Hensworth

You do not need the description and info files. They come in most CMMOS packs and only contain some practical information on who made the mods and possibly how to install them. The third one you mention is probably a virus .

Not every battle is a meeting engagement.

It seems my vehicles never get "unshocked" after they've taken a casualty. It doesn't affect them, they keep moving around, but they stay shocked for the rest of the battle. Anyone else seen this ?

You can dig tanks in as the defender when the scenario allows it. Anybody ever tried this ? Don't know what it does for concealment of the tank.

I for one do not find the absence of a unit roster a major problem. It might be easier to locate your FO's hiding in a big forest but I find that by turning off trees and working my way along the line methodically I rarely lose track of a unit. An exception is when reinforcements turn up in groups far apart. I might find one group and think that's it. I'd agree that it would be nice to have lettered companies and numbered platoons. Throw in a couple of specified WAV files ("2nd platoon, move out !") and the units would come that much more to life. I'm hardly an expert in these matters, but I think unit cohesion is pretty realistic in CM. There is a need to keep your platoons together, but everything above that is fairly fluid. I suspect that would have been about how it was, with units getting lost, losing touch with their HQ's, wandering into a different sector, and so on. My main gripe with the CoC is that if a platoon becomes separated from their HQ, both parts of the unit become pretty much useless. The HQ can't take control of another platoon and the orphaned platoon will buckle under the least bit of pressure without their commander. This is particularly annoying in Operations. Here the roster might come in handy again. It could be used to consolidate troops the way you want.

It means more than a hundred mm. Probably values of more than 100 make no difference in the way armor thickness is modeled, or some such. I'm sure a person of great, in-depth knowledge in these matters will be along shortly to explain the exact how and what. As a very much lesser god, I take it to mean : "no point banging your head against a brick wall". Like Oddball said : the only way to kill a Tiger is to shoot it in the ass.

As far as looking pretty goes, Der Kessel has my vote.

I believe you get foxholes in the first turn and then after every night turn.

I've just gone through the first 10 turns of Bloody Buron II and it's obvious that my use of smoke is not up to scratch. My essential question is : does anyone find it feasible to lay down a smokescreen progressing towards the enemy positions with your troops following in behind ? I'm talking about situations where you have to cover at least 1000m without cover with infantry on foot . I find it very difficult. First of all it eats up enormous amounts of ordnance. By the time your troops are close enough to identify threats like AT guns and MG's, there's no arty left. Secondly, it requires a lot of fidgeting around with the FO's. Co-ordinating your different calibres and experience levels into 1 moving wall of smoke takes some doing. There is for instance a radius in which you can move a target point with only a few seconds time penalty (I'm talking no LOS here, since you're going through the smoke that is already there so no green lines). There's no way of knowing whether your newly selected target point falls within this radius or not. Getting it wrong means waiting minutes for the next round, during which time the smokescreen will lift and your troops will be caught like rabbits in the headlights. Pray enlighten me, good fellows.

No offence, but it looks like ****

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mord: ADDENDUM: I know alot of the guys on here really get off on the armor to armor battles but for me it's the infantry fights that always stand out. I love the games where it gets hot and heavy and the lead is flying for some tiny little patch of grass or some half demolished building. It even gives me the willies sometimes to think how that must have been! Don't get me wrong, I do like a few AFVs to spice it up though, especially when the Infantry have to overcome it. But Rifle/Grenade Vs Rifle/Grenade is where its at! [ 06-30-2001: Message edited by: Mord ]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I couldn't agree more. My all time favorite is when my platoon of Canadians wasted a platoon of Germans down to the last man in a single turn without taking any losses (sorry Craig ). Who says the Commonwealth troops are rubbish in close combat ?

I've just finished an operation (East Omaha) with an end result of 1500 casualties on both sides in 60 turns. That's 25 guys getting killed or wounded per minute and it sure felt like it. One squad got 22 confirmed kills, losing 3 men themselves. Anyone else kept track of such record numbers ?

In large operations I often end up with a few platoon HQ's with nothing to command on the one hand, and some leaderless squads on the other. How nice it would be if these units could be brought together to form new platoons. It's stupid having to group all your orphaned units around a company or battalion HQ while 2 or 3 platoon HQ's are sitting around admiring the scenery. And while I'm on about HQ's : company HQ's should restore morale to platoon HQ's. Imagine a platoon getting caught in an artillery barrage. They all panic, including the HQ, and head for the rear. The squads may come under command of a company HQ and recover fast, but the platoon HQ is left panicking and unable to resume command.

