Apocal

double plz delete

Now that CMBN is up to v2.0, is there any possibility we could get a merge between these forums and CMBN's forums? Right now it is pretty well cross-pollinated anyway, so might as well not have separation.

Are we going to get less prominent bunkers and such? How about dugouts?

To make it an extreme example, if one solid burst effectively pinned an infantry unit forever and one hit rendered them totally useless for the duration of a CM battle, HMGs would reliably defeat rifle squads past about 400-500 meters (without "gaming" the morale system, though I suppose that should be accounted for). Infantry would never be able to walk-through effective HMG fire without supporting arms. That would be a more accurate depiction of the correct combined arms relationship than we have now. Now, if you have some evidence or testing to indicate that rifle squads are still reliably able to pin or even get three bar (or higher) suppression from long (beyond 400-500 meters), then I'd agree that a simple universal morale shift wouldn't produce the desired result. It is already modeled, except the single shot part. That involves fiddling with the TacAI a bit, the actual "cover values" are pretty much OK, it's just the pixeltroops fail to utilize much of it.

In-game, that would have nothing to do with the players and everything to do with pixeltruppen. You implied that it was officers pursuing missions to wipeout levels of casualties. But in-game you can easily hit 50% casualties even playing relatively conservatively and (more importantly) your men will still be functioning and responsive to orders.

Why is that? Plenty of officers throughout history tried to push their men as fast and as hard as CM players. The men still refused to push up past around a quarter or one-third casualties on the attack before breaking off. On the defense they didn't die in place nearly as often (and usually then it was unintentional, the result of smart blocking moves pinning them there) as higher ups demanded. In real life, when it gets too be too much, real troops shy away, they don't allow their lives to be spent freely like so much change rattling around a battalion commander's pocket. Nobody is afraid of dying at NTC so people do incredibly stupid **** all the time. Nobody tries half the crazy ideas they have at NTC in Iraq or Afghanistan because you can actually be killed or maimed there.

That's normal for CMx2. I'm not all certain of it's cause so I don't want to speculate in this thread, but it's definitely worthy of some theorycrafting and testing. JasonC's suggestion (2x increase in rally times) is probably best from a tweaking standpoint, it's just one variable.

If the HMG is within effective (250m or less) small arms range, especially SMG range (75-100m) of troops so equipped, opening up at the same time, with the riflemen established behind cover, it's entirely reasonable to expect the HMG will be pinned in place and destroyed. Getting a few men close enough to put effective fire on the HMG is the entire point of supporting elements like LMGs and mortars. This is countered by mortars and/or mines denying safe avenues of approach, mutually supporting positions, falling back once infantry approach effective range, etc. I'm not trying to replace rifle dominance with HMG dominance, because that will be just as silly and ahistorical from a combined arms standpoint. As I said before, that will encourage more "gaming" of the morale system, since you can effectively make most rifle squads take twice or thrice the suppression by breaking them into teams. You could easily dump 300 rounds in two or three minutes at your desired RoF, with relatively little to show for it once the units weren't actually having rounds pass over their heads in the current morale system. You'd get hits, certainly, but if the effect isn't lasting, you will run dry, they will rally and we'll all be right back square one.

+1 to this, even if only reachable by using the plus and minus keys.

They've been busy trying to push out 2.0 for Normandy, so I understand why they've been mute on the issue. Also because JonS and some other beta testers remain convinced what we have now is perfectly fine. Personally, I'd be more than willing to keep the G.I Joe morale system for most of the game and put realistic morale only on Iron difficulty if it's an issue of playability vs. realism. That way both sides get to have it the way they like it.

Yeah, if you're looking for a BF2 replacement, most of the non-hardcore community went with BF3, but a fair chunk of the hardcore realism guys went with ARMA2 and are now waiting on ARMA3.

3D tactics, no base-building or any real macro game going on. The closest analog would be something like Wargame: European Escalation, except set in WW2.

Yes. I can't imagine it's an issue for WEGO players, but RT it's occasionally a pain when you're trying to micro a platoon for whatever reason and have to flip through six or seven units before getting to a guy who can actually turn off the fires.

