A call for more variety in WW2 (part deux)

[John Kettler]

Since I believe it's important to get a thread off to a good start, I believe I'll propose something that'll make Steve want to give us bicycles and motorcycles with sidecars, maybe even horses! Never heard of it before, but it's so groggy I have to share it.

http://www.onesixthcollectors.co.uk/clubforum/viewtopic.php?t=1974

Regards,

John Kettler

[JasonC]

We already have motorcyles in CMBB. Just split the motorcycle recon infantry into half squads and mount them on jeeps. Works just fine.

[Battlefront.com]

Have I ever mentioned how much I hate Aufklärungstruppen?

Steve

[John Kettler]

Steve,

Does the guy at the link count? Seriously, I really do hope we get motorcycles with sidecars in CMx2, for there are lots of cool things one can do with them, especially since crews can now dismount! For the Germans, at least, they are a significant part of the motorized force structure and show up fairly often in the combat accounts.

In fact, I distinctly recall their being described as part of an advance German formation in one of the late chapters in the CMAK Guide. The ones in TOW are gorgeous and would lend themselves to all manner of mods, too. I believe the Russians had a fair number of motorcycles for recce and messenger work, but I'll leave the real discussion to the estimable JasonC.

Bicycles figure prominently in some of the early war accounts, were a key part of the Japanese advances, and even factor into D-Day, where one batch of German reinforcements had to pedal to the battle! They lend themselves well to lots of

different scenarios, including Resistance depictions, and would be fun to ambush. Perverse, to be sure, but can you imagine the chaos?

The best one I've read yet, though, concerned horses. The CMAK Guide describes an incident in which a German horse drawn artillery column finds itself retreating down a road controlled by U.S. M10s. Since the column just appeared, and no one had issued any specific instructions, the TD guys, unbelievable as it may sound, moved their gun barrels aside, allowing the German column to continue unmolested! I hope we do get horses, cattle, oxen, several types of wagons and such in the new game, for this would open up all sorts of possibilities. The color things like that provide, as seen in SPR TOW, BiA and others, is simply astounding.

Regards,

John Kettler

[c3k]

Hell yeah! Without motorcycles and barbed wire how can I create the Steve McQueen near Switzerland in "The Great Escape" scenario?

On a more tactically appropriate level, yes, I too would like motorcycles and sidecars. Not just for color, but for the different approach required to use those troops. Their speed and unit dispersion present opportunities and challenges.

Have I already mentioned the need for purple flares?

Regards,

Ken

[John Kettler]

c3k,

Doubt the physics model will be up to such extremes, but we can dream, can't we? As for flares, I deem them a must: hand thrown, trip, Very/Leuchtspistole, mortar and artillery delivered. The atmospheric/immersive effects alone would be spectacular, and night battles will never be the same once they're in.

You cited the German use of purple flares as tank warning, but the Russians used flares for all sorts of things, notably calling down preplanned fire concentrations w/o using radio or wire communications.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Peter Cairns]

I'd like to see motorcycles with or without side cars because I believe that almost alone BF would do it properly.

What I mean by that is, that if the were to give in to popular(ish) demand and not keep them off map like Helicopters in CMSF, then people would very quickly see their tactical vulnerability in a real battle.

If I was buying MB's in CM (and I probably wouldn't) I'd deploy them in cover close to a map edge, and then dismount immediately and fight as infantry for the rest of the game.

I suspect that those who do buy then and drive them anywhere near the enemy in CMx2 will find that C&C makes them almost impossible to be effective and their susceptibility to even modest fire so great that they are effectively a waste of time and points.

So go on Steve, put them in just to show how militarily insignificant they really were.

Peter.

[JasonC]

Peter - and you think my solution with jeeps doesn't do that? lol

They are useful for getting around beyond LOS, and they can recon by death into LOS in such tiny numbers that it is a waste to reveal shooters to take them out. As I said, works fine.

As for the history, the Russians used them clear through the war for the recon elements of mechanized forces. A whole battalion of them in each mech corps, and sometimes an additional regiment of them at tank army level, doubling the number available. This made them 10-20% of the infantry type battalions in the mech arm. They worked with modest numbers of armored cars (organic), and typically supported closely by tanks with riders to deliver attacks after they found and screened the enemy.

The Germans used them in the first third of the war, for a similar role in the Aufklarung battalions of panzer divisions. Again with armored cars, and with a larger component of truck borne infantry and infantry weapons. They were phased out through 1942 pretty much.

The Germans continue to use unpowered bicycles for infantry recon and alert formations right to the end of the war. For road marches, obviously, not peddling into combat (lol).

Brits and the US really only used them for dispatch riders, not whole battalions. The US did use jeep mounted cavalry in much the same way, however.

[Michael Dorosh]

As far as the CW goes, m/c were used primarily for Don Rs (despatch riders) and headquarters types for rear area work. The initial Canadian troops ashore on D-Day trained with bicycles but in the event didn't use them much after June 6 (there are famous photos of the bikes being transported and carried onto the beach by the follow up waves). They weren't well made anyhow; the biggest complaint was that the handlebars attached to the front fork by a single nut and rough terrain knocked the bars wildly out of kilter with great regularity.

