What I'd like to see in CM3...

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, Kaunitz said:

That only works in PBEM if both players have a gentlemens' agreement and trust each other. 

Agreed.  What I think norvandave was asking was a game option to allow the game to run for 2 minute turns instead of 60 secs.  In most cases 60 second turns are just fine.  But, for some situations, a shorter turn time would be useful (eg MOUT where things can happen very quickly.)  

[Kaunitz]

What often drives me nuts is that you cannot area-target reverse slope spots (exception: mortars).

This basically means that your line of sight (onto the ground!) is identical with your line of fire, which sometimes leads to rather ridicolous problems: For example, I cannot order my heavy MG to spray some bushes. I can only order the MG to target the ground in front of the bushes, but I cannot fire at the bushes themselves.

For this reason alone, vehicle-mounted MGs are often more usefull as they are better at "spotting the ground" because of the elevated position of the MG. But then again, the fire from mounted MGs  is often not as effective (depending on the distance, the angle between the ground and the trajectory of the shots is bigger, so the bullets don't graze that well/travel that far - the effect of the fire is extremely limited to a very tight spot). 

Generally speaking, I think that MGs have a lot of problems in the current engine. Effective fire is very hard to achieve because of the LOS=LOF issue described above, because of map design (very steep elevations, lots of cover --> very few opportunities for effective long range and/or grazing fire), because players have no influence on the spread (only 1 spot targeted per round/minute) and on the rate of fire (which depends entirely on the range) and because combat mission pixeltruppen tend to be rather unimpressed by fire (unless it kills). To a lesser degree though, these problems affect all small calibre fire. It's very hard to direct fire in a way in which it is effective (sweeping/covering ground effectively).

It would also be nice if MGs were more trigger happy. If they see a single enemy soldier who drops to the ground, they should continue to fire at the spot where he went down and the surroundings. Exclusively firing on sight defeats the purpose.

PS. Example of grazing fire in CM: https://youtu.be/KrY135AV6tg

 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Kaunitz