CAS in CM:N

[YankeeDog]

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Everyone forgot about the awesome FliVo in the early stages of the war?

Screw the "pop smoke and pray" ETO CAS, this was luftwaffe on the ground talking to those with wings! Not your regular FOs either. From all I've heard and read, they were really, really good FOs. Could be wrong, though.

Read the entire thread; this has already been covered. In brief, it sounds like you have an exaggerated impression of the capabilities of early war German CAS.

[MikeyD]

In game terms this means there would be hardly any artillery activity during the battle

I had an amusing thought. We could use the greatly expanded scenario length (4 hours now?) to do a prep barrage for the first three hours of the game, then use the last hour to advance our troops over the rubble. It would be perfectly historical, it would be tactically justified, but it might make for pretty darned crappy 'gameplay'.

[AslakH]

Read the entire thread; this has already been covered. In brief, it sounds like you have an exaggerated impression of the capabilities of early war German CAS.

Well, exaggerated might be so, but it was still unique this early on.

Was it not? When I get home, I will find my books and references on the FliVo stuff.

Long time since I've read it, and lately my mind is slipping.

I just didn't want to read everything in the thread, sorry mate.

[YankeeDog]

Yes, you are correct that the Germans' Tactical Air Support capability in the early war was far ahead of everyone else.

However, this doesn't mean that the Germans were capable of true quick-response CAS in 1939 and 1940. Really, nobody was able to do this at this time. The Germans were significantly better during this time period at coordinating airstrikes with ground tactics on somewhat longer timescales, though (hours to days).

All of this is largely out of the scope of a company-level tactical game like CM, though.

[Michael Emrys]

Yes, you are correct that the Germans' Tactical Air Support capability in the early war was far ahead of everyone else.

But that is because most everybody else was asleep at the wheel before the start of the war, and during its first two or three years were desperately playing catch up. During that time period, the Germans did a lot of things tactically that were better than anybody else. That doesn't necessarily mean that they did everything better than the late war Allied standards.

However, this doesn't mean that the Germans were capable of true quick-response CAS in 1939 and 1940. Really, nobody was able to do this at this time. The Germans were significantly better during this time period at coordinating airstrikes with ground tactics on somewhat longer timescales, though (hours to days).

All of this is largely out of the scope of a company-level tactical game like CM, though.

And that's the bottom line here.

Michael

[AslakH]

Yes, you are correct that the Germans' Tactical Air Support capability in the early war was far ahead of everyone else.

However, this doesn't mean that the Germans were capable of true quick-response CAS in 1939 and 1940. Really, nobody was able to do this at this time. The Germans were significantly better during this time period at coordinating airstrikes with ground tactics on somewhat longer timescales, though (hours to days).

All of this is largely out of the scope of a company-level tactical game like CM, though.

No, that's true. The FliVo FOs were more tourists looking at things, then making a little call, marking features. But they did a very nice job with rapid response CAS at Kursk. Because there was always CAS planes in the air there.

There was little red air activity over Prokhorovka, so the CAS could rain down.

Still, it would be cool to have in the game. Achtung Panzer has some FliVo units. But they call in the Stukas, and that's it. Then you see some enemy flares, etc.