Samhain

There's a similar feature in the latest Maximum PC (American edition). It may be on their site too. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

I had a Wespe try the same stunt in the same scenario, though it just hit the corner of a building (almost point-blank) without blowing itself up. Clearly the commander needed some R&R. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

On a related note, why so few posts in the Tips & Techniques forum? (I notice a lot of relevant posts end up in this one, and then devolve into flame wars ) I'm relatively new to this sort of game and find learning different techniques and subtleties an absolute blast, no pun intended. I've done a lot of reading through old posts in that forum and do most of my own posting there--there used to be some really interesting and useful discussions there, it seems, and I hope there will be more. With a game this rich, I really doubt that everything that needs to be said about tactics has been said ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

RudeLover, come to think of it, when I zoomed the camera down, I thought I heard a drinking song coming from the StuG ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Also if you're either wise (or paranoid, I'm not sure which), plan your AFV routes in bad terrain/weather conditions so that if the vehicle gets immobilized, you'll still be able to use it effectively. On Chance Encounter, one of my StuG's got immobilized in a horseshoe-shaped depression, so that it's LOS was literally only a meter in front of it. One of those situations where you don't know whether to laugh or cry ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Yeah, I don't know if that advice is a CM "urban myth" or not, but it does seem to help ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

If it's just bogged, try stopping existing movement orders, then rotate and reverse. That will often--but definitely not always--free the vehicle. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Well, as I said, mortar carriers will die a quick death, as with any light armor, when not used properly. With sufficient cover and/or when the enemy's armor and at assets are handled, these carriers have their uses. Just treat them with the same care as any other light armor. They of course can't pass through all the terrain types that mortar teams can, but they make up for that with speed and light armor protection, letting you get some decent suppressive fire going in a hurry when the need arises. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR [This message has been edited by Samhain (edited 11-20-2000).]

One thing I forgot to mention: mortar carriers, like the German HT's (don't recall the model off hand). Those eliminate some of the weaknesses of on-map mortar teams, as they're faster and usually have enough armor to stop small(er) arms fire. Of course, they're magnets for AT rounds ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Thanks, Garry, that fixed it. Excellent site, btw; it's become one of my favorite CM resources. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Entirely different beasts, both with excellent uses. On-board mortars require LOS from the mortar team or a commander in radio contact (unless you're using a target reference point and haven't moved the mortars), which generally means more exposure to hostile fire. Arty spotters don't need LOS, so you can hind them in a forest in the middle of nowhere, well away from the fighting. They'll suffer an accuracy and time penalty without LOS though. The heavy arty will blow up whole buildings and devastate large swaths of land, unlike little 81mm mortars. The trick in using it against mobile forces (i.e., not dug in) is to anticipate where they'll be by the time the arty drops. One thing to bear in mind: arty and mortars are as important for breaking up formations, suppressing, and weakening morale as they are for actually causing casualties. And then, there's the capability of smoke screens for blinding enemies/masking movement. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR [This message has been edited by Samhain (edited 11-19-2000).]

Checked and verified. Thanks. Now of course, I managed to get the pee snow tree bases back in thanks to my fiddling Anyone know the numbers of the darker high-res tree base .bmps without gridlines from mdmp or whatever? Thanks. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Sounds like you're a TFC player ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Actually, it looks like those are just grass textures, and the snow textures are between 800 and 850. I don't know which ones are the high-res/higher VRAM version though. Any suggestions? Thanks. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

This could be far-fetched, but I first noticed them after installing the latest Nvidia reference drivers for my GeForce2. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

The weird thing is, I remember playing winter scenarios without them in the past, yet I know I had both MDMP's installed at that time. Maybe some other mods fixed the grid lines, and now I've accidentally put them back in? I install so many mods, it's hard to keep track ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

After installing the Gunslinger terrain mods (at least I'm pretty sure those are the culprits), things look great with one glaring exception: winter battles. The tree bases are too dark, and more importantly, the basic snowy ground tiles seem to have very pale grid lines between tiles, or at least the .bmps don't fully reach each other. I tried installing the second MDMP, which from the description would fix winter terrain, but no luck. Stil the pale lines where the tiles join. Does anyone know how to fix this, such as which winter terrain .bmps I can install to fix the problem? Thanks. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Pesonally, I haven't and won't pay monthly to play any game. For two decades, all the computer and video games I've bought have been paid for once up front and that's it. And now someone wants me to pay every month as well? It just feels both greedy and wrong. Nevertheless, I wouldn't suggest the game will be a flop because of the monthly fee. Look at all the MMORPG's like Everquest, which are hugely successful. (Read the cover story of the latest US PC Gamer to see just how popular this offensive business model has become among publishers.) If it's a flop, it'll more likely be because of some element of the game design, or more probably, the lack of a substantial audience. RPG's are well suited to persistent worlds that you pay to explore and in which you build up a sophisticated character and set of relations over time. Not so a WWII combat game. Also, the most popular online combat games center on contemporary firearms and counter-terrorist actions (Counter-Strike, TacOps, Rainbow Six series, Infiltration, Strike Force, Delta Force series, etc., etc.). ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR [This message has been edited by Samhain (edited 11-18-2000).]

