Sven

Now you tell me 😆.  I'm been trying to do this against @RMM, just one of the many reasons his 'crack' Germans in Gruppe Bohm to Le Rocher are kicking my butt.  So far...
No spoilers of course 😉.

Still nothing, two turns later. I might as well use them as regular mortars.

It would be more realistic if foxholes and trenches weren't as visible as they are. If foxholes were just holes in the ground and more scattered instead of being four together and if trenches were designed differently too and none of them had sandbags they would all be harder to spot which would make their existence more of a surprise.
There wouldn't then be any reason to try to be a "smart designer" and fill the scenario maps with empty foxholes and trenches.
I hope Battlefront will make changes to how foxholes and trenches look and work to have them do that more realistically.

I agree with you both, but it's really something for Battlefront to patch somehow.

Doctrinal open fire range for the ZIS-3 was 750 meters and 500 meters for the 45 mm M1937 and M1942. IN the latter case, the weapon was accurate enough to target specific parts of the tank, such as tracks. The Red Army philosophy was to hold fire until a high hit probability would result, the idea being to open with surprise fire and then pour it on until the foe broke or the battery was blown up or overrun. See Drabkin's excellent Panzer Killers for more information.

Regards,

John Kettler



 

Thank you!

I think most of it depends on the context. In general AT guns have good effect against tanks and good range  but not so good protection, so having them far back in keyholed positions (relative safe) with good fields of fire at locations where you expect enemy armor will maneuver helps them actually being able to fire at tanks before they die.   
Armour cover arcs can be used to control the ideal moment of opening fire. Sometimes it can be interesting to hold fire for a bit, if only with the goal to deceive the enemy that the area is safe while it isn't. Armour arcs will also prevent them unmasking to fire at infantry unwanted.
Also often players will scout with infantry first, so during that time it can be helpful to hide the AT gun; minimizing the chance of being discovered without having fired a shot.
However these are all situational. There aren't always good keyhole positions far back. Sometimes you'll want the AT guns to be part of the front defense and try to achieve fire superiority from the get go instead of letting enemies get closer. Sometimes you'll want them to fire HE at infantry at will. etc
So the best way to setup your AT guns is imo to first decide what role you want them to play in your defense based off the terrain, objectives and enemy forces. Where do you expect enemy tanks to advance and where do you want to engage them? Do you want to deny them any form of overwatch (disallowing combined arms action), or do you want to let them come forward and engage enemy tanks while they are facing somewhere else? Etc
Thinking about of those things and answering the questions with the specific battle in mind will answer most questions regarding where and how to ideally setup your guns, whether to use (armor) arcs and or hide and when to change those orders. 
If you can't prevent or detect enemy infantry scouting close to your AT guns (~couple of hundred meters), they will probably get scouted by infantry anyway (even if hiding) and good chance of mortars incoming sooner rather than later. So in that case hiding and arcs might not be that useful, as there is little merit in trying to hide it; might be better of trying to dish out (area) fire wherever possible. 

If you are talking about quick battles and would like to know how the AT-guns are being placed by the AI in a quick battle, you can start to play one in scenario author mode and choose the AI to use a bunch of AT-guns. When you start to play the battle you can have a look how the AI positioned them.
If you talk about whether the AI use hidden mode with fire arc in quick battles, I think only those who wrote the code for the game engine knows the answer to that.
If it is a scenario, the one who made the scenario decides how the AT-gun behaves from the beginning of the scenario until it sees an enemy object it has been told to wait for (enemy armour or enemy anything). As soon as the AT-gun has shot at the first enemy object it's supposed to wait for I think we come back to the question what the game engine's code tells it to do. The AT-gun is either coded to go back in hiding and wait just as it did according to what the scenario designer told it to do or it stays unhidden and waits to be shot down.

If you want to choose when to open fire: In cover with the HIDE option. No need for a small arc. That's only if you want a chance for the gun to come out of hiding on its own.
If you want the gun to fire immediately when spotting a target: in cover without the hide option.
Randomly within the zone painted by the human designer. However, not completely randomly: it will tend to choose a spot with some kind of concealment.

