Larsen

I know that in WWII titles the experience of the artillery and FO speed up the time of the barrage arrival. So far I don't really see the same effect in CMBS. So, my question is what does the experience for FO and experience for the artillery do in CMBS?

Do you know which if any of the russian AA assets can shoot down an observation drone?

Never mind. I found the module activation program.

Hi, I just purchased the battle pack for CMBS. How do I activate it?

Is AT-14 a Kornet ATGM? Can Abrams spot ATGM teams using thermal sights? Can T-90M spot infantry using thermal sights?

Thank you for finding time ti respond. 2. Do you know which of the planes or helicopters carry big enough missiles to threaten Abrams? 3. For some reason I thought IR optics abd thermal sights are the same. At least from physics perspective it should be. Do you know which ones have the thermal optics? Are those sights good enough to spot infantry or are only good to spot vehicles? And one question that i missed in the first pass Do Russians have any ATGM teams/vehicles that can kill Abrams? I saw some said Khrizantema can. What about the others?

Hi, I played exclusively WWII games and recently out of curiosity bought CMBS. It has tons of different equipment that I am struggling with. I have a few questions. 1. Which of the Russian artillery has precision munition? And as a follow up which of them is capable of killing Abrams? 2. Which of the Russian CAS can knock out Abrams? 3. Which of the Russian MBT and IFV have infrared sights and how good are they? 4. Does any of the Russian vehicles has a chance surviving. Javelin hit?

1. The strategic AI is very hard to make in a game like CM than the TacAI. There are just too many choices of units that could be used in a different way. TacAI is much easier to get eight because the scope is much smaller. 2. The units in the foxholes are not abstracted. If the guy is shown to be out of the foxholes than he is out and the protection and cover that the foxholes provide is gone. 3. Target arc might help or might hurt. You have to zoom into the init in a foxhole to check where the guys actually are within the action spot. 4. Guns in general are a huge disappointment in regarding to the TacAI. Basically once you olace them you better hope they hit something that is worth more than their point cost. In CM1 you could move them effectively. In CM2 i find it super hard to actually move them. There is one guy who pushes the gun and the rest walk in a different speed. Once the gunner gets shot the gun basically becomes either abandoned or stuck in place.

I am not even talking about a squad. Ia m talking about a team taht occupies one action spot. Even if you have a team with 3 men and you place it in an action spot with the foxholes there is a good chance that open of them will be staying in the open unless you manually rotate the squad so taht all of them get into the foxholes. That will last until they start firing and turning inside the foxholes. Then some of them will get out again. LOS is another side effect of the micro TacAI.

There are a number of layers in CM games. Strategical layer - you overview the map, analyze it and you the best way (and in case of QBs the best force selection) to achieve the best result. the player has the full control over how he wants to fight this particular battle. Tactical layer - usually the battle consists of a number of small encounters (unless we talk about really tiny battles) that involve a company, platoon and a number of supporting assets in a particular situation that came to be during the strategic battle execution. Again, here the player has the full control over which units do what and where they move. Unit level - this is how one specific unit behaves during the battle. And at this level for CM2 the player has absolutely no control over the specific unit. And that, in my opinion, is a big problem. Let me explain. In CM1 units were represented by abstract entity that had some abstract firepower which depended on the distance and types of weapons the unit carried. Teh firepower would change as the unit would suffer loses. At no time we actually had to worry where and how individual soldiers inside this unit were located. Not so in CM2. From one hand we, as a player have no control how the units within the teams are spread out over a specific action spot and from another the outcome of the way the soldiers are positioned directly affects its effectiveness. Supposedly, BFC spent tons fo time making the units behave in the most natural way to relieve us from the micro managements. Well, the best I can say is that the result is mixed. 1. One action spot is 8m by 8m. It is occupied by a team - 3-6 soldiers, or 4-6 soldiers of a support unit (MG, mortar, gun etc.). That is a lot of guys in a small, compact space. It is bad already. It gets worse when the artillery or direct HE or MG fire start hitting this particular spot. Normally, if you look from the top the teams, the way they are spread out in an action spot, resemble a small gay orgy - one of the top of another one. If it happens so that an HE shell from even the smallest mortar or a tank 75mm shell lands in the spot the whole team probably will eb wiped out. Given how the moral is affected by losses such a poor management of soldiers' positions has a direct effect on the morale of a much bigger unit. And here we can't do anything because that layer of abstraction is not available to us and is handled by the TacAI. 2. LOS. This is also a direct result of the troops' position inside the action spot. One of the guys might see something but the gunner can't. And rearranging the direction of the unit might or might not solve the problem (most often it does not). Frankly speaking the CM1 abstraction worked much better in terms of how individual units spotted and fired at targets. Here I am not talking about the borg spotting but rather the unit either saw something as a whole or did not and we didn't really need to worry about which guy in the team or vehicle saw something and which didn't. And to add an insult to this the gunner might lose a sigh of the target that did not move. Just like that. One turn it sees it and the next turn it does not. Go figure. 3. Foxholes. They prove descent cover. But... if you look closely at the units int eh same action spot as foxholes more often than not a few of them will be outside of foxholes and since CM2 is so particular about single soldiers those guys that are not int the foxholes will get killed really fast by artillery or small arms fire. Rearranging the direction in which the troops face helps putting them in the foxholes. But they tend to get out once they start firing and change the direction at which they face. 4. Armor. Here I am not sure what the right behavior should be. Maybe guy who served in the armor divisions can help. In CM1 if a tank is faced with a thread that it deems formidable it would pop smoke and reverse. Sometimes they do that successfully, sometimes they get knocked out but they tried to break the LOS with the better tank. In CM2 the default behavior is to dismount... to be killed by MG, HE or artillery fire. I just don't get it. Isn't the chance of surviving higher if the tank pops smoke and reverses rather than bailing out? And the level of troops has very little effect. I just had a crack tank with a descent armor bail out after the internal armor spalling Summary, although CM2 is supposed to be a better, more realistic simulation than CM1 I find that this TacAI behavior is inferior to the simplistic representation of CM1 engine. What do you think?

