sand digger

Agree. As always in wargames things like balance should be achieved by historically realistic means, not by artificial means.

SC looks pretty formidable to me, as it should be if it's at all realistic. Considered Hearts of Iron 3 but it seems unnecessarily detailed and complicated, most of us want to concentrate on the military side I suppose although you can't ignore supply etc if it is to be realistic.

Thanks everyone, it sounds like the partisans in Russia won't be a big enough nuisance to spoil the game. Even if they are a bit more effective than IMHO they historically were I suppose the reality was that the Germans had to garrison towns along the way in order to carry out their other behind the front 'activities' anyway.

My first post re this particular game, have done a lot of skimming of posts to try to get a feel for the game and as a result have gained an impression that containing the partisans seems to be crucial for any German success in Russia. In the real war my impression is that partisans were capable of being a local nuisance but not a lot more than that, certainly not capable of significantly disrupting an operation. After all they mostly lived off the land without any real support and often fought among themselves. I don't want to go to the trouble of learning how to play a game and then find out that it does not play in a reasonably realistic way. Sometimes games can be spoilt because one factor which should be minor in it's effect does not turn out like that. This is particularly crucial in a strategic 'big picture' game like this, a player should not have to be significantly concerned with small unit activities. I would think that the usual garrison/HQ units should be able to handle any partisan threat and that operations could be planned and carried out without any significant diversion of forces as a result. Does the game play like that? Thanks for your patience, if you read the entire post

Your constant smart arse excuse type comments got tiresome a long time ago.

AT gun in cover fires once at infantry on a dirt road directly between the gun and a Sherman, couple of hundred meters. Shot kicks up dust and dirt but no problems for the Sherman, it spots the gun through the dust and dirt and of course, being the wondermachine that it is, knocks it out with the first shot. Lost both AT guns similarly in that game, that was it, game over. I have a fair clue about placing AT guns and in retrospect could not have done better given the scenario.

Have spent quite a bit of time looking for full instructions but everything I have found seems written in shorthand and uses undefined words. For example, I downloaded a mod and tried to follow the brief instructions concerning a "z folder". None of my game folders have that designation so what is that about? Going by the comments I was not the only one with a problem getting the damm thing to work. As for the patch, this "BEFORE installing the patch and make sure that you are installing into the correct directory." Which is self explanatory and fairly obvious but fails to say how that is done. Plus how do you know that the patch has been installed and is operating? C'mon, I'm not stupid but scrape by with the puter stuff, huge amounts of time must be spent doing patches and mods so how about a few more minutes finishing off a good job?

The last battle I tried was so arranged that there were no decent defensive AT gun positions available at all, none. And I looked, hard. So there was no choice but to locate them frontally where, predictability, they were all knocked out at first contact. One by a buttoned up Sherman moving at speed several hundred meters away which spotted the unfired gun behind cover and hit it on the run first shot. Damm, who needs lasers. So the thing is sometimes it is just impossible to locate your AT gun effectively, depends on the terrain etc.

Too much artillery spoils the game. Well it shows up the game's limitations as to excessive casualty rates and effect in certain situations and locations, rates that were discussed forever back in the CM1 days and which still are evident years later. Sometimes I feel like grabbing the excuse for infantry that is portrayed as WW2 here and giving them a WW1 style artillery workover. Just for some reality.

More particularly, their towers to use for spotting, sniping or target practice. Or do the first few battles cover a part of France that was not too keen on religion and its buildings

Perhaps the real reason was that few potential Western tank aces survived long enough to realise their potential. After all, there was no problem with recognising Allied air aces even though teamwork in the air was just as important as that on the ground. Then you have German tank aces able to successfully carry out solo missions simply because they had a single piece of equipment suitable to do it. No Western all arms nonsense necessary.

Flank, flank and flank some more. There is a lot of difference in getting spotted plus of course your shots are more likely to be effective if you set your guns up to flank shot, enfilade I think is the tech term. By following this practice I have found that some AT guns can kill and fire multiple shots yet still survive the entire game.

