gunnergoz

Yep, sure need this stuff in a Wiki or at least the posts copied into one stickied thread.

Reference please? The reason I ask: I commented in another thread a few days ago that I had almost stopped using cover arcs except to limit the fire of scouts and HQ's...and also that I found that letting the Tac AI select the targets seemed to work best for me. I did not espouse this for anyone else, was simply commenting on the limitations I found inherent in the Tac AI in its current state of development. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1283752#post1283752 see post #43 - that was me, not BFC. I have yet to see Steve or anyone else representing BFC in any way promulgate the idea that the covered arc command in the game should almost never be necessary. Rather, I recall Steve saying that the covered arc was being looked at for improvements, not replacement or deletion. Here's the last comment I could find from Steve on the issue: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1284643#post1284643 What I do perceive is a certain amount of - lets say - strange hysteria coming from a few posters on the issue of player control and with it a totally unjustified fear that BFC is somehow dumbing down the game or its controls. The contrary is true. It very much reminds me of the rumor mongering over the "Lepage Glue Gun" in Catch-22. It is a good idea to backtrack a bit before making certain claims.

Ballsy, maybe stupid behavior, but definitely resulted in interesting photos. http://scotthaefner.com/beyond/mothball-fleet-ghost-ships/

I'm going to take a WAG and submit the possibility that the "planning" is where to move the gun to next.

Glad to see you are enjoying the game so much. That's what its all about. As to HT's, if that's your play style, who is to criticize you. I don't use them that way but I'm an old historical fogey and basically use them for transport and then hide them, much like they did during the war - although the Germans apparently did use their recon h/t's more aggressively and I would use those 20mm h/t's that way if I played German. If you were to play against another human, you might want to get agreement on such things beforehand, though.

The restricted 360 degree cover arc just stops them from shooting distant targets that may not have even spotted them, and giving away their position for sure.

Rather than tinker with the game's levels of AI competence or artificial reinforcement, I prefer we just let new players learn the hard way, with all the game features as is (they can start with borg spotting on Recruit level, though) and give them scenarios where they just have fewer, and less lethal enemies and enemies sure to break sooner than their own troops. I'd prefer BFC spend its programming resources making the overall game Tac AI smarter, not spending time and effort making different AI levels just to accommodate varying player competence levels or preferences.

I'm too unqualified as to either 1 or 2 to answer them, but I will give you a big Bravo Zulu if you do get something started. It is something we can all benefit from and can potentially help the newbies a lot.

In real life, you are not calling the same people when you order 60mm mortar fire vs 105mm howitzer support. Not all of them are on the same page of the battle book, so to speak. CMN abstracts the various radio nets, frequencies, and fire direction centers so much that we either forget this, or may not be aware of it at all.

There seems to be a priority list that we don't know about (or at least that I'm not aware of) with respect to what will be picked up first during buddy aid. It would be really nice, BFC, if you could give us some hints about this prioritization.

When you can see religious figures in the cheese smears, you have a winner and can clean up on EBay.

The nice thing about the TRP is that you can place them on anticipated approach routes and terrain funnels that the enemy must negotiate. They may not be there on the first turn, maybe not until the 10th, but you will be ready when they arrive. Otherwise, if you only pre-plan a barrage on an anticipated point they will be at, your timing has to be perfect. Also the TRP is terrific to help you plan your ambushes, since your units firing at/near enemy close to a TRP get an accuracy bonus. If you have an observer in sight of the TRP, your mortars and artillery can be very accurate indeed when they finally are called in.

Yes, those issues are being debated in depth elsewhere in other threads, which is why I purposefully ignored them and pointed out what IMHO the player needs to be doing tactically to help him have a good game in spite of the minor glitches that are still being worked out. Bugs are temporary, but bad tactical thinking is forever.

Remember that the victory locations are magnets for the AI troops and if they are heading there, they will find your troops deployed nearby. Best to flank ambush the approach routes to the victory point than to protect the victory point itself...you can always "claim" that at the very end with whatever you have handy. Keep your troops entirely out of sight until the enemy comes into their kill zone, i.e. behind trees, buildings, etc. That way the enemy has no idea they are there until you open fire.

I managed to get the American forces all the way across the Huzzar! map using roads and trails, in column and without traffic jams by making sure that they were spaced out to start (each succeeding vehicle gets a 5 sec delay, cumulative to the preceding one's delay) and making them slow down for turns as noted above. I place vehicles that need to go fast at the very head (recon jeeps for instance) and the others may have to be staggered over two turns (I play WEGO on Veteran level BTW). The things that make you have to hold up the column (like enemy sighted, etc) are where you have to react immediately to re-plot the remaining vehicles so they don't back up and your column ends up all herding around trying to find AI-designed alternative routes. I try to keep at least 2-4 vehicle length separation between vehicles in the column. Most of my columns move at Normal and Slow during turns, although I will use Hunt for those at the head of the column to ensure they don't proceed further into a potential ambush.

When you see them "scheming" its time to turn off the game.

Possibly because the tank crews are often armed with at least 1 SMG class weapon, usually a grease gun. The code may see the possibility of competence with that one weapon and lets the crews that didn't bail with one, pick up an SMG along the way.

Yes, what makes it even more interesting is that, for much of the war, while the Germans and UK were playing high-stakes Blackjack, the US was playing Bridge...

We definitely need a wiki with all these gems in it.

Thank you Steve, V1.01 sounds like it is going to be chock-full-o-nuts.

Don't know about the Tac AI - I try not to test its smarts too much except where I know what it is likely to do - but I always limit my 2 man scout sections to a very small 360 firing arc so they are not tempted to engage in firefights when I want them as unobtrusive as possible. I find that works well and they don't draw fire as often as they do when they are cocked and locked for all comers at all ranges. I guess the sound of a Garand safety latch switching to "off" carries a long way...

The Ranger platoon had 1 platoon leader, one "special weapons" support section (10 men with 60mm mortar and bazooka) and one assault section (10 men, rifles with one LMG.) Sorry if that was not clear from my previous post. The Ranger companies had just the two platoons and an HQ element of only 1 officer and 3 EM - a very sparse, results-oriented organization.

I suspect that BFC gives more credit to veteran accounts than many might guess, but they are also very scientifically minded and data-driven which makes them temper their results based upon the latter, slightly adjusted to account for the former when possible.

Yep, probably the A6 in game terms. The Ranger platoon's assault section would have 10 men including the LMG, divided into a 5 man assault team and a 5 man LMG team; the platoon support section would have the 60mm mortar and bazooka with 10 men to lug and operate all that. The 21st man was the Platoon leader. Rangers went pretty light and had no organic heavy weapons at the time, though they could always be attached if required. I could not find any TO&E mention of SMG's or BAR's but I'll bet they were present as well if the Rangers had good scrounges over at the QM section. Recall that the Ranger force lost two full battalions at Anzio, KIA or POW in one action where they tried to infiltrate the German lines and all got caught in a swamp drainage ditch like fish in a barrel. Pretty ugly. The Army started to wise up to proper Ranger use after that and saved them for the big pushes like D-Day and not squander them on prolonged campaigns.

AFAIK the Ranger force in this time frame had its battalions composed of six Ranger companies, all identical; each company had two 21-man platoons; each platoon had an assault section and a support section. Platoon weapons included 1 60mm mortar, 1 LMG and at least 1 bazooka.