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Need help: Last CMFI training mission


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Although I am not a noob, I am doing the CMBN/CMFI/CMRT/CMFB training to get some practice.

I am playing on VETERAN as suggested.  Otherwise, I would be at WARRIOR.

I need to use my 5 X Sherman 75mm L to take out an unknown number of German Pz III and Pz IV.  Then, whenI have fire superiority, I can counter attack with my reserve infantry.

My problem is that I cannot make any progress with my Shermans.

Down the right, trying to use a farm wall mid-way down the hill for hull down fails and I got shot up.

From the the top in the middle at range, I get shot up.

From the left, trying to run down a dry river bed in low profile to get to mix up close, I am still visible and get shot up.

It seems that the German tanks can penetrate the Sherman's armor straight on.  And certainly at range, I think they have superior optics and are scoring more hits.

I cannot seem to flank them or get in close.  I am not sure of if my turret rotation and loading out classes them.  (Also, I don't even know if they have any anti-tank weapons:  light or guns.)  I have also one useless ATG; nothing crosses its LOS.

I am at a loss how to win the tank duel.  I know that bringing 2 reserve platoons out of hiding is simply going to get them shattered by German tanks and heavy artillery.

Thanks.

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I never played that campaign, but as a general rule, numerical superiority makes all the difference in tank combat.

To scout ahead with infantry is also important; have your tanks unbutton, unless there is enemy infantry nearby; bound and overwatch is a standard technique, so some of your tanks are always stationary looking for targets; and use smoke to blind the enemy so you only have to take on a few at a time.

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On 10/31/2019 at 10:14 PM, markshot said:

I am playing on VETERAN as suggested.  Otherwise, I would be at WARRIOR.

I'm not clear on something. I decided to have a look at this to see what I could make of it, but I couldn't find anything that matched your description. There are two training campaigns, one basic set in Bizerte, and a second advanced one set on Sicily. Can you tell me which one you are attempting and which scenario?

Michael

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Righty, just cease-fired my way through the tutorial to have a look at this one, and the armour fight isn't trivial.

One issue is that it's tough to fight unbuttoned, as German artillery was hitting the objective at about the same time as the Shermans got there.

The way I approached it was to combine forces in the centre, and split up the German armour temporarily with smoke from the rightmost on-map Howitzer. That way you're getting temporary armour superiority, which you can turn into something permanent. Wind direction is important, but it's from right to left (from the perspective of your lines).

Once in spots where I could gain LOS (even when they don't have spots), I'd bound them forwards, gingerly. This is still tough - I lost two of them - but took out all of the German armour.

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Oh, and above all, patience. If you're in a good position, there's no need to move to another one. You're defending, and not in a rush. Wait for the spots to happen, and don't chase any armour you've driven off - they have low walls, woods and hills, and you'd be advancing into a worse spot.

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12 hours ago, domfluff said:

Righty, just cease-fired my way through the tutorial to have a look at this one, and the armour fight isn't trivial.

One issue is that it's tough to fight unbuttoned, as German artillery was hitting the objective at about the same time as the Shermans got there.

The way I approached it was to combine forces in the centre, and split up the German armour temporarily with smoke from the rightmost on-map Howitzer. That way you're getting temporary armour superiority, which you can turn into something permanent. Wind direction is important, but it's from right to left (from the perspective of your lines).

Once in spots where I could gain LOS (even when they don't have spots), I'd bound them forwards, gingerly. This is still tough - I lost two of them - but took out all of the German armour.

Thank you.

It was very thoughtful of you to personally take a look.

I was really surprised by the mission.  Being that it is "training", I expected a piece of cake.  So, I was expecting their rounds to bounce off my glacis with their armor being made of 2 ply tissue paper.  :)

Thanks!

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The 3(?) Panzer 3s aren't so much of a problem - the 50mm guns will mostly bounce off Sherman glacis, but they can get lucky shots. That means priority one is identifying and isolating the Panzer 4s.

In the above I say I lost two tanks - I actually lost one that was sniped on the approach, and another was immobilised before the crew bailed (but I got them back in). Some of the others took minor damage, and I lost a couple of crew to partial penetrations and the like, but had three mobile, mostly fully functional Shermans to take the forward objective by the end.

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Inspired by this thread I decided to give this campaign another whirl. two "Totals" for the first two missions. But yet again, I only managed a high casualty "Tactical" for the last one. My Shermans had a nasty habit of firing one round at the Pz IVs and then popping smoke and backing off, and guess who gets the first shot off when the smoke clears. Although this time I only lost four instead of five of them. Ho hum.

