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Are AT guns too fragile?


DMS

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34 minutes ago, General Liederkranz said:

"Why did I get demoted and put in a penal battalion? All I did was disobey a direct order, leaving the neighboring battalion's flank in the air and exposed to a counterattack"

Oh didn't you know comrade i'm writing this to you from the Gulag they put me in. Pause. It's a video game. So this isn't a valid response to my criticisms. 

34 minutes ago, General Liederkranz said:

You seem to be echoing many of JasonC's concerns about "the typical case," and I think BletchleyGeek had a good reply to that in the same thread: 

No one is forcing you to play the scenario. As I noted, you can even hit "Cease Fire" and it'll still advance you to the next battle in the campaign.

No one is forcing me to buy CM's products but I do anyway and will continue to do in spite of how rude and careless its scenario designers insist on being. It's really refreshing for me to know though that in the 3 years since that topic was had and argued literally nothing was ever done to fix HF's problems and I have no reassurances that the next Red Thunder module will have incorporated any of the lessons learned. If your response is "there were no lessons we got it right" then just write "cuz history" in your next post to save yourself some trouble so I know to just /ignore list.  I'll just go on posting around here minus your stubborn denial. 

 

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25 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

Oh didn't you know comrade i'm writing this to you from the Gulag they put me in. Pause. It's a video game. So this isn't a valid response to my criticisms. 

No one is forcing me to buy CM's products but I do anyway and will continue to do in spite of how rude and careless its scenario designers insist on being. It's really refreshing for me to know though that in the 3 years since that topic was had and argued literally nothing was ever done to fix HF's problems and I have no reassurances that the next Red Thunder module will have incorporated any of the lessons learned. If your response is "there were no lessons we got it right" then just write "cuz history" in your next post to save yourself some trouble so I know to just /ignore list.  I'll just go on posting around here minus your stubborn denial. 

 

This is getting unnecessarily heated.  I am not sure if that is a cross communication issue or not.   Liederkranz was creating (somewhat humorously) the example of a BN commander (as a CM level player) who decided he hadn't liked his order or the battle situation.  He was doing it to make the point that the battle you are presented in any CM scenario is not necessarily one you would chose.  I recently had a player ask me to Beta test a scenario that is deliberately a nightmare scenario for a player commander.  It is also a very realistic concept based on actual events.  The way I look at all CM scenarios is whatever has led up to the current situation is not something under my control.  However no matter how f**ked up it is, I now own it as the commander of my forces and I need to proceed with my objectives in mind and the resources at hand. period.  There are some scenarios that simply aren't something that interests me.  Some of those are likely damn good.  I just have my own interests and some I really like are not going to appeal to other people.

I went back and read that thread.  From what I can tell on it (and I have not played that campaign so I don't really have an opinion) 5 of those who responded that had actually played it liked it.  At least equal to those critical.  So what I get out of that thread - JasonC could be obnoxious, some people didn't like the scenario, some people did, Sgt Joch had actually done a good deal of research which no one actually contradicted.

Given that I would say there is absolutely no grounds to conclude from that thread that there is anything to actually correct. There is an opinion voiced, saying it is assuredly the only correct opinion is a completely subjective statement.  I do not take JasonC's word as gospel.  I have seen him recommend a particular ToE design for a scenario and then later trash the designer for using that exact same ToE.  When called on it he just disappeared for a bit and wouldn't own up to what he had done.  In my eyes that lowers the value of anything he posts.  I can handle differences of opinion, I can handle being proven wrong and having to reassess my view of something no matter how sure I thought I was at start.  Dishonesty I do not tolerate.

You have now repeatedly lambasted most of the scenario designers in a fairly obnoxious manner with only the broadest brush statements about what "they are getting wrong".  I am trying to be objective and welcome you as a new poster, but I have to say I am kind of leaning towards what Gundolf just posted.

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47 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

No one is forcing me to buy CM's products but I do anyway and will continue to do in spite of how rude and careless its scenario designers insist on being.

