Combat Mission: TTP

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎9‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 10:39 AM, Badger73 said:

When you conclude the video, consider adding a still frame at the end that says, "And for new players who want help understanding the basics, hit the 'pause' button and make note of these references here".  Then list whatever source materials you think any newbies could use; FM numbers, military science URL's, youtube links, etc.

Damn, that's a good idea. Are you a teacher by any chance Badger? You seem to have a knack for it.

I just want to say, this project would be crap without everyone's suggestions. Thank you all.

I'm going to start writing this weekend, so yes, the whip is officially cracked, @c3k.

I really do think I had started out on the wrong tack, and rather than trying to forcefully shift the project into a new direction, I'd rather just stop, turn, and restart. It's a bit schizophrenic, but then again, I've never tried something like this before so some teething issues are to be expected.

All the existing material will remain posted until superseded by new stuff.

Thanks again everyone.

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎9‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 5:53 AM, John Kettler said:

The later stuff didn't really affect me much, but that first song was a huge distraction because it was catchy, was something I'd never heard and was martial, too. Killed my attention to the text. If you've got a link to the song, please post it.

I like your titles and LOVE that the pan is slow enough it doesn't break my brain. More generally, it helps effectively show the situation.

Your point about concentrating fire only where it matters is well made, and I like the clear, concise way you present information to the viewers. I found the failed advance looked less like an attack and more like just movement without any real combat purpose.

Did find it a bit odd you used a current manual coupled with WW II infantry. Overall I believe your efforts will be of real benefit not just to newbies but to those of us who've been in this for quite some time.

The song is called: "Richmond is a Hard Road to Travel" It's from a digital copy of a Columbia Records recording. If you google the song title you can find many versions. Being more than 100 years old, there is no copyright held on it.

The video recording style will remain long and slow as best I can.

I performed the first move in that way because I had seen many AAR's on YouTube from inexperienced players, who simply issue quick moves without really planning. To play CM well, you must unlearn some things you get from common RTS games. That is one thing I have in mind.

The manual may be modern, but the knowledge is as old as time itself.

 

20 hours ago, John Kettler said:

My first comment is personal. In watching these videos, and learning how you handle your troops, I marvel you didn't whup me outright and early in our unfortunately broken off fight in Holland.

The music is much better handled. the video in which you switched from captions only to you explaining things was valuable but jarring, too. Felt as though I'd changed realities abruptly. Definitely prefer the captioned approach. One less set of information to have to integrate.

The frontal assault video was quite illuminating, but I felt the attackers had highly advantageous terrain: significant woods and a whole series of walls parallel to the foe.

All battlefield performance is relative, I had no method to contest the open ground, so I resolved to run out the clock, and force you to attack my prepared defense. I'm fairly certain that would have worked.

The planned switch to narration opposed to captions is purely for the sake of efficiency. Far more information can be conveyed more quickly through narration. Captioning these videos has always grated on me, I never wanted to do it.

The terrain was roughly similar on both sides, I made a lot of very small edits to the map, elevation and terrain tiles, types of walls, etc. A frontal assault like that really can only succeed if there is plenty of real hard cover available. Advancing across an open field into a prepared defense is practically impossible, without an enormous superiority in firepower. Given the 1:1 ratio of attacker to defender in the example, superiority is lacking.

 

11 hours ago, Erwin said:

One question regarding the part about moving an HMG in a building.  I thought that in CM2 (thanks to a patch), when moving a support weapon a short distance, that the unit does NOT have to undeploy and then redeploy (taking many minutes).  ie: it simulates picking up the entire deployed equipment and carrying it a dozen feet and plunking it down again for immediate use.

If such is true, I was not aware of it at the time. I'll take note of this and be sure to test before making further content on the subject.

I'm glad even some old timers get value from this project, it's a very nice compliment.

I won't have anything to post until next weekend at the earliest, so please be patient everyone. What spare time I have is divided among many projects, and overruled by sheer procrastination.

