dieseltaylor

The thread was cross-posted by Oren to the General Forum where there is an element of discussion about genocides

My best battles I cannot remember but incidents yes. I was fighting against a human in the woods of Finland [actually he was Finnish] and I had bought a Flampanzer. I was in the process of being overrun by his infantry and T34/85's against my tank and platoon. There was a slope rising in the clearing and one of his two tanks was working along the slope to nail me. He came into sight at about 40 or so meters and my two flames beat his one shot - leaving me enough time to flame a squad who thought they would waltz across the "open" ground. And of course the 17pdr in an ME who nailed a platoon of crack Panthers by himself : )Which as it was the enemies entire armour ..... The Valentine nailing a Stug at 1454 meters from the slightest of head on angles getting a side hit. The joys of playing.

JC Given the two examples posted , Russia, and Columbus would fall into general knowledge rather than anything else this talk about experts in fields seems a bit of a leap from your remark "I wasn't trying to be snippy, just to point out that there isn't any citizenship obligation anywhere to be an expert on WW II." I do not disagree with that statement but as the comments were fairly well known facts ...... and Columbus Day being a national holiday............ anniversaries of the end of WW2 Anyway my basic assumption in life are there are educated folks and uneducated folks and commonsense is not ncessarily included with either. However the educated commonsense person has a larger store of information to base decisions on, or realise when he/she is being fed moonshine. I do not wish to be picky either but the pursuit of knowledge seems to be downplayed in your subsequent post : "One can try to ask for a little knowledge, I suppose. But a little knowledge looks like distortion and cant, to any man who really knows a subject. It seems to me more sensible to just acknowledge that there will be experts in such matters and to listen to and learn from them, but not to trust them or defer to them, nor to lack the confidence to judge for oneself whatever they say. With nothing more than morals and common sense to go on, often as not." Your argument seems to be you cannot hope to know much almost "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" so therefore listen to the experts, and discard what you do not agree with. Very "big brother".

And normally he seems quite a nice guy.

PzMan "Can you not just go into the editor and change them yourself... its not that hard. [Razz]" Now why don't I think its going to work in QB's??

i have come across a very disappointing CMBO to CMAK map conversion where the re-designer , though changing the friendly edges, did not realise that when loading the map the edges are changed to the CMAK default ones. The game now sucks mightily as the broken units charge towards the enemy lines. The map needed to be rebuilt with the correct orientation ............. Re JasonC!s comment on the artillery. It does suck mightily however if you go with 50% casualties big artillery is affordable. US squads are big enough to have casualties knocked off and still be big enough to do damage. It works quite well - and in any event a little ahistorical to have 100% perfect units. : )

You also might like to consider width of the bridge as another relevant constraint. Very common that bridges would be single track on lanes etc with boggy ground around - And we are talking single track for a horse and cart : )

Some very negative thoughts here --- I think of the positives. Killing a Stug at 1454 metres wiht a Valentine, killing a T34/85 head on with a Flammpanzer --- MMMMmm [thinks] Athlete you sound like my kind of opponent : )

BTW laze and blaze The answer above was a direct quote of stickypix's post to the same question raised same time last year. A search under "smoke grenades" throws up 5 threads and this was the first one I looked at. A lot of questions will have been asked about virtually everything in CMBB and though you can start a new thread you are better off doing a search first. The reason being that most important topics will have a long thread with lots of information in them. The chances of getting the same quality post now is probably diminished simply as a large portion of the regular board no longer hash and re-hash the same topics when they could be playing : ) - and think they know the answer ....

Designer’s Note: Infantry smoke grenades, a source of smoke commonly found in other WWII games is not available in CMBB. Our research shows little credible evidence that this type of smoke was used regularly at the squad level in WWII for tactical purposes. Instead, it appears to have been used for signalling mostly, and we have therefore decided to exclude it from CMBB to prevent its potential unrealistic overuse. CMBB manual page 18 (on the pdf anyway).

I was talking of blocked lines of sight by buildings etc. Yes, talking of arcs is confusing the issue!! : )

Sorry if I was unclear when I said terrain probably made no difference I should have added the proviso - that you are not being silly. That is you have not placed in the midst of a town square surrounded by two storey houses, in deep forest etc whereby you cut down the acquisition time on to target. Therefore high is good as long as it is out of line of fire of the enemy troops - but only worry if they are in range to ID. ; ). But if you are in light trees, rocky brush etc no problem. If you are restricting your arc so that you cannot cover the sky over the battlefield then that is silly.

Given how rare planes are!! I doubt any one has tested that : ) It would be interesting to know if they are firing at a distant ground target how quickly, or, if at all, they switch to planes. I await the results : ) BTW I think terrain makes no difference

Good for the photos! I have read that in Normandy tanks were also considered as fire magnets - and also they had a nasty habit of spotting something and deciding to reverse suddenly ---- a bit of a two edged sword.

