Thin vehicle recon

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

On one thread, someone said of zig-zagging jeeps - "using cheap units as throwaway scouts does seem gamey". On another thread, people are debating SPW-251/1s on point. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the histories say that typical mounted recon forces on the two sides looked like this -

U.S. - 2 jeep MGs plus 1 M-8 with a radio, on "overwatch", seeing what happens to the jeeps and radio-ing reports. 3x .50 cal and 1x37mm to tangle with enemy light armor if necessary. Occasionally a couple of Stuarts instead or in addition, and sometimes M-20s instead of jeep MGs.

German - 4 halftracks carrying scout infantry plus sometimes a couple of armored cars backing them up plus a gun-carrying half-track or three. 1-3 guns 20mm to short 75mm plus 5-10 vehicles MGs to suppress infantry (and incidentally, dust jeeps). Occasionally a Lynx or two.

The Brits had armored cars, scout cars and carriers for this sort of thing. Sometimes Cromwell tanks, too.

There is nothing gamey about leading with a jeep MG, or with an empty SPW-250/1 or SPW-251/1, or with a carrier or Humbler scout car. And when something happens to them, the rest of their platoon sees it and reports it - while also trying to get them out of the jam if possible.

There is nothing different here in principle, from one squad or half-squad in an infantry platoon walking ahead on "point", while the rest of the platoon covers them.

On another thread, someone said it was different because the AI controls firing and will shoot the first thing it sees. Only if you tell it that is what you want to do. You can hide. You can make your own decision to open fire. You can place an ambush marker. You can have one zook team covering the road with an ambush marker, and 2 ATGs hundreds of yards back on simple "hide" without any targets.

There is such a thing as a *fire plan*, as in you cover this spot, and these weapons deal with that threat, and those stand by, etc. There is such a thing as *fire discipline*, aka "don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes". But if you want to have them, you have to order them yourself, after coming up with them.

An example. I like defending with German infantry forces, which get an allowed force mix long on support, but without vehicles or armor. The weapons mix I then use includes infantry, schreck teams, HMGs, FLAK and PAK, artillery with TRPs, and minefields. The PAK are responsible for enemy tanks, and I do not want to reveal them too soon.

That is part of the reason the 20mm FLAK are there. They can dust light vehicles, scout cars and half-tracks and jeeps, without the PAK revealing themselves. But I also have to worry about tanks leading and barreling forward while the PAKs are still hiding, right? No problem.

I use the schrecks with their ambush markers, and infantry at faust range with platoon ambush markers, and AT minefields, to cover likely tank routes. The FLAK do not hide, and cover wide areas. The PAK can place ambush markers, but well behind the areas these other types can engage.

What I plan on is thin skinned vehicles not living long enough to reach these farther PAK ambush markers. Tanks may be stopped by the mines and the infantry ambushes. But if not, the PAK ambushes are next.

That is a fire plan. It includes details about which area is covered, as well as this "tasking by type". I still expect to have to make the decision to "open up" myself. I never expect any defense set-up to just sit there without further orders and handle whatever happens. The orders for the AI (e.g. ambush markers, units not on "hide", etc), are just there to handle decisions that have to be made in less than a minute.

The U.S. uses 50 cals in the place of 20mm FLAK. Rifle grenades will handle light armor that passes close enough, and zooks are obvious. It does not take a Sherman to scratch one halftrack.

For what it is worth.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Sounds pretty intelligent to me. I always thought the anti-jeep revolt was a bit over blown, since they were widely used for recce during the war. There couldn't have been a wildly disproportionate number of them killed or the tactic would have been dropped.

Thanks for posting, Jason.

Michael

[Leeo]

Jason, as always, this was an intelligent and thoughtful post. Though I don't always have the patience/time/inclination to read all of some of the long posts you produce, I am confident in the knowledge that the information you provide has been well thought, often tested, and usually researched historically. Thanks for all you do!!

[JunoReactor]

The boys draw straws to see who goes in for recce? I wouldnt like to be one of them..

"Hey, Johnson, drive that jeep to that clearing over there. We'll be hidden in these trees. If you get pummeled by an AT gun, we'll report back to HQ... and yes, we are expecting to find some hidden on that treeline over there."

"Uhh, OK, sir."

BOOM-KA-BLANK....

Johnson gives his life, but hey, he saved that platoon of Shermans...

-Meanwhile, on the German lines..

"Ya, gamey bastards! They blew ze ambush"

Johnson's soul, hovering 50m over the battlefield, gives the finger to the Germans and ascends to heaven.