HT's are like armored and vastly faster HMG squads, possessing the very pleasant bonus ability of transporting troops Wirbelwinds (or Wirbelwinde, more pedantically ), Ostwinds, armored cars, and such are equally wonderful when deployed wisely against infantry. On numerous occasions, I've stopped mass infantry rushes dead in their tracks with mobile flak guns. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Sounds like a Greek myth.... ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

"You f'ing cowards! You f'ing cowards!" as my troops break just because they're being hit with mortar fire, tank rounds, and heavy machine gun fire Patton had nothing on me ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

Saving a tank by sacrificing an HT is certainly a great trade, but don't discount HT's. That mobile heavy machine gun can be very useful against infantry if deployed well (between cover on the sides and out of zook or schreck range). ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

If you've only bogged twice, play "Kommerscheidt" as the Germans Panthers in muddy conditions: not pretty. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

To say which tanks are good and bad isn't at all easy. As a very rough rule, the ones that cost more in Quick Battles tend to be better overall. But it's a question of speed, gun size, armor thicknesses and angles, how fast the turret can turn to track targets (Sherman turrets traverse faster than most German tanks's turrets, for instance), etc. You can view all that on the detailed info screens of each tank (select unit and hit "Enter"). Some useful ideas to try: * don't move tanks into unscouted areas, especially near forest edges or buildings, without infantry nearby or leading slightly. Otherwise, it's easy to stumble into traps like zooks, schrecks, AT guns set up for ambushes, etc. * attempt to use terrain to get into hull-down positions (just the turret peeping up over a hillcrest) * use the pause and hunt command (see the manual) to creep around buildings and peek over hills * use this in conjunction with the reverse command, to move back and forth up and down a hill, just barely and briefly exposing your turret ("tophat and lowsky") * tanks are mobile, so take advantage of that--fire, move, fire, move--it's tempting but unwise to just leave them sitting like gun emplacements * use tanks in groups; that means more combined firepower and more targets for the enemy to track at once * use stealth to ambush or surprise enemy armor in a way that lets you get the first shot, particularly at their flanks or rear. Don't just roll your tanks out in the open unnecessarily. * don't play "ping pong" (engage in long-range static battles, where two tanks keep firing at each other with rounds just ricocheting away). If you don't get a hit quickly or the computer says you don't have a decent chance of one, move to another position. Be flexible. Hope some of these ideas help! ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR

A lot depends on the force sizes, terrain, weather, etc. Some thoughts, in no particular order: Basic tactics I've found work are to get HMG's or equivalents on the flanks of likely areas of enemy advance to create crossfires. Begin to call in arty on likely areas of enemy advance before you actually see them. You can call it off or adjust as needed. Use barbed wire, minefields and other obstacles to redirect traffic, so to speak--get the enemy moving where you want them. Barbed wire at the edge of a forest is good for keeping troops from just camping there. They'll get hung up or go around. Have a tank or tank destroyer or two if possible, near flanks. Have mortars (preferably mobile) set up towards the rear of your defense. Use the HQ LOS ability with infantry mortars--i.e., spot with the HQ (well hidden) and keep mortars out of enemy LOS. Bring light armor (2 or 3 half-tracks, Wirblewinds, etc. depending on force size) out of hiding after you're reasonably sure enemy heavy armor is knocked out. Then keep these back far enough from enemy bazookas or panzerschrecks, but in range of advancing infantry. A Wirbelwind, amored car, light tank, etc. will easily stop a massed platoon in its tracks a lot of the time. Don't bunch up your squads--keep them as far apart as you can while still in command and able to set up overlapping fields of fire. Don't put multiple squads in the same building or floor, at least of smaller buildings. Use the hide command to set up nasty ambushes. Have a reserve or portion of your men and light armor that can quickly advance to hot spots or weak points that are under attack. If you use AT guns, don't put them on high hills overlooking wide swaths of land, as they'll get knocked out quickly. Set them up where they're blocked by cover on as many sides as possible and where they'll have narrow fire lanes that can be used for ambushes. Don't get carried away buying armor (assuming both sides are combined arms, otherwise more armor as needed), and make sure you have enough "normal" infantry squads to hold things. The big expensive units can wreak havoc, but if you lose a few of them, you're out of luck. You don't necessarily want to keep most of your forces near the front edge of your defensive lines (like all the buildings in a town nearest to the enemy)--it can be useful to draw them in and ambush. Height isn't always an advantage. Reverse-slope defenses that have you at the bottom of a hill (in cover) shooting enemies advancing over the crest (where there's no cover) will turn them around in a hurry quite often. Hope some of this is useful. ------------------ Hope you got your things together, Hope you are quite prepared to die. --CCR