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I would be more than happy to see a pre-september release. Pity flame throwers won't be in, but I'm delighted to see the 251/21 will be. Can't wait to see the first screenshots, especially those of the bridges. I remember visiting Oosterbeek/Arnhem and especially Airborne museum Hartenstein as a young boy, it more or less started my passion for history/warfare. If one of you ever will be in the neighbourhood I can recommend it.

http://en.airbornemuseum.nl/

Pretty sensational to be able to recreate those battles. I hope the fog issue will be 'cleared' by then.

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Any chance for changing the behaviour of ammo bearers and their attached weapon unit?

Currently the weapon unit (mortar, MG) uses up their own ammo first and only when it's depleted start to draw from the ammo bearers. Because of this you can't start to send the bearers off to get new ammo before both units have run dry. Which somehow defeats the purpose of bearers (and dumps/trucks).

Could this be done for MG or is that something for v3?

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Steve, regarding ammo supply: right now American vehicles carry paltry amounts of .45 cal ammo, while on the German side, 9mm ammo is in abundance. This makes it hard to keep troops armed with .45 cal weapons properly supplied. Secondly, the only unit from which the player can replenish ammo for the MP44 right now is a bunker. As the game is now moving into late 1944 (when the MP44 became more common), will we finally see German vehicles carrying 7.92 Kurz ammo?

This - buddy-aiding a Stg44 can cripple a squad (since it obviously rates highest on the choice scale - I've seen guys with tons of 9mm ammo turn in their MP40 for an Stg with none ) if the new carrier has no 7.92K and can't get any.

Also as far as I have seen in game, Fausts are only in 250/251's ( and only 1 ). Are they going to make an appearance in trucks along with schreck ammo ?

And grenades as sburke said.

And poesel71's observation about ammo bearers is also a fairly big deal.

Damn, I've joined the "more" crowd. Sorry.

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Steve i am not coding savvy, so please no offence but how can you code and create a large church but not a crashed or landed glider?

Also will you be adding discarded chutes, canisters and dead troopers hanging from trees,buildings or poles as flavour objects?

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Para - I doubt you'll ever see dead paratroopers hanging about. Its not BFC's style, they've never done anything of the sort - dead bodies, cows, even gore for troops we do have being hit.

Also - I wouldnt worry about persistent damage in time for Stalingrad - thats CMx3-x4 territory anyway..

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we just need to be able to acquire grenades, lots of grenades. :)

+1.

Seems to me that infantry in most if not all armies were generously supplied with grenades and more came with ammo resupply. CM troops start out with a fair number, but they don't get resupplied during the course of the battle.

Michael

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...but not a crashed or landed glider?

Do no underestimate how LARGE a glider is. The game would see it bigger than a King Tiger, covering multiple action squares. I don't recall any anecdotes about battles to capture or to defend gliders per se so we're talking mere eye candy.

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Do no underestimate how LARGE a glider is. The game would see it bigger than a King Tiger, covering multiple action squares. I don't recall any anecdotes about battles to capture or to defend gliders per se so we're talking mere eye candy.

I understand that a glider is large but i cant get my head around the fact that we cannot have them as eye candy MikeyD. I also do not understand why a large building can be in the game and not a flavour object like a crashed landed/glider. I obviously do not expect the gliders to be VL's, just eye candy.

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Para - I doubt you'll ever see dead paratroopers hanging about. Its not BFC's style, they've never done anything of the sort - dead bodies, cows, even gore for troops we do have being hit.

Also - I wouldnt worry about persistent damage in time for Stalingrad - thats CMx3-x4 territory anyway..

Fair enough with the dead troopers but i am hoping for the eye candy canisters, chutes etc

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All of the info is great...thanks Steve.

Though I found these two nuggets of info particularly intriguing.

Quick answers:

4. Certainly you can simulate battles besides those of Market Garden. However, without Commonwealth you're going to be naturally limited in what you can/can't cover. With Commonwealth you can do pretty much everything. Except the amphibious landing stuff since we don't have those vehicles available. Yet :D That's the sort of thing a Pack is designed for.

Obviously it's not impossible to have persistent map damage. It's actually quite straight forward. But it's time spent in a place that we feel doesn't have much bang for the buck with the entire customer base. A big bang for some? Absolutely. But I'm sure people would rather us devote the time to something like flamethrowers or something else. So it's not a high priority for us, though that isn't the same as no plans to do it at all (like bridge blowing).

