ASL Veteran

The simple solution to all of your issues Superwoz is to refrain from buying the game. If you don't buy Combat Mission then you don't have to suffer so much from all of BFC's incredible oversights and inexcusable failings.

For every scenario, every different force mix requires a different AI plan. Essentially what you are asking for is a QB generator that has a specifically tailored AI plan that matches each variable force that may pop up. It might seem like a great idea, but aside from the impossibility of creating a specially tailored AI plan for variable forces that is something more challenging than what a QB AI can give you, the scenario itself may be depicting a very specific historical action where a variable force would be inappropriate. If you want variable forces you can always play QBs.

Ha, ninja'd. Yeah, I think the accuracy is probably about right but the reaction time is the part that is probably too fast. Everything probably happens much more quickly in the game than in real life due to a variety of factors. Where an adjustment could be made would be how quickly the gunner gets on target after an enemy tank is spotted. That's been discussed before though and I'm not sure if there are any plans to revisit that.

If you can obtain a copy of the book 'Freineux and Lamormenil, the Ardennes' by George Winter there is a blow by blow description of a tank battle from both sides. The tank crewmembers for the tanks for both sides were interviewed and they describe the action shot by shot in great detail. You might be surprised, but almost every shot was a first round hit with the ranges below 1000 meters as long as the enemy tank was stationary. I have also read numerous tank battle accounts from other sources that seem to indicate that first round hits below 1000 meters was fairly common as long as the gunner was well trained.

My opinion is when Stalin signed the non aggression pact I seriously doubt that he had an expectation that France would be overrun in a month or two. We all know how much Stalin was pining for a second front, so I think it's reasonable to expect that with the non aggression pact in hand, Stalin probably would have sat tight until it was obvious that the western allies were going to win the war. At that point he probably would have jumped in and grabbed eastern europe as the spoils of war. He performed a similar action in the east after Germany's surrender. I can't imagine a scenario whereby Stalin declares war on Germany with the UK as Germany's only opponent and Hitler in total control of most of continental Europe and his troops sunning themselves on the beaches of France with nothing to do. That's just not Stalin's MO.

ASL is not for the casual gamer or the faint of heart. You also need to know someone else who wants to play it or might be interested in playing it. If you don't already know someone who plays it then convincing someone else might be a tall order. Assuming you can find an opponent though, even when I was playing regularly with a reasonably large group of friends the games would devolve into 'rules fests'. We didn't have any 'rules lawyers' per se because none of us really enjoyed diving into the rule book (a very intimidatingly large white binder with all the new and updated pages in it). However, we frequently ran into situations where the players had a different understanding about how something was done in the game and when something would come up it would be 'hey, you can't do that.' and we would then have to consult the rule book. Usually we would have a designated person, a rules umpire if you will, who would look up and read the appropriate rule and then we would have in depth discussions on what it all meant. The rules umpire would then make the final interpretation. Sometimes it was simple and straightforward and sometimes not so simple and an interpretation would have to be agreed upon. So I guess I would say that yes ASL is probably as good as you can get with a board game, but you need to understand that it isn't really 'just a game' in any sense of the word. You could probably create a college level class just on learning and understanding the ASL rule book. You should not look to getting ASL as just a financial decision because if you do it would be money wasted. You have to go in thinking that this is absolutely the game you must have because nothing else comes close because playing ASL requires a very big time commitment both while playing and studying the rules in between games.

Wow. It is seriously easy to find instances where the Tiger tanks inability to go offroad has a direct impact on that tank's performance in a specific battle. Instances in which the same offroad environmental conditions did not have a similar impact on other vehicles. To claim otherwise is .... well I'll leave it at that. Edited to modify my initial remarks and to add the following: That's just one I happened to find in about five minutes. The Soviets were using IS2, SU122, and T34 tanks in that particular battle. I can give you several more examples too, although I'm not sure it's worth my time doing so. However, there are plenty of examples from Anzio with Tigers and Elefants where they were stuck to the road. You can also find numerous examples from German operations around Budapest as well with Tigers stuck to the roads. Like I said, examples are easy to find. Of course you have to want to see the examples and admit to their relevance otherwise it makes no difference how many examples are quoted.

There are more examples than I can count of Tigers being forced to remain on a road to avoid risking immobilization. Proving that is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel - which I believe the mythbusters actually proved is pretty easy to do.

Driving offroad will increase the stress on the vehicle's moving parts and cause more mechanical failures. This would especially be true during muddy or sandy conditions. So muddy conditions could cause mechanical failures regardless of theoretical performance for floatation purposes. This can be attributed to two different things of course, but the end result is the same. An immobilized tank.

I think Bil indicated that the battle was already complete.

Yes I did, although I probably haven't played it in ... oh at least ten years. I never owned the game although I think I did own a copy of SL back in the day. I just played my friend's copy of ASL and he sank an endless amount of money into it trying to stay current.

The CMx2 game system is still growing while the CMx1 system has ceased. There is an Eastern Front version of CMx2 scheduled to come out sometime this year which you can read about in the 'Christmas Bone' stickied threads in the CMx2 forums. It's possible that Africa could be revisited in CMx2 in the future. You just have to be patient.

This has been reported already. Jeeps can cross that bridge but apparently very little else can cross it.

