YankeeDog

Horses and other beasts of burden, whether mounted or harnessed to carts, do have some limited applicability to the CM scale, more so early war, but late war as well. The Germans never managed to completely motorize their logistics chain, and the Soviets used some horse cavalry supported by heavy weapons (MGs, mortars) moved in horse-drawn carts right to the end of the war. Cavalry formations weren't generally supposed to fight when mounted -- the purpose of fielding such units was more for operational mobility through terrain that was difficult for vehicles than for mounted combat. Nevertheless, it's not difficult to imagine CM scenario conceits where horses might be close enough to get caught up in the fighting. But don't kid yourselves, getting horses modeled passably well in the game would require a very large effort, on both the animation/modeling side and the coding/AI side. A horse-drawn cart is nothing at all like a truck with hooves instead of wheels at the front and the code for this sort of thing would have to be built pretty much from the ground up. So I don't expect it anytime soon, if ever. Only way I can see ever having horses and horse-drawn transport in the game would be if some other company contracted with BFC to license the CM engine for U.S. Civil War game or something like this where modeling horses would be essential. Presumably once coded and modeled, they could be ported back into the CM WWII games. Motorcycles seem more possible to me. Still a lot of work, but at least they don't involve coding up an animal AI.

Correct; during setup phase a single spotter can call in as many missions as you have artillery modules; the one-mission-per-spotter restriction only applies after you hit the GO button for the first time. And again, due to the new SHIFT+CLICK multi-battery functionality, a single spotter can also call in multiple modules simultaneously during regular gameplay, but they have to all be directed at the same target. Since Air Support cannot be controlled in CMRT, there's no way for me to confirm absolutely for sure that this will also apply to CMBN/FI v3.0 player-controlled Air Support (once it's fixed and put back the way it was), but I'm fairly sure it will.

This is where pre-planned (setup turn) missions and the new SHIFT+CLICK to plot multiple support assets onto one target are your friend...

A lot of this is due to the Soviet preference for using new recruits to form completely new divisions, while leaving existing divisions in the field and grinding them down until they were basically nothing, as compared to the Germans (and others), who were more likely to use replacements to bring depleted divisions back up to strength.

The only thing I would add to Sgt. Joch and JasonC 's comments is that starting somewhere around second half of 1943, Stavka and Stalin become increasingly confident the Allies are going to win the war eventually, and their strategic focus gradually shifts from how to win the war and ensure the survival of the Soviet state, to how to grab as much territory in Europe as possible before the end of the war. This is a gradual shift; it doesn't happen all at once. And as the endgame becomes increasingly apparent, Stalin is more and more willing to trade Russian lives for European territory. Stalin never really trusted the Western Allies and he wanted to make sure facts on the ground backed up what he believed to be the Soviet Union's due in post-war Europe. Stalin wanted to make absolutely sure the Soviets are the first to Berlin, And Vienna. I'm sure he would have met the Western Allies at the Rhine in March in exchange for 1 million more Soviet lives, if he could have. I believe this strategic focus this explains some (not all) of the apparently foolhardy Soviet tactics during the Third Period of the War. Stavka pushed the Generals very hard to be aggressive on the attack, so they can grab as much territory as possible, and this filtered all the way down the command structure, affecting tactical decisions on the battlefield. Stavka's Strategic worldview resulted in high-risk, high-reward tactics, leading tactical commanders keep pushing forward on the attack even when overextended and lacking support, etc.

If by "improve gameplay" you mean, "Features make gameplay faster and more intuitive," then I would say yes most definitely. I personally find the addition of command lines very useful; speeds up my movement phase considerably as I have to spend less time moving around to each unit in e.g., a platoon; I get a quick representation of the entire platoon's C2 at a glance rather than having cycle through each unit individually. Shift + click to select multiple artillery assets is another handy one. I also like the new KIA/WIA display as it shows me very quickly whether a selected unit has any recent WIA/KIA down on the battlefield that need to be attended to, and also what weapons are down with those KIA/WIA (and can potentially be picked up by Buddy Aid). I'm sure there are others; these are the first ones that come to mind.

