Erwin

And what happened to Mad Minute Games is a serious lesson.

I only disagree about using more than a two man scout team. Yes, you can back em up with a lot more. But, the idea is to give the enemy ambushers very little to see or shoot at. 4 guys are easier seen than 2. And if the ambush is good, 4 will die as easy as 2. However, due to spotting bonus of binoculars I have used XO and HQ Support teams for recon as well. They are usually 3-man teams.

If you mean the pics that are onscreen as the scenario loads, yes.

It's probably the most innovative feature of CM2 and it does help keep more alive for endgame scoring purposes. My only gripe is that we have lots of relatively useless HQ units but no medics. How about another way to split a squad - split off a medic?

I agree with Andrew's tactics. You need a 5m-10m range arc. We're told that one can simply use the 360 degree arc, but that means your scouts could be looking in any direction, so I use 180 degree arcs to ensure they'll be looking where I want them to look, and yes it's become a pain to do those arcs in CM2 compared to CM1.

I agree with Sakai's tactical idea except that I like to do "2 up": two platoons (or companies) ahead to recon and engage the enemy with one in reserve to provide reinforcement. Also, remember to only reinforce success, not failure. Ideally, you want to find the enemy's weak area and attack in force there, and avoid his strong points wherever possible (use arty for those if you can). Re Recon, best to split off 2-man teams and do it with the minimum of men. It's harder to spot 2 men than a squad or even an assault team.

In my 2nd campaign where I can split squads into three, when I select SCOUT I get a team with a couple of rifles, and no AT. But both the default icon as well as the Lt Smash WW2 icon mod show an AT team symbol. This happens for US and German.

I played this a while ago but don't remember it. In general you want to use the min necessary force to accomplish the job. And a reserve is always good. I find it can work to set aside part of ones force and pretend you don't have em and try to fight better and more cleverly with a smaller force. When you have a lot of stuff there is temptation to throw em all in and this simply provides more targets for the enemy. Hope that helps...

I find the LOS issue to be increasingly annoying. It doesn't make sense for an entertainment game to have (say) the 3rd crewman see a target but the gunner cannot see the target to shoot at it. This is "design for maximum irritation/frustration." It wastes time esp in WEGO as you try fruitlessly for several turns to target a unit only to realize it's impossible from this position. In RL it would be obvious that one of the crew can see the target but the gun can't shoot at the target. The game should either provide a warning that "LOS does not permit targeting" or better still just have the "if you can see it, you can shoot at it and vice versa" put back into the game. In an entertainment game it doesn't matter that gunlayer #3 can see the target in a game. All that matters is that you can fire your gun at it.

Re CMA campaign, how about fighting through a rugged road pass thru mountains to clear it for convoys/armor so as to attack a village at the other end with armor? Shilka's a must. Maybe start with recon scenario, then 1-3+ battles to clear the pass and make it safe. Finally, assaulting a settlement.

The real problem is that with the size of CMBN maps ther is little real function for recon vehicles. The is a huge value in recon, but when a map is so small that an inf unit could literally run across the whole map in 3 or 4 turns, one really needs recon INFANTRY, not vehicles. Since using vehicles for recon on a small map is usually suicide from some of them at least, my SOP is to dismount the recon vehcicles and use the crew as foot recon (they have binocs). The problem there is that many crews only have sidearms, maybe one SMG at best. So, they can't get themselves out of trouble. However, I do find they are able to the recon mission much better than if they were in vehicles. The other problem is that the entire crew bails out leaving no driver. It can take several turns to get back to their vehicle to use it as valuable light support after you know there are no nasties ready to ambush the recon vehicle. And of course no other unit can board and drive the vehicle to their location(!) It would be great to be able to disembark the crew but leave a driver. Also, did they really have no decent hand weapons??

Per my edit I think the 234/1 is missing cos it lost 2 crew. I realized that in my first run thru of the scenario the 234/1 that was dismounted did in fact turn up with its original commander as the new HQ. It was the original HQ that lost two crew that even though it remounted its 234/1, does not appear in scenario 2. So, dismounted vehicles DO return (mounted) in future scenarios of a campaign. It is vehicles that have lost crew that do not reappear.

Note edits to my original feedback post re 2nd scenario "Designer Notes" when I tested the SPLIT KG option and my findings re dismounted vehicles not appearing in the 2nd scenario.

I know exactly what you mean, Rankorian. The good news is that when you play future campaigns/scenarios they will seem relatively easy and more fun, and you will find your standard of play much improved, or so I am finding.

Go to Battlefront Home Page and look under DOWNLOADS.