Unfortunately, formation charges an extra 50 points for a QB. BFC needs to add FO for the German army as a specialist team.

@chuckydyke, there are basically three simple questions which were raised by Redwolf that have simple yes/no answer. 1. at 299 points do you feel that StuG is overpriced for Quick Battles? Basic Shermans are priced about 195, Pz IV at 240, M4A3 (76) is at around 255 and JPz V is 320, Panther 360. The answer is yes or no. 2. At about 195 points do you believe that the basic Sherman (M4, M4A1) is underpriced for QBs? M4A3 are about 235, Pz IV is about 240. The answer is yes or no. 3. Do you believe that Pz IV at 240 points is slightly overpriced compared to Shermans for the purpose of QBs (M4 is at 195, M4A3W is about 235, M4A3 (76)W is about 255). Yes or no. That's it very simple. Three answers - yes or no. Or you can say that you don't know and/or don't care. That is also an option.

I have no idea how what you say is relevant to the current discussion.

I really don't understand how the origin of the particular gun on a piece of armor has anything to do with its pricing. All the guns have their characteristics. That's it. How it was developed, by whom, for what purposes has really nothing to do with the fact that for combat arms battles StuGs are priced out of the game.

Ah... you are at it again. First if all the US 76mm gun is a gun designed specifically for use in tanks (at least according to wiki). Second, I don't see how that is relevant. Its characteristics are very similar to what StuG fields in. M4A3 has more HE, turret, 3 MG with abundant ammo, better spotting, somewhat similar armor and yet it is more than 40 points cheaper. Giving extra points to one side is not a solution. The whole idea of points is to access a value of certain unit in general situations. StuGs are prices out of QBs as of right now.

I see that @chuckdyke is undeterred by logics. OK. Let me try a different approach. It looks like you are a big fun of big guns - the bigger the better. The StuG gun is at 75mm gun The armor is 80mm, I believe upper hull has 10% slope. It costs 299 points. M4A3 (76) early is 256. It has a bigger gun, sloped lower and upper hull armor (45 and 55 degrees, I believe) and a similar turret armor to StuG (I think it is something like 75mm) that is also a bit sloped (correct me here if I am wrong). I know you don't care about the HE, MG and everything since those deal with the guys that carry really small guns but it has 40 rounds of 76mm HE and over 6K of MG ammo. How that is fair? If StuG is 299 then M4A3 (76) should cost like Panther at the very least.

Ee... This whole thread is about understanding why StuGs, Pz IVs and M4 s are priced a certain way. There are different arguments but the only people who can give a definite answer are those who built the game and who don't participate in the discussion. Allegedly, there is some kind of formula. And nobody knows what is inside that formula.

It's interesting that there is no a single comment from the creators of Combat Mission as if this thread had nothing to do with their game.

I really think that these tank vs rank discussions detract from the main point. StuG with its 18 HE shells and literally no MG can support infantry for 4-5 turns. After that the Allies infantry can pretty much ignore it. The rest - mediocre armor, no turret just adds questions about its QB pricing. I don't know what QBs you play, so far the ones that I played had rather short LOS (300-500m) due to trees, bocages, houses etc. The largest maps I saw were something like 2km by 2km and they are very few of those.

I would find it weird if the formula compared the armor thickness for the same vehicle at different points. Of course we can only speculate. The most intuitive approach would be to compare armor thickness of an AV to the penetration characteristics of the opposite side guns. And i don't think production numbers have anything to do with the point cost. After all we have rarity points for that.

Actually formula might be a good first approximation. After that we can just adjust the prices based on how the game feels. It's hard to describe the value of completely different pieces of armor in one, even complex, formula. And this comes from a very analytical guy, by the way. For me it is absolutely clear that the prices of StuG and the price of the cheapest M4 are completely off compared to the other tanks/TDs.

The best approach in my opinion would be for BFC to let games (us) mode the prices. Eventually the community will come to a certain compromise. Free market always finds the best price (even it the price changes with time). The case of StuG is the most obvious one. I don't understand how they let this slide - an assault gun with very limited HE supply, mediocre armor, no MG, no turret and 4 men crew. It is much worse as a TD than JPz IV although pretty close in price to it (299 vs 319). I think getting two Marders and a change is a better option than getting 1 StuG. And for me it is obvious that either Pz IV is too expensive or M4 is too cheap (I lean toward the latter). 50 point difference between the two. M4 (Sherman Mid) - 190 M4A3 (75mm early) - 232M4A3 (75mm mid) - 232 Does anyone even bother with M4A3s?

It's not even that they are that deadly (well, they are) but the way moral is SIMULATED (CM2 is a simulation, not a game, right?) the small caliber mortars are the weapon of choice for anti infantry action - cheap, fast, no delay in firing, cause casualties. In fact the British 2lb and Italian Brexia - you don't even need to deploy them, it's automatic. And for CM2 casualties cause the permanent morale hit. Also if your target hides behind a wall for example, you can't order MG to suppress them - you will get no target marker(no LOS == no target). With mortars it's no problem - they will hit around the target and cause suppression and casualties. The more I play CM2 the more I come to a conclusion that from a simulation view point CM1 was a better game. If one could remove the Borg spotting from it - CM1 would be better than CM2. That is such a shame.

Thank you! will do.

Actually now I know why. My engine 3 purchase was a mail order, not web. I don't have the disk any more. How do I activate it?