dbsapp
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Posts posted by dbsapp
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The spotting, which is in the heart of CM mechanics, is a pure game of chance, thus making CM a lottery.
I know that there are severel factors that affect the spotting (skill levels, optics, terrain etc), but in the end it's pretty random.
Numerous times I witnessed how bottoned up tanks can't see the vehicle right in front of them from 2 meters distance, or your unit, hidden behind several layers of dense forest, got shot from the opposite side of the map.
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5 hours ago, Combatintman said:
Can't speak for the M-577 but all British Army armoured vehicles have this capability. Gentlemen, I present the Boiling Vessel (BV):
Well, two actually, but you get the picture.
Looks like it can be quickly transformed to the chemical warfare device.
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11 minutes ago, Probus said:
This is a little earlier in the war and I believe it didn't get hit by anything larger than a 76.2mm AP round, but the story is incredible!
Six hours of sustained fire, 252 hits, and the Tiger left the battlefield under its own power.
Can't comment on the authenticity of this story, but Mike Felton is a well known wehraboo who is eager to eat whatever nazi propaganda is available without any questions. So consume with suspicion.
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10 minutes ago, womble said:
Ah, no. Paintballs do not travel at Mach 0.9ish...
That would leave some welt...
As to ringing the bell of the crew, the 152mm AP round won't come close to penetrating the glacis of a KT, let alone an Abrams. I'm sure the clang would be impressive, but that's way better than having 40 kilo of steel come roaring through your cramped fighting compartment...
I guess, everybody who is interested in the topic of how artillery affects armored vehicles, should read «A direct hit with an HE round with a PD fuze consistently destroyed the various target vehicles» («Who Says Dumb Artillery Rounds Can’t Kill Armor?», Major (Retired) George A. Durham, Field Artillery November-December 2002. Pdf is easy to google.
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54 minutes ago, womble said:
I'll assume you mean "square-on", by "straight". At 200m, yeah, the AP should've penetrated, without some fairly odd circumstances. Maybe even an Abrams. Though not from the front...
It's only got a muzzle velocity of 600m/s.
Even "square-on" hit of hydrogen bomb can't penetrate Abrams, every American schoolboy knows that.
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30 minutes ago, womble said:
Or, shorter:
"There are limitations on what can be coded. We live with them."
Did anyone express "happiness" about the situation?
First, it probably wasn't an HE round (unless it had already expended its allotment of AP - I don't know how RT handles ammo loadout for the SU-152, but other assault guns in other titles get handed a small allocation of AP or HEAT rounds). Maybe something has changed, but even though a 152mm HE is probably more effective than the relatively low velocity APBC round that weapon chucks, it uses the same ammo selection criteria as every other unit that can choose HE or AP, and would choose the AP round for shooting at a KT. However, it still "ought" to get a penetration on the side, unless some additional 'deflection' angle is involved by the positioning of the vehicles, from the numbers I can easily find. That possibility is important, though. Was it a square-on shot? What range?
It may also be that the general nerfing of HE effect to "compensate for" the coding limitations around infantry (one team per AS, mostly) have made the HE round's effectiveness against armour as well, if that was what was actually fired.
It was a straight shot from a distance of about 200 meters. Be it AP, or HE, anyway 152 mm round would destroy anything, Tiger or Abrams.
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Playing CMRT and CMFR I noticed that there are considerable discrepancies among armor penetration models.
E.g. in the Night in the opera (great mini campaign, by the way) my ISU-152 couldn't damage King Tiger by direct hit to the side armor. After receiving the hit King Tiger quickly turned the turrent and destroyed my ISU. In fact, the hit of 152 mm HE round to the King Tiger's, even if it didn't destroy tank completely, would render it ineffective and at least heavily injured the crew.
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39 minutes ago, sawomi said:
Nice.
15:40 - 15:55 is American Cold War propaganda at it's best. Fulda Gap an "historical invasion route from the east" lol.
Napoleon in 1813 was retreating after defeat at Leipzig. The only ones that where invading at this route where the Americans themself in 1945 in eastern direction.
You know that if it was shown on TV then it's a historical fact, right?
