PvK

My sources give: Official strength in tanks per platoon: '41-'43 Pz III: 5 '41-'42 Pz IV: 4 '43 Pz IV: 5 Of course, usually in practice there would be fewer than 4 or 5 actually available. PvK Edit: formatting data - grr ;-/ [ October 26, 2003, 11:46 AM: Message edited by: PvK ]

I tend to think more time favors the attacker rather than the defender, but as has been said, mainly because too little time can force the attacker to move wrecklessly in order to reach the objective on time. In most situations, I think low (or any) time limits don't make much sense from a realism point of view. Very rarely would it be more important to capture an objective in 15-30 minutes, than to keep men alive. However a short time limit can get players to move their forces into quick action, for players who prefer that sort of thing. PvK

I seem to recall from discussions after CMBO came out that yes, there is less chance in scattered trees, and the most chance in normal woods. However, the scattered tree chance still seems high enough to worry about. PvK

Yep! I typically bump up the time limit on CM scenarios, because I don't like being artificially forced to charge headlong into destruction without proper caution, and there is almost never a good reason for the time limit to be so low. In this case however, no amount of time is enough to take the objective without historically unacceptable casualty levels. Unless maybe you could trick the AI into wandering off of its defenses. PvK

It doesn't sounds like we are winning. A few of us have managed a technical win versus the AI when we have foreknowledge, but I expect even these wins are coming at the price of heavy casualties. What the winners seem to be doing is sneaking troops and armor through the bushes and forcing an assault up the road to the church. I consider my solution to be historical and appropriate. Be cautious, and give up as soon as you determine they are dug in and too strong to assault. Then ask for a proper assault force with artillery support, and wait for nightfall. The original scenario takes place at dusk anyway. That is, mod the scenario to take place at night, allow 60 minutes for the assault, and to include two 105mm arty spotters, and set them to start of the scenario by bombarding all around the church. It would make sense to replace the recon infantry with regular dismounted infantry, but that's not so important. Wait for them to fire off all their ammo, and then advance carefully. This is what I think a real commander would do, and I managed to not only win, but keep my losses minimal. (I took 11 casualties in the first scenario and inflicted 16. Then in the second I took 19 casualties and inflicted 126. My total friendly KIA was only 7.). PvK

How about using the Covered Arc command to specify engagement range? PvK

I have to agree about the trench model. Seems like as long as the enemy is in the right direction relative to the trench (that is, they're not close enough and in the right direction to fire down into the trench), then units in the trench should be nearly invisible and invulnerable to direct-fire attacks. Essentially, they should be able to go "heads down", without the usual penalties of Hide or Crawl. It's also very slow moving along a CMBB trench, which doesn't make much sense to me. It shouldn't be any worse than "soft ground" to run along the bottom of a trench, and if it's a good prepared trench, it could be as good as a road. PvK

EM is for "enlisted men", I think. Sub-NCO's.

Ach! I just tried this one (extreme FOW, no adjustments, default AI/Soviet position), and ouch. The 20-minute time limit is also silly, but many CM scenarios do that, I guess to force immediate action. I should just add 60 minutes or more to all scenarios before playing them, since I don't like being forced into reckless moves for an artificial time limit. However, in this case, I don't think the extra time would have helped much. I sent infantry carefully forward, and managed to get into some advanced positions without getting shot. I then engaged in a bunch of ammo-burning suppression/attrition, assuming foolishly that for once the briefing from HQ would not be a parody of what to expect. Instead, as usual, I was being ordered to sacrifice my men to take a building objective in 20 minutes from a superior enemy. The Soviet force is in several ways stronger than the assaulting German force. Fortunately, my cautious advance discovered this before my men were committed to a massacre, so we were able to call off the assault after taking only a few casualties. I hadn't seen any sign of anti-armor defenses, so I cautiously brought up the AFV's and they were able to wear down some positions, but then one of my halftracks got ambushed by an AT gun that the infantry hadn't noticed, and the tac AI unfortunately didn't reverse it a few meters to safety for whatever reason, so it sat there and took five or six hits in a row until it was knocked out. Except for losing the halftrack, I'd call it a draw or minor advantage to me, since the situation was extremely dangerous, and I got good intelligence on the enemy position and weakened it, and took only a few casualties. Now the thing to do is to call in a bombardment, then maybe do a night assault with a reasonable force. PvK

