Rocky Balboa

I'm all for testing these things but what would a test like this really show us? If you could produce a test that shows a 60mm round can cause 50% suppression when landing within 50 meters, what other factors would influence this in game? Intervening terrain, entrenchment status, weather, leadership, unit training, and even unit morale before the round lands could all be factors that could effect how much suppression a unit should accumulate. Even BF probably couldn't answer these questions because even though they coded the engine, the variables are just too numerous to reliably account for to give an absolute answer.

CPT Mike, just wanted a little clarification on what you wrote. In your OP you said Assuming you were assaulting with a full strength squad you lost 3 men initially to a IG which would have reduced your squad strength by around 25% but you still felt confident that your assault squad could take the objective. I'm also assuming that the intervention of the IG caused your squad to take cover to some extent which probably gave the Germans an opportunity to recover from the suppression. However, your squad also had to recover from suppression as well to continue the assault. What was the length of time it took your men to recover from the IG. Was this realistic or unrealistic in your opinion? You mentioned that your assault was repulsed but didn't mention any other casualties. So did your pixel troops break without taking additional casualties or was there some additional fire before reaching the objective that caused them to fail?

Rat Patrol wasn't exactly a realistic depiction of the capabilities of this vehicle even though I never missed an episode as a kid. Its a thin skinned vehicle and is pretty easy to put out of commission.

Well this is an excellent point. On a much smaller scale when playing CMBN, I can't count how many times I thought I had my opponent on the run and pushed the assault to quickly and with little preparation only to be delivered a bloody nose in the process.

Strategically OMG was a miserable failure for the Allies , but the operation lends itself to some very interesting scenarios at the scale of CMBN. So I'm definitely looking forward to it

You left off a few other key issues with OMG. One is the overall allied supply problems which prevented them from being able to advance with more than one corp. The other is the disregarding of key operational and strategic intelligence. Could OMG have been a success? Sure but as is the case with most historical calamities, it wasn't any one thing that caused the operation to fail but rather a whole host of avoidable mistakes and unavoidable events. Such are the fortunes of war ....

No one said the game was perfect however one would hope that some things will be improved upon with iteration.

AFAIK, the surrender state of an individual soldier/unit is solely based on morale level. Once a soldiers morale gets to a certain point then they will throw up hands and hit their knees. Since surrender is really just a function of morale they can come back from the surrender state by moving friendlies close enough to have them recover. So the reason why the pixeltruppen didn't surrender when exiting the tank was because they hadn't reach that morale level yet.

Sometimes I think its better learning to play a game well by using your own personal experience and not by knowing or trying to learn every detail in the rule book. This is in my opinion what sets a good leader apart from a bad or inexperienced one.

Well now your talking about C2 and how that all works is as much a mystery as the leadership rating. We can assume that leadership plays some factor into keeping C2 or establishing it but there are I'm sure, many other factors as well such as sighting. Most of the time you don't have to move a HQ closer to establish C2 but just move where your HQ can see the unit that is out of C2. I'm guessing the variables involved with how the C2 algorithms work in this game are very complex and would require another complete manual to thoroughly explain how it all works. And then we Grogs ... being well ... very Groggie, would pick it to pieces forthwith. I'm also guessing this is why BF is very reluctant to reveal how it all works.

I understand why everyone would like to know how this works but to be honest, what would you do with that information? How would knowing exactly how leadership works change how you play the game? The way the game assigns leadership ratings appears to be totally random and a good leader can be alive one moment and dead the next so knowing exactly how it effects things to me really doesn't matter. What, are you going to fire a bad leader in the middle of a battle and pick a new one? No, you have a mission to accomplish and at any one point in time you choose the best unit (this means strength, ammo, morale, experience, fitness, leadership all matter) to accomplish that mission. All things being equal, I know + means good leader - means bad leader and that's enough for me to make my decision.

If I understand your question correctly, you should be able to select the icon of the unit you want to view and hit the <tab> key this will quickly move your view into position behind that unit. I use this to move long distances across the map

Also check your graphics driver and make sure it is up to date.

Man don't get me started on the sliding thing, I know this has been around since CMSF but watching my troops slide into position on those last few steps just bugs the snot out of me. Seriously just that one change alone would make the game look so much better without even updating the graphics engine. I can just imagine what newcomers to the came must think when they see their troops hit the brakes and slide those last few feet. To be honest, if they could find some way to fix that one bug I would be a happy gamer ... well maybe for a little while anyway .

@MjKerenr If its not too much trouble please post your variants in the repository or at the cmmods site. I would really like to try it out ..

