Blackcat

Akd, Sorry, I can't reproduce what you get and have never seen such results. I just put three minutes of co-ax fire through a building from two Shermans, no suppression, no casualties. We must be playing different games, or maybe the rules are different for the German side.

50 cal and up will damage your own people as will any round that goes bang including grenades, rifle grenades and bazookas. An unbuttoned Sherman (and Stuarts and no doubt others) firing on "Target Light" will fire its 50 cal, buttoned then its fire is .30 only. Something to remember when using your tanks to shoot infantry onto an objective.

Depends what sort of fire the overwatch team were using, if it was straight "Target" then I wouldn't be surprised by the result if they had HE weapons. Also according to the manual, it is possible that units with rifle grenades will fire them even with target light - though personally I have never seen this (possibly because the only such grenades my guys seem to have are AT ones) - and they certainly didn't use UGLs with "Target Light" in CMSF.

Bummer. Its even worse when its your last surviving Rhino and you have no engineers.

Under what circumstances do you think friendly fire of all calibres can cause suppression? Just to test this idea out, in case it had changed from CMSF, I put a US squad in a very small building, I then had two further squads and a 30 MG fire into that building using "Target Light" from less than 25 yards for five solid minutes. No suppression and no casualties were caused. I then put a squad just outside a building, as if they were assaulting it, and had two squads and an MG fire through them (using "Target Light") into the building. After five minutes no casualties and no suppression. Thus I fired into and through an action spot containing a friendly unit will no ill effects. I have done so lots and lots of times in the game as well again no ill effects. So unless you can give some specific circumstances I think you are wrong on this one. I am not prepared to be so dogmatic about ricochets. All I will say is that there were plenty in the above tests and no one got hurt.

Fom that short video I find it difficult to conclude that anything is broken, other than perhaps the plan for the defence. There are rounds flying everywhere, the defenders maybe in C2, but they are green and not in a good state to start with. Trying to do a close range ambush with poor and partially suppressed troops is seldom going to end well. I'd be interested to know the experience and morale level of the attackers and how much fire they had taken on their way in. I'd also like to know what happened to that last defender, who is still up when the video finishes (I see that two of the attackers are cowering). As an aside it is intreesting to see what sort of fire the defenders put down. Watch the video carefully how many defenders are actually firing at anyone time? GaJ has given us all a chance to learn here - one or two rifle shots will not stop an attacking unit - maybe hide is not the best command to use if that is what it produces. I dunno, but if I was in GaJ position I'd be thinking, "Hmmm, that didn't go well. What could I do better next time?" rather than ranting on here claiming attack/defence scenarios are out of the question until something is fixed. I might also reflect upon the fact that there are hundreds, probably thousands, of games going on every day, but few, if any, of the posters here seem to find as many problems as I do.

"15 minutes is a long time for a quick smoke shoot with an HE alternative " Fair go, 15 minutes was completely unrealistic - to get rounds on target call it 30 - what with having get their comms bloke to understand what you want and where (they are all deaf, you know), do the sums (no computers in those days and the chap at the plotting table is visually-impaired as well as deaf), get the trail apes to put their brew down (hardest job of all) finaly the guns will go bang and the gunners will all have to lie down for a few minutes to get over their orgasm.

And he will say, "Of course I can, son. Just give me 15 minutes or so", and you will say, "But my troops in trouble will all be dead by then" and he will reply, "Then your problem will be over and so you don't really need my help. Stop wasting my time" Of course if you are dealing with the occasional helpful artillery rep he will promise immediate help and then 10 minutes later drop his rounds on your own troops - again ending the problem but not in the way you would have liked. They don't call them "The Fall-shorts for nothing".

I have just started Hell in the Hedgrerows and my pixeltruppen are very unhappy. There are no pioneers! They know that their paths of advance are therefore entirely predictable. Morale has dropped like a paralysed falcon. The combined effects of previous casualties has now started to be felt too - Dog Company is down to just two rifle platoons + the weapons platoon. This is going to be tricky.

I have yet to notice friendly "target light" fire (excluding. 50 cal) have any suppressive effect on my assault troops. Maybe I have just always been lucky, but it is something I'll now keep in mind. You make an interesting point about the time taken to recover from pinned, I have never got that detailed. However, I never stop the suppressive fire until I am in the building either (playing WEGO does mean it is very difficult to get timings spot on, so I err on the side of caution and just use more ammo - in RT I expect one can be more precise).

Suppression, suppression, suppression! That is the key to urban fighting. First use "target" by as many squads/MGs/Vehicles as you can get LOF fire for on the building you want to take (and don't forget nearby buildings that will have LOF to the approach your assaulting squad will use). How long you keep this up for is a mater of context and judgement. If I know that there are enemy in there and I can't be sure they are all dead I will keep it up for at least a minute after they have dropped out of view. Then I switch the overwatch units to Target Light (cease fire for any equipped with .50 call) I use quick to take the assaulting squad/team to within 10 metres of the door at that point I give them a "Target" order and a 10 second pause command (that should see grenades going through the windows) then another quick order into the building with a clear target at the final waypoint, or an area fire up to the next floor if I think I need to. Some people advocate using "Fast" for the assaulting unit as it prevents them from stopping and returning fire if they come under attack on their approach. Using smoke can also be good to screen to actual assault, but I find it can be tricky to get it into the right place at the right time. The above approach is my adaptation of a technique developed by Chainsaw in CMSF (see "Assaulting Buildings Fast and Agile" here http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=82927) and I find it works pretty well. Urban combat was and is a sod in the real world and it is in CMBN, unfortuately in both it is often necessary. Good technique will minimise your casualties, but you will burn through ammo.

