Halmbarte
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Posts posted by Halmbarte
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This APC has had orders to move up (to resupply ATGMs) several times. For the last 3 turns I've give it orders to move up and it doesn't move and the orders are cancelled by the next command phase.
Any ideas? Link to save game here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yiogteqqot3oslu/Brutal! 006.bts?dl=0
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14 hours ago, panzermartin said:
Something just struck me that probably the Russians send a lot of green troops ill equipped and I'll prepared to pretend they are a larger force and cause UKR to surrender more easily. When this didn't happen those naturally dissolved, with no ammo, fuel or specific mission. Maybe that 40km long convoy is the same case. Also I have read reports that indicate they used green troops in the start in several occasions, as probes and reccon to reveal enemy defenses and now more experienced troops are taking over. Sounds cynical but I think CMBS shouldn't try to portray this stuff in the core design , they are easily editable mission specific things
That does map onto how the Soviets started fighting the Germans in WWII.
The problem was the Germans didn't win quickly enough, so they ended up giving the Soviet army a pass/fail education in effective combined arms operations.
The result of the final played out in Berlin in '45.
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3 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:
I think the only lesson learnt here is that if you attack without logistics and a proper plan, and with extremely poor morale, you're not going far.
If your plan is heavily dependent on the defending army throwing down their weapons and their leadership buggering off to the West you're going to run into severe problems when those two things don't happen.
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7 hours ago, The_Capt said:
Not sure if it was intentional. When I built the Soviet Campaign, I pretty much started with the US defence position (in all but mission 4) based on the KZ concept. The fact that there were hidden approaches just sort of happened, but I guess it would be true of any defensive position. What is more telling is that I am watching players go "nope" at the obvious KZs while the entirely of US Active Defence doctrine was for the Russians to "not do that". The Soviet Campaign is hard, by design, but based on US doctrine a that time it should be unwinnable, which it clearly is not.
Mission 2 - Eiterfeld was pulled directly- well the map was- from a US Army wargame they had sent around back in 1979 (Bil got a copy): dkreview.pdf
Here you can see the obvious KZs in the center of the map (we pulled up the South side a bit but it pretty much matches). However, players as Soviets keep taking Hill 446, which is simply not "the plan". My sense is that Active Defence would work very well if you are fighting a zombie horde but living intelligent human beings, even ones with a centralized and templated doctrine are probably going to go "nope".
Even the dimmest Modern Soviet Man can see there are better ways to shut down the American meat grinder than by sticking your arm into it until it seizes.
Playing as the Soviets in either WWII or CW I'm always going to try infiltration and recon with the hope of finding an unguarded path to the enemy rear that can be exploited. You don't always have time for finesse and there are occasions where you have to do a full frontal assault. But just because you have a force that's pretty good at hey diddle diddle straight up the middle doesn't mean every tactical problem should be solved that way.
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6 minutes ago, Simcoe said:
For sure. Would be fun to have a '79 soviet campaign to beat up on those yanks for a change!
There already is such a thing in the base game.
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2 hours ago, Simcoe said:
I swear AT-4's are the strongest weapon in Soviet arsenal. Absolute wunder weapons.
They give up a little range to the TOW but they will kill everything the Americans can bring before the M1 is a thing, they are actually man luggable, and the supporting vehicle has loads of reloads.
The Sov in '79 are scary. They have good kit and the doctrine to use it well.
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4 hours ago, Free Whisky said:
I did consider going left, actually. But it was a long way to the objective and going left meant that it would be slow going, with all the dunes that the enemy could be hiding behind and the forrests that could contain enemy units. I feared that Megalon would have plenty of time to shift his defences to that side of the map if I did. Ofcourse, I didn't know that he didn't put anything there.... Plus, I really would have needed to stick to the roads because of the mudfields in that area. I took two BMP's and one BRDM off road on the left side of the map and one of the three was immobilized in the mud. If there is a world where I would have gone left, it would have been a world with dry ground, I suppose.
yes, I suppose that you could say BMP's have a hard time defeating armor. But I would argue: so does everything that's not armor, in a general sense
. Getting around eighteen cannon wielding, ATGM-toting vehicles with every single infantry company is one of the main selling points of the Soviet army for me. Imagine if I had attacked as the US Army and I had lost my tanks like I did in the video... It would have been harder to continue the fight with M113's rather than BMPs I believe, even if the US Army infantry has dragons.
