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Slappy

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Everything posted by Slappy

  1. If I remember my BO, the shown time is always the base and the countdown rate is adjusted for modifiers (the shown time is adjusted in BB/AK). If you are targeting out of LOS, this could be 2x time, similar for out of command and low quality spotter. You could just be counting down at 1/4 the normal rate and not seeing the time go buy. It is possible the fire could take 7-8 minutes. On the other hand, if you are in command and LOS, there may be something wrong.
  2. Here's my mechanics grog take on this. As we all know (or probably should) some fortifications in CM actually change the way the underlying terrain manifests itself. The classic example is barbed wire in woods. LOS across wire is longer in woods than not across wire. As far as I can tell, the wire actually changes the terrain it sits on to open ground for some purposes. My guess is that the same thing happens for trenches w/r/t bogging. That is the trench is assumed to be open ground for some purposes and that one of those is bogging. I've read the manual as well and agree that this seems unintentional (aka a bug).
  3. How else do you get paras to fight in June '44?
  4. Why not just hit the 'l' key? If I remember correctly, there is no hotkey for split squad. That should cut down on the risk. Using the keys instead of the pulldown will also save you hours of time.
  5. You can model just about everything in NW Europe with CMAK. That's what I do. I almost never play in Africa. There are also a growing number of classic CMBO scenarios that have been transferred to AK. Many are at Boots and Tracks if you're interested.
  6. I'll venture a guess. I'm not sure what it was, but the 'Hit' seems to indicate a hand weapon of some sort. The graphic looks like a standard grenade as I think sachel charges are tan and grenades black. I think whatever it was, it causes a catastrophic explosion to the HT (ammo store hit) which in turn took down the building. I don't think the initial explosion had much to do with the building dropping.
  7. That is entirely true. Higher elevation shooters can and will shoot over the wall. Here's the rub with walls. You need a foxhole or trench behind the wall to make the cover effective for infantry. Although the wall will provide excellent cover on its own, the AI doesn't recognize this. The Tac AI uses only the cover of the terrain it is in to determine whether it should stay or flee. It does not recognize intervening terrain (i.e. walls). So, if you're in the open behind a wall and fire starts coming in, the squad will usually run away (and get pasted). If in a foxhole, the AI assumes that it's pretty safe and will hang out. It can still get some shots off, even under heavy fire and will duck behind the wall when pinned, granting almost 100% cover. This is probably one of the best defensive positions in the game, especially as it has no risk of treebursts like having a foxhole in woods. So, use a wall when you can put a prepared position behind it, but generally not otherwise. This tends to help a lot with the elevation thing too as there is still some cover elevated fire.
  8. Yeah, you should just target the tiger. The line will hold for some amount of the turn even without LOS. You could have alternatively give a rotate order to where the Tiger would have appeared. In any case, untarget the ambush marker. I gave up on ambushes entirely in CMBO in favor of hiding due to the problems with modeling. The long term solution is to switch to BB/AK where cover arcs remove most of these problems.
  9. Friendly fire is pretty realistic particularly at night, but not necessarily as it shows up in CM. I think different formations in contact and at range should be at the greatest risk. Especially when one is significantly forward of the other. On the other hand, I've seen squads in command, that have been in command the whole game just haul off and gun down their HQ at 10 paces with no warning. This is particularly brutal with SMG troops where you can lose a squad entirely before the turn ends and you can untarget. I like FOW as much as the next guy, but I think that the parameters need a little tweaking.
  10. One Addition: Determine BY WHEN you will achieve your objectives. More CMBB/AK attacks fail due to running out of time (or due to casualties caused by rushing) than any other single factor. Set a timetable for recon and progress and start to hurry up early (while you can still do something about it) if you're behind schedule. Remember, your front line will move far slower than your infantry can walk in most cases.
  11. Some thoughts from my tabletop days. A game called Air&Armor representing '80s cold war division scale conflict in Germany had a pretty interesting command point system. You had a certain number per turn (half at night I think) in which to order formations to do things (move, attack, defend, etc.) Different actions were different costs and the scales and starting points were different for NATO and Soviets. It did an interesting job of representing the command structures and flexability of the different sides. One of the quotes in the notes I remember was something along the lines of 'The war won't be decided on the relative merits of the M1 and the T-72, it will be decided on how many of them you can get to the right place at the right time'. I'm not sure of the name on this one, may have been 'Great Battles of the Civil War' (was a series with the same engine, but different maps and counters in different boxes) actually had a back and forth initiative system each hour. You had to make moves and then roll after each one to see if you could make another, had to pass to your opponent, or if the turn would end entirely. It definitely created some real FOW as you never knew how many moves you could get out in a turn (much like real life I imagine) and made you focus on the most important moves first (ditto). My experience is that different games have different angles on these things depending on the authors' beliefs about warfare. They all give interesting points of view, but all were flawed in some way or another. I'm not sure that there is really a way to pack it all into one game that is simple enough to be playable for any length of time without bogging down into the mechanics. That said, I think some system to represent the inability of the commander to run the show perfectly all the time is necessary in a wargame to prevent it from becoming chess.
  12. They have been moved. It can be a little unrealistic depending on the interval between battles, but all units including guns can be moved pretty much any distance between battles in an op. The only exception are truly large guns (88s) which can do the same, but only if appropriate transport is available. This means, as you point out, that you can end up facing the same guns battle after battle in different positions unless you take them out.
