Blackcat

Also known as big units see things little ones can't. This is a problem which I wrote about in CMSF and others have reported in in CMBN. I now have an example nailed down with saved games to match. The fastest way to explain is to recount what has happened in my game. I am playing mission 3 of the Road to Montebourg Campign as the US. It is early in the scenario and a full infantry section (12 men) is moving along a road adjacent to a bocage hedgerow on their right. As they reach the end of their move they see a German Marder 220 yards away in a gap in another hedgerow. That squad has nothing that reach out that far save small arms and I don't want to scare the game. So I slap a short covered arc on the infnatry and move up their platoon HQ with the intention of calling down some mortar fire. The HQ moves up, faces in the right direction and sees...nothing. OK, infantry squad is spread out over two tiles, so I move the HQ to the next one, same result. Maybe the infantry guys are getting the way, so I move them back. No difference. I wait, maybe the HQ just needs some time. Nope, that don't work either. Move it back to the first square and wait for a few minutes. No. Well maybe the bloody thing has driven off, so move the infantry back - bingo instant sighting of the marder exactly where it was. No matter what I do the three man HQ unit cannot see the vehicle that the 12 man section has in plain sight. What is worse the HQ can't even see the ground on which the marder is standing, so I can't call down mortar fire on spec. I think what is happening is the actual position of the three man team within the action grid is too "centred" whereas the 12 man section is more spread out and so they get a view which a smaller team cannot. Bloody aggravating. Of course, I blame TEGPT (That Evil Git Paper Tiger) because he designed the map and placed the units and I shouldn't be surprised, given his paymaster, if he didn't do this deliberately. However, this example does appear to nail down an issue with LoS - big units can (sometimes) see things that little ones can't.

Is it? Looking the centre of the star on the map I would say it was positioned somewhere around Oakhampton. Well on the Devon side of the border.

Speedy, I am more than happy to debate my point and anything about WWI. However, such discussions don't belong here and will just get in the way of people who actually want to talk about CMBN. I already feel guilty about putting in a reply to the post mentioning Haig. So can I suggest that if you want to discuss this point further we take it over to the General Forum. Cheers.

I am also coming to the conclusion that fighting through the bocage is not really difficult. If I can get a tank or a direct fire mortar into the line it is almost too easy. The US squads can put down a massive number of rounds and the under-modeling of HMGs leave the Germans with no effective reply. However, I have yet to play in bocage country against a human opponent. I suspect it might be much harder than against the AI. A human will probably make much more, and more intelligent, use of cover arcs and hiding, will be more inclined to have a bocage position linked in to a wider, more integrated, defence system and could use small scout units to "fire and run", forcing the US player to slow down and waste ammo or rush forward into an ambush. Dunno, but what we might be seeing is the old story of the AI not providing the most challenging game experience - though that evil git Paper Tiger pulls off a few nasty moments in his scenarios (as do other good designers). As per GunnerOz's request: I play exclusively WEGO, on elite setting. The only time I use the keyboard is for the backspace key, the tab key (when I want to really get down and watch a nice replay) and the lateral camera controls when I want to scan along a bocage hedge to find the gaps.

"CM Normandy.exe has stopped working. A problem caused the program to setop working correctly..." I had that, once, with the demo, it was caused by a problem with the graphics card. I gave it a blast with compressed air, a good hoover and updated the drivers. Not had any problems since.

Paper Tiger, You, Sirrah, are officially to be considered a git! A cunning, devious git probably in the pay of the Prince of Darkness. I ran through the Beau Guillot battle without any problems racking up a total victory with next to no casualties. Then I started the attack on Ecoqueneuville. One look at the map convinced me that the road was a ticket into a killing ground. It was just too tempting an offer, what with the farm complex giving a short approach with lots of cover to the village and all. So there was no way that I was going to take that route. However, being limited to just 12 explosive charges I was going to have to be very careful about picking an alternative. So I counted up the hedgerows to be breached, worked out a feasible way in and set off. You put mines behind a blank hedgerow! Not covering gaps, not covered by MG's or mortars as part of the MLR but behind a bog-standard hedgerow just waiting for a sucker like me to try and blow his way through. You complete git! Anyway, I still won (German Surrender with 12 minutes to go) - outflanked most of the defences and used the 105s to shake up the village causing units to flee towards the church. Most of my casualties were caused by those damned mines, those aside I had six men down to German fire (including two to the FOO's pistol, which I thought neat). Thanks for, once again, putting in your time and energy and creating what is shaping up to be a great campaign. If you feel any back pain that is probably due to me sticking pins into a wax effigy. Thanks again.