I'll be happy to give it a go. My email is in the profile.

Are you sure about this? I seem to recall posts form Steve that stated quite the opposite. The CMBN manual, whilst ambiguous, does also suggest that covered arc affects spotting (see page 84).

Easy? I wouldn't know. However, we did play this HvH at the Liverpool preview and the USA side ran out a clear winner (lost 8 Shermans, some to infantry AT weapons).

Bastables, My apologies. I thought from your post that I commented on you were talking about tactics and casualties. I now see that you were talking about about the operational art. Sorry.

TrailApe, You have to remember that most of the posters labour under a massive inferiority complex. To, slightly, mis-quote that wonderful Flanders and Swann song (guaranteed to offend just about everybody), "It is not that they are wicked or naturally bad, Its knowing they are foreign that's driving them mad" As for beer, the Yanks drink some awful piss. The reason they serve it so cold is to disguise the fact that it has no flavour. However, there are, or at least were, some beacons of light in that benighted land. When I was working I used to spend quite a lot of time over there and there was a bar in Miami called "Tobbacco Road" that served some decent real ale, at the proper 54 degrees temperature, on hand pumps from a micro-brewery - a bit sweet to the English tongue but perfectly drinkable. The French should, of course, be kept out of everything (save the Normans, Bretons and Gascons who are actually English).

I think here are multiple AI plans, so the location of the gun may vary from game to game. For what is its worth, I would sugest keeping your troops and vehicles off the roads (TEGPT has a habit of keeping them covered) and looking to places where the Bocage tursn a 90 degree cornernad provides a view down more than one line of approach that can ne used by tanks.

OK Thanks. I am just trying to narrow down the possible causes of the "eternal planning/spotting" bug.

I have posted about this "Planning/spotting" problem three times already. Just out of interest, had you moved the ATG from its default set up position?

"Hopefully they do address the periodic bug where troops leave the vehicle while it is running." Based on my experience with CMSF, I am fairly sure that this "bug" is related to way points and possibly pause orders at those way points, or movement orders which allow the infantry to stop and fire. I have never tested this in clinical conditions, but from when I have seen it occur it seems to be that if the vehicle stops for long enough for the infantry to complete a dismount they will if they have a move order of their own.

Bastables, You really should actually read up on WWI before posting, what was your word, oh yes, "asinine" comments about what went on. As a very small example you may wish to read-up on the tactics the French used in their part of the Somme on 1st July 1916. Compare and contrast those used by Rawlinson in the Britsh sector and consider why the respective decisions were made. P.S. You might also want to compare British Infantry Casualties in Normandy with those of the big battles of WWI, not in bald terms but on a per capita basis.

I hadn't noticed this before. I believe the community owes Xian a vote of thanks for brining this to our attention. BF, please fix or do sumfing! P.S. Xian, you should have kept your mouth shut until after you had ambushed Mad Mike's tanks (smiley face thing goes here).

I finished the Labyrinth yesterday a lovely map (again), but not much of a fight I regret to say. About half my casualties came from when one of my butterfingered men either dropped a grenade in the act of throwing it (no he wasn't shot or even shot at - the enemy units were all well surppressed and cowering) or perhaps he threw it and it bounced back off the bocage. Killed four men out-right and wounded another three. Dunno how many AI scripts there are with this one but perhaps I just got lucky. It was fun but too easy. *** SPOILERS *** - - - - - - - Normally when playing a Paper Tiger scenario I avoid road movement towards the enemy like the plague, but on this ocassion I didn't fancy any of the alternatives either and I thought I'd give it a go. So I dumped some prelim mortar fire on likely ambush sites and set cautiously off. After nearly twenty minutes without being fired upon or spotting any sign of the enemy, I just drove some recon units down to the end of the road. One turned up an infantry AT team behind a hedge which it killed before they could react and the other spotted a Marder by the objective which it engaged with its 37mm and destroyed. At that point I was really behind the defensive line so all it remained to do was rush my infantry up (three full platoons + two sections of engineers, all mixed and bunched up, running down the middle of the road, not a sight common in this game), re-enforce the recce teams and roll up the line. One spot gave me some trouble. Probably because they ran away from the earler mortar fire, in a very small area in a copse there was a company HQ, a platoon HQ, an AT, and half a rifle squad. One of my sections walked into their line of view and four men went down instantly, the rest ran. Mortars sorted the problem out. A Greyhound came across a MKIV and immediately engaged it from its port-quarter getting a penetration. The tank started to rotate towards the Greyhound but didn't fire instead it backed away, but not quickly enough - a M8 gun-carriage finished it off the next turn with a 75mm heat round.

No. As I said, the human player can, mostly, over-ride the TACAI when it comes to targetting orders. However, as I am sure you will have noticed, your pixeltruppen will often decide to open fire on a target without your intervention, their decision to do so is based on the same TACAI that the computer player uses.

Yup it could and it does need something like that. However, I thought that CMBN doesn't calculate % to hit chances! So lots more work to bring in what seemed to be a simple request.