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1 hour ago, arkhangelsk2021 said:
Actually, some countries do like to keep them close together (the Soviets like colocating their battery commander with their company commander ... etc). Quicker response vs survivability. Your choice.
I don't have a clue how they actually do it, but I doubt that in the age of radio and nuclear weapons the best way to share info between heads of military units is to group them together on 50 square meters and to let them all be killed in one strike.
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58 minutes ago, Erwin said:
What is puzzling is that IIRC HQ's in the real world are not located close to one another as one doesn't want one shell to kill two or more Bn HQ's. So, not sure what is being simulated here.
Yeah, it looks strange and artificial, but it works!
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The main thing I learnt is to keep the leaders of different formations close to each other.
E.g.if you have 2 batallions HQ present, place them in close proximity, so the batallons can share info between them.
The same goes for reconnaissance, mortars hq, observers etc.
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6 hours ago, G. Smiley said:
Nice screenshots.
Was that a H2H game or against the AI? The scenario looks interesting so I'm curious if it is balanced for H2H.
Edit: Same question goes for "The Grieshof Meet and Greet" above - may I guess you're playing the AI?
Yes, it was H vs AI game.
Never played H2H, so really don't know if it's balanced for it or not. I would bet not, 'cause it's pretty big and assymetric.
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Another good quality and rather lively mission is (I hope I can type it down right - "Mittelaschenbach sudden awakening").
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28 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
Again, I would offer that a "binary" view is another example of amateurishness.
I would agree with you that "binary" view is example of amateurishness. The thing is I don't recall any of it in my words.
I never argued that the US was interested in the actual war with USSR or was trying to initiate it first for whatever reasons. I guess, if, as you proposed, we put aside the nuclear equation for a minute, NATO would invade USSR with high probability. But since in real life it's not as easy to put aside several thousand nuclear warheads as at internet forum, it was highly unlikely. The nukes serve as a very strong deterrent, so I doubt that in those circumstances any American decision maker thought seriously about making the first move ever. It would be suicide.
What I merely said is that the same goes for USSR. Soviet Union never considered the probability to initiate "invasion", despite all the billions and billions of $ that Washington spent on propaganda to prove the opposite and receive $ trillions in defense budget.
47 minutes ago, The_Capt said:Finally, as to the poor Soviets on their farm tractors:
https://nintil.com/the-soviet-union-military-spending/
Well, this link totally proves my point - the share of military spending in GDP of the USSR was higher than in GDP of the US. That precisely means that for the USSR military spending was much heavier burden than for the US.
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1 minute ago, Erwin said:
And also the US agreed to remove missiles from Turkey.
True. But it doesn't change the whole picture.
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3 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Well that is an amateur interpretation to be honest. In fact all of those factors (more or less true, except maybe geographical) are really reasons why the Soviets would take a forward leaning stance as opposed to a more passive one. You are describing the exact same strategic position that Germany had before both world wars. History does tend to show that nations at strategic disadvantage tend to see the world as very dangerous and that a good offence is the best defence, largely because they know they cannot sustain a protracted war. Particularly for those in the center of the Soviet Union/WP, the Russians who lost 25-plus million in WW2.
Soviet forces and posture reflect this as well. 60k tanks and 70k-odd guns in the WP, a very offensive based doctrine and a whole lot of political warfare action going on around the globe, there was that whole Cuban Missile crisis whoopsie.
Now one could argue that for the Soviets this was largely strategically defensive in nature, not sure if I ever bought into the global communist conspiracy, the West was (and is) far more aggressive with respect to ideology. But I don't believe the evidence points to the Soviets passively accepting anything and there was always a risk that simple misunderstanding (or how about just plain fear?) could escalate a local action into a full on conflagration...you know, like 1914? It is not like we humans need really good excuses to fight, ever, and I doubt the situation in Europe was any different.
The better example of your thesis would be Japan. They knew they are going to start a war with a superior enemy and that they are doomed to lose in a long term, but decided to attack anyway. The main reason is that they were driven to corner and had no other options left, but either to back down and lose face, or gamble and engage in suicidal attack. That's why they tricked themselves into believing that Americans are weak and debauched nation, that would ask for peace after the first heavy blow.
