Starting to make some progress with Mius

How about troops surrendering? I've played though "Operation Blau" three times now, and I haven't seen one single Soviet surrender, even though they are described as broken troops. I also encircled them. Yet they keep fighting to the death every single one of them.

How does morale work? I won a battle and found one single Soviet trooper hiding somewhere.. his morale was "normal" even though the battle was lost and all his buddies dead.

I'm sure I saw troops surrender before, when I played Mius the first time, some years ago.
 
As I know, nothing has been changed. The troops surrender when their combat sustainability drops to 0 and the speed of dropping depends on many different factors. I play Operation Blau as Soviets now (BG variant) and surrender is a big problem for the Red Army, as about 70-80% of the infantry doesn’t have any war experience.
 
xmax said:
As I know, nothing has been changed. The troops surrender when their combat sustainability drops to 0 and the speed of dropping depends on many different factors. I play Operation Blau as Soviets now (BG variant) and surrender is a big problem for the Red Army, as about 70-80% of the infantry doesn’t have any war experience.
Click to expand...
I only played as the Germans so far. Maybe the Russian morale has been boosted a bit in the German version, to give the player more of a challenge? The lone Russian left after losing all his comrades still had around 92 pct combat sustainability if I remember right. He took out 5 Germans...
 
Alright, news from the Mius Front.. I finally managed to win the Dawn of Blau campaign. Got a minor victory, but a victory nonetheless :)
 
Nelson1812 said:
Do you have a verdict on the game as yet?.. been considering over whether I should purchase it, on a couple of occasions, when its been on sale.
Click to expand...

My verdict is definitely positive. It's the most "real" feeling wargame I ever played. The attention to detail is staggering, and weapons systems seem to work as they should. In Combat Mission, it feels to me as if troops are actively trying to miss, and many weapons lack "punch", sometimes taking ages to hit anything even at short range. In Mius, small arms are really deadly at 100m.

Infantry in Mius also behave more intelligently in some situations than in CM. For example, if an enemy tank is driving towards infantry, they will actively run out of the way to avoid getting run over. Sometimes, they don't make it, but generally they are good at it. They will also throw all kinds of AT weapons such as mines, grenade bundles, AT grenades etc. all modelled in detail, not just abstracted by chucking standard hand grenades.

Tank damage modelling is also much more detailed and advanced than in CM. Tanks get tracks blown off but keep going for a while with the track trailing behind, they leak oil when hit in the fuel tanks, etc.

In one battle, I was frustrated that an enemy tank seemed to shrug off all hits and just reverse out of danger. After some moments I realised that it wasn't reversing.. it was knocked out and rolling backwards down a hill because of gravity. It slowly rolled all the way through a village, paving a trail through it by crushing through trees and fences, before finally coming to rest in the valley. Next battle, the wreck was still there, and so was the trail of destruction it left behind. That kind of thing makes it difficult to go back to Combat Mission.

I could write much more about how much more detailed this game is compared to CM. It also has some drawbacks though. Mius is better with combat in the open, whereas CM is more detailed in urban terrain. You won't see infantry take cover behind low walls in Mius for example. But on the other hand, trenches are way better in Mius than in CM. Etc etc.

Despite all the good stuff, it does take time learning how to play Mius. Especially three things make it seem more difficult than it really is:

1: The interface is complicated. But it has been improved a lot since I picked up Operation Star years ago (and got a refund because it was a mess).

2: The manual is poorly translated and lacks a lot of info about how things actually work.

3: The game is still in active development, which on one hand is good because it means it's still improving, but on the other hand, it means a lot of what you see in various Youtube tutorials has been changed later and no longer applies.

Final verdict: Not everybody's cup of tea, but definitely worth picking up on sale and trying out.
 
I have all the games and DLC. Gravteam is a great warsim. The learning curve is high. As mentioned the interface is unusual and takes getting used to. There is also the operational aspect where you maneuver forces, reinforce elements and do other things that affect the actual battles and outcome and this aspect take getting used to.

The physics in the game has been given very high marks. The way vehicles move over terrain, seeing tanks with dead crewmen still moving as driver is slumped over controls and other behavior is very believable.

The depiction of aircraft in the game is also very well done seeing Stukas roll in for dive bombing attacks on ground troops or IL2s conducting ground support mission is very satisfying. Unlike Combat Mission where you just see explosions or tracer fire from the sky. Overall the handling of air support is much better that CM.

Also seeing soldiers running around screaming while on fire gives a real sense of hell. Other nice touches are things like German soldiers using Russian weapons.

I'm not sure I agree CM handles urban combat better, but I haven't had a whole lot of experiencing combat in villages with Gravteam. The big difference between Combat Mission and Gravteam is you have far more command and control in Combat Mission. In Gravteam when you tell an infantry unit to do something in a village you tell them to attack, defend, ect and the unit/AI decides how to do it. In Combat Mission you can micromanage squads and start telling them what specific building to enter, if it has multiple levels, which on to go to, so on and so forth.

One other big difference is the sense of scale of distance seems better in Gravteam. In Combat Mission it feels very compressed. When you zoom in and see a unit close to an enemy unit hiding behind grass or other vegetation and shooting it out, it just looks and feels move realistic and believable in Gravteam.

Ever since I got Gravteam and learned it, I've been asking for a replay feature. There is so much going on that it would be very useful to be able to replay a battle so you can playback and see everything that went on.

The ultimate would be a WEGO mode, but not sure the game engine is designed to do such a thing.

I also think the hardware requirements if you want smooth playing with high graphics is pretty high. I had a good machine with an I7 (older CPU but still high clock speed 4 cores) RTX2080 and moving the camera was slow running at 2580x1080.