While doing research during the CMRT Beta phase, I was surprised to find this wasn't really true. By Mid-1944, the Soviets did have on-call CAS similar to the U.S. ACC/Brit CABRANK systems, and they utilized it during Bagration. The most convincing proof of this comes from an incident where the Germans captured a Soviet FAC vehicle that gave them enough information to reverse engineer how the Soviet CAS system worked. By the Germans' own intel assessment, the Soviet CAS was as good or better than their own (in doctrine and organization; practically speaking, the Soviet system was superior by this point because the Soviets had air superiority, good logistics and plenty of ground attack planes, while the Germans had none of these). Even so, the Soviet CAS system was only used with the vanguard armored spearheads during Bagration -- fundamentally, it was a substitute for artillery with formations that were moving too fast for big guns to keep up. In pretty much all other situations, the Soviets favored guns, mortars and katyushas for fire support close to the line of contact, and the Sturmoviks stuck to much the more typical Tac Air interdiction missions deeper into enemy-held territory. Hard to estimate, but my SWAG is that across the entire Bagration operation, there were probably something like a half dozen Soviet FACs who had the resources and authorization be able to call in quick response, on-call CAS missions. This actually compares pretty favorably with the US/Brit systems. In fact, if anything, the Soviets were a bit ahead of the Western Allies. ACC and CABRANK didn't really get going until late in the Normandy campaign -- around the time of COBRA -- and it took a while for the systems to really get working. Prior to this, Western Tac Air was a pretty haphazard affair, and not really connected with low-level ground tactical action at all. One thing to remember here is that, except for a few pilots who had experience in North Africa or Italy, prior to June 6, 1644 Allied fighter pilots had been flying over a Europe that was entirely controlled by Germany, so they had no experience dealing with friendly ground forces close to a target. In contrast, by mid-1944, Soviet pilots had been flying over an active ground front for three years, so they had plenty of opportunity to learn from their mistakes. Practice makes perfect. So what does this all mean with regards to Air Support in CMBN/FI/RT? Which system is more "realistic" -- the new CMRT system or the old CMBN/FI system? I dunno... As I and others have said repeatedly elsewhere, the most realistic Air Support option for any of the games is NONE; on either front, it was just so rare for a Company even Battalion-level commander to have direct, quick response control over Air Assets that if you're looking for realistic WWII ground tactics, you should probably just avoid Air Support entirely. For a "more fun and yet not totally unrealistic" option, as I have commented elsewhere, in an ideal world, at least for the Allies from Mid-1944 on, I'd like to see a system implemented where the player could exert some LIMITED targeting control over Air Assets during Setup phase ONLY. I have no idea whether a system like this is something that BFC is interested in taking the time to implement someday... I don't see it as a particularly high priority myself because there's lots of other game features/improvements I'm more interested in. Sorry I still can't comment on what's going on with the v3.0 CMBN/FI Air Support changes yet. High command is aware. Cheers, YD

Yes, but you still have to have the demo to play against someone else who only has the demo; you can't play demo vs. full game.

I'm honestly not sure what was intended here... I thought the intention was to leave Air Support in CMBN/FI unchanged, but it's possible I misunderstood, or that the powers that be changed their minds somewhere along the line... Since I'm on a Mac I was not an active part of testing the (PC only) upgrades that just got released and so I'm a little out of the loop. I have put a query in with powers that be; hopefully someone will be along soon to offer an official comment.

Ah; so we're talking about a *CMBN* situation, not CMRT. Wrong forum; the two games are very different WRT CAS. In CMBN, the player does have direct control over air assets. Too much, IMHO, but I'll refrain from beating that dead horse. Anyway, my experiences match akd's: In CMBN, aircraft given "Point" target orders rarely, if ever, go off target. Point target missions simply tell the aircraft to try to "hit the bullseye", whether the pilot sees any enemy there or not. One qualifier: the aircraft has to actually see the ground of the target point to execute the mission. So be careful with Point target missions plotted into heavy top cover (i.e., trees), and smoke. If the pilot fails to see the target point, he'll just buzz the field a couple of times without dropping any ordnance. "Area" CAS requests in CMBN are different. Aircraft executing an Area target will hunt for enemy unit(s) in the target zone and will not drop ordnance unless they see something to attack. Further, IME it seems that if the pilot fails to spot anything to attack in the target zone, he's very likely to go "off the ranch", and try to attack something on the map, possibly a friendly. Moral of the story: Use CAS Area Targets in CMBN with care and generally only when you're pretty confident there's an enemy in the target zone the pilot will be able to spot.

