Kaunitz

Wait are you refering to the tripod-mounted HMGs in the game? I found those to work pretty well, actually, in the method described above ("fixed line" area firing; for an example also check out my little video clip*). The rate of fire seems sufficient to me even at longish distances (target points set on an action square at 400m+). If you fear that the enemy might crawl under the MG fire or sprint through it in small, lucky teams, (totally QB-overpriced) wire should be employed. (Also, I'm quite happy that the MG does not cut down 8 men, to be honest.) Yep, that's the proper employment of the HMG on the defense! I found it can work pretty well in Combat Mission if you put effort into it. As mentioned, you need to "sight" your HMGs before the battle, doing test runs to see if the fire hits the desired area. It's a bit fiddly as you can only affect the elevation of the gun (and also the "spread" of the shots) by a clever selection of your area targets. And you can't remove that odd bush, fence, tree that blocks your otherwise perfect line of fire.... --------------- *http://community.battlefront.com/topic/112114-reverse-slopegrazing-fire/?do=findComment&comment=1763352 (Note that this is a medium MG. Heavy MGs have a better rate of fire/don't take as long to aim between their bursts)

OGL bump map shader files *frag *vert I'm not doing any big stuff, just tweaking colors with GIMP. It would take me longer to understand all that stuff than to create a mask layer and adjust a few sliders ;).

There is one thing that I've been wondering about for years. When you're modding sounds, everything works fine if you stick to the rules (wav, 705kBit/s, 16 Bit). The sounds that you can hear in the game sound like the ones you hear if you play them outside the game. The same is not true when it comes to the sounds of some tank MGs ("gun 7 lmg" - used for german hull MGs and also the "infantry" MG34; "gun 7 coax" used for tank turret MGs, not just for german tanks, but also, e.g. Soviet tanks). Something strange happens here. The sounds played in the game sound very differently (much worse) from the sounds if played outside of the game. It's hard to tackle what it is exactly, but it sounds very ugly. Sometimes, the sounds are even cut off or there is no sound at all. So I wondered if anyone knows what's going on? With all other sound files, everything works so well, but here I am at a loss. I think in the end maybe the sounds are just played so close to each other that they create some ugly blending? So a slightly larger intervall between the shots would make them sound much better? I know that the MG34 also had an incredible rate of fire, but for some reason it sounds very strange. Also, the same sound is used for non-MG34 ("gun 7 coax" is used by Soviet tanks).

Small color tweak for us uniforms, as the vanilla jacket always seemed a bit too bright to me. I've also tuned down the very bright belts and added a greenish/olive drab variation; also added a green pant variation: (right = vanilla, right = my tweak; I'm also using the no backpack mod and slightly tweaked Ari's "weathered" faces) A page that offers quite a lot of info on US. equipment is "At the Front": https://www.atthefront.com/

Also take a look at the more modern machine gun manual, whose lessons on beaten and danger zones were certainly already true in WWII: https://www.marines.mil/Portals/59/MCWP 3-15.1.pdf [see pdf pages 259-266]

Here is the heavy weapons company's field manual from 1942 ( https://archive.org/details/Fm7-15/page/n69 ); Take special note of chapter 5 & 6. [If you're unfamiliar with the map symbols required to understand the diagrams, take a look at the US map symbols here: http://lesliesoftware.com/mods/CatTacticalIconsCMBN/index.html; Basically, MGs are black dots - without a short line at the 11 o'clock position; these are ATguns - with long, protruding arrows that indicate their fire line - light Mgs have a "L" on their fire line? Obviously, each MG has two fire lines - one main (the bold line/arrow) and a secondary one (dotted line/arrow)] I also found a few interesting mentions related to machine gun fire in some eyewitness accounts. Of course MG fire is mentioned all the time, as the basic experience for the attacking infantryman in WWII was to face MG fire and artillery. But I found these extracts interesting as they provide a bit more details: This account is interesting. It describes an attack that was supported by Vickers machine guns. But also, it seems as if the attackers could never determine the source of the incoming enemy fire. Apparently, it is MG fire.

EDIT: CAN BE DELETED. I'm pretty sure it was a hickup on my PC's behalf.

Found this instructional video on the "Australian War Memorial's" account: "I am the platoon commander [...] I carry a pencil!" It's the typical textbook "Let's attack this totally isolated enemy position" lesson.

