Erwin

Hope it's not a fluke as I thought that AI could not use charges.

Invaluable info. Thanks...

Need to be aware that explosions and flames are more "Hollywood" SFX than real explosions which rarely result in a ball of fire. Nothing wrong with Hwd explosions and flames, of course...

IIRC the used satchel charge disappears at the start of the turn, so you can't rewind to see it still there if it's been used.

Enjoying the start of this - 34 minutes in. Occupied the first line of structures and established OP's on roofs with FO's and snipers. One team from the Support Group is having a narrow escape (I hope). It was advancing up center of map and ran into Uncon in trench at hand grenade range. A grenade lightly wounded two of my guys, but they shot one Uncon and pulled back immediately as the turn ended. Am hoping that dust etc will enable them to FAST run away to safety in next turn while I use an FO to bring mortar fire on the Uncons. Already used arty effectively on two other Uncon groups in trenches including an HQ as well as on a couple of buildings to help clear em. One thing I am doing which is not advised in the briefing is use a couple of the Engineer teams that are supposed to be left in the base... for their charges. Once they've used most of their charges I run em back to help guard the the base. Otherwise I feel that the engineer squad I am supposed to have in the Assault Group only has six charges total which doesn't seem like nearly enuff. Oh, and enemy arty attack on the base has KO'd three regular jeeps (mostly empty) and also one of the two MG-armed jeeps and killed the three occupants(!) (not Javelin teams thank goodness as I ran em to cover earlier). Nothing I could do about that, so it's frustrating when you consider how important it is to keep casualties to a min...

What % tend to be operational while the others are in maintenance etc? Am really starting to get concerned about the Empire.

People have been asking for motorbikes and sidecars with MG's since CM1 came out in 1998. I am sure it's the very next thing on BF's "to do" list.

Good to know it's 4 action spots. How many meters is that?

I've read that entering SLOW is the way to go in the game. But, it bothers me to use that gamey tactic. Maybe the game system's "gaminess" should be an excuse for humans to be gamey as well. I dunno... I mean, where does it all end... with AFV crews being used as infantry or summat!!!!???

IIRC moving a MG a "short distance" does NOT require a pack up and redeploy action.

Lot of folk would like that as well. But, not sure if such a mod is possible.

You'll be relieved to know that none of this was reported on US TV and that we are all safe over here. News here is either about the passenger dragged off a United flight, or something to do with Trump. As we all know, nothing else important happens in the world anymore.

What country we talking about re tax? Sweden? (Sucks, man...)

They were Brits, so maybe 2. Will experiment with a simple SPLIT rather than ASSAULT split and see if both teams can acquire an extra AT weapon or not.

My concern with placing sniper near any other units that may fire, is that firing will attract attention to the sniper's location as well. Maybe it works in the game.

Am no expert, but when I did my research for new machines it seemed that fast GPU and SSD were more important than fast RAM. (More RAM was better.)

Am shocked that your current machine doesn't play CM just fine. I have a game machine that is about 7 years old, Win 7, and nowhere near your specs and I have no problem playing CM2 on max quality settings. However, I get my machines made for me by XI Computers (in CA) and I wonder if getting a professional game system build makes a difference as the XI guys know how to max performance with compatible components.

"In CMBS small teams will stop letting you add AT launchers to their load..." Yes, same with CMSF and presumably CMA. Interestingly, in CMSF I split an 8-man squad into Assault sections. Both teams had the same load of AT weapons. But, the A team would not ACQUIRE any extra AT weapon. Whereas the B team could ACQUIRE one more AT weapon.

That's another issue. Can a squad realistically carry an extra 3,994 rounds in addition to its normal load and still function? Also, after taking all those rounds, could they also take other weapons like AT etc? Can the squad move FAST, QUICK, or only MOVE? And how quickly does it tire?

Good movie most of the time. Compare with the nonsense Hwd churns out - eg "Fury".

