Wiggum

@Vergeltungswaffe I think its the job of the game to not give me too much information, espacially about the enemy.That would include false indification of enemy troops, strengh and vehicle type. -Remove the ability to click on enemy units -add a intelligence indicator from poor to excellent. -make it possible to actually show wrong information to the player like a Panzer IV as Tiger or a enemy units where there are non if the panic level rises. Oh, and make the AI use area fire with small arms, tanks ect. !

Im not a huge fan of multiplayer with a stranger using the internet... I like to play football (the real one) on xbox against my friends or play coop with friends over the internet (ArmA).

@ Wodin I also lost against the ai some times but mostly in scenarios where i attack and the ai has to do nothing then shooting at me. I cant remember loosing a scenario while defending. The ai always attacks banzai/human wave style, although that can be succesful sometimes.

I totally agree with you womble, and i will buy "Red Thunder" only if there will be improvements to the editor (triggers/scripting) and the TacAI (and i mean BIG improvements). Otherwise its just another texture-mod for CMBN for me. A editor like in ArmA would be great with complex triggers (with conditions like x casualties or moral), waypoints and scripting. That would allow designers to give the AI more punch and brain. @ SlowMotion I hope thats a joke... The Combat Mission games are not Call of Duty were you can find a opponent in seconds. CM is totally niche. Finding a opponent and play a 2h scenario is difficult. Yes AI will never be as good as a human opponent but Battlefront needs to focus on making it better because most of us play SP most of the time.

Hi ! I played the old CMx1 games, Shock Force with its modules and finally Normandy. But i did not buy any Modules for Normandy and did not buy the Italy game (although i love the setting). Because... In the SP Mode the game alwasy felt way too static to give me the realistic gameplay i was looking for. If you are the attacker the defending ai mostly did nothing then waiting for you to show up and do something, no small scale counterattacks to regain lost key terrain, no maneuver to reposition its units, no retreating of forward elements (alarmstellungen). As attacker the ai mostly just threw its units into the meat grinder. Two AFV already burning at the village entrance, they throw 3 more at you using the same route... Small groups of survivors and tank-crews who should normaly retreat kepp running into your killzones like robots. I know the scenario designer could use some clever ai plans but mostly i felt like the ai was acting stupid and static anyway. Another point was supression, cover and "fog of war". The effects of supression always felt way too low especially with MG's and heavy guns and artillery. The cover presented by the terrain and buildings often felt too low giving me the feeling that my guys were always in sme kind of open terrain and not in covered positions. Then the amount of information you get about the enemy in seconds always felt to much. That enemy hardly ever seemed to target positions or buildings, he always was shooting straight at my guys. So with Red Thunder and the Triggers for the editor, do you think the ai will feel more "real" in SP ? Do you think the gameplay will see bigger changes over its current status ? Hope there will be a demo for Red Thunder !

@ Fuser I like the optional trench texture much better. It looks darker and fits better to the other Terrain of your mod. Could you please provide such a texture for the foxholes too ?

Oh wow, that guy is a must-have ! I want a DLC with him as unit and everyone who buys it will win every MP game because this "bad ass" is invisible and can kill 3+ enemy per minute... Oh, by the way... Did you think a Captain America DLC would be cool ?

Great Work ! Maybe i dont understand it correct but why cant you just use a normal .zip ? Have the same issue and installing a new program just to unzip 1 file is a bit...ahhh.

Oh man, the german voice stuff is sooo funny...

I see you are correct on that one...thats what they call a "Milchmädchenrechnung" in germany...

@ John1966 Again, we are mostly talking about hand-to-hand combat here. Stabbing, punching and biting. Only because you see alot "close" combat (~ less then 50m), that does not mean that your pixel soldiers are fighting with knifes and bayonets.

Shooting at stationary targets is done to get fit in overall shooting skills (breathing, pulling the trigger and know how to adjust your rifle on different ranges. Then there are funny targets that move and/or are only visible for a few seconds...some real hightech stuff even the poor Bundeswehr has...

If we take 1% of 19.000000 we get 190.000. Close Combat Clasp was received by 46.531 soldiers. Thats 0.25% ! But again, the description isnt so exact that one could judge if every "Nahkampftag" means Hand-to-Hand fighting...or just close combat that was fought with the MP and grenades. So if you assume that overall maybe 1% of all Wehrmacht soldiers fought some real Hand-to-Hand you could be correct. Did it happen ? For sure ! Was it overall very rare ? For sure !

Everyone who was in the military should know how much is just done for the overall moral, the cohesion and the right "warrior's mindset". Why do they march like napoleonic armies did ? Its pretty useless today someone could think...but cohesion is still very important. @ RockinHarry Search your books for the word "firefight" and then compare.

