Larsen

You cannot use LOS tool with roadblocks. At least I don't think so. But I'm quite sure that they can spot the enemy units. I don't know about trenches holding flags. That I never experienced. But all those cases could be connected.

No visual contact from any of my units. By the roadblocks and mines had LOS to the units I saw. I noticed it already in my two TCP/IP games.

I'm not completely sure if that is the case or not but the last few battles that I played TCP/IP I could see the opponent's units there where I didn't have LOS but my fortifications (roadblocks and mine) did. Did anybody else see anyhting like that? [ November 03, 2002, 02:55 AM: Message edited by: Larsen ]

I'm not sure I understand. There is a 65% chance to hit the target. Right? Now, out of those 65% 29% hit the turret. Out of those 29% only 18% will penetrate. If I understood correctly that means that out of 65% only about 5.2% will get a turret penetration. Right? Or am I missing something?

It is very hard to come up with the correct point value for different armor pieces. One thing that is for sure is that the price should vary from year to year. Here is an example. A Panther in 43 is definitely worth 3 T-34 with 76mm gun. But the situation changes drmatically by 44. In 44 Allies get tanks that can kill Panther at the ranges characteristical for the majority of QBs. So the survivability of the Panther goes down and so should its price. Pretty much the same applies for StuGs. While there are very good on defence in 42 their value goes down in late 43 and even more in 44. Because the Allies get the 85mm and 122m gun in their tanks that can take care of StuGs. But if I remember correctly BTS stated that the price for the armor units does not change with time. In other words the same tank will have the same price in 41, 42, 43 44, and 45. That is the system and we have to live with it.

You cannot hide and give a movement order at the same time. You can order to hide once they reach the destination but you cannot give an order to hide for, say 30 sec and then start moving. At best your troops will be listed as "taking cover". Not sure if they would be invisible to the opponent though in such situation (a generic unit mark instead of a clear . Plus the defender can always order an area fire for MGs and guns. Those 10-15 sec till the smoke comes back might be enough for the defender to pin the troops down and slow their advance. And in general, what you are suggesting is a work around for problem with using smoke. It would be nice to fix it once and forever. I think in CMBO smoke didn't exhibit such a behaviour. As far as using FOs to lay smoke instead of shelling the bad guys... there are times when it's better to use arty to cover your troops than to shell the enemy. Of course one would normaly use small caliber arty to lay smoke.

Pause will only work in the begging of the movement through the open terrain. But if your troops fail to reach the destination in 1 minute or 30-40 sec if delay is used then they are well in the open in the beginning of the next turn and with smoke from the previous turn disappearing between the turns they are most likely to get suppressed and pinned by MG fire. In my experience one turn is usually not enough to cover the open space. One needs about 2 turns of smoke screen to move the troops trough the open terrain. Sometimes even 3. The reduction of the smoke screen in between the turns is a big problem. Wind, no wind, the smoke pretty much stays in during the turn but it somehow disappears in between the turns. I feel like the shells that fall in the last 10 sec of the turn don't have the same smoke effect as other shells.

Again, the smoke sticks during the turn. It's there and the cover is nice. But something happens between the turns. If you say the wind is the reason then why the smoke does not get blown away during the turn? There is some logic inconsistency. I would greatly appreciate if BTS could look into this and see if there might be a logic bug somewhere in the code. With the new suppression model one just has to use smoke on attack. And by the way, Soviets don't have 105mm. On the other note everything that is not 81-82mm or 120mm mortars for both sides is not a battalion level arty and does not belong to games below 2000pts. Even 75-76mm arty.

The problem is that the smoke disperses fast only between the turns and not during the turns. During the turn the smoke screen stays up while the FO is firing. But in the beginning of next turn the smoke from previous turn disappears fast (like 3-5 econds) and the new one does not come up for 10-15 seconds as if the smoke that should be formed by the shells that fell in the last 15 sec of previous turn does not form up. So you have like 7-10 seconds in the begiing of turn 2 when the smoke screen is very poor. It feels as if the actions is not continues.

What always bugged me in CMBO was inability to play any attack/defence QBs. The attacker would always overrun the defender. Always. Now with the new improved suppression and fatigue model attack/defence battles in CMBB are very close. They are a lot of fun. I'm not sure if many peole tried that but I played about 8 games with my friend attack/defence and all of them were very close. Actually much more fun than ME in CMBO (at least for me). But there is one thing that bothers me. I, as a defender, always run out of ammo. Especially for MGs. Somewhere by turn 22-23 my MGs are listed as LOW on ammo and thus become pretty much useless. Same happens also with the rifle squads. I would like to ask BTS to allow the defender to get an additional ammo supply. Say +20% for probes, +40% for attacks and +70% for assaults. Of course the ammo should be lost if the units move from there original location. And another thing that I would like to see added in the patch is the ability to use backspace to delete a wavepoint while plotting the path. this was already asked for quite a few people so I add my voice there. And one more thing. I'm not sure if anybody raised this question before but why there is no rarity setting for infantry? I would think that some formations were more rare than others at different times. I think it would be nice to see some infantry types to be more expensive then others (relatively) depending on the time period.

Before Seanachai jumps in and start telling us stories how he rub shoulders with Kim Bessinger a couple decades ago I should refer everyone interested in flak gun modeling to redwolf post on www.thforums.com/CMBO in tactics section. The bottom line is that it is not the rate of fire that makes the flak gun dangerous but their accuracy which is insanly high. [ July 23, 2002, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: Larsen ]

There were posts on the forum that stated that friendly fire can be very devastating to your own troops in night batles. This effect either is very small or does not exist at all for day battles.