Pot, meet kettle. Actually that's not fair really because the scenario designer are neither careless nor rude.

 

47 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

If your response is "there were no lessons we got it right" then just write "cuz history" in your next post to save yourself some trouble so I know to just /ignore list.

How about this, as the kids say: "Because reasons". Does that work?

 

47 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

  I'll just go on posting around here minus your stubborn denial. 

You'll be posting to your self in short order. :D

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Perhaps I was being overly snarky, but yes, @sburke is right, my point was that there's a very good reason you lose the scenario if you don't make the attack--you haven't done what you were ordered to do. In real life, there could be dire consequences for that. Since this entire discussion has been about whether the scenario is realistic, I'm not convinced "it's a video game" is a useful response.

11 minutes ago, sburke said:

Given that I would say there is absolutely no grounds to conclude from that thread that there is anything to actually correct.

Exactly. This is becoming a circular discussion.

48 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

If your response is "there were no lessons we got it right"

If this is implying that I'm part of the "we," I should clarify that I had absolutely nothing to do with designing "Crossing the River," CMRT, or any CM scenario.

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I've played the first scenario of Hammer's Flank 3 or 4 times. Never to a finish. (The first time, I found out that a critical FO team was -behind- me (where the camera is at start), and I never noticed it until too late. The benefit of the pre-planned arty was lost... That led to a retry after having played for ~30 turns.) I'm not sure how far along my furthest progression achieved. Pretty far...but not to the end.

It is, simply, not my cup of tea. Also, it could be that my abilities fall short. (As well, I my time is stretched in MANY directions and once I put down a campaign, I hesitate to pick it up again due to the loss of currency regarding what has occurred. In short, I forget about "that" machinegun nest or whatnot and too many men die...needlessly.)

I understand the criticism of the first battle. Having not played beyond that, I will not offer an opinion on anything past what I have experienced. The first battle is hard. I am not "vested" in a campaign until past the first few battles. Having hit my head against the brick wall which is Hammer's Flank, I did not feel vested, so did not pursue a finish to it.

This forum has garnered a reputation in some corners of being unwelcoming to newcomers...especially those with criticisms. 

No, Hammer's Flank is not easy. No, it should not be the first battle/campaign you attempt. Yes, it does present a HISTORICAL challenge to the Soviet side. Yes, many will become casualties. 

The big picture? Criticism can lead to improvement. Couching it so as not to be insulting is as important as being open to hear it...even from new forum members.

But then, I've just had several good pilsners. Shrug.

 

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The problem with any discussion of OBs or TO&E's for any scenario, especially for the WW2 era, is that there is seldom any clarity as to what exactly was present at any particular location at any particular time.  On the Eastern Front in particular, even identifying the correct participants down to the battalion level is typically an impossible task because the documentation simply doesn't exist.  Even in France or Italy where Western Allied and German records are typically much better there are still a lot of unknowns.  The Germans had a lot of ad hoc units where it can be virtually impossible to know what equipment was present or not present and even standardized TO&Es are not so standard once you have first hand accounts or unit specific equipment descriptions available.  I seem to recall that the Hermann Goering Division had one support unit in Italy that was supposed to be an engineer battalion, but only one company was actual engineers.  The other two companies were self propelled artillery and a recon company or something - I don't remember the specifics off hand.  Suffice to say that if you were using a standard TO&E for that unit for a scenario you would be inaccurate in your depiction of the forces involved.  Aside from unit strengths in quiet sectors just before a major attack, virtually no unit on the Eastern Front was ever at full strength with most German and Soviet units being somewhere around 50 percent strength on the high end.  Strength returns for most German battalions were typically much lower than 50 percent, but if a designer chops 50 percent strength off their battalion they are more likely than not to be in the ball park of what might have been present if the exact figure is not known.

