jxrey

Thanks Howler. Good to know that some units wont fire indirectly. I guess that’s why these mortars would not come up on any support tabs. Sgt., what you wrote makes sense. I’ll use more point targets and less area targets. Will also aim for better quality LOS.

Thanks to all for your feedback.

Wicky, thanks so much for figuring this out. It was a weird glitch, I guess. I’ll go back in and finish the saved game.

Correct, I hid the crew and then could not unhide them. Here is the save: https://www.dropbox.com/s/q7br5csp7h1llmk/A Moment in Time 039.bts?dl=0 Sorry, I probably should have sent it straight off. Also notice the gun ammo crew firing and attracting attention even though I had them paused. The mission is: Normandy-A moment in time- Hell's Highway. Game engine 4.

There were enemy spotters nearby calling in nasty artillery. To avoid being targeted, i hid my 88m flak gun crew until i could kill all known spotters. Killed the spotters, unhid my crew and.... nothing. See photo below: https://www.dropbox.com/s/1nv9q0rcuj1f9jn/IMG_3813.JPG?dl=0 The crew remained face down on the ground, unable to target anything, despite hiding and unhiding repeatedly, pausing and unpausing repeatedly, and waiting 1-2 minutes for them to resume their position behind the guns. These guns were central to my defense against 4 sherman tanks. Crack gun crew, rested, ok morale, all green c2, taking no fire, won’t unhide. What gives? Am i missing something stupid? Is there some order i need to give to reattach these guys to the gun?

Wicky, apparently, I didn’t do a good job creating well-spaced save points. Everything i have before this is basically setup and immediately thereafter (though maybe I have one of my approach through the forest). If you think one of these will be helpful, I’ll send it.

Also, has anyone else had problems with friendly-fire from artillery? In the scenario above, 81 mm mortars arrived as reinforcements and instantly appeared in the support tab of my spotter and other units. Needless to say, I was relieved to finally have some artillery at my disposal since the above-mentioned 50 mm's hadn't fired a shot. So i set a linear target inside a gully with spotted enemy troops inside. To my horror, the first 10-12 of the shells fell, with pin-point accuracy, on top of my own units, killing, rattling, and breaking them by the half-dozen. My troops were over 100 yards away from the closest part of the linear target and almost 200 yards away from the furthest part. Eventually, some shells started landing in the target area but, by that time, the enemy had displaced so much that it's doubtful I killed many. I understand that artillery attacks need to time to slowly 'walk' their way to the target but this was not that. Instead of "walking" to the target, the barrage appeared cleanly divided into two separate groups: one on my own men then, switch, another on the target 100-200 yards away. It was remarkable to me that almost all of the misplaced shots (and there were about 12 of them) landed on the 2% of the map where my own troops were located. It was so improbable I figured that maybe the shells that landed on my units were actually fired by the enemy and I was confusing my attack with theirs. However, later, I set another linear target to the other side of the map and, sure enough, shells began to rain down on my positions again, leaving my troops devastated. But this time there weren't two groups of shells falling, there was only one: on my own units. Incredibly, not one shell fell inside the desired target zone, eliminating the possibility that these were enemy shells. The scenario is CM Normandy, game engine 4, campaign: "A Moment in Time", scenario: "Bridge Over Troubled Waters". It's a night mission and the mortars in question are 400 yards from the the first-described target and maybe 700 yards from the 2nd. The mortar team and spotters are regular troops. Given all that, I was expecting a lot of misses but not an astounding 60% accuracy rating... against my own troops! This has happened to me before (in the School Daze scenario, I think). Is there a pattern to this? A way to avoid it? Situations where you shouldn't use artillery? Was this incredibly bad luck, like being struck twice by lightning? Any information would be appreciated.

Thanks for the reply. Unfortunately, the 50mm mortar does not appear under the support tab of any of my units (including the mortar unit itself). Same situation and location described above.

I'll admit it, I'm a knucklehead. After reading dozens of pages of instructions and watching hours and hours of videos, I am still incapable of indirect fire using on-board artillery. Basically, if my mortar team can't see the target (and risk getting massacred) they can't fire at it. I've studied an ocean of manuals, web-pages, and videos on this, I follow the instructions (I think), and get no results. For example, take this mortar unit that appears to be in communication with it's superior unit (Brg Sec Det) which is 35 M away . I've reached my screen shot size limit, but trust me when I say that the superior unit (Brg Sec Det, lying there along the rail line) has line of sight and can target almost any point of the field in front of it. Yet, the mortar team, 35 meters away, can't target any of the field. What gives? Is it because the superior unit needs to be a mortar HQ for the above arrangement to work? If so, in scenarios such as this where there is no mortar hq, does that mean the mortar cannot engage a target indirectly, that it must expose itself by only killing what it sees? I must be missing something, but what is it?