I hope you understand, that the framework of gaming forum doesn't allow to go much further than, as you put it, "amateur interpretation". I don't think it is necessary to develop my argument beyond that with a wall of text that nobody would read.
But it's curious if you noticed that your thesis is a classical Cath 22. Country "X" poses a threat either way: its strong, so it's a clear indication that it's aggressive and can attack. Or it's weak, so it's even more suspicious, because this weakness could lead to outbreak of aggression. Hence always peaceful nation "Y" is stymied to defend itself by building military bases around "aggressive" neighbor, or even to launch a preemptive strike. With the best intentions, of course.
It's hilarious, that Cuban missile crisis is considered a classical showcase of Soviet aggressive posture. US lost its $hit because USSR tried to do what US routinely did - to have the military base near opponent's borders. While US had dozens of military bases with nukes near Soviet territory, it announced that having Soviet base on Cuba "crosses the red line" and threatened the world with nuclear war. USSR complied and withdrew the rockets.
As for kilotons of USSR tanks it hardly proves anything. Should we compare quantity (and quality) of navies, airforces, submarines and nuclear warheads (nuclear parity was achieved only in the late 70s), we would inevitably find out that those tanks are not that frightening at all. As the last chief of stuff of USSR Akhromeev said during "glasnost" period, USSR decided to build that many tanks because it was the only (imperfect) way to counterbalance the Western superiority in the rest of the areas. Quite a cheap solution, by the way. To build the navy or airfleet of the same quality and quantity would be much more expansive.
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8 hours ago, Combatintman said:
Peace loving peoples of the Soviet Union - bound to happen mate ...
I had no intention to discuss any "inner qualities" of any people, including peoples of the Soviet Union (who - as everybody at this forum well aware of - have no soul, inherently sinful and live with single purporse in life, e.g. invading peaceful democracies of Europe and crossing Pacific to destroy prosperous US, because they hate Americans for their freedom).
I merely tried to draw attention to the simple and quite obvious, but usually omitted fact, that from demographical, economical, technological and geographical standpoint USSR was in disadvantageus position, which clearly undermines the claim that it had any agressive intentions towards Western countries.
USSR in the face of superior and quickly expanding Western militaries tried to build up military power to prevent the repetition of catastrophic German invasion of June 22 in 1941, but the goal of achieving parity with combined Western armies proved to be too overwhelming for the economy.
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17 hours ago, womble said:
The Soviets had (the Russians maybe still have) the best intelligence gathering setup. There is no way that a rational assessment of the information they almost certainly had available to them would have led to an assessment that there was any danger whatsoever of being invaded by the West.
Of course all the exercises had the "defend and counterattack" framework. Can you imagine if they actually practised invading first? If the Western public got ahold of that, maybe there would have been a small chance of public opinion being swayed more towards building a force in Europe actually capable of the pre-emptive strike the Soviets claimed to be nervous of. It's as hilariously laughable as current Putinesque protestations of nervousness about contemporary NATO exercises near the border, and claims of feeling threatened by the Baltic States joining NATO.No, "The perfidious Imperialists want to attack us," was always (and remains) pure propaganda for internal consumption. At least in the sense of tanks and planes and bullets and piles and piles of irradiated bodies. Economic competition was much more effective against the Soviets, and if Russia doesn't pivot away from reliance on natural gas exports, will once again put the squeeze on the kleptocrats as Europe reduces its dependency on supplies from the East.
The middle of the C20th offers up plenty of examples of Russia flexing its muscles in its own backyard that don't need much shading to make the NATO public somewhat leery of Russian claims to not be expansionist. And those last right til today.
Any numerical inferiority on the part of the Soviets existed only because the US was the gorilla backing NATO. Similarly, statements about being "surrounded", and "not having land access". Sure, the Bering strait was an insurmountable barrier, but there ain't no Bering Strait in central Europe. Take the Americans out of the equation, and pushing the borders of Stalinism to the Atlantic doesn't look so dumb: industrialised areas, educated populations. Access to warm water ports. The Nazis had proven the concept of occupation was workable; without the amphibious invasions in the Med and Normandy, those nations under the jackbooted heel would have been a long time winning their freedom. And the Soviets had much more resource and, to be frank, perceived ruthlessness (Stalin killed at least as many as Hitler, remember and those were supposed to be his; imagine how willing he would have been to do unto "the other") to apply to subjugation than Germany did in the 30s and 40s, if they wanted to go that way.
