RockinHarry

Another interesting quote from Anthony Beevors "The Fall of Berlin": "The Waffen SS did not believe in standing behind the makeshift barricades erected close to street corners. They knew that these not very effective obstacles would be the first thing to be blasted by gunfire. It was all right to put riflemen at windows of the upper floors or on roofs, because tanks could not elevate their guns enough. But with the panzerfaust, they made their ambushes from basements and cellar windows. This was because the panzerfaust was very hard to fire accurately from above. ..." Note: There´s no such mentioned tank gun elevation limit in CMBN.

Original german Panzerfaust manuals tell: "At firing a fire ray comes out at the tubes end. Pay attention that nobody stands upto 10 m behind you . The fire ray should also leave as far as possible above the edge of your foxhole, otherwise you scorch your rock (uniform). If the tube end is within the foxhole, it´s generally enough to have 1 m distance to the rear FH/trench wall for your security. The fire ray can be deadly up to 3 m if it meets a companion!" Original german: "Beim Abschuss tritt am Rohrende ein Feuerstrahl heraus. Paß also auf, das auf 10m niemand hinter dir steht. Der Feuerstrahl soll auch nach Möglichkeit über den Rand Deines Schützenloches weggehen, sonst sengst du dir den Rock an. Ist das Rohrende innerhalb des Deckungsloches, so genügt im allgemeinen 1m Abstand bis zur Grabenwand für deine Sicherheit. Der Feuerstrahl kann bis auf 3m tödlich wirken, wenn er einen Kameraden trifft!" Note: There´s not a single mentioning in any of original german manuals, that a Panzerfaust can not be fired from within a building/room. http://www.scribd.com/doc/49973112/D-560-4-Pzf-100-m-Die-Panzerfaust-1-45

I think map sizes of 2.5 to 3km square should be sufficient to allow outside normandy style tank engagements, with maybe "normal" engagement ranges of 800-1500m, with bits of maneuvre space left. From my personal experience it´s less concern with general map sizes, but more with a maps "content", leading to OOM issues. Limiting foliage as well as grass (can be mixed 50% with dirt or sand ... to avoid huge texture loads) helps a lot to make large maps playable on medium performance PC´s. A good tank map also has lots of small terrain contours (rises, depressions, sunken roads, RR embankments...) for use as cover for a likely outgunned tank force.

Scribd has some really good reads, as well as downloads. Make sure you don´t block every script and cookies, as this will prevent loading PDF docs in your browser. Having an account partly enables to download resources as well. I found a number of very good stuff from this member (in german): http://www.scribd.com/collections/2499675/WWII-German and off course maaany other great stuff if you look up this members shelves http://www.scribd.com/haraoi_conal/shelf

A more detailed account from "The Lorraine Campaign" (page 224): "A section of M–4 tanks were in an outpost position south of Lezey when the first Panther suddenly loomed out of the fog-hardly seventy-five yards from the two American tanks. The Panther and two of its fellows were destroyed in a matter of seconds, whereupon the remaining German tanks turned hur- riedly away to the south. Capt. William A. Dwight, the liaison officer who had reported the enemy armor, arrived at Arracourt and was ordered to take a platoon of the 704th Tank Destroyer Battalion to aid the tanks at Lezey. Just west of Bezange-la-Petite Dwight's platoon saw a number of German tanks moving through the fog. The tank destroyers quickly deployed in a shallow depression and opened fire at about 150 yards. In the short fight that followed, three of the four American tank destroyers were lost, but not until they had destroyed seven enemy tanks."

Not quite true. If your on the defense and occupy an AS that you don´t want to abandon (FH/trenches/other...), WIA in this AS is applied BA automatically if remaining squad members feel temporarily "secure". This oftentimes lead to additional casualties among the wannabe medics, but the cause is mainly wrong stance. See also here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=100506 Should be rather applied like that:

...for the good feel of not letting your men suffer out in nomans land or anywhere. Beside that off course I also consider scoring purposes as some of the unattended wounded could be counted dead at last.

correct. Anyway...why should make a damaged roof the story below inaccessible? :confused:

...having trees around is also not the wisest of choices. Treeburst possibilities! :eek:

Off course not. The anecdote posted above also does not tell if it was flat roofs (like in CMSF) or just the top of damaged buildings (blown off roofs of angled types), but serves as a hint that Fausts could be launched top down effectively. As always....would be nice to have roof access in CMBN, as well as buildings that generally allow infantry AT to be used from within buildings. Maybe allowing it with risk to shooter gets suppressed and maybe slightly (yellow) injured, also dependent upon unit density in the buildings AS (a small AT team, vs. full squad ect.) and condition of the building/story generally. So far, blowing out any walls from a given building does not make a difference for overpressure/backblast FX in the game. This might be a rule to add.

Definitely, yes (large-huge craters). It´s one of the WYSIWYG cases that work. It´s also equivalent to what Sgt Schultz describes as "Dimple". Terrain contours is the best available cover vs direct and partly indirect fires and also the AI (both AIP and friendly Tac AI) has a preference for it, as one can observe when playing the game. Defilade positions are also good, but offer cover vs. one direction mostly. It´s on the part of the map maker to offer these dimples and terrain contours though.

