Pak40

Actually, I think what is really happening is that when the mortar is fired, CM checks your serial number to get your username. If username = Bulletpoint then Pak=indestructible. That or it's just incredible bad luck.

I've had them take out light armored vehicles at close range, under 50m. It's a hallow charge so the range doesn't matter for armor penetration (~60mm IIRC), however, rifle grenade accuracy is crap in general. I've been playing CMBN for years and have only seen a handful of RGs hit their intended target whether it's armor or infantry.

An unseen sniper will probably be able to get off 1-2 shots but sometimes more before being seen and getting return fire. My tests conclude that you'll have about a 90% chance to hit a running target @250m (towards the sniper) while there is no return fire. If the target is behind a hedgerow, in a building or prone then your changes of hitting go down. There are a lot of variable so your "rule of thumb" isn't always concrete. Also, my tests revealed that if the target is running perpendicular to the sniper rather than towards, then the chance of hitting goes down to about 60%. Check out my test results: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/116316-suppression-test-results/ The 600m range is really not an ideal range for a WWII sniper. Even if the target is completely still and unaware of any danger, it's a hard shot. Not impossible, just not probable.

This really has to do with the amount of suppression that the sniper is receiving. I've run tests where an unsuppressed veteran sniper hit running infantry in the open 9/10 times (250m-125m). Then I ran the same tests where the running infantry had 2-3 supporting squads to suppress the sniper. Accuracy got down to 1/10.

Is this the Justin Bieber mod I've been waiting for??? Also, this mod better have 2112 for the Intro Music.

just a bit of fair warning, creating your own battles and campaigns is a lot more complex than in the CMx1 series. You really need to play a bit to understand how the system works. Also, I think you'll find playing scenarios a bit more rewarding than the old system because each one can contain multiple AI plans. This means you can play the same battle a second time and get a totally different strategy from the computer AI. The old CMx1 battles by comparison were quite predictable, i.e. the enemy AI always would attack directly towards the big value objectives.

Sepp just resigned and now John Oliver has to drink Bud LIght Lime.

It seems like a simple solution to this whole mess is to give a new valid "non-Mac Store" serial number to all owners of the Mac Store version. A simple proof of purchase would be required but that should be possible through the Mac Store or with an old email showing the purchase. It would be good PR for Battlefront plus the obvious possibility of selling more CMBN modules and the vehicle pack. Have you contacted BF through a support ticket?

I use it sometimes but this more often than not causes unwanted camera movement. VERY ANNOYING. It would be a great asset to the game if they made this optional. Also, it would be nice if they had an optional graphic the showed the dividing line between the Pan and Rotate portions of the edge of the screen.

This may generally be true in the 106th Division's area but there are indeed good sources for the other areas. I'm currently reading a detailed account of the 110th regiment of the 28th Division. I've also read a two volume book about the 99th, 2nd, and 1st Divisions' defense of the northern shoulder. Both sources are quite detailed in men, material, movements and battles. The southern should is well documented and so are a lot of the central chaotic areas such as st vith and Piper's forces.

Awesome job MOS. Moderators, Maybe this should have a Sticky!

My theory on recon or scouts, is different. Private David Webster of E Co. 506 once wrote that it's the scout's job to draw fire so that other units can find the enemy and eliminate them. A scout isn't likely to see much if he himself is sneaking around and isn't spotted by the enemy. You might get lucky from time to time and actually spot an enemy unit but it's not going to yield a lot of results. There are times when I don't want my scouts to fire and will give them a covered arc but mostly I want them to defend themselves if needed. I also like to keep them alive which is why I almost always use the Hunt command with them. They will stop and drop when they do see an enemy, usually preserving their lives to be used for future scouting missions.

Yea, I mean targets near the original target. It's definition of "near" is still quite liberal, at least dealing with a typical bocage line that had multiple enemy targets.

They're quite good at both. If you're killing soldiers then you're suppressing the surviving members of that unit. They may still pop up and get off shots but their effectiveness will suffer greatly because of the suppression. If you're only using 'target light' then obviously the suppression wont be as effective. However, once they bracket in on a target you can then switch them to other targets without the need to bracket. This makes them extremely effective in direct fire mode. Once the bracketing is done I often use 'target briefly' to conserve ammo. Also, you're spot on about having other teams provide suppressive fire. Mortar teams should never work on their own in direct fire missions, especially in close quarter bocage country.

Yea, I have a GTX 570 and it does an admirable job. Anything faster will certainly handle CM well. I guess it also depends on what resolution you want to run. Not all i7s are created equal. The i7s you're talking about may very well be slower in clock speed than the i5s you're comparing them to, hence the minor price difference. So if you're just comparing prices of i5s vs i7s without taking their clock speeds into consideration then might end up with an i7 that is actually slower than an i5.

I agree that CM uses more CPU than your norm 3D game - after all it tracks trajectory of all projectiles, TacAI, and relative spotting etc... However, unless you've heard something else from Steve, Moon, or Charles, I think the GPU is still where any 3D game will require more power. There are times when my machine starts to chug on very large maps, an obvious sign of the graphics being strained. The CPU is relatively idle at that point because it's between turns. My point above is that he should spend money on a highly clocked i5 rather than a low clocked i7. Your i5 at 3.4 GHz will outperform that i7 at 2.7 in a single core test. The i7 may have more cores or be able to do hyperthreading but since CM does not use that, it's wasted money. ARMA may use more than 1 core, I can't remember, but I still think a 2 or 4 core i5 @3.7 GHz will outperform that i7 @ 2.7GHz. Almost all game/hardware publications recommend this approach. Obviously with a new machine and the fact that he plays other games that use multi-core processing, he must also look towards the future. More and more games are supporting multi-core these days. But, I think for the foreseeable future 4 cores is plenty.

