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As others have alluded to, that HUNT command (with or without a TARGET ARC) has the potential to make your unit stop along that path. Stopping may not be the best thing. I'll use HUNT, a lot of times with an arc so that, for example, my unit will not continue into that building if the enemy is inside. Short HUNT paths in between QUICK keeps the unit moving but cancels the rest of the move if something unexpected pops up (within the arc, if used).

Perhaps you just had some of the caviar?

Here’s a peak behind the BFC curtain from a long-time Beta tester. (I’m not sure if this is cleared for posting, but what the heck…) At the most recent BFC-Fest, the band was giving me a headache, so I pushed my way out of the mosh pit and walked up to the main house. Steve’s chauffeur pulled the horse-drawn carriage towards me, but I waved him away. I wanted to clear my head and a walk along the half-mile trail up to the house, lit by torches, was just what the doctor ordered. The amplified sound of the band gradually abated, absorbed by the woods, and the BFC manse came into view as I walked along the trail. Yes, I ignored all but one of the strategically placed drinking stops. Clear headed thinking would only be clouded by single malts. Well, except for one or two. Arriving indoors, the muted string quartet provided a gentle contrast to the tinkle of champagne flutes among the many conversations. Spotting Steve, alone by the open french doors to the back gardens, smoking the remnants of a tired cigar, I decided to share my pricing ideas and drove straight towards him. “Steve,” I said, “I’d like to share a new pricing scheme with you.” Never taking his eyes off the distant treeline, he gripped his cigar and wrenched it out of his mouth. “Certainly.” “This’ll be ground-breaking,” I paused. “Give the game away. For free.” He coughed out a cloud of smoke, “What?!? How would that keep the revenue stream flowing?” “Simple. The game is free. The men and tanks are not. If anyone wants to FIGHT with a unit, they’d have to pay for each squad, team, or vehicle. Obviously, pricing would be variable, based on unit effectiveness and rarity. Each scenario would have a fixed price, based on the units in the Order of Battle. Quick Battles would be very price sensitive.” “Players would rack up the units (or scenario) they want. The game would spit out a price and a hash code. Go to the BFC website, paste in the hash, pay by credit card. The website would produce an unlock code, specific to the submitted hash, and they’d be off!” “This would make campaigns that much more special. No more exploratory recon! Every man would count. Who would want to pay for a Tiger tank twice?” He turned towards me and fixed his eyes upon mine. He quickly stubbed his cigar out in the caviar tray being carried by a passing waiter. “You may have something…” And then he strode out the doors onto the deck and continued into the gardens. He was still striding forward as I lost sight of him past the lighting around the fountains. So, this may become the new way. Just sayin’…

Lol...great post. Deleted. Sigh.

You laugh, but THAT is EXACTLY what threw off the September release!

As a Beta-tester, knowing how much pent-up demand there is for Rome to Victory to be released, this only makes me redouble my efforts to find a bug, error, or flaw which will delay it yet again! As soon as my Thanksgiving repast allows, I shall dig back in and analyze the spent brass as it flies out of the open chambers of my REDACTED BY ADMIN Ken

A lot of great advice already given, above. The best way is to play. Look over the battlefield afterwards, then try the same battle again. You should do this until THAT battle is easy to win. Then try another, applying the techniques you've learned.

Spoilers abound... I freely admit that I fired up the first battle and, 5 minutes in, restarted. I'd gone in with a bit of, err, hubris. "Big ol' me, been there, done that. A little training campaign? Ho, hum..." And then I had my ass handed to me. Once I took it "seriously", I did far better. (By that, I mean applying the lessons I've learned over the many years of playing. You know...like tactics.) Two total victories, and I'm starting the third battle. The German onslaught is very impressive. My men on 1056 don't stand much chance. The reinforcements showed just in time. I failed to realize that they (reinforcements) were visible almost as soon as they advanced. I did a couple quick "grab the whole platoon and Quick them 'over there'" movement orders. And that's where and when the German arty started landing. Never good to have two platoons quicking through the impact zone. Sigh. I was in a rush to get the platoons up on the line and did not follow good tactics...like only exposing a team or two at a time. I got punished. Again. This training campaign is a masterpiece. My compliments to @Chris, the author. Off to travel, so I'll have to leave the battle as it is, for now.

