Mud

Spiffy. I just played that one tonight, and was wondering why my reinforcements materialized where they did... The scenario might be a bit on the easy side, as it gave me a Total Victory the first time through, leaving the Germans with the default deployment rather than computer-pick. In my case, my probe through the middle stalled when the German MGs out-dueled my light ones, and on the right Efr. Tarasov's 76.2mm didn't do me any favors when he somehow eliminated my other gun (might have clipped a nearby building?), but I used a nasty left hook to clear out the Victory Factory. The Axis surrender gave me a 84-16 victory despite some misjudgements such as using short cover arcs on the SMG troops in the center -- letting them burn ammo on suppressing the HMG and friends might have been a better choice. *shrug*

Random notes: If you're playing QBs, consider (a) Putting the computer on defense. ( Giving it a handicap bonus -- e.g. +1 rank and some additional troops. © Turning rarity on. The computer is a far worse cherry-picker than a human. (d) Alternately (or simultaneously) let the AI pick troops for both sides. Pumas -- they're nifty, but if you're playing with rarity, they should be pretty expensive as well since there simply weren't that many compared to other light armor. Wirbelwinds, likewise, should also get a rarity penalty. Flak wagons are decently effective against infantry, but keep in mind that while they have good ROF, they don't have a whole lot of blast. A StuG/StuH can be more effective in that role, and might be far more survivable if real armor shows up.

Heh. Welcome aboard. Yes, there's depth to these games; you need to use reasonable tactics (especially in CMBB; CMBO has some fixed-in-CMBB weaknesses that make rushing tactics a bit more effective than they should be) or you get punished. Depending on your background, you may also find yourself looking for a reference book on what all the units are and what they're used for, given that there are so many... You might want to hit the search link and look for a thread called something like "Anthology of useful posts"; that should bring up a nice list of links that at the time were judged to be of special interest to the novice. Oh, and beware of the Peng threads.

Thank ye all. It seems unusual, these days, for software companies (especially publishers... EA comes to mind...) to care that much; thanks for being an exception.

Wouldn't the same problem also hold the other way around, late in the war? Perhaps the Volksturm and scratch units all had spiffy uniforms and clear unit insignia, but that seems unlikely to me. *shrug*

Just don't count on playing "To the Volga". I think that HUGE (in terms of number of units and craters) operation might have been made just to show that it could be done...

Could be the Mother of All Trojans (Hera?) at that size. Say, 50MB of graphical porn spam...

Random notes -- With AT guns, you don't necessarily want to engage tanks just as they enter LOS. Put them in decent cover (e.g. foxhole just inside some woods), and a "keyhole" (very, very narrow) line-of-sight can be very useful as well. A gun that can spot everybody coming up a ridge can be spotted BY everybody coming up that ridge, after all, and might therefore not live that long. And then you engage when you have a good hit/kill chance (check penetration tables and LOS tool) if at all possible, especially against vehicles that have multiple MGs and cannister rounds... Oh, and with multiple AT guns, it can be useful to have them cover the same main ambush grounds, but from orthogonal angles, to give you a good chance of a flank shot. With vehicles, you also need to be cautious. Infantry really should precede them, covering and reconnoitering likely hiding places for hostiles, and perhaps laying down suppressive fire even when you haven't spotted an enemy.

Hmmm. Don't we still get too much information, even in EFOW? For instance, if three squads are in woods, they'll generate three distinct infantry contacts regardless of how depleted they are (e.g. ideally, wouldn't there be a chance of three nearby depleted squads looking like two or even one?). ...and how would you know whether a given squad had been entirely eliminated, anyway? I could see it for a crewed weapon (if you're staring at the gun's wreckage, it's toast) but couldn't there be another member who left the area?

Heh. Well, I used to run it on a 450MHz Pentium II -- probably a fair bit worse,a GF2MX400 64MB (perhaps not a big difference unless you use bigger textures?) and the same amount of ram. It was quite playable, although large scenarios gave somewhat choppy scrolling at 1024x768 (not bad, really, but t'was noticeable) and significant turn computation time (perhaps a few minutes). I used a funky upgrade module to replace the CPU w/ a 1.4GHz PIII-based Celeron, and the turn computation time improved. My less-frivolous excuse for the upgrade was that Paint Shop Pro filter computation on 3.1MP images is pretty slow at 450MHz.

Are they concrete or wooden bunkers, and what else do you have? Wooden bunkers should fall pretty quickly to something like a 20mm (esp quad) vehicle -- at least, judging from one CD scenario, the constant penetrations tends to panic 'em. Concrete, hm, you might want something (a) armored (enough to be able to stand MG fire) and ( with a good nice-velocity (so it can make it accurately w/n the slot) HE round. If you have Pioneers and a lot of light arty, you might be able to smoke the whole area and then rush troops there... it depends on how much smoke you can lay down and how big that open patch is.

The CM-traditional, if arguably gamey (did tanks /really/ coordinate this well?!) approach to confound an AT pillbox is to have two or more groups of tanks attacking over a wide angle. One group goes forward, fires... and while the AT gun rotates to track them, it backs off while the other group approaches its firing point. MG pillboxes do indeed have trouble with 20mm cannon. A quad-20mm AA halftrack can be hell on them. Although... aren't small guns being toned down somewhat in the patch, or is that just morale impact vs tanks? *shrug* However, if all you have are infantry and support, both can be problematic. Hopefully, you have numerical superiority and the map offers sufficient flexibility so you can flank -- they can't shoot out their sides or back, and the back is especially vulnerable. If there's no cover anywhere near it, see whether you can instead entirely bypass the area it covers, or minimize the time spent in its kill zone. This isn't a game in which you /have/ to kill everything. Advance -- yeah, minimize use of it, and watch your guy's status -- if they're tiring or tired, consider getting them rest before they hit exhausted. If memory serves, the more tired they are, the slower they recover and the more they're hampered, performance-wise. M or MTC some troops forward while others cover and (if not too busy) rest so you don't get caught with a mostly-tired force.