Yep. Rule 1 for most realistic representation of CAS in any of the CM WWII games is “don’t use any”. IMHO, second most realistic representation would be something like pre-planned (setup phase only) asset, available units of a flight (4 ships) minimum, that could be directed only to hit a fairly broad target area (maybe a minimum target area of a 250m radius circle, arguably larger). Further, the planes should not necessarily target specific enemy units, but rather just drop ordnance into the target zone, though they should probably have some limited ability recognize and preferentially attack really obvious targets like vehicles sitting in the open without top cover. And there should still be a decent chance of the ordnance dropping outside the target zone, for a number of reasons: (a) the pilot might have read the map wrong, or ( the pilot could miss badly (historical 50% CEP for bombing attacks by well-trained dive bomber pilots under combat conditions start at about 50m in ideal, unopposed conditions, but climb rapidly to 100m+ if there is AAA fire, wind, etc.), or © the pilot might get “buck fever” and attack something he sees (possibly friendly) outside the designated target zone (MANY examples of this happening historically). And even this type of Tac Air support should be very rare. In CMRT’s context it should only be available to Soviets, and only in deep penetration, armored spearhead attack scenarios, because this is the only tactical situation where the Soviets used on-call CAS with any frequency. Generally speaking the Red Army preferred artillery to CAS, but when the armored spearheads outran their artillery support, the Soviets did establish a system to substitute with Sturmoviks, in a manner similar to the US/Brit ACC/CABRANK systems in the ETO. The Germans also had the theory and doctrine to do this kind of thing, but by mid-1944 they didn’t have enough planes to even contest for local air superiority over the battlefield, let alone actually launch coordinated CAS attacks. Any German use of Tac Air in the Bagration time frame was quick, hit-and-run attacks that were not coordinated with local ground action. So anyway… there’s how Tac Air would work in CM if it were my circus and I controlled the monkeys. But it ain't my circus... regardless, it’s not something I lose a lot of sleep over, because I generally follow the first rule above: If you want realistic WWII CAS, don’t use any at all. The present CMRT system isn’t so much unrealistic as it is limited to modeling only one type of situation: A situation where a “hunting” aircraft happen to pass over the battlefield and the pilot decides to attack something of his own volition. This wasn’t supposed to happen – by 1944, all major combatants had figured out that allowing attack aircraft to hunt freely near the line of contact was about as likely to result in a friendly fire incident as it was enemy casualties. So pilots were generally instructed to attack targets of opportunity only once they were deep enough into enemy-held territory that there was no chance of a blue-on-blue. But it still happened, for any of a number of reasons. Pilot might estimate his location incorrectly, line of contact might have moved faster than expected, the aforementioned “buck fever”, etc. So if you want to throw a little chaos into your CMRT fight, by all means toss a fighter-bomber or two into the mix. If you want tight control over CAS assets, go play CMSF, or wait until CM Black Sea comes out…

You need to re-read your history books.

I haven't been able to verify this yet because the Mac version of CMBN 3.0 isn't out yet, but least I heard the plan was to leave Air Support unchanged in CMBN & CMFI 3.0; among other things it would screw up too many existing scenarios if this were changed.

Well, yes. By this point in the war Hitler was completely delusional. There were some reasons why holding on to Hungrary was desirable -- e.g., Lake Balaton area held some of the last oil reserves left to the Third Reich after Romania was lost. Also, theoretically if the Germans had been able to regain the line of the Danube they would be in a much better defensive position. But Hitler's vision of a credible counterattack in this area was pure fantasy, especially after losing a large portion of Germany's remaining armor in the Battle of the Bulge.

Rate of Fire is the IS-2's Achilles' heel; the 122mm has a high kill% against any Panzer, but if the IS-2 doesn't hit on the first shot, in a front vs. front engagement the IS-2 is in trouble as most German tanks will get 2, sometimes 3 shots in before the IS-2 gets a second shot. This weakness actually makes the IS-2 less effective in 1000m+ range armor duel vs. armor duel than their gun power might suggest. At longer ranges, nobody's particularly likely to score a hit on the first shot, but German AFVs like the StuG will get the second and third shots off much faster than the IS-2 and so are much more likely to get the first hit. The IS-2's frontal armor *can* bounce 75mm/L48, but not reliably, and in any event even if the armor bounces the first hit without serious damage, it usually rattles the crew enough that their aim goes to sh*t. Don't know that I can offer all that much in terms of advice other than basic armor good tactics -- Try to use terrain to create many on few situations. Try to hit from the flank in order to take advantage of the Stug's lack of turret. Engage from multiple angles to split the enemy's fire. Try shoot and scoot to give the IS-2 a chance to reload in safety. The usual stuff.

