Pete Wenman

I'm not seeing a gun barrel penetrated in this pic. I'm seeing a damaged muzzle brake that would likely not prevent the gun from firing. 
 
Really - you'd be happy to fire a 90mm high explosive projectile down a barrel that is that badly damaged, and potentially partially blocked. I was never a tanker, but if that had ever happened to my rifle I sure as hell would not have fired another round. Guns and their associated mountings and recoil systems are pieces of high precision engineering, with very small tolerances. If these are exceeded, due to damage or other external factors, they stop working as designed and that is inherently dangerous given the amounts of energy at play.
  P
 

Oh look yet another 'hulldown is actually counter intuitive'  - this silliness is right up there with 'maps are too small'

 
Everyone. Take. A. Shot.

I'm not seeing a gun barrel penetrated in this pic. I'm seeing a damaged muzzle brake that would likely not prevent the gun from firing. 
 
Really - you'd be happy to fire a 90mm high explosive projectile down a barrel that is that badly damaged, and potentially partially blocked. I was never a tanker, but if that had ever happened to my rifle I sure as hell would not have fired another round. Guns and their associated mountings and recoil systems are pieces of high precision engineering, with very small tolerances. If these are exceeded, due to damage or other external factors, they stop working as designed and that is inherently dangerous given the amounts of energy at play.
  P
 

I'm not seeing a gun barrel penetrated in this pic. I'm seeing a damaged muzzle brake that would likely not prevent the gun from firing. 
 
Really - you'd be happy to fire a 90mm high explosive projectile down a barrel that is that badly damaged, and potentially partially blocked. I was never a tanker, but if that had ever happened to my rifle I sure as hell would not have fired another round. Guns and their associated mountings and recoil systems are pieces of high precision engineering, with very small tolerances. If these are exceeded, due to damage or other external factors, they stop working as designed and that is inherently dangerous given the amounts of energy at play.
  P
 

I'll repeat myself: "Gun damage" covers a LOT more than just a barrel.
 

A man sat behind a computer screen with a beer belly in his underwear is not very photogenic! 
😉

Well considering every military in history has trained to aim for center of mass, this seems like the nitpick of all nitpicks. If anything, its an indication the game is behaving correctly. Absurd. Aim does not get magically thrown off target just by firing. This is why recoil mechanisms exist. And if we are going to nitpick and say "the ground is shifting" well as it turns out militaries are actually competent and train for this eventuality. Weapons crews, gun crews, tank crews, etc all take this into account and make micro adjustments while firing to ensure they are compensating for these small variables. Though I know some here will refuse to accept it, I think it is clear that the game accurately models a crews overall competence depending on its veterancy level, and that is more than enough to cover this "issue." Yes, and the sky is blue. Seriously, what is the point? This is known in the real world, yet there is not a single military out there that advocates for fighting tanks out in the open opposed to hull down positions. Again, it turns out that militaries are pretty competent when it comes to this stuff. Yeah, the driver can't see anything in a hull down position. That's why the job of spotting targets is the commander and gunners job, the two people with the best optics that can see over the hull down cover.  Not true. Spotting is 1:1. If less of a vehicle is visible it is harder to spot. There are tons of anecdotal examples of this on these forums alone, people complaining that their tank can't see through some bush or through some smoke or dust, etc. The more obscured from view a vehicle is, the harder it is to spot initially.  The obvious answer is stop getting your tanks shot at. Regardless of what the tank is or what is shooting at it, it is never a good thing to be directly engaged. Again, this is a nitpick. Soft systems on the outside of a tank are more vulnerable than the best armored parts of the tank. This isn't rocket science. And we all know that if BFC were to introduce some form of "center mass deviation" where there was some random chance applied to shots to be off their aimpoints to varying degrees, you would likely be the first to start complaining about how unrealistic that is because ballistics are a well known and quantifiable science.  Mantlets are a historical weakspot on tanks, both in WWII and the modern era. Anywhere you have a gap or disconnect between otherwise solid parts is going to create structural weakness.  This is objectively false. I already know the thread where this hysterical myth first gained infamy, and I don't feel the need to restate the obvious. If you think standing in the open is more conducive to your own survival, then more power to you.
Finally, its a game. It simulates combat pretty damn well. And its fun too. No game is perfect. No sim is perfect. Hell, some argue reality isn't perfect. If you can't get over that, and you really think the game is so terribly flawed in all these micro ways that add up to ruin the game, then just don't play it. Life is short. I'm sure there are better things out there than spending years constantly trying to prove the already known quantity that nothing is perfect. 

