Waaarg

A number of RT people play without pause, but I'm not one of them. The more units you have though the harder it is to play RT, even with pause. There is a personal threshold for each player, where the unit count becomes un-manageable in RT and the experience is better in WEGO. For most players that is, there is a group on both extremes, 1 unit is un-manageable in RT and those who can handle a battalion with out pause. I tried to play a mechinized Brit battalion sized mission once in RT that started the game on-map. Was hell. But I digress.... Point I was trying to make is if you and your buddy are dug in to play RT MP, play with less points and slowly increase till you both find your threshold

The only thing that I'd like to see change is the way a player determines if a squad has LoS. Both from current position, or from a waypoint(s). I have spent enough time with the engine that orders are really quick using hotkeys. I watched Tyrspawn manually issue orders from the UI and remember thinking, huh that would drive me crazy. But the one thing that takes me forever is LoS. Currently I have to use a combination of target command, and TAB + 1 to switch views to eyeball LOS. The latter isn't guaranteed as what you see isn't always what you can target, and TARGET can only be done from current position or once a waypoint is set. If your trying to move a unit to a location that has LOS to point A, it's often trial and error...requiring multiple re-try's. I have to delete the waypoint, issue a new move order and plop a new waypoint down, Hit TARGET, then search for the spot you want to be able to fire on, rinse repeat. Also, the line doesn't always show where LOS is broken which doesn't help. I know I was often frustrated in SF by this, but it's much more frequent now. This isn't the Syrian desert, and the maps are loaded with LOS blocking terrain. And on defensive SP missions, or any PBEM, the LOS time factor jumps up by a large factor. I am not sure what would be the best solution. An toggle able shaded overlay of what the unit or waypoint(!!!) has LOS to, would cut a huge chunk of time off the game. At a minimum, I'd like to see an actual LOS order independant of TARGET, that shows where LOS is blocked. At least that way I can see where I need to move to.

Can't wait till you get curious about spotting!

That is a great post that I completely missed. Much gracias for posting it. Man what a quality post for someone new to the forums.

LoL you must be really young or in your golden years to not recognize hello kitty

The HQ support team is not in the C2 chain, the HQ is. I have not seen it happen, but remember someone saying that the XO will become the HQ if the actual HQ gets destroyed. I'm not sure if XO and HQ support team work the same way though. I assume when looking at the mortars, they are deployed and out of C2. Once they are in C2, and are deployed, you should be able to call in strikes.

i have gotten in the habit of hitting B (FAST) before pressing any move hotkey. B will always switch to the movement orders tab. I also do this for the second tab of the orders interface, I hit T (TARGET), before the order hotkey I want to use. This saved a lot of mistakes, and is a lot faster, for me anyhow, than using the mouse to manually issue orders, or the spacebar. Example: to issue a hunt order, I hit B then K To issue a target light, I hit T then Y

I would like to see us get one relatively soon. A lot of the topics are mechanics and historical questions. While I have and will probably continue to recommend the SF forums to CMx1 and new players, imho the tactics discussions will get lost. Tactics and Tip threads really travel the learning curve of both CM engines....and the learning curve is quite steep. If you don't want to read the SF threads, no one can force you to. But there is a ton of good info there, from folks who have years of experience in the game. Just off the top of my head: Most questions new players would have that I can think of are all answered. Mechanics such as how to string orders together, in depth break down of how Artillery works, detailed discussions with valuable input from Steve on spotting and c2 and how they link together are all covered. None of those have anything to do with WW2 vs Modern era warfare, and while there may be references to Abrams, Bradley's and Javs, they are minimal. Even tactics questions like effective use of smoke to assault enemy positions, the use of suppress + maneuver, recon strategy, effective clearing techniques all are a mess with modern force references, but all can be applied to Normandy.

What are people doing in regards to Soft Factors in QBs? I have been spending the points to make snipers Elite/+2 due to my experience with SF. Snipers were really underwhelming, and have never really done anything worth mentioning in my entire experience (base, all modules, completed almost every campaign mission, ton of scenarios etc), except for the opening mission in the Marine campaign which featured Seal snipers. They absolutely wrecked enemy squads. It wasn't 1 shot 1 kill, but it was close. By all reports snipers have gotten significantly better, have people noticed a big difference in lethality/effectiveness for Very high quality snipers vs Regular quality vs poor quality? This is near the top of the "must test" on my must test list =)

Doh answered lol

I am a bit confused on the issue. Are you upset that you are seeing what the scouts are seeing? Because the system has changed. Spotting isn't shared like in CMx1. What difficulty are you playing on?

Is anyone buying re-supply vehicles for long battles? If so, what is the best one to get for Allies and Germans? And which vehicles have AT equipment/ammo and which vehicles have Heavy weapon ammo to acquire on both sides? PS: For new players a great way to re-supply is to break off a scout team to run and get ammo. Have the scouts high-tail it back to a vehicle, get in, order them to acquire, load them up with ammo and if available AT equipment. Dismount and re-join the squad. Worked great in SF. With ammo sharing, I assume using infantry squads to re-supply weapon teams still works as well with the above tactic.

There are quite a few shock force threads that new players would find useful, but that was the one I was thinking of that illustrated what you could do with waypoints really well.

Some of the tactic threads in Shock Force Tactics subforum might be beneficial to read just to get an idea of what you can do in this sense.

If your using arcs and moving, you really have to plot +2 way points with cover arcs at each one imho.