[Battlefront.com]

No motorcycles, bicycles, or horses planned. Ever. Sorry guys... they just aren't all that important to have for a CM scaled battle. This is the same argument we've had against them since 1997. Back in CMx1 there was another issue and that was the difficulty of simulating them. In CMx2 the problem isn't so much that as it is the work to get them into the game. Since they have such marginal value, there is no incentive for us to put them in. To overcome this the thing in question has to be fairly important, like horsed cavalry in conflicts prior to 1900.

As it is, JasonC has it about right. The motorcycle phalanx of the German divisions was phased out because it was found to be a bad idea. This phasing out happened well before Normandy timeframe, so it would actually be completely ahistorical to include them in any of those games. Earlier ones, sure it is at least historically correct, just not very important.

It's not negotiable, so might as well live with it

Steve

[c3k]

Hmmm,

Sure, toss out "tactical" reasons for excluding motorcycles. We all know the REAL reason: you don't want to put up with the flamewars regarding the correct number and pattern of spokes for front and rear wheels.

Thanks for the response.

Regards,

Ken

[gibsonm]

And of course whether it was too hard to model the blah blah blah variant that allowed you to separate the motorcycle from the sidecar whilst in motion allowing you to create one man mobile sub patrols from a given motorcycle sidecar combination.

[Peter Cairns]

And I so wanted to put flamethrowers in the sidecars..... because you know it was technically possible.

Peter.

[Sequoia]

Well, there goes the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade scenario I wanted to do.

[Pvt. Ryan]

No prisoners and no motorcycles. Steve McQueen is rolling over in his grave.

[imported_mike_the_wino2]

This game will be crap if we don't have horses with sidecars. :mad:

[Dirtweasle]

Pacers or standard bred?

[M1A1TC]

Well, if we cant have horses or motorcycles, how about Soviet Aero-sani? Widely used during winter for transport and recce role

Soviet Combat Snowmobiles

[JasonC]

Think they will hear us coming, Ivan?

Prolly, Igor, but they will just run away in terror. ha ha ha.

[Michael Dorosh]

Originally posted by M1A1TankCommander:

Well, if we cant have horses or motorcycles, how about Soviet Aero-sani? Widely used during winter for transport and recce role

Not that widely. After 1941-42 winter, they were relegated to security duty on the Archangel-Murmansk railway. 25 battalions (each of 30 to 45 vehicles divided into three companies) were on strength on 1 March 1942. Peak strength seems to have been in late 1943 with 57 battalions; by winter of 1944-45 (as early as July, actually) there were none officially listed according to Red Army handbook.

What is it you think they transported, incidentally?

[John Kettler]

Steve,

Definitely not good news regarding, in particular, early war versions of CMx2! No motorcycles sweeping across Poland and France racing for the crossroads, no horsedrawn columns for a bunch of countries, to include some interesting possibilities for modeling refugees on the roads, and wasn't the Wehrmacht 80% horsedrawn itself?

While you can certainly argue that the horses would be to the rear in a static defense scenario, that goes out the window when you're talking something like Cobra or Falaise. Nor will we be able to depict the Polish cavalry catching a German infantry battalion on the hop and shredding it--before those unfortunate Panzers showed up! If we simulate horses with Kubels, it takes a lot of wonderful color out of the Sioux warrior's coup

account presented in the CMAK Guide, too.

Seems to me that when you increase the fidelity of the sim to the point that individual men are depicted, it becomes all the more important for their environment to allow the richer, more detailed interactions already familiar to many WW II gamers via a slew of games. I have seen this myself in BiA, with its faithful recreation of the actual ground and structures fought over, to include vehicles and carts. Mind, the devs there screwed up other things royally, like men who can't climb over a three foot high stone wall!

Because the tactical aggregation is so low, I think many more things become important to depict--as cover and concealment if nothing else.

Again, because the player's brain knows it should be receiving a nitty gritty view, it expects it.

What works at CMx1 levels of abstraction won't at CMx2. Terrain, for example, could be rather broadly defined in the former, but here, you live or die on the presence of that drainage ditch beside the hedgerow when the Jabo shows up! That's the value of modeling microrelief. A single line of trees may grace a stretch of road, yet may make the same road impassable if dynamited. Where men could go in real life and did, men need to go in CMx2: up telegraph/telephone poles, water towers, bridges,

into belfries, etc. I think, too, that communications will need much more detailed modeling, given what the CMAK Guide taught us about their fragility and unreliability, and this goes for wire and radio alike.

These are just a few of the issues that I hope will be seriously addressed in CMx2.

Regards,

John Kettler

[Melnibone]

I thought I would bring up dead cows - sadly missing from CMBO.

[FAI]

You could play 101 Airborne if you wanted cows

[John Kettler]

Melnibone,

Would love to see them both alive and as bloated carcasses, seeing as how they figure prominently in the Normandy accounts I've read.

M1A1TankCommander,

The Aerosans are in CMBB, and I think they're cool--as long as I don't have to be the ski rider in the middle of Russian winter. Talk about wind chill!

Regards,

John Kettler

[Melnibone]

Originally posted by John Kettler:

The Aerosans are in CMBB

Are you sure? I've never come across them.