Other Means

I'm tempted to say - don't ask for a logical explanation. Obviously I won't but hopefully you'll admire my mental strength. Your men will only break and become routed under fire. Direct or indirect. If you get down to level 1 with the squad and follow it you *will* hear bullets hitting them or mortars going off nearby etc. You may not see the bullet hit as no one in your squad may see it arrive. Another thing is the approach may be mined. I'm not sure but I think in the AAR you may not see your opponents mines on the map. This could explain the behaviour. If you have a screen shot, please post it. Also, you do know to use "Advance" when moving if there is the remotest possibility that you may come under fire. There is a massive moral hit if a squad is "move-ing" or even worse "fast-ing" (running). Using advance you can move even in the face of MG fire etc. I've found this thread for you where JasonC explains how to advance under fire. Good luck.

Depends if he's scooting in the reciprocal direction. </font>

Depends if he's scooting in the reciprocal direction.

It sounds like you're sitting in the dust cloud created by your movement. Even the smallest amount of dust cuts off LOS. Check the wind direction & move obliquely to the target, then make small movement lines in the direction of the ATG.

I suspect the PBEM files are encrypted by the players password. Whether there is also a check sum test run against the executable I don't know but it'd make sense. There are freely available 128 bit encryption programs to allow this and if you could crack one of these on your home PC you'd be doing it for real.

Folbec - good read, thanks. Alkiviadis 4. When taking fire, have the crew hide & remain hidden, The OpFor may be fooled into thinking they've knocked out the gun and direct their attention elsewhere, leaving your gun to kill again. This might work against anyone who doesn't know the gun terrain bug in CM. If you're attacking and wondering if a gun is knocked out, click the gun & check the terrain type under it. If this is blank, the gun is dead.

Well I just click it & it stops. Unless I'm using PBEM helper which does it for me. I've the feeling you think there's a way to specify never showing it. No idea what that might be unless you make a BAT file with a return after CMAK load?

I'd guess you could walk a sniper pretty close to the gun line. Possibly about 70m away (a wild guess) who would see your Flaks...Or expose your AFV's to one part of the trench at a time and walk area fire along it. Or even area fire the whole trench. The thing not to do would be to ignore them or come in on high ground. my €0.025.

If you're buying your own units, rather than getting 4 Tigers get as many PzIV's or whatever you can. For the Soviets, T34/76's are especially good. Massive frontal armour will do you little good against demo charges, FT's, mines etc. You want to be able to throw as much HE as you can, and reduce your reliance on irreplaceable units. Use these to level anywhere you feel there may be resistance. Be careful though. I played Soviets in urban defense about 5 times against a better player & never lost. It's quite a task for the attacker.

Good idea. Good idea folke as well. But an even better idea is getting all your tips & tricks together & just telling me. Honestly, I need everything I can get.

Regarding the Infantry war: In a dynamic situation it's best to not give fire orders for obvious reasons. But if it settles down to a multi-unit vs multi-unit firefight, as it nearly always does, I like to target the unit I can get the most seperation of fire on. The higher the angle your fire comes from the more effect it has. This unit is nearly always on the flank, if you can break it this gives one of your units flanking room and you get seperation on the next one etc. It's very important if you do this to not move your flanking unit too early. Engage all the units, concentrate on the most exposed, give your units time to recover, concentrate in the next unit - when the time is right move a flanker into position. If you do it properly (I've heard) you then do this at a scale up. i.e. break/flank a squad, break/flank a platoon, break/flank a company. my .002 of a euro. [ December 19, 2004, 11:42 AM: Message edited by: Other Means ]

JC_Hare - thanks for posting this - is there any more?

Unfortunatley, it's not the desert - I'd circle them just for kicks otherwise. The .50 cals on the M10 are co-axial with the main guns aren't they? So no AAA from them. I'll post the screenies when we're finished. I'm still waiting for the turn *cough hint*. Of all the strange sentences I've read on this board this is right up there. Nice one.

