Broken
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Posts posted by Broken
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BFC think otherwise.
I know what Steve thinks. I think it would not be too difficult coding-wise for the AI to be smarter in it's target selection. The same goes when a tank crew pumps round after round into the same tree or dirt mound when it is aiming at a target beyond.
"Round after Round" and you'll get some turret hits.
At < 100m, they should all be turret hits. At 100m, a Panther turret is bigger in your sights than the entire Panther is at 500m.
It can't. Partly because even 'experienced' gunners (though they'd know the weak bits, maybe) didn't do it. Maybe at the highest level of experience they might, but in a game where you can pick experience levels, having such a step-change in ability available would be an invitation to gaminess. So they haven't implemented it. And if they did, people would just argue about what the conditions would be to warrant 'picking the shot'.
Certainly experienced crews knew what the vulnerable bits were on opponent tanks. Their survival depended on knowing such things. The Germans knew where to hit a Sherman to best brew it up. The Allies knew the Panther front glacis was the worst place to hit it.
Veteran and Crack units can already do many things better than less experienced units. Is that an "invitation to gaminess"? BFC has balanced increased experience with increased cost.
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Hello:
Main problem I have is trying to use the mortars. In this bocage coutryside it is hard for observers to get a LOS. They seem to just be able to see to the next hedgerow. This requires moving the leaders up front and I don't know if that happened in WW II? But even up front, as I said, their LOS seems restricted to the next hedgerow.
Also after getting to the second rows or so or hedgerows I am having another difficulty. The enemy show up as contacts (playing Veteran) but even when near them they seem to stay as contacts. They are in bocage so I assume they are hiding in there?
Also I have a few squads and tanks on a hedgerow hitting the forces opposite and somehow that does not seem to be enough firepower to drive them back. Don't know what I am doing wrong here. It seems I have overwhelming numbers and firepower.
Thanks in advance,
Gerry
Finding good LOS for your spotters is a challenge in this scenario. Are you familiar with how to check LOS from points where you currently have no units? Place a Move waypoint at the point you want to test, highlight that waypoint by clicking on it, and then select the target command. The target line will now indicate the LOS from the new waypoint, not the current unit location. This way, you can find a location where your spotter will see the target you want to hit with your artillery/mortars.
Don't forget to delete your test waypoints or you may have some unpleasant experiences.
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Having run roughly the same scenario a half-dozen times against a score of Panthers, I don't have much confidence in the Sherman's ability to slug it out with Panthers. The M10 seems to do much better. I tend to hold the M10s back under cover and send the Shermans as far around to one side as possible. Only a cross-fire seems to guarantee a satisfactory number of Panther kills. Of course, up close, in town even a 57mm has a chance at a Panther kill, but I've stopped the AI from letting the Panthers drive all the way in to the town/objective.
Yes, it doesn't pay to concentrate your Shermans against Panthers. Spread them out to increase the chance of flank shots. Take quick shots against the German infantry and duck back under cover. Make the Panthers play whack-a-mole. Smoke is your friend.
On the other hand, against PZ IVs, concentrating your Shermans is good.
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If you're playing WeGo its fun to save the game *between turns* just as something bad is about to happen. So you can restart the game and watch your Sherman blow up... or the shot miss... or the suspension get damaged... or the Sherman shoot first... or the exposed commander gets an AP shot to the head. All from reopening and rerunning the same turn over and over.
The number of radically different outcomes to the exact same situation is amazing.
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I just ran a little test. First time I've done this. Three buildings in a row. Small indi house, mid-size modular, and one of the indi cathedral pieces. 200m away I dropped a trench line. Three US rifle squads in the trenchs and one German rifle squad in each house, ground floor. I just hit GO, did nothing else.
- The Allied trenchline seemed the safest bet, though I didn't pay much attention to that end of the map.
- The indi Cathedral building got very few penetrations that I could see. Either bullet ricochets or shots through the windows. It took awhile but eventually one soldier got tagged through a window. Soldiers enjoyed cowering as the incoming fire grew fierce but their morale stayed high.
- Down to the mid-size modular building. A lot more penetrations but a fair number of non-penetrating hits too. Troops did a lot of cowering avoiding the pretty accurate incoming fire, the squad LMG man was the brave one regularly spraying the distant trench line. One guy nailed, I think. Their morale stayed high.
- Third small house 1 floor with attic & windows. Bullets were going through it like swiss cheese. The squad put up a valient fight but their morale dropped and after their third casualty they broke and scooted out the back to lay on the lawn behind the building.
So it does make a difference what building type you're fighting from. There's a lot of small houses on those Normandy village maps and your men are getting small house-level protection. That might be skewing your observations somewhat.
Good info. It would be nice if buildings were tagged Heavy, Medium and Light as far as small arms protection were concerned. At least it would stop some of the incessant wanking about protection provided by buildings.
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Shermans in CMBN can survive even turret hits from Panthers if the angles are right and the distances are not too short.
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It's not. At least not 'on purpose'. It's been said before by BFC reps that all tank shots are aimed at the centre of mass. A string of turret hits is just a string of 'lucky' (your call as to whether that's good or bad luck ) shots.
Center of mass aiming makes sense at long range, but at close ranges a tank gunner should be able to pick where he wants to hit his target.
Would a Sherman 76 gunner bounce round after round off a Panther front hull at 150m, rather than target the turret? Maybe, if he was Green or suppressed, but I would expect an experienced gunner to have some knowledge of his opponent's weak spots.
If the AI could aim at vulnerable points when conditions warrant, that would be an improvement.
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Yeah, I see your point. Unfortunately that's not possible. Trying to track vertical positioning is very, very tricky because inherently all computers have only 2D controls. Buildings are a special exception and I don't think it's possible to do this with Bocage.
Steve
Buildings have the same problem as PO is describing. If you can't see the base of the building, you can't target the building. There are work-arounds, but it kind of dilutes the immersive experience when a tank can't target any part of a two-story building in plain sight because it doesn't have LOS to the base of the building. This happens most often when the base of the building is reverse slope.
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You wouldn't like playing against me.
I've been known to spend an hour or even an hour and a half on a single turn. Most of that though is reviewing the replay so that I know what is actually going on, rather than what I had hoped would be going on. Actually plotting the moves only takes a fraction of that time.Michael
What you said.
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Target Arcs are for marking the area where the enemy will never appear.
Target lines are for marking those enemy units which will vanish one second into the next turn.
Your smoke shells are for injuring your infantry you are attempting to screen.
Spotting rounds are for routing your lead infantry squad.
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What he is saying is that he can "see" the building from the camera view, presumably with the camera located at the HQ's position, but the target-line LOS is blocked.
I find that the camera view and LOS aren't always consistent. Sometimes the camera view is clear and LOS is blocked, and sometimes it is the other way around. For example, even with the camera plane bisecting a tank commanders head, what you see is not always what you get, LOS-wise.
The main causes of inconsistencies are usually objects with fuzzy boundaries, such as foliage and smoke. I can understand why it would be difficult software-wise to get this exactly right.
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I see penetrations from small arms on occasion. I could be wrong, but I think this is bullets going through view ports or vision slits.
Maybe so, but my heart skips a beat whenever I see that Penetration tag pop up over one of my tanks. To find it was due to some lone pistoleer banging away at my tank was WTF funny (except for the injured StuG gunner).
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Grognard contributions:
1) Waypoints on bridges are definitely buggy. Placing a waypoint on a bridge often ends up in the water underneath. Also, selecting a unit near or on a bridge is difficult. I often have to orient the camera so the bridge is out of view and then select the unit.
2) Crew members of crewed weapons firing their small arms at random targets and giving away the position of the crewed weapon (bazooka, mortar, AT gun, MG) is definitely a frustration (as mentioned by others in this thread). The AI should limit this behavior to firing back when fired upon or to firing at VERY close enemy, not at enemy 100+ meters away.
3) Adjustable waypoints, as in CM1, would be a godsend. Having to re-plot a long waypoint-string is a pain. Yes, I know RT players don't plot long waypoint-strings, but WEGO players do.
4) Adjust Fire doesn't reset the countdown to FFE. After adjusting fire on a mission which has entered the Spotting phase, I might get a message saying it will take 4 minutes to adjust fire. Meanwhile the spotting rounds continue to fall on the old target and FFE commences on the old target. If there any rounds left, FFE then continues on the new target. This makes no sense whatsoever, since the same spotter is communicating the spotting results and the adjust request to the indirect fire unit. More sensible behavior would be that an adjust fire request cause spotting to cease, followed by a delay, followed by spotting for the new target and then FFE on the new target.
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Might have been a rifle grenade, you know. Those things can mess you up if they get a lucky hit and they can be missed during a replay in WEGO, let alone overlooked during RT play.
I had a StuG shot at from 50m by a bailed tank crewman armed with a pistol. The result was a "Penetration" and a wounded gunner. The StuG was unbuttoned, so I can understand the shot gunner. The "Penetration" message was a bit disconcerting, however.
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Jings! I go away for a few days...
Cheers for all the comments guys - really interesting to see how differant people play this. I'll respond to some of the main point raised.
There are three differant AI Plans in this one - for both sides. For the US if I recall they attack down several differant centre lines, two of which are variations on a theme, one of which is a wide ball. The main difficulty I had with the attack AI Plans is co-ordinating stuff. Still it sort of works although one of my main gripes with the AI is it's propensity to keep coming on to it's death. Until we get triggers I think this is a game engine limitattion scenario designers just have to be aware of and work around.
FWIW for the wide ball attack - if the German player is slow of the mark the US force can become a real issue as it then has space to fan out. If the german player (as you guys all seem to be) is quick of the mark or IDs this wide ball plan then you can catch the attcking force in a bottleneck. Badaboom - big badaboom.
When I put this together I had thought of three main phases - recon/counter recon; advance to contact; close range fight for the objectives (with some surprises thrown in). So I'm pleased to see and hear that is how it generally pans out. I'm working on a large map with larger forces with the intent to create a multi layer scenario (recce; manouver; attack including long range tank duelling, PAK fronts and close range infantry fighting all at reduced battalion level).
Anyways thanks for all the feedback - really appreciate it - andkeep your comment coming I'm enjoying reading em thanks
Definitely a top notch creation. The map must have taken you forever. The multiple phases of the battle make it seem like three games in one.
Not everyone played as the Germans. My first game, and evidently Gunnergoz's, was as the Americans. It was very creepy encountering all the knocked-out German hardware (at night!) when I first advanced through the river crossings.
My only issue is plotting all the vehicle movement along the narrow roads. It would really help if Battlefront could add a "Copy Waypoints" command which would copy one vehicle's waypoint-string to another vehicle. Then you would only need to plot the first vehicle in a convoy and the rest of the vehicles could attach that waypoint-string to their own. This plus adjustable waypoints (to fix the path of the inevitable vehicle which goes off-course).
Thanks again for an excellent scenario.
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Okay, finally finished this lovely map, although not quite satisfied with the end result (How can 18 knocked out enemy tanks, 15 armored vehicles and 200 infantry lost vs. my 0 lost tank, 5 armored vehicles and 12 infantry casualties just be acceptable?)
I had to make a screenshot of a tight defensive situation...
Who is more stubborn here, the attacker or the (2) defenders? :-)
Uploaded with ImageShack.us
Hilarious. I had two stugs sitting at the same river ford with nearly identical results. The AI was relentless in sending down fresh meat for my "Stug Brothers".
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Doesn't look like many are trying this scenario from the American side. If you are, I'd like to hear your experience and impressions.
I'm about 40 minutes into it and my recon units have killed off the German recon units and their tanks are only now beginning to show up at a distance, in one corner of the map and are slowly beginning to approach the objective that has a farm across the river from it. I already occupy the village, having cleaned out what recon elements were trying to hold it.
It is a little harder as the Americans against the AI, but not much. Total or Major victory is not difficult unless you are really rushing your moves. The Vet Panthers will nail anything within sight, so you have to be careful with your LOS checks, even if you think you are moving your Shermans to a "safe" location. This seems to be generally true in the bocage environment. But the Panthers eventually have to come to you, and you can play the usual flanking tactics at close range.
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The tight windy roads of Normandy are a pain in the butt when it comes to plotting the movement of a large number of vehicles in convoy. Two things would really help this:
1) Adjustable waypoints, as in CM1. This would allow you to fix the waypoint string of a vehicle when it goes wonky without having to delete all waypoints and re-plot them.
2) A Follow Command. It would work as follows: While vehicle A is selected, click on the vehicle B you want to "follow" and all of B's waypoints are added to A's waypoints. This would save tremendous amounts of time when dealing with multi-vehicle convoys on narrow roads.
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105mm/155mm battery direct fire is handy in a pinch but lets not get too enamoured of it. U.S. experience with their towed AT assets was lackluster. They fielded M5 3 inch gun by the battalion yet only managed six tank kills in the whole Normandy theater. Not that they were bad guns, its was just so darned difficult positioning them where they would do some good! 105mm howitzer uses the same gun carriage as 3 inch AT gun and would be just as difficult to place in position. Lacking massed German tank attacks to beat back, 3 inch gun found its utility as a HE chucker in direct fire support of infantry - something the solid shot 57mm gun was inefficient at.
I think JasonC answered your question better than I could. American arty in direct fire was not only quite good in WWII, but also in Korea during the Chinese offensive which overran a number of US units only to be smacked hard when they came within LOS of the 155s. Well trained big gun crews were very effective at long range direct fire. The British and German arty were also tough on armor penetrations that came within sight. The WWII Soviet 122mm guns were designed with a direct fire role in mind, and were effective at it as well.
I think it is a bit of mythology that tanks exploiting a breakthrough would find artillery units easy prey. Best that they stick with destroying C2 and logistical assets.
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Magpie - as a general thing Broken is right that field artillery position were not pushovers. This was particularly true in the US army from my reading of the combat narratives (though the Brits used their 25 pdrs in North Africa in a similar manner, and with success, notably in the first battle of El Alamein). There are several important cases of German tactical break-ins by armor (meaning, front units penetrated but whole depth of the defender's deployment zone not passed through) in which field artillery stopped them. Sometimes it was massed guns of an entire corps firing indirect at "surge" rates of fire, just inundating the attacking formation in HE, stripping of infantry, etc. Examples of that are the last fights after Kasserine, the Mortain counterattack, and the Elsenborn position on the north flank of the Bulge fight. In those cases maneuver elements remained on a front line between the artillery and the attacking armor.
But there are other cases where the intruding tanks went farther, to within direct fire of the battery positions, and were checked by fire from those batteries. Examples are the follow up to the first German breakthrough in the Salerno counterattack in Italy, and some of the battery positions behind "skyline drive" in the center of the Bulge breakthrough. There are also examples where it was SP arty - Priests, not Long Toms - including some of the early Lorraine fighting against the Panzer brigades (alongside 75mm Shermans), and the Heer PDs breathrough along the road to Bastogne during the Bulge. You can find another case (towed 105s) in the early Korean fighting - after TF Smith was overrun, its supporting artillery was much more effective than the maneuver element had been at killing T-34/85s. (On that occasion, they were overcome by numbers eventually - but took out more than their own losses in enemy tanks).
All that said, Cooper citing 155s SP has a different agenda and one that the evidence does not remotely justify. That agenda is trying to claim that much heavier weapons were required to deal with German tanks than the US fleet possessed, as part of his thesis that a 90mm armed main battle tank was a minimum the US should have been fielding.
And the reality is 105s at the gun line - and it generally was 105s when it was a question of direct fire - were not appreciably more effective than the rest of the AFV fleet. 90mm TDs were effective and were also fielded in numbers. And both upgunned British 17 pdr AFVs (Fireflies and Achilles) and US 76mm TDs and Shermans when they had advanced ammo, were quite sufficient for the job.
Yes, the Salerno battle is one where the US artillery were quite effective in a direct fire role. Thanks for presenting such a detailed account!
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Ok, so this is a really good example of why Cooper's book needs to be taken with generous doses of salt, especially when he strays out of his lane.
The attack being discussed occurred on 11 July, when Lehr attacked north towards Carentan/Isigny, into the advancing Americans. Lehr totally had their asses handed to them, and the attack fizzled in less than 12 hours causing a barely noticeable slow down in the US rate of advance. Yet Cooper - with no personal experience relating to this fighting - describes the day as "one of the most critical battle in the battle of Normandy. He also states there were Jagdpanthers present that day. He then goes on to opine that "the 105mm howitzer mounted on the M7 chassis proved to be one of our most effective weapons against German armor."
When he talks about ordnance stuff and and his own - personal - experiences: great. When he starts free forming about anything else: terrible.
Whatever your opinion of Cooper's assessment of the Lehr attack, there 72 M12 SP 155mm in Normandy, 991 being one battalion.
A battalion of M12s were attached to 3 AD in the Ardennes, in which Cooper served, and he is not the only source saying M12s saw direct fire action there.
In any case, there were a number of times in 1943-44 where German attacks did penetrate to the US artillery line. The Panzers usually got the short end of the deal. In fact, throughout the war, whenever armor penetrated to the artillery positions they often had a tough time of it.
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I would like to see more US stuff, like the 105mm howitzer and especially the M12 155mm SP artillery. I would like to be able to create scenarios where the Germans penetrate to the US artillery line, as occurred in a number of instances in Normandy, Lorraine, pursuit across France, and the Ardennes.
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Yes, firing WP rounds at the big cats was not an uncommon tactic. The German crews would sometimes bail out, thinking they were on fire. At the least, they were temporarily blinded, allowing the Sherman a chance to withdraw.
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It's a flawed concept anyway. People tend to buy things based on a variety of reasons, price being one of them. "Gamey" guys will go for the best perceived value for the price, others will buy what they feel is more fun. The two might be completely different and that will affect any data gathering effort.
Steve
Even so, in CMBO there were a few items with prices so out of whack you guys did adjust them. Pupchens for instance.
I've been known to spend an hour or even an hour and a half on a single turn. Most of that though is reviewing the replay so that I know what is actually going on, rather than what I had hoped would be going on. Actually plotting the moves only takes a fraction of that time.
LoS Issues Part XXVIII (Poss Spoilers)
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Are you sure the CO wasn't Green or have a -2 Command rating?
Also, US Company HQs don't have binoculars, which make a big difference in spotting. Your Platoon HQ should be OK in that regard.