Juardis

OK, my bad. I am the Germans. xerxes is the Russians. Turn 1, move my MG team in kubelwagon towards trees well away from the town. He mowed it down on turn 3 with a plt of his own. I move my mounted plt along road to prepare to assault the wooded location near the x-road. My HT with the inf HQ unit got shocked and ran off the road, my infantry kept going and dismounted out of C&C, took fire, and they all panicked. Meanwhile, another plt of Russians shows up on the flanks so now the road is covered from both directions and I have no infantry. Some AT gun took out my scout cars, my HTs didn't seem to pin his infantry, but my infantry seemed brittle. My trucks are dead since he had the road covered. Anyway, I need more help it appears but perhaps playing against a decent Russian player the Germans have a MUCH harder time of it than you guys had.

His opponent (me) has nothing left to exit the map. They're dead....all dead. I guess I could try to exit the ko'd crews, but they no longer say that they have to exit for points, so I'm assuming all they have to do is stay alive. As for playing against the AI, does that mean it's a horribly unbalanced scenario if you play against a human xerxes/marcs, you're correct, whatever assets I have around that flag are soon to be dead assets I am sure.

I'm playing the Russians. It's my first CMBB scenario. I'm getting my ass handed to me by a capable opponent. He thinks it's horribly unbalanced. I'm not sure since this is my first experience with CMBB. To those of you who are 1) experienced with CMBB and 2) have played this scenario, do you think it's unbalanced? Is it possible for the Russians to win (or at least represent well)? I mean, when I say I'm losing I'm down 95-5, and I CONTROL the big flag!

It's too late already, but couldn't you have made it an operation of one battle? That way it could be played as a scenario but with the flexibility of editing it for a multi-battle operation. May not be possible, just throwing that out as a possible solution going forward.

It shouldn't seem odd. Your member number indicates you've been here as long as I have. So surely you know that BTS has stated repeatedly that they will not add campaigns where units gain experience or requires strategic thinking. No promise was made that CMBB would have campaigns, no hint ever given that CMBB would have campaigns, and certainly BTS has stated that they are not interested in campaigns. This is a tactical simulation. If the original poster bought the game thinking there were campaigns, then he/she was wrong and it's entirely he/she's fault. Now, we can argue all we want about having campaigns, but to come here dissing BTS for a feature they never even advertised is BS.

thank you tom, i'll be here all week... lol On a more serious note, I read somewhere (Citizen Soldier I believe) that 50% of all green horns died in the first 3 days of combat. If they survived 3 days, they were considered veterans. Using that scale I truly believe that for longer ops, green units should move up to regular and regular to vets, provided they saw action and more than half the squad lived through them. The fact that they do not does not befund me though.

Meaningless? Obviously you're in the wrong place. EVERY battle I fight is for control of the world. I win, PENG is banned. I lose, PENG continues. Needless to say, I lose a lot. So don't talk to me about meaningless battles. Besides, my conscript HQ unit just increased to veteran in the time it took to calculate the last turn in To The Volga. Yours don't?

Good, thx

Obligatory Disclaimer: I did a search, did not find answer. Ok, still reading the FM and have yet to be able to sit and play other than to return a PBEM or two. Anyway, the FM implies that you can specify an opening barrage but it did not place restrictions on which types of battles. Now a barrage is supposed to represent pre-planning and pre-targetting, much like TRPs. And much like fortifications and TRPs, barrages should not be allowed in meeting engagements. Are they?

Well, the way I see it, it would be similar to case number 2. In all cases the moving russians were spotted by 50m, so putting a covered arc there would not increase the range at which they were spotted. Scenario 2 the stationary germans opened fire when the russians were spotted. You would expect the same thing to happen if there was a covered arc there, no?

very interesting weasle, thanks. So covered arcs by itself will result in immediate fire once triggered, but hiding allows the enemy to close before opening fire, regardless of where the cover arc is placed. At least that appears true in scattered trees. It also appears that whether they are hiding or not does not diminish when they first spot the russians, so that's good to know too.

