James Crowley

Indeed. Similar to ideas myself and others have suggested but which have been roundly rejected time and again. Not only by BFC, to be fair, but by several forumites. Much more restricted knowledge of the enemy and much tougher command and control of friendly forces are the equivalent of the Holy Grail to me and, it seems, about as likely to appear.

Thanks Steve. Initially followed Ian's advice and that did the job.

Thanks Ian, that did it.

Is anyone else having problems installing the Pc patch? I have tried every which way I can think of; antivirus on and off; mod folders in and out etc. It gives the appearance of installing but when I try to launch it just brings up a message saying that FB has stopped working. I take out the installed folder and 1.01 seems to work fine. Can't remember there being a problem with previous patches.

Zaloga's book, Armored Attack 1944, states that the TD belonged to the 704th TD Battalion and was hit by German artillery on 29 December on the southern approaches to Bastogne.

Intrigued to know what those TacAI enhancements are; all sorts of possibilities spring to mind!

Great news and an interesting mix of new features. Given that the 4.0 upgrade will precede the various planned modules, is it reasonable to suppose that said modules will contain scenarios/campaigns that feature the AI enhancements? Without new scenarios the new AI features will not become evident unless scenario authors revisit their older works and upgrade them and, sadly, user-made scenarios are comparatively rare - another scenario pack, maybe? Also, will the AI enhancements work with QBs? I'm not sure but I believe that triggers don't work with QBs; if the new stuff doesn't as well then QBs will start to fall way behind scenarios in terms of what they can offer.

Thanks Ian. Looking more closely at the individual files I can now see the small a's, p's and m's. In previous CM's the titles of the QB maps had the more obvious full descriptions.

Looking at the QB maps; in game there are 105 available to choose from. However, the QB map folder holds 414. There appears to be between 3 and 6 variations of each of the 105 maps. What factor/s influence the selection of one of those variations?

...and dated Thursday 10 March 2016, a date that doesn't exist.

Wow, longtime since I have seen you on the Forums! I feel quite privileged Found the maps, as described, although only fifteen of 'em. But who's counting. Had a quick look-see and the BP looks good. Here's hoping for more of them. Cheers Jim

Not seeing any new QB maps; latest ones I have are dated Feb 2015.

I have been leafing through Munch's history of the 653rd Hvy. Pz. jg. Bn. to try and find something definitive. Nothing that specific but there is reference to a memo to 1st Army High Command stating that slow reloading was a known problem. In part, from the separate projectile and propellant casing which is obviously a slower process than a conventional tank shell. But also because " it is necessary to return to zero degree elevation after each shot to unload the spent casing. This makes it necessary to employ a large number of Jagdtigers in an attack" This tends to make the tested loading time of 15 seconds seem rather generous but how much longer it took would, I guess, depend on individual circumstances. Certainly switching to a different target would take longer, given the constraints, than a second shot on the same target.

A mere jest but, IMHO, at this stage Baneman has no choice but to bull on. The infantry will tire out if forced to move laterally; although there may be some wisdom in reversing and repositioning the armour. Bil's aggressive stance has already been punished; perhaps an aggressive counter is what is called for now. A good fight and great AARs from both partcipants.

Which leaves going sideways or.....backwards? Good luck with those two on the attack

You could also try: 'The Ardennes 1944-1945 Hitler's Winter Offensive' by Christer Bergstrom. Originally published in Sweden, the English edition was published by Casemate in 2014. A big and beautifully produced book of nearly 500 pages. Lots of maps and excellent photos, it goes into huge detail with many first person accounts as well as the strategic overview and is pretty balanced between the two sides.

To be fair, it is the all AT gun, all AC, all HMG, all mortar selections etc.etc. that are the true bane. I don't generally mind some of the odd combinations that crop up; in fact I quite like having to make do with what I'm given but those ones pretty much kill the battle from the get-go. Keep up the good work; fight the good fight and so on

Ian, just wondering in what capacity you are able to influence the force selection procedure - Beta tester maybe? Using the suggestion button is, indeed, a good way to cycle through a variety of potential selections, so as to obtain something that you are happy to put into the field. Unfortunately, if you are playing solo, this does nothing to aid the other sides selection, unless you are happy to compromise FoW. It is this, for me, that cripples the QB selector. This is particularly noticeable in tiny and small sized battles which, of course, have only a small number of units on the roster. The 'combined arms' choice in CMx1 was pretty good for that and it would be great to see something like that available in CMx2. However, I'm thinking that it is technically more difficult to do in the current engine, which is why we haven't seen something like it emerge up 'til now.