I seem to recall Jason complaining about King Tigers, Panthers, and other German tanks being too common in scenarios and I think it can serve as a good example of the problem with that kind of argument.  If I have a book about the 505th Tiger battalion and from that book I manage to find enough material to create four scenarios all with Tigers in them, well then those scenarios are historically accurate.  At least as accurate as I can make them given the reference material that I have available to me.  Saying that out of twenty scenarios there are four scenarios with Tigers in them and that's inaccurate is a faulty argument on its face.  If I recreated four scenarios with Tigers in them and I used reference material from four actual battles that took place that had Tigers in them, the fact that there are four scenarios with Tigers in them doesn't make those scenarios inaccurate.  That's just a ridiculous position to take.

There are so many battles in WW2 that took place and accurate information down to the battalion level that includes specific equipment strength figures is so hard to come by, it is without a doubt more difficult to prove that something is inaccurate since any battle that any designer chooses to create could theoretically have taken place on the battlefield at some point in time during WW2.  With regards to the Red Thunder campaign I think a fair question to ask would be whether anyone can prove that the situation depicted in the first scenario never took place.  There are literally thousands of miles of frontlines to peruse and for someone to sit there and say with any level of confidence that the situation in the scenario is absolutely a false depiction of events is going way out on a limb no matter what 'facts' they are basing their objections upon.

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4 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

The problem with any discussion of OBs or TO&E's for any scenario, especially for the WW2 era, is that there is seldom any clarity as to what exactly was present at any particular location at any particular time.  On the Eastern Front in particular, even identifying the correct participants down to the battalion level is typically an impossible task because the documentation simply doesn't exist.

+1

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Well the problem with JasonC's argument to me is that there is no reason a video game shouldn't make use of the flashiest and biggest. It's exciting to roll a pair of Tigers in a counter attack against a British rail head, and the capabilities of those vehicles make for a playable scenario with multiple courses of action. Which is possibly again why scenarios focused on the Germans tend to just work without modification. In fact the German campaign in Red Thunder is the single best campaign in the whole series to me, and accomplishes that without excessively packing the defender. The maps are large, the timers are long, and your force has a good mixture of units from tanks to armored infantry, engineers, anti-aircraft, and on-map artillery. As a result, your Battalion's actions all break down into Company level events independent of, but not unaffected by one another. It's brilliant really if a little unwieldy. 

That said I think the ratio does need to be taken in the other direction a little but I guess small scenarios are easier to make than larger ones and the terrain maps now included in the games make it very easy to cut out a section of map and make Platoon or Squad level scenarios. 

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I think the problem with wargames using the flashiest and biggest is that it contributes to this Axis-biased hardware-obsessed type of amateur history that skews away from an accurate depiction of the second world war. The frontal armour and main guns of Axis AFVs meant very little in the scheme of strategic, operational, or tactical warfare.

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2 hours ago, DougPhresh said:

I think the problem with wargames using the flashiest and biggest is that it contributes to this Axis-biased hardware-obsessed type of amateur history that skews away from an accurate depiction of the second world war. The frontal armour and main guns of Axis AFVs meant very little in the scheme of strategic, operational, or tactical warfare.

Hear, Hear DougPhresh.  Well said.  Yes, Tigers are great fun.  But they are expensive, unreliable, slow, guzzle insane amounts of precious fuel, and bog easily.  They can't cross most bridges (why does the T34 85 have relatively light armor? -- because at ~30 tons it could cross most bridges, not bog, etc).  Otto Carius' book has him spending half his time trying to unbog his precious tiger.   In a CM battle, the Tigers are already there, have fuel and ammo, and are running.  Which is quite nice when I am the German side, I must say. 

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You would think from how certain segments of the wargaming community go on about fighter aces, panzermen, tank armour, StG 44's and so on that the Wehrmacht had won the war.

 

The better military is the one that wins. Depicting how they won makes for good wargames. Better a Sherman or T-34 that's there than a Tiger with a broken transmission in a separate panzer battalion, 200km down the front.