I think most average human beings would be utterly crushed if a man 6 foot 5 inches, weighing in at 335 pounds, and who can bench press over 500 pounds ran into them at full speed. Normal sized non athletes would be hospitalized from the impact even if they are wearing the pads. NFL football players are ridiculously quick, big, and strong. I can assure you that you wouldn't want to be in a collision with anyone playing in the NFL with or without padding.

Before the end of 2014.

I added a Sherman to the US forces and it refused to cross the canal bridge. I'll report that as a bug. Thanks.

I just started a new game as the American player in 2.12 and I drove a jeep across the Bailey Bridge (canal bridge) and I drove a jeep across both Dommel River bridges. I then started a brand new game as the German and I drove a tank across the diagonal stone bridge across the creek. Every bridge seems to be working, although the diagonal bridge is a little screwy when the vehicles cross it. Ah, I see that you said tanks can't cross the bridge. I don't know why a tank wouldn't cross if a jeep can. I might add a tank to the American starting forces and see if it will cross. There is no reason a tank shouldn't cross the bridge.

Was this from a game started prior to the release of the patch or is this from a new game started after the release of the patch?

You can't.

There may be parameter objectives which are threshold based, but yeah, what you mention there is essentially as I understand it with regard to QB.

The destroy objective doesn't work in Quick Battles. My assumption would be that it doesn't work because there is no way for the game to assign a destroy objective to a unit automatically. So in terms of Quick Battles it is true that casualty victory points don't work. In terms of the game itself however, they are present and are frequently used in scenarios. In terms of the OP's post, if he was referring to QB only then he is correct. Casualty victory conditions don't apply. If he is referring to CMx2 in general terms then he is incorrect because the ability to assign casualty victory points is present and is used in scenarios and campaigns.

An excellent point. Considering that infantry in CM have nothing but ordinary hand grenades as equipment then whether or not the infantryman is physically standing on the vehicle or not is really irrelevant. In FM 21-75 on page H7 it lists several weak points on a tank that are suitable for infantry close assault. The turret ring, engine compartment, suspension system, ammunitions storage (inside the turret), and fuel tanks (external ones like Soviet tanks have). If you subtract the fuel tanks and the ammunition storage (behind armor) then you are left with the turret ring, suspension, and engine compartment. In no case does the Field Manual make a recommendation that a simple hand grenade be used to attack those weak points. Let's have a look at these weak points shall we? If a soldier stands on the engine compartment and places a hand grenade on it, would that be any different than if a soldier tosses a hand grenade onto the engine compartment? No, no difference at all unless there is some sort of a special location where the soldier can wedge the grenade into (and hope it doesn't roll off). Even then though a tossed grenade could end up in the same location without physical placement. So for that weak point it makes no difference whether the grenade is tossed or placed. For the suspension system, once again whether a grenade is placed or tossed would make no difference. In fact if the tank is moving it may very well be impossible to physically place a grenade somewhere in the supension system without losing part of your hand. What does that leave us with then? The turret ring. In most cases there isn't any sort of a gap large enough to actually wedge a grenade into the turret ring, especially from the front or the sides. Some tanks have a turret overhang in the rear for ammo storage like the Pz IV for example. Even in that case it's not entirely clear that the gap is large enough to wedge a grenade into. The presence of turret skirts also complicates matters since the soldier would have to reach past the skirts somehow. Suffice to say that wedging a grenade into a turret ring would be a challenging proposition unless the grenade itself had a means of sticking to the location that the grenade was placed. In most cases the likely result is that the grenade would just roll off the tank as soon as the soldier let go of it. The only thing soldiers are carrying in Combat Mission are hand grenades - no gasoline, no molotov cocktails, no crowbars, etc. Nothing other than hand grenades. If we make an assumption that hand grenades are not powerful enough to destroy tanks then the obvious conclusion would be that infantry in Combat Mission shouldn't have a close assault ability at all. The absence or presence of a wall, bocage, or any other intervening terrain is functionally irrelevant because whether or not the soldier is physically standing on the tank or not is also functionally irrelevant.

Maybe you missed it (in spite of your extensive experience with noticing things), but it was explained that the plate quality rating was deliberately set to low quality by the person who codes it. It was intentionally set that way. In other words, that was not a bug. It was intentional. When someone complained about it, the decision was made that it was probably easier to just alter the plate quality rating than to argue back and forth with forum members about whether it was the correct rating or not since the charge was being made that the game was inaccurate with regards to penetration of that particular plate. Once that happens, then the Armor Plate Pope calls for a crusade and the Jpz IV Plate Templars fire up a new thread every other week demanding a fix to the broken plate because they can't play the game anymore. The incorrect plate value has broken the game to the point where it isn't even worth playing the game and they would rather spend all their time on various gaming forums complaining at the irrepairably broken armor penetration model in CMx2 unlike CMx1 which was handed down to Hercules by the hand of Zeus for the masses to enjoy in all it's perfection. The only way to correct the matter is to pressure BFC with the blunt force of hundreds of repeated forum posts until BFC finally breaks and a proper solution is brought forth to please the masses. As demonstrated by the continued discussion of the Jpz IV plate, even the immediate adjustment of the plate value apparently was insufficient to distract the Jpz IV Plate Templars who apparently are continuing on in their crusade in spite of the fact that they have already won an easy victory.

Abstracted when there is no bocage but not abstracted when there is bocage? A little consistency goes a long way

Good for you. Maybe you weren't aware, but infantry have been able to close assault tanks across bocage since CMBN was released - so it has been that way for several years now. Now that you have discovered this game feature you can use it to your advantage more often.