Will vehicles be able to engage multiple targets too?

[Fenris]

I brought it up at the preview but haven't seen it discussed at all. After seeing that a single infantry unit can have multiple targets, ie shooting in multiple directions, I wondered if vehicles with multiple weapons would have the same behaviour.

Will a tank be able to point it's turret in one direction and have the bow MG engage soft targets to it's front at the same time?

Thanks

[MikeyD]

Yup. This was in CMSF too, though you'd be hard-pressed to find a vehicle that could actually use the feature due to weapons arrangements. The late model Challenger with the remote HMG on the roof, I suppose.

[GhostRider3/3]

Nice... good to hear.

"I would hate to be on the recieving end of a x4 .50 call Machine gun Halftrack"

[noxnoctum]

How would you order it to attack two targets? I never figured that out in CMSF.

[ChrisND]

How would you order it to attack two targets? I never figured that out in CMSF.

You don't, you assign one target, the AI would use the others as it saw fit.

[Lanzfeld]

This was also in CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK. Turret was one way shooting a target and bow mg would shoot at another target. I have seen this first hand.

[Michael Emrys]

On the other hand, in CMAK the M3 could not engage different targets with its 75 and 37. Hopefully with the new code that will now be possible.

Michael

[MikeyD]

It'll be rather difficult to get an M3 meduim tank to do anything in the game.

[Michael Emrys]

Granted (pun intended) in light of the fact that they are not present in this theater or timeline. However, I was thinking ahead to the possible happy day when the North African Theater of Operations was revisited. And if not there, then Lend-Lease Lees showing up in the USSR. And don't forget, the Soviets had some multi-turreted tanks too.

Michael

[Rayak47]

..and the French in '40...oh never mind!

[Michael Emrys]

..and the French in '40...

True. And don't forget the early model Churchills.

Michael

[Rayak47]

No sweat, one of the things on my list when I win the mega millions is to commission BF to make a '39-'40 CM European Theatre Game,

[Sequoia]

No sweat, one of the things on my list when I win the mega millions is to commission BF to make a '39-'40 CM European Theatre Game,

You have that dream too! But even so it will only have to be a '40 dream as they say adding Poland '39 would be too much of a change even from the German side of things. We have to demand the Dutch and Belgians though! Some have suggested 1940 would never sell as the only interesting campaign would be from the German side. I don't believe that's really a problem for Combat Mission players, and besides I bet a good French and British campaign could be done.

[Michael Emrys]

...besides I bet a good French and British campaign could be done.

True. Although victory might have been unobtainable, they could have held out for much longer if the High Command hadn't been idiots. If they had somehow managed to last a whole year, the US might have been in it by then, and who knows where that might have led. The Germans might have been in a pretty pickle with Stalin perched on their eastern borders just biding his time before he put the knife in. Strategically Germany was on thin ice and could have been sunk...if the Allied High Command hadn't been idiots.

Michael

[SleeStak]

True. Although victory might have been unobtainable, they could have held out for much longer if the High Command hadn't been idiots. If they had somehow managed to last a whole year, the US might have been in it by then, and who knows where that might have led. The Germans might have been in a pretty pickle with Stalin perched on their eastern borders just biding his time before he put the knife in. Strategically Germany was on thin ice and could have been sunk...if the Allied High Command hadn't been idiots.

Michael

German margins were so close early summer of 1940. Had the French held on til the Germans had to overhaul their tanks in large numbers and German logistics began to fall apart, the French could have made it to the fall. Then no Western French ports for the German Navy, no battle of Britian and Stalin just watching with relish. It would have been a very different war.

Of course, the French would have had to figure out how to handle those pesky Panzers in division and corps strength.

[Michael Emrys]

Of course, the French would have had to figure out how to handle those pesky Panzers in division and corps strength.

To say nothing of the French having to figure out how to get messages to and from Supreme HQ in a timely fashion. Inability to do that killed their chances about as much as anything. And there were a lot of "anythings".

Michael

[dan/california]

The First World War killed their chances. They literally hadn't had time to recover their a population, much less anything resembling a fighting spirit. Unfortunately the never too be sufficiently damned treaty of Versailles mistreated the Germans badly enough to go looking for theirs, but not so badly they couldn't find it.

[Michael Emrys]

You put your finger on something. France and Britain really, really didn't want to fight another war. Neither the populace nor their leaders wanted to. They wanted so badly not to fight another war that they closed their eyes and tried to wish the Nazi threat away. They really bent over backwards not to "provoke" Hitler, not realizing that Hitler didn't need provoking. He was bent on war from the outset and prioritized preparation for that war above everything else, driving Germany to the brink of bankruptcy in order to pursue it.

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

Unfortunately the never too be sufficiently damned treaty of Versailles mistreated the Germans badly enough to go looking for theirs, but not so badly they couldn't find it.

The Versailles Treaty has a lot to answer for, but extreme German nationalism had its roots much further back than that. The dream of a Greater Germany goes back to the middle of the previous century with Prussia and Austria vying to see which of them would dominate it. Since neither could allow the other to dominate, they blocked each other from achieving it. Following the creation of the German Empire in 1870 though, they were off and running. Germans, and especially the Kaiser, were intent on Germany becoming a dominant world power. Later on, under the Nazis this attained a semi-mystical status. The treaty made a lot of Germans, especially in the military, thirsty for vengeance, but that was just a recent grafting on a tree that had rooted 80 years before.

