CMplayer

CERTIFIED WHINE ABOUT GAME MECHANICS ISSUE I put this on tech support(probably the wrong place) and didn't get any answers so I thought I'd try here. Thx for any help: _Open ground tile_ with adjacent pavement on one side, and a heavy blockhouse on the other side. I can't put 'APRSNL' mines into that open tile, probably because it has to be exactly centered in order not to overlap onto the pavement or the Blockhouse. However much I move the mouse around, I only get a red set-up line. But when I let the AI place mines, it succeeds in putting mines into that tile. I think we'd all agree that the engine ought to allow putting mines into such a tile without your having to play 'find the pixel in the haystack'. Am I missing something? Is there another way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? Or should I just interpret it as "my guys didn't feel like digging there that day, the sort of thing that really happens in war y'know." regards, --Rett [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-24-2001).]

Maybe they are afraid of scaring off customers if the interface becomes too complicated. But players would always have the option of leaving the SOP fields on their 'default' settings, in which case it would play just like it already does. --Rett

In woods, if you are dug-in then you get pretty good protection, but if you aren't dug-in then accurate 75mm HE fire will rout your guys really quick, in my experience. On the other hand, you are more susceptible to mortar fire in the woods because of tree bursts. One nice thing about woods is that, if they are a few tiles wide, they both block LOS and vehicle movement. So putting your guys in the _back_ side (away from attacker) of the woods can be excellent. From there you send a half squad forward to peek out the other side and locate his attacking forces. If his infantry is planning to use the woods you are hiding in as a route of approach, you can shoot once then skedaddle back to the foxholes and wait for him to come walking through the woods, where your dug-in guys will have a decided advantage. If you're defending with just infantry against armour, then anywhere you are, where his tanks can safely pummel you from just out of range of your zooks, and out of LOS of your AT gun(s)is somewhere you don't want to be. You have to keep disemplacing and reambushing his infantry, and lure his armor in close if possible. CC2 provides pretty good practice at this (if that's not heresy to say on this board). Coralsaw made a good point though, that you don't want to surrender those heavy buildings to his attacking infantry too easily, though. He can put MG's and the like in there to cover the next stage of his attack. All around it's a nasty situation to be in and you _will_ take casualties. One of the fine things about CM is that you can use QB's and the scenario editor to test out doctrines. For example, if you get really hooked on this game and start reading tactics articles on the net, you can recreate the examples on a CM battlefield. So if I were you and had the same questions you are asking here I would set up a QB along the following lines. (this is just one of my personal favorites, but the possibilities are endless) Axis attack, September 44, 500-1000 pts You are the Allies: American or British Airborne (i.e. infantry only) purchase lots of vets, no heavy arty The AI is the Germans: SS or Heer, combined or armour village, flat, moderate trees (various paramaters tweakable to try things out) computer experience bonus +1, 40 turns, clear weather, dry Buy your infantry, don't forget the zooks, and some AT guns, MG's, mortars, TRP's etc. Try it putting your guys in the trees, in the buildings, in front of the buildings, behind the buildings, etc. etc. till you see what works and fails, and why. You can even design super-mini scenarios almost akin to chess puzzles where the objective is as simple as 'get across the street alive'. (Jag svindlar bara jag tänker på möjligheterna.) Then come back and report here, if you feel like it. Interesting questions you have, and I benefit from hearing other people answer. regards, --Rett [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-23-2001).]

Thanks, but searches usually turn up tons of material that takes a long time to wade through, and with my modem and paying for connect time that isn't feasible. Soon I will have a much faster connection, so then I will search more. So I just treat this more as a 'chat' board than a reference library and ask. Sorry, if that's a problem. regards, --Rett

This has an interesting effect on tactics, since tanks in a column can effectively mass fire directly forward. Would this be gamey? Should I refrain from firing 'from depth' so to speak? regards, --Rett

check out the new paragraph I just edited into the message, if you want to squeeze the most out of your defence. regards, --Rett

Why don't you try putting them behind the buildings instead. That way they get LOF out diagonally to the sides, but the building protects them from HE (somewhat) from straight ahead. If you have several positions like this, with overlapping fields of fire then you can slow down the attack quite a lot. THEN.... When the enemy is in position to start whacking the heck out of your infantry, you run back and defend from heavy buildings farther inside the village. The idea is to force his armor to move into the town if he is to shoot at your firing positions. This way his armor has to engage you at much shorter range and your zooks/schrecks get effective shots. Oh, one more thing. You can split your squads at the beginning, and move the BAR team or German equiv forward into each building while the rest of the squad is hiding behind. The LMG can ambush his infantry and then immediately run back to the cover of the foxhole, hopefully avoiding long range HE from the enemy vehicles. regards, --Rett [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-23-2001).]

