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Slappy

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Everything posted by Slappy

  1. 1. In general, yes. Most units give the opponent their purchase price when taken out. There are some exceptions. To wit, captured troops are worth twice the kill points, spotters have a fixed point cost no matter what guns they call fire for and exit scenarios have a whole different point system for troops that can/should exit. There may be other exceptions, but that's all I can think of right now. In general, a 300pt flag is worth a Panther and a couple of grunts and a 100pt flag slightly less than a StuG. This leads many, including myself to think that most scenarios are dramatically under flagged. 4000 points of units fighting over 400 points of flags just doesn't make sense, particularly in attack/defend. For a full explanation of exit points, there was a great thread in the AK forum about a week ago. 2. I don't think they're on the disc. If I remember correctly, penetration in the game is coded that richly, but not displayed that way. The designers just put out a couple for illustrative purposes. You can imagine how many of those big pictures you would need to show penetrations for all vehicles against all guns or even a sampling thereof.
  2. I've effectively used IGs as ATGs on occasion, but they require a lot of care. In my opinion, the biggest downside to the 75mm is the low HC load combined with the low velocity of the round. I know you're going to say 'The velocity doesn't matter, the penetration is the same at all ranges for HC rounds!". True, low velocity doesn't matter for penetration, but it does for hit percentage. The low velocity HC rounds are inaccurate and you only get 2-4 on most loadouts. This means you have to open up under 500m to ensure a good kill chance (200m is even better). This limits your tactical choices and the low engagement ranges make your guns easier to spot. If you're going to go IG, I say go 150mm. At that calibre, you still have all of those problems, but you get an even more devistating anti-infantry platform and the 150mm HE is big enough that a near miss will force an abandon or track/gun damage on even the largest armor.
  3. Well, that's sort of what broken is. They're going to get out of there. If you let them alone in a quiet place for a while they will reorganize, regroup and recover, it just takes a while.
  4. A personal peeve of mine is exit scenarios with flags where all units are marked for exit. Now really, what am I supposed to do with that? Am I ordered to hold the ground or move on? I hate having to do the math on the point swing on leaving units at the flag or moving on. Designers, if you're going to have flags in an exit scenario, have some units designated to stay on map to hold them.
  5. Hedges and fences offer no cover. They also offer all the exposure of trying to cross walls when on top of them. They are generally pretty useless except at extreme range as Spacewrangler mentions. At that range, they still won't stop fire, but hedges will offer decent concealment. Units that go to ground behind the hedge will become unspotted quickly at that range (in BB and AK at least) allowing them time to regroup. Of course, once they regroup, they still have to cross the hedge in clear LOS. Fences are pretty useless all around. Consider them free barbed wire.
  6. 1. You want to be behind the wall. In the wall terrain represents crossing the wall and will rapidly lead to being mown down. Behind gives cover from the wall. 2. Here's the rub with that. The TacAI doesn't consider intervening terrain in its calculations of safety, only the terrain the unit is in. Under fire, a unit behind a will will take little damage, but will panic as if in open ground. Best use of walls is in a foxhole behind them. If that is unavailable, behind a wall in the open is far better than on the wall.
  7. I was a big 2" fan in BO, but I'm not so hot on them anymore. It seems that they've upped the ROF and lowered the ammo load (no I havent' researched, that's just my impression). This effectively makes them single use weapons as they can fire off all or almost all of their ammo load in a single turn. I love the weapons, I just wish I got more than 60-90sec of use out of them. As it is, I prefer the 3". More power, more ammo, still not terribly expensive.
  8. I agree that the Beevor is great, but it deals mainly with the battle as it occured and doesn't get into a lot of what ifs or could bes. Personally, I think the germnas should have just gone around. I understand why they didn't (city name, determination, personal interest and meddling by Hitler, lack of other good Volga crossings, etc.), but that doesn't excuse it. Stopping or pulling back to 10km to the west of the city would have given them a solid open steppe blocking position from which to launch attacks to either the North, South or both to ford the Volga. The amount of artillery and air assets used to level the city could have easily kept the Soviets at bay long enough to establish a bridgehead somewhere else if applied more tactially. There are plenty of examples of political meddling in military planning and execution in WWII to the detriment of the latter, but Stalingrad, from the german perspective, was one of the worst and most disasterous.
  9. Actually, plans for a casement (unmanned) turret version of the M1 with a three man crew are quite old, but the end of the cold war and the realization the M1 is already the best tank on the planet drained a lot of money for new development.
  10. I would also add that Recon companies were not used exclusively for recon and often found themselved defending frontage that was not expecting major attack. If it did come under a determined attack, having some medium tanks show up to reenforce the position would not be at all unreasonable.
