB14's point that the fewer house rules you have, the better. One or two rules might be necessary from time to time (no turn 1 fire into known or obvious setup-zones in meeting engagements makes sense to me). But the more rules you add the more it feels like a sport and the less it feels like a battle. I can see it easily getting to the point where you'd be walking on eggshells the entire time and unable to have any fun.
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On 3/30/2024 at 4:41 PM, Heirloom_Tomato said:
This mod only removes the icons for the OPFOR, it leaves all your icons active. It makes the challenge of "spotting" the enemy up to the player as you have no enemy icons moving across the map. It kind of "forces" the player to look at the battle through the eyes of all their men to see what they can see. The pain with it comes when you are playing multiple battle at the same time and as both sides since you have exit the game, swap out the mods and reload the game every time you switch from Axis to Allies. It works best when you only play as one side all time. A request to have this be an option for the game to include, ie, Icons ON, OFF, SPOT and ENEMY OFF, has been asked for with the Engine 5 upgrade.
Ok that's definitely on me for not reading carefully enough. I still don't see the point. The enemy icons are there to tell you what your troops know. If you disable enemy icons then you know less than the game intends for you to know. It still just feels like a handicap for the sake of a handicap, rather than something that makes any sense from a realism perspective.
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3 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
I'm still willing to have yet another debate about how to define "winning" and "losing". I mean, cripes, it's probably been a couple of months since we had one. I don't think anything has improved from the Russian perspective, but hey... I'm open to the possibility that I've missed something.
I don't watch this thread as closely as I used to, so I hadn't realized the victory conditions had been cast into doubt. They're worth reiterating in case anyone forgot what's at stake. Based on what I've been reading from ISW, Putin still maintains his maximalist objectives (despite those becoming less and less realistic as the war goes on). And I think we all know what victory means for Ukraine.
The victory conditions are clearly asymmetric. So defeat for one side is not the same as victory for the other side (this is a point I recall you making a number of times). It's definitely impossible for both sides to win. But it is very possible for both sides to lose.
Victory for Ukraine I think means driving Russia completely out of Ukraine's 1991 internationally recognized borders. Defeat for Ukraine means being forced to accept anything less than driving Russia completely out of Ukraine's 1991 internationally recognized borders.
Victory for Russia (if Putin still maintains his maximalist objectives, as ISW assesses, and I'm correctly interpreting "demilitarize and denazify") means the complete overthrow of the legitimately elected Ukrainian government, followed either by replacement with a government friendly to Russia or complete annexation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation. Defeat for Russia means anything less than the complete overthrow of the legitimately elected Ukrainian government, followed either by replacement with a government friendly to Russia or complete annexation of Ukraine into the Russian Federation.
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1 hour ago, sfhand said:
1. Are dictators elected over and over again?
Yes! In fact that's one of the clearest signs that you're looking at a dictatorship rather than a true democracy. Democratic elections are competitive. Elections in single-party democracies* (a.k.a. dictatorships) are not competitive, and are really only conducted at all in order to provide the appearance of democratic legitimacy.
*A single-party democracy either only allows one party to run, or may allow other parties to run as straw-men but will only ever allow one party to win. Almost all modern dictatorships are single-party democracies. They provide an advantage over classic dictatorships if you are the dictator since you get a little extra legalistic justification for your rule, without ever really challenging your rule.
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23 minutes ago, weapon2010 said:
tomorrow is a couple of months , not that Im counting
What Steve forgot to mention was that we're going by fusion rules. The announcement is a couple months away, and always will be.
But in all seriousness I suspect there is a fair to decent chance of the announcement coming sometime within the next month or so.
Edit: I guess we'll see how much heavy lifting that "or so" ends up doing.
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22 minutes ago, Andrew Kulin said:
Umm. Whom are you referring to?
Sorry. Did I say too much?
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Just now, Vacillator said:
I think playing other humans is the best way to be challenged
Until we get better AI at least.
Best way to learn the game
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted
I'd say it's worth playing both against a human opponent and against the AI. The human opponent is more reactive and challenging. But you can get in more turns a day against the AI. I think the only way to learn the game is precisely the same way you learn anything else. You put lots of time into it.
Of course one additional thing you can do is to supplement your gameplay by studying tactics. I made a post that I thought offered some decent tactical advice a while back:
If you're really crazy you can even go directly to the doctrine manuals. For WW2 doctrine I usually go to the Nafziger collection:
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/american-tank-company-tactics-fm-17-32/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/us-armored-infantry-battalion-fm-17-42/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/british-and-commonwealth-armored-tactics-in-wwii/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/british-and-commonwealth-motorized-infantry-tactics-in-wwii/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/employment-of-tanks-with-infantry-fm-17-36/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/german-panzer-tactics-in-world-war-ii-combat-tactics-of-german-armored-units-from-section-to-regiment/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/soviet-armored-tactics-in-world-war-ii-the-tactics-of-the-armored-units-of-the-red-army-from-individual-vehicles-to-battalions-according-to-the-combat-regulations-of-february-1944/
https://nafzigercollection.com/product/soviet-infantry-tactics-in-world-war-ii/
I'd recommend FM 100-2-1 for Cold War/modern Soviet/Russian doctrine. And FM 71-1 or FM 71-2 for Cold War/modern US doctrine.