Try this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/arcv9ivmn9qyzw9/A Moment in Time 020.bts?dl=0 It's the first time I'm sending a save file, so let me know if it doesn't work. I was hoping to find a save file that captured the scene a little before this, when I was unloading on the buildings to little effect. This is after that, when, basically, I had captured one of the structures in the center of the row and went on to take another two. I also finally manged to collapse the wall of one of the stone buildings on the right, after I don't know how many mortar strikes. Not sure if this happened after i posted here or just before (and maybe I didn't notice). Note that the soldier in that structure is still there (though finally rattled). You could say that my barrage of mortar and gun fire paid off since, by this time, I managed to kill some building occupants, rattle another, and collapse at least one wall. But it took a long time, especially considering that there weren't that many enemy units defending this front row. At this point, you'll see that my own troops are in such a sorry state (mostly killed, rattled, and broken) that they can't go on much further. After this, I went on to take that first row of buildings except the one on the very far left edge. Time ran out while trying to take the next center cluster of structures with whatever shell-shocked units I had left.

@Wicky , tried to send the save game file, but it's over the forum's 1.95 MB attachment limit. Compressing it didn't seem to reduce the size much. Can anyone explain how to attach a save game file?

I must say that I’m impressed by all the advice I’ve gotten and interest everyone has shown. Never posted much on game forums, but glad I did. When i get home I’ll try and figure out how to send a game save. Iron mode seems intimidating but, if it’ll accelerate my learning, I’ll try it.

My MG34, was firing repeatedly from about 71 meters away at about a 25 degree angle. Plus a number of other soldiers firing different weapons from different angles. This particular situation lasted for about 10-15 minutes, with perhaps 15-18 soldiers firing on this particular building at the beginning (from about the same distance) and with less than half of them still standing at the end (which is when I stormed the building). I'm chalking it up to inexperienced troops with poor aim (they're all green and conscripts) and the stoutness of the building. Interestingly, the mortar fire was precise. Maybe there was a long-hidden enemy soldier in the building but, far as I could tell, my units, once inside the building, and after at least a minute or two on the second floor, were killed by small amounts of gunfire coming from a nearby building, about 52 meters away, and equally small amounts of fire from one or two distant buildings 100-300 yards away. I believe that one of those distant units was a sniper. If anyone wants to play it, can gain at least a marginal victory, and post a full video, it would serve as a great tutorial for the community.

LOL, absolutely. They're all fun, even this one (though frustrating at times). You learn more from failure and that was definitely the case here.

Players more expert that I have indicated that this is not a bug. No one has dissented from this view. Therefore, I will assume it's not a bug and that none of the thousand rounds fired at the targets were able to catch someone at a window due to the bad aim of my green troops. As for the pin-point mortar strikes, I guess 50mm mortars are simply not effective against stone structures (and troops standing on the other side of stone walls, just a yard or two from the blasts) even if they're hit with 15-20 blasts to the same location (though I imagine that it will begin to crumble after some number of blasts, say 30 or 40). Still not clear why my troops were quickly wasted inside those same buildings (they're green and kept hanging out at the window, perhaps), but will try the pause or hide command in the future to see if it helps. Assuming that I've been able to suppress fire from all other locations (it's difficult), I will pause before entering structures and target the occupants in the hope of triggering the use of grenades. Will also try the 'target light' command to see if it's more effective at killing someone firing through a window (I read this somewhere else). And yes, the scenario is unwinnable, I know. Thanks everyone. If you have other thoughts, please chime in. I'm particularly curious about the triggering of grenade use mentioned by Sgt Squarehead.