Some feedback re this Campaign: 1) Just completed first scenario and enjoying it immensely. I love the decisions one has to make to decide what to do re the 2nd scenario. Well done! 2) Slightly troubled by the Pumas. There were incredibly rare - like Elefants or Sturm Tigers - a failed experiment I guess. I suggest a mention in the briefings or designer notes about how come this KG has been "honored" with a platoon of them. http://www.militaryfactory.com/armor/detail.asp?armor_id=365 3) The briefing says there will be no offboard arty support (despite the luxury of having two FO's). I had spotted AT guns and was maneuvering to kill em with direct fire when I was surprised to notice an 81mm mortar became available. I have no idea when it arrived or how long it had been there. Obviously, it made a difference. Please mention reinforcements like this in the briefing. 4) I appreciate the attempt to immerse the player in the moment with the lengthy designer notes/briefings. But, they were too long and actually confused me as I didn't see any additional important info that the briefings had failed to offer. I feel I wasted time rereading the several pages of designer notes hoping to find some key info I had missed, but never found any, plus it didn't make any difference to the battle outcome. As CM is not a roleplaying game, the personalities of the officers really do not matter, and I would cut this stuff out as it's unnnecessary reading. 5) At the end I suffered about 6 KIA and 7 WIA plus an "Other" (kubelwagon) destroyed. The US surrendered with about 5 minutes to go, so I got all the victory points. But, I only got a Tactical Victory - which surprised me. The briefings say that friendly casualties are not a concern. So, am curious what else I could have done better. 6) When the briefing essentially says "casualties don't matter" does that imply 100% replacements? I always play to minimize friendly casualties at almost any cost as all the campaigns I have played so far do not seem to replace casualties in future scenarios. 7) I noticed that you provided an EXIT zone to get rid of "unneeded units." I did not bother although I had a bunch of kubelwagons and trucks sitting around. Does one get points for getting them off the map? A mention in the briefing as to your intentions would have been good. 8) I tested the SPLIT option and found that the DESIGNER NOTES for the 2nd scenario says: "Let's send the whole KG to the North" rather than half of it... Other than that, great first scenario. Have chosen to keep my KG concentrated vs the town route next. A question re the game system. I dismounted my two 234/1's and used the crews for recon. One of the crews never got back to their vehicle when the scenario ended. Be warned that this means that dismounted units will NOT appear in the next scenario of a campaign. EDIT: I went back and redid part of the scenario so that the dismounted crew DID get back and remount their vehicle. However, still only one 234/1 appeared in the next scenario. I wonder if the fact that the other 234/1 had lost 2 crew, even tho' still mounted, that is what knocked it out of the campaign.

Thank you. Good vs AI presumably?

Clearly you are a Hero of the Soviet Union! A great victory for the Motherland!

Thank you...

sdp: Just to clarify, can we put all three of your Italian mods (listed in the previous post) in the same (say) "ZZZITALIAN MOD" folder and have them work ok, or do they conflict with each other? Or, should we only use one of your 3 Italian mods at a time depending on scenario seasonal requirements?

How dare you call it a bug! It's not a bug, it's a "feature" designed to simulate the fog of war and confusion as experienced in RL.

It would be good if there was a "Recon" mode. The trouble with HUNT is that as soon as the unit sees trouble it simply stops, when what one really would do is back-pedal out of harm's way as fast as possible. That was the whole point of the German 8 wheel recon vehicles, they had a driver at each end so they could reverse as fast as forwards. Not modeled in the game unfortunately. The other thing that would be helpful is if designers made recon units Crack or Elite to sim their extra training - that way they should spot quicker and take action faster rather than "spotting by getting shot." Actually, it would be good to make all specialized troops Crack or Elite: Engineers, Snipers, Recon...

I think that the largest CMBN battle I have played is the LA HAYE final scenario in the COURAGE AND FORTITUDE campaign. Seemed like more than a battalion of inf plus support, 12 tanks and a couple dozen trucks, jeeps etc. The Germans didn't have so much, but it was a terrific scenario. I haven't tried it again recently, but I had problems with the FIRE BRIGADE scenario. I could load it ok, but once I saved, attempting to load the saved game froze my system - which should be plenty powerful enuff.

Not sure that makes any sense jb. As with most of the CMBN weird phenomena, it's not a big problem, but it's strange and confusing to "reach" for an AT team icon only to find it has no AT capability, and the actual AT team has a regular inf icon and it's hard to locate (in the larger scenarios that I enjoy most).

Since teams with binoculars get spotting bonuses (AFAIK) you can also use some of those otherwise useless XO and HQ Support units as scouts. Unless you tend to get your Co HQ's KIA a lot, the only other function for those extraneous HQ units is to act as medics. (And I have been quite vociferous in the past about the fact I would have rather had medics than all those extra HQ units cluttering up the battlefield, heh.)