Anything they can do to add some character to the soldiers would be great but it may be asking too much to have variations in the models to that extent. Currently the troops just look and act too wooden and robotic. They all have their weapons pointed up at exactly the same angle. In a perfect world, some troops should hold the muzzle up and others should point the muzzle down. I actually think that BFC can overcome some of the deficiencies with the graphics engine by adding some variety to the animations and make them look more natural. Of course not knowing exactly how CMx2 handles things under the hood means that adding more animations will also increase memory cost as well as CPU cycles so I realize its a pipe dream but I thought I would just throw the thought out there.

For the next major release, I would like to see some more animations, particularly with regards to infantry. Why are all my soldiers right handed? I would like to see left handed soldiers added to the mix as well as some variation in how they hold and fire their weapons. Some would be muzzle up some might be muzzle down and of course the lefties would fire and run in a left hand dominate fashion. I would also like to see some of my German troops running with the weapon in either the right or left hand as they liked to do. Of course I know everyone has their own things they would like to see added but I think this would add greatly to the realism and immersion in the game.

This thread brings to mind a question I have wondered about. If you set a TRP up for the AI will it give preference to using the TRP? In other words can the scenario designer use TRPs to direct where he wants the AI to place it's indirect fire?

Currently hedgehogs can't be blown with a demo charges and IMO this blows. These hedgehogs were not indestructible and could absolutely be removed with a modest amount of HE. If a demo charge can breach a tank wide hole in bocage (which I seriously doubt could be done in RL with a single charge) then you should also be able to remove hedgehogs with them. I think both wire and hedgehogs should be breached with either demo charges or large caliber HE(105mm +). I would also submit that a large caliber HE shell that lands on top of a hedgerow would also have the effect of opening an infantry size hole in the hedge. Are we saying that large caliber HE can destroy concrete and masonry buildings but can't blow these metal hedgehogs off a road or knock a hole in a hedge?

Even when including TRP's in a defense I will normally always have a scout team(OP) forward who can observe the location covered by the TRP and the purpose for this is 2 fold. First This is realistically the way they would have been used. Even if you have preregistered targets, you still need to know when to call the fires in so I use the scouts as an op to trigger the fires at the proper time. Second I do so enjoy seeing the carnage and destruction caused by a well executed indirect fire attack

This is why the game includes TRP(target reference points). These represent preregistered fires that don't require a spotter or direct LOS. When calling indirect fire and using a TRP the fire comes in very quickly and very accurately. All well designed defensive plans should include a few of these on suspected enemy avenues of approach.

In this situation you are the spotter and unless you can adjust fire for the arty then those rounds are going to be wildly inaccurate and depending on how close you are to the target and how accurate you are a coming up with the correct target coordinates you could be eating those rounds as they fall :eek: . Please read my previous post on the difference between real world positioning and map positioning.

There are a few issues with calling for fire by map coordinates only. As BD mentioned the first problem is in order to accurately hit that building or crossroads, you have to know where your tube and the target is exactly on the map. In WW2 troops didn't have gps and maps where 1:2500 scale and not accurate enough to pinpoint exact locations. But even if you could pinpoint your exact spot on the map that building your trying to hit could be off by 50-100 meters. Even with the most accurate modern day maps, there is still a difference between real positioning (round earth) and map position (round earth converted to a flat map). This is why you need a spotter. The spotter can give the mortar team/gun the map coordinates to the target and that hopefully gets you in the general area. Then the spotter makes adjustments until the rounds are landing where they need to land exactly. If the spotter wants to mark that as a TRP the he relays that to the mortar team and they mark their gun/tube settings. But even if you have preregistered a TRP why would you want to fire and possibly waste ammo or worse kill your own troops or civilians with out having a spotter tell you that its ok to fire?

First rule of etiquette is, if someone plays like a dick then don't play them again. I don't suppose there is anything preventing a player from choosing all artillery or a battalion of jeeps but like I said rule one does apply and you can always establish the ground rules before hand. I don't think you will run into too much of this kind of thing with this community as the maturity level is probably higher than most unless of course you slip into the cesspool which is Peng and then all best are off.

I happen to think the quick battle maps included are very well done however the great thing about this game is that if you don't like the ones included then you can create your own. Since you have stated that you can create much better maps very quickly then I wish you would hurry up and make them so we can all start enjoying your creations. Personally I don't think you can ever have too many QB maps .... When you get them done and if they are as good as you say they are, then send me your PayPal info and I'll send you a donation. When do you think you might have them ready? ... Are they done yet?