@markshot, Thanks to your original post, I fired up this campaign (it's been YEARS!!!), and played it on Iron. Yikes. Battle three is TOUGH. But, it does teach some lessons. I'm about 20 minutes into it and have just gotten the reinforcing Shermans. They have knocked out 2 Panzers in their first 60 seconds. One was due to positioning, the other was purely lucky shooting. (On the move, ~500 meters, front turret penetration.) This battle teaches not to charge in.

Do you have any savegames showing this? (Specifically, that a bomb is dropped but never lands?)

Ah, I have that same book! Hunnicutt did some outstanding stuff. As to the Super Pershing...any action it saw means it MUST BE INCLUDED!!! I mean, even the dual balance springs sticking out the top were significant. In all seriousness, I'd think it'd be pretty awesome to include it. It was built, it was shipped over to ETO, and it was used. It would open up a lot of "what if" scenarios. That means gameplay. That means sales.

...and the arc can not exceed (or equal?) 180^. If you do, say, 180.00001 degrees, the arc flips to point the other way, and becomes an arc of 179.99999 degrees.

Ignoring a lot of posts, and just looking back on the OPs issue... The game does not "ignore" foliage, but it does assume a bit more transparency than is obvious. It does this for a few reasons. 1. The game does not let you micro-position your forces. IRL, a vehicle could/would maneuver very slightly and gain a much greater LOS. 2. Foliage visual models in-game are very uniform. IRL, they are not. Plus, foliage moves, even in subtle breezes. The game makes leaves more transparent to model these characteristics. 3. Well, there's more...I'm sure.

This. IF, and that's a big "IF", the AI could recognize when to split into teams and then the corollary, when to recombine back into squads, that would be HUGE. Sure, it'd a huge advance for CM and gameplay, but even more, it'd be a huge advance in AI programming. Charles would be featured on the cover of every software magazine, e-zine, blog, podcast, and even be a morning "news show" guest. The fame would corrupt him; front row sporting seats, sponsorships, glam lifestyle, etc. He'd never again lock himself in the basement with a six-pack of mountain dew and a bag of doritos and code for 24 hours. No, those days would be gone...as would CM3. Here's part of the issue: what type of teams should the AI create? Should it split off an anti-tank team and leave them on overwatch? Maybe a scout team would be better? Or is this a situation where an assault team would be best? Or, maybe just split into the normal component fireteams? It only gets more complex from there. The current implementation is there to SOLVE the many issues that have been annotated previously. There is no free lunch.

Thank you for this!

In the OPs case, with the main gun inop, there will be no Target Light command (IIRC). The only functioning weapon will be the .50, so it will "move up" to the Target command. A covered arc would, however, make the turret rotate to the rear (assuming the covered arc is to the rear of the vehicle. A covered arc to the front would prevent the .50 from firing. (<- this is supposition, dosed with a lot of experience.) So, the covered arc solution is a non-starter. That leaves the sub-optimal solution of reversing towards the enemy, or just letting the TacAI control the .50.

Exactly. (And add pauses so teams do not jam up at the doorways.) Agreed. Examples of this are frustrating. There are subsets of this problem. A: Sometimes, if you track the battle, the building face they run away from has been exposed to incoming fire. In this case, the game engine tracks the building damage. It does not meet the level of "show damage". The result is a visibly undamaged building having an internally coded damaged doorway. Your troops cannot enter through the damage, so they run away to an undamaged entry. This undamaged doorway is usually on the enemy's side of the building, since you cannot fire at that facade for suppression. B: In the same case as above, but the internal game engine has tracked the building damage and it has passed the "show damage" threshold. In this case, you SEE damage, but it appears to be light. You -think- a few bullet holes in the wall would not cause enough rubble or debris to block a doorway, but your troops still run around to the enemy's side. C Rare, but visible: Some buildings sink into the terrain (due to undulations in the contour and the need for buildings to be level) and this blocks a doorway, even though the building model shows a door. These can be anticipated if you look closely at the building. (A scenario designer could rotate the building such that the doorway is on the non-sunken face.) This is also rare. As specific examples are found, they are added to the "fix in an upcoming patch" pile. If players see these, specific savegames and screenshots are incredibly helpful to allow Beta testers to recreate the problem and post them internally to the "fix in an upcoming patch" pile. Otherwise, it is up to the Beta testers to happen to catch it as it occurs. (A corollary is that the game engine "sets" the map in the editor. So, if Big Factory building gets fixed in a patch, EVERY battle that uses Big Factory building has to be opened and resaved. (Big Factory building may have to be removed and re-emplaced, as well. Possibly with editor saves in between?) In a perfect world, every time such a building fix is generated, BFC will re-release all the official battles with that building, having already done the editor work. That way the player never has to do it...except for his pre-existing non-official battles which have Big Factory building.) Of all of these, buggy buildings can be fixed...as they are found and reported. Nothing can be done until they get fixed. My subset "A", damaged buildings with no visual clue to the player, is the more frustrating, to me. It would be nice (no idea if this is feasible) to have a damage decal added to buildings with inoperable doorways. Something that shows beams or debris in front of the door. Otherwise, I voluntarily suspend disbelief and imagine that a previous occupant has blockaded the doorway such that it cannot be kicked open.

