Slappy

Given the propensity the AI has for 'bumper cars' like road movement today in the face of opposition or command delays, I doubt I'd trust such a command. If it worked however, it could lead to less micromanagement, not more. The current system which forces me to individually plot 15 waypoints for 12 vehicles is, in my opinion, the height of micromanagement.

tabpub, I can't support that sort of punning, but I want you to know that someone got it.

You can mod up the building skins for heavy buildings to make them look like factory sections. You can even set them next to each other to make larger factories. The problem is that the game still sees them as separate buildings. What the mod can't change is the fact that you can't move between heavy buildings without running into the street. The LOS rules are also significantly different. You could do a 20mx20m factory, but that woulden't be very exciting.

I also stock up on 50-82mm on board mortars when on the attack. They are the most cost effective unit in the game for taking out guns and MGs. I usually make sure that all the company HQs have 2 82mm or 3 50mm with them to take out strongpoints without having to expose my armor.

Keyholing is placing armor/guns in a place where they can see/shoot through only a very narrow alley of terrain (between two hills or patches of woods). They are essentially 'peeking through the keyhole' at the enemy. The advantage is that this tends to isolate them in 1 on 1 duels or snipes, rather than exposing them to the entire enemy force. This is particularly useful for armor with big guns and little armor. It lets them get off the first shot against one or two enemy vehicles without exposing them to fire from dozens. The downside, particularly with ATGs is that if no one walks into the LOS, they're useless. Armor can be maneuvered to a new spot if the enemy chooses another lane of advance.

Armor in CMBO is not nearly as different from CMBB as infantry. Most of the changes were to infantry morale and movement orders (note I said most). The real differences are lack of optics modeling (not usually a difference though as denser foliage on the western front will generally keep engagement ranges to well below 1000m), lack of vehicle crew morale (actually a plus here as your allied vehicles will valiantly charge those german heavies in the face of near certain death) and the obvious differences in tools that the allies have available. The base or 75mm armed shermans are, essentially, like a T-34/76 in this case. They can kill from the side, but not the front. If you search you will find innumerable threads telling you that you have to get to the rear/flank and use the germans slow turrets to your advantage to do so. Smoke (with shorter west front time to target) works pretty well here too. If you want a chance to take them down from the front you have several choices: The Firefly is very popular. It comes with the excellent 17lb gun which can take down even a tiger from the front at close range. At the same time, you'll lose some infantry support capability and get no more armor (essentially)than with a base sherman. This is probably the closest equivalent to the T-34/85 in the west. The US M-10/M-18 are also up gunned and quite fast, but have very light armor. Sniping, keyholing and flanking are extremely important for these vehicles. Think of them as a SU-85 with a fast turret. There are a variety of more exotic vehicles, but I'll let others chime in with their favorites. /* edited to make more sense */ [ May 28, 2003, 08:59 AM: Message edited by: Slappy ]

In CMBO, I would always fill up on artillery first. In BB, with the longer lead times for artillery, I usually buy 1-2 modules of the largest batallion or regimental level artillery available, as they generally have reasonable arrival times. I try to but infantry in bulk as has been suggested, often augmenting with additional on board mortars, ATRs and other light support as necessary. I then move on to armor, generally with a view to taking out other armor at range. After that, it's filling up the rest with either some scouting or HE vehicles, HTs for a maneuver platoon or guns and transport.

I agree that covering the entire frontage with trenches is probably a waste, but trenches can be an important part of your balanced breakfast. In woods, they're little better than foxholes. Trenches are best used where there is not sufficient cover to defend effectively without them. In either case, If I had enough to span the map, I'd probably use them in staggerd layers rather than an unbroken line.

You can set the overall damage level which will place craters and damage (and rubble) buildings randomly, but there is no way to set specific buildings to light or heavy damage.

HQ or no, they hide better than any other single soldier. I've had PBEMs where a sniper's position was overrun. He managed to hide for 5 turns within 7m of an enemy squad with 2 more within 15m. This was at dawn in trees, but in winter so not a lot of trees. Try that with your depleted squads.

Perhaps my post was a little cryptic. I know that in CMBO, the engine just calculated randomly the KIA percentage out of the casualties. Some fairly evil testing was done to confirm this (pounding a company on an island with 8" naval guns for 15min then following up with FTs on area fire to give only a 50% killed to casualty ratio). It is possible that this was updated in BB, but I don't remember seeing it on any of the feature lists. I also don't know anyting about ops.