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by JunoReactor:

Johnson's soul, hovering 50m over the battlefield, gives the finger to the Germans and ascends to heaven.

[grin] Very amusing. But the fact is those light recce guys were pretty good at not getting blown to hell (or wherever it is that deceased recce guys go). They must have known something, and I would like to know what it was.

I think this whole subject needs a bit more research to test our assumptions against and I, for one, am ready to do some reading. Can anybody provide me with some good book titles? Unit histories of recon groups, personal accounts, etc.

Michael

[Bullethead]

Michael emrys said:

Sounds pretty intelligent to me. I always thought the anti-jeep revolt was a bit over blown, since they were widely used for recce during the war.

But just running with the simple fact that various light vehicles were used for "recon" misses several points IMHO. And these points I consider as going directly to the heart of the whole gamey-ness thing.

In the 1st place, does anybody know the real tactics employed by such units when they did recon? I mean, did jeeps and such cruise all over the potential battlefield in plain sight, or did they just serve as a means to get foot scouts to the desired spot fast enough to stay ahead of the main body? By the latter, I mean that the heavier recon units would overwatch on the approach march, but once the target area had been reached, did the jeep drivers park behind cover, look around it with binos, and scout the immediate area on foot? This of course is impossible in CM, but if real scouts wanted to live long enough to report anything, I bet they did NOT go driving around in plain sight where the enemy was expected to be.

More importantly, I consider this entire recon business almost completely out of context at the scale (as to time, distance, and force size) of a CM battle. I feel this way because I have a "top-down" view of CM. Forces the size of those found in CM battles are only on the battlefield because some general stuck a pin in a map way back at HQ. So there are basically 2 situations for an attacking CM force to be in--part of a diliberate attack, and part of a hasty attack--but in both cases, they are part of a larger context off the map edges, and the key word is attack.

In a deliberate attack, systematic recon has already been done before CM-size battle groups arrive on the map. The mission of the battle groups is to act on this info. CM models deliberate attacks with pre-made scenarios and the recon info available to the attacking commander should be in the briefing. If it's not, the scenario is flawed. But in any case, it's not the business of the attacking force to do the recon--it's mission is to attack. And because it only has a limited time to secure its objectives, it had better get on with it.

A hasty attack, OTOH, is one performed without as much prior recon as you'd like. Like say you've broken through and are exploiting in unexplored territory, or are doing a quick counterattack where the mission is to blunt the enemy's drive ASAP. In both cases, the priority is to attack NOW, not screw around driving jeeps everywhere. CM handles this sort of battle with QBs, where you get no briefing at all.

In both cases, one of the key context problems with systematic recon in a single CM battle is the time scale. In real life, recon info has to take time to get back to the boss, who then has to take time to make plans based on it, then give orders to the next lower level of command, and so on until it finally reaches the riflemen. But CM's spotting system eliminates ALL of this required time by instantly letting everybody know what the scouts are seeing. And, of course, time stands still while the player is making plans for and giving orders to maybe a full battalion based on this info. Thus, recon in CM gives conveys far too much into to far too many people way too soon.

Hand in hand with my view of the over-all context of CM battles is the use of historical OOBs. How often, in real life, did every friggin' reinforced rifle company have its own collection of recon vehicles? Not bloody often, I'd wager, but you'd never know it from looking at the forces frequently picked for QBs. But because people pick such forces to attack with, defenders are forced into equally ahistorical selections to give themselves a "counter recon" capability.

This situation to me is indicative of a "bottom-up" view of CM. It seems that such players view the totality of the universe as bounded by the map edges of this particular CM scenario. Hence, they are unconcerned as to how their force and its mission fits into the overall war context because they view the whole war as their single battle. Hence, they feel they have to provide for every need and are not bothered by selecting historically inappropriate force mixes. To me, it seems like this sort of attitude is a carry-over from RTS games, where the player's forces really ARE the whole show.

Having said all this, there ARE a few situations in which I feel that trying to do systematic recon is appropriate at CM's scale. One is where recon is the whole mission of the attacking side. CM doesn't do too well with this because it figures victory based on kills and flags, not info gained, but this can be worked around outside the game. Another is during an operation, like using a night battle for patrolling to try to find a way around a strongpoint or find good arty targets for tomorrow. This is part of why operations exist, and systematic recon is acceptable in them because they lift the time constraint. There is enough time for the info obtained by recon in 1 battle to get back and plans for the next battle to be made based on it.