The BMPs have more firepower if you’re going to stay mounted and fast moving, but the BTR company has ATGMs that are the equivalent or better of the Dragon (lighter and they have more AT7s) and access to AT4s, which are almost as capable as TOW and much more mobile.
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On 2/13/2022 at 9:40 AM, Warts 'n' all said:
I've never heard of Black Lagoon, sorry.
Insane manga/anime about some couriers in SE Asia running a PT boat 'delivery' service. Balalaika is the name of the head of the local Russian mafia group. Real fun people...
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Everything has a cost, even in a command economy like that of the Soviet Union.
If the Sov decided to upgrade all their tanks with thermal sights, what new equipment would they have to forego or other upgrade would need to be canceled?
With hindsight not upgrading to thermals was a mistake, but it wasn't nearly as obvious at the time. The NATO countries felt that they were behind in numbers of tanks and were going for a qualitative edge to offset Soviet numbers. The NATO countries could also leverage the West's strengths in electronics manufacturing to make each thermal sight made a smaller chunk of the available GPD.
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On 2/6/2022 at 3:03 PM, Warts 'n' all said:
I think you'll find that there are three distinct accents in that area. North Lancastrian, Westmorelandish, and Cumberlandish.
In the meantime, getting back on track. What does 2022 have in store for me? Pretty much catching up on 2021 and playing Fire and Rubble, or The Balalaika Boys Take Berlin as it should have been called.
Black Lagoon reference or...?
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On 2/11/2022 at 7:44 AM, Probus said:
The forces amassing over there are getting ridiculous. Is this just sabre rattling by Russia or are they going to pull the trigger?
They kinda remind me of Robotech.
A lot of the squadrons have been around since WWII. I suspect that Robotech took some inspiration from them.
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I noticed that the point values for the 2S3 SP battery seem to be odd. The 2S3 with cluster munitions is 40% the cost (discounting rarity) of the 2S3 with HE, although the cluster equipped 2S3s do have 60% of the ammo of the units slinging HE.
Is the point cost and ammo quantity deliberate or an error?
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On 2/9/2022 at 8:29 PM, Simcoe said:
That shot with the M60 really highlights how terrifying a tank would be in real life (never had the chance to see one yet). I could only imagine the balls of someone taking out a tank with an RPG/Bazooka/etc at close range.
A tank unaccompanied by infantry should be the unit that in danger. Modern infantry can wreck tanks from the top, rear, or sides and the tank crew have very poor situational awareness.
You can see that starting in the Western European campaigns in 1944/45. Tanks can't just roll over infantry anymore as the infantry has PIATs, bazookas, Panzerschrecks, and Panzerfausts and just kills the tanks.
And the Soviet RPG is a better weapon than any of those and every squad has one.
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5 hours ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:
Wonder if the engine was modelling the M901's loading hatch as open?
No, they had some close hits earlier and had already buttoned up. You can kinda see the hole in the roof right by the TC’s hatch.
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Never seen this before. I was dropping a 120mm mortar smoke mission on this M901. Apparently a 120mm mortar bomb will penetrate the roof of a M901 and I'm supposing not do the crew too much good.
https://i.imgur.com/TFR6kh7.jpg
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With Sov tactics the structure makes more sense too. You'd not send a single platoon off to do anything important, you send the entire company. The Sov company has the larger command structure and key weapons available to it to make it more capable.
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On 12/31/2021 at 1:11 PM, John Kettler said:
Have to say I do find it of interest that the Russian ammo load is slightly larger as to round count than the American one, despite AK-47 ammo being considerably heavier than US 5.56 mm. Would also like to know if a pretty common US practice was followed in this period: each man carrying one LMG belt and one 60 mm mortar round?
Regards,
John KettlerThe 1st rate Sov troops in game are armed with 5.45x39 weapons, including their RPKs, which makes their small arms ammo weight similar to if not less than the Americans, who are hauling around 7.62 NATO belts for the M60s.
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9 hours ago, domfluff said:
The M60 isn't really an "LMG" in any definition of the term, and that really defined its use. It was judged that it was too much for one man to operate, and that it would ideally have a team of three.
The mechanised infantry had five to distribute over the platoon (CMCW has this as "heavy" squads with 2x M60, 1x Dragon, "medium" squads with 1x M60, 1x Dragon, and "light" squads with 1x M60 - on-paper would then be 2x Heavy, 1x Medium in CMCW terms).