Ok. It didn’t take long playing the demo until I decided it was well worth the price tag. 
 
What a great game!  I’m really enjoying it. When you play on easy settings, does that make it easier to destroy enemy vehicles and easier for friendly vehicles be destroyed?  It seems pretty hard to show your face and survive. 

You Sir have just earned your Oak Leaves, Swords and Diamonds to go with your Iron Cross!!!!
Tried Running the game one last time - No Dice. Installed Avast, game launches flawlessly. Reset and Shudown half a dozen times to make sure.
Now here's the interesting bit - I removed Avast and still able to launch!

A )
B ) You might be clutching at straws if you're trying to suggest that the gun barrels of all tanks from all nations suffered fewer than 3 frontal hits in the entirety of WW2, whether there was anyone there with a camera to record it or not.

C ) The greater point is that assuming that it never ever happened ever in WW2 does not mean that it wouldn't happen in CM, even if CM was 100% realistic (which it isn't). Battlefront can only provide the tools for the players. If players decide to reverse towards the enemy, they run the risk of getting their engine knocked out. If players let the enemy shoot at the front of their tanks, they run the risk of getting their main gun knocked out.

It might just be a perspective problem.
Looking at it sideways- how many times do US players run up against Tigers in Combat Mission? A lot, right? Because Tigers are cool and popular. But its shockingly unrealistic. That Pershing-Tiger engagement there is 1/3 of all the times the US Army fought Tiger Is in Western Europe. The Americans basically never fought Tiger 1s in the entire period covered by CMBN and CMFB up to the end of the war. It's a historically negligible event. But in games, of course, it happens all the time.

Leaving aside the fact that we've already seen enough photos spread out around the threads to show that gun barrel damage is more common than US-Tiger engagements in the historical record, it stands to reason that any reliance on "it seems like a rare event in real life" is about as effective an argument as "my panzer's mighty armour should let me do whatever I want with it."

The bottom line is that the enemy has to be shooting at you to damage your gun barrel. If you've put your tanks in a position where they're getting shot at, either accept the risk or work out where everything went wrong.

I did play and finish the campaign, years ago. With a lot of casualties, but I enjoyed it. 
A bit in the middle about the subject. How realistic CM is, it will still never be real. Hourlong barrages aren't fun to play. Also, some challenge for the player is needed; after all it's still entertainment. The AI needs some help providing a challenge, which won't always feel natural. 
Also. war doesn't always goes by the book. So I can understand if a scenario models a specific part of the front/attack where most artillery was simply not available and or defenses stronger than anticipated. FUBAR . In reality in Bagration (and other offensivse) there also have been attacks which pressed on while taking very heavy losses. Apart from the (locally) failed attacks, renewed later or just bypassed. 
The scenario depicts a challenge to overcome dug in defenses by attacking with quite massive infantry formations, with limited support. I took about a hundred casualties IIRC. I tried it a couple of times. The river battle was similar, and perhaps bloodier. 
I don't think those are badly designed, however felt that perhaps a bit much focus was given to these types of scenarios. Making the campaign quite the grind to finish, while many 'toys' didn't feature. 
This is in contrast with, for example, the first mission of the Russian campaign in CMBS. It's more a full scale attack 'here's all the toys' type of mission, which I think is a nice way to start of a campaign. 

German tanks were not invincible, and the German tankers certainly did not think so. Further, national origin has nothing to do with it, training and experience does. Many German tank crews bailed out of their tanks prematurely because their replacements were green, untested, and poorly trained. It didn't matter if they were in a supposed "uber-tank" or not. The crews bailed regardless. 
The Sherman wasn't a death trap or a tinder box. This myth has been thoroughly put to rest many times over.