There's also an option to turn occupied buildings translucent. That should help.

I've actually managed to do this against a human opponent. We used a random map in a QB and it came with huge hills and no cover. It was fun, for me.

I have absolutely no memory of writing this post. Damn you beer!...Oh I can't stay mad at you.

Ann - has it really come to this?

Well, we'll see. I'll post a screenshot of what I did when I've lost.

Enemy aircraft have been heard - what do you do? Scattered trees are near but only a small patch, they'd be one big target there. Stay still? Move? They're about 100m apart - disperse them more? They're not directly in enemy view but it's close. Would hiding make a difference? Fast 2 to the trees? Also, there's a lot of 50 cals scattered about, will they act as AAA? Andreas if you're reading this, it's *nothing* to do with our game - OK? OK?!

On a PC: INgame, get to the image you want. press "Print Screen". Alt-tab out of the game. Press windows-r. in the box, type mspaint and press enter. mspaint will now open. Click in the blank image & press Ctrl-V. The image is now in mspaint & can be saved (best as a jpeg) as normal. Of course, now you need to find somewhere to host it as BFC won't.

I love 3k pts on a medium map, but recently my friend and I instituted a "one big, one small" policy. We started off with the smallest map we could get & 800pts (I think). It was really entertaining. Smoke & dust play a real part in the game at that size. I brought a 150mm IG for kicks. It was fun but didn't last long. The next big map I'm still setting up - but it is a 5000pts assault on a custom map. Conclusion - umm none really. Play all of them.

Also, IRL I assume the mortar would have relatively easy access to ammo re-supply. As they're to some extent behind the lines you'd send someone back to the UC for more. Come CMx2 that may even be modelled, then you'll see the full reason for bringing them. Also, I've seen stats in the past (don't ask me to check it was years back) that said that of on-field weapons the mortar caused the most casualties. I don't remember it being broken down by calibre though so it may have been all of them. If you're in a non-entrenched position I imagine finding over head protection would be mighty difficult.

AIUI Napoleon's inference being that the people grumbling knew enough to grumble. If a snappy young Leftenant was giving wrong, or rather not 100% correct, orders the grognards knew enough to grumble about it. The hoarding of arcane knowledge like this term is central to a grogs being, therefore they take pleasure in it. If you keep your eyes open you can see several of them in their natural element here...

Late '45 British vs German in Italy is a favourite, although you still have to fight 3k pts battles to let the allies buy some arty. The Germans have the Panther, Tiger, late StuG etc & the British have the Achilles, Firefly & 76mm Shermans. Both support weapons are excellent, with the 6pdr being a bargain. Very refreshing after CMBB's Russian 76mm plinking off everything. The infantry seems balanced with the Germans firepower being balanced by the ammo points of the British. The British squads organic mortar gets more useful every time it's used, although I wish it'd stop firing smoke before it's requested. If you play with 20% casualties the Germans can get some seriously monstrous armour & the British can buy the rifle Battalion which is nicely balanced & have 6 6pdrs & 12 (more?) Vickers. These all provide a very controlled rear area (can you tell I mainly play British). The Germans can also buy a lot of flaks which disuade the thin skinned armour from risking too much & can bring in a 150mm infantry gun - although the British get great mortars. The allied arty isn't cheap, but of course this is because it's superb. The 25pdr VT has a very short delay & 120 ammo. It's a killer. The Germans get (perhaps a-historically) easy access to the 105mm which certainly does the jerb. Have a look at Folke's site for an excellent run down on the units.

CMAK. I played CMBB for years & eventually felt it to be fundamentaly unbalanced. You'll learn to hate 80mm fronted StuG's which can't be penetrated AT ALL until the T34/85 comes along, and when it does it's ROF is & accuracy is so low you wonder why they bothered. Oh yeah - they cost less than a standard T34/76. The battles are more epic with CMBB but CMAK is better balanced, especially for the allied player. Playing British with the 6pdr killing everything cheap & the Achilles killing everything just feels sweet.