[John Kettler]

SLIM,

Have now watched through the complete Part 4. Some observations--other than the excellent content, tremendous education I'm getting, coupled with growing feelings of CM inadequacy:

1. While there's no doubt the Americans beat the tar out of the Germans here, were this for real, the victors probably don't feel like it, given 1/3 of the guys have been hit. Frankly, the casualty count made my stomach clench. Perhaps the product of reading so many grunt accounts and excerpts?

2. It's been a while, so my recollections may well be wrong, but weren't bazookas part of a heavy weapon section (?), rather than line infantry? Don't recall whether there were actual teams or just weapons held and parsed out as needed, along with the bipod .30 LMG. The only US Army infantry units I know of with a (gulp) bazooka in every squad were Armored Infantry.

3. I know this is a training map, but it seems to me US hard cover is much better and more extensive than German hard cover. How well protected are the Germans in the woods on the American right relative to the Americans behind their series of walls?

4. It may be simply the result of your keeping the camera on the American side of the map, but the German fire seemed desultory, rather than serious lead flinging. Pop. Pop. Pop. Brrp. Rinse. Repeat.

5. Meant to say this earlier, but in the earlier video, when you were showing the differences among the CW, German and US forces, you talked about the criticality of the MG-42 to German combat performance. The videos show that when the Americans start to take lumps, they, as the industrial expression goes, fail soft. This is because the squad is bigger and because the loss of one man causes incremental firepower loss. Really impressive to watch all those GIs on line and cracking away with their Garands. By contrast, both the Germans and the CW, both of which have smaller squads, suffer major drops in squad fire generation effectiveness per man hit, and both can fail hard if, for the Germans, the LMG is taken offline or, for the CW, the Bren goes down. I have considerable experience with the drastic effects of German LMG loss from playing a lot of AH's Up Front, be it the jam which won't clear, the weapon breaking or its loss because of terrain played upon the team. For the Germans, the LMG is the basis of the squad's firepower, with the riflemen there in support. Since I played mostly US vs Germans, I can say that BAR problems, depending on range, generally were in the realm of annoying--unless its incapacity prevented the use of nasty fire cards!

6. Very effective siren song singing, calling me away from CMBS. Haven't played CMFB at all, either. So many games; so little everything needed to play them.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

[Badger73]

1 hour ago, SLIM said:

Damn, that's a good idea. Are you a teacher by any chance Badger? You seem to have a knack for it.

<snipped>

Thanks again everyone.

I manage IT projects for a living using skills I picked up during 4 years active service in the US Army; analogous to pushing string and herding cats.  Teaching skills apply but the knack is mostly about communicating among multi-cultural teams (which both army troops and CM players well resemble!).

Thank you instead, @SLIM for taking the initiative to accomplish this!

Edited September 24, 2016 by Badger73

[General Jack Ripper]

17 hours ago, John Kettler said:

1. Frankly, the casualty count made my stomach clench. Perhaps the product of reading so many grunt accounts and excerpts?

2. It's been a while, so my recollections may well be wrong, but weren't bazookas part of a heavy weapon section (?), rather than line infantry?

3. I know this is a training map, but it seems to me US hard cover is much better and more extensive than German hard cover. How well protected are the Germans in the woods on the American right relative to the Americans behind their series of walls?

4. It may be simply the result of your keeping the camera on the American side of the map, but the German fire seemed desultory, rather than serious lead flinging. Pop. Pop. Pop. Brrp. Rinse. Repeat.

1) Indeed, frontal assaults without numerical superiority would pretty much be the worst case imaginable. I tried the same attack again on my own time, with a couple HMG42's added to the German force, and none of the Americans even made it to the first wall. There were 12 casualties inflicted while attempting to gain fire superiority, and the first maneuver element was easily wiped out.

2) As far as I know, the bazookas were re-assigned as a company level asset sometime in 1944, being removed from the weapons platoon.

3) Both sides have stone walls fronting their positions. The woods on the German side are the thick type with 3 trees per spot, with heavy woods ground type. Until the Americans reached the first wall, all of the German positions were on a reverse slope, making area fire impossible.

4) The massed fire from the American attackers caused many casualties rather quickly among the first few turns of the attack. The Germans lost two of their three LMGs in the initial exchange of fire, hence the lack of firepower displayed.

