Mud

Thanks to both Scipio and Moon for that. Ahhh, blind spots for buttoned-up tanks, plus morale for the buggers... I'm looking forwards to some nasty, confused fighting in urban ruins.

Hm. Probably anytime I order an infantry AT team to sneak into a nice ambush position, and then instead of proceeding quietly, it decides "Ooh! Enemy AFV at 190m! I can do that..." Aaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrgh. Losing not one, but two 88's to first-shot kills from the AI's Shermans, with much of the map in between, in the Reisberg scenario was also pretty harsh.

When planning what birds are appropriate, don't forget to take into account not only the front -- perhaps Crimean birds differ from Finnish birds -- but the month. It would be a shame if a migratory bird were heard at the wrong time and place... (And... will CMBB support bird call mods at a higher sampling rate? And winterized bird calls?)

Don't forget Glantz's works. Oh, and a warning about Erickson's "The Road to Stalingrad" / "The Road to Berlin" duo: bring your own Soviet-era maps, 'coz there are very few provided, and the ones that ARE there tend not to include the smaller villages and rivers that the text often refers to.

Determinant -- I'd figure that there are plenty of "fair" fights available, especially when looking only at a limited tactical action, and when considering that attacks were also made under less-than-ideal conditions (e.g. far from dominating ratios, insufficient supplies, communications snafus...). And the very first units in an assault may encounter a "fair" fight for at least a while. If the first hour or so of a battle is even enough to be interesting, that should be good enough for a single battle; there may even be "fair" operations, depending on the victory conditions (e.g. if the attacker needs to go a long distance, then the forces don't need to be that even...). Remember: CMBB is a tactical wargame. It deals with small actions, mostly. Even if one side largely had the upper hand at any given time, it doesn't mean it had it /everywhere/ and /everywhen/ (e.g. every 0.5-1 hour or so that might be turned into a CMBB battle).

Determinant -- I'd figure that there are plenty of "fair" fights available, especially when looking only at a limited tactical action, and when considering that attacks were also made under less-than-ideal conditions (e.g. far from dominating ratios, insufficient supplies, communications snafus...). And the very first units in an assault may encounter a "fair" fight for at least a while. If the first hour or so of a battle is even enough to be interesting, that should be good enough for a single battle; there may even be "fair" operations, depending on the victory conditions (e.g. if the attacker needs to go a long distance, then the forces don't need to be that even...). Remember: CMBB is a tactical wargame. It deals with small actions, mostly. Even if one side largely had the upper hand at any given time, it doesn't mean it had it /everywhere/ and /everywhen/ (e.g. every 0.5-1 hour or so that might be turned into a CMBB battle).

For a scenario with interesting pacing, hm, try "Sherbrooke Fusiliers" as the allies. It's on the CD. Trying to hold on under a massed Panzer assault, and with contact coming extremely early in the game, isn't particularly relaxing. "Aachen", by virtue of its short game length, small size, and urban neighborhoods, is another on the CD that has quick pacing. "Le Lorey-A Hard Stand" and "Chambois", if they're the ones I'm thinking of, are better for high-tension armor-armor conflict. Definitely, read tactics and history. It'll help one's play to dispel any strange notions that one may have about, say, any alleged massive superiority of German tanks/troops versus Allies, or the invulnerability of tanks as they run over infantry, or whatever bad habits one may have picked up from less-realistic games, such as ones that give tanks "health bars" which get depleted through ordinary rifle fire.

Hm, don't forget the morale penalty that all split squads suffer. There may be more targets for the defender to kill, but he may not have to do nearly as much to each before they break. Might be interesting to test, 'tho... in both CMBO and CMBB (with the improved machinegun rules, this may not work as well there).

Yep, I wish. Of course, I'd probably even get a kick out of crisp, green retro wireframe mods...

