Pak40

^^^^^ bingo. it sounds like a useful request.

The first campaign you should tackle as a newcomer should be "Road to Montbourg". The sheer size of the campaign will impress you. The maps are well done and the missions are crafted well also. They wont knock your socks off but they are entertaining you can tell that the designer put a lot of effort into the entire campaign - especially the historical research. If you have the Commonweath add-on then you will really like the campaign maps in that one - top notch. BTW, just so you know, BF is a very small independent developer. I think when CMBN was being developed the total "professional" staff was like 4 maybe 5 people. They just don't have the time to develop the scenarios & campaigns themselves. However, they do give the designers a lot of support and for the most part have picked dedicated "beta testers" with as much professionalism and love for wargaming as the actual BF staff. And if you download user made scenarios and campaigns you will find some top notch "professional" work. Ditto for graphic and sound mods.

Siffo, you're experiment is really unscientific. The variables between the two games are so vast that there's no validity in your conclusions. The variables listed above are only a subset of what is really driving the casualty ratio between the two games. In PC, the hexes are 1km in size but you put the company across a 400 meters in CMBN. You also didn't specify how big of an artillery barrage was specified in CMBN. If you put the barrage size at 400m then you're not comparing apples to apples. Put the barrage radius at 500m (1000 diameter), then you've got a fairer comparison. Also, you assume that the PC barrage lasts 2 hours! Even if a two hour barrage consisted of 150 shells, that's just over 1 shell per minute falling across a 1km hex - hardly a barrage to fear or cause suppression. Another issue that doesn't seem right is the 40% PC entrenchment value. If I understand correctly, the company should receive 40% more casualties if they are unentrenched? So, by your casualty tests they might receive one or two more casualties??? Doesn't that sound rather light for a company taking a pounding by 105mm in the open? Hardly worth the barrage.

My first thought was one of those 50mm AT guns with a panzerfaust warhead. I can't remember the name of it but there was a brief glimpse of one in Band of Brothers in the episode where they attacked Carentan. Edit: also possibly a puppchen or recoiless rifle.

John, I'm quite sure he meant in a tactical situation where the allies actually had a chance of capturing the bridge before it was blown.

Steve, thanks for all the responses. It's nice to hear reasoning behind the decisions even if we don't like what we hear. And now for a serious question, When will this unit be available in CM?

Well, not so much important to combat but important for an objective that you can capture before it's purposely destroyed. The only way I can think of doing that now is to just abruptly end the battle which would signify the bridge being blown before being captured. The downside to this method is that there is still a battle for the surrounding terrain and prematurely ending it will not reflect the rest of the battle. Hmm, really? I kind of envisioned something like this: Battle A ends, prompting you to save before exiting to the next battle. Battle B loads but uses map from last save of Battle A. Battle B is designed with the exact same map as battle A did in the beginning of the battle - this will allow for accurate default deployment of troops. Issues will arise where default deployment will not be possible, i.e. 2nd floor of a destroyed building, but I suppose you can code it so that the AI will choose the next best available building or cover.

I hope so. It seems like the logical thing to do would be to tie "Demo" of the bridge to a touch or secure objective. That way, if an allied unit touches or secures and objective then the bridge will be saved before the opposing side can prime the xplody things. Another question which I think Steve is dreading: Will there be carry over damage to map elements in campaigns? It seems like this is almost a requirement for MG since so many battles were fought over the same ground over and over. I know this can currently be fudged in the editor by actually saving an existing map and applying damage to the buildings but it will awfully funny when some buildings that have collapsed will suddenly be re-built in the next battle. And because I know that Steve has nothing better to do , I have one final quesiton: If I start building my own MG scenario now will I be able to import it into the MG module?

Yea, possibly those Renaults. They were in the area at the time and they do kind of resemble doodlebugs. At least he didn't call her Goliath

I wonder what a Doodlebug is? Maybe a Goliath?

No doubt the guys at BF put themselves to a high standard. That evidence is in their campaigns and battles. But I think there's evidence that a lot of amateur scenario designers have very high standards also. All true, but my point is that no matter the quality of the original designers, there can and usually will be amateurs out there that can produce better mods. The same could be said of campaign and battle designers. There are truly some talented individuals out there and they seem very dedicated. good to hear that the QB maps are getting better. I'll have to check out the new 2.0 QB maps to see what they're like.

With all due respect, in many cases the only difference between the amateur and 'professionally' made material is that one was paid for. The modding community has already output better graphics, sound, UI graphic mods than the game has originally came with. I have only downloaded a small number of user created scenarios and campaigns but the few that I've downloaded are worthy of shelling out some $$. Maybe they're not on the scale of 'Road to Montberg' or 'Scottish Corridor' but they're definetley high quality - their creators put a lot of love into them. What I'd really like to see improved are the CMBN quick battle maps. The original ones left a lot to be desired, no offense to the original creator. I'm Not sure if this has been addressed in CMFI since I didn't buy it. In any case, it'd be worth $5 for a pack of improved quick battle maps.

I've given it a go and WEGO is much better. I can only stomach real time if the battle size is under a company, otherwise you have to pause too often and it really breaks the flow of the game.

Heck yea, I'd love that roster! BF, hire this guy!

