ASL Veteran

It's easy to do. Just try pushing an unlimbered gun during We Go and watch what happens when it reaches it's destination. I reported it months ago in one of my big bug bonanza threads.

Oddly enough I had my doubts about walls as cover and ran a similar test several months ago (before the release - so yeah we were looking at it). I had one leg US infantry platoon behind a wall and one leg US infantry platoon in the open 100 meters away. Each squad was set into a separate lane so that it would be just one squad vs one squad (separated by tall walls to prevent cross over fire because I didn't want two squads ganging up on one squad). I also did not modify the morale and used the default motivation level. My results were just the opposite of what you got. The squads behind the stone wall took almost no casualties and the squads out in the open were annihilated. I think the main thing about our results is that you set the motivation to the maximum and I did not. I think if you alter your motivation level to regular or low for both sides you will get a much different result. The troops out in the open will cower much more because they are in a lower cover state than the squads behind the wall.

C2 is more difficult to maintain at Elite and Iron.

I would just like to point out that America has plenty of private post and it generally does much better than the US Post Office. It's called UPS and Fed Ex among others. With parcels the US Post Office can't really compete because of their cost structure. The only reason that you can get parcels delivered for less by the US Post Office is because it's subsidized by the government and the US Post Office doesn't need to be profitable. If the US Post Office wasn't subsidized (or continuously raising stamp prices on regular letters to help with parcels) nobody would send parcels by US Post Office because it would be more expensive or it would have gone out of business years ago. Would privatized regular mail work? Maybe, maybe not. The post office has a mandate that it must stop at every residence no matter how remote, but a private company may not feel it's cost effective to do that. With regards to Australian Post, the question isn't necessarily whether the company is private or not, but how many regulations the Quasi Governmental Organization has in place. A government can control private enterprise through regulation just as effectively as it can by owning it outright. Was this Homeland Security fee imposed by the private company all on it's own or was it forced to impose it due to some regulation or law it's complying with? I'm just asking a rhetorical question here because I don't intend to get involved in a big political debate. In fact, I'm pushing the eject button now.

It's my understanding that the Sherman didn't have neutral turning (which allows turning in place), although several German tanks did. I'm not 100% certain of this though. Apparently it was (is?) difficult on the drive train.

Just an fyi, you can target mortars direct at an enemy unit or area fire direct on a piece of terrain when you don't have direct 'visual' LOS at the target. In other words, if you are on the other side of a RR embankment and you can only see up to the tracks, you can area fire with mortars beyond the tracks for a certain distance even though you can't actually 'see' past the tracks. If you do this there will be no return fire because the enemy can't see you.

Steve P, with all due respect you aren't 'getting it'. What you aren't getting is the fact that there are no triggers for the AI. The AI is either on a waypoint / mapzone or whatever you want to refer to it as, or it's trying to get to one. The AI doesn't have the capability to create it's own new randomly generated 'mapzone' upon contact with the enemy so the AI isn't going to stop moving in between mapzones for any reason. Period. If you don't understand this fundamental fact about the AI then you will always struggle with getting it to do what you want it to do. A hunt command would require a trigger. Anything that involves something like "If X happens, then Y should be done" is going to be trigger based. There are no triggers currently available for the AI.

For frontline soldiers the 'desertion' would be taking your wounded buddy over to the aid station and then just hanging out there 'looking after him' for a while. Generally these soldiers will return to the unit after they think the combat has ended, but not all. Once you are at the aid station then you are surrounded by troops that don't necessarily know you or what unit you belong to and you can wander off from there.

Just to expand a bit on the Hunt command. You have to think about it a bit, but you will get there. First, let's just assume for the sake of argument that there is a hunt command for the AI to use. On the way to the next waypoint the AI becomes engaged and stops moving. Great, now what happens? All the AI knows is that it wants to get to the next waypoint - it may be engaging the enemy but as far as the AI plan goes that's irrelevant. The AI just wants to get to the next "painted on the map at whatever size you choose to paint waypoint" This waypoint can be fifty actions spots big, but as far as the AI is concerned it's just a waypoint - I hope that's clear. Okay, so your truppen have stopped with the hunt command, what happens next? Do they then hunt again and stop immediately when the next enemy shot comes? You see, the problem with the hunt command for the AI is that the AI is situationally dumb other than what you are telling it to do by going to painted on the map zone x. So as long as the AI truppen haven't reached that point it will continue to try to reach it. With a hunt command that obviously ends that movement and perhaps would cause a logic loop. Would it be nice if the AI could be given orders on how to react to the enemy when between waypoints? Sure it would. That's not how it is right now though. The AI only thinks in terms of waypoints - it's either on a waypoint or trying to get to one. That's it.

