CM Red Thunder page is up

[Con]

I think that Battlefront could revise their CC a little bit and if possible put in the asynchronous mode that makes flashpoint so popular.

My suggestion is that turns could be broke down to 30 seconds of WEGO (anything less and a 90 minute game would be too burdensome).  The Russians might start at 1 minute turns and this could then even be increased as they lose HQ units.  Add in an order limit for troops outside of HQ range say you only have 75% of orders that you can give to units so you either have to give group orders or really decide that for the next turn you want your tanks moving and the infantry in support etc).  These orders would also degrade down as you lost HQ units and your troops morale begin to gets shaken.

I think implementing this would certainly start providing the feel of larger inexperienced formations and force the Russian player to play in a more historical way (limiting recon, more larger group assaults, tanks used in attack)

Both could be used in WEGO and order limitation could be tweaked for realtime (ie a certain amount of time has to pass before orders can become active again).

Just some random thoughts

Con

[Skoop]

I think limiting experience levels for the soviets is one way to handicap them tactically.  All soviets should be conscript or green and maybe guards could be regular.  If you've played cm with conscript or green troops you will know what a serious disadvantage that is.  At conscript experience, one or two bursts of automatic fire and that squad is routed and will potentially become broken.  Once a squad is morally broken they are almost useless the rest of the mission.  It's up to the scenario designer To apply proper experience levels.  Another setting to apply is the motivation level, you could have highly motivated conscripts that will aggressively charge forward, but with the brittle moral and skill factors.
You still might see an elite soviet smg squad in a h2h online meeting engagement, people aren't always going to enforce historical restrictions. 

[MengJiao]

I think limiting experience levels for the soviets is one way to handicap them tactically.  All soviets should be conscript or green and maybe guards could be regular.  If you've played cm with conscript or green troops you will know what a serious disadvantage that is.  At conscript experience, one or two bursts of automatic fire and that squad is routed and will potentially become broken.  Once a squad is morally broken they are almost useless the rest of the mission.  It's up to the scenario designer To apply proper experience levels.  Another setting to apply is the motivation level, you could have highly motivated conscripts that will aggressively charge forward, but with the brittle moral and skill factors.
You still might see an elite soviet smg squad in a h2h online meeting engagement, people aren't always going to enforce historical restrictions.

  There are plenty of ways to handicap the Soviets tactically (though of course in the CMRT time period, they were doing very well tactically, operationally and strategically), but I think most of the Soviet problems were always in the operational area more than in the tactical area, though by the CMRT time period not so much.  So in tactical terms what you would see in a game like CMRT would be the results of some operational fumbles and attacks would not happen or something.  Once the attack was on (operationally functioning), the Soviets would not be all that different tactically.  So an operational or Grand tactical game could better simulate Soviet problems than a tactical game.

[ComradeP]

Well, it's a familiar and usually lengthy debate, but I don't think average Soviet tactical effectiveness was up to Western Allied standards at any point in 1944-1945. There were experienced units, but overall loss rates and the method used to replace them (sending men into battle with minimal training, often men that were liberated and immediately conscripted) guaranteed that there were clear limits to the experience of the average Soviet unit.

The decreasing experience of the Germans also doesn't automatically make the Soviets better in absolute terms, only in relative terms. Bagration was a huge success, but keep in mind that like in most of the famous encirclement operations, there were no significant reserves to halt or significantly slow down a strategic or even an operational breakthrough.

By the time the Soviets reached former Poland, the Soviet offensive ran into the familiar problems of an inefficient logistics tail not being able to keep up and mobile units having advanced too far ahead of their infantry armies resulting in the Germans being able to temporarily halt them. Given the dispositions, the result of Bagration wasn't inevitable but highly likely to occur. Personally, I'm more impressed with the way the Soviets turned to Riga during Bagration than with the plan for Bagration in Byelorussia (which was sort of a reverse of the opening stages of Barbarossa there).

[Grim.Reaper]

I am glad that I am not smart enough to understand all these technical details and the analysis:)

I simply play the games to enjoy a reasonable tactical representation of a battle....just glad I don't know enough about these details, or I don't think I could ever enjoy another game again:)

Sometimes good to be simple and just enjoy what it is.....

[ComradeP]

Admittedly, I also often enjoy playing wargames from a period I know very little about, it tends to be far more relaxing than playing a WWII one and seeing "well, this isn't remotely historical because..."

[Zonso]

I think there are some stereotypical misconceptions regards Soviet 'tactical rigidity' during this period of the war, to the Soviets the Third Period of the Great War. Soviet tactics at CM's level changed a lot over the course of the war and by mid-44 to 45, Red Thunder's setting, I don't think the scenario was much different from how other nations operated. A Company commander assigned an attack objective would usually come up with his own plan, having the discretion to adjust tactics and movements etc. depending upon battlefield conditions. Where the rigidity may come in would be the carrying out of the objectives 'at any cost', though not always the case, as I have read of Red Army commanders being dismissed for taking needless casualties. Further, armored or breakthrough units were expected to have a high initiative and to take advantage of a changing battlefield development, regardless of the day's objective, just like western armies.

CM models experience, morale and motivation for units. Tied into this is the C2 aspect, which greatly affects unit performance and spotting, something that many people seem to overlook or not understand. For Red Thunder it has been stated that the Soviet forces will have weak C&C, meaning a lack of radios and poor junior leadership for their formations. This will have an affect on splitting squads and morale etc when C2 is broken, which in turn correlates with the real life organization of the Soviets who used Companies as other nations would use Platoons. After having played the Italians in CMFI, who suffer similar issues even without being able to split squads, there is a noticeable difference in how the forces are employed and trying to do things without taking that into consideration generally leads to disaster.

