Sgt Joch

yes, CMFI will get the same fix.

Part of it is also switching your mindset from WW2 to modern. I read an interesting article from the mid 90s in which the Russians were discussing the lessons of the 1991 Gulf War pondering on how to survive in the new battlefield dominated by PGMs, i.e. precision guided munitions. They were discussing the use of two forces, an initial smaller, more spread out mobile force that would draw out, absorb and neutralize the bulk of the enemy's (i.e. U.S.A.) PGMs at which point the main body, a more conventional force would engage. That also works well in CMSF.

Auchinleck's mistake was more in leaving Ritchie in charge even though he and other generals had doubts about his ability. Going up against the Desert Fox is not the place for "on the job" training. The biggest mistake the Brits did at Gazala was trying to fight a mobile battle, which was the German's speciality. This was, of course, poor planning. This was primarily Ritchie's responsibility, but the Auk must also share part of the blame. The first thing Monty did when he took over was revamp the plans so the 8th would fight a 1918 style artillery-infantry battle. Not sexy, but it worked at Alam Halfa and Alamein. Does anyone think that if Monty was in charge at Gazala that Rommel would have walked all over the 8th Army? I certainly don't. On another point, Monty is often criticized as being too cautious, but he is the one who pushed for "Market Garden", so he could be bold when the situation demanded it.

Picking on Monty is a popular pastime, but Churchill kept him because he won battles, something which is not as easy as "armchair generals" like to imagine. In may 42, Auchinleck had about the same superiority in men/material as Monty did in october, but 1 month later the Auk had lost 80,000 men, most of his equipment and retreated 500 miles while in 1 month, Monty detroyed a big chunk of the DAK and advanced 1,000 miles.

its more fun when you are defending as the Germans.

yes, when they are on adjacent action spots, they will recombine automatically.

agreed. I personally would have no issue with a more realistic depiction of carnage, since I am of the school that war is horrible and if you sanitize it, you just end up glorifying it. my issue is more practical, namely how far do you push it and how much do we want BFC to spend resources on it? More realism would mean soldiers being maimed, blown apart, screaming in agony on the battlefield. What about civilians? Do we want dead/wounded men, women and children strewn about? Once we have more realisitic depiction of casualties, will we be happy with the simple "medic" animation or should we have a more detailed scheme with stretcher bearers?

"Borg spotting" was one of the major weakness of CMx1. I know some players prefer it which is fine. I prefer a more realistic system like the relative spotting system in CMx2. CMSF is in many ways more tactically balanced than CMBN/CMFI. The Coalition forces are usually outnumbered and their AFVs are fragile. The Arabs are liberally equipped with modern AT weapons and each soldier has a SMG. If you are not careful, you can easily lose a battle in 1-2 turns.

BFC has never said they would not do North Africa. I would not be surprised if we eventually see one. However, they already have a lot of projects on the go and they have already done CMx2 "Desert", its called CMSF. North Africa is one of my favorite theaters and I spent a lot of time trying to recreate battles with CMAK. It did not work well in CMx1 because of "Borg spotting". However CMSF shows that CMx2 handles open desert armor battles much better.

All good points....plus BFC does not think giving its customers nightmares is a good marketing strategy...

I hope you guys don't get the impression nothing was changed in 2.01 regarding HMGs. I just wanted to point out it's not a black and white issue. I think most players will be very happy with 2.01.

thanks, I always hated math in school. so the probability of a hit is even worse than I originally thought.

now you lost me, so what would be the correct percentage of the chance of any one round hitting?

if each burst has a 50% chance of hit, if you fire two, at least 50% of the two or one of the two should hit, so if you fire two, you should have 100% chance of at least one hit...seems logical anyway. Of course with the laws of probability, it won't work out that cleanly, it's more to get a ballpark figure.

If 1 burst has a 50% chance of hit, then two bursts should have 100% chance. Two 6-9 round bursts works out to an average 15 rounds. so worst case, "chance of target hit" means at least 1 out of 15 rounds or a 6.67%+ chance of any one round hitting a moving target at 200 meters.

The problem with modeling MGs is that there is surprisingly little useful data on their effectiveness in combat. Shooting range data is useful, but everyone shoots better on a range, the targets are stationary, the distance is known and more importantly, no one is shooting at you. In combat, in addition to the stress, you also have the problem that enemy troops will generally move from cover to cover and hide as soon as they come under fire. Combat also covers many situations, from a HMG in a fixed position/bunker where the crew is familiar with their sector and has measured the distances to a HMG which sets up in an unfamiliar spot and then has to immediately fire over unfamiliar terrain, although you could use TRPs to differentiate the two. Plus, when you do find useful data, it is often open to interpretation. For example, this diagram is from the U.S. Army's FM 7-7 which came out in 1985: The M60 is interesting since it has the same basic design as the MG34/42. note that: -the MG has a 50/50 chance of hitting a stationary man sized target at 600 meters; -however, this drops down to a 50/50 chance of hitting a moving target at 200 meters. While this is, of course, very useful info, it leaves many questions unanswered. i.e.: -what does 50/50 chance mean? 1 round? 50%? -what is a moving target? presumably man-sized, but moving which way? presumably towards the HMG, but what happens if it is moving at an angle or perpendicular to the LOF? -where does this data come from? shooting range? combat reports? a bit of both? Is it the Army's best guess of the weapon's effectivenes in combat or a conservative estimate?

Hey Wombie, I am just glad I don't have to start re-testing mortars, I am getting a bit tired testing HMGs.

I use AKD's sound mod, it works fine.

If you have personally seen a bug with mortars in CMBN v. 2.0, please give us the situation and we will be glad to see what the issue is.

soon....

here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=108266 These Eastern Front threads always come to no good.

I tried to replicate your test, but on a map with heavy undergrowth & trees, none of my troops can spot any trenches until they are within 30 meters. I presume your map has the forest undergrowth, but no trees? That would explain the spotting distances.

One last point on this. Standard late war German defensive doctrine. Note that the "Battle Zone" where the main trench lines/strongpoints/HMGs were setup was supposed to be on the reverse slope so it is out of LOF/LOS of the attackers.

Agreed, but again it is a question of comparing apples with apples. Fortifications do not have an inherent cloaking device. You look at RL tactical situations where fortifications were very hard to spot and you see the defenders went out of their way to achieve that result. btw, a 1 meter high berm very much blends in with the terrain.

Here you go. Open terrain, US troops are 150 meters from 4 german positions/foxholes. The only obstacle is a 1 meter berm in front of each position. The front of each German position is protected by enfilade fire from the other three. Standard by the book defensive position. Do you see the foxholes?