Lots of dust......higher elavations....longer battles?

[Determinant]

Originally posted by John D Salt:

Presumably those were mostly prepared attacks put in at 3-1 odds with lashings of arty. It would be interesting to know what the figures were with the far more parlous 'advantage' enjoyed by the attacker in CM! Lucky to get off the start-line I suspect!

[Runyan99]

Bump, because the debate also continues in the thread "CMAK: BTS battles without turn limit PLEASE!"

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Sergei:

("Good work with destroying those bunkers Jim, now take this platoon of Shermans and carry on the attack to Hill 144"). Well, maybe that last example was a bit too videogameish... Watch out, Sudden Strike!

On the contrary, I like this too, and it reflects actual practice. On acheiving one objective, real units would use coloured flares or radio signals or runners to advise higher headquarters of their success. Operation Flashpoint does this well with their scripted scenarios, and while I would hate to see CM scenarios rely too terribly much on scripting, it would be nice to be able to simulate a change in plans.

ie - you fight forward with a company to take a village - your objective is marked with flags. On turn 20 a force of enemy tanks appears - the flags disappear too, and suddenly you have a friendly exit zone behind you. A new briefing comes on, and your battalion CO is on the radio advising you of an enemy counterattack and ordering you back to the start line.

This could be abused (if you knew this was coming because you are replaying the scenario, you can simply linger at the exit zone til turn 20) though having definable triggers (ie 80% of your force must be more than halfway across the map from the start positions) could prevent this (or making such occurences random).

But then, you get away from a Game and more into an Experience; many CMers - ladder players for example - prefer not to have a lot of surprises and simply want to test their 'skill' in evenly matched battles rather than experiencing realistic stuff.

Given the lack of a campaign setting, this may not be such a great feature.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by Determinant:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by John D Salt:

Presumably those were mostly prepared attacks put in at 3-1 odds with lashings of arty. It would be interesting to know what the figures were with the far more parlous 'advantage' enjoyed by the attacker in CM! Lucky to get off the start-line I suspect! [/QB]</font>

Why "presumably?"

Statistics in themselves prove little; would be interesting to read some accounts of one or two of the battles that were part of this sampling.

[Private Bluebottle]

I believe it was Jary who made the point that often, because of external operational constraints, a company or battalion commander could rarely actually wage his battle the way he wanted to. Artillery time-tables and so on, often meant that manoeavure was often limited as attacking infantry had to keep close to an advancing, creeping barrage, while their use meant that flanking was nearly impossible.

It appears to me that many who claim that battles should have unlimited time limits, ignore that the battle their fighting could well be only a small part of a much larger operation and their role in its pretty minor as far as higher command is concerned. Resource allocation could well mean that if they want to have that artillery or armour support, they'll have to carry out their attack NOW, not at their leisure and in the manner they necessarily would like to.