 

[John Kettler]

On 5/9/2016 at 11:49 PM, SLIM said:

I do apologize for the delay, it is 71% my fault

SLIM,

Who, then is the culprit for the other 24%?! Have finished watching your MG Tutorial, which I found educational. Some comments.

1. The typical configuration for the MG-42 in LMG configuration wasn't with the snail drum but like this, and there was an assistant. Sometimes, he got to sub for the bipod! This isn't to say the snail drum wasn't used, for here we have a gunner with the snail drum in place (for prompt fire) and the belt (for more sustained shooting). He happens to be in the SS near Caen.

2. Combat during the Korean War showed the usable weapon range, sans on-weapon optics, was 600 meters. The HMG-42, if you will, has a telescopic sight which no Allied HMG has, which should give it a leg up when shooting past that. Another neat trick I've seen is for the Germans to pick up the fully deployed HMG and either low carry it with the legs at about waist height or carry it shoulder high.

3. While the deployment times into a house may seem high, speaking as someone who caught a Ma Deuce when it was being removed from from the MG turret of an M60 following Armed Forces Day, just the MG alone is a beast. Carrying that thing up three stories of stairs is horrifying to contemplate.

4. I think it's worth pointing out the fundamental difference between MG design philosophy of the Germans and everybody else. The sequence beginning in this War Department film makes the German MGs look bad, but this is a test vs static targets, not against briefly exposed ones the German MGs were designed to defeat. I daresay the results wouldn't be so US favorable vs briefly exposed targets scattered throughout the overall zone of fire.
 

On a completely unrelated note regarding our MG outing, I did not show sufficient speed or aggression. May have to turn in my Corcorans! I freely admit your defense looked scary when revealed. I tried to do all that textbook stuff so I wouldn't get my guys massacred in the open fields, but that took forever and still got me spots on very little of your force, despite having lots of scout teams forward.

Regards,

John Kettler

 

[Bulletpoint]

On 9/24/2016 at 11:13 PM, SLIM said:

The woods on the German side are the thick type with 3 trees per spot, with heavy woods ground type.

Maybe you chose this for teaching purposes to show how much cover and concealments forest terrain can give? But this is the most dense forest the game is able to produce, and I find it to be exaggerated for most purposes, especially for quite open countryside like this. I recommend using splotches of light forest intermixed with open squares, then maybe a few heavy forest tiles to represent the thickest parts of the undergrowth. In my opinion, it looks better and plays better.

[General Jack Ripper]

5 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Maybe you chose this for teaching purposes to show how much cover and concealments forest terrain can give?

That was the terrain present on the map. I didn't modify that part of it.

[General Jack Ripper]

I know there are a few of you waiting patiently for this, so I thought I'd throw a bone:

 

 

Work on the new series is ongoing. Recording gameplay for animation purposes is a bit more difficult than I thought.

Working weekends remodeling a kitchen, and painting a house also tends to slow things down a bit.

[mbarbaric]

thanks for making these. really look forward to it.

[General Jack Ripper]

This is an unlisted preview release. Please criticize, comment, or whatnot:

If there is some glaring flaw with this, I will re-render it, otherwise any format corrections or suggestions will be incorporated into the next video.

I WILL be replacing the old TTP videos with these new ones. I can no longer stand the awful, second-rate production quality of the old videos.

I've also bought myself an actual microphone, so the quality of voice narration should improve in part two.

Edited December 15, 2016 by SLIM
I'm an idiot.

[General Jack Ripper]

THE VIDEO IS BEING RE-UPLOADED TO FIX SEVERAL TYPOS, it will then be made public.

[GerryCMBB]

Really nice of you to do these. I had started watching the ones about the composition of squads. Great stuff. 

[General Jack Ripper]

Here's the final product.

[General Jack Ripper]

3 hours ago, GerryCMBB said:

Really nice of you to do these. I had started watching the ones about the composition of squads. Great stuff. 

Thanks. I'm glad you like it.

[Txema]

Very nice video !

Thank you very much, Slim !