In one battle defending against the AI my single Panther and the infantry only destroyed 17 Shermans in total. If you keep the Panther front on it survives very nicely even at 200 meters or less against Shermans.

There is a lot to it eh, plenty of good tips here which seem to work too. But the most important thing seems to be where in relation to the battle field the guns are placed, things like choke points and the direction enemy tanks are likely to come from. I have now found that it's best to avoid frontal encounters where the tank is likely to be pointing towards the gun, and, to use a criss cross system of gun firing lines covering killing zones. Plus leave the close up stuff to be covered by the infantry with their hand carried weapons. Love setting up a defensive system, attacking is pretty well much a do it by the numbers thing, defending is an art that really makes you think.

Some of you are missing the point which is all about time, how long it takes buttoned up tanks to spot. At present, as anyone who has played the game much should know, buttoned tanks regularly spot a nearby threat or whatever almost immediately. With a threat the spotting and reaction becomes one, damm quick and usually faster than a threat unimpeded by a surrounding armoured box can react. So a solution has no negative implications for the A1 at all because a buttoned up tank could still spot, it's just that realistically it should not be able to regularly spot with such immediacy all the time. Although an experienced crew could quite legitimately be able to spot more effectively than some greens so there we have another realistic tweak that can be made.

Agree with all the OP's points, particularly with the X-ray vision spotting by buttoned up tanks.

Thanks blokes, a simple on/off map contour overlay would help heaps in getting a quick feel for the terrain you have to operate in. Similar aids have been available in other games for years. But yeh, no point in fretting if the powers that be ignore it. As for separate trenches for gunners, it was the done thing I believe, where time permitted of course. Wait until the arty clears then up out of the trench and man the gun, if it was still there I bought the first edition of this game and am just getting around to playing it so newb. Next I want to see if the 88 is allowed to fire without being setup properly.

Did a bit of a search, nothing much at all. Other than than sand bags which you either have or not, what equipment and procedures are available to dig in or otherwise protect say AT guns? What I would like to do is have a trench nearby for the crew but this does not seem to be an option, they are stuck with the gun whatever and therefore more vulnerable than they should be. Sometimes putting a gun in a trench seems to work but other times that reduces the field of fire. Without a simple universal field of view system this game is a biatch to setup a defence as it is, digging guns in is pretty basic stuff. Or it should be.

This looks brilliant, TOW always has had huge potential but failed in the replayability and predictability areas. I gave up after TOW2 but may buy TOW3 if this WW2 transformation pack works out. Providing there are full instructions suitable for a non tech head like me because at the moment I would not have a clue as to how it's going to work

What RB said in his last para ^ Tell us that can't be done, go on.

His point about the lack of artificial aids to compensate for the lack of terrain detail that would be apparent, or more apparent, in the real world is a good one. It's the worst feature of this game and quite surprising given the history of the CM series. In fact the appearance of the terrain can be worse than being merely uninformative, it is misleading on occasions, particularly where certain angles of features such as roads may, for example, indicate a rise when there is not. It's strange given the really excellent quality of the game otherwise, anyone done a grid mod or something yet?

Deciding when the AI should come into play would be simplified if some sort of rule was applied. An example of such a rule could be when an asset is threatened with severe damage it should react to defend itself by whatever means are available. But other than firing at a target where there is a good chance of at least inflicting significant damage, the offensive side of things could be left to the player. This could be further refined by taking into account the state or condition of the asset. Now there are sure to be valid exceptions to any such rule but at least it would be a start.

Actually Battlefront have been very generous with the amount of content in the demo. As for learning to play, the nature of the game means it is complicated, that is inescapable with this sort of game. The control setup could be better which does not help but there is inevitably a lot of learning involved which for many people is best done by playing the game and learning as you go.

That's a very scripted situation, invariably as lots of people are saying here nothing happens to the tank and the infantry are killed. It also eliminates choices of action you the player may wish to consider, like sneaking a tank killer team up.

Surely it would have been fairly obvious where such accurate German fire was being spotted from, Americans had aerial spotters too didn't they. With air superiority those spots could then have been creamed. No CAS?