  11. I don't know for sure what the mission objectives are so I can't say whether my approach is gamey or not. I generally find that preservation/destruction of force is more important in almost all battles than ground and flags. I'd rather get there more slowly alive than fast and dead. If speed is essential, than I guess he's out of luck. Why not floor it and hope they don't get everyone?
  12. I guess I have a differnt take on this. Why use the convoy at all? I'd lead with infantry followed by the armor with the trucks and HTs at a safe distance to the rear. Only move up the armor once the infantry has flushed out the defender and only move up the light vehicles once the armor has destroyed the infantry. This method is slower, but protecting a convoy is one of the toughest missions in CM. Two ATRs and a light AT gun or two can cost you 300pts in two minutes. Why allow your opponent that opportunity? Frankly, this is exactly why units didn't ride into battle in unarmored convoys very often in the real world, it's just too dangerous.
  13. No Pacific Theatre mod as Japanese soft drinks are generally as nasty as they are incomprehensible.
  14. After much debate on the forums, a war for CMX was chosen. It will be based on the 1980s US Cola Wars. You will be able to play both major combattants (Coke and Pepsi) as well as a number of minor allies yet to be finalized (RC, Dr Pepper, Nehi, etc.). All can and bottle skins will be fully modable, but the sugar content and other ingredients will not be editable to maintain game balance and realism. Key theatres of conflict modeled will include Media, Supermarket, Fridge and possibly Vending Machine if Steve has time. How's that for sarcasm? /* edited for spelling */
  15. In my experience, there is absolutely no reason to ever hide a vehicle in any version of CM at any time. I have never seen any spotting advantage to hiding, but I have seen significantly longer response times by that vehicle when fire on. Here's what usually happens. You hide a tank, usually in some light trees. Enemy tanks show up and spot the vehicle normally. Your tanks sits there happily thinking it's hidden while the enemy turrets traverse toward your vehicle. The enemy opens fire. If the first hits don't penetrate, they keep cranking away while you traverse towards them. It's almost guaranteed death. Sure, you could use a cover arc, but you could do that without hiding, so what's the point.
  16. The embark behavior is annoying, but not that unrealistic. It's easy to think that they should be able to get in if it's close, but twelve men in full combat gear loading into a halftrack in twenty seconds is tough when it's stopped and far harder when it's on the move. Loading an 81mm mortar assembly or limbering a 75mm gun along with crew and 100 rounds of ammunition is even harder yet. Just be grateful it doesn't take longer in the game.
  17. The 'Hi mom' is an attempt to get a post into a thread going nowhere and likely to be soon locked down before that happens. Anyone who has been around here for a while has seen more horse and civilian threads than you can imagine. This one seems to have degenerated faster than usual, likely because a number of people (MikeyD and junk2 drive) have the same idea I did and are subtly encouraging the silliness. The designers have said a number of times that horses and civilians are really tough to code and add very little to the combat simulation.
  18. You really can't plot all of this at once. Troops will only mount or dismount a stationary vehicle. Sometimes you can get away with a pause command that will allow the infantry half a turn to load up and then have the vehicle move out, but the risk is pretty high that the vehicle will leave without the troops. Better to just sit there for the turn. You really shouldn't be loading and unloading under fire anyway.
  19. 10000 points? 10min of processing must be a small fraction of what it would take you to plot moves. CM was designed primarily for batallion sized engagements and seems to do pretty well up to 3000pts for most machines. One of the big hang ups for large battles is that the game needs to do LOS and targeting checks from unit to unit so you end up wiht a n(n-1) calculation increase for some areas of the battle which can create a cliff when you have large numbers of units in close contact.
  20. Same function as the handle on your frying pan and just about as necessary.
  21. Can I resupply my bridge with ammo after I blow it up?
  22. AFVs will almost always abandon when they lose the main gun and are immoble. They're not much use at that point and tend to be sitting ducks. I'd probably bail out too rather than sit in a useless hulk filled with HE waiting to be brewed up. One or the other is a serious morale hit and with a crew death will usually lead to an abandon unless the tank can reverse out of harms way. On a side note, in CMAK, they've further upped vehicle morale gradations. I recently had a PzIV with a dead TC that had taken several partial penetrations running around behind the lines 'broken' for the better part of ten minutes. I was eventually able to get it back into the line for infantry support, but it was entirely unwilling to engage armor for the rest of the game.
  23. Don't drive off the map. You'll probably lose the units and they won't influence the starting line any more than if they were sitting on the edge. Just hang out at the edge and clean up any remaining pockets. I wish I had reason to ask this question once in a while.
  24. Interesting. I usually don't keep the movies around that long after the game is over, but others might have a greatest hits collection on the hard drive.
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