Grenades and Fausts (oh my)

[MikeyD]

Talk about going from exception to rule, a crazy notion for the Bulge title might be to allow seperate 'scrounged equipment' infantry units in the TO&E for late war. One notable group in particular, whose name I can't recall off the top of my head, made wide use of Sdkfz 251s for troop transport and were particularly fond of their captured StuGs. Perhaps a simpler idea would be to just allow captured vehicles in the individual unit selector. CMBB gave us captured 'turncoat' T34s and Panthers if you recall. And if your captured Sdkfz 251 just happened to have acquireable fausts loaded in back?

[Frenchy]

My grandfather, who was a combat engineer during WW2, did pick up German weapons -- but he never used them. He sent them home as souveniers.

[Sakai007]

Hehe, this thread reminded me of a saying I read somewhere once, it went something like;

The English fight for their Queen, The Russians fight for their motherland, The Japanese fight for their Emperor, and the Americans fight for souvenirs. LoL

@MikeyD - That was one of the coolest features for me when I first got CMBB. I would set the reds with captured german equipment and the germans with captured soviet equipment. Entertaining to say the least. I have no clue, so if I am wrong let me know, but wouldn't all that would be involved would be to make some new skins for said equipment and slap em into the TO&E of various units???

[JasonC]

The Russians also used captured fausts, and by mid 1944 had significant numbers of the things. Doesn't mean they were common equipment, as they were for the Germans, but they were scrounged and they were used...

[JasonC]

As for the claim that the German concussion grenade had twice the "range" of a US frag, I don't think the range of a US frag was 15 meters. It was basically the same ~30 meter range seen for all hand grenades. Concussion grenades have a smaller area of personnel effect than frags, by a long way. They might be marginally more effective in a confined area (tossed into a bunker or house, say), but the main reason to use them was precisely to prevent friendly casualties to the using side. Basically they are a deliberately smaller lethal area weapon. If there are 40 friendlies above ground moving toward an enemy location, a frag is dangerous to those friendlies - and if the thrown grenade is going to land 5 feet away from an intended victim (perhaps in cover, trench or foxhole e.g.), a wide burst area is not necessary.

[Foreigner]

How about allowing the Allied side to purchase, let's say, 2-men Captured Panzerfaust teams with a huge cost in "rarity points"?

[Michael Emrys]

How about allowing the Allied side to purchase, let's say, 2-men Captured Panzerfaust teams with a huge cost in "rarity points"?

That's not how they were organized. If they were present at all they were distributed throughout a platoon, one or two to a squad and whoever got them probably was the guy(s) not already overloaded with gear or the guy(s) who had the most experience using them/was the best shot with them.

But in any event, I don't think it was worth making a big deal of trying to get them included in the game. Yeah, they were used historically, and especially towards the end of the war when the Allies would have been capturing large stocks of them from time to time, not rarely. But even so, they weren't the kind of thing one would be encountering every time one turned around in an American platoon. Think: how many photos of US infantrymen have you seen carrying or shooting a PF? I've seen a few, but very, very few out of hundreds and hundreds.

Michael

[LongLeftFlank]

Assuming CMBN contains some kind of IED equivalent single bang "booby trap", this is a workaround for scenario designers dead keen on getting a few PFs or MG42s into Allied hands without having Yanks running around in feldgrau.

1. Buy PF-equipped German antitank team for the Allied side.

2. Bring it in as an early reinforcement if setup zones are an issue.

3. Have it appear in the same location as the IED(s)?

4. BOOM! (hopefully big enough to kill everyone)

5. GIs can loot the bodies of their "kameraden".

[Michael Emrys]

Good lord! Will we next be coming up with ideas on how to get the maximum number of angels dancing on the head of a pin?

Michael

[Foreigner]

That's not how they were organized. If they were present at all they were distributed throughout a platoon, one or two to a squad and whoever got them probably was the guy(s) not already overloaded with gear or the guy(s) who had the most experience using them/was the best shot with them.

I agree with you that's how it most likely worked in real life. Yet, in my opinion, to implement it in the game exactly would be too involved. I don't think anyone would argue for making PFs standard equipment for Allied forces, so the game would have to include some limitations or ground rules as to what types of squads during what periods of the war would have had what chances of getting them. Once a squad gets them, do they discard their bazooka? Or if they keep the bazooka, should the "Antitank Team" order (or its CM:BN equivalent) split the PF, the bazooka, or both? Or should there be a separate "Split PF team" command?

While not very historical, making a separate team available for purchase would seem to me the least painful way of a) including PFs for the Allied side at least in some way, and finding a reasonable middle ground between having too many or too few of them (or rather, leaving the choice to the player/scenario designer).

Furthermore, I understand that in CM:BN one can subordinate a team to a platoon commander, so apart from the need to give orders to one more unit there should not be any C&C issues. I would also expect that in most cases, even if the PFs were organic to the squad, when the situation called for their use, they would be split out into a team anyway.

