Agua

Love the subdued terrain Vein. Thanks a bunch. I'm going to sub out the darker plowed fields that Patboy looks to be putting together, but other than that, just loving it.

Found this to be far easier than A Delaying Action. Replayed it once. Learned the first time that all the smoke and timing of split team inf is not going to get them across the bridge in a useable state to eliminate the deep defenses. The first defenses in the plowed fields were too busy cowering from the 105s to bother with the tanks. I was back decimating the second line before the barrage ended. Thoroughly clean the back of those hedges, then proceed to the hill and slowly hunt your way along the front and side of it, outside of the objective zone. Yes, there were a few faust shots and a couple shreks, but the distance between the tanks and the hedges were such that all they did was expose themselves - distance too great for a lucky 1 off kill for them.

The plowed field looks FAR more like what I'm accustomed to seeing as far as texture and color. However, the sort of bright fields that come in the stock game appear to be the color of the plowed fields in Normandy. Nevertheless, I want the darker fields.

SPOILER ******** Your engineers are going to croak, so accept it. Run them up to the bridge, get them to clear the wire and mark mines on both sides of the bridge. You'll be lucky if there are 10 total left alive. Get your veteran FO to the top of a little rise in the field on the left fronting the stream. Get your regular FO to the highest point on the right side of the map, which will be in a field. You have to eyeball it to recognize it, but its there. Move some heavy machine guns down to the small hedgerow fronting the stream on the right hand side. It's a small hedgerow about middle way between the single road and the right hand map edge. They're going to get killed to, but they'll cause the first defensive line to reveal itself and between the two FOs and the MGs by the stream, you'll be able to locate all the AT guns. Use the 105 for single point target, as directed by the Vet and/or reg FO. It will come in and wipe those out quickly, so be ready to cease fire immediately. Look over on the right behind the patch of woods approximately 150 meters beyond the stream. There's an AT over there with sandbags. Your Vet FO should be able to see the sandbags at least. Call in a mortar strike with whatever else you have for single point target. Once those start to fall, get your tanks on the road. There's a mine on the far end of the objective area after you clear the bridge, so shunt them off to the right as soon as they get off the bridge. Run tanks on hunt all over the back end of the map while using the remaining 105s to decimate the first defensive line along the front of the plowed fields. German AI will surrender and you should get a total out of this, as your losses will pretty much be limited to the engineers and HMG units the AI pulverized with arty.

Hope to see this setting return soon; provided great, ahem... "atmosphere".

Just finished. Great finale. The "intel" combined with the briefing helped immensely on this one.

Blackcat - hell, do over. Through La Vallee is the only viable way to do a total on this. The other end is just pure hell with wire, a hidden MG, several bottlenecks. On the first try, I managed to get whatever mangled remains of crippled teams (not squads) to make the road on the right side, but there was not enough firepower to do anything other than be eliminated once they made it.

Yeah, if hiding men behind the wall suffer no casualties absent rifle grenades, then its exposure. If the prone soldiers were closer, and I'm assuming here that more of their body would be exposed to fire at closer range, there should be a marked difference.

Well, less chance they'll be spotted and shot up by units outside their arc.

Post the results if you get around to it.

Okay, cough it up now.

Took a quick peak before heading off to work this morning. Beautiful and the terrain appears faithful to the original, as I recall it, anyway.

The Devils' Descent Campaign is a nice one. Counterattack at Landstadt is as well. Haven't gotten aroud to playing any others yet so there may be lots of good small ones available.

I think your cover arc f'd you in that one GaJ. What I've noticed, though, is that if you come upon them from a direction other than that which they're facing, the troops inside are pretty much toast. On the other side, I've had an entire squad, save 1 guy, get mowed down by 1 light machine gunner in reverse slope that somehow survived the opening barrage in Busting the Bocage.

Just started the last mission, and I'm a little disappointed to see it end. I'll miss seeing Dog, Easy & Fox companies. A couple of those squads were comprised of cold blooded killers, racking up close to 40 kills, bunkers and a tank or two. Has been very, very enjoyable. I found nearly all to be challenging, esp Hedgerow Hell and Le Ham.

Send immediately!

YAY! Thanks Tom.

Never ran into that. You sure you didn't just choose "human select" for unit purchase of one of the sides rather than choose that side for play?

Outstanding. I miss all those great scenes playing RT.

Le Ham - Ran into the same problem with pre-planned arty. It's a bug and isn't supposed to be happening. There are two oddities with this bug. First, it doesn't seem to be happening on all machines. I really didn't notice it on any scenario until "A Holding Action". the 81 and 75s were given the pre-planned barrage area fire orders and they utilize spotting rounds. Of course, if the unit calling the barrage can't see the rounds fall, the barrage will be way off target. I sent my save of the startup to akd, and he could not get it to do the same thing. I thought, "huh, well maybe just a one off thing", and tried it immediately after reading his comment to me. Same result. I replied by e-mail and he tried it over, and over and over, and could not get the pre-planned arty to do the spotting routine. Finally, I fired up the setup one more time and just took screen shots of the arty dialog box showing it took nearly 5 minutes for FFE to be called on the 75mm. It happens every time, without fail, on that setup for me, and apparently, never happens for akd. The second oddity is I really didn't notice this happening in any scenario or QB prior to reaching A Holding Action in the campaign. I haven't looked into it any further, but I may try another scenario to see if it's just some quirky think with the campaign or if there's a larger problem here. [Edited to include the following:] No, it isn't limited to this campaign. Worked perfectly on Road to Berlin, then the spotting routine occured on A Delaying Action.

:thumbs up:

Didn't it cross anyone's mind that, "hey, maybe we should call it 'Z Delaying Action'"? That's one tough SoB to be greeted with at the top of the scenario list.

1) Keep C2 intact (which pretty much necessitates); 2) Keep the platoon together; 3) Suppress; and 4) Maneuver. Don't make big bounds. Use hunt to get to action spots which you haven't had occupied yet. I went down the right side of the map to the river. Of course ran into Germans on the opposite side. Just poured it on em and slowly advance one squad after another back across the length of the river to the ford. From there, there's were a few teams it seems like, but you've got wider field of view and maneuver is easier.

Had a couple of the series. Just outstanding AI.

Definitely, gamey.