LarsS

I appreciate the answer and the fact that you are willing to give estimates on the numbers involved. Most knowledgeable commentators I've encountered aren't -- which is perfectly understandable since it's so very easy to be wrong when the FoW lies as thick as it does over the eastern Ukraine.

I've had a hard time getting any real grasp on the scale of this conflict even though I've followed it somewhat closely, and this is especially true regarding the separatist side. The estimation of 25 000 thousand fighters on the separatist/Russian side at present is one of the first 'hard', if still 'best guesstimate', numbers I've come across. Would the numbers have been significantly higher in August-September, during the counter offensive? And how many AFVs (lets say BRDM-sized and bigger, and include SPGs firing from inside Russia) would have been part of it? I understand that any number would be highly speculative, but are we talking 100 or 2000, or what?

I also find breach teams very useful in urban terrain. They can open new, covered approaches to the enemy by blasting inconvenient house walls, letting you move through the city blocks instead of having to expose your units in the streets. They also double as tank hunters, since their charges can take out/immobilize enemy armor.

Great stuff so far. I always learn something new following these AARs. (Too bad I tend to forget it at first contact with the enemy, though.) How many points do the two sides have in this battle? I haven't seen it mentioned in the thread.

Nice test. It comes as a bit of a relief to see that a much shorter spotting cycle is used whenever moving units are involved. The other thread had me slightly worried. I mean 7 seconds is an eternity in MOUT, in thick woods and other situations where abundant cover/concealment limits engagement ranges. Especially for when vehicles are involved. A 2 second cycle, which on average means an actual delay around 1 second before units make the spotting check after they have come into LoS of each other, is perfectly reasonable and more in line with how the game "feels".

I second this request. And third, fourth and eighth it, too. I currently don't have much time for any CM: Time Thief games, so I like to enjoy them vicariously, in any format.

It's all about scenario design. If the defender gets reinforcements late in the battle, additional time will let him use them to greater effect. If the defender's units are forcibly spread out over a large area (by way of a big map and different setup zones), he might need the extra time to concentrate his forces to first stop the enemy attack and then later counterattack (there is of course nothing preventing the defender from having objectives inside the attacker's setup area). If the attack starts pre-dawn, a longer battle might mean that the defender better can use his long range fire power as the light conditions improve. Etc.

Meet Small Village tells you that that specific map is made for Meeting Engagements and that the map is of the type Small (size) and Village (terrain). This means that if you pick either Random or ME as type of battle; Small or Random as map size; and Random or Village as terrain type when you set the QB up, that specific map is elegible to be picked at random, among all others that fulfill the criteria you've chosen. Tiny or Huge are used both with regard to battle size (i.e. force size) and map size. Both can be set to random. The maps are made so that it doesn't matter which side is attacking or defending, the defender always sets up on one part of the map and the attacker on the other. So you don't need to make maps specifically stating that the Axis are defending and Allies attacking (or vice versa).

If you play as the attacking side in an Assault QB you get intel on the setup locations of some of the defending units.

But I want a wildly inaccurate estimation of exactly when. It's more fun that way.

It's actually out! I expected at least three it's-out-but-not-really-haha-threads before the patch would see the light of day. Nice work!

My memory might be way off, but I think someone else brought this issue up a while back, and the fix was to delete all area objectives. After that free expansion of the map was possible again. (Best to save the map before you try, obviously.)

Yeah, I agree that the problem lies in too limited setup areas on some maps, not in pre-planned bombardment as a feature. In a perfect world, every map would have a minimum of a 500 m deep setup zone for the attacker and lots of space for the attacker to defend in depth and keep reserves hidden and not too concentrated. Mapmakers' and low end computer owners' lives would get a lot harder in that world, though.

Making the table "crew served" and have it function like a gun is actually brilliant. You'd need to "limber" it to pack it up for transport, you'd "unlimber" it when setting it up, and preferably you'd transport it by a loading it unto a truck or a jeep/K-wagen. Carrying it would be slow. And the HQ team, i.e. the "crew", could "bail out" and ditch the table in an emergancy, just as you say. Best idea ever, come to think about it! I trust it will be included in the soon-to-be-released patch;).

I especially like the folding map table idea for HQs. The effect when having it deployed could be a bonus to the time it takes for C2 information to be dissiminated, or maybe increased accuracy for spotters in the HQ's chain of command, or a shorter arty response time for fire missions that are conveyed through it, or...the possibilities are endless.

As long as THE issue that makes the game unplayable gets fixed, I'll be happy. Yes, I'm talking about the fact that the Panzerfaust 30 is labelled with the user instructions for the Panzerfaust 30k. Oh, I almost forgot: the clang when small arms fire hits railroad tracks is 5 Hz too high. I assume it's number two on the list of fixes in the patch.

