Blackcat

I have seen similar things, most seem to be down to slight crests. A couple of days ago I sat watching as one of my Shermans kept pumping rounds into the ground even though there was a bright blue line from the tank to the target. Shouting variations of, "Lift the point of aim, you %*&"!" at the screen had no effect. I think there might be an issue where the Tank Commander can see the target but the gunner just can't quite. It gets reported as full LOS/LOF where actually it should get a grey line. That said I am fairly certain that most of my tank gunners are three parts pissed or just totally incompetent at their job; nothing else can explain how they can fire short, then over, then go back to the original short spot and so on.

I never got the hang of it in CMSF either, but a couple of months back someone, and I am ashamed to say I can't remember who, posted specific instructions on here and they work like a charm. Essentially, give your engineers a waypoint exactly one action spot away from the bocage that you want to blow. Then give the bast order to the friendlly side of the bocage (i.e. in the adjacent action spot) then give them a quick move order away from that spot. Press "go" and, voila, you have a neat hole and a safe team of engineers back under cover.

Place the blast point on the friendly side of the hedge then give them a quick move order away from the breach. The engineers will then not go through the gap.

"I just can't believe that engineers couldn't have used just plain HE to blast holes in them" They could and did, but it took a lot of time to create a hole and a lot of HE. As a practical solution it was a non-starter. The CMBN version where some engineers walk up place a charge and bang there is a gap in less than a minute is wholly unrealistic, but it does make for reasonable gameplay.

My thanks to those who have responded to my question. I am not convinced that firing one or two action spots away will produce sufficient supression to keep a unit pinned, but I will give it ago.

Nah, you can't select the target line as you can with movement orders.

Quite often I use a tank to put down HE on an infantry position, then after a turn or two of HE, I want to switch to just MG fire so as to keep any survivors' heads down whilst my own infantry moves in. In basic terms what I want the tank to do is stop firing with its main gun but, without changing the aim point, continue firing with the bow MG and use the coaxial MG. However, the UI insists I order a new, "Target Light", order but because of the dust and smoke kicked up by the explosions from the HE rounds my tank no longer has a line of sight. So I have to cease fire giving the surviving enemy troops at least a turn to recover. Given that in real life terms all want my gunner to do is use a different trigger for his existing point of aim, I am not at all sure the present behaviour is realistic or defensible. Furthermore I find this an very common problem - I have hit it in just about every battle I have played where I have armour. Could someone point me to a solution to this problem?

IMHO, Thanks for answering my question. Would you mind if I suggest that you are judging the situation and the decision makers from a 21st century perspective? The values held, by both sides, sixty-odd years ago were very different and people like Truman should be judged on what they knew and believed and not what on the knowledge we have and our values.

IMHO, You said, "What really makes Japan case emotional - there were no danger to Allies any more". I am curious, in what sense do you mean that there was no longer a danger to allies from Japan in early August 1945? Assuming Truman decided againt the use of bombs what do you think he should have done?

You are quite correct. I was projecting on to Battlefront, issues that aren't theirs. Except in the matter of purchase price in a QB, of course.

YankeeDog, You have a point, I suppose it depends on how you define Units (see Mr. Burke's comment above). I tend to think of battalions rather than divisions, but thats just me. Anyay lets not get into metaphysics here. Most of the troops on the allied side in those first few weeks of the campaign were green, but the paras were a cut above the line infantry and cavalry in terms of training, motivation and morale. Could you agree to that?

Nobody is allowed to touch my testes except my wife. Mind you at my age it doesn't do her much good.

True, but I am not convinced you have jacked them up enough in the morale and leadership departments.

The time to set-up grown-up artillery for indirect fire (all that surveying etc.) was judged too long for a CMBN game.

If you are thinking about D-day and the early Normandy campaign most of the allied forces, probably the overwhelming majority were green, i.e. they had never been in combat before. Taking that as the base line I think it would be correct to say that generally the green airborne troops (and especially the paras) were fitter, better trained and more highly motivated than their line infantry or cavalry counterparts. Th UK commando forces were in a different league as, they were as highly trained as the paras and most of them had already seen the elephant. However, there were comapatively few of them many of them in Normandy. The Rangers I think of as analogous to Commandos, but I don't know enough to risk a comment.