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Gpig: As for map direction enlargement, you CAN do this in the editor. You have to hold down the SHIFT key (I believe) if you want the map to extend in a different direction. Anyhoo, it's in the manual there someplace. <hr></blockquote> Thanks Gpig! It seemed like there should be a way to at least use the reduction and enlargement in the other directions - that can acomplish some of what I was talking about. PvK

I imagine these ideas have been brought up somewhere in this huge forum history, but here are some requests for map editor enhancements: It'd reall be nice to be able to cut and paste large sections of map. Being able to specify which direction to extend or shrink the map would really help too, to make scenarios want a map that uses part of a previous map. Right now, it only seems to extend or shrink from the north and east edges, which greatly limits the ability to do so. Finally, it would be very nice to be able to start a new scenario based on a saved game file, to at least get the map in its current state of damage including all the craters and building damage, and hopefully the wrecks, too. This would be great for making scenarios set on prior battlefields, and especially for human-moderated campaign games re-fighting in the same area. PvK

I thought my 300 MHz Celeron with 64 MB RAM and a 16 MB Voodoo Banshee video card ran the game quite acceptably, with few problems. I also ran it on a 433 MHz Celeron laptop with no video accelerator on a liquid crystal screen, and it ran ok but the video was not particularly great. Certainly playable, though, as long as I wasn't trying to play very long on battery, and I made sure the laptop had enough ventilation so it wouldn't overheat! I tried on a 200 MHz Pentium MMX with a 16 MB Voodoo 2 or Banshee (don't know), and it was unplayable, however. Better systems give better results. 700 MHz with TNT 2 is pretty nice. 1.4GHz Athlon with GeForce 2 is another order nicer. But, the 300 MHz Celeron with Voodoo Banshee was ok for me. PvK

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Vanir Ausf B: The problem is that the M10 can penetrate the hull of the JPz IV with AP. In fact, in my limited testing it penetrated the upper hull and superstructure consistantly at 500m. The TacAI apparently is aware that tungsten is not useful or not needed, because it always fires AP even with 5 tungsten rounds on board. So why does having the tungsten lower the kill chance? Still dunno...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Probably the AI ammo selection code is different from the to-kill estimation given to the player. If I were in an M10 faced with a Stug IV, I'd probably fire tungsten myself, because I'd figure it was most likely to be the model of Stug IV that for some reason isn't included in CM, which has thicker armor. <g> PvK

There's also the question of how "more likely to bog" is best measured. These tests measured in terms of time (turns). But it could also be measured in terms of distance. If a tank is bogging less often in broken ground and mud, how much slower is it moving, and what is the relative difference in distance between bogging events? Apart from the seeming bogless reverse issue, the other one that bothers me is the Hunt move being faster than the Move move - if the Move move is slower, why is it "less alert"? PvK

I'll admit I've never seen any mention of buildings being a bad place for infantry to take cover against HE. I'd be fascinated to read any such references - can anyone provide some? While I don't doubt that it's possible in CM for units to not take losses when a building collapses, my experience so far has been that inf in buildings take very low losses in buildings from direct fire, but then frequently take multiple losses when a building comes down, which it inevitably does after a few HE hits. The problem I have with this is that in reality, I think houses would tend to fall down in stages - it's unlikely for the whole thing to tumble at once and trap multiple people, I would think. While a building falling down might hurt or trap some men sometimes, I think that would be less dangerous than HE explosions themselves, and this seems to clearly not be the case in the game - the falling-apart building is way more deadly than the bombs and bullets. Yes, I can see that if a house is being destroyed by HE fire, that the men should and would probably get out. However I think that infantry are much faster and mobile and intelligent about how to do this than is shown in the game - they're not a mass of guys in one spot who only move as shown in the game. In other words, I think men would scramble to safe corners and so on quite quickly, and usually be able to make the presence of a house at their location a strong defensive advantage rather than a trap, most of the time. The player shouldn't necessarily have to micro-manage where the men move, and the AI shouldn't have to even move the guys out of the house - I'd just reduce the chance that so many guys will be lost, because this sort of defensive scrambling seems to me to be beneath the scale of the game's infantry units. Guys will scamper behind what's left of a crumbling edifice, and it's more likely to be a benefit that there's a house, or the remains of one, at their general location than if they were in the open or in light cover. At least, that's the way it seems to me. PvK

Seattle here.