OK, that's where I'm coming from. I imagine a goodly number of others have a "top-down" view of CM as well. So when guys who think like me see somebody doing systematic recon in a stand-alone battle, with recon units he probably shoulnd't have to begin with, and using them in a way they probably weren't used in real life, we're prone to say "GAMEY!" Perhaps "gamey" isn't the correct term. Maybe instead we should say "unrealistic and ahistorical", or even "immersion-destroying". OTOH, the guy doing such things sees nothing wrong with it based on his "bottom-up" CM worldview. Thus, we have all these threads on "gamey recon". And they will never end as long as there are 2 views of the CM battle's context.

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-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

[retarded_keydet]

People who bitch and moan about things being "gamey" need to learn one of Murphy's laws of combat.....

"If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid!"

------------------

There was a long silence of rememberance for the dead, to which I added these names:

Ernst Neubach, Lensen, Wiener, Wesreidau, Prinz, Solma, Hoth, Olensheim, Sperlovski, Smellens, Dunde, Kellerman, Freivitch, Ballers, Frosch, Woortenbeck, Siemenlies...

I refuse to add Paula to that list, and I shall never forget the names of Hals, or Lindberg, or Pferham, or Wollers. Their memory lves within me.

There is another man, whom I must forget. He was called Guy Sajer.

[Bullethead]

Originally posted by retarded_keydet:

People who bitch and moan about things being "gamey" need to learn one of Murphy's laws of combat.....

"If it's stupid and it works, it ain't stupid!"

Classic example of what I call a "bottom-up" view of CM. Thanks for providing this illustration

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-Bullethead

In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

[Treeburst155]

Right On Bullethead! You've just summed up the whole gamey recon debate in one clear, concise post. People just don't understand that recon is over before you even start the battle at the scale of CM (with a few exceptions).

Treeburst155

[Mattias]

Great post Bullet! To the point of deserving a thread of its own.

M.

[Homba]

password test

AH it works...

(please delete this post- I fail to see why I cant delete my own post.)

[This message has been edited by Homba (edited 03-13-2001).]

[Guest Michael emrys]

Originally posted by Bullethead:

More importantly, I consider this entire recon business almost completely out of context at the scale (as to time, distance, and force size) of a CM battle.

This is a point I made in another thread earlier this evening. It's kind of tricky to set up an authentic recon mission in CM. For some of the reasons that you mention elsewhere in your post, it may not be possible to exactly duplicate the tactics of recon units. This to me is a little sad because this kind of cavalry style recon appeals to me personally. The kind of all-out slugfests that CM trends towards are interesting in their own right, but sometimes I hunger for something with a little more "nuance".

Michael

[Priest]

Bullet I agree with you to a point. Do you put forces ahead of you your main body when playing the game?

If you do then this is a screening force also known to some as a recon force. Now it is a recon in force but recon none the less. I agree that the flyovers and "scouts" have been over the area previously in a planned battle and in a hasty battle little prep has been done. But I use a force to find the enemy and initiate contact. Now this is not traditional recon but their primary reason is to gather information and take as few casualties as possible. The gaminess is the fact that the CO (the player) has no regard for the lives of the troops he sends forward (the jeep example!). Any number of tactical manuever is possible in CM (that is why it is so great) but the simulation aspect fails when a person starts number crunching and willingly sacrifices his pixelated buddies. That is the issue and one that is hard to address. It is late I hope I have made some sense.

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Sir are you sure you want to go to red alert...it would mean changing the bulb

-Kryton of Red Dwarf

[Simon Fox]

It is impossible to simulate the SOPs of Btitish recon units properly in CM because:

(a) AC crews cannot dismount

( SC crews cannot dismount

© The recon section is not simulated

(d) Recon vehicles seem to be insufficiently threat aware. In a recent PBEM I had a Daimler AC take on two german tanks frontally at 1000m with his 2pdr before my order kicked in and he reversed out of there. Forgive my disbelief, but he has a smoke discharger and the tacAI should have popped the thing and backed straight out of there.

In real life these units were often fired upon but infrequently hit.

