please disallow pre-planned arty

[De Savage]

Nidan and Jason, excellent ideas about scenario design and forces. Too often scenario makers use full forces. Even new battalion just arriving usually have some men missing (sick etc.). So 90% for "full forces".

In Normandy many German divisions were 30-50% of their maximum strength. Also US airborne troops suffered horrified casualties and many companies were down to 50% or even more.

[MikeyD]

In CMSF I did a couple scenarios that unapologetically targetted the opponenet in the opening barrage. But they were special circumstances dictated by the storyline. Most times the scenario designer studiously avoids clobbering the opponenet at startup. Or he combines limited artillery with multiple AI terrain targets which randomizes where the AI might drop its opening rounds. A human opponent gameily targetting the setupzone is just bad sportsmanship. Like a baseball pitcher hitting the batter in the head. Sure, that ends the contest in your favor but it defeats the purpose of the game.

[SlowMotion]

I'm one of those who think setup zones should be big enough that deciding the battle during first few turns using available arty isn't very likely.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

I'm not so sure. The quote was dealing with a Canadian attack on Carpiquet airfield east of Caen. Looking at Google Earth or Maps doesn't tell us whether the modern wooded areas near Marcelet are the some ones that were there in 1944, but any wooded area east of of Marcelet yet west of the airfield area is going to be pretty close.

The fire against the assembly areas was conducted at Division level by the Germans in this instance - way outside the scope of the game - but the same arguement could be made about US forces calling in Naval gun bombardments. No matter what scale these types of fires were conducted at, we would still expect to see their effects in our smaller scale slice of the big picture.

i made a map that shows the area and intial actions:

on the bottom is a modern google maps satellite image. on top of it is an aerial recon photo from 1944. on top of it is a sketch of the actions. on top of it are some comments of mine. different layers do not match 100%, as i didn't want to put too much time into this, but it's pretty good.

the yellow "assembly areas?" blob is my guess of the assembly area of the Canadian forces (they assembled in the villages west of the start line). they were shelled by Germans starting on 3rd July and continuing throughout the night.

the red blobs are the wooded areas south west (today) and east of (back then) of Marcelet. these were shelled by the 12th SS at 5am (Allied time) on 4th July. it happened at the same time, or just after, as Allies started the attack around the start line, with supporting barrages from naval fire + 21 regiments of artillery + regiment or two of tanks + other stuff.

i think you have a point in that something like the attack of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles towards the hangars could make a big CMBN battle. map 2 km long (EDIT: perhaps 3 km, i don't remember how close the heights were and if south or south-east of the airfield), Marcelet at the other end and the western end (EDIT: or perhaps eastern end, or up to the heights) of the hangars at the other end. perhaps 800 meters wide (or over 1 km, depending on the location of the heights). duration 4 hours. initial German barrages at the start line could be in the game. (EDIT: or perhaps even down to 2 hours if German barrages are not in the game, and as abstracted/simulated result the Canadian battalion arrives piecemeal in parts as reinforcements per JasonC's idea) could even be an interesting fight. Canadians with a battalion of infantry, a company of tanks (perhaps arriving as reinforcements to simulate historical passivity) and lots of artillery. opposing them is perhaps a platoon of infantry reinforced with a couple of HMGs and mortars + later reinforced by some panzers at the south-eastern (or southern?) highground. this would of course require some tweaks in the future patches (HMG fire effects for example), so that the Canadian battalion doesn't simply overrun the opponent in 30 minutes.

still it would be pushing the limits of the game, i think. but i agree that in some case barrages at assembly areas can fit the scale of CMBN battles.

[John Malcolm]

i made a map that shows the area and intial actions:

Cheers for that. I'm really looking forward to the first module.

[Battlefront.com]

Remember that most of the stuff described in the history books is at the higher level because that's what official records documented better. That and most historians tend to examine larger chunks of a battle or campaign.

If you read first person accounts from people lower down the food chain you will see things like "at 0600 we heard some activity in the copse of trees to our north where an attack had come from a few days earlier. Battalion fired mortars at them for 20 minutes. Afterwards a recon patrol moved in and found bodies and debris that hadn't been there the day before". This isn't a real account, obviously, but it's the sort of thing that often is found in first hand accounts. There might only be one or two such references in an entire book, taking up maybe less than a paragraph in total length. This is the sort of stuff that's totally within CM's scope.

Of course, in real life such preemptive artillery often nixed the enemy's attack entirely because in real life they often had that option. Since CM is a game that option isn't viable since the game is rather boring if the attacker doesn't show up

Steve

[undead reindeer cavalry]

Remember that most of the stuff described in the history books is at the higher level because that's what official records documented better. That and most historians tend to examine larger chunks of a battle or campaign.

If you read first person accounts from people lower down the food chain you will see things like "at 0600 we heard some activity in the copse of trees to our north where an attack had come from a few days earlier. Battalion fired mortars at them for 20 minutes. Afterwards a recon patrol moved in and found bodies and debris that hadn't been there the day before". This isn't a real account, obviously, but it's the sort of thing that often is found in first hand accounts. There might only be one or two such references in an entire book, taking up maybe less than a paragraph in total length. This is the sort of stuff that's totally within CM's scope.

Of course, in real life such preemptive artillery often nixed the enemy's attack entirely because in real life they often had that option. Since CM is a game that option isn't viable since the game is rather boring if the attacker doesn't show up

that's very true.

the sickening thing about speaking finnish and having unhealthy interest for WW2, is that 90% of finnish war diaries (and all sorts of related wartime documents) are scanned and are freely and easily available online. for indirect arms you get the diaries of down to individual batteries (artillery) and platoons (mortars).

a book covering the actions of just a single division, covering a couple of months of actions, could never come even close to the amount of information covered in the documents. books give you only those vague remarks about how positions of this or that unit got shelled during the night, or how the supporing artillery fired x thousand shells during the day (mostly on sectors x and y).

when one looks at those wartime documents, you get stuff like a single artillery battery firing at dozens of targets during one day (the exact individual targets, the number of shells fired at them etc). as you can easily have tens of batteries (or battalions) of artillery, and of course great number of mortars, covering a sector of one division, the number of different fires and different targets is absolutely incomprehensible.

this might lead one to the conclusion that CMBN level "round 1" arty fires at startup areas may have been fairly common, and at least a lot more common than history books would suggest.

on the other hand, the same digitized documents cover infantry company and platoon diaries (and of course higher level ones) and it's quite rare to read about cases where attacking finnish infantry would get shelled in CMBN style round 1 fires. but perhaps it's just the rigidity of Soviet artillery or sumfink (i haven't read the diaries that cover the actions against Germans at far north).

btw if anyone is interested to see how a single battery fired, here's one example: http://digi.narc.fi/digi/view.ka?kuid=2783843. it's in finnish but the format should be self explanatory. date, time, target (most are predefined call signs, TRPs), the number of shots by each tube in the battery. "seuraava" in blue top bar takes to the next page if someone is interested for some reason.

[DavidFields]

For scenarios, I think there is already a known solution for the defenders, seen in Razorback Ridge in Courage and Fortitude: bring the defenders on incrementally. Let the pre-planned bombardment begin--we will show up later.