Halmbarte

Soviet WWII artillery is pretty decent, by WWI standards. Soviet CW artillery is damn good, for WWII. H

I generally make it a point to put a few HE rounds into church towers and the top floor of particular high rise buildings just on general principals. If that piece of key ground is really great your enemy probably thinks so too and they will make it a priority for fires. Fighting the Soviets and their rocket artillery will teach the value of 'don't be in the obvious impact zone' pretty quickly. I move FOs far enough forward for them to do their jobs. With the Americans you don't have to be so careful as they tend to have lots of FOs available and pretty much anyone can call for fire, just not as effectively. With the Sov/Russians I am more careful since FO are scarce and not all FOs can call all artillery. In the end though FOs too far back to get LOS are just as useless as dead FOs. H

Tacops. Great tactical game that had very good AI for the enemy. H

Another thing to keep in mind. The kind of place that has great lines of sight for your FO is also likely going to be a great place for ATGM or GMG teams. Those guys will attract fire and get your FOs killed even if the enemy never actually saw the FO team. H

You have a save game file? H

It's pretty hard to see men wearing drab clothing from any signifiant distance, particularly if they aren't moving or firing. You need to get LOS to the target, but that LOS can be to the top of a building or hill. A linear mission can drop rounds on targets that the FO can't actually seem they just need to see the end points of the linear mission. I try to get LOS with scouts to where I want my FO to get to. If there is a surprise I want to find out with the scouts and not the FO. When the FO is in position I give them a limited target arc to get them looking in the right direction and so they don't engage targets with their organic weapons. I also try to park FOs in foliage, rocks, shrubs, or in a building so they at least have concealment. H

I would deny that. Most of the battle rifle calibers used solid bullets that were relatively low velocity and very stable when traveling through a person. Basically you get a ~7mm hole in and a ~7mm hole out. The British mk7 .303 used a light filler in the nose so that the bullet destabilized when hitting flesh, making the bullet particularly effective for a battle rifle cartridge. Multiple assault rifle cartridges have enhanced terminal ballistic effects, some accidentally. The original M193 US spec 556 ammo would tumble rapidly in flesh and frequently break apart at the cannelure, resulting in multiple wound tracks and enhanced performance. The Sov spec 5.45x39 was balanced so it would destabilize in flesh as well. The most pertinent question is: does all this make a difference? I would argue that most soldiers, when shot, seek medical aid. H

I'd expect thermals to be deployed on key weapons 1st, then as they get smaller and cheaper to get deployed to the majority of troops. And it's a truism that for every measure there is a countermeasure. As thermals become ubiquitous expect decoys and spoofs to get deployed too. Not too many foxes or rabbits are going to be making hot lures or setting up thermal screens to block IR. H

Over 300m or so it's difficult to see men in drab clothing that aren't trying to be seen. Because being seen = getting shot at and most troops aren't completely suicidal they tend to hide and reduce expose times. And for those times where you do see people farther away there is always the GPMG. H

Anyone who believes that .45 ACP and 556 NATO have similar wounding effects at close range is seriously delusional*. Col. Cooper was a great guy but he had certain biases when it came to caliber effectiveness. Back to the main subject, I'd expect the semi-auto rifle armed troops to be a a significant disadvantage in woods or towns where the fighting is close up, and less of a disadvantage at longer range. Since the majority of the team firepower comes from the GPMG (with the rifle armed troops mostly serving as ammo bearers and spare crew for the MG) I'd expect the squad to have similar longer range (>200m) firepower to what we have now. H *Google image search "bullet wound xray". The pics you see where bones are shattered and have become secondary projectiles are from rifles. Bones are simply broken or have a hole punched through them are pistol wounds.

Chieftain might have more trouble with T62s than I expected: H

It's pretty much grape shot stuffed into a thin walled tin. Beehive was worse (worse to be on the receiving end of, that is). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beehive_anti-personnel_round H

Since the M60’s armor won’t keep out anything more than a dirty look I’d take increased speed as an alternative. I think the Germans were on to something with the Leopard 1 design criteria. I’m looking forward to trying them out in CW. As far as the French infantry go, I’d expect them to play similar to Brits or Germans of the same time frame. Battle rifle armed line troops supporting GPMGs and AT rockets. H

I'm kinda surprised by the ineffectiveness of VT fuzed shells in urban combat... Not what I would have expected. Thanks for the hard work. H

I suspect it's the autoloader. Losing a crewman can give you a big reduction in the volume you need to protect, making the armor package lighter, which means you can use a smaller engine, that needs less armor to protect it... For example the T64 weighed one more ton than the T62 but had much heavier armor package and a much bigger gun. All that was made possible by the autoloader. H

If the tac AI was better at not being a complete dunce that would be more of a thing. As is I have to micromanage berm drills, reaction to contact, and so forth. H

I suspect the biggest difference is in communication. As a player I have a plan in my head and the plan and any changes are communicated perfectly to my units. Nobody who works with actual humans would think this is the case in real life. H

My history of being disappointed by the M60 has come to a close. A BMP2 attempted a drive by and I had a M60 waiting in ambush. I expected the engagement range to be a bit longer but I can confirm that the front armor an a M60 can take repeated hits from a 30mm auto cannon w/o being crippled. H Pretty good shooting by the BMP gunner with nice tight groups, but just not enough in the end.