From the trailer - there aren't enough para helmets and the boots are wrong ...

Force fields are nifty when your side has them - a bug when the other side has them!

AFAIK BF have actually confirmed it and said they work on it after the previous patch was released, but they said it wasn't an easy fix because difficult to find out why. Perhaps someone could find that post and sticky it, because this problem gets re-reported very few weeks. It might also help people like you who falsely assume there has been no confirmation/response from BF and start going wild about them being money hungry bastiges or something (my thoughts).
Anyway, apart from bocage, I don't see why WW2 is unplayable. As is modern. So that leaves a lot to play.
The remarks about them not patching without money to be made is uncalled for I think. Just look at the patch history. Many patches apart from paid 'upgrades'.
Also, you can still buy those modules but you choose not to. While you are calling out people that say you should live with it, I think you are creating unnecessary fuss/drama and spreading incomplete information around a real issue with bocage fighting.  
Relax, it will be fixed in the next patch I'd expect. Keep your money nicely in your pocket until then, hopefully inflation won't damage the value in the mean time
Apart from bocage, it's not really effecting much other stuff. I've had my share of bocage already a long time ago, so I'm not really impacted by this bug.

No need for those big maps then eh … 😏

This is the point of zeroing.
Because that is exactly what they are doing.
It's pretty pointless to compare real world data for Tiger 2 and ingame data for the Sherman 76 (Have you got a link or reference for the Tiger 2 accuracy stuff?) It would more useful to compare the ingame Sherman accuracy once zeroed to the Tiger 2 ingame accuracy once zeroed.
The Sherman gunner's main optic is 4x IIRC, so it looks even smaller! Im not 100% up on my Sherman fire control and gunnery mechanics, but I don't think firing the gun is going to change the gunner's point of aim... so why would the gunner voluntarily aim somewhere else once he's on target?

Finally... in theory you could increase the deviation to make the guns less accurate to simulate the gunner "shifting his aim" or "targeting different points of the tank", but
a) how do you know that BF hasn't already done this?
and b) It's such as an edge case. This setup- one tank plinking another 2000m which isn't allowed to shoot back on a flat map with no cover- is an accuracy test (which I understand is what you're testing) but it's not an accuracy test that takes into account likely battlefield conditions. What you're effectively testing is the maximum accuracy of the Sherman vs the Tiger 2, but there's no indication that this is relevant to actual gameplay. If the Sherman doesn't survive long enough or isn't exposed for long enough to get that maximum accuracy- or the Tiger 2 is smart enough to avoid getting plinked like this- then does it matter?

This thread answers some of those questions if you download @Lt Bull's pdf - while I appreciate it is a different bit of Belgium there are wire fences aplenty.  Also check out the master maps in the title - they are extremely well researched and well executed and therefore worth a study to get a feel for what looks right and what doesn't.
 

I love this sort of stuff, so good to see you giving it a go. The real issue is what comprises you are happy to make to fit doctrine to the game and how important scenario balance is to you. I'll ignore the second point, and just throw out some thoughts on the first.
Reality on the ground is very hard to determine if not based on historical records, and even then it is likely the TOE is overstated in most case for this stage of the war, but some principles can be applied.
With regard to German outpost defense 
...the width of a defensive sector assigned to a unit is approximately twice the width of the sector the same unit attacks. Normal sectors are : Platoon, 220 - 550 yards, Company, 440 - 1100 yards Battalion 880 - 2200 yards ....advanced posn, the Germans organise the advanced position 5000 to 7000 yards in front of the MLR, within the range of their medium artillery. ....outpost posn's are normally established 2000 to 5000 yards in front of the MLR. When the fronts are stabilised the outpost position is the only position forward of the MLR .... outpost posn's are occupied from platoons to companies depending on mission, terrain, width of sector and number of troops available. ..... the main weapon, however, is the light machine gun which opens fire at ranges of about 1300 yards, while riflemen commence fire at about 850 yards ...positions normally are  selected at the edges of woods, villages, hedgerows or hills. A good field of fire is considered mandatory. Numerous dummy positions are constructed. Withdrawal of the outposts is conducted so as to not hinder fire from the main battle position. After the outposts are abandoned they are likely to be covered by carefully registered fire of heavy weapons in order to prevent occupation by the enemy.  That's what the book says, well one book anyways, but the reality on the ground could be almost anything I would imagine.
 
