Apocal

Easy enough to test. Take a map, put 15 MG42 teams there and have them blaze away at a house. Game works fine. There might be slowdown on some lower-end machines trying to render all the tracers and calc out the ricochets, but that really isn't the CMx2 engine's fault.

No, that is perfectly fine. Adversarial multiplayer is meant to be played in a competitive frame of mind. If the wargame, played competitively, is unrealistic, that is a problem with the wargame, not with players.

I usually play iron/RT, including most of my MP experience.

Yeah, I started watching the trench platoon closely and it was virtually always a shell landing smack in the trench that caused casualties. Still no idea why the guys in foxholes seemingly loved to crawl out of them during barrages though. No, I did not.

Is there the possibility for on-map field pieces bigger than infantry guns? Something like 105s for either side or 4.2" chemical mortars? I understand that on-map SP pieces are already in the game, but I think towed could be interesting in a few scenarios.

Only on paper.

This doesn't really show RL relationship between rifles and (H)MGs very well, since airsoft guns have similar ranges and none of them reach out past "point and shoot" distance.

"Map-firing" means I take my forward observer, pick any point on the map and arty or mortars (or even aircraft) hit it. You can only do this with a TRP or during the setup phase currently. If it was Sean Naylor's "Not a Good Day to Die", the Apaches were firing in self-defense first, at some HMG positions. A different set of fighting positions, including mortars and howitzers, were sweeping the infantry on the LZ with fire. The Apaches eventually got over to servicing the ground element's calls, but there was a delay while the helos cleared out. If it was "Victory Point" by Ed Darack, there was similar mention made of delays in getting CAS and a different service's artillery and how mortars filled the time-gap by helping keep them pinned while the support "ramped up" from 60mm mortars, to 81mm mortars, to artillery and finally JDAMs coming in.

I never said numbers were a factor, the clearly are not. They left out MLRS/GMLRS entirely, map-fired arty/mortars, thermobaric TOWs, and various other pieces of gear that number in the hundreds, if not thousands. The delay on air-support is working through the fire support apparatus. And the game is already hilariously fast compared to real life. IRL, if you only wait 30 minutes to shoot something with anything airborne, you're grateful.

I only ran five of each, but hopefully someone else has more datapoints to add. 105mm Arty, 4 tubes, HE, heavy, short, general, 110m area, Platoon in open: A. 9 (8 WIA, 1 KIA, 11 injured) B. 16 (11 WIA, 5 KIA, 11 injured) C. 16 (8 WIA, 8 KIA, 11 injured) D. 19 (12 WIA, 7 KIA, 9 injured) E. 15 (8 WIA, 7 KIA, 3 injured) Platoon in foxholes: A. 2 (1 WIA, 1 KIA, 2 injured) B. 4 (3 WIA, 1 KIA, 3 injured) C. 4 (4 WIA, 0 KIA, 5 injured) D. 5 (4 WIA, 1 KIA, 2 injured) E. 5 (1 WIA, 4 KIA, 4 injured) Platoon in trenches: A. 7 (4 WIA, 3 KIA, 7 injured) B. 16 (11 KIA, 5 WIA, 8 injured) C. 7 (4 WIA, 3 KIA, 5 injured) D. 10 (10 WIA, 0 KIA, 9 injured) E. 12 (9 WIA, 3 KIA, 6 injured) Obviously, the platoon in the open was eviscerated by artillery, not sure if that matches wartime effectiveness or not. Surprising to me was that the trenches provided less protection than foxholes, approximately 2/3rds of those killed/wounded in foxholes had actually crawled out of the foxholes during the bombardment and were hit as a result. Nearly all the trench platoon's casualties were physically located in the trenches. I'm guessing with a larger 'open' area, the likelihood of a shell planting itself inside the trench is higher and that accounted for the seemingly ineffective protection offered. Something to think about.

I just used the pool table test to show that even in the one situation where a HMG should flat out dominate, it still doesn't. Cool.

Obviously there are concessions made to being a game, rather than a simulation. I only mind it insofar as it misses the essential flavor of things, i.e. I don't mind the skewed ratio of dead/wounded because the difference in-game is purely academic. Neither of them come back, even in campaigns. Obviously there are concessions made to being a game, rather than an all-out simulation. And like I said, I'd be totally cool with realistic morale only being on the most realistic difficulty setting.

Finally got the opportunity to fine-tune this, rebalanced forces, pretty much all the allied side.

I'm currently seeing it in the scenario editor as well. The ammo level does stay the same with bearers at a distance. And the bearers carry no hvy weapon ammo.

Most of them are outside the scope of CMx2. There are some small tactical UAVs we use, but I don't imagine they'll make it into the game for balance reasons.

It was allegedly like this in CMBB. Did that game do poorly? I thought it was highly regarded?

That is incredibly in-depth and helpful, thank you. Now I just have to finagle what you told me into something workable on the CMx2 scale (I don't feel comfortable fighting full battalions on the attack in CMBN or CMFI). I'm thinking maybe just downsize the strongpoint companies to platoons and seeing if that keeps things interesting without being too much.

I assume these were used fairly often by the Germans and Italians in Italy. How were they laid out? How many men would they generally contain?

I'm obviously not familiar with your code, but you already have something that approximates No. 2 reasonably well in the form of "friendly directions." Obviously there are times when it can be "gamed" or otherwise produce unrealistic results. Just so I'm clear, I actually do play CMx2, enjoy it and feel it offers something different than competitors. But I also want it to improve.

There is nothing realistic about being able to push dudes consistently past 50% casualties and still have them actually obey orders. In-game right now, there is nothing I can do to force a realistic morale model on the player, even at -2 motivation, they just rally too quick and in far worse situations. Meanwhile, even neutral morale (to say nothing of +3 or +4) gives me the ability to bang infantry together even in broken state. Would it be reasonable if I asked for something like -3 or -4 morale states?

I've recently begun to notice that ammo bearers for the Allied infantry OOB (HMG teams, ATGs, medium mortars) aren't actually carrying an additional load of ammo. All the ammo seems to be front-loaded to the fighting unit, leaving the ammo bearers with little to do except be medics. Is this intentional or bug?

Oh, just in case any were wondering, I had a screw up with some of my latest (3 HMGs to simulate increased RoF) testing and then realized my methodology might not be sound, so I went back to the drawing board. Plus a few games

Certainly keep the separate technical forums, but the main forums? Not so much technical, more tactical and general interest in nature.

If you're referring to your source, it stated 22 aimed bursts a minute but explicitly said 50 round bursts for an HMG. Surely you realize something is amiss if those figures are placed together. Anyway, I'm currently trying to get a workable RoF increase test by adding 3x HMGs together, stripping them of men and ammo and, finally, placing them in the next to each other (to share ammo, creating a realistic basic load, around 1800 rounds). Regular experience, standard morale, standard leadership, still slightly elevated, in foxholes, etc. TRPs haven't been as much a factor, they are running out of ammo too fast. I still have more testing to do to get a decent sample size, but preliminary results are not good. I'm taking more losses doing it and using more time, but I'm still able to rally and force troops to within rifle range and it's downhill from there. Split squads, if a unit takes a hit, I give it a one or two minute timeout, then send them back forward as long as they have nothing significant on their suppression bar. The morale status doesn't seem to actually have a practical effect at all to be honest. Two of the teams are actually "broken" but as long as they don't take a hit, they hold. The panicked unit you see is on it's third casualty, just a BAR gunner there now.

That isn't an exceptionally long time between bursts.