I don't have a table, but I do have some advice. Non-radio vehicles need to be within 50-80m of the HQ tank to be in command (in order to see hand, flag signals) and need to be unbuttoned. Radio vehicles need to be within 600-700m (for the HQ to have enough of an idea of their situation to give relevant instructions) and can be buttoned and in command.

My AA guns do open up and fire at aircraft when in scattered trees, so that's where I tend to put them. I don't know how effective they are there v. open ground. The truth is, I've never shot down an aircraft in either case. My thinking is that having flak flying around longer is more important that its accuracy in driving off bombers. Have there been any tests of this?

It's random.

I think that this is a perfectly legit tactic.

The specifics are always hard, but here is my advice. Your problems seem to stem from the fact that you can't take down the T-34 and the MG nest at the same time, so you need to take one out of the picture. Smoke it. I would lean toward smoking the immoble obstacle (the MG nest) because it can't drive out of the smoke. This will let your infantry advance. If he moves his T-34 up to counter, you should be able to get the shot of your choice with at least one of your 2 AFVs if you set them up to anticpate this. You can also consider using smoke on the T-34 to allow your tanks to close another 200m toward the bunker. If they can then take it down, you have only one issue.

I believe, based on little testing but much observing, the following: 35m is too far for infantry to effectively attack an AFV. Suqads are an abstraction and so is their location in CM. Your 20m and 15m squads are essentially 'touching' the AFV, making it possible to do the down and dirty attacking that will actually take down the vehicle. As mentioned in the manual, you can toss grenades in the direction of a tank all day and have little to no effect. Taking one down with grenades generally involves more direct means like forcing grenades into specific unpleasant spots on the tank (gun barrel, engine compartment, crew hatch) and this can only be done from rather close range. Personally, I would advance the squad to a closer range (5-20m) where more of this can and will happen. Note however that the game graphics will show only what you see now (grenade lobbing). The grenade lobbing and AFV assaulting graphics are the same, but the mechanics in the background are very different at 10m and 40m.

I haven't tested, but I have tried to experiment with the new orders as much as possible. I find assault to be only slightly better in terms of morale and cohesion than advance, but significantly more tiring. If it really is the last 30m, I'll use assault, any more than that and my men fall over before reaching the objective.

I've recently finished a PBEM where I had a critical platoon held up for 3-4 minutes crossing a gap in some trees by a sharpshooter I never IDed. He got plinks off at just the right time, pinned some of the squads on the way over the open ground and it took some time to rally and get everyone to the other side. It could have cost me a small VL (hard to tell). Same sharpshooter also took out a commander on one of my KVs. I don't think he got more than 2-3 men, the time was the killer. As far as I can tell, he was in a treeline on the flank 200-300m out with a covered arc command between the patches of woods. It's a bit of a gamble, but that kind of placement can really make the 22pts pay off. I tend to use them as spotters who also go for targets of opportunity (guns, FOs, heavy weapons teams and TCs). If you're outside of 200m, no one will ever get more than a sound contact, but don't expect to take down any infantry formations.

Online. That's it.

That's true for CMBO. Units only get credit for 'confirmed' kills. In CMBB that is true while the game is in process. After the game ends (during AAR phase) all unit kills are displated in the info boxes. This lets you see the true effectiveness of those units that tend to not get the close up and personal kills like sharpshooters and FOs.

I'll give it a go.

One helpful thing to remember here (and in some other sticky CM wickets) is that for calculation and mechanics purposes, all CM vehicles are points. The game engine recognizes vehicles as dimensionless points moving around the map. The pretty models are just an illusion. This means that the gun, and the vision slit are in exactly the same spot for all vehicles. The real life situations that would allow asymetric spotting don't exist. There is no way that an enemy will see, for example, the rear and engine of your tank peeking around a building and be able to fire on it while your TC cannot see the enemy tank. Your engine, TC and gun have all been collapsed into an infinitely dense point that not even light.... well, you get the point. Bonus: This also explains why CM vehicles cannont be used as cover by infantry. There is nothing for the infantry to hide behind.

Nothing to be done. They are entirely immoble and indestructable.

Great post as usual. I tend however to group support weapons by type rather than into mixed bags althoug it obviously depends on the number of spare HQs, an types of weapons. I find that Company COs with the three 50mm mortars from their platoons makes a very effective gun hunting and suppression team. These teams are very mobile in a way that they coulden't be with a HMG in the bundle. Two HMGs and 81mms or spotters tend to work better together as they're all fairly slow and long range. I also try to buy some transport for my MGs if possible so they can be moved up to supress pockets of resistance quickly.