Mr. Oz, you are firing wide. Australia's casualties, whilst horrendous in both wars, have nothing to do with how nasty Normandy was as a campaign. The chances of a Brit or Canadian, particulalry in the combat arms, becoming a casualty in Normandy was higher than his forebears on the Somme in 1916. The later is written into folklore as a campaign of Lions led by Donkeys, a slaughter, etc., the former isn't. If Haig's methods (which, mostly, weren't his but let that pass for now) were so awful why don't Montgomery and his subordinate generals come in for the same level of criticism? Dempsey was certanly no more competent than Rawlinson and had fewer, if any, of the technological barriers and troop training problems that the latter had to try and overcome.

The fact that you weren't there doesn't change the fact that Normandy was more of a meat grinder than the Somme.

Sorry to interupt, but people do tend to say silly things about WWI and imagine that WW2 was so much better. If you take into account the relative lengths of the Campaign and the numbers of troops deployed then you will find that Normandy was a bloodier campaign for the Brits than was the Somme in 1916. To put it another way a British soldier had more chance of becoming a casualty in Normandy than his father did on the Somme. If you factor in the change in ratios between teeth and support arms (there was a much bigger proportion of people in "safe" rear area jobs in 1944 than there were in 1916) the situation was even more dangerous for the combat troops. Now back to the topic under discussion....

Sorry, but I don't agree. When I use 81mm they work as per spec as a certain PBEM opponent can tell you.

"It has always been a bit odd to me that if you order your troops to run across an open field they will do so without hesitation and be gunned down without stopping, yet often they take matters into their own hands quite readily in contravention of a fairly clear and specific order when it is a bad idea to do so." Come on, Mr. Oz, you have served, doesn't that sound like typical squaddie behaviour to you? If it doesn't the RAR must have changed an awful lot over recent years.

"The game has a covered arch that the troops are to focus their attention on unless they feel threatened. That tank was not moving, shooting or showing any signs of life, that is not a threat." Maybe, but there are questions to be answered before such a conclusion can be reasonably drawn. For example, what was the time delay between the infantry seeing the tank and firing? What visible signs were there to the AT team that the tank was not a threat? What was the experience level of the infantry? However, the key point in GaJ's original post is, "If I later discover that most times covered arcs work fine, and these were just trigger happy dudes... great, no worries". Based on my experience that is exactly what he will find and as he would have found in previous games. In CM games the troops don't always do as they are told, never have and, I hope, never will.

Pixeltruppen have never been 100% obedient in any of the CM games. There have and hopefully always will be ocassions when they fire outside their covered arc. Sometimes that behaviour benefits the player sometimes it doesn't. The greener the troops the more this is likely to happen to the player's disadvantage. I would place a bet that within a few months someone will be posting here saying they set their unt a covered arc and this threat popped up and they ignored it, thats crazy, the game is flawed, this needs to be fixed etc. etc.. This is one of those situations which when it occurs will upset someone. GaJ says that if most of the time his unit arcs work as planned he can accept the odd example of idiot or trigger happy troops. That is probably a good attitude and one which will meet with his in game experience.

1. No 2. No 3. No 4. Normal hedges, yes. Bocage (high or low) only if equipped with the Rhino gizzmo.

And remember to tell the mortars to face in the right direction and deploy once they have reached their new position (fallen foul of that more than once).

