Confession time: How good/bad a commander are you?

[MikeyD]

Here's a painful question. After aaaall your CM combat experience (for some of us its over 5 years!), how do you judge YOUR commanding skills?

Last night I took some time off modding to actually play a game. A random infantry quickbattle, turned out to be on a flat treeless map (yikes!). But still, I soon concluded that many of my problems were my own darned fault as commander. I'm always rushing vehicles forward without proper recon, I have nasty habit of splitting my forces for some imagined encircling movement that never seems to come off. Usually about 20 moves into a game one of the little platoon commanders will turn, look up into the camera, and say to me "Well, this is another fine mess you've got us into Mikey!" :eek:

[SgtMuhammed]

Well I wouldn't want to serve under me!

Actually I tend to win more than I lose and I do try to avoid pointless casualties, so mayby I'm not horrible.

[GillFish]

MikeyD,

I don't worry about my platoon commander's opinion (with my skills their lifespan is rather short); it's when the High Command starts to take an interest in my ineptitude that my nights become restless.

[David I]

Bad enough that when the war is over I don't dare return home!

DavidI

[wunwinglow]

I am complete rubbish, but I am CONSISTANTLY rubbish.....

Al-ways look on the bright, si-ide of life, de-dum de-dum-de-dum-de-dum.....

Tim P

[wunwinglow]

Actually, what always catches me out is the level of micro-management you sometimes have to engage in. I'd rather give an order 'Go scout over there, see if you can see anything down that road, but don't get your head shot off.' But no, I have to plot every tweak of the ACs steering wheel, and when I miss a little valley that the driver would have applied his initiative and used, he blindly follows orders and gets his head shot off.

But I'd still be rubbish......

Tim P

[MikeyD]

Yeh, but you've got to admit when you DO formulate and execute a brilliant maneuver (without dying in the process) it feels really really good. The moment that combat team, after a looong detour, wind up at the 6 oclock position of that anti-tank gun and take him out with hand grenades - that feels good! :cool:

[Earl Grey]

I think I'm not that bad - but it depends. What I CAN say is that I'm too damned slow in taking some objectives. But usually that's because my infantry isn't as fast as my tanks - and I learned not to let tanks advance in wooded terrain WITHOUT infantry cover on the flanks. But, hey, sometimes it DOES work. Example: My PzIV's advance in the general direction of a crossroads when suddenly an AT gun pops out of nowhere and nearly kills one of my tanks. The back away and I rush a platoon of infantry in to flank the AT gun. It worked like in infantry school.

Anyway, if we really are good commanders is to be determined when CMC is out - then you have to bring your men home! Especially the German player won't be able to cope with high losses... It's not like some tabletop games where you loose 90% of your manpower and still win!

[Sgt Steiner]

Hi all

Peaks and troughs

[Folbec]

Zhukov's style : there's no casualty rate that I cannot swallow...

[juan_gigante]

I, too, win more than 50% of my games, but the casualties get pretty damn high.

[Sunray]

OK sort of, I only play vs AI. Generally speaking I will beat AI when it attacks, because it's not very good at it. However quite often I fail when I'm on the offensive especially when I try a scenario for the first time. Main failings would be losing patience and blundering into trouble, forgetting how vulnerable infantry are, not massing armour sufficiently and generally being rubbish!

[JoMac]

I consider my self a half way decent Commander. I agree with Wunwinglow, i unfortunatly find myself micro-managing several orders for each unit and end up having to use some of the Tips and Tricks in hopes to have a better edge against human opponents. Those Tips and Tricks are great for some real CM tactical advice but alot others are there because of the gamey quarks that people can take advantage of. Some other problems include Borg-Spotting, units reacting to quicly, allowing for example your unit to shoot at an enemy unit say 2000 meters away just because your other friendly unit can see that said enemy at 50 meters. I could go on and on with many problems i have with the CM game system.

Basically the bottom line is that many of the CM players have failry good tactical skills but because of the short coming of the game system are unable to use it fully.

I play WW2 Table Top miniature games and because of the game mechanics and the less use of micro-managing im able to concentrate more on my tactical skill to determine how well im doing.

[ May 31, 2006, 04:58 AM: Message edited by: JoMc67 ]

[Son of Hamchuck]

If bits were blood I'd be a butcher,NOT. I just thank god I didn't have to endure what these guys went thru in WWII. I lean toward Montys dictum, conserve the infantry, and let the artillery do the work. So I tend to be overly cautious, which costs me sometimes. Do I really care about these guys, or is it just my fear of taking losses? Deep psycology this stuff:).