Steve

I know I'm getting waaaay ahead of myself here but there could be some intriguing possibilities for the possible final module in the CMBN family, covering the October & November 1944 battles to clear the Scheldt and the advance to the Rhine. Amphibious assault vehicles (LVTs & Sherman DDs), Crocs & Wasps, Commandos....all the Odds & Sods. :)

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My hunch is that persistent damage isn't much of an obstacle for the current game iteration - it's just a case of a tool function that inputs the relevant data from a .bts game save and outputs it as a .btt map file. Perhaps not as straightforward as some might think because there's a lot of data that such a tool must ignore. Still I don't think it's unrealistic - and I certainly want it!!

Personally, I don't care how long it takes to develop and release MG, the EF continuation or even SF2. I have so much to get on with BN/C and FI/GL (that I still haven't yet touched). I'd be prepared to wait for MG till christmas if it means it will be vastly superior as a result. In fact I'd quite happily settle for a pack and patch in the meantime. Yes, I'm in the more brigade too but I'm prepared to be as patient as is necessary.

Edit:-

Sorry I overlooked this:

Obviously it's not impossible to have persistent map damage. It's actually quite straight forward.

I suspect more people would want this feature than you might think. Do it!!

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Re resupply, is there a coding or other problem re why resupply sources cannot resupply grenades as well as regular ammo?

I also hope that some day BF can streamline the acquire process by simply having units adjacent rather than having to mount/dismount.

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Quick answers:

1. Code is extremely specific for things like vehicles, soldiers, buildings, terrain, etc. One can not compare them to each other. So yeah, a stand alone church is huge, but it is a building. Flavor Objects are their own thing, so the fact that there is a huge church or a 800m long bridge, there's absolutely no relevance to what Flavor Objects can do or not do. And the thought of how absolutely pissed people would be if a huge glider were present that offered no cover or concealment or blocked movement. So even if CM had code to support eye candy (and it doesn't) it would be a VERY bad idea to include it.

2. We can do more with ammo allocations to vehicles now than we could before. But there are still limitations. As for ammo problems with MP44s... well... these sorts of problems did exist in real life. Not as cut and dried as we have it currently, but it's not like every vehicle was driving around with an ample supply of Kurz rounds in real life.

3. No to the Hetzer. From what I remember the first instance of them being on the Western Front was in October. And I'm not sure they saw much combat until later.

Steve

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Michael Emrys,

If you check my post #21 at link below, you'll see I explicitly raised the proper demo charge issue for bridges, which now was a waste of my time. It amazes me that what I had in Tractics (a set of TSR WW II rules for warfare with miniatures), we don't have some 40 years later in a highly sophisticated military sim!

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=109886&page=3

Erwin,

I raised the issue of gliders in that same post, with another rejection. Sigh.

Regards,

John Kettler

So what if you had it in a set of paper rules ? The "coding" for that goes somewhat like - roll two D6 if they equal twelve then Boom.

Denigrating CM because it doesnt have this feature is ludicrous. So - even if they wasted their time coding it - why would it be relevant to a tactical situation ? The only way I can think of one is a particular situation where troops have to reach a bridge before its blown up. So by definition if it gets blown up - the game is over - you want a lot of strenuous effort just to see something go bang - and achive something thats do-able in the tools already available.

Personally I hope BF dont waste time on this and spend it improving things that are actually at all relevant to a tactical game such as amphibious vehicles. If they just did the boats I would be happy - so we could simulate the Waal crossing and evacuation scenarios. Now thats a lot more relevant than a bridge blowing up as far as MG is concerned.

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Steve,

Insignificant number of bridges blown? You must have lots of fingers!

Greece, WW II

http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9832982

Belgium, WW II, from Jump Into Hell, p 34

http://tinyurl.com/q6s6val

Budapest, WW II (multiple bridges)

http://www.bridgesofbudapest.com/bridge/chain_bridge

France, WW II (multiple bridges) D-Day, five bridges by Brit paras

http://www.secondworldwarhistory.com/france-ww2-events-timeline.asp

Denmark, WW II (three bridges)

http://ww2panorama.org/panoramas/langaa

China, WW II pg. 427

http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-PR-Japan/USA-PR-Japan-5.html

Italy, WW II (bridges over the Arno, many)

http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=6841

(Fair Use)

"Sites in and near Florence

To slow the advance of Allied forces, the Germans blew up all the bridges across the Arno except Ponte Vecchio, which Hitler had ordered spared. As you walk across Ponte Santa Trinità to Lungarno, on the left is a plaque noting that this bridge was built in 1569, destroyed by German mines on August 4, 1944, and rebuilt after the war."