Gent - Belgium. Thanks to CM-PBEM I have discovered that some Americans are even aware of our existence, so just this once I'll skip the customary Yank bashing geography lecture.

I discovered by accident that ordinary rifle squads can also take out pillboxes (even the concrete AT ones) by tossing handgrenades at them. This was in a scenario where the bunkers were placed in amongst some buildings. Most of the bunkers were dead inside a minute. I guess this could be explained as the individual infantryman sneaking up from the side and lobbing a grenade through the slit.

Broadly speaking, there are 2 types of players : those who see CM as a competitive game first and as a means of reliving the WW2 battlefield second, and those who see it the other way around. In the first group you will find people who employ "gamey tactics", pull out of battles as soon as their chances of winning are gone and would welcome the inclusion of monkeys trained to plant miniature nuclear devices in the game. In the second group you will find people who invite their opponent to writing joint 100 page AAR's, spend 5 hours on completing 1 turn and find themselves simulating tank movements with pieces of toilet paper on the bathroom floor. These are all good people, but they should not mix. When you start a PBEM, make sure you're dealing with a like mind.

I've just seen a platoon HQ move OFF the map to get out of the way of an advancing tank. Is there no end to my misery ? Sorry, just had to get it out...

Received from my PBEM opponent : I like the way your troops fire at their own MG positions... something they learned in basic training ? Of course I thought he was either bluffing or joking. But no, one of my squads actually have their backs to the enemy and are shooting at a friendly MG some 100 m away and in their rear !! Common point with the previous posts : night combat.

Thank you, kind sir. And pardon my ignorance...

This may be a long shot and I'm probably exposing myself to eternal ridicule, but I'll venture it anyway. Has anyone ever thought of setting up a strategic level battle, using CM to model the tactical engagements ? I mean something like this : A set of moderators design the interconnecting maps and decide on the forces facing each other. As the game unfolds they map the results of the battles to the strategic level, thus deciding when, where and with what forces new battles occur. Each side would have a general, who doesn't actually do any fighting but must act upon the information he receives back from his field commanders. The generals then have a set of subordinates who fight the individual battles. Each field commander is attached to a specific force and is dependant on the general for deployment. I think the main issue would be the speed with which the moderators would have to design scenarios. I have too little experience with scenario design to know whether this is at all feasible. Any thoughts ?

The situation you are describing had a next to nothing chance of occurring over France or Belgium in 1944-45. By then the Luftwaffe, or what was left of it, was fully engaged in fending off bombing raids on Germany. Therefore, CM does not model this and rightly so.

"Haul ass with that machinegun !!!" "Get your ****ing head in the tank, you idiot !" "Can't you get a single shell to drop on the enemy, you useless moron ?!" "Hit it !!! Hit it !!! GOD, how could you miss ????" "Man, not ANOTHER Panther !" Any of this sound familiar, anyone ?

Alright, let's have it !

It's great to see that the interest in historical ladder play is on the rise. However, I fail to see why people keep insisting on using rules to supposedly level the odds. Overcoming disadvantages in terrain, weather, troop experience and available assets is as much a part of the tactical problem as directing the actual movements. Rather then devise ever more elaborate schemes to make sure that we are playing with fair odds (which is never the case in reality), could we not have a ladder where all settings MUST be random. I agree that the forces determined by the game are not always completely realistic, but in general I think you get more or less a fair deal. Sure, you will lose some games because you got stuck with useless units, but this will also happen to the other members. Plus there is the ultimate kick of beating a human opponent AGAINST the odds. In short, you win some, you lose some. If you're good, you will still win more than you lose and rise. It would also be an incentive to play many games because this decreases the random factor. Such a ladder would, in my view, have the truly great tacticians who can overcome adversity and still hand out a good drubbing, at the top.

Obviously Roach knows far more about it then me . However, I might still make myself useful : Since my previous post I have come across a scenario called dd116th or something like that. The map used there is just about perfect, as far as the general landscape and proportions go. It's in the CMScenarioMegaPack which is somewhere on this board.