I mostly agree with Shandorf. I don't mind the visual because graphics are just icing to me. I don't think the rate of building collapse is necessarily a problem either (despite having recently levelled one house with a single 150mm HE hit, and another with a turn of 20mm quad flak area fire). The casualties do seem like a problem to me. Like several others who have posted here, I've noticed that buildings are generally a dangerous place to put troops. I think the casualties tend to be more than would occur in practice - as is, they seem about right for buildings that really do suddenly explode without warning. While a building might sometimes all fall down at once, I tend to think it would usually be more gradual, giving men time to not get taken out, by means of scrambling out or to safer positions. The main thing is that towns are like booby trap terrain rather than cover terrain, which does not seem right to me. Troops did use buildings for effective cover in WW2 - in CM, I wouldn't recommend it. When I have tried to use houses as cover, they generally have taken noticeable more casualties from buildings falling on them than from the incoming fire itself. PvK <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Shandorf: Whoa, I didn't expect this kind of a response. Anyway... The graphic of the house blowing up is fine with me. I realize it is just the representation of the house collapsing. The only thing I ever found odd about it was the number of casualties you take. It seems that the more men that are alive in he squad the more casualties you take. For example.. I have NEVER seen a fresh squad take less than 50% casualties from a collapsing building but for most squads that are already down to say 1-5 men only take 1-2 casualties most of the time. Which is less than 50%. I would think that the number of casualties should be more random that's all. Jeff<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

100m faust - the long bomb! (US football reference)

Ya, although in my cases, my men were all Veteran quality level, and the force morale level was over 80%, and except for the cases where the tanks themselves fired, the units weren't suffering any other abuse. The lesson I think is that you really can't count on them to use the fausts, especially if they'll come under fire. Not at all like the way Panzerschreck teams behave. Having better than 30m fausts may help a lot (probably does). PvK

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Get Some: In response to those half squads not using their pazerfausts: Did they have LOS to the Sherman?? They need that to fire their faust. How was their morale? They aren't going to do u any good if they're taking cover. Are u sure they had fausts? This would appear in the unit info box. When sneaking or moving up to a tank be sure to target it so they know to use the faust. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, they had LOS to the tank and yes they had fausts and even though the tank fired first, and eventually killed a couple of men, except possibly in my first experience, the men didn't go to ground, despite being shot at accurately at close range with 75mm HE. Targetting may be helpful in getting them to use a faust, but it's not necessary. I just had another experience where my opponent charged two Shermans carrying infantry into my bocage line where I had a 3-squad platoon, and each squad had a 30m panzerfaust. On the first turn, neither of the two units with LOS fired their fausts. At the start of the second turn, only one of my squads had LOS, and I targetted the tank. That squad did not fire the faust, and was quickly wiped out by the tank. However the third squad then arrived and fired its faust. The second squad I had simply turned to face where the other tank would appear, and it fired its faust. All in all, it appears to me to be a luck thing. I think it helps to not be under fire. It may also help to have decent fausts - I think in all of these cases except the one where my troops fired a faust at an infantry unit, I only had 30m fausts. PvK

Practically always: Realistic scale, no grid, full fog-of-war, detailed armor hit info, only a couple of modified bitmaps (uniforms, snow camo). I use a variety of views each turn, unless I'm limiting myself to only seeing from my units' actual ground-level positions. Usually: Unit bases on, max tree coverage. PvK

You can't do this per se, but if you want it to wait to target until finished moving, you can order the unit to move (F)ast and target the unit. Depending on the unit, it may still fire a little on the move, but at least will keep moving at full speed until it gets to the destination. Depending on the circumstances, sneaking or moving fast combined with an order to face the target may be more what you have in mind - if it's a good target, the unit will fire on its own, although you won't be able to choose yourself between multiple good targets. PvK

P.S.: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: Also keep in mind that AFVs have spotting delays depending on experience and if they are buttoned up. ESPECIALLY if they are buttoned up. This is to simulate internal communications (general) and reduced vision (buttoned up). Depending on battlefield circumstances and the unit in question, this can add up to a decent number of seconds.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is super, and I'm all in favor of this delay. In fact, I'd be happy to see this delay increased, as sometimes it seems like AFV's respond immediately to new targets, without an internal comms delay. However, the issue at hand is the difference a turret makes based on the orders system and TacAI (see preceding long message).