Better yet! Tally-ho!

Unfortunately the answer is 'no' on all counts. These features, or something like them, would be great to have but, unless this had changed with CMBS and I don't think that it has, there has been no substantial alteration to force selection in QBs since the advent of CMBN. As a consequence, unless you are prepared to pick the forces for both sides, which totally destroys a major element of the game - FoW - the solo QB experience is largely moribund. Even if you pick forces for your own side, there is every possibility that your opponents force will be totally inappropriate to having a decent battle i.e. your infantry force will be faced with an all-tank force or an anti -tank force. So QBs only really work for H2H, where both opponents pick their own force. Having a decent combined arms selection available for all sizes of QBs for solo battles is something of a holy grail and, given the lapse in time, I very much doubt that it is on the horizon.

Excellent! Interesting subject matter; let's hope this is the first of many. Will these scenarios feature the use of triggers and what proportion are playable from both sides? - obviously not the campaign ones. Also, are any specifically H2H?

With the exciting news that a Ver, 4.00 of CMX2 will be under development at an unspecified time in the future and that the features to be included have yet to be decided on, do any of the features on this whimsical wish list, many of which have been raised before and which apply equally across FI, BN and RT, strike a chord? Or are many/all of them merely tilting at windmills? Make the branching in AI orders have more conditions, make it non-binary.Similar in Campaigns, plus simple dialog-based choices so the designer doesn't have to insert a scenario for every choice they want to accommodate. Updating all the UI elements to C21st standards (scalable, configurable, incorporating standard UI conventions like scroll bars and in-place editing). Camera height going to actual eye levels of selected elements. Allow Broken troops to rout off the map edge in all cases if they're still running away and they hit it; if they leave from within a setup or exit zone, they're not counted as casualties;if they leave off an unmarked edge, they're MIA. Improve the TacAI so it's more aware of what's around it and can react to that knowledge. Including more surrendering when cut off, surrounded and about to be wiped out. Especially allow it to abort/reschedule script movement orders when it's being forced to run a gauntlet. Tagging for units and AI order groups so that groups get orders appropriate to the kind of assets which will be assigned. Make screen edge scrolling toggleable. Being able to Tab to a waypoint. better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats not 'improvised' weapons. better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen but... Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

A very good, and appropriate list. To which I would add: better representation of close assault on vehicles. The current one, whereby an AFV can be 'assaulted' from up to 30m away - sometimes with an obstacle to movement in the way - is far too generic and allows something that happened on a vanishingly small scale to become almost commonplace. The real short range danger to AFV's were 'zooks, 'shrecks, fausts and Piats not 'improvised' weapons. better auto-selection of forces in Mix option, in QBs, particularly in the tiny and small categories. stopping the heavy 'clipping' that is still possible with AFVs. I know Steve has said this is very difficult but having, for instance, a tank drive 'through' another tank on a narrow bridge is a real immersion killer, IMO. Never going to happen. I know but I can still hope. Tighter C&C around out of command units. Ideally, no communication with them at all but, more likely, some limitation on command options. Less casualties, much more suppression effects on infantry under fire, particularly in heavy cover/buildings.

The upcoming programme in the CM story sounds very promising - particularly interested to see what the Battle pack is going to contain. However, as exciting as all that is, I do hope that the 4.00 upgrade has something that will render the auto-pick in quick battles able to select decent mixed-force match-ups, particularly for small and tiny battles. You know, a bit of Infantry with a tank or two. As it stands, the QB auto selector is close to unusable, particularly in those cases but often in larger sized battles as well. Even if you get a half decent force to fight with - and that can take several attempts - you have no idea what bizarre selection you will be up against. More often something totally inappropriate for the map or situation, such that the game is lopsided and often pointless to continue with. Sometimes it would be nice to just generate a nice small, quick and dirty battle that can be played out in a relatively short time. And sure, sometimes an odd mix can be interesting. Just not all the time. Why auto pick? Simply to preserve FoW and to have to fight with what is given - provided that is a sensible force on each side.

As an interesting aside, I've just completed a small QB in which circumstances allowed me to rain 60mm mortar rounds on a Stug and a Mk 111. In the case of the Stug, one round achieved a partial penetration on the gunners hatch - marked as hull top I think - causing the crew to bail. Oddly enough another round went through the now open commanders hatch but neither actually KO'ed the Stug. The MK 111 also took a hit on the turret roof which caused another partial penetration and did KO it. I was quite surprised at those results as I didn't think they were possible with 60mm ammo; 81mm maybe.