One thing I am a little unsure of is how the Soviet all SMG squads will perform in practice. IMO CM seems to over model SMG effectiveness at range, at least that has been my experience with the British Paras in Market Garden. Either way they will be nasty!

[Bison]

Personally I think that when most games are over thought they never live up to expectations if historical accuracy is a requirement for a good game play experience.  Most if not all cannot literally transform the battlefield into a game experience and so you end up with an abstraction to best represent a given battle, operation, or theatre to a games mechanics and limitations therein. 

[ComradeP]

I think there are some stereotypical misconceptions regards Soviet 'tactical rigidity' during this period of the war, to the Soviets the Third Period of the Great War.

I don't think anyone here believes there was no difference between their performance in 1941 and 1944-1945. When I call them rigid at the tactical level, I'm referring to what you describe: inflexible C&C arrangements due to lower quality leadership, a large maneuver unit size and lack of radio's requiring more extensive pre-battle planning.

The effect of the experience of individual soldiers or squads can be limited by less efficient C&C. There was a certain "ceiling" to how effective Soviet units could be on the tactical level due to issues unrelated to the performance at the squad level.

The Germans at this point in the war were probably overrated as well, they suffered from dramatic drops in training compared to 1941 and being forced to use troops that were older or younger than the age at which they'd be most effective as soldiers reduced effectiveness further. That also goes for the Soviets.

[Grim.Reaper]

Personally I think that when most games are over thought they never live up to expectations if historical accuracy is a requirement for a good game play experience.  Most if not all cannot literally transform the battlefield into a game experience and so you end up with an abstraction to best represent a given battle, operation, or theatre to a games mechanics and limitations therein.

Agree with this....don't think any game can live up and as I said above, I am glad not to be an expert otherwise could never play any games.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Thanks for your observations on CC, Comrade. The pathfinding was quite a game breaker, indeed.

Personally I think that when most games are over thought they never live up to expectations if historical accuracy is a requirement for a good game play experience. 

The problem is with the usual definition of 'accuracy' you usually find applied on games, which is 'recreate historical events'. Such railroading will lead in an unavoidable way to over fit the engine so that those events are guaranteed to be recreated. War in the East is quite a good example of that kind of "over fitting" and its results on game play. There are many paths to reach the same conclusion, if the players have the stamina to go over the whole thing.

A more sensible approach to 'historical accuracy' is that of trying to 'recreate processes' so the outcomes can be significantly different but still 'make sense'. Europa Universalis has got there (except in the military department) for instance.

In CMx2 I must say there's little railroading of the kind above and I appreciate that. I played one of the several 're-enactments' on the scenario repository of the notorious Villiers Bocage episode. In one of my replays, Wittman's Tiger threw a track trying to negotiate some rough terrain. Which obviously SUCKED at one level, but at another level was AWESOME. It really makes you think about the role of contingency: history is like a music tape that every time it is played, it sounds different [:)]

[Rayfer]

I am glad that I am not smart enough to understand all these technical details and the analysis:)

I simply play the games to enjoy a reasonable tactical representation of a battle....just glad I don't know enough about these details, or I don't think I could ever enjoy another game again:)

Sometimes good to be simple and just enjoy what it is.....

Amen brother! I feel the same way.

[undercovergeek]

I am glad that I am not smart enough to understand all these technical details and the analysis:)

I simply play the games to enjoy a reasonable tactical representation of a battle....just glad I don't know enough about these details, or I don't think I could ever enjoy another game again:)

Sometimes good to be simple and just enjoy what it is.....

Amen brother! I feel the same way.

+ more

Definitely this, I know where the pointy end of the sword is and have a fair grasp of fixing, flanking and firing beyond that I'm just happy to be along for the ride

[Zonso]

I'm not a grognard or an 'expert' on WWII, though I definitely appreciate those that are, no mater how tedious(!) they can be at times, because of the types of games produced as a result of their input. No question things can be overthought when trying to reflect historical accuracy to a 'T' to a game; however that's where good game design and producers come in. I agree completely also with Bletchley_Geek's approach to historical accuracy by simulating the processes that lead to an outcome, and not simply being forced into a straight jacket.

Then again it seems 'mainstream' wargamers are more than content with games such as PanzerCorps, Battle Academy or more recently Heroes of Stalingrad anyways, so any concern over historical accuracy is a moot point. ;)

[MengJiao]

I'm not a grognard or an 'expert' on WWII, though I definitely appreciate those that are, no mater how tedious(!) they can be at times, because of the types of games produced as a result of their input. No question things can be overthought when trying to reflect historical accuracy to a 'T' to a game; however that's where good game design and producers come in. I agree completely also with Bletchley_Geek's approach to historical accuracy by simulating the processes that lead to an outcome, and not simply being forced into a straight jacket.

Then again it seems 'mainstream' wargamers are more than content with games such as PanzerCorps, Battle Academy or more recently Heroes of Stalingrad anyways, so any concern over historical accuracy is a moot point. ;)

  I agree with the people who want accuracy and some way to simulate typical Soviet problems with coordinating things, but I don't think a tactical game can really do much without becoming a chore to play.  I think it would be interesting to simulate higher level Soviet problems by putting the player in the position of a Soviet army commander and letting them learn how to get things to work within Soviet limitations in communications and staff competence.  There's an awful lot in Glantz's books that covers this all th way down to phone calls from Stalin with the Dictator explaining how to use your tanks and artillery.