I've noticed that Bazooka and Schreck teams tend to start firing at the extreme limits of their effective range. In this way they reveal their position, and use up their ammo, before having a decent chance of a hit. They get jittery, which is probably pretty realistic. A solution to this, which I have read here and used, is to employ the ambush command. But what if the enemy vehicles might show up at several points? If the team is disciplined enough to wait till the target reaches an ambush point, 120 meters from its position, then shouldn't it be disciplined enough to understand an order to engage any enemy AFV that comes within a specified range from any direction? One way to work this would be to allow units to target multiple ambush markers. This would be a great addition to the game, IMO. In effect, this would be a SOP order of the sort you see in TACops, but it would be achieved within the command structure of CM. To tell them not to engage armor at greater than 150 meters, you put out a few ambush markers, on all the likely approach routes, and target the lot. (of course inexperienced units might still screw it up, but that's just one of the fine things about this game) Or are there other workarounds to get the same effect? regards, --Rett

I remember the manual saying that global morale affects the likelihood of your units listening to your orders. What I was wondering was this: as casualties mount, and global morale goes down, will units be more likely to target on their own, and disregard my targetting orders? For instance in the case from another thread where a dug-in gun refused to area fire a Building**, choosing instead to fire at a machine gun, would the gun have been more likely to fire at the building if the Global morale had been higher? Also, would it's C&C status affect it's compliance? Also, has anyone discussed the possibility of being able to _emphasize_ an order? What I mean is: an order where the CO makes it clear, one way or another, that you are to do it, do it now and don't do anything else, because this is a high priority, urgent, order. Normal orders would still be orders of course, but urgent orders would be less subject to the usual sorts of countermanding that take place in the game. This could provide a lot of useful nuances both to movement and fire orders, with a minimum of new commands. Such 'do it now, dammit' orders could, of course, require a special moral check if global morale is low or the unit is suppressed etc....and might even have the unintended consequence of triggering a rout if used indiscriminately. In any case, the option of extremely firm targetting orders could help a lot when you need to coordinate suppressive fire to support an attack, or when you have strategic goals that the tac AI naturally can't understand. regards, --Rett [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-23-2001).] [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-23-2001).]

"you'd have to be a pretty hardened, callous person to execute prisoners just because you need someone to guard them" Remember that scene at the end of The Naked and the Dead? It was getting on towards evening and the patrol thought it was too much trouble to walk the prisoners all the way back to camp so they... The whole point of that book was how war takes normal guys and makes them pretty hardened and callous. I think this is better left unmodelled in CM. BTS has shown good judgement in this regards, IYAM. regards, --Rett [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-23-2001).]

oops [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-23-2001).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rob/1: you can't put mines on Pavement...don't know why... Rob<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Rob, I am talking about putting mines on an entire 'open ground' tile, which happens to be adjacent to pavement. The problem seems to be that you have to perfectly center the mines, so that they wont spill over into an adjacent tile where mines are forbidden. It would seem that a tweak would be very important here. regards, --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kanonier Reichmann: Anyone ever seen this kind of thing before. My Churchill Mk VIII fires an HE shot (all he had left) at 2 Marders on a ridge, misses both but the explosion occurs right between both units & they both abandon! I couldn't believe it. Just when you think you've seen everything in this game, something new crops up & blows you away. Suffice to say I was rather chuffed at this turn of events. Regards Jim R.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That'll teach your opponent not to place his vehicles so close together you lucky b****** regards, --Rett

Open ground tile with adjacent pavement on one side, and a heavy blockhouse on the other side. I can't put AP mines into that tile, probably because it has to be _exactly_ centered in order not to overlap onto the pavement or the Blockhouse. But when I let the AI place mines, it succeeds in putting mines into that tile. I think we'd all agree that the engine ought to allow putting mines into such a tile without having to play 'find the pixel in the haystack'. I hope that description is specific enough to be of use in tracking down the problem, if it's considered a problem. And please notice that I did count to ten and diplomatically refrained from titling this post "CM 1.1 MINES STILL BROKEN AFTER 3 PATCHES!!!!!!!!!" Anyway I would really appreciate being told what I'm missing, or hear a trick for getting around the problem, or hear that it will be fixed, _if_ it's really a programming oversight. regards, --Rett

