Unit size?

[Steiner14]

So i understand it, too.

[Hunter]

Originally posted by DBaron:

Just to be sure...no splitting means that if the author of a campagian deems the ME to be company size, then I am stuck using the whole company throughout the campaign. I couldn't leave one platoon behind after a battle, and continue attacking with other two?

That's correct.

[PzKpfwIII]

Originally posted by Hunter:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by DBaron:

Just to be sure...no splitting means that if the author of a campagian deems the ME to be company size, then I am stuck using the whole company throughout the campaign. I couldn't leave one platoon behind after a battle, and continue attacking with other two?

That's correct. </font>

[citizen]

Perhaps resupply percentage is reduced the further into enemy territory you go. Or at least I hope is how they will simulate it, barring actual supply lines.

[PzKpfwIII]

Originally posted by citizen:

Perhaps resupply percentage is reduced the further into enemy territory you go. Or at least I hope is how they will simulate it, barring actual supply lines.

I don't know that this would be especially realistic. Battalion and especially company stores would seem to be an all or nothing affair.

On a typical CM:C map, you are dealing with - in the background - ammunition coming up from Divisional supply trains and being stockpiled at regimental and battalion dumps located just off map (within 10 or 20 km of the firing line) with the company quartermasters tasked to move it forward. Generally, at least in the German Army, that was done by horse drawn wagon, truck or sled. I don't think the types of limited penetrations we're going to see in the tactical arena would have much effect on how much ammunition is available to the division or the regiment.

The actual mechanism of getting ammunition from Regiment to the fighting platoons was not complex; being small it was easy to hide and generally not easy to disrupt. The Regimental Supply Train had a VI supply train with one Beamte officer on a motorcycle and a two-horse wagon, and a VII supply train with a beamte paymaster, and two trucks, as well as a pack train with two trucks.

At the battalion level, the Company First Sergeant had under him a battalion quartermaster sergeant, two 2-horse wagons (Supply Train I) and the paymaster Beamte, a supply sergeant, and two 3-ton trucks (Supply Train II) as well as a pack train with 3 ton truck. These guys would receive ammunition from the regimental quartermaster, store it, collect salvage (empty MG ammo boxes, MG link, etc.), and liase with the company commander as to where the drop points would be.

A handful of men at most would be involved in these tasks; at the CM scale, even an operational level game like CM:C, the interdiction of ammunition supplies was probably an all or nothing affair - either the battalion quartermaster got through with the ammunition boxes and grenades - or he didn't.

Also at this scale, length of resupply lines is a bit irrelevant; I'd presume regimental and even battalion supply areas to be off map or well away at the least from the contest map tiles. Again, either they were far enough away to stop the daily or twice daily resupply - or they weren't.

Ammunition shortages were certainly a problem, but generally not as a result of interdiction in battalion or regimental scale actions.

98th Infanteriedivision reported near Vyasma in March 1943 that the entire division's supplies were being moving smoothly to the fighting men despite heavy rains and mud, "attributable to the small, mobile horsedrawn wagons. All alone, they supplied all the division's needs in ammunition, food, equipment and engineering supplies through day and night action. All the motor vehicles, on the other hand, were silent." The point here being that relatively few vehicles were needed to keep all necessary supplies flowing.

Outside of cauldrons such as Stalingrad, or areas chronically interdicted at the strategic level such as North Africa, problems of resupply in German units seem to have been minimal. At the tactical level, adding a couple of kilometres to the route taken by battalion quartermasters seems to be not worth simulating in any way on the CM battlefield. Some would argue ammunition usage is overmodelled as it is, without increasing additional burdens, especially without the historical context to justify doing so.

[citizen]

I'm convinced! Thanks for the examples. You're right, we aren't talking Army Group breakouts 150km deep.

I'm just a bit too anxious to cut off units from their supplies. Maybe it'll happen in CMC Afrika Corps.