(long post) It seems to me that the main issue here is that turretless AFV's are at an additional disadvantage compared to turreted one (in addition to the realistically-modeled disadvantages), because of the way the game allows turreted vs. non-turreted vehicles to respond to orders. That is, with a tank, I can target a unit or area target in any direction during the orders phase, and the tank _turret_ will respond immediately, attacking right away. The _hull_ behaves differently, and non-turreted AFV's depend on rotating the hull to attack except to the front. This results in non-turreted AFV's being unable to turn and attack immediately, unless a rotate order is given, and rotate orders don't allow movement orders after them. A very short hunt order combined with a target order can be followed by move orders, so this could work, but it doesn't allows for customizing the amount of delay before moving off, as can be done with a turreted AFV. I'll have to re-try my JagdTiger scenario (muahahaha) and use this last technique to see how effective it is. Assuming it works well, this will still be a problem for players who haven't figured out this trick will often watch their turretless AFV's sit and not attack enemies to the sides. Even for those who figure out how to do it, it'll still mean turreted AFV's have a disadvantage in orders flexibility, and unless they had an appropriate order left over from the previous turn, they'll still be at an additional command delay to target enemies not in front of them, compared to turreted AFV's. There's also the problem that rotate and hunt orders aren't linked to targets the way a target order is, so an AFV given such orders will turn the hull to follow orders, not to follow a moving or changing target. I.e., it makes no sense that if two enemy AFV's end up aware of each other at the end of a turn, but facing the wrong way to engage, that the one without a turret will have to either wait for an additional command delay to turn and attack (hunt order), or not be able to have movement orders following turning to fight (rotate order). Also in either case, if the target moves or hides or another target appears, with either rotate or hunt, the turretless AFV will tend to rotate to follow orders, not to respond to target locations, the way a turret will. Various possible solutions: 1) Tweak the TacAI so turretless AFV's will immeditately turn to face targets out of arc. Also make sure the TacAI only gives turretless AFV's new targets out-of-firing-arc for sufficently threatenning enemies, and when there isn't an equally-suitable/dangerous target already engaged to the front. This way, the player would see them respond to orders as expected and like turretted AFV's. 2) Allow rotate orders at any waypoint, including the starting point. This would be useful in general, but would have the problem that if the target moves or changes, the turretless AFV would still turn to face the original target direction, unlike a tank which will turn the turret. I suggest 1) as the only way I've thought of that would not additionally penalize turretless AFV's. PvK

If this has been covered, let me know where the thread is. I was just playing with a JagdTiger (what a blast!), and noticed something that seemed like a problem. Namely, on four separate occasions, the JagdTiger seemed to refuse to turn to face targets I ordered it to attack, prefering instead to sit in place and engage no one. The targets were fairly low-priority, (a half-track, some infantry, or in one case, an area target next to a halftrack that had ducked behind a house). There was nothing better to target to the front, however, and it seemed to me there were no particularly dangerous units out of view to the front that might be an excuse to stay facing forward. In each case, the JagdTiger did have orders to move after a delay - I wanted it to turn to fire, get off a shot or two, and then reverse away a bit to a new position. Also, on a hunt order, the JagdTiger had its choice of two halftracks and an MG jeep at pretty close range and in forward arc, but it didn't bother to engage any of them. It was unbuttoned and was the only unit nearby, so it was surely aware of them. The main problem was the unwillingness to turn to target. I suppose it would've worked to give a rotate order too, but since rotate orders can only exist at the end of a move order sequence, that would mean I had to either target for the whole turn, or be able to turn and move. I guess I could to do a short Hunt forward in the target's direction, combined with a target order. But that too would be unsatisfactory, because then there would be no way to get a Pause in between the order to face the right direction, and the move away. Compared to a turretted AFV, this is a large disadvantage in terms of possible orders. PvK