You're welcome to play Elite or Iron if you don't play it already, it is not for everybody. The important thing is to have fun, once an ATG moves or fires the camouflage no longer applies (You need forest or a heavy shrub environment). Recommended position above a foxhole the crew on hide will be save. C2 are the key I found a unit with a contact icon of the other will get the first shot in. German ATGs are deadly at over 1km but once spotted they are on borrowed time. 

In my latest game I moved an infantryman close to a German concrete bunker, hoping that he would throw a satchel charge at the bunker. To my surprise he instead threw a handgrenade from the side, which landed on the roof and exploded.  Nothing seemed to happen and nobody inside the bunker got hurt or died.  However, 10 seconds later the crew came out and the bunker was "knocked out".

Isn't that a little odd?

I agree with you. Just trying to help mentioning a couple of the things that can cause this to happen.
Another thing is that the unseen tank seems to be in a ditch - possibly giving it a higher chance to remain unseen.

I was waiting for the "nothing wrong here this game is perfect you are stupid" replays.
You  think there is nothing wrong with not seeing something that is directly in front of something else that you can see? The situation you described is a totally different situation. The problem is not that he could hit an invisible unit.

I just had a Panther take out an invisible tank. It fired on a T-34 it had eyes on, but the round struck another tank beside the first one. How is it possible for the gunner to NOT see that tank?

It then reloaded and took out the first one, but the "invisible" tank still isn't seen. Just the smoke coming out of it.

It turned out to be a very good minute for me, but it's annoying anyway.

It's been mentioned in so many threads, but LOS is screwed up.

Agreed. Another is that you can't push other vehicles if they're blocking the way.

Nah, it's when you get down to eye level that you start to notice tanks hiding behind single trees.
Here we go again with the player bashing. I'd like to see a link to a thread where a player was relying too heavily on the opponent being slow, blind, and incompetent and was greatly disappointed when their strategy didn't go according to plan.
 

Many of us play mostly at ground level 1 and try our best to eyeball LOS and play as "realistically" as we can.  There is a a real issue with the "one pixel" gap phenomenon that only the AI can see but which allows a unit to fire and kill through what to Mk 1 human eyeballs at level 1 looks like impenetrable forest.
The other example is the clear LOS that one sees when at level 1 eyeballing the LOS but the unit itself cannot see or fire at what seems to be an easily visible target to the human eye.  One experiences that situation very frequently in urban scenarios and also along straight roads that do not appear to the human eye to have any obstructions.
Maybe not a game-breaker, but it happens frequently enuff to be irritating.

CMRT has roving aircraft which are not controlled by the player for both the Germans and the Soviets.  You can purchase aircraft on the QB purchase screen or use the editor to include them in a scenario but once you start the game they will do their own thing.  All other CM titles have air strikes directed by the player (despite what the game and engine manual advise).   

As mentioned in another thread you should take into account the potential range of the enemy as well as weather and visibility.  In darkness and poor visibility it may be worth the risk of unbuttoning as otherwise a tank is virtually blind.  Also, if you are on a large enuff map that the enemy is further than (say) 500m, then an unbuttoned crewman is fairly safe.
Also, if you have many tanks it may be worth risking one or two unbuttoned as scouts.
I generally try to lead a column with less valuable vehicles unbuttoned like halftracks as they can spot better.

I went prowling the manual and found this page 76 of the game engine manual:
 
The term 'no longer controlled' Implies that they had been controllable by ground spotters previously. That was changed long ago. I have a distant memory of Steve being unhappy with air controllers calling point target attacks along the front line in the WWII timeframe. Perhaps we'll see FAC return in the CMBS module. Late war the US was just starting to get the hang of it.

Not a screenshot, but check this link out. Three birds with one stone... : (Link to Google Photos)
 
PzIV triple kill

Not a screenshot, but check this link out. Three birds with one stone... : (Link to Google Photos)
 
PzIV triple kill

To reconstitute in setup phase: keep the teams adjacent, delete any move orders, and de-select any team. Then they will recombine in just a few seconds.
 
In any non-setup phase, you'll have to do the same as above, but they will not recombine until after you hit the "go" button. That's why it's best to play in the setup phase: you get free recombines without having to hit "go".