No, I understood your post correctly. By waypoints I am indeed referring to the points painted onto the map. They are considered waypoints because those are the 'waypoints' that direct the AI's direction of movement and the timing thereof (using the before and after orders which you have apparently not discovered yet). Steve P, maybe when you've spent more time with the AI we can have an informed discussion about it. I have amassed many hours of time working with the AI over the last couple of months and I'm just trying to give you some friendly pointers in making it work for you. If you choose to ignore my assistance then that's obviously your choice.

That all depends upon how far apart your waypoints are. The main thing about waypoints is that the AI is at it's most vulnerable to the player when moving between waypoints. Yes Hmm, sometimes they do, but not always. Platoon HQs usually lag way behind. Small units like scout teams, independent bazooka teams, HQ support, and XO teams generally will lead the way - that's true. I suspect this is to allow small units to sniff out ambushes rather than having an entire squad get ambushed. Yes, that's true. I suspect that it's because the AI isn't smart enough to know when the enemy will engage them, so if your group gets surprised in between waypoints your truppen will continue on to the next waypoint regardless of what the player is doing to them. So if you gave your truppen a 'walk' command and the player ambushed them, well the AI would just keep on walking while getting annihilated. At least if they are doing some bounding overwatch they have an opportunity to return fire while getting annihilated. edited to add that the Hunt command as currently designed cancels the order when the truppen make contact. Obviously with the AI a cancelled order wouldn't work too well since the truppen who were hunting would then just sit in place after making contact for the rest of the scenario. Depends on what you are trying to do I think it's safe to say that it's working as designed. It's just not designed to do what you would like it to do. Different waypoint location choices might make it less of a turkey shoot too. Perhaps if the American tanks stopped just after the hedgerow and delayed for five minutes rather than moving straight up to the buildings your result might be different. You're going to get out of the AI what you put into it. If you want to put something together that's quick and dirty it's going to be easy to defeat. If you spend a lot of time with it you will get an AI plan that's a little more robust.

You can assign individual vehicles and specialist teams to any HQ level. When you select the specialist sections you will see a little arrow on the command level you are assigning the team to. If you select a platoon commander the arrow will point to a platoon commander and your specialist team or vehicle will be assigned to that platoon.

I would never get a debit card. My credit union switched my ATM card over to debit card and I've never used it as a debit card. If someone gets ahold of your debit card number they can empty your bank account, whereas with a credit card they just run up some charges. Usually credit card companies are pretty good about fraud and you seldom end up paying for 'unauthorized purchases'. Credit card companies are also usually pretty vigorous about spotting fraudulent charges and cutting off the line of credit before the unauthorized charges get too out of control (because the card company doesn't want to get left 'holding the bag').

Just post a description of the 'bug' and include pictures if you are able to. When one of the beta testers asks you for a save game file you can then send it to them and they will ensure that the appropriate people see it.

The only place you can modify the units in a scenario is in the "Units" section of the editor. You cannot amend or modify them while in the 3D map view or in the deployment screens (3D map with truppen on it). Once in the "Units" section, just look down near the bottom and you can alter their motivation and experience levels etc.

Hmm, okay, so what you are talking about here is infantry etc located in the upper stories of buildings firing bullets into the open tops of vehicles like M10s, Marders, Halftracks, etc? I'm not actually sure how the crews are handled in that situation .... they probably aren't handled like infantry but have some sort of crew protection bonus from the vehicle and are treated like crew exposed tank commanders. Open topped vehicles 'in game' can be 'buttoned up' to an extent and they look like they are all hunched down inside the vehicle. If the small arms firing is coming from above though it shouldn't matter, although that might not be modeled so I'm not sure. I don't recall anyone actually testing that specific situation though so it might be worth a look. Perhaps it would be helpful if you wanted to set up a range of some sort in the editor and do some deliberate testing on casualties caused vs open topped vehicles with small arms from above and compare that to small arms vs open topped at the same or lower level. See if there is any substantial difference.

I'm not sure what you mean here. So are grenades being dropped into the open turret with no result? What do you mean by 'handled the same way as infantry'?

The .50 cal will only engage targets to the rear of the turret as 'opportunity fire'. If you let the vehicle turn the turret to engage targets to the front with the .50 cal it would get very confusing for the AI tank commander very quickly.

Once the commander is dead then that HQ unit is out for the count unless there is an XO present. If there is an XO within the same team as the commander the XO will then take over command if the commander is killed or wounded. If an XO is in a different team as the commander then the XO will only take command after the entire commander's 'team' is killed or incapacitated. The company commander will command troops within his radius if the platoon commander is killed or incapacitated though so you can still get your squads into command from the company commander. Once the platoon leader is dead though there is no more platoon HQ to establish contact with so the link is permanently broken.

