C^3 and Armor

[Guest wwb_99]

One thing which is not modeled at all in CM is Command, Control and Communticatons vis-a-vis armor. All tanks are presumed to be their own HQs (I guess). There are never any difficulties in coordination of armor which are not user-generated problems.

But this situation is contrary to reality; tank platoons and teamwork were vital to armored operations. For example, in 1940 the Wehrmacht had inferior tanks yet punished the French and British armor in every major encounter. The German advantage lay in their superior coordination of assets. Much of that coordination was beyond the scale of CM, but a fair amount of it is. What is needed a system similar to the infantry platoons, where there are significant advantages found in fighting under a superior unit's command. There should be an advantage to having a 4 tank platoon rather than a random collection of 4 tanks.

WWB

[dfgardner]

I've found that if you select the entire group of tanks and say, have them "Hunt" together, the tanks tend to cover each other.

In several scenarios I've played, while one tank was being engaged/destroyed by another, the remaining "platoon" engaged the enemy tank.

Using the tanks as Battleships or Death Stars, individually roaming the battlefield reeking havoc works for a time, but I always end up losing them.

[Diceman]

wwb_99: Good point. I think this will be even more important for CM 2 where the lack of radios in Russian armor hurt them badly. Here's hoping Steve and Charles take a serious look at this.

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Pair-O-Dice

"Once a Diceman, Always a Diceman."

[Guest wwb_99]

Yes, tanks do a good job of supporting each other. But therein lies the problem. Mutually supporting tactics require command, control and communication (C^3). As it stands now, this is presumed and constant. For example, take a your 4 tank 'platoon.' There is no platoon leader, so the unit cannot suffer command penalties like an infantry platoon who lost its HQ. Also, the current system presumes a similar level of tatical cooperation among combatants. Granted coordination among the combatants portrayed in CMBO are pretty similar. But as Diceman has pointed out, there was a major difference between Russian and German C^3 capabilites. For example there was exactly one 2-way radio in the entire city of Stalingrad in October 1942 on the Soviet side.

WWB

WWB

[Guest wwb_99]

bump

[Doug Beman]

For CM, BTS decided to forgo modeling C3 for vehicles, as the coding work necessary would have been large. I don't recall the reasons right now, but doing a SEARCH on "command" or "radio" should return some useful threads.

It is also my hope that CM2 will feature command issues for vehicles. The ability of the Germans to stay coordinated in battle vis-a-vis the Soviets was very important to their ability to remain in the fight as long as they did.

DjB