sfhand

An interesting tidbit, re: tank riding infantry, can be found here: http://www.militaryhistoryonline.com/wwii/articles/hedgerowbreakout.aspx ... Between the 19th and the 25th of July, the 22nd Infantry and Combat Command A's 66th Armored Regiment conducted mock attacks and rehearsals in preparation for Operation Cobra. Tankers conducted classes on the proper distribution of main-gun and machine-gun fire and the correct way to use the rhinoceros hedge cutters mounted on 75 percent of the 66th's tanks. Platoons from the 22nd Infantry constantly practiced tank-infantry coordination with the 66th Armored. Infantry units learned how best to mount, dismount, and ride on tanks and taught their soldiers how to use the new external telephones mounted on most of Combat Command A's tanks. Infantrymen also found ways to camouflage themselves with vegetation while riding on the Sherman’s. Leaders generally found that infantrymen easily adapted to the new tasks involved in working with armor. ... I've got to wonder why the infantry would want to camouflage themselves with vegetation while riding the Shermans if there was no enemy around.

Troops on tanks are entirely inappropriate for CMBN and most especially for the CW module...

Doesn't the game already make those calculations when the soldiers are walking? My understanding is that every round is tracked and when a round comes in contact with a polygon in non-abstracted situations a hit occurs. So how does having tank-riders change any of this?

You could if I wasn't a practitioner of tabbed browsing... I was reading the thread in one tab while refreshing the main page in the other. :cool::cool::cool:

Well you got me to read the other thread in its entirety which means you owe me big time now...

Which brings up a quick question, hopefully not a repeat, are piats going to be able to fire from within buildings?

Bimmer... you are an evil evil man... Thanks!!!!

Thanks ian...

I too was unwilling to base my actions on my assumptions. Like a previous poster I took a look at the schreck team and wondered about possible enemy vehicles. Even choosing a careful approach got me to the Inn first which, for me, turned into a less than ideal situation. But my main reason for posting here is to say you put up a great AAR and to ask you how you do your graphics (the lines and arrowheads look much better than anything I could manage which is a main reason I didn't provide graphics).

My first CMx2 tournamenta and my first ever AAR. Sorry no pictures, maybe next time. Written from my Bunker deep in Axis territory. First off, many thanks to Bimmer for the time and effort in setting up this tournament. I entered after the original bracket was filled and he was kind enough to start a second bracket. Keeping my gratitude in mind, the following is my DAR/AAR for the opening round. When I first looked at the setup my initial take was that I was not in a favorable position. All of the objectives required that I move across open space to approach them whereas The allied player had a nice bocage screen to allow them closer access and effective support. With that in mind, coupled with my briefing's directive to not engage unless I had tactical superiority, I decided to keep my platoon together with the exception of my over-watch and rear security force. I set up my mg team (over-watch) behind the bocage at a turn in the road just outside my setup zone where it had LOF down the length of the road to the crossroad objective. I sent a scout team through the haystack field toward that objective as well. After giving the scout team a one turn lead I sent the rest of its squad after it. A turn later I send the other 2 platoons that way. I purposefully didn't send the HQ unit with them for 2 reasons. The first is that it had a -2 leadership value so I questioned its value in a morale sense, and the second is that I was using those 3 guys plus a shreck team , with eyes on the farm complex and a small target arc, to provide rear security for the over-watch team. After establishing a foothold in the x roads buildings contact was made in the form of GI’s coming up the sunken portion of the road with support from, you guessed it, behind the bocage. Unfortunately it happened right as I was sending a split squad further past the x roads and the guys were caught in no-man's land with 2 guys dying and the other 2 hugging the earth. I decided the earth huggers were toast no matter what and sent them on toward the road hoping that they would be able to at least take out one or two GI’s from their elevated rear position before they wrote the big check. They did not and their check bounced... My guys in the x roads Inn fared no better. Between the GI’s in the road, those behind the closest bocage, and those behind the bocage down the road by the farm complex (his over-watch?), my guys were soon either dead, surrendered, or routed. My starting belief that I'd rather be behind bocage shooting at guys in a building rather than the other way around seems correct, at least for the way I play the game. But, as I told Ken (ck3), in Rumsfeldian terms, one doesn't play a scenario with the situation one wishes for; one plays a scenario with the situation one is given. I didn't sign up to win, I signed up to play and have a good time and that has happened. As I write this I see the end coming soon. In real life my guys would have abandoned the mission long ago when their losses started to mount and I have little stomach for sending them to their doom in a lost cause. (At the time of this writing – during the game - things looked grim and I assumed defeat) After the shock of the initial slaughter at the inn/crossroads I took a couple of actions to further my interests. Firstly, I decided to go to any length to free the captured soldiers. My intel was very sketchy so my actions had mixed results. I had one squad that was about 2/3 strength (behind the bocage screen between the axis spawn point and the inn), the others were eliminated except for the hostages. My HQ, schreck, and LMG were intact. Since Ken adeptly used smoke to defeat the effectiveness of the LMG I decided to move it into the rear security over-watch position (the bocage alley just off the axis spawn point) replacing the schreck team which I was pulling up to apply a little HE to the Amis holding my guys hostage in the inn. The 2/3 squad held its position while the schreck team sprinted to join them. Some of the GI’s in the Inn were killed by the subsequent schreck rounds and a group of them gathered outside in the area between the two inn buildings and the outbuilding. Unfortunately for the GI's, I used to play a lot of Quake and am very familiar with using the Quake rocket launcher effectively, i.e., taking advantage of the splash damage by targeting the schreck team on the small outbuilding the GI's were next to. I felt the time was right to try and liberate my guys so I had the schreck team target the outbuilding while giving my 2/3 squad orders to advance to the front door of the inn. The splash damage worked well, too well, because rather than going in the front door I decided to enter the secondary building and try to mop up the dazed guys outside; a bad decision as it turns out. You see, Ken had more GI’s upstairs in the secondary building. They mowed down all but one of my 2/3 squad. I was pretty sure this was the end. I left my 2/3 survivor alone in a dazed state, he may have even started buddy aide on his wounded comrades when suddenly a couple of GI’s come running out of the secondary inn building. The survivor exacts quick revenge for his lost squad-mates I send the schreck team into the inn to free the hostages from the 2nd floor of the inn and notice a GI running away. The next turn I send my heroic survivor in pursuit of the running GI. Bang, dead, from more GI’s in the secondary inn building. My schreck team and/or my recovered hostages had some grenades so I ordered area attacks on the secondary inn building which either killed or drove off the GI’s there. During this action, Ken tried flanking my 2/3 squad when they were still behind their bocage. My HQ over-watch unit saw them and killed most of them pretty quickly. At some point, not really sure of the exact details, he tried to move on my over-watch position (unintentionally?) and quite a few GI’s were mowed down with a couple surrendering. I went from certain defeat to having some hope. I needed to seal the deal on those hostages! I sent schreck team to the field and orchard objectives furthest from the Axis spawn point, then brought them back to crawl out to the orchard objective between the farm and inn. Meanwhile I sent my recently liberated pair back to the over-watch position, but they got there too late. I tried to move my HQ team to the other end of the sunken lane/over-watch position because there was a breach in the bocage there and I didn't want to be flanked. Unfortunately they got there too late and 2 out of the 3 of them were victims to grenades. The survivor routed out of the lane. My LMG team fell next. And finally the HQ survivor. The surrendering GI’s changed their minds. So there I was... yes, I love “there I was” stories. So, there I was... about 3 or 4 minutes to go with 4 surviving soldiers and my opponent in the area of the bulk of the objectives. I sent my guys through a gap in the bocage and circled away from the enemies last known positions and proceeded to touch as many farm objectives as I could. After watching the final turn I expected to lose by points in a draw, which I would have considered a victory at the 15 minute mark of the game. Instead I advance because of one casualty. I feel funny advancing at this point; in many ways Ken played a much better game than I did. I guess my motto applied itself to the game in this instance: I'd rather be lucky than good.

