xerxes

Doesn't everyone and anyone get insulted in the cesspool? I thought that was a given.

I'll hazard a guess at what happened (if you review the film carefully it will tell the real story). Your advancing troops failing to ID the defenders as targets quickly enough. The defenders heard your advancing infantry, turned and let loose on them. The initial fire of the Germans drove your advancing troops to ground and then the Germans just poured it on at point blank range. If your troops are suppressed it doesn't matter if they have smgs or sharp pointy sticks. Defenders that aren't moving have a distinct advantage at detecting advancing/moving infantry. Sneak can work though if other units of yours have ID'd the position. Sneak to just within range (add a hide so you don't have just one squad opening up at the end of the sneak). If you can make it undetected, the next turn you can unhide and merrily blast away. I bet the Germans weren't just carrying rifles and lmgs too. That sounds like they were packing at least 2 smgs/squad and probably more. The 4smg/4 rifle/1 lmg German squads put out a heck of a lot of firepower at close range.

It was a good question Lee. The problem you've faced with eliminated the last man or two in a HQ is solved by closing with the HQ. The HQ lacks the firepower to prevent this, you really can just overrun it.

Ok, I tried a little test. 3 4-man axis HQs and one 6 man CO against 4 4-man Romanian lmgs at 60m (romanians in command, [one of the romanian commanders was a double lightning bolt and remained hidden], they have a firepower advantage at 60m). If either side lost sight they used move to contact to close the range. All the units were in brush terrain. Result: HQs: 11 casualties out of 18 men, 3 KIA LMGs: 2 casualties out of 16 men, 1 KIA No unit on either side was eliminated. 2 of the HQs were down to 1 man. Both sides were low on ammo for the last 5-6 turns. Conclusion: HQs lose to LMG teams. LMG teams have very little killing power and they still inflicted high casualties on the HQs. [ September 20, 2003, 11:09 AM: Message edited by: xerxes ]

Most of the casualties in CM are not bleeders and they don't want to become one. (check an AAR screen and notice the low number of KIAs.) HQs may be more resistant to firepower than they should be but I really don't know how one could determine such a thing.

ATRs are one of the safest ways to kill gun pillboxes. Just takes a lot of rounds on average.

Woa! Trampled paths! We want trampled paths! No more treats for BTS until we get trampled paths! It would be cool for snow scenarios.

I just lost a Stug to a Soviet 120mm prebombardment, knocked my uberarmor clean out. Guess I shouldn't have setup my Stug on that hill overlooking the battlefield in plain sight.

Buy some cheapo armor so the planes have something to shoot at. If you're soviets get some T-70s/T-60s, if you're germans get a Somua. It's basically a soak-off strategy.

I would hope that "eliminating" the last 3 men out of a 10 man squad is much easier than wiping out a 3 man HQ. A squad that has already lost 70% of it's force is going to be very brittle in most cases. An HQ should be much stronger. A fair number of "casualties" are just soldiers quiting the fight. This should occur more easily in a battered unit.

For armor, attacking from the side/rear is a huge advantage. I suspect you're talking about infantry. The key is to catch the enemy in a crossfire. Infantry taking fire from two directions break and run very quickly.

I have a new scenario under development that is missing the ATRs for exactly that reason.

The key to placing mg bunkers is to prevent long range ATR/gun/afv direct firing on them. Long open LOS to a wooden mg bunker will get them killed quickly every time. Reverse slope or deep in cover are the best places. Behind heavy cover and firing laterally can be very nasty.

Some level of programmatic access would be wonderful and would spur innovation. Having to write everything as a screen-scraping shell stinks.

Having been doing so research on the north african campaign it is notable that in CM size engagements air power was more often then not absent. The reason was target confusion. Neither side would commit air when troops were engaged because the chance of hitting your own troops was far too high. Close air support during an actual assault appears to have been extremely rare. Air when supporting a major attack would be used before the ground forces engaged. Commanders on the field had no control over their own airpower.

I meant my question for markshot. The destroy all buildings from an aircraft bomb bug is still in CMBB (at least the earlier builds). Sort of an easter egg.

Did you have pioneers/engineers nearby? Pioneers will autotarget AP minefields with their satchels and they aren't none too careful if there are friendlies about. The area effect blast of satchels will take down buildings quite effectively.

I've never lost so many tanks in so little time. It really takes a callous Soviet commander for this one.

ack! my bad, very bad.

Tank Warning is a very cool operation but it hasn't been released yet.

The modelling of building effects is fairly unrealistic in CM. I'm sure that's on the list of things to fix for the engine rewrite. I think you're forced to use the game mechanics are written, I wouldn't consider that gamey.

Of course the AI has better luck than you. That's a simple extension of the well known "Law of Low Numbers" which states that for every lucky shot you pull off, your opponent (human or ai, no difference) will get at least two lucky shots. Think back about how many times you can remember your opponent getting that 1 in a 1000 lucky result. Think how many times you've gotten that lucky. Not even close It all makes sense. It's true for all CM players. It's a conundrum.

What JasonC said. You should never defend a building near the edge unless you're in night/heavy fog and LOS is very short.

I've used a similar technique to provide "recon" information. I'll reserve a setup zone and use it as a "there aren't any enemy here" notification. If I'm using the setup zone for that purpose I don't put any units in it so it's only informational. If you're using labels, you can also give a geographic label and in the briefing state, "An AT gun position has been identified at the crest of hill 305" or some such.

I'd like to see an infantry "hunt" command where the infantry advance cautiously (using cover), stop to engage any enemy and continue their advance once the enemy is gone.