Freyberg

In circumstances - such as smoke or heavy cover - where it ought to be possible to successfully conduct a close assault on a tank, it isn't all that difficult, although the infantry will usually take heavy losses. The actual mechanics are a little unrealistic, which is hardly surprising given how very difficult it would be to model realistically (a little like hand-to-hand combat), but the outcome makes sense. I'm satisfied...

A brilliant, powerful film.

A lot of interesting stuff there. It would be nice to have other forms of communication explicitly represented, as long as it didn't get complicated to play.

Those troop-carrier HTs also have a lot of suppressing fire potential. If you flank the village at just under bazooka maximum range, you can put down enough MG fire at enough angles to suppress most possible ambush sites.

In a game I'm playing now, the Jerries had an ATG in a trench right in the middle of their line. It was exposed to mortar fire, an artillery barrage, numerous MGs, close indirect fire from tanks, and infantry in small arms range - the little b#st#rd kept on popping back up. It wasn't until I had a tank get a direct, aimed shot from close range that I killed the little blighter. It varies, obviously, and I'm assuming the crew were high experience, high morale - but trenches offer excellent cover in the right circumstances.

I get your point and I think there's a lot of truth in what you say - particularly, as you note, in the early war setting or for green troops. But even in the First World War, those attacked by tanks were not passive victims - many of them fought back, often very effectively. In the Second World War, soldiers soon realised that unsupported tanks were not invulnerable - and attempts to use them that way generally failed. In CM, it's surprisingly hard to conduct a close assault on a tank - infantry need good cover for one thing, and the close-range spotting penalty given to tanks is not especially long. But if that Stug is bogged in a vineyard* with no infantry to protect it, it deserves to be a sitting duck... (*or Brad Pitt's tank immobilised in the dark) The human factor in such things must be extremely hard to model. I think CM has the balance about right.

This reminds me of the discussion about RPGs in the SF2 forum. Historically, in those instances where it happened, tanks close to enemy infantry without infantry support were extremely vulnerable. I think CM models this well.

How sweet. Personally I find the map editor a great pleasure to work with; and it bewilders me that some would rather fuss around with the immensely frustrating job of a file conversion - in which virtually every square of the original must be carefully checked in case it contains an element that will cause the game to crash, in order to produce a map that is usually rather flakey and may well cause the game to crash anyway - rather than engage with one of the funnest parts of the game. But 'damn' and 'hell' chaps, if that's how you feel, then I wish you all the best.

I believe it can be done - but you have to edit the map to remove all incompatible tiles, flavour objects and so on, then edit part of the binary header (there's a reference to the game-specific marker sequence in map buried somewhere in the forum). I tried it and found it a huge hassle - it's more fun and probably quicker just to make a new map

The trick is to include short Hunt commands between Moves or Quicks

Wonderful - very much looking forward to it, including some fabulous urban engagements.

I use rocks and heavy rocks and play with the elevation to make it look like piles of rubble. This works really well next to damaged house tiles, as it gives a steep edge - the ground level of the house will be the lowest elevation square the house sits on, so you can raise or lower it to make it look like an imploded building (higher) or a collapsed basement (lower). I probably overdid it on this map - some of the piles of rubble were unrealistically high, but it wasn't too bad and it was super fun to play Where there's shell damage I change the pavement to dirt or rocks etc. And lowering the elevation of a shell crater makes it look bigger.

It's one of the built-in maps, and yes - you can do it to any map. The map editor is fun! Adding damage is particularly fun - the trick is the various shift, option (Alt), control -click combinations that add damage to buildings (they're written down somewhere) - Modular buildings are the best, as you have more damage options.

Images from the game so far... 'Quantity has a quality all its own' ...here comes the swarm. I set up a very simple AI plan (because I'd played that map twice before, so I was familiar with the plan) - but the AI was able to surprise me brutally. Well-placed mines everywhere... Friends and relatives come through the door, Father Christmas comes down the chimney... ...but Red Army Guards sappers come through the wall... What SMGs can't reach, flames might. In urban fighting, training is less important than morale and a high rate of fire.

@mjkerner : here we go. I'm not sure of the ethics of sharing someone else's map so I didn't put it on the Scenario Depot - it's an excellent QB map (as are they all), all I did was vandalise it a bit. I also added a different AI plan. I'm not very experienced at that, but it seems to be working OK. https://www.dropbox.com/s/m321h1j2jz1gcnf/City Assault 063-ruins.btt?dl=0

Share the map? Sure, if you want it - I'll upload it tonight.

In anticipation of the Fire and Rubble module, I've been merrily converting one of the City maps into a bombed out moonscape - which I'm just about to swarm over with Red Army troops... Merry Christmas!

Back to the question of what makes this module worth buying... I played a lot of Italy back when GL came out - so much that I gave up for quite a while. Now I've been playing Quick Battles with the new interesting forces available, because I like QBs and because I've been too busy at work to have a proper go at the scenarios, which are best played fresh, without mulligans, and carefully. There are something like 500 QB maps with FI, GL and RV !! I feel like the game is brand new. The new forces are really cool - not just the brand new ones; the 1945 British are quite different from the forces in CMBN-Commonwealth, as are the New Zealanders, and I haven't even looked at Canadians and Polish. I'm still just toying around with QBs - I haven't played a single scenario, let alone a campaign, but I'm having lots of fun. The map designers have got the AI to put up a pretty good fight. The one I'm playing at the moment has been a real buzz - a map I'd never got around to before, British against SS, very late '44, played in assault mode, at dawn, with some very intense and surprising little firefights. There are things I'd like to see improve in CM, of course, but I get such great value for money from this crazy little game...

@John Kettler You find the best obscure vids!! Thanks (I really enjoyed those squad training vids on the other thread too)

Is it a gamey loophole? Or does it reflect real life?

I enjoy loading the maps into the scenario editor...

I certainly believe in freedom of speech generally - I just prefer to come here to blather about this wonderful game rather than politics...

I'm enjoying the new module a lot - and these complaints seem kind of petty. Having said that (and I didn't like the link Mr Aragorn shared a while back - I actually read some of it, which made me feel dirty when I got to the contentious bits), I don't like 'flame wars', so I hope we can all be more grown up than that.

Fascinating, tactically, historically and sociologically...

You do have to be careful to note the action squares your squad will land on - but it beats doubling or more the number of unit orders you have to give each turn.