Apocal

Completely and utterly typical. Almost anyone with sense would sooner "purchase real estate" with bullets rather than blood. Plus infantry can be broken down into very small elements (two man scout teams) that still present a credible threat that forces the enemy to unmask himself to deal with. They don't do it for some elements of the defense against human players though -- for example, a smart human player will keep his HMGs further back and ATGs silent while tasking some small, non-critical element of the defense (typically a squad of rifle infantry) with dealing with the approaching scouts then enduring the resulting pain when their overwatch goes into action -- but the idea is that the enemy just can't hold fire everywhere in an effort to assassinate your key systems.

In context of the thread, light motorized transport is a case of one eyed men being preferred to those who are cometely blind. The "better than nothing, but still worse than everything else" option in a serious brawl. Outside of serious brawling, go nuts, doesn't matter, except when/if you start finding mines the hard way.

The guys who served in the more kinetic battles of Iraq said similar about entering defended buildings, "Main thing is to just poke your head around and make sure the attack-by-fire element did its job."

Thats projecting too much. The Chadians beat Libyan combat formations, on the attack, once given MILAN. Whenever and wherever they showed up with ATGMs and French air support, the Libyans were stopped cold and hammered flat at that point. Rear area raids were something the Chadians pulled off semi-regularly before they got MILANs and French air. They just didn't do much good in stopping the Libyans any time they actually wanted to attack and mostly served in its final impact to help the Libyans when some of the best (relatively speaking; none of these guys were that good) Chadian formations were off in the deep desert instead of the point of contact when Libyan tanks and artillery struck. Seriously, that entire war was a bum fight.

When I crack open an American AIB and select dismounted, I can choose from 0-3 bazookas and what type. I haven't noticed quality influencing small arms much at all though...? I'm fiddling with FJ and their squads all have double MGs with typical or excellent set for equipment. I think it should be possible to manipulate weapons directly though.

Can't you fiddle with all the settings it (equipment quality) influences manually in CMx2 though?

The Toyota War was a bum fight, certainly a high intensity one for those involved, but still a bum fight. The only thing that war demonstrated was that one side (Libyans) could get away with being completely, utterly inept by the virtue of possessing the tanks and ample artillery while their opponent had virtually no heavy weapons... until the French gifted them MILANs. After that, there was certainly a lot of Libyan ineptitude being exposed in the form of burning tanks but had the Chadians tried some of the stuff in Hiluxes (which the Libyans allowed them to get away with, routinely) against almost anyone else, they would have been blown the hell away. There is an argument for lighter vehicles in occupation-duty compared to high-intensity combat, but the Toyota War is not a shining example thereof. It's more of a demonstration that when you opponent is truly awful, damned near anything can work, provided you also have air support.

I believe you, I just can't see what might be causing it.

Did anyone else want to give it a spin and provide some feedback?

Why did they remove AA vehicles' ability to shoot down aircraft from the initial versions of CMx2? Why did they remove the ability to purchase divisional artillery as on-map assets? Why did they remove the ability to directly set ammo levels in units? Why did they remove the in-game information display for units? Why did they remove the ability to set any time for a fire mission to go off, not just five, ten, etc.? I don't know. I wouldn't say it mattered more in CMx1, except in the sense you could get away with a lot of silly things by hanging out in a woods tile. Like slurping up all the opposing AI infantry's ammo in five minutes flat and merely walking up to blow them away. Now, you really, really have to pay attention to little dips and rises, microterrain opportunities for cover/concealment, which side of a building has doors and windows, etc. Unfortunately, the effect is frequently more frustrating and "work" than really having fun exploiting the possibilities, so my opinion is mixed. Certainly CMx1 was more favored to the sort who favored bold movement to decide battles. CMx2 feels more like an extended, chaotic brawl thanks to relative spotting.

Nope. Nine submachine gunners and four more submachinegunners in the HQ team.

I'm running quick and dirty tests as well, they seem to support what you're saying. Not surprising; modeling the hatch's position in relation to the commander's face and resulting LOS blockage would be the most ridiculous detail I can imagine in a company-level wargame.