It's not the i7 processor that giving you the umphhh for games like ARMA and CM. It's the GTX860m graphics chip (in the case of the Asus rig in the link above). Honestly he'd be better off with a higher clocked i5 and with the money saved on the processor he could get a better graphics card.

mbarbaric, I think it's important to note that at least some of the battles in that campaign are semi-historic. Actually I think one of them is an outright fictional battle. As for sources, I've read lots of books and 1st person accounts/ autobiographies: September Hope by John C. McManus Hell's Highway by George Koskimaki (101st in Market Garden) The Road to Arnhem by Donald Burgett (trooper in A Co 506) All American All the Way by Phil Nordyke (82nd Airborne in WWII) Hell's Highway - US 101st Airborne & Guards Armored Division by Tim Saunders Arnhem 1944 The Airborne Battle by Martin Middlebrook (really good source for British at Arnhem) Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose all the BoB spin off books published mostly by surviving members of E Co 506 including Dick Winters It Never Snows in September by Robert Kershaw ( a view of German side during MG - this has detailed OOB for German units) There are some Market Garden websites too, just google for them.

For sure, as discussed with womble and sburke, there are certain situations where the tool will make up limitations in the system. However, using the tool "to make sure you can actually spot from the intended position" can be gamey if you're not using it for the purpose of overcoming a game limitation. Unfortunately some (lots?) players use it in this manner. To each his own. I prefer to let my assaulting units choose their targets when approaching dangerous enemy positions. I learned the hard way a long time ago that restricting by covered arc or setting specific targets will get your assault teams killed. Nothing is more frustrating than watching an assault team get pummeled by a sudden and more dangerous threat while obliviously shooting the wrong way. There are exceptions to this rule like when I'm absolutely sure there wont be any surprises. I usually set target orders at the beginning of the turn. I probably have set targets from a waypoint before but not area fire, only on visible targets.

Actually, you bring up a really good argument for it which I think Womble was also trying to say. IRL, troops will make those small adjustments to their movements in order to improve their LOS. However, in turn based Combat Mission, if your troops end their movement with no LOS to the target that you intended them to have then they got tthere, then you have to wait until next turn to move them over a bit. That's way over the line for me. Did they do this in a multi-player game?

I think there's a misunderstanding here. You're talking about a game, I'm talking about real life. The discussion between womble and I was partly about the simulation of war as realistically as possible within the constraints of the game. Being able to plot waypoints in the game and then accurately obtain LOS from a waypoint to any potential spot is kind of like having a magic wand that allows you to see where your units have yet to go. If used for that purpose I think it's unrealistic - Modern battlefields have drones and unmanned vehicles to do this but real life units did not have this ablity in WWII. Your comments about building models or using contour maps to pre-plan or judge LOS etc. is perfectly valid, in a planning environment. My reply was that it can't be done while on the battlefield in real life so why should players in Combat Mission get an extra advantage in a game that's trying to be realistic as possible?

In the heat of battle?? I'd like to see the soldier who can build a 3D model accurately on the battlefield. It's hard enough to do it using mashed potatoes at dinner time

Players are shown which ? are recent by the transparency. I'm not sure why this couldn't be true for the AI. I'm sure it's not done at this time for the memory and processor reasons you say, but in theory they could change that behavior and add the code to fire upon recent sightings. It's currently working for both sides in a multi-player game, so why not add it for the AI? Actually, I do remember reading some posts a while back that the AI does remember targets previously seen. I'm not sure who the source of this information was. Yea, but it may be one of their reasons why not to include it. Probably a coding nightmare.

In a related topic, just having the ability to area fire while the enemy AI does not, is a HUGE advantage IMO. It's too bad they have not programmed this into TacAI of the enemy. If the game is true relative spotting for both sides ( with the ? icon for formerly seen enemy), then I don't see why they can't program the enemy to fire at these ? icons from time to time, especially if the ? icon is a recent sighting. My guess is that it has something to do with the Action Squares screwing up the whole process because the TacAI can't see the AS where the ? is located.

After thinking about this a bit more, I suppose you're right. A platoon leader can, for example, tell his squads to "advance to that hedgerow over there and fire on the house beyond it". The house would have to be known to be there by either the PL or a scout that has previously spotted the it. I think my whole problem with the LOS from a waypoint feature is that many people on this forum have said that they use the tool specifically for determine LOS from a spot that none of their units have visited yet, i.e. "If I move my tank to the top of this hill can I target this house". In reality, the tank would have to move there or a scout sent to recon from there, exposing them to visibility and danger. In Combat Mission all one needs to do is use the LOS from waypoint to determine this, therefore "changing history" or changing how battles truly were fought. In essence it changes how we play the game. If it's PvP game then both sides have the same advantage but in a PvAI battle it's one more advantage we humans have over the AI.