LongLeftFlank

Yeah, George's maps more or less set the standard, for both quality and playability. I spent a lot of quality time with this one to learn how the CMBN editor differed from CMSF.

My opinion, but it's probably adequate to have corpses lying next to the vehicle. Mord's war-ravaged German and American faces mod and some of his voices should give you all the gore you need. Damage decals of all kinds have been long requested and CMBN has indicated it may get them into the next interation of the engine. I think someone did a mod where the casualty base marker looked like a pool of blood. That work for ya?

Jeez, I am tempted to delay release of my La Meauffe town map so I can include these beauties (might happen anyway ). On the bloodstains: eww!

Yes, now that I've seen these shots on a larger screen the yellow is a little overwhelming. Maybe this is a good look for the IPad version of CMBN

Don't think the spotting round process is affected by the factors you mention, although it can be disrupted by pinning the observer or mortars. The perfect first round was a fluke, gamewise. However, once the stonk gets going it invariably gets increasingly accurate vs a point target. You dont want to be moving (or much of anything else) once you're a target at that stage.

From this 1947 paper by Battalion S-3, 3/137th Infantry: During the course of the day's fighting all of the battalion staff had occasion to remark of the large amount of individual and crew equipment strewn about the battle position. Everything from meat cans to machine guns. It should be recalled here that this was a new unit in combat, undergoing their first baptism of fire, and of course had entered battle carrying full equipment, including such items as signal panels, extra shoestrings, etc. However, in all fairness to members of the battalion, a large part of this equipment resulted from casualties. When a man was wounded, and started for the rear he would drop all of his equipment, further the aid men would relieve a man of all his equipment prior to carrying him out. It was found that a resupply of rations and small arms ammunition was not required. All companies reporting sufficient rations for the next day. All reporting that the men had not eaten during the confusion and excitement of their first day in battle. The status of small arms ammunition was explained by reason of the men not firing until they had a target to shoot at, and so very few targets had been seen during the day. This doesn't speak specifically to ammo loads of course, and this was a green outfit. But this is just one of numerous anecdotes regarding the tendency of US soldiers particularly to leave a trail of discarded gear in their wake. I was also browsing a site where some French guys are excavating the Hill 108 battleground and finding all kinds of gear everywhere.

Just downloaded 1.40 to a My Documents subfolder, but I keep getting an error message "Not configured correctly" at launch. I reinstalled -- same thing. I don't have WinZip on my PC (I use 7Zip freeware instead) -- does that have anything to do with it? I noticed there's a library.zip file in the folder. Any insights?

... my first scenario and submap for the Le Carillon sequence. This is a Tiny (reinforced platoon) 1+ hour historical recon mission played on a 1x1km stretch of farmland and orchards east of La Meauffe. Playable as US vs AI (RT or WEGO) or H2H. Anyone who wants to playtest this puppy and provide feedback on everything from the game balance to the briefing to the map, please send me a PM with your email and I'll send you the file. Broadsword, I'm preemptively emailing you the file along with a polite request to PBEM me as US. The following background is from the German briefing, and lays out some of the context for this entire series (don't worry, there are no spoilers here): June 15, 1944 In the two critical weeks since the invasion of Normandy, German Seventh Army had been unable to either drive the Anglo-American forces back into the sea or prevent them from consolidating their beachhead and moving inland. The frontline German divisions had suffered terrible losses in the lowland fighting. Their new front in the bocage was increasingly manned by a patchwork of kampfgruppes and skeleton formations attached to other divisions. As American forces began pushing up-country in ever greater numbers, LXXXIV Corps was tasked with rendering their advance as slow and bloody as possible in order to buy time for the panzer forces slowly building up in the area. Key to this brutal attrition fight was German control of the heights north of St Lo. The Vire river, which bisected the American southern front, was also tactically important to both armies. Defence of the eastern bank and blocking the major road (Highway 3) and railway that ran along it, fell to the battered remnants of 266 Infantry Division, now attached to 352 Infantry Division. As elsewhere, the staying power of this defensive scheme rested almost entirely on its ability to stall the American forces in the dense bocage, and then batter them with artillery directed from the commanding heights around le Carillon. II Battalion, 899 Grenadierregiment established its main line of resistance (MLR) along a 3km front anchored by a bend in the Vire at the small town of La Meauffe, then running ... to the Le Mare - Le Carillon heights. Yesterday, June 14th, an unidentified American Armeekorps [the newly activated XIX Corps] launched a fresh offensive in the direction of Villiers-Fossard. A secondary flank screening attack down the Vire bank secured them a ridgeline around Amy, placing the Americans on the outskirts of La Meauffe and face to face with the German OPs at le Carillon. II/899 has been conducting a token defense in these areas, avoiding protracted stand-up fights, but .... has now dug into a forward defensive line in and around La Meauffe itself. This line is now coming under American mortar fire from the ridge. Last night, American light armoured forces cut the main road east to Villiers Fossard and are expected to appear on the eastern outskirts of La Meauffe today.... Mission The main axis of advance for the latest American offensive lies east of here. This leaves their right flank increasingly exposed to the La Meauffe-Le Carillon position. Being dogmatic and predictable, the American commanders will impulsively order a subsidiary attack to reduce this salient, using forces that are either understrength or inexperienced, or both. To compensate, they will try to pulverize the town using a heavy artillery programme, or perhaps airpower, plus direct fire from tanks advancing up the north road and railbed. However, the bulk of this extravagant firepower will fall on houses and on largely vacant German positions. Their infantry will then advance into a narrow wedge of ruins on low ground, under nonstop German counterfire and it will be very costly for them to maintain this position or to build up forces there to mount a further attack. If they withdraw, German forces will reoccupy La Meauffe, lay more mines and force them to repeat the entire operation. Your ... current role in this defensive scheme is to keep the American advance forces from securing an eastern approach to La Meauffe. This will force them either to attack this area in full force, in full view of the le Carillon artillery observers, or to attack La Meauffe head on from the north along the river.... Fiendishly clever. And that's more or less exactly how it went down for the 175th, then the 119th until the full 137th Regiment finally broke the logjam head-on in July.