Michael

[Other Means]

You put your finger on something. France and Britain really, really didn't want to fight another war. Neither the populace nor their leaders wanted to. They wanted so badly not to fight another war that they closed their eyes and tried to wish the Nazi threat away. They really bent over backwards not to "provoke" Hitler, not realizing that Hitler didn't need provoking. He was bent on war from the outset and prioritized preparation for that war above everything else, driving Germany to the brink of bankruptcy in order to pursue it.

Michael

This really is an unrepresentative oversimplification of the British stature and really a position only tenable in hindsight.

No politician - none in the UK and even less in the USA would have wanted to do anything to provoke conflict at that point.

The UK may well have been appeasing but the USA was ignoring.

Neville Chamberlain, rightly, wanted piece. But at the end this was not done blindly. If we had not had the breath of the phony war we would have been overwhelmed immediately. As it was we had several months to prepare - which we did. If we hadn't had that time we wouldn't have been able to resist and the outcome would have been very different.

[Michael Emrys]

This really is an unrepresentative oversimplification of the British stature and really a position only tenable in hindsight.

No politician - none in the UK and even less in the USA would have wanted to do anything to provoke conflict at that point.

The UK may well have been appeasing but the USA was ignoring.

Neville Chamberlain, rightly, wanted piece. But at the end this was not done blindly. If we had not had the breath of the phony war we would have been overwhelmed immediately. As it was we had several months to prepare - which we did. If we hadn't had that time we wouldn't have been able to resist and the outcome would have been very different.

You misunderstood me. I tend agree to agree that by 1938 Britain and France needed time to prepare. Germany had gotten the jump on them and they were playing catchup.

But the critical point was two years earlier when Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland. His military advisers strongly urged him not to do this. They knew that if challenged they lacked the military strength to back up such a move. The occupation of the Rhineland was done with a few battalions of lightly armed men. At that time the French army was strong enough to have evicted them without firing a shot. And if that had occurred, the German army leadership was prepared to arrest Hitler. Quite possibly they would have given him a quick trial and shot him to get him and the rest of the Nazi leadership out of the way before it could respond. But the French did not move, nor did the British urge them to and Hitler came out looking like a winner. And you don't arrest and execute winners.

Whether or not the Allies should have called his bluff in Munich is IMHO a moot point. Some firmly believe that the German army was still not strong enough yet to withstand a concerted effort by Britain, France, Czechoslovakia and possibly the USSR had they stood up to him. I'm not so sure of that myself, so I leave that debate to the experts.

As for the US in all this, Roosevelt and some others had some awareness of the threat posed by Hitler, but the public and quite a number of influential public figures didn't want to see the country involved in European affairs. Many of them still felt that it had been a mistake to have gotten involved in the First World War. Roosevelt had an arduous task of educating public opinion ahead of him, and until it came around, there was little he could do.

Michael

[Sergei]

But Michael, the remilitarization of Rhineland was akin to if Canada declared that they were to form an actual military again. Hardly anyone would expect that to result in Washington D.C. being burned down again (and those who could foresee it wouldn't object).

[SleeStak]

You put your finger on something. France and Britain really, really didn't want to fight another war. Neither the populace nor their leaders wanted to. They wanted so badly not to fight another war that they closed their eyes and tried to wish the Nazi threat away. They really bent over backwards not to "provoke" Hitler, not realizing that Hitler didn't need provoking. He was bent on war from the outset and prioritized preparation for that war above everything else, driving Germany to the brink of bankruptcy in order to pursue it.

Michael

I don't think the Germans really wanted to fight the western powers either. I suspect Hitler was stunned when England and France actually declared war over Poland and thought that each military success would lead to a diplomatic deal ending the war in the west so that the Germans could prepare to go after the USSR.

[Erwin]

It's hard to do an expeditionary force across water over other people's countries to get to an enemy, so I think Britain's position was understandable from a logistical POV before one even gets into the politics.

I don't want to rag on the French but they had the largest and "most powerful" Army in the world and did nothing over the Rhineland occupation, or Poland when virtually Germany's entire army was in the East. That was the situation that gave the Wermacht fits, that France could have simply walked into the Ruhr.

But, even now we're in a similar situation with the US having been seriously burned over Iraq and Afghanistan being very tentative about other more recent developments. So, we have to give our forbears some empathy/understanding when we see what is happening in today's world.

[SleeStak]

I think history is often too tough on people/countries that fail in war. I think the historical judgement on France in 1940 is probably too harsh and its hard to imagine a nation that could have resisted a German invasion if they had faced the same circumstances as the French. What's more, the French army gave a good account of itself in local actions. After Dunkirk, had the French mustered the political will to fight it out with the Germans, they might have remained an independent political force in Europe and siginificantly changed the course of the war. The german material margin wasn't huge. Of course, the war could have developed in to an attritional struggle with the Germans that would have depleted a generation, something the French might have found worse than surrender. For me, fascinating 'what ifs'.