Apa

One possible cure to the players ability to deliver HEAT too accurately would be to make area fire really _area_ fire. Make it dependant on distance and known enemies. The range penalty could be something like 5m radius per 100m of distance, with minimum radius of 10m. If known enemies nearby, then you get half the range penalty.

OK, that seems like a bigger problem... As for the "only the team spotter has to have his eyes exposed" - this assumes excellent cover. IIRC a mortar in the open firing at a rifle squad @200m succeeds usually in wiping out the rifle squad. Assuming the open ground doesn't happen to have a nice abstracted 1m ditch in it, the mortar team would be in big trouble trying to aim & fire the mortar.

One big problem for the on-board mortars is the possibility to use them under direct enemy fire. It seems abstracted cover will give the mortar operators unrealistic cover while aiming/firing the mortar. In reality, trying to put the shell into the tube of 81mm mortar under fire would be heroic, but stupid. You will be exposed for a couple of seconds, stationary. The enemy knows your exact position. Everybody is aiming at you...

It is obvious that machine guns would not have been so central to WWII tactics if the effectiveness is what is shown in the video. The problem is likely that of simulated cover. There isn't enough cover in the terrain, so weapon effectiveness is reduced artificially to get a nice simulated effect. As usual, this doesn't work all that well in isolated tests. So, the men covering in open ground should be considered simulated cover. Running directly towards machine gun fire without suppressive fire (as done in the video) isn't realistic at all. That would be 100% pure suicide. There is plenty of evidence, for example the whole of WWI.

I was just playing a battle where a couple of platoons were doing an assault supported by armor. I watched it from a distant view. Artillery firing, machine guns firing supporting fire, mortars firing, infantry advancing & firing. Houses collapsing, panzers exploding... It looked awesome. It was one of those moments when you realize how great a game CMBN really is. So, congratulations to all the people involved!

My intention was not telling you all that large scenarios suck, or that CMBN can't handle them. My point is that I like small scenarios, and I can't handle the large ones. Maybe I could handle mutlibatallion scenarios if I used a lot more time per game. But for me it is load CMBN, play for an hour and hopefully finish the scenario in that time. So my wish is simple: more interesting small scenarios! Even better: campaigns which concentrate on one, maybe two platoons. You might get one or two more as support troops.

I know different people prefer different scales. I prefer small scale battles. They are fun and you can really concentrate on the details. I just wish there will be more small one or two, maximum of three platoon battles. I like playing for an hour and finishing the battle in that time.

For me the biggest problem is that scenarios which have more than two platoons (plus support) of troops are not fun. When you have a company+ of troops then there is simply too much needed micromanagement. I really don't like that you need to check individual doors of houses when you are in command of a company. Not for me. However, the small scenarios are really funny. At that scale the game works beautifully. Unfortunately most of the campaigns deal with way too many units for my taste.

120mm mortars would only be used on map in emergency situations. Most likely something like ambush. I don't think any army was crazy enough to suggest using them as close support weapons. In cross-country terrain the 120mm mortar is practically immobile. And you can't have enough ammo for it, one shell is approximately 10kg. So, from cost-benefit point of view there is little reason to include the 120mm mortar on map.

This particular instance could be solved by improved TacAI. TacAI should move the halftrack into safety in such situations. Of course, that movement could cause a "rage quit" if for example the halftrack decides to move at the wrong time or into the view of a Panther. I don't know about the rest of you, but I really do think that having a minimum area for area fire and indirect fire would solve many problems. The are could be based on range, C&C status and if the firing unit knows that enemy units are in the target area. If the target radius had been 8m (just for example), even that would have changed the results in your example. If the vehicle was in view of the 60mm mortar, then there of course should be no minimum target area. Then the question is if the mortar was too accurate. My experience says that there isn't any big mistake in the accuracy. TacAI should have moved the vehicle, but this might be hard to program in a way that solves more problems than it causes. I think we need to ask MythBuster if you really can hit a bucket with a mortar...

The mortar really is quite accurate at close distances. At least modern 81mm mortars. And there hasn't been that much technological improvement, so I think my experience using modern mortars applies to WWII mortars also. Now, if a mortar under fire should have the same accuracy? No, it should not. You need to fine tune the tube if you want good accuracy. To do that, you need to be in a crouching position for a couple of seconds. Actually, you need two man doing that. Not easy to do while under fire. Another issue is that in general I would like that area fire would be much more _area_ fire. Currently it is too easy to use your semi-borg abilities to area fire known enemy positions. The area fire should hit a much larger area. My idea would be to force area fire to an area of maybe 1/25 of range radius circle. So, at 100m you could are fire at most to 4 meter radius circle, or one action spot. At 200m, to 8m radius circle, at 1000m to 40m radius circle. I think there is currently some effort to this, but the area is just too small, and the pattern too centered. This would naturally need a lot of testing to get the minimum circle radius correct. In my opinion, such area fire would be vastly more realistic than the current "spon-on" area fire. This would have a nice effect on the tactic of "use tanks sitting at the other side of the map insta-area-firing anything that is spotted". In addition, being able to set your MGs to area fire at a larger are than just one action spot would be a nice feature.

Sorry, the remark wasn't actually about your first post, but the discussion that followed. It seems to be a little of topic, and a little heated, too. In other words, all you expect from a good forum discussion I guess next we will be discussing Vietnam war...

Maybe this thread has already served its purpose (if there ever was any...) but I can't resist replying. My opinion is that Stalin could have cleared the country. If you don't consider human rights at all clearing the country is suddenly a lot easier. The Germans managed to pretty successfully fight the guerrillas in multiple large countries while fighting a war on two fronts. Remember that Stalin had _millions_ of soldiers on his disposal. If you consider something like Vietnam war, the end result would have been pretty different if the US would have systematically destroyed every village there was in the country. And maybe 5-folded their troop count. OK, I do admit it could have been somewhat bloody to the Soviets. But then again, that guy did kill millions of his own people. So, if they would have lost even a hundred thousand men it would just have been statistics to Soviets. In general I think there are two approaches to conquering a country: be so nice to them that they stop revolting, or be so hard to them that they stop revolting. Divide and conquer, I guess. When you are in-between you are asking for trouble.

If the soviets had taken Finland during Stalin's reign there would not have been an effective guerrilla war. Most finns would have been moved to concentration camps, moved to some distant part of Soviet Union or simply killed. It is incredibly naive to think that Finnish people had the option of giving soviets the lands they wanted and then just lived on. Read anything about Stalin and you know this is true. That man could not be trusted at all. He would have taken the land, thanked the fools and after that conquer the rest of the country. I would say Finland won the winter war. Finland survived, that is a victory in and of itself. Finland also survived the continuation war, but I would classify that still as a defeat. Because surviving a war you started isn't exactly a great outcome. Finland's independence wasn't strong during the immediate years after the war. Of course Soviet Union could have conquered Finland. Luckily Stalin had bigger games to play, and thus Finland survived.

There is the other problem. If you have a scout team, in real life it sure as hell would not advance in a way where the 3 or 4 men are in the center of a 8x8m area. The enemy mortar team would only have single soldier targets. And would not probably see all of the enemy soldiers simultaneously. Thus, a scouting team would not be a good target for the mortar team. However, the other side of this is that in real life if you bunch up your troops, a single mortar team could easily decimate a platoon+ of infantry. I don't see anything unrealistic about that.