ASL Veteran

There is a lot more than just that one spectator giving it away. There is an entire wall of spectators standing at a right angle to the German line of defense on the far side of the field. You can also hear a loudspeaker announcer giving the blow by blow to the audience. Then there is the yellow caution tape strung between the trees along the river bank as the 'Soviet' tank comes rolling into view. There is also no recoil for the AT gun of course.

Don't take it too hard Green. The continuing commentary from the peanut gallery just comes with the territory. They are just a bunch of peanuts though so nothing to lose any sleep over. In fact, if I were a peanut I would be getting a little worried about now since the squirrels will be coming out in force pretty soon. Just putting an AAR together, let alone doing well in one, takes a lot of work so I'm sure everyone appreciates your efforts.

Well John, I have just the thing for you. It's called FM 21-75 Combat Skills of the Soldier. On page 3-5 it just happens to have information on just the thing you are discussing here. IMMEDIATE ACTIONS WHILE MOVING This section furnishes guidance for the immediate actions you should take when reacting to enemy indirect fire and flares. REACTING TO INDIRECT FIRE If you come under indirect fire while moving, quickly look to your leader for orders. He will either tell you to run out of the impact area in a certain direction or will tell you to follow him. If you cannot see your leader, but can see other team members, follow them. If alone, or if you cannot see your leader or the other team members, run out of the area in a direction away from the incoming fire.

I also think that there are too many variables as well. It would be different in 1941 than in 1944 and it would also be different depending upon if there is a unit full of 'liberated' Ukrainians or a group of SS fighting a Red Banner unit (At least the Germans referred to Red Banner units, but I'm a little shaky on what that means exactly from the Soviet perspective).

Why would you need to know the points? The entire 'point' of having points is so that opposing players can purchase their own troops before fighting a quick battle. If you are making a scenario the player can't purchase their own force, therefore the points aren't needed. The player has to use the force you give them and you can just 'buy' whatever you want to and plop it into the scenario. You might want to use the points to buy the opposing forces, but if the player isn't buying their own force then it seems rather pointless to me for you to use the points since allowing the player to buy their own personally tailored force is the entire point behind having points in the first place. Points are also not an indicator of 'balance'. If you buy a thousand points worth of trucks for one side and a thousand points worth of tanks for the other side the fact that both sides just spent a thousand points doesn't make the match up balanced. It's really 'pointless' to have points in the editor because they serve no purpose. They aren't an indicator of balance. They aren't being spent by the player who is commanding a specific force. I hope you get my point.

There are no purchase points in the editor.

Do you have any sound equipment? Maybe you can get some great sound files for Combat Mission.

John, have you seen the Peanut Gallery thread for this battle? You might try jumping in there for a while. Neither Bil nor Green is allowed in that thread so you can be as free with the intel as you like over there.

The Fallschirmjager 81mm mortar is a cut down and lighter weight version of the full 81mm mortar. So the 81mm mortar is a 'light' mortar.

I'm not sure I understand the question. There are independent houses, independent commercial buildings, and there are modular buildings. You have to be in each section in order to place those types of buildings. The number on the building refers to how many levels the building has so if a building has a number 1 on it that means there is only one floor. Going from memory I believe that there is typically one house one action spot in size with one level and one with two levels both of which have two facades that you can cycle through using the shift key IIRC (I'm talking the independent houses here). One version for 90 degree facings and one version for 45 degree facings. If I'm placing a barn I always know I'm placing a barn and I always know how many levels there are. The facades you just cycle through - that can't be what you are referring to are you? The facades? You just hold down the shift key and click on the building to change the facade (or the ctrl or alt key - they each do something different and can even be used in combination) :confused:

It doesn't. Fortifications don't spot anything. It's easy enough to test, just put a bunker in an open field in the editor and place enemy troops all around it. You won't spot a thing playing as the bunker. It's not really possible to know what happened in this situation just from your description. MG fire can penetrate half track armor depending on the MG and the halftrack. If the MG couldn't have had an effect on the halftrack it wouldn't have fired at it, so either it could penetrate the armor or the troops inside were exposed. If they took enough fire from the MG and it's suppression level got high enough then it's possible that's the reason why the vehicle stopped. However, there are just too many variables that we don't know to allow us to give you a more specific answer.

Maybe so, but if you want that problem to go away you are going to need to re do your patching or it's just going to continue. Try uninstalling, reinstalling, applying the 1.11 patch, then applying the 2.0 upgrade, then applying the 2.01 patch in that order. If you do all that and the problem continues I would be very surprised. If you don't want to do that - well then that's your choice I guess.

I wasn't trying to call you out ... your remarks just made for a convenient foil and seemed to sum up the direction the thread was taking by several posters. I wasn't specifically thinking of you when I created that post.