Hey, Mr. Stanbridge, you are in Scotland. The Scots like high taxes - lots of money for the government to give to "deserving" people. On the bright-side your £17.90 in taxes and charges take sthe total cost of CMBN, for you, to just over £68.00. I reckon you are going to have to play 0.024 minutes a week more than I do before you get you money's worth.

The key word here is "Seem" as in "seem useless". They ain't far from it. What might be adrift is your tactical thinking.

Where you place a TRP is up to you and how you read the battlefield. You don't need an HQ to have sight of the TRP anyone will do. Then once you know it is worth firing a barrage, select any HQ or FOO and call it down. Easy-peasy. P.S. Firing on TRPs doesn't incur the same delay penalties as normal indirect fire.

If I remember correctly, in CMx1 an assault battle increased the attacker/defender ratio to something like 3:1 but at the same time gave the defender a deeper area in which to set-up (the flags were further back from the forward edge of his set up area). Attack and probe battles had similar but smaller effects. It would seem from MikeyD's post that the point situation has been toned down and, if that is the case, I would hope that the depth effect has been as well. Whether this is a good thing I am not so sure. I note that the CMBN manual (page 51) says that the points ratio does change, but not by how much, and that for an assault the attacker is given a "certain level" of intel on enemy positions. The old CMx1 scale gave advantages/disadvatages to both sides for each battle type. It seems to me, on the information available, one would have to be very silly/confident to agree to be the defender in an assault QB in CMBN.

That would be a super game to play. Imagine playing such a game, "Fred take your company and take that hill there. George, I want your company to probe towards the village, once Fred has the hill switch from probe to assualt, you'll have a platoon of Shermans available to you in about thirty minutes. Harry you hold in reserve ready to either pass through George's troops once they have taken the village or to give him a hand if he gets stuck. Battalion mortars are available to all three companies, but ammo is limited so don't get greedy." That would be that; then you could go off down to the pub and come back later to find out how your game went. It would be sure to be a best seller.

A Platoon Commander taking over the command of a company was indeed a relativley common event in all armies goig back centuries. However, two points. Firstly, this mostly happened outside the scope of a CM fight which are limited to a couple of hours - once the fight was over a reorganisation, would take place. Secondly the new company commander would not carry on running his platoon, doing both jobs would be impossible even on a very short term basis. The platoon would be turned over to a senior NCO. Yankee Dog, has indicated how such circumstances could be set-up before a CM battle, but to consider a command reorganisation during a scrap would be ahistorical.

Many, many years ago when I was learning to shoot I had to use standing and kneeling firing positions in the open on a wind-swept rifle-range. That didn't mean I had to stand out in the open later on when it came to putting those lessons into practice. It is perfectly possible to use on-board mortars in the direct firing mode without any of the team using their rifles etc.. It is also possible to put your mortars in the front line, nice and close to the enemy, but if you do be prepared to see them die real quick.

Can you imagine the threads that would go on about whether a .30 would penetrate an oak dinning table and, in the cafe, whether a German officer enjoying the pleasures of room 6 (with the flying helmet and wet celery) could realistcally be expected to "spot" a US squad in the corrdor outside? Some level of abstraction is best left in.

Sluggo, Infantry weapons: A pistol, though included in the game, is hardly a combat weapon. Get beyond a few yards and, in a fight, you'd be lucky to hit a barn door. SMGs, 50 yards tops. Currently the game has pixeltruppen opening up with them at 100 yards plus, but that is an acknowledged flaw and going to be fixed. Rifles, generally, in the game call it 300 yards. They can score hits at greater range, but don't rely on it - more harassing fire than effective. Bazooka type weapons, ignoring the one shot German stuff, 100 yards if you are lucky but better to let the armour get in closer. Everything else is effective at the sort of ranges you are likely to see targets in the Normandy campaign. What more do you need?

Just to repeat this, nothing has been left out of CMBN. It is not CMx1 updated. It is an entirely new game. It took me a fair while to get my head around this point but once I did I found it much easier to play CMx2 and much more enjoyable. Constantly refering back to an old game and how it used to be possible to do things is not a useful mindset to have when learning CMx2.