derb

I've been off playing other games but am ready to return to my old favourite. I hope there are plenty of CMBB opponents still out there! Any word of what might be in CMBB2 or when it might happen? Any important new sites, mods etc? (There doesn't seem to have been any more patches).

Did the Americans not send any? Did the Russians not ask for them? It seems to me that they would have been really useful for the Russians to have. (What's the range/accuracy of Molotov cocktails, anyway?)

I am playing a scenario that specifies fog (city of ruins) and the LOS is only about 70m but if you choose a unit and look around you can of course see to the edge of the map. Would a different video card make a difference (I have a Radeon 8500)? I already set "weather/fog" to "extreme"... I would prefer not to have to pretend to myself that there is fog around.

If you have several houses side by side with a wall between them (eg like you get often in cities) and you want to go from one house to the other, do your troops have to leave the building and go into the open (albeit briefly) as they would IRL? Or do they cross the "internal" wall as if it was an external one (ie they are exposed to people in the adjacent building as they pass through the wall, but not exposed to people outside the "block"?) Are all houses assumed to have front *and* back doors?

If you have a game you have been playing with a live opponent but they disappear is there any way to tell the computer "it's a scenario" so you can finish it against the AI? Or vice versa?

Borg spotting? What's that? Unfortunately, CM 1 and 2 already cover the only tank battlefields that interest me. I would like to see CM3 updated but covering the same two battlefields...

Just an impression but does anyone else think tanks should be more effective than they are against infantry in buildings - especially "light" buildings? It's hard to visualise even well-built wooden buildings standing up to a > 37mm HE shell. Not that a single shell would destroy the building but I would expect the room targeted to be blown up and people in adjacent rooms to be substantially shaken - if < 50mm - or injured through internal walls being blown down. And how hard is it to hit, say, a room in a building where fire is coming from - or even an adjacent room - compared to hitting a tank at the same distance? Moreover, troops in a house are more likely to be bunched in rooms and/or by windows than troops in a forest, no - and therefore more likely to be killed by a shell that gets through? Just wondering therefore how, for example, troops in a light building - from memory - can get fired on by 75mm from c. 300m 4 or 5 times without the building collapsing and/or the people inside being killed by falling internal walls, shrapnel etc?

I knew someone out there would know. I couldn't remember the German name for them. From what I read on the site given the anti-personnel feature doesn't sound very effective.

I gather that some Tigers and I believe other German tanks have anti-infantry bomb dischargers to protect them from close assaults as well as smoke dischargers. Are both modelled in the game? How effective are they? I read here http://www.panzer-vi.fsnet.co.uk/ that after a while the dischargers were discontinued on Tigers. Anyone know when that was? And what other tanks besides the Tiger had smoke or anti-personnel dischargers?

I wanted to see how JS3s and air units worked so I have tried all sorts of combinations of quick battle without success. I was never even offered the option of air units in May 45 as the Soviets (or the Germans) and when I did try to buy JS3s they didn't turn up. Is the latter just the "rarity force adjuster" at work? (In which case you really really shouldn't buy a JS3 as it is very expensive and probably won't even arrive!) Come to think of it I think an explanation for the air units may be that the random time allocation put me to 'night'... Let this be a lesson to you - if you just want to play around with uberweapons, you have to remember to set the location to "central" (it knows that there were no JS3s on the Finnish front), to set the time to daylight, the casualty levels to 0 (otherwise the units you buy may not arrive) and probably one or two other parameters I have forgotten! It's commendably realistic in this respect but occaisionally frustratingly so (as with this game in general...) It even seems to adjust the rarity penalty (if I remember correctly) to reflect the nature of the scenario as well as the date (as some units were usually used offensively or usually defensively?) Thinking of rare units - can you buy the weird three turreted Russian tank in 1941?

Is it my imagination or are Russian ATRs perhaps a little too powerful? Not as bad as .50 cals in CMBO but still quite lethal? Possible spoiler alert - In the Wittman/Kursk scenario... my halftracks were riddled with ATR hits. This time, at least, most of them did no damage (I assume the 12.7mm rounds have no HE charge!) but eventually all of them were KOed. My first objection is that it appeared (from memory) that the ATRs were able to hit from 200m or even further. Is this likely for a weapon without (I assume) telescopic sights? And 2) when the HTs did get knocked out I seem to remember not infrequent heavy passenger casualties. Shouldn't casualties be proportionate to the calibre of the weapon which did the KO? I would expect a halftrack KOed by a hit to the engine by an ATR to just grind peacefully to a halt and have its infantry climb out, grumbling, in an orderly, un-panicked fashion... I haven't done any testing to make sure my impression of the effectiveness of ATRs is accurate. Has anyone else run across this?

One thing I have noticed in the last few scenarios I have played is that Russian tanks don't seem to have smoke shells, nor do standard Russian infantry mortars (at least not in '41). What's the best way to ensure you have plenty of smoke to put in front of (say) a nest of 88s? Off board arty might have smoke but if it takes an hour to arrive it may be too late

I still have trouble understanding how to use assault and advance. It seems to suggest that you advance if you are 20-100m from the enemy and assault from 20-0m. Why can't the AI simply switch from advance to assault as it gets close? I find that for some reason some of my Russian squads once I have given them their first "advance" orders I can't give them "assault" orders for the last 20m...

I'd like the ability to play back (and save) all of the action turns that have taken place so far so when a battle is over (or at any given point) I could play it back in real time from any given unit. Is there any way to get back to a minute's replay once you have gone on to the next action plotting phase?

88s certainly don't seem to have a problem. When I played the Iron Roadblock they killed off the KV-1 really quickly. In fact as far as I can tell the best approach would be just to wait for the 88s to arrive then rush them out (maybe alongside some Pz IIs to act as decoys) and keep everyone else away. One irritating thing. I did manage to get a whole squad of infantry up to 3m away from the KV-1. They immobilized it quickly enough but even once it was immobilized (and without nearby infantry) they could not kill it over two minutes. Surely with an immobile tank in the open an infantry squad should make short work of it using grenades through the hatches or something?