There's always something that can be added or improved. No piece of software, game or otherwise, is ever finished in the sense that there's nothing else that could be done to make it better. I really don't get all the agita. It's a pretty common model for software development and marketing. For example, I'm a photographer. When I bought Adobe Lightroom 4 for post-processing, it wasn't with the expectation that they would give me Lightroom 5 for free when it came out, even though it's really the same program with some modest incremental improvements. If I felt like I didn't really need the Lightroom 5 improvements, and they weren't worth the offering price to me, I could stay with Lightroom 4. In so doing, I would end up off the technological "leading edge", and eventually as Lightroom 4 gets older I'd probably find that newer plugins and camera profiles would not be supported, but that's much how things work with software. You can stay with the old, unsupported version for a while without too many issues, but eventually you'll find yourself obsolete. Similarly, if you don't feel like the 3.0 upgrade is something you need, and it's not worth the $10, you don't need to buy it; you can keep playing 2.12. Most active players and scenario designers will eventually move on to 3.0 so sooner or later you'll probably be pretty lonely playing 2.12 by yourself, but you can't really blame others for moving on and leaving you behind; that's their choice to make. If you're one of those that goes around expecting something for nothing, you're going to find yourself pretty disappointed with life in general, really.

Yes; when the hits are down in the tracks and/or running gear, it can be very difficult to spot the hit decals, particularly the smaller ones like HEAT hits.

Yes; the holes for Panzerfausts and HEAT rounds in general are quite small, which I understand is realistic. They're easy to miss, but they're there.

Since this is the CMRT forum, a bit of clarification to make sure everyone understands: CMRT (Mac & PC) is already using v3.0 of the game engine. I'm sure there will eventually be a 3.01 patch (and probably more) for CMRT, but no patches for CMRT have been released *yet*. So I assume it's the CMBN & CMFI v3.0 Mac upgrades (not patches) you want to know about. Unfortunately, the only answer I can offer right now without violating my beta NDA is "when it's ready." :cool: I can probably safely tell you that the Mac upgrade is actively being worked on, and I think everyone wants it released as soon as possible. How soon is a little hard to predict; Murphy will have his say and sometimes issues pop up with the installers that have to be worked out, which takes testing and debugging time.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=nerf

The short version is that he's suggesting assigning a progressively increasing "to hit nerf" to the second and following rounds of bursts of automatic small arms fire, which would have the net effect reducing the overall casualty-causing effect of automatic fire vs. aimed single shots, while keeping other effects, chiefly suppression, more or less the same.

Several problems with this: - In many situations, more than one guy can shoot through the same window. Proper MOUT technique is to set up firing positions inside the building, ideally several meters away from the window openings, and shoot through the window from a distance. Not that difficult for two soldiers to do this through the same window, especially if shooting at different targets. - Especially in lighter construction, loopholes and other non-window openings are used when possible. A simple two-course brick exterior wall can be loopholed fairly quickly with a couple bursts of MG fire. And, of course, there is the fact that buildings in combat areas tend to develop additional apertures... - Many common types of construction are not proof against full rifle-caliber fire, so even if some of the soldiers are not actively shooting out of the building and are assumed to be sheltering deep inside the building, they cannot be assumed to be completely safe from even small arms fire. Nevertheless, some buildings would have shelter areas impervious to all but the heaviest coming fire (ex: basements), but units sheltering in such areas would also usually have pretty much zero situational awareness, so really they should have no LOS/LOF out of the building and also probably suffer severe C2 penalties (how would a unit hiding in basement communicate info and receive orders from a nearby HQ?). Overall, urban combat and particularly combat involving buildings is extremely complex, and the game model is going to have to involve a lot of abstraction in this area for the forseeable future. Overall, I think CMx2's current fairly abstracted system for buildings (but considerably higher fidelity than CMx1) works fairly well, albeit with some rough corners here and there. I would eventually like to see some improvements, but I think steady incremental improvements is the way to go. For example, I think it's worth examining whether an explicit modeling of basements (with all their advantages and disadvantages) can be added to the game engine relatively soon ("relatively soon" meaning within the next 3 major game engine releases or so).

