Bonxa

I'm free until late august. So if you want to TCP (or PBEM, at least the setup) something big I'm up for it. Have been at CM since the beta demo and have played through regimental sized battles so I should be a decent opponent. Just send me the setup! cheers P.S. Time zone is GMT+1 but as I said, I'm on vacation so I can play on odd hours.

I made my service in northern Sweden and can attest that moving in snow is very tiring when it gets beyond 20-30 cm or so. You are either plowing your feet throught the snow or you have to lift your legs high, or both. Running is impossible when the snow gets deep enough, you'll fall over. In CM I find the move command to be the best in snow, even under fire. Very short advances can do the trick under more intense fire. Patience is key. And I disagree that CMs tough infantry model is unrewarding. I think it's all the more rewarding when you finally get there and capture those damned HMGs that have been harassing you the last 20 minutes.

Excellent thread guys! It's lovely to read up on plans that work out. The only thing that's better is when it's yourself that execute them.

Yup, I think rifle grenades have decent range, ~50 meters or so. At 100 meters it was probably a PIAT or zook who caught you. PIATs don't produce any smoke and have low velocity thus it might look as something being lobbed. Maybe?

Move to contact plus hide would probably be the best option. The hide command will prevent the sneaking behaviour when the squad hits the ground. Run is a bad idea since they then are very vulnerable. Move results in run when they come under fire, see above. Advance is an alternative if you want them to continue pushing, maybe when the distance to cross is short.

The transport class of the towing vehicle must be greater than or equal to the transport class of the gun as well. Additionally, vehicles only capable of having teams as passengers (as opposed to a full squad) have a limit of 6 men in the towed team. All this information is found by hitting enter while the appropriate unit is selected. Good luck keeping 'em alive!

Hey, don't scare him away. He should be welcomed since he's going in the right direction. Welcome! BTW HMG teams are 6 men strong

It's only when you pop in the CD right? I have the CDV CMBB and it asks me wether I want to reinstall, play or exit when the autorun thingy starts. This of course isn't a problem since the CMBB disk sits firmly in my CD drive, only leaving occasionally for some fresh air. The play button doesn't work but "cancel" is the way to go. Then just start CMBB in your preferred way (via some shortcut or whatever). One way to get around this annoying popup would be to turn of autorun for your CD drive.

A classic question. I believe you hit print screen and then there's a screen shot in the CM folder or in the copy/paste memory, can't remember which. You can always check the manual.

To repeat what others have said. The 88 needs to score a direct hit, the 75 does not. There's the relativ difference.

Play something else, like an attack/defend QB or a well made scenario. I used to play ME QBs when I stared out with PBEM in the CMBO days but I haven't played one for years now except in a tourney. ME's are hard and don't feel very realistic IMHO.

It's the similarity between the germanic languages and my lazyness that planted the word 'watersick' inmy post. I'm swedish and we have a word that directly translates into 'watersick' which means terrain with too much water in it like a water meadow (never used that before) or a semi marsh/swamp. I could have checked a dictionary for this but you caught on just fine anyway, as I hoped. Soft ground would be the terrain type in CM I believe.

I'am disturbed by a few things in the current editor. Mainly the general construction with one tilebased window where you mark out height and "terrain" for each tile and then go into a preview mode to see how it went. It seems like a more programmer friendly approach rather than user friendly. Why not put in the effort to make a system where you work and view in the same window, where you immediately see the effects of your fiddling? (I realize this requires an engine rewrite, but that's what they're up to. Next is the open ground. I live in Sweden which has a lot of forrests like Finland and some farmland looking somewhat like in the rest of Europe. Where is open ground here? I have got into the habit of look at terrain with CM eyes when I get out and about outside town and there simply is very little open ground. (I know CM's open ground doesn't represent the lawn it looks like but it still plays like one, almost). All flat areas are either farmland, watersick or lakes. Even tough some place might look flat it's usually undulating at a smaller scale, difficult enough to walk over and most likely impassable to wheeled vehicles. The small scale undulations are most likely abstracted in the current engine but I think they often are systematic enough that a more accurate representation of them would benefit gameplay. Something like sneaking up in a ditch along a road is not possible right now. Or take the proper modeling of a trench. For this to work in a 5 meter grid system there has to be elevation changes inside a tile, which might not be a very good idea. To sum up I'd like completely new editor that was made in a userfriendly fashion. I'd like to separate things like elevation (already done in the larger scale), general terrain type, density of main vegetation, undergrowth, softness/watercontent. Setting these things individually for each "tile" is not the idea. I'd rather see more of a brush where you could increase undergrowth or the density of your pines in a continous fashion, not like it's now where you have pinetrees or no pinetrees. I hope the above is somewhat coherent and understandable. It's late and I'm tired. Please forgive any obvious mistakes. [ April 17, 2004, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: KarlXII ]

Yup, awesome battle you got there. I've played CM for a long time now so it's always fun with a scenario that sticks out a bit gameplaywise. I'm commanding the axis and really enjoying it. It's almost like a good ME methinks. Very cool scenario without having a map or OOB that sticks out so to say. (I don't mean the map and OOB are bad, they're not) The map also seems very realistic with only small undulations and large bodies of the same terrain. I hope for more scenarios like this!