And did you try Alt-A and Alt-Q by any chance? Also Esc helps in certain situations (like when for example your TCP/IP opponent takes for ever to plot the move)...

I'm with Dorosh on this one. There has been too much Fionn (Fionn who?) posts lately on the CM forum. Larsen

In Sid Meier's Gettysburg at the end of the battle they would always show the most effective unit, the most hard fought unit and so on. It would be nice to have such a feature in CM.

I second that. And arty.

My money are on skelley. Do you guys plan to post an AAR somewhere? Maybe on thforum.com site? Larsen

I think that if one wants to go to the detailed HQ effect simulation then he/she would need to decompose each squad into LMG team(s), SMG/Rifle team(s) and squad HQ unit. After all sergants are there to command squads and to make desicions as well. What is so special about platoon HQ compared to squad HQ? Why not then stop at company HQ level? For me the problem with absolute spotting is not that I know immidiately where the bad guys are but that the units that didnot spot the bad guys can immidiately see them and fire at them. I would assume that once the shots are fired one can say that "the bad guys are somewhere there". It would be nice to make each unit to spot the enemy individually rather than collectively.

You may find my suggestion odd but I would stay away from Allied tanks at all. Get British AB with tons of 4.2 mortars and the rest spend on a combination of on board 3in mortars, guns and trucks and jeeps to tow them. This will work unless the terrrain is very, very open. As redfwolf said it's the infantry that wins the game. 10 Panthers are very expensive and not very effective against infantry. They don't have enough HGE shells and their blast is only 34. If you move your infantry you should be able to avoid him doing much damage to you with his Panthers. You will have enough arty and infantry to suppress his infantry screen around his tanks and your PIATs will take them out one by one. Keep in mind tha talthough british 4.2 inch mortars are not the most powerfull in the game but they route and break infantry same way as the more expensive stuff. And oyu can get tons of those in 5000 pts game. In general it's a good idea to max out the infantry and arty before purchasing armor in CMBO. By the way did you play with one force rule? What was the terrain? Larsen

The question that you raised is devided into two parts. One is the question about the kinetic energy that the shell posses at the moment of impact. That consists of the kinetic energy of forward motion and kinetic energy of shell rotation around it central axis. This is not hard to calculate. With a good approximation you can write down MV^2/2 + Iw^2/2 where M is the mass of the shell, V - is the velocity upon impact, I - the moment of inertia and w is the angular velocity of shell rotation around its central axis. The second question is how armor behaves when it is hit with something that posses that much energy as a gun shell. The answer is given by a theory of composite materials. Basically the steel behaves as steel only in the first moment on the impact. Then if the the shell posses enough energy stell melts around the point of impact (first order phase transformation - one can calculate how much energy is required to melt certain amount of steel regarding the process as adiabatic) and start flowing as a viscous liquid. How much it flows, how far the shell core will be to travel in such a media is not a simple question to answer. Look for the physics books on composite materials to get some formulas. Larsen

There are a few things to consider. First is what scale do you want to permit for your operation. There are two types of campaigns: 1. Operational level. Each side has a huge number of untis (preset) that battle on a map consisting of huge number of smaller maps of CM scale. Either side cannot produce new units but rather utilize those that it has in the beginning of the campaign. 2. Strategical level. Each side has some number of units in hte very beginning. The number could be eitehr large or small. That is of no importance. The important thing that each side can either produce new units or buy them. There are some resources involved that have to be managed and so on. This two campaign are significantly different. The first one does not have any resource managment and one has only rely on the units it has in the very beginning and in the otehr on each side can decide which way to develop its army and how to manage the available resources to win. There is yet another thing to consider -that is the scale of the campaign and thus the number of units involved. That will detemine how large you will need the map, how large will be the maps for the tactical battels and how fast the reserves can arrive. The scale is very important. Basically it determines charactristical lenght at which the units will be affected by the current tactical battle. For example if you decide that each sector represented by a hex in your map has the characteristical length of 10km and the tactical battle say has a characteristical length of 40 minutes you will not need to consider the infantry reserved that are not motorized at all because they will not be able to come from the adjacent cells unless motorized. Of course motorized units will have a different correlation length than non motorized ones. Larsen

I'm not sure where this information about the best units being punished came from. Never heard of anything like that. I would not say that it is not true but from my knowledge of the WWII from the Russian side I should say that it is highly unlikely. There were units that one might consider elite. I mean the penalty battalions. The idea behind such an organization was that the officers and enlisted who were found guilty of cowardness or disobeying orders and who by the "laws of the war time" (this is a direct translation from Russian) should have been shot and the criminals of non-political nature servicing time in prisons were given a chance to clear everything off their name. They would be organized in battalions and those who would get wounded and servive the battle would be granted an amnestey. Usually such battalions had NKVD troops in rear who would shoot them if they would disobey orders. From what I heard this battalions would be used in assaults that were known to have upriory a high casualty level. These troops would attack with yelling curses instead of usuall "hurra!". They didn't have anything to loose and they were very dangerous. Larsen

Well, in my humble opinion it is more of a local civilization game (two countries invloved) in a modern age (no archers except the TD) where the battles are resolved using CM:BO engine.

Thank you, guys. I sent the e-mails to both noble generals.