Thanks. Except for a barn far off to one side, and a far-off house on the other side, the houses in question are all in one row. While one was unoccupied, it would’ve been almost as difficult to take that one, so i opted for taking the occupied structure next door instead. Once inside a building, is there anything in particular you can do to keep your men alive? The ai was surviving in these same buildings ten times longer than i was and while a lot of it must have to do with the differences in experience between my men and theirs, the contrast is so massive that it leads me to think that I’m missing something. Perhaps theres a command or location in the building that would significantly improve my survival chances? Also, I’ve recently read that the target light command is better for harming troops inside buildings. Is that true? Finally, despite some research, i’m confused about grenades. Let’s say one of my squads have grenade launchers and they’re 30-60 yards from one of these buildings. Is there a command that would maximize the use of grenades by the squad and could one of those grenades, by chance, go through a window and detonate inside the building?

The advice that the scenario is unwinnable, while appreciated, is beside the point. Though I quite enjoyed the challenge of at least taking a couple of the houses, I’m concerned that the structures in this scenario provided an unbelievable amount of protection to the enemy while providing very little protection to my own units. Moreover, I’m trying to figure out whether this is a bug and, if it isn’t, whether there might be tactics that i can use to to take a stout dutch home with two soldiers in it without losing 45 men and two tons of munitions. Since the responses seem to indicate that this is not a bug, does anyone have any advice on how to defeat units inside buildings, without armored vehicles or heavy artillery, other than setting multiple lines of fire, raining down mortar shells, and usIng smoke to approach the structure and root out it’s occupants? Also, any idea how I can afford my units the same protection inside these structures that the enemy has? Are there special commands, should the units be placed in any particular part of the building, etc?

It’s definitely un-winnable, and i’m fine with that. However, i’m concerned about the invincibility of soldiers in structures, whether it’s a bug, how to counter it if it isn’t a bug, and whether this will continue to be a problem in other scenarios where I’m not given heavy artillery or armored vehicles. Thanks Mikey, but I still can’t conceive anything less than a bunker absorbing that kind of destructive force. Plus, if i landed 15-20 mortar shells on and immediately in front of a stone wall with soldiers just feet away on the other side, relentlessly, over the course of 15 minutes, along with perhaps a thousand-plus rounds of ammunition, and that building had glass windows and doors, i just don’t see how those soldiers wouldn’t either be killed or, at the very least, rattled. Plus there’s the mystery of these bunker-like residential homes turning to cardboard the minute my troops step inside them.

Overpowered Buildings? Playing cm Normandy, game engine 4. Campaign entitled, “A Moment in Time”, scenario entitled “In the Zone”. I’m leading inexperienced German troops through a forest and then attacking American paratroopers inside buildings on the other side of the forest. I have no armored vehicles and am playing on the easiest skill setting. The problem is that the enemy paratroopers have proven to be unbelievably hard to kill, demoralize, or dislodge from their buildings (which appear to be made of wood and brick, though hard to tell). I’ve tried targeting a building with 2 and even 3 squads, firing from different angles and, while they manage to suppress the fire of the occupants a bit, it’s nearly impossible to kill any. All the while, the enemy (usually one or two soldiers) manages to counter-fire well enough (through the windows I guess) to pick off one or two of my soldiers per barrage, and slowly whittles my forces down to almost nothing. What’s even more amazing is that I’m also firing on these buildings with 55 mm mortars (sure, not the most devastating, but still). The mortars are unbelievably accurate and tend to land right on the other side of the wall, window, or door as the enemy soldier yet, with rare exception, even after 15-20 near-consecutive strikes, the enemy soldier is neither killed, wounded, or in any way demoralized. Again, this is happening in combination with relentless rifle and heavy machine-gun fire! Is this a bug, or an accurate representation of warfare? Admittedly, my troops are inexperienced, but the fact is that they still managed to fire thousands of rounds into a buiding, against a sighted enemy, along with 15-20 pin-point mortar blasts, to almost no effect. If what I’ve described is not a bug, then why is it that, in the rare case where I’ve managed to successfully storm the building and kill the occupants (usually, the few shell-shocked troops I can muster for the assault get killed on the approach), my troops will quickly be sighted and killed by other enemy troops firing on the building? I should add that the enemy is able to quickly wipe me out using significantly less firepower than I was, firing at longer distances, and using no explosives. If the imperviousness of buildings and the unflappability of troops inside them is not a bug, then what can I do to counter this, other than set multiple lines of fire, rain down mortar shells, and use smoke to approach the structures in order to root out the occupants? Also, how can I obtain the same invincibility as the enemy for my own troops and do it without hiding? I’d like to whittle down the enemy with counter-fire, while outnumbered and inside a hailstorm of bullets and mortar shells, just like the AI does.