Some British recon action:

"Both Troops were fired on by an 8-wheel AC probably with 75mm which had one ineffective shot and withdrew. 3Tp remained in the area which was extremely dense with visibility often limited to the hedge on the side of the road only two yards away. Snipers, MGs and mortars continually stalked the Tp through the corn and long grass. The scout section was dismounted to try and locate a sniper about 100 yards away. Two men, L/Sgt Davies and Tpr Brady crawled through a cornfield to the hedge about 100 yards from the Tp. Unfortunately they had passed through a Coy of German Infantry without seeing them or being seen and shortly afterwards were surrounded and captured. They were disarmed and sent to the rear escorted by a soldier with a rifle. As soon as they were clear of the enemy troops they attacked and overpowered this man and brought him back to our lines. His Regt was identified as 304th Panzer Grenadiers which confirmed the presence of 2nd Panzer Div on this front; it only having gained contact with us this morning. L/Sgt Davies gained a mention in the Div Int Summary the following day for this exploit. 3Tp were continually attacked for more than 3 hours by Infantry crawling through the crops and had to be sent a refill of ammunition."

------------------

"Stand to your glasses steady,

This world is a world of lies,

Here's a toast to the dead already,

And here's to the next man to die."

-hymn of the "Double Reds"

[Guy w/gun]

Originally Posted by Bullethead:

This situation to me is indicative of a "bottom-up" view of CM. It seems that such players view the totality of the universe as bounded by the map edges of this particular CM scenario. Hence, they are unconcerned as to how their force and its mission fits into the overall war context because they view the whole war as their single battle. Hence, they feel they have to provide for every need and are not bothered by selecting historically inappropriate force mixes. To me, it seems like this sort of attitude is a carry-over from RTS games, where the player's forces really ARE the whole show.

Is this sort of thinking *so* wrong? I mean if a person consistently wins ladder games using this way of thinking are you gonna tap him on the shoulder and say *in pinched nerdy voice*: "uh, actually your not playing correctly. You see..."

People want to say that CM is balanced, and that's so far from the truth it's not even funny. CM leaves the balancing up to the players. That's why there's the short 75mm rules and such. Because otherwise there is no in game penalty for one side being unbalanced. The same goes for picking historically correct unit mixes. Nothing is stopping you from being ahistorical except yourself and your opponent, usually via pre-game agreements. And most importantly, nothing is stopping you from using your units in an ahistoric and in a gamey way except you.

I will readily admit I don't read up on WWII much. I am much more interested in strategy and tactics, be it from Waterloo to Desert Storm. I am so sick of people basing whether or not something is gamey on whether they read if it happened or not. WWII lasted about 6 yrs. A thousand books could not fully documented every last detail of the war.

So, IMHO, taking a jeep or another fast vehicle to quickly peak around trees for recon doesn't sound too far off to me. OTOH, going up against 10 Elite KT and nothing but SMG squads does sound incorrect. But that case is an extreme. Hell using a jeep this way really isn't even recon! In the same way you might use a mirror to peak around dangerous corners to avoid having your head blown off, you can use a jeep to avoid having your ever so important armor blown to bits.

The gaminess is the fact that the CO (the player) has no regard for the lives of the troops he sends forward (the jeep example!). Any number of tactical manuever is possible in CM (that is why it is so great) but the simulation aspect fails when a person starts number crunching and willingly sacrifices his pixelated buddies. That is the issue and one that is hard to address. It is late I hope I have made some sense.

This very true. But I think of it this way. You are a commander of company/battalion. You have been ordered to take a small objective by your superiors. This objective is a very small part of the war, but still, you have your orders. If the objective isn't taken by you, you or others will have to keep trying until it is. You as the commander feel the preservation of your armor is very important to the mission. Now, would you rather screen with a jeep and risk the lives of a couple of guys, or would you not screen, have your armor destroyed, have your forces decimated, and waste more life trying again and again to take the objective?

[This message has been edited by Guy w/gun (edited 03-13-2001).]

[Jarmo]

This "recon is already done when the battle begins",

means we don't agree what recon is.

To me, "theres something out there somewhere"

is not a recon done well enough.

I need to know if there are tanks and guns, and where.

At least as far as the immediate front is considered.

I'm not talking about running M20's all over the board.

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Now, would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of

our trenches and walking slowly towards the enemy sir?

[This message has been edited by Jarmo (edited 03-13-2001).]

[Nabla]

A very interesting thread, I must say. How about we turn our imagination towards solving some of the problems here.

The first idea that comes to mind is to make your QBs longer. This way you could first scout the enemy and then start your attack.

A second idea is to increase the point value of light vehicles in QB games.

The idea about letting light vehichle proceed on foot is very interesting. I think it would be fairly easy to program this if there was not strategic AI. Which raises another question into mind: is the strategic AI able to handle all the complexity that will be requested in future versions of CM, or should CM become a purely multiplayer game with just the tactical AI? Well, perhaps that should be discussed in another thread.

