Slappy

You can't save a QB map, but the auto create function in the Scenario Editor uses the same alogorithim. You won't get the same map, but given a couple of tries, you can get any number of QB maps that may suit your needs. You can also edit the maps to meet your personal needs.

I've only found 2 uses, both defensive. 1) Limited Visibility on Defence. Put them in woods, among dug in squads. The attacker can't tell what they are until they start flaming. This will usually 'panic' at a minimum. It will also flame a section of woods, channeling the attack around it. 2) Fire buildings along routes of attack to deny cover. You can usually get 1-4 fires out of a FT depending on luck. This makes artillery and DFHE more effective. It also may force the attacker to change attack route during the attack causing delay and confusion. As far as using them on the attack: Not worth a damn. For soft targets, if I could suppress the enemy enough to walk a FT up to it, I woulden't need the FT. For bunkers, grenades will do the job in 90sec most of the time from the rear. Given the terrible speed of FTs, they will be lucky to arrive earlier. Side note: You would be shocked how fast a Veteran armored crew will bail if you can get 2 FT bursts off at them. My guess is that there is no way to actually kill an AFV with a FT in the mechanics, but they will sure run.

For taking out an isolated bunker (wood or concrete) with infantry, just park them in the square behind the box and wait. Assuming a still have a full platoon, I usually put out two of the squads to stand guard and target the rear of the bunker with the third squad and HQ. AT weapons or not, the crew usually bails out within two minutes to be cut down by the platoon. In fact, I prefer to do the targeting with squads that have grenades only. They do the job just fine and you don't waste those weapons on the box. Now here's the problem with this. I never buy a pillbox or bunker on its own. Generally, I consider the bunker, 1-2 MGs, an AT weapon or light AT gun, and a TRP or wire/AP mines as part of a bunker 'unit'. You put the bunker out front and dig the MGs and AT in ~100m behind. The optimal placement is designed so that the cover can see the back of the bunker, but not be seen from in front. You essentially use the terrain that the bunker is in to create a mini reverse slope defense for that area of the field. MGs sweep any infantry attempting to do the above, ATs pop any armor that tries to flank, and the fortifications and TRP are just a bonus. Generally, this is not favored, but I prefer this bunker in front of the MLR strategy. If you suspect that this is what you are up against, come with a much larger combined arms force to suppress the support elements or you are toast.

The 'wackiest' I remember downloading was called something like 'Chess'. The board was all a central hill with a checkerboard of scattered trees and clear. Most of the units were weapons teams. Apparently the idea was that you move them as 'pieces'. If you wanted something faster, just do a QB with both sides human picked. An all flamethrower 600pter should be fairly funny.

I have found sharpshooters to be extremely valuable in a couple of ways. 1) Extremely stealthy when not shooting. Had a US rifle squad run within 5m of one sneaking through the woods. Didn't see him at all. Sharpshooter did not fire. Just kept on going about his business. 2) Great for buttoning tanks. Can get an armor ricochet and button up a tank at 800m, way further than he will be spotted. Fantastic way to give your armor the edge. 3) OK at suppressing infantry, but not great. Generally at a range close enough to matter, he'll be seen and taken out. Blue Light Special: German Fussilier Squads come with SIX SHARPSHOOTERS! Also a bunch of SMG/Rifle mixed infantry. If you're looking for something to send an opponent into unexpected fits, that's it.

This is a big frustration of mine, particularly in some of the larger scenarios. I find that I spend 2-3 turns on reinforcements when they come on board just getting them into some kind of movable order without bogging, or running over my own troops. I'm not saying that I need to specify who's mounted on what, but I would at least like squads in the same platoon to be w/i 70m of each other.

Green Howards, or whatever its called. As the british, it's a really tense advance. Danger behind every bush and such. Not quite as exciting as the germans.

I am seriously pro Italy. Much more interest there than in the desert. I know that I'm going to get killed for this, but the desert always struck me as a line 'em up and plink away at 4000m tank duel. Not very interesting for a game at the level of CM.

The biggest difference in bogging. I don't move my tanks at FAST unless they're on a road. Even then, I generally do a lot of infantry screening and spend a fair amount of time stopped while I scout out, and then move forward in bursts.

Something else to try on the defense. CM only lets you have foxholes (in fact Makes You Have Foxholes)where you start out. In the setup, position your troops 40-50m inside of a treeline. On turn 1-2, move them out to the front of the woods for a forward defense / ambush. Trigger this at 100-150m to supress the enemy and give him something to think about. When he recovers or armor/arty shows up (still at least 80m away), RUN back to the start position. He'll lose LOS and likely assume that you've bugged out a lot further than you have. You can get a 2nd, better covered ambush inside the woods. Repeat this procedure with your now slightly weakened, but better covered squad. When things get hairy there, bug out again to a central fallback area using the greater tree cover to save you.

I didn't have that much trouble with this one. I stayed in the farm outpost, but kept everyone hidden until I had armor within range of my AT posts. At that point, I popped up and started laying in with mortars. I was able to scatter the infantry push and take out 1 Stug and 2 Halftracks before the position was overrun. I literally had 0 survivors from that position, but was able to hold up the germans for 10 minutes. While that was going on, I moved up the rearguard to the bridges, just out of sight as a mobile reserve. I put the two .50s and the towed AT guns at the river edge as fire support and kept the bazookas hidden. Because of the confusion at the farm, the germans hit in clumps and were generally taken out piecemeal while being peppered with artillery. I spent the last 3-4 turns moving the reserve platoon back across the river to mop up the remains of the german attack.

Although I have some AI gripes, it has handed me my ass on a number of occasions. In fact, it is currently chewing me the hell up in a scenario that I designed!?!. I thought that I had this one pretty well figured out, but the AI came up with some novel unit placements and ambushes that I didn't expect, including some localized counter attacks. Several times, I have been forced to deploy a much larger force than I wanted to to screen my advance. The AI is putting up a classic delaying defense in depth and may hold on to most of the flags when time runs out. Of course, my brilliant set up area allocation allowed the AI to do this, but I really didn't think that it would take advantage of it. To say the least, I am impressed. ------------------ Slappy

Yeah. Generally the 'Time to fire' represents how much the FO has to do before the shells come in rather than the actual game time. I generally watch the FO for a couple of seconds at the beginning of a round. If it starts to run 2:1, that's what it'll do until the fire drops. That goes for the 'sighting rounds' as well. They come in more slowly if there's no LOS.