LongLeftFlank

Really? I don't recall ever having problems area fire targeting upper building levels or rooftops on my CMSF Ramadi map, where 95% of the buildings have high walled compounds enclosing them.

One of the many awful things aboit mortars is that they don't make as much noise when falling to earth and therefore give less warning (I'm sure someone here can explain the physics which I forget -- Angle of drop, rotation and sound barrier or sumfink) The vertical drop plus the impact fusing and casing design made mortars far more lethal over an open area relative to (non-air or treeburst) shell impacts, which tend to lose a lot of fragments in the earth. So that, their high rate of fire and their subordination to the frontline formations (Coy, Bn) makes them ideal defensive weapons for driving enemy attackers to ground and pinning them there. But on the other hand, mortars are far less effective in killing infantry that has already gone flat and/or interposed even an inch or two of solid cover between their flesh and the showers of fragments. Even shallow scrapes provide all-round protection against anything but direct hits at the same level. That's why for dug-in infantry with overhead cover, regular mortar "stonks" were more an annoyance than a hazard. Unless they had left their holes of course.

This is the best CMBN video I've seen yet, even including the "mockumentary". Really captures the flow of the action. Very well made bocage map too -- great "feel" of the green maze of hedgerow hell. The mass casualties -- especially all the fatalities -- under those mortar barrages do confirm my general sense that the pixeltruppen need a quicker "Hit the dirt!" reaction to incoming. Nobody should still be standing or taking a knee. You'd still get a lot of decimation and panic from the barrage, but not whole squads massacred to a man... or anyway, that outcome would take a lot longer to achieve.

No fear; as you know, I come from the "no compromises" school of map design. I like to fight in the boots of the tactical commanders as much as a game can allow.

Not much time to spare for gaming these days, but I have finally finished the all-important field outlines for my Le Carillon-La Meauffe master map: 2736w x 2816 h. The little yellow squares are orchards, the dark green are woodlands. I haven't actually laid hedgerow objects yet, as that would make the map crash -- the outline is the "Weeds" ground type (so I don't have to delete all of them). 90% of the buildings are present as placeholder structures. My source material is primarily the 1947 aerial imagery together with the St Fromond one sheet. The German fortified area depicted in the famous Green Book map lies just south of that barren "triangle" in the lower center of the map. I eagerly await the next patch to see whether BFC is able to do anything with the OOM problems before I decide how much detail to add. Ideally, I'd like to be able to render the various depressions (railbeds/embankments, streambeds, draws) in some detail on the master while remaining loadable. I'd also like to do the major settlements in some detail, although I can leave that for the submaps if need be. Alas, I doubt anyone will be able to load a battle using the entire map, which is a pity, as it contains the full regimental frontage for the 137th Infantry (and defending 897 Grenadiere) for the entire 5 day battle of 11-15 July. The battalions fought shoulder to shoulder, and often overlapped, so you lose a good bit of the bigger operational picture when you have to hack the map up into isolated battalion actions.

Yog Sothoth! Key and guardian of the gate!

You can always create map depressions to simulate gunpits, but these won't be FoW

Just tried to load this map and hit OOM at 50%. My machine is 2004 vintage though.

Hmm, note to self: when civilization collapses, do not raid northwest Indiana seeking precious metals, Spam and ethanol for the Great Humongous' bike....

That, sir, is some creative mapmaking! Well done!

Mapeltappenkommando im Westfront!

Oh yes, the uncanny infantry spotting abilities of buttoned AFVs have been amply discussed. We hope for some redress in the next patch.

What you're describing here of course is a deficiency in map design, not a problem with the game. If one just plops down a bunch of houses and a few trees along a road then calls it a "town" then..... On the other hand, if the houses are surrounded by walls and hedges and small outbuildings, then AT teams have plenty of great keyhole positions to choose from.

Like the comparisons between CM and the AH tactical classics. I am a bit unusual in that I started playing SL first (age 14) and only picked up Panzerblitz/Leader in college. I remember at first heaving a sigh of relief over how much easier it was to play... then immediately started to draw "reduced size" units on the flip sides of the counters to make it more granular and SL like.

To paraphrase Crowe's Captain Aubrey: "You've come to the wrong shop for popularity, brother." We're wargamers.

On the contrary, putting myself in the shoes of the the CO and facing as many of his RL challenges as possible is why I choose to play this game: others may feel differently. It would be a school of hard knocks lesson for the attacker foolish enough to mass his troops in obvious places like roads too far in advance of H-Hour. Sure, it may be inconvenient to have guys only form up and move to the start lines when the prep barrage is already underway, especially at night in the bocage maze with green troops, but that kind of "fun" should be available to me if I want it from a game that strives to deliver realism. In Ramadi, I forced players to adopt wholly different (and more authentic) tactics, as it was no longer feasible to simply blast defenders out of their positions the moment they were Spotted. If I ever get there with my le Carillon project, it is my intention to deliver a very similar "in the CO's boots"'play experience to those who enjoy such things in their gaming. If that's not your cup of tea, no problem, but I will advocate for the tweaks that I believe enhance that outcome but live with whatever BFC chooses to do.

Just make sure interdiction firedoesn't get nerfed too badly by these proposed changes. Preregistered TRPs on unseen but likely enemy concentration points such as crossroads, farms, gullies/draws, etc., was a critical element of an organized defense, especially for the Germans (who had previously owned the real estate). Many an attack or counterattack never reached its start line and absorbed heavy casualties without even contacting the enemy due to a spoiling barrage, either timed or called in by FOs based on visual or sound contact.