My qualifications aren't really relevant here because what happens in the game is what happens in the game. However, since you are curious I always played Red in PBEM we go games when playing CMSF (and I have annihilated quite a few blue squads if I do say so myself). I've also been beta testing CMBN since January. I have to say that I haven't detected any morale hit from split teams in the CMx2 system, and I think Steve has confirmed that there is none on more than one occasion. C2 is more difficult to maintain for Red and for WW2 squads, but you just have to keep your troops closer together that's all. I honestly haven't had any issues with C2 whether split or not, and I've certainly not seen a case where a squad that was in C2 was suddenly not in C2 because the squad was split. Why don't you post a screen shot of a squad that's in C2, then split them, then show us a screen that shows they are no longer both in C2. If there is a bug then let's see it so it can be addressed. Like I said, I've been playing with split Panzergrenadier squads in CMBN for five months now and I've never seen an issue with either C2 or morale, but that doesn't mean it wasn't overlooked. As long as my Panzergrenadier teams were within eyesight of the platoon leader though the little indicator showed that the C2 chain was present. You said you identified a problem with team members from a good order team crawling back to the location of a pinned team in the same squad and said you identified a bug. I explained why that behavior was occurring in the game and I suggested a way to work around it. You said that there was a penalty for doing the work around. I assured you that there isn't one. You are now telling me that I'm incorrect and that there is in fact a penalty. One of us is wrong and I'm pretty confident that I'm not the one in error. Of course, none of that has anything to do with the problem you 'identified' because that behavior remains unchanged in the game and is likely to continue unchanged. So I'm not going to debate with you about C2 and morale for split teams since that has no direct bearing on your original issue. If you want to continue to believe there is a penalty for splitting squads then by all means continue to believe so. If you don't like splitting squads into teams - then don't split them. I was just trying to be helpful and suggested a way to minimize the original 'issue' that has you all worked up. I doubt if I'll make much of an effort to assist you in the future though.

That is quite the compliment!! I can't think of anything more tasty and satisfying than bacon.

I'm not so sure about that. I don't think there is a morale hit for split teams anymore. There used to be one for the CMx1 series of games but I don't think there is one for CMBN. You can always recombine them easily enough when your truppen make it to where you want them to go. I don't think there is a C2 hit either - unless the positioning of the team puts them out of the command radius of the platoon leader. In fact, I always split my squads when playing as Panzergrenadiers - like 100% of the time. The MG 42 is the basis for the German squad's firepower and keeping a squad with two MG 42s combined doesn't make sense to me. I think of Panzergrenadier split squads as mini squads or 'MG teams' because each team has almost the same firepower as a full size normal German squad. FYI, Company commanders now help with the C2 for individual squads who are not within the command radius of their platoon leader. The company commander will now command wayward squads directly thus preserving C2 for squads who have had their platoon leader killed or are out of their platoon leaders command radius. Yep - a 'new' feature.

I 'think' I have seen what you are describing on rare occasions. Your description isn't very clear though so I'm not 100% certain of what you are describing. What I think is happening is that when a squad / fire team takes heavy fire and becomes pinned / rattled to the point where you lose control of your troops, any orders those truppen have gets cancelled. If half the squad is in one location and the other half of the squad is in another location then the game will have to select which action spot the order was cancelled in and that action spot will be where the squad seeks to end it's move. If it's a move order that was cancelled then the game will select the truppen who have moved the shortest distance and make that the squad's location. My suggestion would be if you play RT then pause the game and split the squad into two teams if that happens. If you play we go then you can split the squad into teams at the next orders phase. If the squad is split into teams the team that has advanced the farthest won't return back to be with it's buddies since they are now considered a separate unit doing their own thing. You may even think about splitting a squad into teams before making what you think may be a 'risky' move to prevent that from happening in the first place. It will still happen to individuals within a team though to some extent so you can't avoid it entirely unless you alter your tactics a bit.

Yes, that's helpful. You have to think of this as a squad and team level simulation not an individual 'soldier' simulation even though you see each individual soldier rendered in the game.

Yeah, I just confirmed in the game again that when you click the Target line to check LOS that it's still traced from the team leader instead of the weapon. Just keep that in mind when checking LOS because the bullets fire from the weapon not the team leader, so if the weapon looks like it's about right then just leave it there and hope it fires where you want it to. If you play around with it enough you will get the hang of positioning things. You will probably need to leave yourself a little slack in how you position your weapon teams too. I mean, if you want to just miss that building corner and only have LOS to an area that's about 3m wide then it's gonna get frustrating no doubt about it. You just aren't going to be able to position your teams with that level of precision.