Soapbox and Pot Stir.....Bunkers and Pill Boxes

[Mike Abberton]

Earl,

I agree that CM won't be everyone's cup of tea. It's a squad level/individual vehicles game on a fairly small scale, map-wise. Most maps are on the order of 2 km x 2km or smaller.

Also, ammunition loadouts are represented and no resupply is possible during a scenario. So the length of scenarios is pretty much limited to 60 turns or so and that is stretching it, 30-45 is more realistic if combat starts right off in the beginning turns.

Actually that brings up a good point, which is that, on average, as game scale increases (i.e. bigger default units, hexes and turn lengths) abstraction increases as well. As you move further away from each firing action = one shot, the game engine has to abstract the results somewhat.

So in CS, for example, I assume that each vehicle in a platoon uses ammunition evenly and each can always fire each turn while in supply. If out of supply, half fire.

In CM, where I have individual vehicles, it is rare that each vehicle in a platoon maintains an even ammo loadout with the others. Typically one vehicle finds itself in a good firing spot and shoots more often than the others. That vehicle may actually run out of one ammo type altogether and have to pull back. If it was firing HE, it might now move to provide AT cover, while another takes over the HE work.

Is the CM model more "realistic", probably. But that level of realism is beneath the abstraction level of CS. Neither one is really better or worse (except from a personal preference point of view) just different.

Mike