Holman

Great news! Can't wait! (Will of course wait patiently.)

Every release contains a HUGE number of vehicles and units, and every additional module does the same. In the CMBN line, for instance, I can't think of a single significant vehicle we don't now have for the time period covered.

I play on Win10 with no special settings. Latest updates, works today.

I couldn't agree more!

USS Olympia is indeed beautiful! One thing you really notice is the different living standard for officers and sailors: wood-paneled, finely outfitted staterooms vs. hammocks slung around the guns and in the passageways.

There has been a lot of discussion about this. There has been a change (I'd say a dramatic change) in game behavior, and it seems to involve units fleeing where before they would merely cower in place for a short time. Units in good cover (a heavy building, a trench) coming under fire will now get up and run into the open rather than hunkering down in place as they used to. This is as true of Elite British paras as it is of Italian conscripts.

I would *love* to hear from BTS about this issue and whether it is being addressed. The new tendency of even high-quality troops to flee good positions has ruined a couple of my recent PBEM games.

So it's Russians on both sides, then?

I've seen WW2 pics of all nationalities with larger-than-crew groups posing on or around one tank--enough that I've wondered the same thing. I would guess that they are friends from the same unit posing together, and they just picked one tank to do it with. Or perhaps you sometimes see a tank crew posing with their platoon or company (troop, whatever) leaders. Or maybe the mechanics feel attached to the crew, etc.

I do agree! As I've said before, I admire BTS' design vision and I trust them to get this right.

Just saw a fresh veteran British airborne team run out of a building under mere rifle (not even MG34) fire. They have taken no casualties at all. Some mild HE had fallen nearby (not very close) earlier in the turn, but no one was even wounded. The two or three HE rounds and the incoming rifle fire were the first action the airborne team had seen in the whole scenario. In fact I don't believe I had taken more than one casualty on my whole side yet. Needless to say, these are not Iraqi conscripts.

One other ting I've noticed just in the past few turns. We all know that a shreck or bazooka firing inside a building can suppress the team. Under 4.0, I've seen three or four instances of this suppression causing the shreck team to vacate the building. Under 3.0, they would have cowered in place. They are not taking any kind of fire. They fire the rocket, get suppressed, and stand up and run out into the street.

Oh, I know. I wish I had the time to do repeatable tests. I might even learn that I'm wrong, which would be reassuring about the game. I hope I haven't come off as a whiner. I genuinely trust BTS to get things right, and I greatly admire their design vision. It's just that I've never before had this strong sense that something changed to make the game less realistic.

I feel like this discussion is going in circles, but I need to add that, while I gave one example above, it was only one example among many I've seen. I'm not basing my sense of the 3.0/4.0 difference on that one instance alone. That one merely illustrates the larger pattern. Once again, the problem is not squads panicking or that their behavior is out of the player's hands when they do; the problem is what the game has them do when they do panic. In about ten or twelve games under 4.0 I've seen multiple instances of infantry bolting into the open when they would have cowered in place under 3.0. I believe the older behavior is more realistic, and in 4.0 blindly running upright into the open out of cover has become unrealistically common. I love the degree to which the TacAI is the heart of CM, which is why I want it to be the best and most realistic it can be. I trust that BTS is aware enough of these sorts of complaints to look into them. I'd be very happy to hear that that's the case.

For purposes of this debate, figuring out what's going on involves comparing 3.0 and 4.0. I'd love for BTS to acknowledge that they've made a change for specific reasons or that something unintended has slipped in. My sense of something being off comes from things like squads inside a stone church taking rifle fire (not even Bren fire) and running out the door to be killed in the street. Yes, the squad in question was pretty beaten up, but my strong sense is that in 3.0 and earlier they would have cowered in place in the church (making them immune to aimed fire) rather than running outside.

Well, my comparison is between 3.0 and 4.0, and I feel sure I can see a difference. Units in buildings and trenches are bugging out into the open under the same conditions that used to cause them to hug the floor. The problem isn't that they're being suppressed. It's that they're more likely to stand up and totally expose themselves when suppressed.

I really feel like I'm seeing units flee cover by running when they used to cower in place. It's not that they're not "tough" enough; it's that they run into the open when they used to (realistically, IMHO) hug the ground until they collected themselves. I'm seeing this in response to fire from other infantry squads, not incoming artillery. I haven't done systematic tests, but this is my impression after about ten PBEM games under 4.0. I believe I was an active enough player under 3.0 to notice a significant and valid difference.

But, as many have reported, soldiers are leaving cover far more often than before even when under rifle or MG fire, not HE.

There is no unit editor in the scenario editor as such. You can't put particular weapons into the hands of particular soldiers. However, it is possible to customize to a limited extent. All of a unit's stats (experience, morale, etc) can be tweaked, and in some cases it's possible to manually decide which squads have special equipment. (For instance, you can choose which squads in a pioneer platoon actually have a flamethrower or which gun teams have which model of AT gun.) Overall, picking the quality of a unit's TO&E will affect how well-armed and supplied it is, but it's not possible to pick everything. Above the level of individual squads and vehicles, however, you can mix and match. You can easily take an infantry battalion and decide which of its platoons are at full strength and which are missing squads. You can create a tank platoon that is all Panther G's or instead create one that is a mix of Panther G, Panther V, and Panzer IV's, etc.

If you're putting BMPs in front of anything larger than a 7.62mm machine gun, you're doing it wrong. If they're spotted, they're easily killed or incapacitated. Despite the name, IFVs are eggshell-fragile against just about any mounted weapon. Considering that the Tunguska is designed to spray out AP shells like a firehose, they are the last thing you want to expose any vehicle to. Even a tank can come away with its sensors wrecked. If one of those beasts is positioned to spot as you move your large rumbling vehicles into the open, it will kill them before you see it. Probably your best bet is to dismount a foot team and have it creep forward to put eyes on the monster.

Maybe we're playing the game Allied soldiers *thought* they were playing, where every PzIV is a Tiger.

Others have noticed what seems like a fairly dramatic change in infantry resilience under 4.0. Here are two active threads on it. (There may be more.) Has 4.0 made the stock campaigns unplayable? How can I prevent infantry running away?

That's all very good advice, and it's great to see it presented together. But I think the issue at hand isn't players not knowing these things. It's that the threshold at which infantry run away (especially when temporarily cowering in place seemed more realistic and more likely to keep them alive) has been greatly lowered in Engine 4.0. I really have the sense that the balance was just about right in earlier versions. What was needed, if anything, was more situational behavior ("tank fright," for example, or better choice of routes when retreating), but it seemed to me that behavior seemed believable enough. Right now it seems like units in cover run away in the exact same way that units in the open do. I certainly get the sense that they expose themselves more often than before, and that's the especially unrealistic part. (Cowering inside a building and crawling to cover inside seems much more believable that racing out the door into the street.) I almost have the sense that the cowering and running-away behaviors have been swapped.

Have you tried the 4.0 engine? Yes, those behaviors have always been there (I've played CM from the beginning), and they are appropriate under the right circumstances. What's happening now is a much more pronounced tendency for infantry to break and leave cover much earlier.