I did try to give a sense of this in my Shadow of the Hill series of scenarios, where a British infantry brigade advances over some 4k distance through the German defences, spread across 4 separate scenarios.
 
P

Thanks very much everyone.  I started w smallest as suggested.  These Russian soldiers are for real!  Dude is hitting me w grenade launcher from 500m and seems to be bravest man on earth.  Bullets and mortars all around him and he just keeps firing.  How many rounds does this guy have??   I've got MG firing from a reverse hill crest, a good position, but their luck will run out at some point.
THIS IS FUN!!!

King Tiger tanks of schwere Panzer-Abteilung 503 having just been transported by rail from Mailly-le-Camp and de-trained at Gare de l'Est, Paris can be are seen turning from Rue d'Aubervilliers into Boulevard de la Villette on their way to Mantes-la-Jolie *
https://www.pinterest.com.mx/pin/431078995567859884/
maybe a connection here
http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/king-tiger-tank-fontenay-saint-pere.html
* This is a photo of a King Tiger Tank turret in France. He said that this and other King Tiger Tank parts were found in 2001 near Mantes-la-Jolie, France, This Tiger 2 tank, from the 101 SS.s.Abteilung, was lost in a crater near Fontenay-Saint-Père on 26 August 1944.
And restored
'According to an article from the Musée des Blindés French Tank museum's magazine n° 54, this King Tiger tank, which now carries the turret number 233, is believed to be tank number 123, which belonged to the 1st Company, 101 SS Panzer Abt in August 1944. It is believed to have been abandoned by its crew on 23 August 1944, due to engine problems, at Brueil-en-Vexin, near Mantes-la-Jolie. It was salvaged by the French Army in September 1944, and then stored at the AMX Tank factory at Satory before being transferred to the museum in 1975.'
http://tank-photographs.s3-website-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/tiger-II-heavy-tank-Konigstiger.html
 
'In August 1944, German Tiger II tanks of 503rd Panzer leaving Paris for the Normandy front.'
Colourised version

 
 

I’ve no idea how many are reading this but I’ll give some background to what you’re seeing.
First of all, this is created using new software that I wanted to try. Making this comic took almost three months which is about the same time per page as my previous ones. I was concerned about the learning curve when switching software but it was less effort than I expected. There were a few shortcomings, like very few onomatopoeia, and one's ability to manipulate them wasn’t as advanced as my usual software. However, the ability to change the dimensions and shapes of each panel on the fly was huge. Previously I had to go on to separate custom software to re-size the individual panels on a page and they had to be four sized, and right-angle parallelograms. With the software I used here, I could almost make any shape. This afforded much more flexibility in terms of layout, as well as reducing reader boredom through panel layout repetition.
Second, I wanted to give the perspective of a single squad in combat. Some films, and a number of books, have taken a much more focused view of battle, personalizing it. Rather than making it that of one man, I thought a squad might be interesting. There are few grand overheads, because a squad would have none. There are few explanations of what is going on everywhere else in the battle (and it was a fair sized one) because again, a squad would have little such information. If you’re confused what is going on where, then you’re in the boots of Gorokhov and his men: aware of a wider engagement around you, following where you are led, and only certain of what you’re doing and the ground you’re running on.
Finally, since this is a special edition, the look itself of the graphics is different. You won’t find many speech bubbles here, and no comic half-tone dots. I wanted this to look less like a comic and more like a graphic novel.

Ah, but you typed more, I just copied and pasted !
P

Stalingrad ([stalinɡʁad]) is a Paris Métro station on the border between the 10th arrondissement and the 19th arrondissement at the intersection of lines 2, 5, and 7, located at the Place de la Bataille-de-Stalingrad, which is named for the Battle of Stalingrad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stalingrad_(Paris_Métro)
Obviously not called that in 1944 though.