You must also consider the behind armour effect. Even a partial penetration from a big gun can make a crew abandon their tank. I'd say that below 50 mm weapons you usually need several hits (preferably in close succession, hailfire) to reliably kill a tank. ATRs can get several penetrations without causing any damage for example. When you're at 75 mm plus it's usually good enough to get one penetration, you might need more, to KO. I recently took out several early T34s with 105mm HE fire in directly even though the penetration was questionable. Many tanks were disabled due to gun damage. So keep an eye on caliber as well as raw penetration data. Some shells also have an HE burster that increase kills chance while somewhat reducing the penetration stats. P.S. A memorable moment from the CMBO days was when my Hummel KO'd a Hellcat with a miss some 5 meters away. 150mm rules!

If you believe it safe you can bring it up in a battlefield taxi (Half-Track). The regular infantry must be in command of the situation anyway though or the FT will just get wiped out when they disembark. It does eliminate the long and hazardous trip into the most forward position. Defence on a reverse slope or close terrain is where they shine.

I kind of envy you, getting to discover CM from scratch. Anyway, I'd like to chime with Slappy and push for PBEM (Play By E-Mail). Don't be afraid to start early with multiplayer, you'll learn quick and there's most likely someone else on your level. It's most convenient to spend 15-30 mins every morning and/or evening going through 1-5 games or so. Lot's of emails to discuss tactics and whatever too. Congrats to finding out about CM!

If you somehow could get more/better angles to the target I think the 6 half-squads (I presume that's what you're talking about) would be better. Surrounding your enemy is always good. But firepowerwise they ought to be equivalent. The downside being somewhat reduced morale.

I did a small test, not very controlled, with M10s vs. Tigers. At 100 meters range or so against the turret front there are a lot of shot shatter or only partial penetrations. Upperhull is more vulnerable though. BTW, I've lost a Tiger to an M10 in the desert. I suspect we played the same battle.

If you have played CM more times than the number fingers on your hands this kind of situation must have come up before. Infantry platoon versus MG, wow. The thing I've had to learn is to be patient. Let the minutes pass and the fire pour in. I failed miserably in my experiments with mounted infantry attacks because once they jumped off the HT/carriers my brave men were cut down by not properly supressed enemy infantry. It works ok with a few minutes of supression fire and plenty of smoke though. A bit of a gamble/risk but fun when you pull it of.

IIRC the bonuses of the HQ work on themselves in that a regular HQ with plus one in morale will act as a veteran HQ in that respect. The squads under it's command don't become veterans in the morale aspect, they are still regulars but with a "veteran" HQ. I think someone made a table over reaction times with different experience levels for squads and HQs. It confirmed this. And I don't think Coy HQs are better than platoon HQ other than that the toon HQs are "locked" to their own squads plus support weapons.

I think the major reason why my zooks missed was that they were in the middle of a major small arms fight. And the Tiger prudently showed it's big side to me. Just taunting though as my guys couldn't hit it anyhow.

I just spent two zook loads (16 rounds) on a Tiger at just over 100m in TCP/IP battel versus a friend. Not a one of them hit. (A M10 TD then tried it's luck and cracked to APCBC shells on the front turret at 200m before being put out of it's misery.) To get first shot kills with zooks and schrecks it seems you have to be under 50m or else have very many of them. As for AT-rifles, they have so much ammo and are so hard to detect that I would open fire at maximum range. Don't expect anything though.

Also, area fire is the only you will get. You can't target enemy units directly in this indirect fassion of spotting. I must add that I really like the british 3" mortar. It's a lot more powerfull than the eqvivalents in the other armies.

If your opponent repeatedly use woods as defensive positions and you can predict somewhat where he'll be already at setup, use prep-fire. With green or conscript even heavies dont' cost much. Just put them on 5 min delay or something and one to three patches of woods will be cleared for you in a very efficient way. This obviously only works well under the above circumstances. But one or two "secure" holes in his line might enable you to go around other positions easily.