In general terms I always feel that as far as artillery is concerned less is more. There are a lot of factors that artillery affects in games that many here aren't accounting for. Also, I would point out that the OP seems to be referring to scenarios and not to Quick Battles - so all this talk about 'learn how to deal with it' seems to be missing the point. A player can be fully capable of 'dealing with it' and still not enjoy that aspect of the game. For scenarios, artillery is difficult to balance for. Sometimes it will wipe out the opponent and sometimes it will have almost no effect. Especially if you can trick your opponent into dropping it on an empty field. So when you are making a scenario and giving one side or another artillery it's really hard to tell how it's going to affect the outcome. Artillery consumes time. If you make a scenario and you set the time then you generally have an expectation that the attacker can achieve their objectives within that time allotment. Whenever an attacker is 'dealing with artillery' by adjusting the positioning of his troops it consumes time. I see a spotting round and move my troops back - the FFE goes off and I advance back to my previous positions to prepare my attack. The artillery goes off again and I have to retreat again etc. By the time the opposition has used up all his artillery I might have wasted ten or twenty minutes of time so now that one hour that I had is now forty minutes. edited to add that map size is probably the single most important aspect of artillery in scenarios - although that's been touched on earlier in the thread. The effects of artillery are amplified on smaller maps. A bigger map gives the player on the receiving end more of an opportunity to 'deal with it' effectively and increases the chances for the person using it that the area he is bombarding has nothing in it. With a smaller map you can bombard areas blindly and still expect to 'hit something' if the avenues of approach are restricted or if the defender is stuck in a small space. With a 2km by 2km map you simply can't do blind firing with that same level of certainty so it will typically have to be spotted fire. Spotted fire on a moving or advancing enemy can be challenging since you have to time it just right. You typically aren't going to target the location where the attacker is, but where you anticipate that he will be when the FFE is ready to come in. That's much harder to do on a larger map. Generally speaking, most players don't enjoy being bombarded by artillery even if they know how to 'deal with it'. If you are a player and you love it when your troops are being plastered by 155mm Long Toms then I'm not sure what your motivation for playing is. I think most players prefer it when their pixeltruppen aren't being wiped out - not because of any emotional attachment to them but because every truppen vaporized by a 155mm shell is a reduction of your combat power. In terms of Quick Battles you can probably rationalize that enemy artillery was purchased at the expense of something else. Not so for scenarios since there is no point association with the forces involved. Your enemy can have as much or as little artillery as the designer places in the enemy's hands. So, should all artillery be eliminated out of every scenario? I'm not sure anyone would advocate that. Like anything though, a scenario designer who is adding tons of artillery to their scenarios needs to understand how it affects game play. I'm sure a lot of Quick Battle players would complain about too many Panthers in their QB games. I could sit here and state in a condescending manner 'Learn how to deal with Panthers. If you don't know how to deal with Panthers then you really need to think about how you play the game.' but I won't because I understand how frustrating that can be. I'm sure that most Quick Battle players know how to deal with Panthers - they just don't like dealing with them all the time or in large numbers or whatever. Artillery is just another aspect of the game that can be overdone and can be frustrating to players even if they know 'how to deal with it.' I'm taking the OP's plea to be directed at scenario designers to ask them to pay closer attention to how it affects game play when adding it in rather than a 'I can't deal with it' whine. I think of it in similar terms to 'we need a house rule against Panthers'.

It's unlikely that an anti tank mine would not at least break a track if something armored were to drive over it. Maybe with an anti personnel mine it's possible, but it's unlikely an anti tank mine would not get a result. Just for comparison purposes an anti personnel mine might have a charge of 0.237 kilograms of TNT while an anti tank mine might have 5.3 kilograms of TNT. So in other words, an anti tank mine would have a charge that's twenty times more powerful than a antipersonnel mine. The crush fuse on an anti tank mine would be weight sensitive too so a man probably wouldn't set one off because he wouldn't be heavy enough. Once again though - antitank mines can be equipped with what they call a 'tilt rod fuse' that sticks up from the mine such that when a vehicle passes over the mine the tilt rod is tripped and the mine detonates beneath the belly of the vehicle - which will destroy it rather than immobilize it.

Nothing from CMBB applies to CMBN especially when it comes to spotting. The spotting routines are completely different so if you are asking a question about a situation on spotting in CMBB and trying to apply it to CMBN then it's a bit of a waste of time. The entire situation you described appears to have come from a CMBB game that you played. It appears that what you are saying is that the AI has an inherent spotting advantage in CMBB that you have proven to exist through a test that you ran. Under the same identical test conditions the AI spotted enemy truppen better than truppen under your command could spot enemy truppen. From what I can tell, we are now being asked to proactively give you pointers on how to spot enemy units as well as the AI does .... in CMBN ..... because you want to overcome the perception that you have of the AI's inherent spotting advantage in CMBB and by extension all CM games both x1 and x2? :confused:

He also said that he switched sides to the Russians so it's hard to tell if he's asking a question about CMBN or CMBB.

Positive. I placed them myself for the one side and I ran over them myself with the other side (scenario testing). Try running over an AT mine with something really big from the animal kingdom and see what happens. Incidentally there should be a chance for an AT mine to destroy a tank. AT mines could be fitted with tall spike type things that projects up from the mine and when a tank hits the projecting spike that activates the mine and causes it to detonate directly under the belly armor.

I've had this happen as well. I had a very large tracked vehicle of a type I can't mention run over two anti tank mines in the same action spot and keep on truckin' right on through the crater the mines left. After the vehicle went through the mine sign changed to green. It was very disappointing. edited to add that I don't think the speed has anything to do with it. I think that the AT mines have been nerfed or something. Yes, they were definitely AT mines too because I placed them in the editor myself with the intent of destroying said vehicle if it went where I didn't want it to go. If you post something in the right place I can expand on it.

Interesting. I was in the 1st Cavalry Division too for a while. I was in Air Defense Artillery though.

That can't work for CM scenarios and campaigns because anyone who purchased the first one could just send it to all their friends. Pretty soon everyone would have it for free anyway. In order for it to work there has to be something unique in the pack / module / whatever that's required by the game in order the game to be run. Something like a new piece of equipment or a new piece of terrain etc.

Here you go

Wrecks could also be anything. I don't think anyone would doubt that a tank could shove a burning truck or a jeep off the highway. Shoving another tank would be another matter and several orders of magnitude heavier and less 'movable' if there is anything wrong with the tracks.

I'm pretty confident that the Canadians were wearing shorts in Sicily.

France was the destination of many German units who were reorganizing after a spell of serving on the Russian Front. IIRC there was a large allied presence in the Ukraine around that time and many German units were being rotated in and out of that battle zone.