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Slappy

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  1. Bunkers with that sort of LOS, particularly against early war armor, are devistating. The only real options for the attacker are smoking the bunkers and massed firepower on one at a time. Smoke allows maneuver to the side of the bunker where they cannot return fire. Massed firepower has a half dozen or more tanks firing at one target. The tanks will take losses, but generally get the bunker by sheer volume of fire. When the bunkers have LOS to most of the setup zone, neither tend to apply and a bloodbath is the usual result. I might suggest that a bunker embargo on desert scenarios might help things be more enjoyable in the future.
  2. That's "I'm crushing your head". Sorry. Just logged on and have nothing constructive to say.
  3. I use covered arcs as SOP in the attack as well as defense. I usually set a forward ~100m arc for all the advancing infantry to prevent them firing wildly at contacts 400m in the front. I believe that it can delay the defender IDing contacts (no info from fire to determine unit type and unseen units don't give themselves away by firing), but the main reason is to prevent useless ammo expendature. Squad fire at 400m is not going to have a meaningful effect on a MG in any kind of cover. I'd rather save the rounds for when I'm closer. Of course, that's what I beleive. I could be total crap.
  4. Or one of his friends. Either way, just another day for Dick.
  5. In my experience, the problem stems from having the AI weigh things happening close to it much more heavily than things happening far away. Generally this makes sense. Given that it can only choose one, you want an AI halftrack to take cover from the tank 200m away rather than the one 200m away. Also, you want the AI to seek out and try to take the flag 200m away rather than leave it alone to take the one 2000m away, at least generally. I think there is a sort of "inverse square law of AI response" that helps this happen and prevent the whole AI force from reacting to things on one corner of the map (a problem with Borg spotting). This generally works fine for maps with the size and flag and unit density that you genrally see in CM, but in novel situations the AI will definitely fail. As an aside, I'm sure you've been attacking the AI and taken one flag only to see at least some of the defenders leave perfectly good prepared positions to wildly charge the taken flag. This is exactly what the distance response curve must have been implemented to overcome. The problem is, I doubt that the drop in response for distance is proportional to the size of map. It is likely a static number. As another aside, you can see what sorts of issues this might present when trying to play CMC matchups against the AI (along with a host of other potential AI issues). In a world of 2km x 2km maps with exactly four flags, how will the AI react? Your guess is as good as mine.
  6. My experience is that there are some mine spotting bugs. I've had rare occurances where I've spotted mines (not DC) on turn two far in the opponent's setup area where none of my troops had LOS. I'm not sure what the issue is, but occasionally mines will be spotted when they shouldn't be. That can happen at 40m or 1000m, leading to mine spotting misunderstandings. My personal belief is the dual coding role that mines play as "sort of units and sort of terrain" is not implememented perfectly, leading to occasional early appearance.
  7. You also asked about bigger squad size. There is a bit of a trade off here. A company with 12 man squads will, for the same overall weapon mix, cost more than a company with 8 man squads. You pay for the extra firepower. Bigger squads deal out more firepower and obviously have a somewhat higher life expectancy as they can absorb more damage. They are particularly useful in close combat where numbers are very important. Of course, for a given number of points you will have fewer squads on the map with larger squad sizes. In most formations, squad members 9 through n are just riflemen. You're not getting high value weapons like SMGs or LMGs, which means that in most situations the increased firepower is not linear with size. Large squads do not also have commensurately better morale. One 150mm round will ruin your whole squads day regardless of its size. Generally, I prefer to have more squads / platoons of somewhat smaller size. I feel it gives me more options in terms of deployment. If I want to, I can pack a little more densely and concentrate firepower, but it also gives me the option to spread out a little more and lower the force density in some areas.
  8. Tank riders are extremely vulnerable. I can only recommend mounting on a tank behind in known secure areas. As you've discovered, even weak small arms fire will cause the riders to panic and dismount. Not terribly surprising actually. I'd probably get the hell of the T-34 once MG rounds started bouncing off the hull. There's not really a lot of cover up there, especially with twelve men on top. The infantry, at least in the first wave should be dismounted and in front of the tanks to clear cover they cannot see into. You can debate whether this is historically accurate or not, but in CM, tank riders are extremely exposed. I'm not sure what happend to your TH / FT pair, but you may have experienced delay due to one or both of the following. Hiding will increase firing delay as the unit will need to unhide before firing. Small teams like FTs are pretty stealthy unhidden. I'd just use the cover arc without hide, you'll probably see faster firing. Need to rotate will also slow response. Your FT will need to change facing in order to fire which can take valuable time. Units always face the center of the arc. A 180 degree arc means the team may need to rotate 90 degrees to fire. A narrower arc, while sometimes risky, will mean less rotation need. I'll also make a more general suggestion. If you're puzzled by behavior or game mechnics, you can always save (as was suggested by Zalgiris) and replay the turn a couple times with different commands for that pair of units to try to get a feel for different outcomes. You can also fire up the scenario editor and setup small test cases. If you're wondering at what range MG fire is effective, setup a small scenario with a couple of MGs and a company of opposing infantry (or T34s with riders for that matter). If you hotseat the scenario against yourself, you can see the effects from both sides and very rapidly get a feel for the likely outcome of in game choices.