Interesting discussion :cool: I´d like to add that there´s indication, that Fausts were also launched from rooftops. Excerpt from Steel Victory: "And, on 17 April, tankers of the 756th rolled into the Nazi citadel of Nürnberg, and with the doughs of the 3d Infantry Division for three days fought street to street against determined resistance in the form of antitank, bazooka, and small-arms fire. The 191st Tank Battalion and 45th Infantry Division pushed in from the south. SS and mountain troops, backed by thirty-five tanks brought from the Grafenwoehr Proving Grounds, defended the city. German snipers with Panzerfausts picked off tanks from the rooftops, and it became standard practice for the tanks to blast any building that even looked as if it might hide such a sniper. On 22 April, with victory finally at hand, the 756th patrolled the streets of the city in a show of strength."

Nice, but quite unusual example with open topped vehicles moving into such a killing zone. Try again with a handful of Shermans and see what remains of the germans, once they start dropping grenades. Looks like the damaged buildings upper level would make for a good rooftop AT ambush position. Unfortunately they´re inaccessible to all troops. Fausts should be capable to be shot down although I could think balistically that wouldn´t be an easy shot. No idea about Schrecks/Zooks for this case.

Good example for tanks vs infantry in terrain with lots of concealment, as opposed to my given example in urban environment.

Actually from all overwhelming (support) fires aiming at the town edge.

So far only leaving Inf AT guys outside buildings makes sense. Get them prone behind walls, in gardens, any covered place outside buildings that you can command streets from. Any other troops should stay prone and hidden in buildings, unless you find good opportunities to shoot at turret commanders with snipers or very small teams, but not a full squad. That´s vs armored forces only. Vs combined arms, avoid town edges.

Interesting...that the Schreck team is capable to do this....:eek: ....but it looks like the Shermans are silhouetted enough so at least the turret can catch a round from the prone Schreck team.

Think I never noticed any ammo (grenade) expenditure for close assaulting infantry and I guess the grenade throwing animation is just a pointer, that a more abstracted "close assault" is occuring. So it could likely be grenade bundle throwing, single man climbing on tank throwing a grenade into hatches, non directly modelled sticky hollow charge HL3 attaching and so forth....

True. "Basic" spread was about 5m each man, but it varies greatly under given conditions. Without naming the countless details about inherent (german) squad tactics, I´d assume it almost impossible to code to have it realistically applied in CMBN. Human players can mimic this sort of squad tactics with split teams reasonably well, but the AI can´t.

Hm...ok. I´ll test some if back home tomorrow. I could imagine there´s a limit for bounds, as waypoints plotted far apart would lead to moving elements get exhausted very quickly. Think I also noticed that possible cover is taken into consideration for plotting single bounds, but if effective cover is absent, forward elements would stop at some 40-50m, before covering teams start following. That´s under non actual combat conditions (no enemy units yet sighted or shooting).

Currently the rules are strict. No matter size of the house and its condition (window configuration, damaged or undamged), you can´t shoot Fausts (and rifle grenades?) and Schrecks/Zooks from within buildings. While it makes sense for larger teams or full squads in closed up rooms, I have my doubts for the various conditions that can be assumed in the game. First question would be, how is the internals of buildings modelled in the game? Is single rooms "abstracted", at least in larger footprint (>=2x2 AS) buildings, or is it always assumed to be single large rooms (halls) a story? My experiences support the latter.

Yep, sometimes it works to advantage, but more oftentimes not. Off course it much depends on proper application of assault move under right tactical circumstances and it counts the more for AI driven forces, who just execute given scenario plans. Personally I got away from assault move, both for human and AI forces and prefer to split into teams, for better control and dispersion. As for AI plans I now mainly use quick and max assault. This also gives me a better estimate of plan execution times. Edit: Has anybody measured assault move bounds yet? Think they are around 40m and I find it very important to know where the forward moving team will stop, before the remaining follows.

Personally I have less concerns with armor vs infantry spotting chances, but more so with AFVs that broke into infantry positions and wreck havoc at point blank range. It´s particularly devastating in close quarters urban environments, where infantry AT can´t be used from within building positions. :mad: Can´t really judge IF "blind spots" on buttoned up armor is modelled in a realistic manner, but AFV do not appear to have blind spots for shooting/targeting purposes, as they can pump HE/MG fire straight down into a foxhole 1-2m away and then switch quickly to targets on upper stories of nearby (<10m) buildings, killing them in quick order.

Could it be the lone assaulter was a remnant of a previously executed assault command with the remaining squad members beeing wiped out during the process? So that squad could never automatically recombine to conclude the assault move and thus the assault possibility remained active. Who knows...

An oddity with the assault move command is that the support (LMG) team moves first and at least for german squads this provides a big disadvantage. I think the internal squad structure, at least for german squads is wrong in the game.