Not to rehash the other thread, but wow! this gives the game a really compelling visual "style" -- reminiscent of period combat footage without being black and white. The intense daylight "sun-washes" the colours and masks a lot of the (inevitable) imperfections in the terrain and models and draws you in. Really beautiful and immersive without literal photorealism. If BFC is looking for a distinctive "look" for future evolutions of the engine without the depressing grey look of most shooters, this could well be it.

Well "fatally flawed" certainly depends on the expectations one brings. That said, the core engine is still very much a work in progress. As a content developer who has put significant time into the game, I personally could wish for at least a partial "forward portability" of features like maps and AI plans so all my work is not lost as BFC moves to newer platforms.

Thanks, Erwin, again for sharing. This is very interesting stuff. Some form of CoPlay seems essential for any serious training purpose, so that the command trainee can only directly control units in voice or visual range (or perhaps less) of his personal unit and must relay all other orders and receive situational information via a referee. CMSF seems to me particularly valuable in teaching infantry and armour leaders how to cooperate.

These rules are for infantry on the attack or on the move though, ja? A prepared defensive position would typically keep more ammo on hand, assuming that there was time to bring it up. BTW, one weakness of the CMBN HMG teams is that as the team takes casualties (e.g. those pesky ubermortars!), the ammo supply is reduced sharply. That's true even if the position hasn't moved. So you can truncate the firepower of a machine gun nest by picking off the riflemen. Another good reason to add a static "ammo supply" unit (say 1k rounds) that never does anything but HIDE but will "share" ammo with nearby units using the game mechanism.

+1. MikeyD you really need to stop and think before you jump down people's throats all the time. This is not an unreasonable post and he went out of his way to say he likes the game. We have all encountered moments like this -- I imagine I'd be pretty frustrated too especially if I was well into a highly competitive H2H game. BFC does not need a self-appointed Defender of the Faith.

I didn't mod back in CM1 days, and my CMSF efforts extend only to building facades but it isn't all that hard for those willing to learn GIMP or another program. M1A1TC did a Korean War part II mod for CMSF including Korean faces... They don't work right with the CMBN wireframes but would probably work with some manipulation. The Para helmets will do for later war IJA with some good helmet netting. For uniforms and webbing you'd need to play around a bit but probably doable -- the biggest challenge would be the footwear - the Japs did that bandage thing instead of gaiters. If you don't like them toting SMLEs you might texture swap those with K98s which look more like IJA service rifles. A search of the forums will tell you how to do texture swapping. Bottom line: start a CMBN Pac War mod set and you miggt find some modders pitching in to help you. But by now I think you've got the message that an official BFC product isn't in the cards.

Plenty of combined arms in the CBI Theatre. Also during the fight for Manila and some of the bigger islands (Bougainville, Okinawa). Meeting engagements betweeen mech forces, not so much (a couple in Burma). But as I've observed elsewhere, heavily modded British Airborne troops would make adequate Japanese.... Bren for Nambu, 2inch mortar for knee mortar, etc. No offense intended to the Red Devils. And believe you me, I am finding CMBN more than equal to the task of simulating dense vegetation, albeit on smallish maps. No grass huts, sure, but they'd provide about as much cover as the outhouses and shelters now available as doodads. And a Ryujin texture swap of the CMSF palm tree for the Type A oak would create a pleasing simulacrum of the PTO. Lots of tall grass, marsh and gapped bocage segments to limit LOS. Plus plentiful small watercourses to enhance infiltration and severely restrict vehicle movement. Banzai!