I thought stealth was all about remaining undetected, combat was about how well you shoot, and command was how well your guys followed orders. Yes, cover arcs replaces ambush, but it adds to the ambush command so that it becomes more like a ... well, like a cover arc Seriously, I view cover arcs more for assigning an area of responsibility, as in "hey, your job is to make sure nothing gets through that gap in the trees". In which case the command bonus makes much more sense to me than the stealth command.

In CMBO you could spring ambushes by giving the hide order and your guys would unhide automatically once the enemy got close enough AND your hiding unit spotted them. The ambush command by itself did not do as good a job as just plain old hide IMO. Using ambush + hide was even worse than using either command by itself. So now I read the following about cover arcs But it is also known that if your guys are hiding, then they cannot spot as well, thus I emphasize the word notice in the quote. So are we back to the situation we were in with CMBO where cover arc + hiding is worse than either one by itself? Presumably, if you're assigned a cover arc, you'll be looking specifically in that arc for the enemy so you're more likely to spot them, even if you're hiding. Just wondering how this works in the game. Yes, I know, I can test this myself, but I'm pretty sure that someone has already done so and if they could be so kind, it would save me some time. Thanks.

From the FM, pg. 93: Now why would the stealth skill give a bonus in this situation? It seems that the "command" skill would be much more appropriate, or even the "combat" skill, but certainly not the "stealth" skill. Just a curiosity question thing.

Why not? No one in their right mind would order this game from CDV. And if someone in their not right mind (Dorosh? ) were to order from CDV, wouldn't the $$$ come back to you guys eventually?

heck, let the TacAI know the condition of it's troops. Makes it more of a challenge . As far as turning it on or off, not really a good idea during the game IMO. If you're playing in a rumble, or against another person, being able to turn it on or off defeats the purpose since most people will turn it on to gain that little bit of advantage.

Not sure how much use it would see, but what about a setting that told you nothing about the condition of your troops unless you had a designated HQ unit within LOS or C&C of it? In essence, you as the human behind the keyboard would not know whether that pixelated squad is pinned, panicked, routed, low on ammo, or even how many men were still alive unless your HQ unit was in LOS or C&C of that squad. So you can issue orders all you want and depending on the condition of the unit receiving that order, it may be carried out, or may not. The best use of this new FOW feature would be in rumbles. But I also think it would be neat for regular play as well. Granted, I wouldn't choose this setting for every game, but I would occasionally. What got me to thinking about this was reading the FM that said the info we get on each unit is WAY more info than a real commander ever had. So I ask, why not simulate as best we can the problems faced by a real world commander? So give the player only as much info as their in-game alter ego could gather. Understand again, this option would be frustrating at times, and as such, would not be for everyday use, but it definitely would see usage. Thoughts? Other than I'm an idiot that is

You guys didn't select overnight shipping when your ordered? Man, how stupid is that! I'll have my copy on Saturday. I'll post how great it is Saturday night and taunt you all with screenies.

In honor of the fighting men on the eastern front - Anti-freeze. Drained from my 4 year old car.

NO, you're both wrong! It was ME that hounded Steve into fixing ops. Sheesh, some people will try to steal the credit right out from under you. It was me and me alone. Thank you for your time. Thank you Steve for listening to ME, and me alone.

In defense of the tac ai, there was a piat in that bren carrier. If that piat disembarked, there was a 92m shot into the flank of the Panther. So either way, the panther was in a precarious position.

I'm downloading now. However, only 18kb/s on my cable modem Matt, those screenies are gorgeous.

I don't trust anything Toms Hardware has to say. He sold out years ago during the great nVidia/3dfx wars. I would trust Anandtech's site more if they have a review of the cards. Computer Gaming World (latest issue) certainly gave the 9700Pro the nod over the G4 cards. So there is another data point for you.

Thanks scipio. I like that fortifications can come in as reinforcements in OPs. Very nice. I can't wait to see how operations have been improved. One question though. The ability of the TAC AI to target the highest threat first (for example, the zook team running in a pack of infantry even though the game thinks they are all infantry?). Has that been fixed in CMBB?

60 scenarios and 10 ops? Cool, I thought it was 50, but 60's even better.