I think this is the right topic to share some thoughts about how the heavy machine gun can be used in Combat Mission. Maybe I will create a small tactical video on it once I get some adequate footage from my actual H2H games as the explanations below would certainly benefit form some form of visualisation. I think that in some circumstances, the HMG is the most misunderstood, underrated but also most difficult to employ weapon in Combat Mission. Judging from AARs, I think that many players are unaware of its great potential!* So why do I think the heavy machine gun can be the infantry's defensive weapon number one? And how to employ the heavy machine gun for good effect? 1. Lines of fire / control of space: I can't stress enough that HMGs should make maximum use of oblique grazing fire. You always need to fire at your opponent from an angle. This way, you create a line of fire that crosses the axis of his approach, rather than running paralell to it. After all the defender's main goal is to stop the attacker's advance. Instead of locking down individual spotted enemy teams for 2 seconds with every burst, our aim is to lock down lines of 400+ meters' length permanently and (almost) blindly. For this to work, you need to find adequate fire lines in the terrain, which is admittedly extremely fiddly and requires you to make "test runs" on the map before you start the actual battle. Your "fire lines" should be as long as possible - the longer they are, the more ground your HMG can control. Also, wherever possible, the HMGs gun's bullets must travel close to the ground (--> "grazing fire"). The HMG must be positioned roughly at the same height as its intended beaten zone. So you have to consider the muzzle height** of the machine gun in and the height of the tile that you're aiming at. The line in between the muzzle and the aimpoint will determine the elevation of the fire. Even though they're conspicious and likely targets for the enemy, multi storey houses can be usefull to achieve an even line between the HMG and the intended beaten zone. Also be aware that shifting your aimpoint forward and backward affects the "spread" of your fire. 2. Reliability: The good thing about HMGs is that they come with plenty of ammo. While the ordinary HMG units are still somewhat limited (2k ammo) and might require some extra supply asset (trucks, wooden bunker), wooden HMG bunkers offer plenty of ammo (5k). This means that your HMGs can and should be firing non-stop. This way, they are really able to lock down the enemy. LMG units cannot achieve this as their volume of fire decreases very quickly with range. HMG units, by contrast, keep up a high volume of fire even at ranges of 600m+ (their "aiming" task is much shorter than that of LMGs and they fire longer bursts). Also note that smoke screens don't help against your HMGs. That's because you're relying on area fire and the LOS between your muzzle and your aimpoint (e.g. at 80m distance) will be clear and unaffected by the smoke screen at the beaten zone (e.g. at 600m). 3. Protection: The heavy mg's best protection is distance in combination with concealment. If enemy squads can get eyes on your hmg within 300 meters, your hmg is not well positioned. At ranges under 300 meters, you risk getting suppressed by ordinary riflemen and LMGs. by contrast, if you employ the HMG at proper ranges and in some concealment, it can stay concealed for a very long time even when firing. I really had some eye-opening moments (testing in hotseat mode) when my HMGs were able to pepper the opponent who had no clue where it was coming from. Therefore, HMGs are extremely usefull to scare away a tank's infantry support. When a mixed column enters the beaten zone of HMGs, the infantry gets suppressed, bullets hit the tanks (gradually damaging tracks and optics) but neither the tanks nor the infantry can see where it's coming from (note, however, that tanks could "block" the fire lines of your HMGs to build a "bridge" over the fire line for the infantry..!). The greater distance between the HMG and the opponent also helps against artillery and speculative fire, as the number of potential positions increases with range. It will be harder for your opponent to "guess" where the HMG is. [There is still the problem of sound-locating the HMG though, which I personally consider cheating/a bug]. 4. Exploitation: The lines of fire described above are very effective at suppressing and pinning enemy infantry. This alone can be extremely usefull as it disrupts and slows down enemy advances. The lines of fire will not wrap up many kills for you though. Therefore, the standard WWII procedure works very well in Combat Mission: HMGs anonymously pin the infantry, mortars and arty do the killing. So, with these 4 points, HMGs can be deployed for great effect iif the circumstances are right. I don't consider any of this particularly "gamey". Rather, it's just another example that you can recreate proper WWII tactics in Combat Mission (although in this particular case it is very fiddly). I've even tried to apply some indirect machine gun fire - firing from a reverse slope - , but found that the maps were not large enough for it ;). Of course the HMG can also be applied in the attack, but just like in the defense, you'd need to test your positions before the battle in order to prevent ugly surprises (the beaten zone is not where you want it to be, or the bullets go high alltogether). ---------- * Even though I might come across as a lunatic, I also want to point out that the way that many quickbattle maps are designed severely handicap HMGs (and other support weapons and tanks). In my opinion, they often cut lines of sight unrealistically short. The maps are often too "bumpy" (the slopes are not soft enough, hills are too "small", ridges too sharp) and/or they are not deep enough to position support weapons at their proper ranges (support positions are simply "cut off"). **Note that medium machine guns are usually fired from the prone position (--> difficult to achieve good angles), heavy machine guns from the "sitting" position (-->better), and HMG bunkers are fired standing (-->best).

