Apocal

Heat. "Worn out" takes thousands and thousands of rounds delivered downrange, not something you're going to see in a typical firefight.

I once used a QB map with the starting zones turned 45 degrees and no one seemed to notice.

Two things: 1) Don't confuse posters with players. Lots of people play, relatively few post. 2) The game came out two years ago. Among my friends I got to play, most spent two or three months playing regularly then quit for other games. I could occasionally cajole them into another MP game but most people swap games every few months.

The studies indicating that tac-air was completely ineffective at killing AFVs were done during the war by the British, specifically Mortain. And the British were the ones that could scarcely afford the losses they were taking during WW2, disbanding full divisions to make good the losses in others.

"But I guess someone has to live with the fact, that even if huge lies like the official 9/11 story have been proven wrong..." Good to see someone else has avoided inhaling those chem trails.

If you could just make it so they don't move in a single-file line, that's 80% of the problem gone right there. Also, I wasn't kidding earlier about the MP part. In-game lobby system for smoother matchmaking and I could get you like 20-25 consistent customers, and I'd be willing to pay like 15-20 bucks for it alone. Leagues and ladders and such are fine for WEGO, but if I'm popping in for an hour between errands, I'd really like to have another option for RT CMx2 MP than maintaining a huge list of opponents on IM and individually hitting up each one asking if they are down to play a quick battle.

Extremely tank heavy force composition, i.e. purchasing one or two complete tank companies with minor shaving to get rid of lights, supporting assets, and few hulls, then cherry-picking a few "uber" tracks (cats for Germany, 105 Shermans for Americans, etc.) that represent some form of a hard-counter towards ATGs, dug-in infantry, etc. rounded out by perhaps a platoon or two of infantry, possibly stripped of supporting weapons, possibly stripped of rifle squads and given additional cherry-picked supporting weapons instead. Its considered cheesy because it requires your opponent to guess "right" at the purchase screen and buy piles of AT mines, ATGs, air support, etc. rather than a rounded force mix. If he guesses "wrong" than his dedicated tank-spam counter-comp is horribly ineffective against a rounded composition. And CMBN sits at the wrong scale for max-tanks vs. infantry to be a winnable fight (generally-speaking, of course) for the equivalent point cost in infantry or a more rounded force composition, although they can certainly make even a good player pay a hefty price for the win. That doesn't matter any in QBs because force preservation is under-scored and ground control (no matter how tenuous) over-scored. I don't view it as a realism problem per se as much as a problem of scoring and maybe purchasing options being a bit too wide open. I understand BFC doesn't want to touch the latter, but perhaps there could be a few shifts to the former to encourage force preservation. edit: just my definition, personally. YMMV.

APOS has a worse interface than CMx2, hands down. I spend about a third more of my time fist-fighting the UI compared to CMx2 games. That isn't to say its an inferior game (or superior for that matter) but acting like CMx2 is uniquely bad in the interface department is simply disingenuous. Or ill-informed. Now WALB is quite a bit better in that regard, its control scheme is nearly perfect for the game's scope, but its pedigree is from the competitive RTS games/community rather than ASL, so that's to be expected. Right now, my main complaint with this is that there isn't some kind of lobby system or pre-made IRC chat room linked directly to the games for finding opponents on the fly. I will never understand why you guys focus on a bad review from a no-name reviewer who's sole purpose on YouTube seems to be vomiting hours upon hours of nearly content-free videos onto their servers. Seriously, look at the number of hits the review received: less than 1500. Almost nobody saw this review. If people had not linked it on this forum previously he almost certainly would not have broken 1000 views -- and probably between 700-900 unique hits. The number of people making purchasing decisions based on this guy's video (especially since its literally years late) probably wouldn't break out of the the tens, at most. Eh... I disagree, a good interface should hold the player's hand, even a slower-paced real time game like the CMx2 series. A player shouldn't need hours upon hours of poking, prodding, testing and theorycrafting to figure out how to make the AI do what they want, the interface should give them clear, concise direction and the tools to make the pixeltroops do what they intend with minimal (unintended) side effects.

Depends on my force composition and the terrain. For infantry-heavy QBs usually I skip out on mortars except for two or three 60mm tubes for fast response and go with a battery or two of 105s. On occasion I'll take 155s. If I'm tank-heavy, then I'll have some 81mms to save on points, since I still want fast response, they work reasonably well against ATGs and I don't need the destructive effects of 105s when I have a bunch of tank guns in my force.

You seem to be very angry regarding the mere existence of these scenarios. Are you aware you don't have to play them and can probably delete them?