(Fair use)

Germany, WW II Cologne (Hohenzollern Bridge)

http://tinyurl.com/p4ektco

(Fair use)

"The three humped Hohenzollern Bridge is one of Cologne's most iconic structures. It must have made an easy target for Allied bombers during World War 2, but despite their repeated attempts to destroy it the bridge remained standing. It was only after the Allied invasion of Germany that German troops blew up the bridge themselves, to slow the Allied advance."

(Fair use)

Germany, WW II (multiple bridges, including one blown immediately after U.S. clashed with Germans on one end of town), p. 144

http://tinyurl.com/qawaltw

Germany, WW II (Oberbaumbrueke, Berlin)

http://www.aviewoncities.com/berlin/oberbaumbrucke.htm

Russia, WW II "Rear Area Security in Russia"

http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/20240/20-2403.html

"In March 1943, the main supply line into the Orel salient was completely interrupted for some time. The break occurred about 15 miles southwest of Bryansk where a double-span railroad bridge crossed the Desna river. The paramount importance of this bridge had been impressed upon the commander of the rear area, and he had been repeatedly warned that the structure was to be protected and kept intact at all costs. The commander had therefore assigned a security platoon with antitank weapons to the task of guarding the bridge. One of the German reliefs which failed to take the proper precautions and was observed by the enemy from the neighboring woods, fell victim to a partisan night attack. The leader of the covering force had neglected to assign his men before nightfall to their individual defensive positions. At the crack of dawn the partisans first made a feint assault from the west. Once they had succeeded in distracting the attention of the security unit, a group of 200 to 300 men attacked the bridge from the east; the guards were overrun and the bridge blown up. The main line was now blocked to all traffic."

Poland, WW II Actions of Polish Underground (38 RR bridges destroyed)

http://www.warsawuprising.com/state.htm

An account of one of the 38 destroyed

http://www.jewishmag.com/59mag/polishtrain/polishtrain.htm

France, WW II Filthy Thirteen destroy bridge over the Douve

http://www.stripes.com/news/filthy-thirteen-veterans-recount-their-antics-during-wwii-1.85075

WW II, Germany Our guys go out to blow up a German bridge, but are beaten to it by the Germans! Pages 1 and 2 here.

http://www.tankbooks.com/ninelives/chapter2.htm

WW II, Holland

Highly detailed investigation into the failed Nijmegen bridge destruction attempt. From BattleDetective.

http://www.battledetective.com/battlestudy16.html

Then, there's that Son bridge, too.

Belgium, WW II Technical Services, The Corps of Engineers Against Germany, pp. 472 et seq. (all that engineers vs Peiper business)

http://tinyurl.com/pyfodrn

The above is by no means complete, but it does serve to make a useful counterargument.

Not that I'll get it anyway, but what I was seeking was a relatively simple model of handling bridge demolition, via time fuze or command detonation, as a function of bridge size and durability. This is what Tractics had, and it was fine for the intended purpose. Was looking for something similar, as opposed to, say, Finite Element Analysis and hydrocode! Bridges could be, and were, rigged for demolition and/or blown up within CM time frames.

Regards,

John Kettler

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Bridges were wired for demolition in WW2 - a fact that nobody disputes. When would a bridge demolition be relevant to the CM time frame? If enemy troops were in the act of crossing said bridge when the demolition took place, or if the demolition took place just before enemy troops crossed the bridge (like seconds or minutes before). Under what circumstances were enemy troops able to cross bridges that were ready for demolition - surprise or confusion on the part of the bridge defenders. In a CM scenario neither of those situations would exist. You can't simulate surprise or confusion in a CM scenario since, by definition, if you are playing a CM QB or scenario your opponent knows that he faces an enemy force.

Keeping in mind that a bridged water barrier is typically going to be impassible without the bridge (why else is the bridge there?), and that if the capture of the bridge is the point of the scenario, then what's to prevent a defending player from simply destroying the bridge in the first minute of the scenario beginning and thus ending the scenario before it even starts? Nothing. If there are no objectives on the far side of the bridge for the attacker to capture then there is no purpose for the attacker to capture the bridge - thus making the bridge irrelevant. If the objectives for the attacker are all on the opposite side of the bridge then once the bridge is blown the scenario or quick battle has ended since the attacker can no longer reach the objectives. If the defending player has control over when the bridge is destroyed, then there is absolutely no situation where the bridge won't be destroyed before the attacker reaches it as your in game opponent will never be confused or surprised.

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