I'm up for a game again! As CM:FI, CN and RT are bugged for PBEM-QBs right now, CM:FB is the way to go! Here are my preferences: Game: Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg, Engine 4, version 2.01 turn based, iron Turn rate: I live in Europe and can should be able to play several turns each evening; I'd like to keep the pace steady (roughly one turn per evening would be nice); I'm a patient opponent, so no need to feel any pressure. I don't get bored if you take your time for scouting, etc. orces: small Map: chose one of the selection of 4 QB maps in the PDF linked below; for the one with the river crossings we could make some special adjustments (give the attacker extra points for engineers) Engagement type: Attack (probe or assault is also fine for me; note that the maps linked below are the "attack" versions) Roles: I prefer to defend Factions: I have no preferences here Time: ample - imho the suggested time limits for most maps (see pdf) are set waaaaaaay too short, 1h15min is pretty much the minimum I'd give to any attacker Force selection limitations: we can agree on these before the game; I'm fine with limits on tracked vehicles or armored vehicles in general; No armor is fine for me too; I'm not a big fan of exclusive armor battles; I'm a fan of setting all soft factors to regular XP / normal motivation or "typical" (except for bunkers which can be set to lower settings to make them cheaper...); I prefer strict rarity; fortifications and TRPs are allowed (but it's okay to ban concrete bunkers) Ingame rules: The attackers deployment zone must not be targeted by artillery If you are interested please drop me a line - either here, via PM or over at the Few Good Men (I'm "Butterblümchen", same avatar). Link to the pdf containing my map-suggestions: https://www.dropbox.com/s/70ya6o8p3pxuhkp/FB_maps.pdf?dl=0 (green arrows indicate the deployment zone of the attacker).

Are you just looking for historical narratives or also first hand accounts? There are some eyewitness accounts that feature a chapter on the Battle of the Bulge (of course often it's not more than a few pages...) available relatively cheaply via kindle. E.g. William F. Meller, Bloody Roads to Germany Michael C. Bilder, A Foot Soldier for Patton George Wilson, If You Survive

The buggy "leave cover and run to a crater in the middle of an artillery barrage" behaviour is still in the game. Only troops in shelters/bunkers and buildings (?) are unaffected by it.

A Bren gun in a light machine gun role covers a 6pdr anti tank gun from enemy machine gun fire coming in from medium distance (ca. 350m). The incoming volume of fire being thus reduced, the 6pdr can resume its dirty work. BAM! By the way: Does anyone know why the (empty) "Lloyd carrier" is so expensive for quickbattles? It can transport fewer men than the "Bren carrier", provides less ammo and has no MG... Why would anyone pick a Lloyd carrier over a Bren carrier? Is this an oversight?

The best sound is the riccochet sound at 1:06:00 (*peeeeeew*). I don't know of any original WWII records with sound, do you? It's the same as with the colorized =/= color clips. Indeed now that I'm watching all the videos, they seem to be very realistic. In some scenes I even wondered wheather it was real combat footage. I was also very intrigued by the clip on Soviet field fortifications, the horse cart columns and the ski trooper attack (ca. 02:08:00).

Slightly similar: the "Frontschau" videos. Obviously it's german propaganda and it's not as detailed at the Panzergrenadier video in regards to tactics, but I still found it pretty "convincing" (as in not overly "glorifying" or portraying combat in a fantastic/hollywood manner). PS: Here is a combined version with some (not always completely convincing) english synchronization:

What George MC said. Check out the "scenario depot". SeinfeldRules has some very lovely small scenarios for Red Thunder.

I don't want to open another topic, so here is another youtube channel that CM players may find interesting.

By the way. Maybe this is something to add for your realism mod: When bullets hit trees, there are some impact effects (small explosions, dust). While this is nice, it is not part of the fog of war, i.e. the enemy can see these effects even when he has not spotted the unit whose firing is causing them. Especially when automatic weapons are involved (many bullets hitting something in a short time), it broadcasts the bearing of the unit. If you also take into account that you can pin-point units due to their sound, you can get a very clear picture of where unspotted units are.