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My personal theory is that engine/data changes since the the missions were designed have shifted the balance of this scenario substantially.  Training is supposed to be just that a "training piece of cake".  But I highly doubt if that much regression testing was done with each of the patches or that included missions were reworked to use the latest editor features.

When I was with PG, I generally had 1 or 2 favorite missions to do all my testing with.  So, all patches were validated like that.  That meant 98% of included content and playable settings were not retested.  Yes, I could have gone further than I did, but the only way to really spot issues was to be intimately familiar with the engines behavior as I with a limited set.  This is why one the project features of large scale commercial software is a test harness (automated testing) with a complete set of regression testing scripts.  BTW, the developers are even worse than the betas as they are mainly looking to check how "new" functionality behaves.  (You may ask if I knew better, then why did I not do better?  I was just a volunteer in someone else's resource deficient business.)

 

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3 hours ago, Warts 'n' all said:

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I am still running Fortress Italy on the original engine, sorry for any confusion.

Oh, why didn't you upgrade to v4?  Are the issues bigger than the improvements?  (I still don't understand how to use HULL DOWN.  I tried it one day, and expected my tanks to stop.  Instead they raced forward to get shot at point blank range.)

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Hull Down is really powerful, but I didn't find it as much use on this particular scenario as normal.

There are two ways to use it, but I only use it the second way.


For the first, the command is used like a move command, and it means "move until you are hull down to this spot, then stop".

If you are never hull down to that spot along the movement path, you won't stop. That's why I don't use it that way.


The second I use like this:

this.thumb.jpg.25ccc6651fd1fe2c478130547


I.e., a Hull Down command, followed by a target command.

This means "Move along this path until you are hull down to the targeted point".

This is also a move command, so if there is no way of being hull down, you'll move until the end of the hull down command. This means that the above example is actually too far forward, and in practice I'd move it to a safer point, just behind the hill crest.





 

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With regards to CMFI, it is my least favourite title so I haven't bothered upgrading even to engine 3. I know that lots of fellow forumites are big fans, especially because of the wider range of vehicles. But, I'm not really taken with the mountainous terrain, so that is why I play it the least.

I do like some of the features that came with Engine 4 especially the ability to merge teams that have taken casualties in a campaign.

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5 minutes ago, Warts 'n' all said:

With regards to CMFI, it is my least favourite title so I haven't bothered upgrading even to engine 3. I know that lots of fellow forumites are big fans, especially because of the wider range of vehicles. But, I'm not really taken with the mountainous terrain, so that is why I play it the least.

I think that's valid. The thing I really like about CMFI, especially around Sicily, is the comparative power level of everything - there's fewer super-units in general. Anti-tank guns and Armoured cars are of much greater utility.

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Thanks for the tips.  I had done a search for "hull down" a few weeks ago, I saw something about it had been tweaked, since your main gun is not at ground level and the target's turret isn't either.  (I didn't try it in the scenario ... I just meant in general.  Before v4, there was just gridded terrain and noticing where the target command transition and a little "Kentucky windage".

One thing I really like with X2 is to be able to check LOS from any two points the battlefield.  As there are times, when just a few meters can get you killed.

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Yes, the hull down point it's tracing to is actually a couple of metres off the ground. It still works fine with the above though.

The old ways (hunt commands to a ridgeline or eyeballing it) are worse, and it's a very useful command to use. Sometimes you won't want to - it's hard to know precisely where you're going to stop along that path, and you could get tripped up - but in most cases it's a massive improvement.

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4 hours ago, domfluff said:

This means that the above example is actually too far forward, and in practice I'd move it to a safer point, just behind the hill crest.

LOL - That thought jumped into my head when I saw your move.

 

@markshot The FAQ (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/125783-the-cm2-faq-thread/) has two links to extensive discussions about hull down:

One from before the command was added

and one that includes both doing it the old way and using the new command

 

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Do you get mortars or artillery? Have you tried dropping them on the German tanks? If you get really lucky you could hit one or perhaps even knock one out, but I usually drop mortars onto tanks just to get them to button up. While that is going on I have infantry spot the enemy tanks and then have them run back to report their locations to my own tanks. Then I can move my unbuttoned tanks, who are already aware of the enemy tank presence, forward while the enemy tanks are still blind and oblivious. 

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