[Shandorf]

My point in the 251/1s thread was that I am NOT doing recon. I am ATTACKING.

My front infantry screen line is supported by 251s, to give heavy weapons support and to basically force my opponent to attack with his heavy weapons and AT assets so that I can bring my tanks and SPs forward to eliminate those threats.

At no time am I doing real recon. So what Bullethead is talking about and what I am doing are two completely separate things.

Jeff

[jasoncawley@ameritech.net]

"...but once the target area had been reached"

There wasn't one. The target area was all of France and Germany. They did not have neon signs that flashed "Danger Will Robinson! Probe mission! Heavy opposition expected with no better than 4:3 odds for the next 1200 yards! Danger! Dismount your vehicle Will Robinson!"

In the U.S. army, every armor division had an armored recon battalion, and independent groups parcelled out other such battalions to the infantry divisions. Which were not in the least leg formations by the way. (I know you know that, not everyone does). But the layering of recon-dedicated assets did not stop there.

In the early, "square" U.S. armored divisions, there were 2 armor regiments and each had a full battalion of light tanks. In the later, standard one, there was only one regiment, but every battalion had one company of light tanks. So the ratio of light to medium tanks was 1:2 in the first, 1:3 in the second type. What were the light tanks for? Recon. To find the things the fighting tanks would blow up.

In the tank destroyer battalions, each had 3 companies of 12 TDs, M-10s mostly, some of the better types. And every such battalion had another, 4th company, equipped with M-8s and M-20 armored cars, and jeeps. For what? Recon. To find the things the TDs would blow up.

Every infantry and armored infantry battalion had one platoon set aside from the line companies, that was instead part of the support company. In the same organization as the anti-tank guns, the mortars, the extra machineguns, in other words. What was its job? Recon. To find out who was in front of the line companies and the like. They usually reported directly to the battalion intelligence officer.

Did the line companies just rely on the information those provided, when moving out? No. One platoon had the "point" position. And it usually sent out 2 lone scouts a ways ahead of the platoon itself. Sometimes a team was used instead of 2 lone scouts, to give them some firepower if they encountered one sniper. There was a "lessons learned" report about it dating from the Italian campaign.

Was this some strange fascination of the Americans? No. See all those infantry types marked "fusilier"? That is what the Germans called their divisional recon battalions, in the infantry formations. They often did recon on bicycles. The typical late-war German infantry division had 6 infantry and 3 artillery battalions. Plus 1 anti-tank, 1 engineer, and 1 fusilier - that is, recon was 1/8th of the infantry type and 1/12th of the overall number of battalions. The mobile divisions had bigger recon battalions mounted in half-tracks and equipped with armored cars and gun-armed halftracks.

Does anybody think the recon performed by these big units with lots o' guns and vehicles amounted to 4 guys sneaking-into-the-movies before the first "Go!" button? No. They were all designed to recon in force. Including some fighting, if not perhaps the CM "marquis of queensbury" rules, nearly-even-odds arena combat fighting.

Why did they recon in force? Because thin forces and 12 man roadblocks are pennies in military terms. And any force that backs away from the mere prospect of getting shot at will therefore be stopped long before it finds out anything. Real war recon, not the snaker-eaters LLRP with 4 commandos but the kind of thing you need 1/8th of an infantry division for and 1/4th of your tanks for, involves blowing through the little stuff until you hit something more serious.

And nobody knows where that is, until they hit it. CM is about situations in which something is really hit. But the "point" is up there every day, and only a handful of time in the whole war, is he going to run into so close an overall fight. Usually, one side of the other holds all of the local aces.

"Oh that is ridiculous. Only a handful of times? But CM is 30 minutes of fighting, and the campaign lasted nearly a year." Yes, but in CM fights, ~50% of the engaged forces get wiped out. And if that happened more than a handful of times to the average unit, then nobody would have survived WW II. Plenty of people did.

The light armor or the jeeps are up there on "point", because they do not know this is the day. So set up some proper fire plan that will KO the little buggers before they find out too much, and stop bawling about it.

[Olle Petersson]

Has anybody used that armoured recon formation available way down in the German Infantry selection list?

Lots of firepower.

Cheers

Olle

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

But CM is 30 minutes of fighting, and the campaign lasted nearly a year." Yes, but in CM fights, ~50% of the engaged forces get wiped out. And if that happened more than a handful of times to the average unit, then nobody would have survived WW II. Plenty of people did.

Exactly. This is the biggest "problem" with CM: For all the carping about whether CM is "balanced", or which tactic is "gamier" than the next, this single paragraph highlights what is wrong with the game.

