LongLeftFlank

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.

Agreed. I don't even like the enemy casualty crosses showing up (and those can be removed via mod). There's a FOW mod out there (by Mord, I think) that transforms all infantry icons (MG, etc.) to a generic infantry symbol, so at least you won't be able to differentiate unless you actually click on the spotted enemy unit. Of course, you won't be able to differentiate among your own either.

Well now you have the Cubist Anti-Fascist Volunteers for your Spanish Civil War module!

Seems to me that given enough gumption, PTO fanbois should be able to mod up a creditable representation once the Commonwealth module comes out. Strip the Brits of their vehicles, mod faces (M1A1TC did some North Koreans for CMSF -- there's a start), uniforms and Airborne helmets, set morale to Fanatic and you've got a reasonable surrogate "Japanese" force to face the US (or British) Army (remember, more US Army soldiers fought in the PTO than Marines). No clue whether squad size compares, I'm sure someone knows. Bren for Nambu, 2 inch mortars stand in for "knee mortars" and Tojo's yer uncle! Yes, your infantry are lugging SMLE .303 instead of the underpowered Arisaka .25 but ya can't have everything. I gather Japanese artillery was quite good, on the German model. Oh, and buy lots and lots of snipers. For tanks, you'll likely need to wait until the final "funnies" module when French H39s or PzIIs / 38(t) come along to stand in for the Type 97.

Enclose the buildings and their gardens with authentic walls and hedges and they won't look so odd. For good measure add a crate, sacks or bench. Simple enough.

I used to delight in saying such things to my American friends until one pointed out that the Latin from which these words were taken does NOT include "u" and that moreover all the Brits (and their offshoots) are doing is advertising the sad fact that a thousand years ago we lost a war to the French. Never felt quite so self-righteous after that zinger....

Punk rocker, poet, painter (and Late Empire uniforms grog) Billy Childish. The Youtube links posted above explain all. Thee Headcoats is his most famous band, but Buff Medways is another. Basically, if the Peng Challenge had a soundtrack, Billy would provide it..... If that ain't enuff, Google or wiki "Steady the Buffs" for the regimental history.

More than you think, mate....

Nice work! Putting a "gapped" high bocage abutting the side of a 2-3 story house is a little dense for ivy up close but doesn't look too bad at a distance. It also provides very good additional cover for the ground floor -- bocage is a lot sturdier than stone and brick walls. I'm using this expedient to toughen up some of the walls of my fortified chateau.

Wow, nice looking map! One reco, FWIW: make sure units have little to no LOS deep into, much less right through, those two patches of woodland flanking the Abbey. Those are going to be critical tactical terrain in the game. Right now, I am sad to say the plain CMBN forest tiles + trees aren't accurately representing the dense thickets (young trees and bushes) at the woods edges that in summer heavily obstruct LOS into and out of the interior. They are more representative of "interior" forests where sunlight is sporadic. The method I recommend is to use the hedge tiles that have gaps in them at various angles to represent the thickets, together with the small "orchard trees" and long grass. More info available in this thread. Good luck! EDIT: Some others have suggested tinkering with the elevations or using bocage instead of hedge but I don't personally endorse those solutions as thickets generally offer very little cover (but great concealment). You make the call. EDIT: Oh wait -- are those orchards? Never mind the thicket in that case, but they should definitely have bocage around them.

Yes, buttoned AFVs spotting infantry is on my own Top Three Things To Be Improved list.

As opposed to this (minute 13:25)?