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Question about Russian campaign


mvp7

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I have been crawling trough the first Russian campaign mission for a few days now. An optimist could say that the battalion would still make a fine company...

Do I have to use this battalion again during the campaign without it getting reinforced? I'd hate to spend days on these huge mission if in the end I would be completely stuck mid campaign because of these losses.

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Could be that too :) but I'm only getting to the second line and losses among rifles are around 50-60%.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that Pak 40s have extremely strong shrapnel effect? Pretty much every round that hits ground kills 2-3 guys tens of meters away from explosion. They are doing more destruction than most artillery even when hitting a swamp! I just watched Pak 40 survive six 80mm mortar hits less than 5 meters away and the gun was only 10 meters away from 300mm rocket crater.

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By the way, has anyone else noticed that Pak 40s have extremely strong shrapnel effect? Pretty much every round that hits ground kills 2-3 guys tens of meters away from explosion. They are doing more destruction than most artillery even when hitting a swamp! I just watched Pak 40 survive six 80mm mortar hits less than 5 meters away and the gun was only 10 meters away from 300mm rocket crater.

Probably because one target is a big chunk of metal and the other is a bag of mostly water.

edit: that being said, the HE effects of ATGs does feel too strong for their respective classes in CMx2 generally. That could be an issue of misplaced perception though, I have nothing hard indicating that ATGs were necessarily bad at blasting infantry, I just notice a conspicuous lack of comment on their effectiveness in this role when reading accounts of RL action.

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Probably because one target is a big chunk of metal and the other is a bag of mostly water.

edit: that being said, the HE effects of ATGs does feel too strong for their respective classes in CMx2 generally. That could be an issue of misplaced perception though, I have nothing hard indicating that ATGs were necessarily bad at blasting infantry, I just notice a conspicuous lack of comment on their effectiveness in this role when reading accounts of RL action.

I was mainly talking about the crewman who survived all that artillery and kept fighting. But apparently there's some bigger bug involved, I have now had full platoon of infantry firing at the crewman for two minutes from 5-10 meters but the guy just won't die, he took about 50 rounds of smg ammo to the chest like a boss and had two F1 hand grenades explode less than a meter away from him...

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I was mainly talking about the crewman who survived all that artillery and kept fighting. But apparently there's some bigger bug involved, I have now had full platoon of infantry firing at the crewman for two minutes from 5-10 meters but the guy just won't die, he took about 50 rounds of smg ammo to the chest like a boss and had two F1 hand grenades explode less than a meter away from him...

Maybe they really were a race of supermen. Or at least this one guy is.

:rolleyes:

Michael

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Ok, I guess I'm not doing too bad then. I still haven't managed to unlearn Shock Force where victory with more than couple casualties wasn't really a victory at all :D

Are the rest of the Russian campaign mission as big as the first one?

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The first mission is the biggest. I was the one that designed the campaigns this time around and felt we would be doing the whole game a disservice by not having the player experience the scale of Bagration down at the tactical level. Even with this first battle we gave the player more room and less men than was historically present. At some point we do have to consider playability :D

Without any spoilers, I can say that no battle is as big or complex as the first one. Some are actually quite modest in size and scope. There's also quite a variety of situations too. Basically each battle is pretty unique from the others.

As in real life the Soviets lost a lot of men in this push. The campaign recognizes this by heavy rotation of battalion sized formations and also reinforcements. The Germans, on the other hand, lost almost everybody. Only a relative handful of the 256th Infantry Division's personnel made it out of Belarus.

Steve

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IRL the Soviets here had 7:6 superiority in infantry, 3:1 superiority in AFVs, and 7.5:1 superiority in artillery tubes.

The space on the Soviet side of the Sukhodrovka River at the start of the campaign (a.k.a. Soviet Campaign Master Map 1) would have been packed solid with a division + assets, then another division + assets behind it, and eventually the entire 2nd Guards Tank Corps once the Soviets realized this was the place to send them through for deep penetration.

Re: Partisans -- Primarily the effect of partisans in Bagration was more in the German rear, where ops against rail lines, etc., severely limited German ability to reinforce/resupply etc. But that's all beyond the scope of anything within RT. But the German front collapsed so fast that those logistical effects never even had time to matter.

I did include Partisans as one of the Random Events in my operational layer game (see the RT mods forum). It's something that can strike a German HQ or small platoon-sized unit, outpost, rearguard, etc., that's in forest and a given distance from any friendly troops.

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One of the great things about CM is that it doesn't cater to any one particular type of player. Some people LOVE the mega huge battles. These are the guys back in CMx1 days that would play with a regiment or more, even if the got only 5fps while playing. There are others who are thrilled to play a battle with nothing more than a reinforced platoon. And of course people that like something in the middle. I think most people like a mix of things, but prefer one size more than another. CM offers all of that.

I will say that traditionally our Campaigns have shied away from really big battles because (I think) most people prefer not to play them. This huge one we're talking about is the exception to that rule. It is pretty much unique to all campaigns from all CM games. Like I said in my previous post, I think we'd be doing this entire game an injustice by not having at least one glimpse of what Bagration was all about.

Steve

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I'm mostly a "reinforced platoon" kind of guy. But when I do play a big battle, I tend to kind of arrange my units in some sort of reasonable order and then send the entire battalion (or maybe individual companies) forward, usually on Hunt, sometimes on Move. And even once the fight is joined, I tend to use companies as the smallest maneuver unit. At that level, I don't have time for the whole "crossing their lines in the mist on our hands and our knees" thing. :D

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BTW, the first version of mission 1 had TWO Russian infantry battalions. THAT was massive. :D

I don't think having only one Battalion takes too much away. When you read up on june 22-23, you see that even though the Soviets often had up to 10:1 superiority in certain sectors, many of the attacks were in waves, i.e.:

1-initial attack by 1-2 battalion;

2-if 1 is unsuccesful, then second attack by reserve battalion;

3-if 2 is unsuccesful, then repeat 1+2 with another Regiment, etc.

The Germans had good defensive positions, excellent defensive terrain in that area and were at full strength. Their big problem was that they were too spread out and really had no reserves so the Russians just had to keep piling on until they broke through.

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I think the first battle was a great one, the feel of the Belarus forrest and the massive attack, the second mission also great but in another way and then :

mission 3, wauw, maybe the best map I have ever seen and my favorite kind of scenario

attack on a village, Battlefront has hit the eastern europe "touch" perfect you can all

look forward to this mission, its just fantastic.

LF

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Lucas, you'll want to try the Run the Gauntlet scenario. I think you'll find it meets your desire exquisitely!

gawd I never did finish that one. Brutal, absolutely brutal

Truth be told, me neither.:)

Nor me ! ;)

That should tell you everything you need to know, Lucas...

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i love the big fights with historical formations, my last battle was a scenario in CBN near caen fight with SS.Pz.Rgt.9 SS.Pz.Gr.Rgt.19 parts Pz.Art.Rgt.9 and Regiments Troops vs parts fr II.Canadian corps map 4 x 4 km run constand and no lags problem was the loong load time fr map ca. 10 min after this no problem was a epic battle... : D

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