CM takes a single event (the "battle") out of the context (WWII) that made the event nescessary in the first place. This only further serves to encourage tactics that, while highly unrealistic and ahistorical, work perfectly well in winning that single battle. What does it matter if 75% of yr force is wiped out, so long as 95% of yr opponents is? (And how many threads have we seen where people post how disapointed they are when their opponent doesn't fight to the last pixel?).

Most of WWII small unit actions involve both sides taking pot-shots at each other until somebody withdraws. Repeat over and over until war ends. It was all about attrition. The massed SMG platoon charges that everybody uses in CM just didn't happen. Does that mean it's not a good tactic? No, it works damn great --- in a game!

Same for the hapless Jeep/Kubel/scout. It wouldn't have happened that way in the ETO of 44-45, but in the "simulated" version we all love, it's a common fact.

As somebody once said (G.A. Custer?): "A good scout is a dead scout."

[Nabla]

Originally posted by von Lucke:

CM takes a single event (the "battle") out of the context (WWII) that made the event nescessary in the first place. This only further serves to encourage tactics that, while highly unrealistic and ahistorical, work perfectly well in winning that single battle. What does it matter if 75% of yr force is wiped out, so long as 95% of yr opponents is? (And how many threads have we seen where people post how disapointed they are when their opponent doesn't fight to the last pixel?).

Most of WWII small unit actions involve both sides taking pot-shots at each other until somebody withdraws. Repeat over and over until war ends. It was all about attrition. The massed SMG platoon charges that everybody uses in CM just didn't happen. Does that mean it's not a good tactic? No, it works damn great --- in a game!

Hmm... Sort of begs the question: couldn't you have another type of battle called attrition, in which the final value of a point won depends on the overall point value of your troops at the end.

For example, let us consider the case of a 100 point battle in which you've eliminated a 95 point unit. In the first case, think that you have all your troops intact at the end. The final value of the elimination would be 95. However, if you only have 10% of your troops intact, the value would only be, for example, 9.5 (scaled directly by the 10%).

The final victory would be computed from the original point values. That is, in the first in which you have all forces intact your score would be 95/100, and the enemys 0/100. In the second case your score would be 9.5/100 and the enemys 4.5/100 (he has won 90 points, which is scaled by the 5% he has left of his own units). This way in attrition you can both loose (although one may still lose more than the other).

Well, had to write it down Any sense in this?

[This message has been edited by Nabla (edited 03-13-2001).]

[aka_tom_w]

Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net:

"...but once the target area had been reached"

There wasn't one. The target area was all of France and Germany. They did not have neon signs that flashed "Danger Will Robinson! Probe mission! Heavy opposition expected with no better than 4:3 odds for the next 1200 yards! Danger! Dismount your vehicle Will Robinson!"

Snip

The light armor or the jeeps are up there on "point", because they do not know this is the day. So set up some proper fire plan that will KO the little buggers before they find out too much, and stop bawling about it.

WOW!

Great Post

Very accurate and very entertaining!

This is the best line: (re: Jeep recon)

"So set up some proper fire plan that will KO the little buggers before they find out too much, and stop bawling about it."

Perfect!

That post is sure to become an ALL time classic post as I believe it is dead-on accurate!

Thanks

-tom w

[Ksak]

Right on Jason.

My initial impression that CM generally rewards good tactics (read that as Field Manuals) and punishes helter skelter doings has only been reinforced with more game play. I still find it annoying, however, that there is a cadre of self appointed High Priests of History with the hubris to pronounce perfect knowledge of what every single combat soldier in WWII would have done in every situation.

Even if you studied every After Action Report for a particular unit throughout the entire war you still would not have information about the behaviour of every individual soldier, gun or vehicle in every action. Add to that the affirmation that CM (the game)is an abstraction designed to provide balanced and entertaining play and the entire concept of gaminess as an antihistorical argument vaporizes.

And not one thread of the thousands posted about gaminess addresses the most obvious and the most pernicious antihistorical element of CM - the ability to flip views and get in the enemy's foxhole. Find me an AAR or a history book that documents that neat little tactical maneuver.

So again - right on Jason - do some proper fire planning and stop bawling about it.

[Holman]

Very interesting thread!

One minor point I'd like to add is that scenario briefings can do some of the pre-battle recon for you. That is, a well-written briefing can give the player exactly the kind of limited information that a real battlefield commander would have. I'd like to see more attention paid to the text that we see even before the set-up phase.

Of course this won't apply to QBs, but there you go.