I am currently playing as the Americans. Spoilers below: It's currently 1125 and the 1st BMPs are swimming the river. I don't* have anything in the 1/3rd of Rumpenheim facing the river as I feel that anything exposed to the tank company parked across the river is just going to get annihilated. My plan is to deny the free movement of Sov infantry in the town by calling VT on the dismounted troops, the tanks and scout teams with LAWs will deal with the BMPs. Once the promised reinforcements arrive I plan a counter attack to keep a toehold in the city and deny the Sov free movement. The AI plan may be brilliant but at couple of platoons got into a traffic jam at the spot where I had a 155mm contact fuzed mission coming in and a M60 covering from a keyhole position. I don't expect many survivors out of them. So far the big surprise has been the lack of Sov artillery. H *I only ever had some OPs on the riverfront as I was expecting that area to get flattened by Sov artillery. I pulled the OPs in since I plotted the VT mission along the waterfront.

Funny you should mention that, because that's how I played Valley of Ashes too. And come to think of it, also Between Two Fahrbahns. I think I'm detecting a pattern here. Scenario designers like feeding you units in dribs and drabs but if you use them that way you're going to struggle with being defeated in detail. H

I just noticed this detail in the shop posters in Rumpenheim Rumpus. H

I appreciate the feedback and I actually do try to utilize Sov doctrine* when I'm playing them. In my analysis of the situation my plan allowed for: 1) Proper recon. I start with no information about enemy forces but must assume, after the failed attack earlier, that the town is defended. I need to know what enemy forces are where. Since I didn't have any proper recon I used dismounted vehicle crews. If we were able to dismount AT5s from the BMPs I would have pushed those forward too as the motor rifle units arrived. 2) Artillery is the god of war, but it needs time to degrade the enemy. Besides suppressing and attriting the enemy infantry the artillery did manage to immobilize all the M60s and some of the M113s, along with a few direct kills of M113s. ATGM assets were high priority targets for the mortars. I didn't want to save the artillery for the city fighting as the response time for everything excepts the mortars is just too long to be of much use. 3) Achieve the proper correlation of forces. I wanted my direct fire assets to have overwhelming superiority and we achieved that. Anything that exposed itself to the other side of the river was killed quickly. The motor rifle units assaulted across the river as complete companies and just had overwhelming firepower compared to the surviving Americans. Because of terrain I don't have much choice except for a head on assault of an urban area. I was worried that my waiting to begin the assault with the 3rd rifle company wasn't going to allow me enough time to clear the riverfront. If the Americans hadn't surrendered I think I would have been able to secure the riverfront but it would have been much closer. H *My notes on how to play the Sov in the WWII games and CW: Time spent on recon is never wasted. Time and resources spent killing enemy recon is never wasted. Have a plan and execute it. The artillery fire plan dictates the maneuver plan. The maneuver plan dictates the fire plan. These must be mutually supportive. A company of Sov tanks spots better than any single German/American tank. When you attack, attack! Don't poke him with one finger at a time. Make a fist and crush the enemy with overwhelming force. Use a platoon to crush a squad > use a company to crush a platoon >> use a battalion to crush a squad. Fair fights are for suckers. Keep pressing attacks until they aren't feasible anymore, but don't reinforce failure. The Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks. Just because you have mass doesn't mean the only way forwards is a frontal assault. There are other ways to win that don't involve sticking your dick into the meat grinder until it jams. Recon routes that bypass the enemy, the Germans/Americans never have enough troops/tanks to cover every avenue of approach. Infantry infiltration is a thing. Take you time, don't be in a rush to die. You'll probably run out of people, tanks, and/or ammo before you run out of time. Urban warfare: Don't move in the streets. Mouseholing is optimum, then back gardens, then alleyways. Stay out of the streets. Use supporting weapons to create mouseholes and gaps in walls. Don't go in through the front door. If you can arrange it start at the top and clear down. Suppress every building that has line of sight to your maneuvering force. If you can't suppress or smoke it don't move that way.

I'm playing RR as the Americans right now and I'm actually surprised that the Sov artillery isn't currently flattening the town. OTOH I'm 7 minutes in so that can still happen. I've got the M150s working the flanks and some M60s in town in keyhole positions. I have a bare minimum of OPs facing the river because I figure that anything exposed to the other side of the river is going to get obliterated as soon as it is exposed. My basic plan is to try and disable the Sov supporting fires with artillery until the BMPs cross the river then switch to my TRPs in town and blast them with VT fuzed 155mm hate while the scout teams and M60 slow the Sov motor rifle troops up to keep them under arty fire. We'll see how that works out. H

I had 9 minutes left when the Americans surrendered. With the pace I was making clearing the town I wouldn't have been able to clear the entire urban area in the remaining 9 minutes. Most of the opposition in town was the cav troopers who survived the artillery bombardment. They would shoot at and maybe kill my scout teams as they rushed forwards but the fire support team and sometime squad BMP would then rinse the exposed trooper. US 3 man scout teams vs a Sov squad (or 2 squads if they have LOS) + a BMP isn't a real survivable fight for the cav guys. The American reinforcing platoon had a rough time of it too. One squad dismounted into my 3rd company cut off team ambush and were pretty much annihilated. Another squad was trying to get to the castle and got their M113 colandered by 30mm auto cannon fire while a GMG on overwatch killed most of the survivors as they tried to bail out. I don't know what happened to the last squad, I didn't really encounter them before the surrender. H

I tend to agree, OTOH, dribbling troops piecemeal into a fight w/o proper reconnaissance and lacking artillery suppression seems like a good way to end up with a lot of BMPs either on fire or at the bottom of the river. H