Someone hasn't been paying attention to current pricing...

Kudo's to the h2hh devs, this thing rocks! Personally, as one who plays multiple oppo's I find setting up a dropbox for each oppo and pointing the gamefile at it via rightclick/editgame to be superior to having a dropbox created for each scenario (sometimes I play the same scenario against multiple oppo's).

I'll put it in our Farm dropbox and email you the password.

A condensed version of the action leading up to the video... Team spots stug, great flank shot opportunity... Stug disappears team engages 88 (bullets going through stug? while stug rotates, i.e. is moving which should make it easier to spot)... Stug reappears as seen in clip... Stug disappears again (have to check but maybe the soldier spotting is hitting the dirt) Money question, how in the heck can they spot the 88 and not the stug?

Hey... found myself in a situation where my AT team had a perfect flank shot on a stug it spotted with an 88 directly behind it. Somehow they lost sight of the stug and were firing on the 88 when this happened. (Warning, this is a 211MB video file, it is high quality and only a few seconds long.) http://dl.dropbox.com/u/25076297/CM%20Normandy%202012-01-16%2019-29-54-18.avi I don't know what's going on under the hood, but for them to lose sight of the stug when it is presenting a perfect flank shot is a drag when one considers that it reappears with it's gun and frontal armor facing them. At the beginning of the next turn, I gave them target orders on the stug (what the heck, suicide I know) and it disappeared again a second into the turn. The next turn I end up telling the AT team to back out of there (I'm waiting on my oppo to see what happened to them). Anyway, this seems rather bizarre and counter intuitive so I figured I'd post it and see what you think.

I've been slow to join this party but now that I have I want to thank you for this jewel of a program... it is making pbem (pbdb) much easier. So... Thanks!

I'm not going to be able to get started until Saturday yet I am already wilting under the pressure of my opponents psy-ops...

If you get another 16 I'd like to be one of them... sfhand(at)gmail.com

Many thanks!

Thanks for pointing me to the mod/utility! Unfortunately the instructions mention a brz file that is not included in the package... any suggestions?

Japanzer, like everyone else I think this is an awesome tool. I have one tangential question, after watching the import video I noticed a link to a unit/rank info script. Have you released this? If so, where can one get a copy? thanks, sfhand

I'm currently a 99% pbem player. In every one of my ongoing games I'm (mis)managing at least 2 Co's of infantry and some armor spread across a large front. There is no way I could effectively (mis)manage my forces without replay; there is simply too much going on in any given turn (especially when the "questionmark icon" is so generic, i.e. not knowing what type {armor, infantry} of unit it represents)

From my perspective none of your suggestions or examples are superior to the current implimentation. When I want detailed information about my unit, including the exact location of each member of the unit, I click on it's icon. That seems simple and straight forward to me.

Never been a problem for me... I'd rather see time spent allowing a <shift + mouse wheel> type of command that lets me control which adjacent action spots my other teams will occupy.

Reading this thread has made me aware of the seemingly common perception that UI design is easily done. Some have said that solutions rather than criticism should be offered. I am going to be brief: my wife has, for decades, been very well paid to be a user interface designer for products ranging from software to automobiles. A large part of her time is spent in research, observing a large number of users as they interact with the product and interviewing them about their use of the products, testing assumptions and theories, brainstorming, and applying sound design theory. Successful UI design isn't as simple as some would like to believe...