Let me rephrase: The units that are allowed to "Go To Spotter" are ones that are allowed to call on the asset. Units that are flatly denied that ability can't "Go To Spotter."

Why is that? It seems somewhat odd this is a necessary condition of being able to share ammo between teams. As far as "gaming" the system, I can only imagine a player placing (f.e.) a truck several dozen meters behind some significant terrain feature and using a chain of teams and squads to shift ammo up to some units in an advantageous position... except that would be perfectly reasonable and even somewhat realistic in certain circumstances. It's not as if every man has LoS on targets all the time (when they do, the terms we use to describe such action run along the lines of "slaughtered", "decimated", "hammered" and "massacred") so it's natural that the ones doing the shooting get additional ammunition passed to them while the guys doing security or shying away get by with less. No micromanagement needed. It's especially annoying when you've had several units shot down to a handful of effectives and try to consolidate into something resembling a coherent force, but some are out of ammo, some are full, but no one is sharing.

Look at the dates, guys.

Agree, totally. By the way, the "some" units are ones that would be authorized to call for that battery's fire.

Also: a weird thing I discovered a few years back, Soviet (and now Russian) forces always displayed themselves as Red on their maps, exercises etc. with their opponents being blue.

BMP-T and BTRT never entered production. Russian Ministry of Defense outright cancelled the BTR-90. That being said, there are lots of cool Russian toys we would have gotten, like Krasnopol artillery rounds, various upgrades of T-72, T-80s, Spetsnaz troops, etc. I doubt we'll see it, but it would've been cool to get a Russian forces module, at least piggybacked on one of the other modules.

I've only seen it at a waypoint, when deciding what specific route to take to the next waypoint.

IRL, I've never seen anyone let their barrel get hot enough to melt before changing it. It's pointless since you could just change it a bit sooner and still get to keep using the barrel once it cools.

Would it be possible if we could get some way of combining mortar teams into a single squad/section and have this reflected in the fire support tab? Right now, there is a rather ridiculous situation where three mortars, all occupying the same action spot, independently bracket the target before firing for effect. Surely if they are sharing ammo, they can share firing data with each other.

Respectfully, I disagree. If it's possible to get players to care about land they don't have the deed for, it's possible to make them care about casualties. We have victory conditions for friendly casualties, most scenario designers use them (some better, some worse), the ability to influence player behavior is there. This isn't me arguing against an operational layer by the way, because I think it would much to CMx3 if a player could act in the role of regiment or brigade CO, dealing with higher-level "operational" concerns that would influence the tactical decisions. Too much of the flavor of real war is lost when you're starting off every firefight with an arbitrary allotment of forces that may or may not be tailored to what you're trying to accomplish. I draw two separate issues with this statement. First being that in CM, it's entirely expected for the attackers to have a considerable (3:1 or more) advantage in combat power; not always raw numbers, but often augmented by more fire support, higher quality units, vehicles, etc. There are more meeting engagement scenarios then is realistically proportionate (and I wouldn't presume to tell scenario designers what to make in any case) to real combat, but they certainly aren't the majority by any stretch of the imagination. The second issue is that there were times when attackers misjudged the defender's strength or advanced into approaching reserves or had reinforcements show up at an inopportune time. It wasn't automatically bloody just because sides were evenly matched. Often as not, both sides would gamely make a play for it, realize the outcome was a crapshoot and slink away from each other. Mortars and arty (especially mortars) weren't nearly as effective in real life. For a variety of reasons, less accuracy, less precision, less likely to actually wound/kill, fired at larger targets for longer periods at lower rates, supply more often a concern, etc. The two way range has a much higher difficulty setting, my friend.

No problem. I deliberately denied the player a full toolbox, so you guys have to use a wrench to hammer nails, figuratively speaking. I'm eager for feedback on this one, I wasn't sure if the scale and situation worked as far as scenario design goes. Hopefully it's a fun scenario, either way.

Ah, I see. I missed your posts earlier in this thread. Sorry about that. I was referring only to my tests.