Somewhere i read that even during medieval (now thats some real close combat) the actual battle casualties were pretty "low". Most got killed after the actual battle, if one side run away and the other side choose the slaughter them and the wounded. But i cant remember the source... @ RockinHarry The fact that hand-to-hand combat got practiced by most WW2 armys is just to give the soldiers the feeling that they are prepared for such events. Its like ABC training, its rarely needed (actually was never needed during WW2) but still done to tell the soldiers "hey, we have prepared you for every possible situation on the battlefield". The reason why even modern armies give their soldiers bayonets and knifes or some real hand-to-hand training is the same. The message is "You are prepared and have the tools even for the worst and rare situations". Why are many people attend self-defence class ? Just for the moral ! They feel better and feel prepared, although the brutal truth is that actually they are not because you need years of training and some actual experience to be realy prepared for some nasty street fight. Again, just my thoughts.

Yes. Even if you will continue and post another 1000 examples copyed from some books... What would be far more interesting would be the actual sources of those actions you post here. I doubt that you will find them for all you examples and even if, most likely you will only have a veterans account from 10+ years later. And even if you have a official AAR, you will hardly have one of both sides describing the same action. "we got in and slaughtered them" is just pointless. Do you have offiicial casuality figures for those actions ? Do you have reports from both sides describing hand-to-hand combat ? Do you have statistics of how many soldiers actually died from stabing or beating ?

@ Magpie_Oz I think the use of weapons like bayonets has more effect on the own moral and/or fighting spirit then that of the enemy (at least if they still have some ammo). Bolster the own moral and spirit can sure be useful sometimes. @ RockinHarry I think searching for stuff like "hand-to-hand combat" is pretty pointless. Because anyone can use this term for nearly anything that is somehow "close". All i read in your examples is that there was "close-combat" going on...but how close, and if any real (fist, knife, shovel) hand-to-hand combat was going on is something you just cant judge from those few sentences...maybe just some storys told by veterans many years after the actuall event.

Ähhh, yes...so close combat days = close combat days or what ? A discription from Wikipedia maybe is not what i or we was looking for. "see the white of the eye of the enemy" is stil a range to first use anything else then your hand or a knife.

...the level in this thread is sinking rapidly, not that anyone could see it come. [...]DID apply to regular [insert country] infantry units to varying degrees.

Thats way to unspecific. Sure, fun for this discussion here, so someone can throw in examples from great "American regular infantry" actions or tell you about the Airborn and the Marines... What makes regular infantry of any country poor quality troops ? - Insufficient training - No combat experience (or not enough) - Bad leadership - Bad moral - Bad cohesion - Insufficient supplies of basics like food and fuel - Insufficient supplies of ammunition and weapons - Insufficient communication equipment I think most of that does not apply to many US regular infantry units late in the war. Sure there are examples of green US troops like the Battle of Kesternich where inexperience and bad leadership resulted in a bad beating for the US forces by combobulated Volksgrenadiers. But such examples can be found for any country and late in war, the regular US infantry was way better then the scattered remains of the Wehrmacht.

@ RockinHarry Do you have the exact description about what the germans called "Nahkampftag" (Close-combat day) ? I believe there is a issue with mixing close- and hand to hand combat. Most likely all fighting in urban areas was "close-combat" but that does not mean that any hand-to-hand combat was occurring at all.

By saying "loads of", what exactly do you mean ? Sure there was some Trench raiding going on, but i never have seen any report about how common hand-to-hand combat really was in WW1. The mass bayonet charges and all...the result will maybe similar to the one mentioned by c3k about the US Civil War.

Yes, totally rare. And as always...dont believe anything you read ! Especially during such extrem situations (combat !), the human perception is really limited (tunnel vision ect.). There are many historians for example who highly doubt the very high numbers of claimed kills by some fighter ace's. Running in berserker modus and taking out "numerous MG gunners with bayonet and grenades (and fist !)" is something i just would rate as "really rare isolated case"...at most. The way CM simulates the close-combat stuff, simply by abstraction is ok. 90% + of the soldiers would not be very keen to fighting with knifes and fists...thats why they would do everything to avoid such situations and simply rout the enemy with fire from everything they had.

...oh no, dont start with those fancy nicknames. "Devil Dogs", "Green Devils"...and last but not least "Devils in baggy pants". Yeah, someone somewhere wrote something and thats how it all started... About the fighting power issue: I always like to think of it like a ordinary work in a ordinary company. The big boss wants to get something done and is really enthusiastic about it. The normal worker...does what needs to be done and tries to avoids the stressful and back-breaking work. I think thats the way most fighting was like. The ordinary conscript from all countrys just tried to stay alive. (Why are the casualties in games like CM always to high, because they simulate the most extrem combat situations where the commander forces his soldiers into the meat grinder and they dont refuse to go). Most campaigns were won an levels the normal soldier could not even imagine. Sure there were some really heroic small unit actions on all sides, and thats the stuff they make movies from. No one cares about the million of conscripts who just tried to survive the war. ...just my thoughts about it.

And i always thought that this is what happens most of the time in CMx2 (maybe in CMx1 even worse...i dont know ) ! As soon as i start shooting at a enemy unit they know the position of my guys (who are shooting at them). Although i can remember at least one firefight where i could not see who was shooting at my guys... I know, if it would be 100% realistic and your soldiers ingame would need 30min to find out who is shooting from where...it would be no fun at all. Can you maybe explain a bit more how this is done by the game ?