In short, I would say that including a separate team is the cheap and dirty alternative to getting it right - however, it can also be an acceptable alternative to not including them at all.

[MikeyD]

One flaw in your cunning plan.

3. Have it appear in the same location as the IED(s)?

CM:BN is an IED-free zone. I had even argued that IEDs (by that name anyway) were something of an anachronism for 1980s CM:AFghanistan! Anti-tank, anti-personnel and mixed mines, for sure. But hooking up 155mm artillery rounds to cel phone detonators didn't happen much in Normandy.

[jurpo]

CMBB gave us captured 'turncoat' T34s and Panthers if you recall.

Which makes sense because in the theaters CMBB covered captured materiel was used a lot and in an organized way. I would think any future Ostfront CM would do the same -- captured Soviet weaponry was extensively used e.g. by the Finnish army.

Heck, when I was doing my military service in 1990 we were trained to use DP-27s. The Finnish army borrowed about 9000 of those from the Soviets, and we didn't return them yet.

This is of course a different matter from on-the-spot acquisitions.

[LongLeftFlank]

But hooking up 155mm artillery rounds to cel phone detonators didn't happen much in Normandy.

Gosh Mikey, it's a good thing I have you around to tell me such things!

Tripwire-activated booby traps (not 122mm shells, sure, but still of considerable lethality -- e.g. Teller mine or 3 grenades) were not at all unknown in buildings, roadblocks or even woodlands when the Germans had time to rig up such things. That and the constant sniping was a large part of why many Allied grunts learned to hate the Germans so quickly; these things were seen as having little tactical value, just meant to kill or maim indiscriminately. (As opposed to saturation artillery barrages or carpet bombing, which was merely good clean fun of course).

Far less common but also employed (e.g. Ortona) were remotely (wire) detonated charges intended to demolish key structures (and their occupants) if they fell into enemy hands.

And no, I'm not going to worry much if these aren't included in the game.

[dieseltaylor]

And what about Pfaust tripods?

[Michael Emrys]

Far less common but also employed (e.g. Ortona) were remotely (wire) detonated charges intended to demolish key structures (and their occupants) if they fell into enemy hands.

Not to mention the rather massive time bomb they were kind enough to leave behind in the Naples post office basement.

Michael

[WillyPete2171]

Due to the very thin metal wall surrounding the Panzerfaust 30 explosive charge and its extreme brisance, we can safely relegate the danger of fragments to a second order effect. This assumption is grounded in reality as many weapons systems which try to enhance fragmentation use explosive charges with very low detonation velocity. (E.g. US Mk2 which switched from flake TNT to black powder)

Although the US Mk48 75mm HE shell also has about the same quantity of explosives, the shell fragments are non negligible. Something left to a future analysis.

So what does this all mean...

Without any argument, prevarication, or dissembling, if you are standing or kneeling within 7 feet of a Panzerfaust when it detonates your mortal being will become a fine red mist or a casualty completely out of combat.

How does this compare to the CMx2 engine's results?

As I mentioned above, the lethality of a blast when within a building is even greater. This should be something that the CMx2 engine should handle as well.

If the unfortunate human is crouched behind a wall or in a foxhole, the diffraction effects of the blast wave are still calculable but I would imagine this would be beyond the CMx2 engine's capabilities. What will be interesting is the "fudge factor" that the CMx2 engine does apply in these cases.

Finally, since the only threads that seem to get attention are those in the "eye candy" category, I believe that there are completely unacceptable errors: :mad: the Faust conical head is incorrectly modeled :mad:, is the wrong color scheme :mad:, is missing the graphical text :mad:, and the sighting guide is 1cm too long.

Oh where have all the grogs from CMBO gone?

Cheers

MRD

[Secondbrooks]

And what about Pfaust tripods?

I've heard there will be no such thing. But instead Fausts can be mounted on to Opel Blitz, behaving similarly to Stryker MGS and UAZ with SPG. They even get 10+ meters into their effective range as they are being fired from tall vehicle, instead of being fired from ground level. Think about all the possibilities in there!

I can't wait.

[RogCBrand]

I've heard there will be no such thing. But instead Fausts can be mounted on to Opel Blitz, behaving similarly to Stryker MGS and UAZ with SPG. They even get 10+ meters into their effective range as they are being fired from tall vehicle, instead of being fired from ground level. Think about all the possibilities in there!

I can't wait.

Like Charge of the Opel Blitz Brigade?

[LukeFF]

I vote for the Donkeyfaust:

[RogCBrand]

LOL!!! That reminds me a bit of the Fast Reaction Unit my brother and a friend came up with at their base in Iraq a few years back-

[Bradley]

And on that note, time for some Hogans Heroes..