The leg infantry didn't have a MG at the squad level. Instead the M60 was crewed in two teams of three (the MG squad), at the platoon level, to be attached or deployed where appropriate.
I don't have figures to hand for common ammo loadouts for the M60, but from memory each of those three men carried 1000 rounds or so, but that might be more for the two which weren't the gunner - I haven't checked in CMCW to see how that is modelled in-game. The US loadout of the period wouldn't be carrying mortar rounds or M60 belts above that, I suspect. The mech infantry only had them at the squad level because they had an M113 to carry the load for them.The M60 was intended to replace the BAR in the LMG role w/o a tripod and to replace the M1917 in the heavy MG role with a tripod. That the M60 wasn’t a great GPMG shouldn’t be too controversial a statement but it was intended to be used as a LMG.
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4 minutes ago, Armorgunner said:
I´m to the bone, a true anti Soviet believer. But in the 60th, and 70th. Soviet know that they had, to have a large numerical superiority. And in "Big Mac Index" I think their numerically superior force, was not more expensive for them.
And @The_Capt Hand on the bibel. Did not Nato, and the US have plans. Both for offensive, and defensive operations? In the cold war, both sides had plans for every thinkable scenario. But after the Iron Curtain falled. Some of the Warsawapacts plans came out in the light. And the ones that got most attention, is the offensive ones.
War was probably close, a few times. But I think, neither side really wanted it! But at the time, we all belived that the other side wanted war. And a strong Army/Air Force/Navy, was the only thing preventing the opposit side, to make a move! I´m glad, that the trigger needed to start things, never happend. Becouse in the nuclear armsrace age, anything bad could had happend!
Just my thoughts
Every competent military has plans for everything, even an invasion by the armies of Middle Earth*. Just because the USN had plans for a naval war against the UK** didn't signal the intent.
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*Tip of the hat to C Stross: https://www.amazon.com/Nightmare-Stacks-Laundry-Files-Novel-ebook/dp/B016JPTNZW/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0
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Spoilers:
The easy way up the road is a death trap.
It takes a long time but the BRDMs and BTRs can drive thru the forest on the left and right and drop your ATGM teams and GMG teams in locations overlooking the town in the forests. Tanks can support by fire from the right hand forest. You can then do a BTR supported infantry assault from the left rear of the town once most of the US vehicles have been taken out.
It's a long wait for the vehicles to drive ever so slowly thru the woods but you have enough time.
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33 minutes ago, Sgt Joch said:
One point to keep in mind is that the western view of Russian tactics has been heavily influenced by German accounts of WW2, notably the notion of “human wave” attacks and that the Russians only won because of overwhelming numbers which makes you think that the Russians just used WW1 tactics. This is wrong IMHO.
As far as I can tell, the Russians used the same infantry tactics in 43-45 on attack as the Germans and Western Allies used, i.e., fire and movement, use of cover, short sprints, etc. The major difference is that the Russians were less concerned about casualties, so they would tend to press an attack when a U.S. commander would be more likely to stop and call in artillery.
The Germans taught the Sov Army how to fight in WWII. It was a pass/fail course with failure = dead.
By the end of the war the red army is pulling off sophisticated operational deep maneuver warfare that's up to Heer early war standards, while the Germans are executing Stalinesque 'not one step back' tactics that waste their army.
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2 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:
The Red Army needs no unit dispersion. Unit dispersion is for armies who intend to brake, to slow down, or to retreat. But the people's glorious cause of socialism has no brake! Comrade Commissar has cut the brake lines. There is only one direction of advance, into the heart of imperialism. Only one speed, top. Our glorious Air Force will stop the capitalist's bombs, our brothers in the artillery arms will silence their guns. And we will race forward with an "Ura!" on our lips.
Have you been drinking the hydraulic fluid again, comrade?
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3 hours ago, BeondTheGrave said:
Not one step back, Comrade. Or else.
I do not believe that your unit dispersion is within norms, comrade!
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One thing that I have learned is that Sov pattern troops will burn through their basic load fast when doing suppressive fire. I run them back to the BTR/BMPs to get more ammo during lulls in the actually shooting.
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bug?
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
It all looked good, also tried to back out in reverse, no joy. I will try rotating in place. H