I'm now using a Ryzen 7 5800X and RTX 3080 and running at 4k with everything maxed out and performance is good.
 
Last edited:
Zeke_21 said:
Ever since I got Gravteam and learned it, I've been asking for a replay feature. There is so much going on that it would be very useful to be able to replay a battle so you can playback and see everything that went on.
Click to expand...
That is exactly what I feel playing Graviteam and coming from CM. In CM I usually watch every turn several time from different angles.
 
Some other observations regarding Gravteam:

As mentioned in one of the many youtube videos, how you maneuver and use your forces in the operational phase can pretty much make or break success. Once you enter the tactical battle phase and place your forces your pretty much an observer from that point on. Yes you can give orders to your forces, but you have a limited amount of orders you can give and your units respond slowly. This forces you to be judicious and keep things simple. Complicated, rapidly changes is not really possible-at least in my experience.

In Combat Mission I can give all sorts of orders to all my units, change them on a dime and they respond. The consequences of doing this are minimal to none. You can shift fronts and directions of attacks and defense very rapidly in Combat Mission. Everyone get the orders immediately and react immediately.

In Gravteam that's not possible. I've found that if I issues too many and rapid orders in succession, units don't respond and things then get confused and quickly turn in a big mess.

Another big difference is in Combat I would say most players including myself fight to the death and butcher our troops simply because we can. I can take a green unit and by the time things are done they are all dead or wounded. In realty that wouldn't happen. 5-10% casualties and the unit would be finished, but in Combat Mission, its not unusual for 75-100% casualties for a given unit.

I've seen mention that the game engine and AI in Gravteam is designed to prevent this from happening. I can't give exact numbers, but using up a unit like I can in Combat Mission doesn't seem possible. Once you hit a level of casualties my troops will surrender and I can't effectively control the unit.

One other huge difference between CM and GT is machine guns. In GT they seem far more convincing and realistically modeled. One or 2 well placed MGs can pin down a large force. There is something in the way MGs look, sound and operate in GT that feels move convincing. In GT you can see why they were so valuable and effective in a way that IMO isn't as well conveyed in CM.
 
Zeke_21 said:
As mentioned in one of the many youtube videos, how you maneuver and use your forces in the operational phase can pretty much make or break success. Once you enter the tactical battle phase and place your forces your pretty much an observer from that point on. Yes you can give orders to your forces, but you have a limited amount of orders you can give and your units respond slowly. This forces you to be judicious and keep things simple. Complicated, rapidly changes is not really possible-at least in my experience.
Click to expand...
My experience is different. I find I can play the game almost as normal... sometimes I have to wait a bit for the order meter to fill up again before I can give a new order, but generally I do give many orders during each battle. I definitely don't feel like a spectator.

Zeke_21 said:
Another big difference is in Combat I would say most players including myself fight to the death and butcher our troops simply because we can. I can take a green unit and by the time things are done they are all dead or wounded. In realty that wouldn't happen. 5-10% casualties and the unit would be finished, but in Combat Mission, its not unusual for 75-100% casualties for a given unit.
Click to expand...
As I see it, the problem is not that players do this, but that the game lets us do it. I've had this argument several times on the official forum. When units get "broken" that should indeed mean "broken" as in no longer able to fight.
 
Zeke_21 said:
One other huge difference between CM and GT is machine guns. In GT they seem far more convincing and realistically modeled. One or 2 well placed MGs can pin down a large force. There is something in the way MGs look, sound and operate in GT that feels move convincing. In GT you can see why they were so valuable and effective in a way that IMO isn't as well conveyed in CM.
Click to expand...
Definitely true. Machineguns seem "real" in GT, whereas in CM, they seem like damp squibs.
 
Another big point of contention on CM forum is the vulnerability of machine gunners on half tracks. In Combat Mission they get killed very easily. In GT they seem less vulnerable and thus HTs with MGs are a very serious threat.

Smoke in CM is limited and for the Russian side very limited. In GT there is no shortage of smoke-the Russians have and make liberal use of it.

Another thing I noticed in CM is pistols. Many times my pistol wielding pixel troopen are Clint Eastwood...
 
Last edited:
Zeke_21 said:
Another big point of contention on CM forum is the vulnerability of machine gunners on half tracks. In Combat Mission they get killed very easily. In GT they seem less vulnerable and thus HTs with MGs are a very serious threat.
Click to expand...
Agreed. It's also been discussed extensively on the forums.

I think either the Wehrmacht made a serious design mistake with their halftracks, or Battlefront did.
 
Bulletpoint said:
Agreed. It's also been discussed extensively on the forums.

I think either the Wehrmacht made a serious design mistake with their halftracks, or Battlefront did.
Click to expand...

I also noticed that CMCW M113 .50cal gunners should be similarly exposed but seem to survive longer.
 
I think machine gunners are too vulnerable in CM, but its also been mentioned that due to the short distances in most CM battles the HTs are far forward that would be the actual case historically. Regardless half tracks are useful and powerful in GT. Their machine guns, armored protection and mobility makes them excellent and useful weapons. An assault with half tracks and infantry feels like a mailed fist.

In Combat mission using half tracks almost always results in dead gunners and panicked drivers.

I see M-113s with exposed gunners and some variants with a cupola mounted MG. I think the M-113 is aluminum armor and vulnerable to .50 cal fire. I also wonder if its .50 cal can penetrate a BMP or BTR.
 
Redwolf said:
The M111 A2 has a forward shield like a SdKfZ 251/1.
The A3 has a shielding all around the gunner.

I see the A2 gunner survive longer than 251/1 gunners.
Click to expand...
Funny how when it's a US vehicle, the gun shield suddenly works :unsure:
 
Correction, there is an A1 without any shield, and the A2 has the round-the-gunner shielding.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom