Broken

Also true moving German 75mm infantry guns. They don't appear to be break-dancing, just very drunk.

Yes, it does matter what the costs are intended to reflect. If the cost represented the economic cost to "build" the unit then a vanilla Sherman would be 1/10 the cost of a Panther, judging by their relative production quantities and not counting crews. If the costs are supposed to reflect relative effectiveness, then Shermans should be discounted in price relative to Panthers by this measure as well. But by how much? In a strictly head-to-head anti-armor sense, the Sherman should be discounted by a lot. In an anti-infantry sense, the Sherman was as good as a Panther, and shouldn't be discounted at all. WillLight's idea of a QB market is intriguing. Let the market set the price. Not sure how you could implement it though.

If the "optimal" QB unit purchase quickly converges on Panthers to the exclusion of all other German Armor, regardless of tactical circumstances, then they are obviously under-costed. But the optimal QB purchase always converges. How quickly and to how few units determines the lifespan of a game like CMBN, at least for head-to-head QB purposes. CM is similar to the card game Magic in that regard. A new Set of Magic cards comes out and Magic players race to find the optimal card decks. The more optimal decks there are and the longer it takes to find them, the greater the longevity of the Set and the more money Magic presumably makes.

More control when cherry-picking QBs. Better mortars than CMBO. And of course, all the CMSF improvements over CMBO. Excellent scenario designs.

I don't claim to know enough about WWII TOEs to state definitively that US Inf Co HQs only had one radio operator and carried binoculars, but it is the only HQ in the game with this peculiar organization of two radio operators and no binoculars. I assume it is a typo. Likewise with the US Scout Teams hauling around 2 demolition charges. I suppose it could be handy in game terms, but it doesn't seem likely that demo charges were standard kit for scouts. I assume this is a typo as well.

Presumably, the guy on the left is the officer (captain). Unless US company headquarters use different radios, (two man instead of one man), than the rest of the US HQ units, I would assume it is a "typo". The extra radio operator should be replaced with a binoculars-equipped spotter. As it is, US Inf CO HQ units are the most expensive HQ unit in the game (44 points for vanilla) and they are half blind to boot (without any binoculars).

What Blackcat said.

Must be that advanced German technology. They all carried iPhones.

Some mysteries in unit makeup: Why do US Infantry Company HQ units have two radio operators (for one radio)? Why does this same HQ have no binoculars, unlike every other HQ? Why do US scout teams carry two demolition charges? A bit odd for scouts, or am I missing something?

I have had the "stray" squadmate occur in both CMA and CMBN. One pixeltruppen gets detached from his mates and has to be rounded up. It's not always possible, but often moving the unit back to the stray will causes it to rejoin.

Yes, we are almost back to CMBO HMGs, meaning not worth the purchase cost. Unless their effectiveness is boosted by whatever means, HMGs and MMGs will be stripped from most people's Quick Battle purchases. This is unfortunate, since MGs add a lot of richness to infantry tactics. Battlefront might be a little leery of making MGs too effective. There were a lot of complaints in this forum during the transition from CMBO to CMBB about how tough it was on the attack with all those nasty MGs out there.

The German 75mm and 150mm field guns can be used in indirect fire mode, even when on-map.

There was a very handy tool in the old Shrapnel games which allowed you to see all points visible from a given spot with one click which caused all points not visible to be shaded. But there is a useful method to approximate this in CMBN. Plot a move command line to the point X you want to see. Click on the move command line to select it. Next select the target command. Use that line to locate all points visible from point X.

The bulk of my casualties in "Breaking the Bocage" (half way through the scenario) have been friendly fire from my tanks using Target Light.

14.7 nanoseconds.

From the latest version of CM:A, acquiring 5.45mm makes the first ammo bar go up, and acquiring 7.62mm (either x39 or x54) makes the second bar go up. It was different in earlier versions of CM:A and the demo, which was when the manual was written. I agree that the CMBN interface looks like an improvement.

In CM:A, the 1st bar is for 5.45mm and the 2nd is for 7.62mm small arms. As you noted, the other two bars are for grenades. Crewed MG ammo, on the other hand, has no bar representation. MG rounds remaining are listed on the ammo tab, just as for other crewed weapons and vehicles.

WWII weapons may have been less lethal than in CMSF, but the units back then were packed much more densely. Historically, formations have become more spread out as firepower has increased. Since a modern platoon can put out the firepower of a WWII company, it can cover a defensive front equal to a WWII company. More, if you factor in more lethal arty, etc. Also, tactical doctrine back then encouraged more densely packed infantry assault formations than is true today. These formations did not have the luxury of advancing under armor in an AFV. The net result is roughly the same lethality per soldier in battle. Actually more, since highly casualty rates were tolerated in that era than are today. Consider that there were more US KIA in a few weeks in Normandy than in Iraq and Afghanistan over 10 years.

Yep. That's what I missed most in CMSF, the PBEM QBs against fellow humans. Especially the roll yer own TOEs.

The King Tiger is fun, but in reality it was a waste of engineering and manufacturing resources. The attrition rate due to breakdown and lack of fuel was appalling. In the Ardennes Offensive, particularly in KG Pieper, the Royal Tigers had a higher attrition rate to all causes than either the Panther or even the Mark IV. It was just too massive a lump of metal for the engine technology of the time. Kind of like Shaq O'Neal: great to have if you can ever get him out on the court.

Agreed. I don't get the kevetching about WEGO from some of the "Realtime" players. The claim is WEGO allows too much micro-management. Just the opposite in my experience. If something unexpected happens in Realtime, you can instantly react. Not so in WEGO: you have a minutes worth of agony before you can issue new orders. A "realistic" chain of command should have delays.

Even in CM1, the solution to highly concentrated infantry is a highly concentrated arty barrage. Concentrated armor is a realistic and effective tactic against opposing armor, at least in CM1 and the earlier versions of CM2.

Indeed. However, bayonets were very useful for keeping the cavalry at bay during the era when cavalry was a decisive arm. Cavalry, of course, was primarily armed with melee weapons. In that era, many infantry-on-infantry bayonet charges were conducted. Only a small fraction of them resulted in actual contact. The usual result was one side or the other broke and ran. One exception to the rule was Borodino, where many melee combats between infantry transpired. Of course, when your musket has expended it's one shot, your bayonet or rifle butt is all you have left. The US Marines still train with Pugil sticks, a surrogate form of bayonet training. This is done to instill psychological hardening, not in anticipation of actual bayonet fighting.

Great to see so many of the familiar names back. Amazed that so many are still playing CM1. I loved that series, but I hit the wall in 2004. CMSF was very good, but just didn't hit the same gut resonance somehow.

I remember a conversation concerning the German Mark IV gunners targeting M4 turrets instead of hulls as a result of AI tune-up. I wasn't aware something similar had been done for US gunners targeting Panthers, but I will take a look.