Often a "fully loaded" vehicle will only allow a min of 1,000 rounds to be acquired. This esp affects snipers. Very annoying when you want to give a sniper 100-200 7.62mm rounds and the min it can acquire is 1,000. The CM2 game is very good at this point. I hope that BF starts focusing more on the "ergonomics" of play from now on. ie: Addressing some of the irritating aspects of the UI which slow down gameplay cos it takes many more unnecessary clicks or actions to accomplish simple tasks. The ACQUIRE system is one. Also, bringing back the efficient CM1 "one click" 180 degree arc. If one plays with a lot of turreted AFV's, it gets real annoying and time wasting having to do 180 degree arcs for a company of tanks if you want their turrets to face a number of different directions that change at several waypoints along their route. Those two items are a couple of the ones that can waste the most amount of player time when the player wants to focus on fun decisions re tactics, rather than fighting the UI.

There is no way to share ammo between vehicles, or vehicles and troops. IIRC, an inf unit that is out of ammo can take ammo, a clip at a time, from an adjacent inf unit that does have ammo. The inf units may have to be from the same formation - not sure about that. Have long asked BF to improve the ACQUIRE process so that adjacent units can share ammo - probably with a time delay proportional to the amount or type of ammo being shared. The current ACQUIRE from vehicles is way too cumbersome and is almost a "sub game". For the most efficient acquisition of ammo by a number of units, one has to 1) Split squads into teams; 2) Embark teams from different squads into vehicle(s); 3) Each team uses ACQUIRE to get ammo - sometime a team may only want 200-300 rounds, but you find that the minimum is 1,000(!) rounds; 4) Dismount teams; 5) Run teams to their respective parent units' locations and allow time for them to recombine. Then, if you have more teams than can fit into the supply vehicle(s), you have to do 1-5 all over again. Hope this can be streamlined for CM3 at least.

Will you make adjustments b4 we give it another test?

If I'd known I coulda sent you a bunch of saved game files, but all deleted now. By "the final VL" I meant the one in the corner that one can only reach after capturing the village. It's actually a pretty straightforward mission. There are only two tricky parts: 1) Getting across the first crossing without getting blown up. It looks like a trap so I instinctively used a few smoke grenades and everyone crossed safely. Didn't have enuff time to secure the village b4 the convoy entered. So it seemed that I had to secure the convoy entry point first and did so with few casualties. I think maybe 2 WIA or KIA to this point. Saw there were uncons covering the "final" VL. I figured I could deal with em later - probably with mortars. 2) Attacking across the main road to secure a foothold in the village (supported by the convoy vehicles). I think 2-3 men were plinked by snipers or some sort of small arms fire while on MOVE towards the "jump off" point just across the road. There was HE arty falling but I don't think anyone was hurt. Used all the smoke from the bigger guns on both sides of the assault route. But, the smoke wasn't quite enuff. After I finished the scenario I restarted at this point several times to see if I could do this without loss. But, I always lost 3-4 guys running over the road. Used split ENG teams and ran a platoon across the road with one team set to BLAST the wall to get into the first building (which had been previously hit with ATGM's btw). Gave them pause so they would BLAST but not run in. That part worked. But when the guys did enter (and kill any surviving occupants), the real damage was done by the uncons in the square low walled/sandbagged on the other side. The uncons would have been easily killed by arty had I known they were there. But, now it's too late. A stand up fight between units in the building and these uncons always resulted in heavy friendly casualties. With the benefit of hindsight I experimented by sending guys around the RHS of the wall and was more successful taking these uncons from their flank. Uncons in the buildings on the other side of the gully to the right revealed themselves and I tried to hose em down with the 50's on the trucks and the MG's. But, they seemed to be able to plink away at men still at the wall. Probably shoulda used at least another few smoke grenades to cover the men at the wall while they waited to move to safety inside. Once the foothold was made, it was fairly simply MOUT tactics to clear the rest of the village with no loss. After that there was no real challenge left and the rest of the mission was easy. Taking the final VL was not a problem. One just has to keep enuff smoke grenades in reserve to cover the recrossing of the gully by the convoy.

I still enjoy CM1 as well. If it's a heavily modded CM1, I would think it would look pretty good.