With regards to the first item, I believe that t'was already indicated that imported units will no longer have their experience levels changed. I don't recall anything about flags, but maybe you'll get a response re: that.

Just make sure you have the recommended Detonator drivers -- e.g. 30.82 and 29.32 (?) both work, if memory serves. Other versions can give interesting glitches, should you enable anti-aliasing.

Well, if you're curious, the mine sign bmps are 1220.bmp (AP) and 1224.bmp (AT, daisy or buried). The originals are 128x64 BMPs.

Unfortunately you cannot, aside from asking your opponent to keep track for you.

*snort* That's why some of us mod the signs so that they're of different color.

meldorian -- It might be worth it. Check to see whether it retains the German optics (for a Panther, hm, they should be either Binocular or Dual-Mag. Probably Binocular, as the manual says the DM are for 'late-model Panthers', and A probably doesn't qualify.) For a non-conscript crew, they'll give some advantage. You'll also want to consider other factors, like ammo count, crew, turret speed... and rarity. That Panther will probably be penalized a fair bit even when available.

It's expensive, it approaches immobility IIRC, it has a low muzzle velocity, and it's got an extremely long reload time (that, perhaps, should be longer...). And, if it shoots anything close to itself, it's at risk of own-goaling (Hmmm... jeep charge? Maybe in an anything-goes game...). On the other hand, it's hell on strongpoints in towns, and massed infantry.

Word! Now that's a crazy toss... There weren't any hostile aircraft flying overhead, were there?

Yup. Barbed wire cannot be taken out by any means that I know of. And while it doesn't kill people itself, it (a) slows them down significantly while they're passing through it, {It wouldn't surprise me if it caused extra fatigue as well...) and ( probably provides jack-squat cover. So if the wire is covered by an HMG or a big HE hurler, maybe even w/ a TRP for the boresight bonus, whoever's trying to breach it may be a sitting duck. Save the demo charges for minefields, strongpoints and tanks.

FOW: Yes, once the game is over FOW is lifted completely and casualty counts are true. It can be satisfying to see that "no kills" turn into 40+... Mortar firebase -- second the command bonus. In particular, the command bonus on the HQ means that the mortars don't even have to be in LOS of the HQ -- so the HQ can be on a reverse slope, spotting (it can't be hidden while spotting, but you can give it a short cover arc) and the mortars can be just behind the ridge. Oh, and the combined effect of multiple mortars, even light ones, can be pretty brutal. There's also the TRP rule (mortars which haven't moved can fire at TRPs regardless of LOS or HQ), but you won't normally get very many TRPs to play with. Cemetary Hill on the CMBB CD, as the Soviets, comes to mind as example -- especially against the AI, as its most likely path of advance is rather obvious. Aircraft -- Like in CMBO, they're a major gamble. They can really hurt... although which side they hurt can vary, heh. In a QB, one of my Shturmoviks somehow picked out an HQ tank, repeatedly strafed it, immobilized it, and then killed it... unfortunately, it was one of my own. *grumble* And if they instead get shot down, perhaps after decimating your own vehicles, the cost hurts.

No, it's not... architectural issues interfere, such as the number of instructions that regularly gets executed simultaneously and how much each instruction can accomplish. Compare the PowerPC architecture with the Pentium 4 or a McKinley... or, for that matter, the Pentium 4 with the original Pentium. Benchmarking in the general case is not terribly meaningful, hence the focus on specific applications. Then, you've got to take into account bottlenecks in the rest of the system e.g. a 2.8GHz PIV w/ an ancient Riva TNT w/ 16MB card, a mere 128MB SDRAM, and a slow drive might have more trouble in CMBB than a 1.6GHz PIII w/ a 128MB GF4 Ti4600, 512MB RDRAM and a RAID 5 array of 10K RPM SCSI disks. Both, however, might deliver near-identical performance in the first Doom...

Rex -- Not to mention that your enemy probably isn't going to advance towards you with a not exactly intimidating Gun Tractor. Halftracks, gun tractors... I would think that the former would be MUCH more likely to be spotted moving around in the thick of things, and that infantry should be more likely to make the "probable" guess as they have SOME prior knowledge. Madmatt -- On the crash bugs... if we have a saved game whose computation gives the (now fixed) Access Violation error, is the saved game itself corrupt (IOW, can be safely deleted) or will we be able to resume from that point?

Those PPSh platoons are very, very brutal -- and even the HQ gets all PPSh, heh. PPSh + T34/76 w/ canister makes for nasty close-quarters anti-infantry fighting; try "Last Stand at E...", Russian assault from all sides on SS+Volksturm. Other notes-- * Katyusha and incendiary-rocket prep barrages are fun. * You've got nasty rocket-launching heavily-armored aircraft... if you can afford them, of course... * The M17 meat-chopper/anti-aircraft vehicle. It's a remote 4x0.50... * T-34s not only are brutal to infantry, but they're good on lousy ground. Try "A Warm Place to Sleep" and you'll _love_ (or hate, if you choose the Germans) that T-34. * T-34 variants that have both a cannon and a flamethrower for causing yet more pain to infantry. * For fans of big guns, 122mm cannon in a TURRET, in contrast to the 128mm-armed turretless bog-happy slow-as-molasses low-ammo JagdTiger. Sure, the Sturmtiger beats it for size, but rarity, accuracy and reload time also matter somewhat...