[MikeyD]

Who was the U.S. commander with the lowest casualty rate? MacArthur! The man who came up with the phrase 'Hit 'em where they ain't". Sometimes it sounds like good old Georgie Patton commmanded his troops like we do our CM soldiers - with the same bloody results.

[Wildass69]

In my world I don't do to bad. In y'all's world I'd probably stink.

But I have fun.

[Sirocco]

I was poor when I started, taking up where I left off with SP. But then I read Schneider's Panzertaktik, and some concepts fell into place, at long last.

Now I'm competent. I still have problems on the attack, but on the defence I'm a decent opponent, which I imagine is quite a common combination.

[Hermitage]

I am the god of war, a veritable Ares! Well, against the A.I., at least . . .

Not consistently good against human opponents, sadly. I'm probably overly dependent on armor on the attack. My infantry tends to just muddle along in the wake of the tanks and occupy ground.

When I have to push infantry forward on its own, my casualty levels start to ramp up alarmingly. Since I feel that infantry should be moving forward (Infanterie greift an, nicht war?) I force them to do so, but the casualties can be quite shocking. I should practice more and do better by them I know.

When the battle works out my way, it feels great! Yet, I guess I'm much in line with FF Krautdog's way of thinking. I feel really bad when I inflict outrageous casualties on my force just to take some godforsaken piece of ground.

Really glad I don't have to write the letters of condolence to the wives, the mothers, etc.!

Just goes to show what a brilliant simulation of warfare CM really is.

[SgtMuhammed]

I subscribe to Mao's statement of "I have an army of 8 million and am willing to lose all of them to win a single battle. How many are you willing to lose?" The AI is usually pretty intimidated.

[painfbat]

I just ran into a Stoffel-in-command at Carentan.......back to the academy.

[John Kettler]

Judging from how I've fared in the Invitational Tourney and a bunch of ROWs, not to mention the "Forever War" with Kingfish long ago, I'm good enough to be competitive, preferably NOT in ladder type pick your force play, but not good enough to make the Finals, and I'm definitely not in the low Earth orbit realms inhabited by people like Walpurgis Nacht and his fellow wargame gods.

As those who've fought me will tell you, I'm capable of some diabolical feats at times and am generally tenacious to a fault, whether on attack or defense, but when I screw up, it tends to be big (see my South of Vevi AAR and if you can find it, my AAR for the Invitational Tourney fight against Fionn, who totally wiped the floor with me). Typically, my battles are hard fought and often go down to the wire, as in that horrendous clash with Ace Pilot in Melon Valley or somesuch (the one with the paratroops which must hold while an armored column fights its way to them) or the nocturnal horror of Sounds in the Night.

I play more by intuition and feel than by science, though I incorporate generally sound tactics. That is, I tend to rely on my gut instinct a lot, and certainly don't operate the way JasonC, with his super analytical firepower based approach, does. One of these days, I'm going to have to see if he fights battles as well as he analyzes them. Regarding the latter, he scares me, conveying dark visions of fighting the wargaming version of the Terminator.

My infantry handling, except with the Russians, is okay on the attack, but really good on the defense. I know how to bleed people. I love having obstacles at my disposal, especially mines

in combination with barbed wire. My ROW fight with Londoner as British on the attack and me as the Italians defending a pump station (don't recall scenario title, though) is a good example of my defensive skills. I even got Glisenti kills! For what happens, though, when I incorrectly deploy and things go wrong, see my AAR for the Italian rearguard action

in Ethiopia. Bad!

I find the new artillery system a royal pain, both from a seeing where the spotting round and even FFE land (no shock waves anymore and loads of "fun" to see even 105mm fire in reduced visibility of any sort) and because of the radical impact dust has on fire now. The game engine won't permit continuation fire on prior settings, but am not sure why. Am certain we didn't cease bombarding all sorts of places during WW II simply because a lot of dust got thrown up!

My good armor seems cursed (bogs w/o firing a shot--on dry ground, then immobilizes; gets F-killed, bombed, etc.), but I can work veritable miracles with the lighter stuff. Forced into it, you might say! The best I've ever done with armor was the virtual textbook attack as the Germans at Kursk in the Beta Demo of CMBB, with my debut as the early Russian commander a close second in the same Demo, but that was with combined arms. I am aggressive and sneaky in the attack with armor, and will do my level best to work it into positions and engage from angles you'd never expect.

Antitank guns are definitely my thing, as are IGs and onboard mortars usually, but my offboard fire support skills need work, at least post CMBO. In CMBO, though, I managed to get phenomenal results from even Green FOs. Just ask Kingfish about Lion sur Mer. When I'm the recipient of support fires, though, I seem to get pounded.