I've done quite a lot of research on the Sicily campaign (mainly focused on the Commonwealth effort though). You can find a list of books in the second post in this thread (https://forums.lnlpublishing.com/threads/the-battle-for-catania-primosole-bridge-sicily-july-1943.5326/). For tactical, "Combat Mission" purposes, the "Lessons learned from the campaign in Sicily" might be of particular interest: https://archive.org/details/LessonsFromTheSicilianCampaign/page/n21 (A similar thing exists for the campagin in mainland Italy, but I couldn't find it on the internet). I found p.13-14 particularly interesting (infantry failing to deliver a sufficient volume of fire because they would only fire at enemies they could see)

By the way, regarding fighting in woods, this might be interesting (the channel also features a video on us. rifle squad tactics which is highly recommendable):

All kudos belongs to RockinHarry. I would never have looked into it without this thread. These are interesting questions. Regarding your first question, I don't know and I don't know of a good setup to test it. Players have been playing Combat Mission for decades and don't really know with certainty if there is a "saving roll". How should I know? Watching recorded scenes in slow motion, it's hard enough to determine if the game is really hitbox-detection based. It's hard to tell because not every bullet comes with a tracer, you can't get the camera down to ground level, and also some props are definitively permeous to bullets (I'm pretty sure that I've seen bullets go through foxhole-models). It's really hard to draw any conclusions here. Regarding the second question, I can say is that the troops using the animation exchange are NOT invincible. So no to your second question regarding Hollywoodienne survival powers. They still get hit. Whether they even survive much longer than without the animation exchange, I don't know for certain yet either. In theory yes. In praxis I have not developed a feeling for it yet.

It's simply the overall quality of the sounds and the improvement potentials I've mentioned above (volume decreases too fast over distance, no differentiation between close and distant sounds). I can't tell how realistic or unrealistic individual weapon sounds are, but the the above mentioned issues are certainly "unrealistic". Generally speaking, other games' sound just strikes me as vastly more immersive (e.g. Post Scriptum). Off topic, through my interest for Combat Mission and sound-mods, I've been learning a bit about "combat sounds". For example I didn't know about supersonic bullet "cracks". Recently, I've also read in a veteran's account that mortar bombs struck silently, contrary to the "incoming whistle" that is so popular in movies and games? At some point I even tried to figure out (via internet research ...) whether you could hear incoming artillery shells. As far as I can remember, I learned that you could certainly hear them whistle by when they were flying over your heads, but as for the location of their impact, I was not sure whether the "whistle" traveled fast enough to arrive at the target faster than the shell/explosion. Sound is just such an important aspect of immersion!

I also wanted to chime in and tell you that I love your scenarios and maps. The size of the scenarios fits my taste really well. Small enough so that you don't lose track of your forces, you can play the scenarios in depth with a lot of care in just 1-2 evenenings and you never feel like it's micro management work. The maps are also done with a lot of love and are very inspiring. I'm planning to play Gorbatzewich Road Block next. I'm increasing the time for the scenario a bit though, as I plan to impose some roleplay restrictions on myself. As the Soviets only have a single radio with them, communication between split-up forces will be non-existent (I might role play three flare-signals though ^^) or down to messengers/runners. I will provide a short summary how it went.

Excellent! Thanks for clearing that up! Psst. Don't tell them.

Erwin, from my understanding, the effect is not just visual but has relatively large ingame implications. I think it's plausible that the soldier models are in fact the actual hitboxes that are used to determine whether a soldier gets hit or not (see the links posted by IanL: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/120405-question-about-infantry-animation-files/page/2/?tab=comments#comment-1625553 ). So the lower silhouette is not just visual, but also reduces the soldiers' chance to get hit. From my understanding, it should have a real ingame-effect. So using it in a H2H without the opponent's consent is cheating. (Actually, I have no clue what would happen if just one player has the change activated. Does it depend on who's the host? Does the game break down? ^^) The detailed, intuitive-concrete, "what you see is what you get" ballistic model is what makes CM so great. But it also raises some issues when it comes to infantry, who'd make use of every centimeter of cover available. Naturally, the game cannot portray such a small level of detail: action squares are 8x8m, height intervalls are 1m, infantrymen have three stances, and their positioning is - also quite understandably so - not always optimal. Of course this resolution level, if you will, is still much more sophisticated than what any other game offers. But still I think that if we can help infantry to make better use of cover somehow, then why not? I think that boosting infantry's will to survive is a good and realistic thing. I suppose it also puts slightly more emphasis on suppression/volume of fire (instead of instant elimination) and makes fire fights last a bit longer. I also like that the long exposure caused by aiming are gone. If I had the choice between exposing myself a few seconds for a properly aimed shot and exposing myself only a split second to fire somewhere in the general direction of the enemy (and say I've done my duty), I'd certainly prefer the latter. The effect is not easy to test. I have not yet developed a real feeling if there is a difference and how big the effect is. It's hard to gauge as not every round fired has a tracer, and different kinds of props/terrain might behave differently. I will upload a file and inform you as soon as I've altered all the relevant weapons' animations. Perhaps we can try a small H2H some time in the future?