Scenario design and the types of battles that CM players like to play is definitely part of it; CM scenarios are not a representative sample of WWII combat. In addition, though, I think the reason many players find bolt-action rifles less effective in CMx2 has as much to do with how people play the game as anything else. Many CM players seem to be in a big hurry to win and I also see a lot of players with a strong desire to execute dashing, exciting tactics -- rapid flanking moves, close assault, etc. These high-risk, high-reward tactics tend to favor infantry with close-range, high ROF weapons. And while such tactics can work, they're not necessarily the most consistently successful tactics in the game. IME, in a pure infantry fight, once you've uncovered the enemy positions, if you're patient and sit back with your bolt action rifles and SAWs in the 200-300m range, you can easily outshoot SMG-heavy infantry, eventually attriting and routing them. Of course, the SMG infantry can hide in the forests and buildings to cut down the potential engagement range, but then there's often a way to bypass them. SMGs and SMG infantry have their place, but if you want to control the battlefield in an infantry fight, you need ranged fire.

No sure of the context in which you intended this -- the soldier's aptitude with various small arms, perhaps? I know less about the details of non-U.S. combat infantry training, but most U.S. combat infantry did receive least rudimentary training in how to handle all of the major weapons of the rifle squad, if not in basic then in theatre after being assigned to a combat unit. I don't know for sure, but I think it's a fair SWAG that training for other nationalities was similar. So I think it's reasonable to assume that at least soldiers of Regular quality and higher carrying e.g., an MG42 but no ammo for same would theoretically be capable of stripping a nearby corpse of an MP40 and 9mm clips and using the new weapon with at least a basic level of competence. But again, as far as the game is concerned I really don't see this as a significant issue because by the time a soldier has gotten into a situation where he's (a) surrounded by the dead bodies and cast off weapons of his comrades, and ( completely out of ammo for his primary weapon, he's usually in such a poor morale state that I don't expect heroics from him; I'm pretty happy if he just keeps his s*it together enough to not surrender. I do think it would be nice to someday to have the soldier/small unit AI tweaked so that total squad weapon weapons loadout was a consideration in what weapons are picked up via Buddy Aid. IMHO, squads should "like" to keep at least one SMG around, just as they now "like" to keep at least one SAW around. However, they also should not "want" too many of either; the bulk of the squad should always stick with their basic rifle. Ideally, the AI should favor one or two each of SMGs & SAWs per squad, but no squads should end up with 3+ SMGs or SAWs due to Buddy Aid except for specialized units like SMG infantry whose basic weapon is something other than a rifle (I have seen units end up with 2 and even 3 SAWs due to Buddy Aid; it's rare, but it can happen). But this a tertiary concern for me, at best. Bren tripods might be higher on my list.

Sure; buried under all of the OP's histrionics, there are some valid (albeit minor) points. At least in the case of units in good order with good morale, it would be nice if the individual soldier AI was smart enough that a soldier with an MG42, but no 7.92mm ammo, might have the presence of mind to pick up to an MP40 nearby with ammo and start using it. As I mentioned above, though, every time I've seen a unit get into a situation like this it's usually taken so many casualties and in such a poor morale state that I don't really expect much in the way of rational behavior from it anyway. So this is not an issue I consider very important. Another time issues like this sometimes crop up is if one of the squad types with only one SMG takes an unlucky solo casualty early in the fight, and this casualty happens to be the SMG. In this case, the squad is usually still in pretty good order (probably only "Cautious" or at worst "Nervous"), and theoretically, it would be nice if the AI was "smart" enough to recognize that it's important for a squad to keep a variety of weapons in its loadout, so dropping one of the (many) rifles and having someone pick up the only SMG might be a good idea. But again, it's not something I lose sleep over. If my whole tactical plan falls apart because one soldier is using a rifle or a pistol rather than an SMG, I really don't think the majority of the blame for my defeat lies with that soldier.