A few points...trying to keep this on track with your OP. His post was very useful. It explained, and used examples, of how splitting up into teams and giving staggered timing orders to each team will prevent an team from running around to the wrong side of a house. You may not like the STYLE he used, but the factual content was spot-on and useful to those who don't know that a full squad will send autonomously split into teams to pathfind to the next waypoint. If you re-read your original post, you did not specify that you KNEW about the pathfinding/autonomous splitting behavior. That behavior is responsible for the vast majority of running around to the wrong side. The "buggy buildings" issue is much more rare (and solved in recent releases.) You mentioned doors being mis-aligned, parenthetically and only in regards to a specific campaign. ^^^ This is true. The requirement to take out ALL buildings and replace them with the SAME building solved a LOT of those issues. There are still two outstanding issues: sometimes terrain slope will make a door unusable and sometimes invisible damage will make a door unusable. Both of these cases will cause a team to run around to the "wrong side".

@Panzer_Freak and @IanL, I'll take this. Send me your tests and/or savegames. PM me for my email address. Ken (one of the Beta Testers...for those that don't know.)

1. General Knowledge: I'm all for it. Set up a quick editor "bespoke" test and find out if mortars can destroy a bridge. Or, how many rounds of 75mm it takes to rubble a brick building, etc. I'm all for that. That would be representative of hard-earned combat knowledge, or would allow you to understand how the in-game effects work. That's all good. 2. Specific Knowledge: Testing THAT battle's map for keyholes? Nah, that's not my cuppa. Or, testing that map for timing how your infantry will stack up crossing the street or anything else? I'd be opposed to that. Gain general knowledge through testing or playing. Apply that knowledge to the game at hand. Don't use the game at hand to test strategems, tactics, or effects. That's my thoughts on it. In all my pbems, I always exchange passwords with my oppo at the end of the game. I consider that a courtesy. It ensures that he sees the play from my side and can understand what I did and why. FWIW.

Wow. I read his commentary as being very on point with some sarcasm tossed in. Apparently, others thought it was some sort of personal attack??? Maybe I come from a less sensitive generation. Whatever your FEELINGS are, @General Jack Ripper has made some SOLID points, AND has advised how to get around the game engine limitations...AND shown both techniques in action. Now, onto the OP's question: I really don't think you'll see this get changed anytime soon. (<- IMO)

I'm sorry, did someone mention "flare"?

I think I'll start a thread: "Let me know if you'd love to have a thread about things you'd love to have in the game."

Grenade count in WeGo: the first time through (real-time-ish) the count is accurate. I think. After the first replay, then the grenade count is "fixed" at the lowest point. E.g., a squad has 12 grenades and throws one every 2 seconds for the first 24 seconds of the turn. As you focus on that squad after hitting "go", you'll see each grenade getting thrown and the grenade count decrementing down with each throw. At 10 seconds into the turn, they'll have 7 grenades left. At the end of the turn they'll show 0. If you then hit replay and watch them again, the grenade count will be 0 and, yet, they'll throw each of the 12 grenades. At least, that's how it worked the last time I examined it. (It was reported and deemed WAD.)

Exactly. I -think- a non-movement period (an entire turn is what I use) reduces the chances of a Bog turning into Immobilized. I have not tested, but it certainly seems to behave that way.