I must admit that I think a loss percentage is probably a good idea but rarely seen. I would never not play someone for that reason. I think one of the biggest benefits is that where you know precisely how much your opponent can spend under combined arms etc. this means you cannot guarantee that the force has become heavier in one area as your opponent may chance his arm on better tanks or heavier artillery that was unavailable to him pointwise before

JC I see we are now shifting the argument to scenarios - do I take it you accept that choice of forces is the first decision you make in the game? As flamingknives points out if it is scenarios we are talking about - then I accept your choice comes down to whether you play it or not. Presumably you either avoid games where there are very few vehicles or you accept the risks and play the game warts and all. Anything whose impact on the game turns on a player decision is OK, because it *involves* the players, it makes the outcome a meaningful resultant of their mutual headgames. Anything with game changing impact that does *not* involve the players, that does not reflect anything they did or did not do, is anthema to strategy gamers. I could not have agreed more : )

Jason "His argument is that players cannot avoid moving in open ground in practice, while they can avoid moving in other, higher risk of bog, situations. And he objects - or more properly, simply acknowledges that other people before him reasonably object - to game determining events that neither player has any impact on with their rival decisions. He wants a *strategy* game to be determined by the *decisions* of the players. What players can affect by deciding this way rather than that, can be as random as you please. But what they cannot affect, should not be game determining and random." I see then that your arguement moves risk and decision making to in game when actually your decisions start in your choice of weapons. I decide not to buy Tigers because the chance of them breaking down is higher than I wish to chance. I use my skill and judgement of enemy likely force , terrain etc. and my armoury of weapons to get a balanced force. There is no arbitrary actions here. Once I get onto the battlefield then lucky planes, jammed guns, and bogging is the world I play in. In your world where the bogging is optionally off or on "dry" ground then your are devaluing the choice I make in force selection. The desire to negotiate every time I play - or do not play someone - on the parameters, I regard as a major drawback. But I am sure you will no doubt argue that the game of chess are well loved because of all the different variants played throughout the world and how easy it is to find someone who plays your variant. Incidentally the game never says dry ground does it? The weather may be clear etc but does that mean that the ground is rock hard. It may have been raining until the start of the battle.

I played a Bulge Battle with historically accurate artillery added to an existing game. It was murder on the US as lots of rockets etc unbalanced the forces, I think serius tweaking might have to be considered as the game mechanics do not necessarily provide a straight translation from historic to a good game .... but then you knew that didn't you : )

If you chose big squads - that is 12 man squads even with 50% casualties you end up with many 8 men squads which are beefy enough for your purposes. : )

Flamingknives - I have actually played games on the basis of writing down the enemy force rather than grab all the objectives - or even the majority. If you can get the other guy to lose 300+ points to gain a flag that is excellent. It only takes two expensive tanks to go and there you have it, But of course I play big point games 2000+ which is I think the natural home for CM games as luck can average out, skill can come through as you utilise more , and , different forces and flanks actually exist to be used.

Paul Au "I hope Battlefront either tones it way down, or better, makes 'bogging' a player-determined level of probability. As has been said, it can be a game-spoiler. " You are defending your corner well - and given nothing will be changed it would almost seem to be a pointlesss exercise. However the benefits arriving from the discussion in testing and historical information may actually be beneficial. Regarding your quote - specifically that: "better, makes 'bogging' a player-determined level of probability." I deduce from that .0001% would be some players decision - untutored in the mechanical unreliability of different WWII vehicles or the fact that roads were normally dirt. Another player may have a view that 8% or 5% is more realistic. How are you going to reconcile their views or does it not matter - each to their own ..... play the AI or simply play people who accept your version of the game. BTW do you think your knowledge has improved from the thread?

Yes. For that matter I have disabled a MkIV recently with an 81mm. However I would not guarantee a kill - in game terms not a great idea unless say you have 5 t34's hiding in a dell from your ATG's and you want to get them out or dead - tactically I like that : )

In the spirit of boggedness and to help those who chose the boggier tanks I have just completed a 30 minute test - in wet. Stug III Green - two out of three immobilised Stug III Crack - none immobilised Stug IV Crack - none immobilised Tiger II Crack - one out of four Tiger II Green - two out of four It seemed that the crack crews would bog but extricate themselves. The III had the heaviest PSI and the IV the lightest. The IV's had one bog only whilst the crack Tigers had three - excluding the fatal one. BFC fix it or sumfink - better crews unfairly benefit!!!! BTW the TigerI was known for getting ice,rocks and other obstacles caught in its interleaved track wheels jamming the tracks - slightly improved design for the TigerII from the rock point of view but the new design had a twisting motion on the tracks. They both suffered from freezing snow gumming the tracks.

And my first finish was against Foxhole Rob in Wet and I thought that had been registered in a prior list ----- so Melnibone is in twice ....Mmmmm!

I find thta sharpshooters can normally wander about the battlefield quite unmolested - if you do not run them but simply move you should be fine up to 200 metres possibly depending on the terrain. And leave him to find his own targets generally as he will not waste shots apart from important targets. An HQ is daft as it will not make much difference other than the enemy will spot the HQ from a much greater distance and try to kill it - waste of an HQ.