Well evidently there wasn't much backblast. I don't think the launcher even has a vent tube (correct me if I'm wrong), and if the gunner isn't getting his eyebrows burnt off I'd presume that people behind him aren't either.

Re the PIAT referenced earlier Louis Hagen's memoir "The Arnhem Lift" relates a duel between a German SP gun and his team, which was firing on it repeatedly from a small attic window. I read this book long ago and details are hazy but ISTR they were engaging the AFV at some distance and launching the PIAT bomb in an arc. They didn't kill it but kept it from advancing.

Thanks for posting. Warts and all, there's nothing else like this on the market.

Aww, Broadsword there you go just when things are getting interesting! It's like watching two bull elephant seals getting ready to fight!

Wow! Do an AAR if you can, with some map panos and level 8 screenies showing the deployments for the key fights. As for the Nazi Gotterdamerung on the city edge, you've got the high ground OPs now. Pour on the arty (and the heavy bombers)!

Another option would be to have bailed out crews have Scarce levels of ammo in their small arms (how likely are they to be wearing or grab ammo belts when their vehicle is destroyed?) to inhibit their combat power while retaining the player's choice to have them hide, flee or fight. A 1 level Experience (not Morale) drop outside the vehicle might make sense too. Even if they've left their vehicle voluntarily to scout or Spot, they have no business (or incentive) seeking out or staying in major firefights. Self defence or rounding up enemy surrenderees they may stumble across is another matter and there are ample historical accoumts of both. I definitely don't like the Auto-Rout idea. Why represent them in the game at all if they're merely ciphers? Also, what happens if they've bailed voluntarily or the vehicle isn't destroyed? Can the TacAI distinguish?

Let me join the ranks of the slack-jawed It took me a moment to realize the first shot wasn't a colourised period photo (the uniform poses of the pixeldoughs made me look again).

Quite the rolodex there, Broadsword! @TrailApe, I was referring strictly to recon ops in talking about casualty avoidance. The little recce battle I'm playtesting now really brings home how the Cavalry units were very well-equipped to cover mileage and kill enemy snipers or OPs but totally unequipped to hold ground or do more than withdraw in the face of a dug-in enemy once located. I also need to pick up Balkoski's book on the Cav units.

Agreed. In the platoon scale recon scenario I'm testing right now, the player must weigh his objectives against force preservation -- in practical terms, even if you've occupied your objectives you aren't likely to hold them long if you've also lost ~15% of your lightly armed force. This also promotes a lot more realistically cautious behaviour by the attacker. Killing enemy is of relatively minor value (albeit not zero value) -- Recon forces simply weren't equipped and manned to hold ground or to do much more fighting than kill snipers or drive off rival patrols. The teeth to tail ratio varied a lot, and the Germans were especially (though not uniquely) prone to put their cooks and clerks into the line as riflemen in extremis. My guess is that once an attacking infantry force hits about 8-10% casualties in a planned attack (i.e. every squad has a man down on average, although more likely a few unlucky squads have sustained 30-50% casualties and are essentially broken), forward movement has ground to a halt, especially since the causative agent is most likely copious enemy artillery. I don't think there's a fixed threshold of cumulative unreplaced casualties (i.e. across multiple days of fighting) at which a force becomes totally unable to attack though -- in fact, history suggest there isn't. Small groups of elite forces engaged in commando raids or coups de main might be more resilient, so long as they've seized their objectives early on and are awaiting relief or reinforcement (at that point, they've become defenders). For defenders, the "breaking point" is a lot harder to quantify. Defenders typically don't know what's going on beyond the next hole, so casualties alone aren't necessarily going to cause them to flee (leaving your hole could be worse). However, if enemy shooting or shooters are detected on the flank(s) or worse, behind them, I suspect most defenders would take that as a cue to fall back or at minimum, ask command what's happening.

The legend of the lone hero annihilating numerous opponents predates civilization: think the Iliad, Gilgamesh, the Ramayana, Hiawatha, blah blah blah. There's a reason shooters, not chess or Go-type many-vs-many strategy games, have dominated video games ever since Space Invaders. I went through my Paul Carrell phase as well, but as I read down into the accounts I realized he was full of crap. The Russians held, then thrashed the Germans head to head using superior strategy, plus equipment, tactics and good old fashioned individual cunning and courage that were every bit as good -- think T34/KV/IS tanks, SU-122, Sturmovik, La-7 and MiG-3 fighters, 76mm AT gun, 120mm mortar, Katyusha, PPSh41. Many of which the Germans themselves copied (yes, the Russians returned the favour). EDIT: Oh, I've downloaded the scenario. Look forward to giving it a spin.