  9. Pretty good advice already. I'll try to put it together for you. The mines are 50/50. If you really want to deny an area, double them up (you can stack them or lay them in depth). They are by far your best bet against the KVs if your biggest gun is 50mm as the chance for a kill from mines is about 50/50 regardless of tank size (tracks and bottom armor are a great equalizer and much more similar than say the front armor for a KV v. T34). ATRs should fire early and often. It is very unlikely that you will get any sort of penetration against real armor even a point blank range. They will only really penetrate halftracks, armored cars and the flimsiest of early war tanks. You're hoping for trac and gun hits, so you need a lot of hits to get the low probability gun damage hits. 50mm guns are pretty effective against T34s, but you'll need side shots to do much against the KVs unless you've got tungsten rounds. Even then, no real guarantee the gunners will fire it. Engineers and tank hunters are somewhat effective, but definitely hit or miss. Just try to plant them in cover about 20m from a tank and wait. They'll throw what they throw. For engineers, you want to select the throw demo charge command. I don't know a lot about the terrain, or what infantry your opponent has, but here's a good as it gets for your situation. Assuming there are a couple of enemy advance routes, you want to lay significant mines to block as many as you can definitely deny. Ideally, the remaining routes will force the enemy tanks to expose their flanks to your 50mm guns as they come through. Side shots at under 500m should have a pretty good chance of success. Hit them with the ATRs at the same time to keep them buttoned. This will at least delay the tanks spotting of the guns for a little while and allow you to get off a couple of extra rounds befor the KV2s paste them. If you can get a couple of kills, now you've got burning tanks to further limit visibility in the area. This is the time to move in with the engineers and tank hunter teams to try some close assault. Get them close and hope for the best. That's the best I can give you.
  10. As far as I can tell, all of the actual unit representations for the tactical battle will be in BB, so sure. Mod your CMBB and it will mod in CMC. As for the strategic level, if that's what you meant, I'm not sure. The UI and the other graphics look pretty similar to the CM skins, so my guess is that it will be modable.
  11. I certainly don't mean to suggest that you don't have experience with setups. I'll go on to say that I always appreciate scenarios that logically group starting forces. I appreciate it because I personally find it tedious and the first thing that I do when I open a battle. I love it when designers do it for me. I'd love it if CMC did it for me, but I doubt it will. I further doubt that it will do so in a way that will make you, me and everyone else happy. I'd rather the designers spend time on other things than a great setup assistant. I don't know if I can be more clear than that. As for engagement sizes in CMC, you are correct in the intent of the game, but I'm not sure how that will play out in actual design. CM was intended to be a company level game, but people built To the Volga anyway. In CMC, if you have divisions (the stated total formation size) fighting in out on 10km of front, I don't think having a regiment lining up on 2km where the big push is happening is unrealistic at all. Just my guess on where scenario design and the game are likely to go. That's a lot of men to setup. Hell, it's a lot to command for 60 turns, probably more than I have attention span for.
  12. My testing, (it was either in BO or BB, I'm sure it wasn't AK) showed that speed had no impact on bogging, only distance. Of course going fast you cover more distance per time, so the chance of bog per turn was higher on fast.
  13. I agree. Not many solutions to this problem. Mortars were historically pretty useless in these sorts of situations. Personally, I'd like to see some more options though. I think there's a disconnect between on and off map artillery options in these situations. If you have off map 3" mortars, you can still call fire out of LOS. It will take longer and be less accurate, but you can still call fire. With on map, you have no options at all unless you have TRPs. Why not allow unobserved on map fire with big time and accuracy penalties? Example. You're defending at night. Your OP/MLR gets hit by some infantry. You figure that it's probably not a lone platoon and that there is a follow on force somewhere behind it. You want to lob some shells from mortars 150m behind your MLR to 150 to 200m in front of your MLR in order to cause a little confusion and maybe an injury or two to the attackers possibly second wave or to further panic repulsed attackers. Now, this seems like a doable military order. The fire will be unobserved, but there's no reason a mortar team couldn't throw some shells "350m East" and see what happens. Will you kill your own men once in a while? Probably, but you should at least have the choice. Hell, you can buy conscript rocket spotters if you want. My concern, which I'll admit that I haven't fully thought through is what gamey actions this might open up, either at night or in the daytime that would make this idea silly.
  14. They are grouped somewhat logically or at least in purchase order along the back wall. I disagree that it only takes a minute to sort them out though. For large CMC battles with regiment+ size forces it could take quite some time to sort everyone out. I personally find this one of the more tedious phases of large battles as it is just clicking and no action. That said, I doubt that a "force organizer AI" could be easily developed that would be universally agreed to be useful. I'm willing to call this setup work a cost of doing business for large battles and have the time spent on other features. Compared to the overall time spent pushing units for a battle of this size for 60 minutes, setup is tedious, but fairly small overhead.
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