Off topic, sorry

Maybe the minefield, once triggered, could set off a 1 minute series of "aftershocks" that while producing no damage, visual or audible effect, could trigger the self-protective TacAI reflex and "warn off" other units, at least for the rest of a WeGo turn (after that it's up to you to keep your guys out of the minefield). Just an idea.

Only difference being, the guys on the receiving end actually hit the dirt like Sarge says rather than sitting upright waiting for the BOOM.

So it seems that after all this (intelligent and civil) discussion, all we really need here is a self-protective reflex to the infantry accompanied by the agonized howl INCOMING!!!!!!!!! I'm sure Mord will be delighted to provide a suitable voice mod, for the Yanks at least! Not sure what kind of bloody hack would be required to add this while doing the least violence to the engine.... Perhaps each indiect round has a silent(?) and invisible "pre-impact" that does no damage but triggers the appropriate "near miss" behaviour in nearby troops?

But aye, there's the rub! Hiding isn't enough.... First of all, the AI does not cause its units to Hide (hunker down) in response to incoming fire, which in 1 player mode basically lets you blast them out of their holes using 81mm without needing direct hits. In WeGo mode, you must wait until the next Orders phase to Hide your units -- in the meantime they have to suck it up. In addition, even if you do Hide your units from incoming, the TacAI will frequently self- cancel that order when enemy units are in the vicinity. In that case, your guys resume sitting upright in their holes in "fighting position", soaking up the shrapnel (unless they're Cowering). That's why I suggested that a tweak that causes entrenched infantry to fight prone by default as opposed to "taking the knee" might largely address the problem without mucking about with the existing mortar ROF, accuracy or ballistics models, which seem well-thought out. I'd settle for them to Cower a lot more while being shelled, even if it meant they were shooting far less. Again, the bottom line is that 81mm -- however much of a "buzz kill" it proved to be in forcing infantry attacks to go to ground -- should not exterminate dug-in infantry in concealment terrain with the rapidity and thoroughness it does in the game. If mortars truly had this kind of "Argus eye" (), frontline combat in both World Wars would have been very, very different.

winkelried - thanks for testing. Time permitting, I may try to replicate your tests using 81mm instead of 60mm. Those are the bad boys that inflict most of the devastating results I've been seeing on dug-in troops.

Do you have any links to shots that show the positions as the enemy would have "seen" them, as opposed to standing right behind the thing looking down into it? As you know, photographic "evidence" can be deceptive. Most photos are taken well after the action and are posed for dramatic effect, not authentic illustrations of tactical drill. Consider some of the shots included in CMBN itself -- the GI with the grease gun sitting with his ear right next to the barrel of a water-cooled Browning. EDIT: I'm sure the inexperienced GIs arriving in Normandy committed some entrenchment faux pas. I'm equally sure the Germans taught them the hard way how to do it properly....

While it's indeed a trivial matter for a trained WWII mortarman (and observer) to "drop a pickle in a bucket at 500m", thus allowing a light mortar to kill infantry in open holes given enough time and ammo, that assumes they know where the bucket is (i.e. the observer has the target under direct observation, relatively free of obstruction). In those cases, the target has only 3 alternatives: (a) kill the shooters / FOs, ( withdraw to less readily observed terrain © dig in deeper and roof over the dugouts so that only heavy shell direct hits will kill them and the mortars cause only pinning and shock. In hilly areas, that kind of direct observation could happen more often, and explains the particular horror of the Hurtgenwald (sitting in the bottom of a valley filled with scraggly pines, surrounded on 3 sides by enemy FOs), or numerous valleys in Italy (which is also more sparsely vegetated). In not-quite-so-radically-hilly Normandy, this also explains much of the importance ascribed to seizing / holding the various heights around Saint Lo and Caen. It also explains much of the popularity of "reverse slope" defenses which deprive the enemy FOs of the ability to look into your holes. So the dramatic "overkill" observed in the game seems to me to derive not from some problem with the modeled accuracy or speed of the mortar teams / FOs, but from: (1) non-moving infantry in good concealment terrain, even dug-in, are far too easy to spot with precision, at a distance. Spotting seems to be all-or-nothing; once a unit is spotted, the spotting unit invariably knows its position down to the meter. Pickle, meet bucket. Reality is of course far more tenuous; you "spotted" muzzle flashes, or a helmet bobbed up, or just sensed something moving in the direction the shooting is coming from. (2) excessive lethality of non-direct mortar hits against dug-in or comparably covered infantry, particularly those in buildings or wooden bunkers (honestly, units in the latter should be essentially impervious to light mortar fire -- the weakness seems to be the vision slits). Suppression and shock, yes. Wounds, not so much, at least not so quickly. I have watched medium mortars breach a hedgerow in 2 minutes; that kind of demolition simply wasn't possible with ordinary frag rounds (unlike gun shells which plow into the earth before detonating). One tweak that might help a lot is to have entrenched infantry prefer to fight (shoot and spot) prone, as opposed to sitting up so much and exposing 50% of their bodies to incoming of all kinds. They seem to "take a knee" even when their position already has a good field of fire. Another fix would be to radically decrease the spottability of entrenchments from "vehicle" class to "infantry" class. Right now, entrenched infantry are spotted about 3x as fast as unentrenched infantry in the same terrain. Light and medium mortar fire, or any direct fire weapon for that matter, simply shouldn't be able to clean out a concealed and dug in position so fast at combat ranges. It's a real game unbalancer. FWIW.