Blitzkrieg was more of a strategic concept regarding concentration and coordination of force aided by mobility, not a tactical one -- at least, that's my impression. They also supported their armor with Panzergrenadier (mechanized infantry), so it's not like they neglected that arm... At the CMBO timeframe and front, the Germans have lost air superiority (very much so, which naturally affected their ability to concentrate forces), and are hurting with regards to, well, basically everything. In a CMBO battle, you're unlikely to get a truly massive force ratio unless you specifically ask for an assault /plus/ additional handicapping in your favor. Given that, you need to be much more cautious. Tanks -- are NOT invulnerable. Infantry AT weapons are fairly common, and depending on type, range, angle of shot... can be very effective. Plus, AT guns can be quite deadly at the short ranges typical of a CMBO battle... Keep them _back_ from non-scouted positions. Do not commit them early before you know what you're dealing with; and when you do, commit in force. 4 tank duels that are 4-on-1 each are far more likely to end in your favor than 4 1-on-1. Armor should be kept mobile once committed; it's not like you have to worry about running out of fuel in CMBO, and sitting in place gives a defender time to set up ambushes or otherwise adjust his dispositions. Infantry -- your main force usually. Use them to scout, to assault, and to hold. Losing a half or full squad to an ambush is preferable to losing a Sherman. Ideally, this would not be committed in force until a recon screen determines the enemy dispositions. Of course, ideally (from an attacker's POV), you'd have a few hundred turns (hours...) for a battle instead of half an hour to an hour or so. Artillery -- reach out and touch some one. Should possibly have more shells and/or better fire control than shown in CMBO, but this is somewhat balanced by the combination of borg spotting plus ability to call down fire unseen. (If you want to play a ridiculous battle, go with unrestricted forces, lots of points, and no fog of war. Rockets + TRP = possibly nasty first-turn.) Light arty goes for suppression, heavier for killing. A good arty player will time it such that his arty will be suppressing/killing shortly before his assault force makes contact so as to minimize recovery time available.

4-yr-old Pentium II 450 MHz, 384MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX400/64MB, 17" CRT, 'bout 20GB total on 2 hard drives. CMBO runs OK on smaller battles, but turn resolution can take a while on larger ones. Will probably look towards upgrading later this summer, but first need to read up on current technology and potential specs.

Yup, would be a nice addition. 'course, if it's a much previously prepared defense, there'd also be the risk that some of it is already known -- but the ability to stick .BMPs or other image types in a briefing would permit dealing with that, as well. And that would be very, very spiffy indeed. (Right now, they could be marked as landmarks -- possibly inaccurately, heh -- but image(s) in the briefing would be swell.) I suspect that there are enough interesting potential additions for BTS/BFC (?)/Battlefront to be draining our wallets for as long as they care too.

dumrox -- Sure they weren't daisy ATs instead of regulars? They use the same sign type, if memory serves, so the main give-away (aside from trying to clear them with engineers and succeeding without using a demo charge) is that if an AT mine is on a paved surface, it must be a daisy. Anywhere else, it might be, but isn't necessarily.

WRT defending non-FO units and extra ammo, CM:BO perhaps already shows one way to do it -- the extra ammo is available (currently only via the scenario editor), but is sacrificed once the unit moves. If added, it might be a particularly tempting option for HMGs and on-board mortars within fortifications. Hm. Unit point values would vary in a way that should probably not be revealed under fog of war until it becomes obvious that one unit has been expending a LOT of ammo. A bit orthogonally, I wonder whether the victory point estimates will be based on expected unit costs (e.g. average price that you expect the other guy to have paid for something) or whether the variable rarity settings will be "known", even if only obliquely.

On the machine-gunners surrendering, ISTR that an HMG team is immobilized when knocked down to one man, which probably makes the lone survivor a bit more willing to surrender...

And if you're looking for even more automatics, ISTR that the FJs have some squads w/ 2 LMGs and multiple MP40s. 'course, it'd be a bit odd for FJs to appear all that often compared to regular Heer, and you lose most of your AFV choices...

Aye. Either orders are given by the player, in which attention must be directed there, or by the AI. And game AIs usually aren't exactly geniuses at either the tactical or operational level, resulting in player-neglected units doing idiotic things like ignoring enemy units, or blithely charging ahead instead of waiting for support units to catch up. If game AI were exceptionally good, and one could delegate high-level tasks ("take this armored formation, call upon these arty assets if necessary, and knock out that strongpoint") instead of a player having to micromanage ("hydra 1, go to back of mass and regenerate. Hydra 2, move up. hydra 3, take hydra 2's place. hydra 4, target that structure. Damn, they're attacking there too, click click click...") then large-scale continuous might be more playable, but it isn't. If player attention is to be directed, then either the game scope needs to be quite small (few units, slow speed, small map, simple interface) to be manageable, or you're playing not a historical wargame in which units behave even slightly realistically, but a crisis management game called "micromanage the remote-control idiots" in which everybody's forces will likely behave unrealistically badly whenever the Puppet Master isn't watching them. (Not to say that real-time tactical can't be FUN -- it can be -- but it throws out a lot of the "historical wargame" ideas when you don't have the time to have units behave with reasonable amounts of coordination and intelligence).