Yeah, if you attack without tracks, artillery, engineers, breach teams or tank hunter teams, you deserve to lose in my book. Light and medium mortars can't cut wire, regardless of number of hits. Neither can area fire hand grenades (incidentally, you CAN destroy bridges with hand grenades). 120 mm mortars only need one hit to make a breach. With demo charges it sometimes takes more than one. Haven't tested the lighter guns.

How the enemy deploys and fights can be randomized with AI plans, though. So, on large maps it is possible to keep random parts of the enemy force hanging way back - maybe behind a hill and beyond some non-traversable terrain, like marsh - and away from any fighting during the scenario. Some randomness can also be achieved by using the maximum time span of 30 minutes for when enemy reinforcements arrive.

For personal use, you can always cut away parts of the bigger QB maps included in the game to make smaller ones. You'd need to change the AI plans for the new maps, but for QBs they are usually very broad and general, so it would be quick and easy. Just open any QB map in the editor and see how it's done. I wouldn't upload or distribute the new maps though, since they in essence would be the butchered remains of somebody else's hard work (usually MarkEzra's).

Assigning bonuses doesn't change the fact that, if the enemy gets points for destroying its opposing force, the best tactic would be to retreat all but the absolute minimum force required to secure the own side's objectives off the map. It just gets silly when you, to get a total victory, have to start rushing troops back and off the map when the scenario is nearing its end, just to deny the enemy points. The map edges worked the same way in SF (well, the same way but without exit zones--they were added in CM:A), but they rarely led to the problem of retreated/broken units getting stuck on them. The Syrians had a tendancy either to get cut down when they started to retreat, or surrender (exclamation point surrender, not white flag surrender as in BN), so they seldom made it to the edge. Playing blue, you'd sometimes have a few Humvees you'd rather have retreated off the map, but that was about it. And the superior training and morale of the blue force usually meant that they were more likely to fight and die, than to retreat to a map edge. Regarding 1, maps with a larger area around the objectives, and hopefully most of the fighting, in all dimensions, is IMO a good way of solving a number of potential problems. Retreating units won't get stuck on the edges, edge hugging gaminess will be less of an issue, the attacker won't get a super restricted setup area (ripe for pre-planned arty missions) and reinforcements won't magically appear too close to the actual battle. But big maps are performance heavy and take time to make. Regarding 2, if side A doesn't get points for killing side B's forces, adding friendly edge exit zones for B wouldn't be a problem, and vice versa. But when would killing the enemy not be a good thing for either the German or American side and therefore rewarded in the scenario? Usually the units that you would be least likely to withdraw from battle are also the ones that would be most important for the enemy to destroy and therefore ought be assigned as a destroy unit objective. But then they have to retreat or count as destroyed. If A has an friendly map edge exit zone to allow exiting trucks and broken units, B can't be rewarded points for destroying his armor; if he was, A would have to retreat the tanks off the map or they would be counted as destroyed when the battle ends, and that makes no sense at all. A very clunky way of getting around the issue is to use friendly edge exit zones and not award points for destroying enemy forces using destroy unit objectives, instead only using the parameters settings to give points for inflicting casualties and preserving your own force.

You don't assign points to an exit objective. If you have an exit area anywhere on the map all of YOUR units that the ENEMY has as a destroy objective will count as destroyed, and therefore award him points, if they haven't exited the map at the end of the battle. So, if you have a "retreat" exit zone, the enemy cannot be rewarded points for destroying your troops in a good way, and vice versa. Friendly side exit zones for one side and unit destroy objectives for the opposing side can't be combined without forcing the former to exit, i.e. retreat, ALL his units that the latter scores points for destroying. And it is only in the very rare scenario where it would make sense not to reward one side for inflicting casualties on the enemy. In my opinion that need trumps the need for exit zones for retreating units. Usually, building a map a bit deeper takes care of the problem described by dieseltaylor, but of course lower end machines might not like the larger maps.

Funny, my reactions would be the exact opposite. If someone pulled something like that when "it matters" I would be PO'd, but if a friend did it when we were just playing for fun, I would think it's hilarious. Especially if I walked right in to the barrage. Hitting the usually very limited setup area of the attacker, or in a ME battle, is just wrong though. Not funny, ever.

Dodos truly are a dying breed...

You can't use the blast command on a bridge. However, a bridge can be destroyed with area fire hand grenades; you just need to chuck enough of them at it. For a wooden foot bridge it only takes three or four solid hits to bring it down. Ironically, demo charges are not used by troops when area firing, so it's impossible to blow a bridge with the tool that would seem the most appropriate for the task.

I tested the blast command a while back and, IIRC, found that you can blow both types of fences, free standing walls, hedges, buildings, bunkers, veichles, outhouses, haystacks and (bus) shelters.