Trenches, when I'm in them, are great for me, and I seem to be able to deal with them when attacking, but no matter what I do with them or how cleverly I site them, my pillboxes have lifespans rivaling those of Shermans in Bullethead's immortal analysis of said beasts. If my opponent has them, though, they're generally made of Impervium, while smiting all in their sight. Exceptions to this rule are rare and greatly celebrated in consequence.

On the whole, airpower has been good to me, generally managing to actually hit and hurt the foe, though I have been hit a few times by my own

air support, but nowhere nearly as badly as many have reported. I think my worst to date was one halftrack destroyed and one panicked, with a few nearby infantrymen face down in the dirt. Others less lucky have taken heavy tank losses and had whole platoons of infantry blown apart.

Ground launched rockets, though, are another matter entirely. Mine seem to accomplish next to nothing even when they hit, and this is particularly true of the Katyusha. By contrast, rocket attacks made against me seem to rival Zeus's awful thunderbolts in their effects. I've had whole defensive schemes practically wiped out by a salvo. In my CMBO days, a single 30cm Nebelwerfer strike killed an M-10, an antitank gun, a bazooka team and an MG position, demolished several houses, and left most of the rest of my force stunned or buttoned up, leaving me to fight for a time with a few squads of infantry, a flamethrower team and a minefield.

On balance, I'd say I'm good and getting ever better but not great, with strong deviations at times to both ends of the combat effectiveness scale. I tend not to get paralyzed by an adverse situation, but have been known on occasion to ungergo a kind of morale failure, especially when nothing works no matter what I do or don't do. I try to handle my pixel force as though it was real, but being a sensitive soul, I am ever keenly aware of the carnage generated by even a success.

Knowing what I do about war, having studied it for a lifetime, I'm astounded they can find anyone to participate!

Regards,

John Kettler

[MikeyD]

I split my warfighting pluses/minuses into two distinct groups. There's the game-engine group and the real-world group. The game-engine group involves taking advantage of map edges or initial setup zones, of knowing how many men you have to put under a flag before it turns. You can go a long way in the game just paying attention to game-engine oddities. Real-world group involves tactics that might be useful if you really were placed in the unfortunate position of having to capture some snow-covered hamlet in the countryside! :eek: I may be a mediocre commander but I'm a thousand percent more competent than if I hadn't had all this CM virtual warfighting time under my belt!

[Earl Grey]

I always ask myself what I'd do if I were REALLY there. I haven't had any tactics courses and never been to the armed forces (and had I been they had made me an airborne sniper and lone warrior), so everything I can do I have taught myself. Considering that, I think I'm good enough. And when my 251/9 kills a Sherman at 1.5km with one shot, or my PzIV knocks out half a dozen enemy tanks wothout getting the paint even scratched, I'm rewarded enough. Not to say I've even lost Jagdtigers to FRONTAL PENETRATION (damn those April 1945 scenarios! ) and every kind of stuff you can imagine. But I LEARN from my mistakes and not often make the same one twice...

[Andreas]

I suck. I need to find easier opponents.

All the best

Andreas

[Sportsguy64]

For starters I'm glad this is just a video game! and not the real thing because my commanding officer would be very concerned about the casualty figures coming in from my sector and the supply sergeant would not be to friendly either due to my great loss of equipment. That being said, at least my guys are not still belly aching along that goddamned road! Hey, you have to appreciate some of Georgie's lines in that 1970 award winning movie. I played One Hell of a Morning - US vs Falschirmyaeger in the bocage country today - very good scenario I think. If you go right down to ground level you can get a small idea (very, very small) of what that brutal hedgerow fighting was like. And you definately think through your moves instead of throwing caution to the winds which is typical for my play. I mean, are you going to most past that clearing without checking around that hedgerow corner? if you were really there, you definately would as there could be a very nasty surprise waiting for you to pass by. Tig or Panther? :eek: And that would be all she wrote because the german parachute guys are plenty tough. If you only use the high aerial views you can see everything which is not realistic but when you go down to ground level, you really have to stop and ponder a bit. You see no friendly units because of the vegetation and you ARE on YOUR own and making the right decision is paramount. How did I finish? Well, those Falschirmyaeger guys are very tough and do not like to give up ground. Kicking back and waiting for arty to do the work still doesn't get the job done so you have to assault and root them out - not easy. The game decision was a draw. Well, I won't be sleeping in that french hotel with plenty of babes tonight (read scenario briefing