Consider keeping support elements back w/ surplus pl/co/bn HQs. Keep in mind that while a rifle platoon come with, say, a PIAT and mortar attached, nothing says that the PIAT and mortar cannot be assigned to a different HQ further back. Ditto for machineguns and so forth -- teams, unlike squads, can benefit from any platoon HQ regardless of original assignment. One HQ w/ a command bonus, hidden in woods on a slope but with good forward LOS, can spot for numerous on-board mortars on the reverse slope... Note also that if you have, say, a company HQ with excellent bonuses, and a couple of platoon HQs with none, you can take the grunts from the platoons, group them with the company HQ, and use the platoon HQs for support weapons if you feel the need to put 'em elsewhere.

I could see stealth bonuses from the HQ, if the HQ officers are directing them as to what cover is appropriate or stopping the soldiers from firing too early and spoiling an ambush. Firepower is stranger, 'tho; better marksmanship doesn't make that much sense, so it'd have to deal with how the fire is coordinated, say.

Kappa, did you read his post? No, no, no, and asking again will not change the answer, until possibly after the engine rewrite for CM II (not CMBB).

If he's within a reasonable distance -- 40-60m doesn't sound too bad... -- then I doubt that there would be a problem. I think the problem threshold for recon is crossed when units are sent ahead, well out of C&C, and small-enough quantities that the only reasonable explanation is suicide recon. Sending a group of several armed ACs on a flank probe isn't gamey recon, although it may be bad tactics depending on the terrain. Sending a single AC on each edge well ahead and having them race forwards on contact to gather as much intel as possible before they die, instead of withdrawing to safety, would be far worse. Sending crews and out-of-ammo troops well ahead to trip ambushes and find minefields would be downright despicable -- on the level with exploiting game bugs wrt. the flak trucks, for instance. Basically, I find it implausible that they would be willing to do that duty, or that they'd be telepathic and able to transmit their ill-gotten information gains. But hey, that's just my opinion. Take it with a grain of salt.

Borg spotting + needing to go into street instead of direct building->building moves + high-priority target = bullet magnet. Unless you've got so much firepower locally that everybody nearby is suppressed, or it's night and spotting/IDing becomes that much harder, FTs have it rough. Hm. Anybody have stats on how effective they were in real life, and how they were actually used?

Because it's an AI? It'll blithely advance to contact with spotters, even, and will often lead with vehicles right into ambushes... coordinating an attack with as many units as there are in CM, with as complicated a map, is presumably a very hard problem for a machine. If memory serves, the tactic should work better in CM:BO than in reality, since moving troops still get some cover from the terrain, and the machineguns are undermodeled -- at least, both are being changed for CM:BB. If you play the AI in a QB, take the offensive for a better game.

Well, the MGs will be more lethal in CM:BB from what I've read -- at least when dealing with multiple units clustered together. Maybe they'll be nastier against speeders, as well. Keep in mind, 'tho, that unless the jeep's KO'd before it actually spots somebody, the damage may already have been done. Perhaps the nastiest case is if the jeep owner manages to a) spot a significant concentration, or something nasty like a well-placed heavy AT gun, and calls in an arty strike before the defender can move away (or tow the gun away). If the owner's been "pretargetting" his spotters by targetting possible areas shortly before they get checked (to overlap arty latency with recon time), the defender might not have that much time to move. One KO'd jeep and a captured crew, plus mild arty depletion, traded for a reduction in the surprise factor and perhaps a gun KO or wounded platoon or more.

Best solution for now, given that CM:BO will not be patched and that CM:BB will not fix the "borg spotting" issue, is to set ground rules before playing people. You can't do it with the AI of course, but apart from occasionally obnoxious unit selections (which should be limited in CM:BB with the rarity system, if you prefer), it's not as abusive as a nasty human player can be. Recon by suicide, such as jeeps rushing around deep in enemy territory locating enemies until they die, would certainly be one of the things to consider banning unless you're deliberately setting it up as a gamey test of who comes up with cheesier tactics.