Sheesh, Mr. Preusse, we know that English is not your first language so nobody is worried when you don't pick up on the nuances in a post. However, maybe you might want to think about the fact that people do use language constructions such as sarcasm, irony, hyperbole etc. before you respond because then you are more likely to catch the meaning of posts such as that by Mr. OZ.

I have to work my way up before I can play you in a PBEM? P!ss off! Back to the CM cess-pit with you and all your silly rules and talk of minions. Begone, I say!

"I haven't yet seen how they do in a protracted, longer range firefight, which is where their performance should fall off compared to other MGs due to the overheating and platform stability issues." Does CMBN model the sustained fire abilities of water-cooled MGs? I can't say I have noticed if it does. No barrel changes and no heat issue out to mean a lot more lead flying down range, I just haven't seen it. Oh, has anyone seen a MG jam in CMBN?

"HEAT rounds are quite effective against soft targets in terms of suppression" Damn right they are! My US sections often have a bazooka and they do a spiffing job at suppressing enemy infantry, especially in buildings. Of course, they usually start firing when thay are too far away and so waste a lot of rockets, which can be embarassing later if they bump into armour. However thats my fault and my choice.

Mr. Rune, I don't think you are allowed to bring your nonsense out of the Peng Challenge Thread. So either begone back to that fetid hole or challenge me yourself in a calm, civilised, gentlemanly manner.

"As the moderator of the 'Hate Forum' " GSX, you moderate that stuff? Seriously? I just spent a few minutes there and that was quite enough for me - its a cess pit full of sh!t. Do you get paid or is it a labour of love? If you aren't getting paid large sums of money, then I take my hat off to you.

"the problem is if there is a discrepancy between intern calculations and engine modelling then it is very difficult to the player to decide where his tanks or troops are safe... for example i place my tank behind some trees and think hey nobody can see him here and in the next moment my tank goes bang because the internal calculations say something different... i think this should be fixed by bfc in the upcoming patches because its really unfair." Ok, I can understand your view. Clearly it would be ideal if the internal "map" was matched exactly by the graphic display. I don't know how feasible that is but I suspect its is impossible due to hugely diverse numbers of graphics cards and settings that are available. The internal calculations are though available to the player in the from of the target tool so it is possible to check if the position we think is safe from view is actually safe. Finally, how often does this situation actually occur and of those occasions how often does it make a difference? I suspect it is very rare.

"if you dont recognize something dont means that it dont exists or ?" Hey, you have one experience and can post about it. I have a different experience, can't I post about it?

"i tried many quickbattles with many different settings. from elite snipers down to regular ones and it seems that they need several shots to hit something even at still standing targets. i only can talk about my impressions " Fair enough, but please accept that other people have different experiences and therefore different impressions. For example, I have played a couple of PBEMs against Mattias and he loves his high experience snipers. I can assure you that they hit what they aim at, maybe not one shot one kill all the time but as close to it as makes no difference. They are also a bugger to spot. In one game I was losing a steady trickle of men - one sniper had in effect pinned down a couple of platoons behind some low bocage and despite having all those eyes on it still took several minutes before I was able to find where the fire was coming from. Another example, in the penultimate battle of the Road to Montebourg campaign against the AI two enemy snipers set well back from my line of advance (300 plus yards) caused 75% of my total casualties and I didn't know where the top scorer was until I found and killed him by accident right at the end of the game. Are snipers ineffective in the game? Nope, not in my experience (at least not when used against me). There may be an issue with accuracy against tank commanders, I have not seen enough to comment one way or another. If I leave my tanks unbuttoned within a couple of hundred yards of the enemy the commanders seem to get shot on a regular basis, but whether from snipers or general infantry I couldn't say. One thing I will say about the use of snipers and this is carried over from CMSF, they appear to be at their most effective if you sneak them into position and then leave them alone to sort out their own targets. In those situations their spotter/security man seldom opens fire, thus giving away their position, and the number of shots to the number of kills tends towards 1:1.

For what its worth I have never seen my own troops fire small arms against an unbuttoned tank and the only time I have noticed incoming small arms against my own armour is when I have forgotten to close them down (and in those cases I quite often see the tank commander killed). I may have had a couple of occasions when enemy tripod mounted MG42s have fired on a buttoned tank, but I couldn't be sure - they may have been firing at the supporting infantry and the tank was hit by overs. If this really is an issue I don't see it.