double post, woops... [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-21-2001).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Phoenix: Do a search on "campaign" (in the subject field) and you'll get all the answers from BTS about this you could want. As GP said, they've indicated that it's not something they will do. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Of course such a campaign can be managed by the third party 'dungeon master' who sets up a sequence of maps and allocates forces/resupply etc. on the basis of earlier results. (I'm sure this has already been suggested before but I hate searching) regards, --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jasoncawley@ameritech.net: If you want to know exactly what e.g. an 81mm mortar barrage against a platoon in the woods can actually do, play a scenario with fog or war off (or two-player "hotseat" and playing both sides - or both). You will see plenty of casualties, and plenty of broken units. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks for the really good suggestion! It's obvious once you say it, but I hadn't thought of trying it. regards, --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Hans: Anyone remember that old classic? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It was especially fun with the optional nuclear weapons rule. --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Pvt.Tom: I know it was common towards the end of the war for Allied troops to move between adjacent buildings by knocking holes in the walls, why can't we do this in CM? It sucks to have to go outside when moving between buildings, I always loose men when I do. Pvt.Tom<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I used to live in a building in Berlin where the back half was unrenovated and still was marked by damage from WWII house-to-house fighting. (Köpenicker Str 9B, 1987) An architect planning to fix the place up took us around and showed us where he thought handgrenades had exploded, where there had been a fight in a stairwell etc. as well as some of these 'mouseholes'. The ones I saw were openings in a solid meter of masonry if my memory serves me correctly. These would almost have to be considered to be already in place at the beginning of a CM battle, as making one would take more time than the usual QB. (some or all of these holes might have been made by activists who had used the building as a hideout during conflicts with the riot police in the early 80's) One thing I really hope BTS takes the trouble to simulate is that heavy urban residential buildings should have a front building facing the street, side wings, and a back building all enclosing an open courtyard. This is a really typical arrangement, and can't really be satisfactorily represented by the present blockhouses IMO. regards, --Rett [This message has been edited by CMplayer (edited 01-20-2001).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aka_tom_w: Can anyone who reads this forum claim that they can (in a QB with computer selected forces) beat the AI at least nine times out of ten? I can't. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Nine times out of ten? Without experience bonus, that's not too hard. regards, --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Papa Smurf: Playing a QB against my brother last night - I had a CRACK inf squad HIDDEN in a house when a German inf squad crests a hill approx 700m distant... My IDIOTS started firing, drawing fire from the 8-9 German squads slowly advancing across the map. I demand the facility (in game) to Court Martial the leader of that squad! Neil <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You _can_ courtmartial them very easily Just have them rush a defended stone building from 100+ meters over open ground. Oh, and don't bother giving suppressing fire. I felt like suiciding my stug when it rotated to fire at an infantry squad (400+ meters) instead of waiting for the Shermans which were coming. Aparantly it thought the Ami squad was dangerous because the stug fired smoke. The thing is, that lonely squad was facing a whole platoon of my SMG's at about 20 meters. The danged stug saved those Amis' butts with that smoke. Luckily a Sherman knocked it out the next turn, after rolling into LOS while the stug was rotated away from where it would have had a chance to get off the first shot. regards, --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by 109 Gustav: The scenario is Polish Airborne at Arnhem. CMplayer, when you give detailed info about a scenario, you should put in a warning about spoilers first. Hey Gustav, I don't think any of what I said about it is a spoiler. As you noticed, the AI does not handle assault boats well at all. That's why you cannot give the AI assault boats. Scenarios like this one must be played either as the side with the boats, or played multiplayer. Your best bet for boat handling is not to ram your boss's skiff and check the wind before approaching the net. Oops, that's real boat handling. Your best bet for CM boat handling is to turn "show all movement paths" on, and move each boat to a different location across the river. Make sure you are moving them to open ground, not more water. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks for the tips. I hope it works. regards, --Rett

Hmm....Polish Paratroopers at Arnhem scenario, it has some assault boats for getting your guys over the lower Rhine. A couple of questionable things happened. One: A boat with a platoon HQ in it stops short of land (about 1 meter) so the HQ ignores his disembark order and sits there. Next turn I order the boat to go to land. It can't. It seems to be unable to go ashore because another empty boat is in the way. Okay another turn wasted because of bad AI. I order the boat to go a little to the side and move onto land so the HQ can disembark. It doesn't move. It always says it has 3 seconds pause. I keep giving it new movement orders, and then notice, that the boat which is 'in the way' is getting bumbed around, presumably the boat with the platoon HQ is pushing it. But nothing happens. No way to get the guys ashore. 2) I notice that the other, empty boat has got a 'fast move' order attached to it. Strange. I run a squad to the empty boat, thinking to move it out of the way. They get there, then stand running in place on the boat, information says 'embarking' for 3 turns in a row! Now they are 'tired' running in place on the boat, and I still can't move it out of the way. All the while the first boat with the platoon HQ refuses to move. I mean come on. The AI is overdone to allow tanks to decide when to shoot smoke, but it can't figure out to go a few extra meters to go to shore to let off passengers with a move order leading to a destination on the other side? It can't help a boat go 1 meter to the side, so that the guy can get off if another boat is in the way on land? And what is going on with this weird boat freezeup? And the guys running in place 'embarking'? No, I don't have the file as it wasn't a PBEM. regards, --Rett

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JediJobu: I don't think this happens, but should arty fire on or right near a minefield either disable or reduce the effectiveness of a minefield due to mines beign set off by the explosions?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> ...and how about barbed wire, too. ??? --Rett