In my experience (with the game, obviously) the suppression effects are fine, 75mm HE within one action spot will max out suppression, generally speaking. Within two action spots the bar is generally near max, with any following shots maxing it out. I've only seen results as extreme as described when the gun was protected by a fairly steep gradient in front resulting in many shells landing within 5m as the bird flies, but in-game two action spots away - and protected from the shrapnel by the terrain. And then, if the gun is "skylined" the majority of the longs go well over, landing two, three, five action spots behind. Its uncommon and "dozens and dozens, Typhoons, etc." is certainly an outlier even among that, but it happens. Also (probably) related is the point you raised in the prior thread about MGs: suppression recovery is too fast. EDIT: @OP, would it be possible to provide a screenshot?

I suppose I could try some tests, but before I start digging, I have to ask: is it at all possible that the Shreck team was spotted by a third unit and the tank just happened to be the first and only to actually engage?

Try to drop them off behind buildings, in covered ground, using a ditch to shield the vehicle, etc. This wasn't really the era of leisurely rolling through small-arms in armored PCs. They take awhile to get spots on guys shooting at them, don't stress too much.

I don't know, I wouldn't apply the term "beaten up and bloodied" when the Allies inflicted more casualties and sent the Germans scurrying back to the Siegfried Line. AFAIK we only lost about 4000?

Unobserved harassment and interdiction may have been the majority of artillery casualties overall (I don't know either way), but observed fire against an active enemy is the most effective use of artillery. Taken from an Army At Dawn: Darby watched from Djebel Berda in the south as American time-fuze artillery shells - set to burst a few feet above the ground - rained on the enemy formations. "Eerie black smoke of the time shells showed that they were bursting above the heads of the Germans," he wrote. "There was no running, just a relentless forward lurching of bodies." The fight descended into something between war and manslaughter. Roosevelt, who had ordered the time-fuze barrage, thought the battle "seemed unreal." Gaps appeared in the grenadier ranks. The faces and uniforms of those still standing turned brown with grit as if the doomed men had already begun returning, earth to earth, dust to dust. Roosevelt later wrote: 'Just in front of me were four hundred men, a German unit. We took them under fire and they went to ground behind some sand dunes. The artillery went after them with time shells, air burst. In no time they were up running to rear. Black bursts over their head, khaki figures reeling and falling.' Enemy soldiers bunched behind one hill in such numbers that the formation seemed to spread like a shadow. Then Allied artillery found the reverse slope. "The battalion broke from cover and started to run for another wadi in the rear," reported Clift Andrus. "But none ever reached it." At 6:45 PM an 18th Infantry observation post reported: "Our artillery crucified them." Shells fell at seven-yard intervals across the retreating shot-torn ranks. "My God," Patton murmured to Roosevelt, "it seems a crime to murder good infantry like that." Survivors rejoined the panzers to withdraw eastward in the haze and long shadows. How many men the Germans lost remains uncertain, but the 10th Panzer Division, already badly reduced before the battle, was essentially halved again. Observed fires, placed onto an active enemy is basically what we have in CMx2 and it can be surprisingly lethal. Granted, lethality of artillery in-game is a bit too high in a raw numbers sense, but other effects are more muted.

Wargame: AirLand Battle.

Well the MG thread wasn't about difficulty per se, MGs before the current iteration just flat weren't doing the job they were supposed to do. I wouldn't say that's true. A lot of friends I talked into trying Combat Mission have since moved onto WALB. WALB has nowhere near the fidelity of CMx2, but its pretty good as a beer and pretzels wargame, certainly more realistic than a lot of stuff from the eighties and nineties that's considered classic today.

I'm thinking much of the reason for forces being forcibly crunched together like a car collision is that a CMx2 player is probably playing a one-off scenario or MP quick battle, whereas in the real deal that wasn't nearly the case. These dudes had to fight tomorrow and the day after and probably a week later with the forces that made it through the previous fights. Certainly would offer a counter-incentive to "must win every battle, no matter how insignificant the objective."

Just bumping this to ask if there was ever an adjustment made? Or do they require more tests?

No, that's from a different game you're thinking about. P.S. Leo 2A4 is No.1! P.P.S All the publords love to feed their T-80Us/Leo 2A4s/M1A1s/etc. into U-shaped ATGM ambushes. Its pretty bad and they should feel bad for doing it.

Only if the men wear the missiles as hats.

Same reasons we didn't in Iraq in 2003 or in Afghanistan now: finding people on a battlefield is hard and there isn't always enough air to go around.

He has a viewership measured in the sub-1K range, despite putting out hundreds (literally) of videos and dozens of reviews. If he's a paid shill, someone is wasting their money.

Shift+click to grab all the units isn't exceptional. I didn't even notice I'd been hitting shift all this time and most of the games I play are not CM.

I'm personally wondering how he missed drag selecting units... its actually in there, all you have to do is click and drag like every other game.