  13. If I'm following you, which I'm not sure that I am: The colored areas around the tanks are a qualitative measure of armor protection by aspect and position (those to the right from top to bottom are Turret Front, Upper Hull and Lower Hull). Green is good, red is bad, you can figure out the middle (ROYGBIV). I believe the green mike is an in command indicator and that it will flip to red if out of command range (you can test this pretty easily).
  14. Well, I've never seen this, but it seems that a good number of you have. I would appreciate some words from the great powers on high on this one, if it please them of course.
  15. Probably not your imagination. Infantry are just as easy to spook, but seem to cower more in place instead of running around like decapitated chickens. They are also a bit easier to capture. Overall, the engine changes are far more modest than the BO to BB changes. I mainly play in Italy and like the return of allied units and trees, long missed since CMBO. I find the unit mixes and matchups between the forces a little more balanced and more interesting and I like the tactical challenges on the peninsula more than the open armor warfare of the steppes/desert.
  16. You can also try having a small amount of your forces come in as final turn reenforcements. I'm not sure about ceasefire, but I know auto surrender will never trigger if there are reenforcements scheduled to arrive.
  17. Tracked vehicles hold up far better in scattered trees than wheeled vehicles. I've always assumed that the painful slowness of wheeled vehicles was an abstraction of thier need to 'pick their way' among the trees and change direction a lot among other things. Of course, you should be able to go pretty fast in an orchard, but only in some directions. In other types of scattered trees, you may have more trouble. I think it's a bit of a compromise overall.
  18. What are you going to do? This is a classic 'My AT weapons couldn't take out a jeep a 10 paces, but my opponents can drop a Tiger with one shot at 250m in the fog.' situation. Happens all the time. Well, at least it happens to me all the time.
  19. The scenarios are not on the disk already, but some sites like Boots and Tracks and other have them available for AK. Here's what I mean. Let's say you want a Bastogne scenario for AK. Go into the editor, set the date to 12/44, make a map. All the terrain tiles from BO (and quite a few others) are available. No problem there. Snow (and the new light snow) are available, no problem there. Pick your units. Just about everything you need is in the purchase screen for both sides. Let's say that you want US paras though. No US paras in Italy in 12/44. Why? They were all pulled out to fight in France silly. OK, change the scenario date to '43 when there were paras then change it back. Viola! They're still in the scenario. CMAK even has a 'tall hedge' terrain which behaves curiously like bocage in CMBO (aside: I hate bocage in CMBO and think it is terribly modeled. It is, in my opinion, even worse than ambush markers but that's another story) including the ability to be crossed by allied vehicles after some point in '44. You can really recreate just about any battle in CMBO with the CMAK editor. Caveats, exclusions, limitations: QBs are less flexible and so you can't get quite the matchups. The date workaround is obviously unavailable in QBs so you'll have to have the regular army holding the approaches to Bastogne, but if you're looking for historical realism, QBs probably aren't what you're playing. Some vehicles are unavailable in AK that were in BO (King Tiger, Pershing and some of the more obscure Shermans notably) because they never saw service in the Med. For me, that's fine. I always found it a little strange that all 3 of the King Tigers in France always seem to show up against my little company. If you're an ubertank fan, you may miss them, but I find my 75mm Sherman v. PzIV battles interesting enough. Other Thoughts: A lot of other things changed from BO to BB. Many more in fact than from BB to AK in terms of gameplay. When you get around to BB, don't be surprised if you have a hard time. Have you ever wondered why a squad in CMBO can run 80m across open terrain while being fired on by a MG 200m away and not break? Well wonder not in CMBB. That's the biggest difference. Infantry is far more brittle and MGs far more effective both as they should be. Oddly enough, BB and AK will improve your BO play, but the reverse is not true.
  20. Strange but true: Vehicles are dimensionless points in CM, not 3-D objects from the engine's point of view. Exception: Burning vehicles do provide cover as smoke and fire have width, length and height although the thing burning does not. Feel free to hide behind them.
  21. I fervently second that. I love AK and I almost never play in the desert. Some of the great scenarios from BO have been transferred and with some fiddling around with the dates you can recreate almost all of CMBO in CMAK. The only significant thing missing are some of the very late war ubertanks and I never really cared for them anyway. I find infantry and more common armor play much more interesting.
  22. That's exactly what I mean. On a broader note, ambushes in CMBO are pretty lame. I actually gave up on them in almost all cases. The 10m radius ambush marker is just too restrictive for most cases. Unless you have a clear cut case like a vehicle coming down a road, it is just too prone to error and misinterpritation. Cover arc commands in BB/AK much better represent the reality of commands that you want to give around conditional engagement. They have some limitations themselves, but are far better than the CMBO system. Overall, I find hiding and popping up to engage between turns a better strategy in most CMBO situations.
  23. I don't remember the exact answer to the first part of the question (I haven't played BO since BB came out) about whether you have to target the marker with the tank, but I believe the answer is yes. What you also seem to be implying is that a unit has more than one ambush marker. This cannot happen. A unit can only have one active ambush at a time. My guess is that the game ignored the first after you set the second (ambush markers only disappear after a turn without any unit targeting them).
  24. Well, it sounds like you are playing in some pretty damp conditions. That's a different story. The question then is not what speed you should go at, but whether you should go at all. In damp and mud, you want to stay on roads whenever possible. Moving around too much over muddy terrain is just begging for a bog. I'd use your armor for something else and try to get a bazooka over to take out your bogged opponent.
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