It has always been that way. Situational, like you said, but it will rip infantry in the open a new one, even though a fair number of rounds go smack or detonate so high it is detrimental.

Remember the little "bug" where one of the crewmen was facing ninety degrees off where he was supposed to, and therefore not taking advantage of some of the tank's optics like they were supposed to? I wonder if his face being crammed right up against the hatch affects spotting...?

Both mid and early variants, the commander's face is crammed right against the hatch when unbuttoned. Surely this can't be intended? I haven't tested to see if it makes him immune to small arms fire from the front, but if that actually occurs, just pretend I never reported this, lol.

The Puppchen?

The strange things is that CMBB had this already, in the Soviet Rifle Battalion 44B, infantry force type:

I'm not saying it is a bad game, far from it. My problem is that there was something of a lost opportunity to pull people towards tank sims, and wargames generally, that was squandered only due to an incredibly poor choice of setting. Even for hardcore treadheads, 2nd Kharkov is not typically one of the top ten tank battles/campaigns. Yeah, the level of detail is getting crazier each and every year.

Wow, my cut-and-paste ate my first sentence. Anyway, I am asking why the Soviets didn't field a bazooka equivalent during the war. After it, certainly, but for some reason not during.

I've heard a lot of reasons but ultimately none of them make all that much sense to me, the most prominent among them was limited effectiveness. But limited effectiveness is basically a great description for an ATR on its best day, yet the Soviets had these huge formations of the things...? What gives? Third, does anyone have a good diagram of how Soviets laid out ATGs in a gun front? There is some good stuff out there in other places, but my Russian is super-rusty so I can't really get too much mileage out of it without a decent translation.

Or we could just learn to "elect good men," as they say...

1) The AI always accepts a cease fire. 2) No, the victory conditions still apply. Whoever better fulfills them, wins. 3) I don't believe it expires. The only way to rescind it is to hit cease fire again, at least in real time multi-player. I've never done it PBEM. 4) If they surrender, they automatically lose, yes. 5) No.

They did. It was called Steel Fury: Kharkov 1942 and pretty much everyone praised it. But the developers sort of ****ed up with the setting for the game and while all the playables (T-34/76, Matilda and Pz IV) were pretty well lovingly rendered in great detail, none of them were a Tiger or Panther or Sherman. So sales apparently (allegedly) weren't so hot and the team shifted to making tactical sims with the same engine, which sold much better. That was pre-WoT though, so it might go better for someone nowadays, but I'm pretty skeptical about that; picking a battle outside of the popular period of the war (mid-1944 on) that no one gives a **** about probably isn't ideal as far as setting goes. Virtual tankers kinda hunger for a nuts-and-bolts sim but still want their big cats, red steel and Shermans.

Probably because not many people are bold enough to shoot with a tank pointed their way in real life. Any way you slice it, there are a lot fewer things on the battlefield that can hurt a tank compared to an infantryman and they are relatively rare on the battlefield. Most of the times a tank showed up in WW2, it straight-up trumped everything present. Wargamers just studiously avoid those periods of fighting because they don't typically make for good scenarios. Or they "sexy" them up by adding a bunch of tigers, high-tier AT, well-trained and borderline suicidal infantry, etc. to make what was IRL a curbstomp into a relatively even fight.

Often enough: In David Hackworth's biography, Brave Men, he mentioned an incident during the Korean War: "There were dead and wounded everywhere. Slugs were ricocheting off the ice; we could see sparks where they hit. Jim Parker's 2nd Platoon had successfully silenced an enemy machine gun to our left, so the pressure was off enough for us to get our wounded behind the protection of the tanks and paddy wall, where they could be patched up. Our progress was hampered, though, because the tank crews kept moving their tanks. They didn't stop to think they were exposing our wounded all over again; they were too busy trying to save their own armor-coated skins. I told the tank lieutenant, whom I'd come to view -- and treat accordingly -- as a recruit at Fort Knox, that the next time a tank moved and exposed our guys, I'd fire a 3.5 bazooka right up its ass. There was no more movement."