For Wego mode, I'd rather have multiple Fire Briefly commands available in a single turn. That way you could pin point several key positions that are separated, which is more often the case than a bunch of units lined up in a continuous line. I doubt this will be implemented though.

I suspect all of the projectiles from the 3" rounds and 76mm rounds were interchangeable, so long as they used the correct cartridge case. I don't recall seeing a HVAP round listed for the 3" gun, but I can look that up later.

Michael, Found this on page 287 of the American Arsenal: To clarify: The M7 3 inch gun on the M10 Tank Destroyer uses complete rounds that have the Mk. II M2 Cartridge case (a diameter of 4.27 inches at the base of the cartridge). The M1, M1A1, and M1A2 76mm gun in the Shermans use complete rounds that have the M26 Cartridge Case (a diameter of 3.566 inches at the base of the cartridge) BOTH the 3" and the 76mm guns use a 3" shell or projectile. In fact, they both use the M42A1 H.E. shell. Therefore, what I think was happening is that the M10 units were bargaining for the 76mm HE rounds, but they had to separate the M42A1 shell from the M26 Cartridge Case and put it onto a Mk. II M2 Cartridge case.

Yea, as I recall it was only some of the ammo that was incompatible. I'll have to re-check my source: American Arsenal

Just a side note: audible contact alerts are already in the game. I haven't really investigated how often they occur but they do seem to generally occur when *some* units are newly discovered. The contacts are sometimes hard to hear and it seems you need to be closer to the ground and actual units that spot the new threat. I don't really regard it as useful because I usually see the enemy unit right before or at the time the audible alert is said, but still, there are cases where it has alerted me before I noticed the enemy. Since I pretty much play Wego, it doesn't do much good.

After thinking about this a bit more I have another thing to add...It's basically not going to work well the way you envision it for a lot of scenarios. Basically what will happen is that a majority of your units will see one or two enemy scout units, probably at an extreme distance where there is little or no threat, thereby ruining their alert system for when you really need it. Of course, this depends on the map geography and your unit setup etc... But, by and large it's just going to lead to mostly useless information and it will let you down just as often if not more than when it actually helps you. For example, it will be next to useless on more open maps especially if you're on defense. Your units will see the enemy coming from a long way before you even need to be alerted. Even if you're on the attack, the majority of your units will likely see the same few outpost units, blowing their "load", so to speak, way too early against relatively nonthreatening units. I can see it working sometimes in a heavily segmented maps such hedgerow country, but it's only really useful in real time games where you can actually react to the newly discovered threat.

OK, I see your point but this sounds like it will only really be useful at the beginning of the game. Once all or most of your units have made their first spot, probably in the first 1/3 of the game, it's pretty much useless. And it may not be useful at all when it really counts, i.e. when that King Tiger suddenly pops it's head out and you're screaming at your units "Why didn't you alert me about the F@#$@#ing Tiger!!"

A casualty alert would certainly be good and probably not too annoying. I actually think it's needed for real time play even though I rarely play real time. However, the original post suggested having an alert every time a unit came under fire, which is absurd even in a small battle. You would constantly be getting alerts, it would be very annoying and ultimately useless. If they got an alert once per unit per game, that might be tolerable. Whether it can be done or not depends on which type of alerts you're talking about. The spotting alert, which Zebulan Pleasure Beast II suggested, would completely ruin fog of war (see my previous post). I seriously doubt BF will sacrifice their excellent spotting system on which they spent a lot of time developing. No, not really close in scale. Close Combat has a max of 15 units IIRC. In CMBN a 15 unit battle is tiny and a typical battle is closer to 20-30 units with the possibility of splitting squads to get 40-50 units. Close Combat's system worked well because you 1) had a manageable number of units [which means a small number of alerts] and 2) because you could quickly access all you units in the UI with a single click. Also, IIRC, CC didn't alert you every time your units saw an enemy unit and it didn't alert you every time your units got fired upon, which were the suggestions of the first two posts in this thread.

Yea, I know it's old technology - Baldur's Gate has similar settings. My question is, is it practical for the CMBN engine? Well, I wasn't really replying to you. But I am now, so I'll try not to deliberately misunderstand you. That will limit the notifications but it completely ruins the Fog of War for spotting units. Currently, if a unit is spotted, then not spotted, then spotted a second time in a different location, the opposing player has no real confirmation that it was the same unit. With your suggestion, players will know if it was a previously spotted unit or not. Not good for this game. And if your response is to say that if all units shall report as a new spot every time it is re-spotted, then you are indeed talking about hundreds of notifications per game. Yes, HUNDREDS, because each soldier does his own spotting (although we can only view spots per unit). If you have 50 units on the map and your opponent has 50 on the map as well, that's a potential 2500 spotting notifications - and that doesn't even count the potential re-spots! Information overload.

Yea, seems like it will be more work for the artists and modders. Hopefully some day the CM engine will have true degradable buildings based on actual round impacts, sort of like how there are currently crater impacts on the ground. Not likely to happen soon though.

Wow, so whenever your units takes some fire you'll be notified?? That's a lot of notifications! In the heat of battle you'll get tons of notifications within seconds. The replay functions basically serve this purpose anyway. And, by the way, CMBN tracts LOS from each individual soldier. So, if you have 200 soldiers under your control and they all see 10 different enemy units in the same 60 second turn, then suddenly you've got 2000 notifications!!!