We Europeans have the Americans to thank for making the concept of invasion sufficiently dicey that we never had to nuke the Soviets (and get nuked in return). I'm a child of the 80s, and I don't recall sharing the much-touted "existential angst", cos even as a teenager, I knew enough to be pretty sure the CCCP had no real interest in trying it on, in the face of what the West would end up throwing at it. And I knew in my bones the West had no military designs on Warsaw Pact territory; the "best" militaries in the world have tried it on a couple of occasions, and ended up bugging out with the bitten off stumps of their tails between their remaining legs.
Never thought that such level of ideological indoctrination is possible outside of laboratory environment, but you proved that I was wrong.
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4 minutes ago, Ultradave said:
I have a PhD in Nuclear Engineering and a 38 year career in nuclear weapons, nuclear power and nuclear non-proliferation, so yeah, I'm an expert.
That was their strategy back then. I didn't make it up. Allows mobilization and deployment under the guise of an exercise.
Dave
Well, it took me 6 episodes to achieve what you made in 38 years
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51 minutes ago, Combatintman said:
Nothing automatic about it. NATO forces in Germany were under strength and needed time to round out. For instance most of the NL and BE corps were based in their respective countries. 1 (BR) Corps' 1 Armoured Division's peacetime locations were a good deal north of their wartime AORs and, depending on the time frame, two of the 1 (BR) Corps roled Field Forces and latterly one of it's divisions was based in the UK. Same for the US, who had even further to move their reinforcements. Soviet exercises plus the routine rotation of conscripts were watched closely because if GSFG/WGF went for the standing start option a lot of NATO would be in the wrong place. It would be naive to assume that the Soviets didn't know this and didn't have a planning option for the standing start scenario.
Theoretically each side must have all scenarios on the chief of stuff's table.
It doesn't change the fact that Soviet side was the weakest part of this struggle, technologically, economically and geographically seriously inferior to US.
It was surrounded by US bases from Germany and Turkey to Japan and Philippines.
It didn't have direct land access to US territory, where as US had hundreds of ways to the terrotory of USSR.
By invading Europe (NATO wet dream) it would achieve nothing at best and commit suicide at worst.
Still, the myth of "mighty USSR invading weak NATO" alive and well till the present day, and made itself comfortable even in CMCW.
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2 minutes ago, dbsapp said:
Everybody is an expert in Chernobyl and nuclear power since HBO aired its tv-show!
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10 hours ago, Ultradave said:
“Able Archer” Big NATO exercise. Russians were worried about NATO attack because attacking from a large scale exercise is what THEY would do.
Lol
"Wo made large scale scary exercises that threatened our opponent and could lead to thermonuclear war, but it something that Russian WOULD DO"
I like how you automatically frame it.
And Chernobyl happend in 1986.
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11 hours ago, chuckdyke said:
If NATO had not existed an invasion could have happened in the 50's.
It's very probable since US had 10 times more nukes, capable airfleet of bombers that Moscow didn't posess, while USSR had literally zero interest in invading, instead it was focused on rebuilding crippled economy when US economy flourished.
That's why they first created NATO and only after that Warsaw pact.
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14 minutes ago, The_Capt said:
So we are still talking Mission 3 "Nuke and Bypass", you are not seeing Mig 17s with cluster munitions and a Air Controller team?....well that is a bug then. Good thing we are doing a refresh of the campaigns before wide release.
No. I wonder if they will make any difference since hundreds of artillery shells including clusters don't impress mighty bradlies at all.
That would leave some welt...
TOW MISSLE ISSUES NOT REPRESENTED IN THE GAME
in Combat Mission Cold War
Posted
Interesting. I had impression that TOW is much more accurate and reliable, maybe I was wrong.
At least Youtube have a lot of videos from war zones that show very effective employment of ATGMs of different kinds, including TOW.