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10 hours ago, DougPhresh said:

I think the problem with wargames using the flashiest and biggest is that it contributes to this Axis-biased hardware-obsessed type of amateur history that skews away from an accurate depiction of the second world war. The frontal armour and main guns of Axis AFVs meant very little in the scheme of strategic, operational, or tactical warfare.

Perhaps the number of scenarios skews away from the depiction of the war as a whole, but certainly no specific individual scenario can be described as an inaccurate description of any particular tactical situation that is created based upon the available documentation.  Much of the source material available tends to discuss Tigers, Panthers, SS, etcetera in more detail than the other stuff.  Perhaps that wasn't always the case, but many books that were written in the fifties and sixties aren't necessarily available anymore.  I think every US division had a divisional history that was published shortly after the war, but most of those books aren't available and those that are typically aren't detailed enough to be useable as a primary source for scenario creation.  If you look over what's available on Amazon in terms of unit histories, the ones that are available in English anyway, are going to be Panzer Divisions, SS Divisions, and some American divisions.  Even divisional histories of Commonwealth units are relatively difficult to come by, at least on Amazon in America.  Battle histories in general will be done about fighting that was 'important' or 'interesting' from either an operational or strategic perspective and, yes, many if not most of those actions involved German Panzer Divisions or SS Divisions since those were the types of units that were generally present where the action was the hottest or the most important.  There are a few very good divisional histories of standard divisions where some 'common' battle types can be pulled from, but those types of books are probably on the more uncommon side of things.   

So a scenario designer who is making something 'historical' is restricted in the reference material that is available.  The designer also wants to create something that's interesting.  What makes a scenario interesting probably falls into two categories.  A scenario can be interesting if it uses interesting units or equipment or a scenario can be interesting by depicting a certain tactical situation.  Who wants to play ten scenarios that all depict the same tactical situation with the same standard units?  Maybe for players who prefer quick battles I suppose there might be some interest in that, although the player is choosing his own force under those circumstances so the force is personalized to the player who is selecting it.  A scenario needs to strive for more in order to grab the average player's attention and make for an interesting gaming experience. 

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What's about "Hammer's flank", in real life 1-st guards division was in 2-nd echelone. It's battalion made reconnaissance in force before assault, probably that's why German sources say about this division. And campaing author was using German sources, I guess. Inaccurate, but it doesn't change a much. What is more important, there is no solid trench line... If Germans would set such defense with seperated platoon sized positions, Soviet recon units would infiltrate through gaps at night. 

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@ASL Veteran think of it in the context of the Napoleonic Wars: sure the Old Guard and Horse Grenadiers draw all the attention, but they were a very small part of Napoleon's Army, and while present at Waterloo, the actions of the regular regiments were more significant.

Similarly, the handful of elite Germany units (LSSAH, HG, Panzer Lehr) is a very small part of a military that by and large marched on foot and was supplied by horse drawn baggage trains.

It would be nice to have more scenarios or campaigns that depict the actions of a typical battalion or company trying to accomplish a typical mission, in typical terrain with typical equipment.

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11 minutes ago, DougPhresh said:

 

It would be nice to have more scenarios or campaigns that depict the actions of a typical battalion or company trying to accomplish a typical mission, in typical terrain with typical equipment.

That would be something for the user community. For BF there is a limit to the quantity they will do for stock scenarios and that has to cater to a large audience appeal.  Looking at most user created content it does not seem most folks want typical. 

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anyone read the two short volumes of "DDAY through German Eyes"?  Two of the interviewed soldiers had the same experience -- they were captured and brought to the beach and asked "where are all the horses?".  One asked US soldiers this and they all started laughing.

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2 hours ago, danfrodo said:

anyone read the two short volumes of "DDAY through German Eyes"?  Two of the interviewed soldiers had the same experience -- they were captured and brought to the beach and asked "where are all the horses?".  One asked US soldiers this and they all started laughing.

My favorite is Normandieffront D-Day to St. Lo through German eyes.  It was my bible the whole way through my virtual campaign with Broadsword. 

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