Txema

[IICptMillerII]

@SLIM I just realized that even though I've been following this thread since you started it and watching all of these excellent videos as they've come out, I completely forgot to leave you an encouraging message here! These videos you're making are fantastic! A great aid to players new and old alike! For example, I found the videos that go over certain squad rates of fires at varying ranges very informative. Everything else is great! Definitely a worthy successor to the famous Armchair General CM Tactics videos. 

If I have one bit of constructive criticism to give you, it would be this: I think it would be helpful for you to show the tactics and techniques in a full scale battle. Doesn't have to be a huge battle or anything like that, but a practical application of everything would be a nice way to sum things up/drive things home. 

I know that your aim is to have a finer detail than the ACG videos, so if you are building up to a full scale battle where you show everything then that's fine, I'll just have to be patient! 

Looking forward to the next installment!

[General Jack Ripper]

1 hour ago, IICptMillerII said:

@SLIM I just realized that even though I've been following this thread since you started it and watching all of these excellent videos as they've come out, I completely forgot to leave you an encouraging message here!

If I have one bit of constructive criticism to give you, it would be this: I think it would be helpful for you to show the tactics and techniques in a full scale battle.

Looking forward to the next installment!

Well thank you for the wonderful encouragement!

Full-Scale Battle will be coming up eventually. The plan is to go to Platoon, then Company, then Battalion-Level video features.

I am also looking forward to the next installment, mostly looking forward to having a few days off of work so I can sit down and write.

4 hours ago, Txema said:

Very nice video !

Thank you very much, Slim !

Txema

No, thank you very much for watching!

[GerryCMBB]

Just curious if you have analyzed vehicles in some videos the way you have broken down squads and platoons.

[General Jack Ripper]

4 hours ago, GerryCMBB said:

Just curious if you have analyzed vehicles in some videos the way you have broken down squads and platoons.

Not yet, and I likely won't get into that anytime soon. That's a whole other can of worms.

Just doing the Sherman Tank and it's variants would probably take a couple hours of video

[IICptMillerII]

6 hours ago, SLIM said:

Full-Scale Battle will be coming up eventually. The plan is to go to Platoon, then Company, then Battalion-Level video features.

This is what I assumed, but wasn't entirely sure so i decided to mention it. Great to hear you're already planning to do this. Very much looking forward to it!

[GerryCMBB]

8 hours ago, SLIM said:

Not yet, and I likely won't get into that anytime soon. That's a whole other can of worms.

Just doing the Sherman Tank and it's variants would probably take a couple hours of video

I understand. Some beginning players in the future might find it helpful to see a higher level treatment of how to play tank vs tank or AFV vs AFV in a more general treatment - how the different nationalities tanks match up, what match-up to shoot for and avoid, etc. More higher level that what you were thinking with the Sherman even though there is overlap of course. In general some things are fairly obvious but in your squad videos you showed how things are very detailed and may not be obvious to the neophyte.

I should also add to ignore me! I shouldn't be asking for things when I am not 100% sure I will be playing the game. Keep doing your great stuff.

[General Jack Ripper]

On ‎12‎/‎17‎/‎2016 at 5:00 AM, GerryCMBB said:

Some beginning players in the future might find it helpful to see a higher level treatment of how to play tank vs tank or AFV vs AFV in a more general treatment - how the different nationalities tanks match up, what match-up to shoot for and avoid, etc.

I should also add to ignore me! I shouldn't be asking for things when I am not 100% sure I will be playing the game. Keep doing your great stuff.

That's a perfectly valid point. Covering at least the basics of tank vs. tank combat would make a good addition. I had already planned to do a video about using combined arms, but I could also put one together with pure armor.

I will not ignore you, you're not the boss of me!

[GerryCMBB]

2 hours ago, SLIM said:

That's a perfectly valid point. Covering at least the basics of tank vs. tank combat would make a good addition. I had already planned to do a video about using combined arms, but I could also put one together with pure armor.

I will not ignore you, you're not the boss of me!

[General Jack Ripper]

Here is the next installment of the new TTP videos:

Yes, I sound like a robot. No, I will not be re-recording it. Screwing up the narration is what caused this in the first place.

The next video will be an unscripted Appendix about supporting weapons.

Edited January 11, 2017 by SLIM