Beta1

you think thats lucky - One of guy, who I played a few times (and usually trounce) had a tiger that took multiple penetrations from T34/85s at close range (I think 4 in one turn) before calmly popping three of my tanks. Equally I've had tanks immobilsed by small calibre artillery, flame throwers that torch themselves and captured prisoners unsurrender. Its war, weird **** happens.

are you attacking along the valley or over the hills? (ie is the axis of advance n/s or e/w?)

LOL yeah, you can level most of the block if they are light buildings!

One of the best ways of dealing with a big cat is to not deal with it. Stay the hell out of its way, never give it a tank to shoot at. It has to kill a lot of infantry to make it worth its points. Making it wave it turret back and forth by exposing/hiding targets at opposite ends of the map can work wonders too. But if you avoid giving it high value targets often a human player will move it to find them and the more it moves the more the chance of a bog or a possible ambush. Just dont play people who insist on unrestricted games on big flat dry maps...

that said I have seen 30+ games reach turn 40. Usually when I'm defending and down to my last bullet.

LOl you think 150mm is good - try the 200+ stuff with lots of TRPs. You can buy the FOs at conscript level and the TRP brings the target on target and on time. You really dont want to be anywhere near the 300mm+ shells!

I think rockets are one of those weapons that get better value the larger the battle - The area they come in on is often so large that unless they are firing on big formations they often dont make their cost back, especially compared with equivlent calliber tubes. On defense with TRPs they are more usefull though as with some luck you can have multiple possible TRPs to fire on increasing your chances of a good stonk. OTOH the same price of big calliber stuff can do a lot of damage when paired to TRPs. Some of the big russian calibres can be purchased really cheaply at low experience and paired with TRPs can cause total carnage if you get your stonk in on time.

quick google search reveals http://worldatwar.net/article/australiantank/tankpacific.html so its basically a short range heavy mortar. I guess you wouldnt want to be too close if they fired all those off at once!

An ASW matilda? Why on earth would you want one of those? Cant have been that many U-boats in the western desert!

probably true for the example you give but with a 6 man HMG half of those guys are there to lug the spare barrels and ammo. They dont have to be in the same foxhole as the guys serving the gun and to help spot etc they may well be spaced out a fair bit.

It would be nice if the bunkers were not a unit in their own right but part of the scenery - ie you buy the bunker (log/concrete/whatever) and at setup could place whatever you want inside (AT gun/HMGs/flamethrowers/troupe of dancing girls...) Would maybe leave open the option of evacuating a HMG from a bunker if you wanted to.

If your being harrassed by IL-2s go for the 37mm. The IL-2 is a pretty tough customer - its pretty heavily armoured (for a plane) and 20mm flak is often not up to the job. And as bone_vulture said it eats light armor alive

depends what they were carrying. If you got unlucky and they just had molotovs you need a fair bit of luck to get a kill. If your lucky though you might get a grenade bundle, or a RPG depending on the date. These have a fair chance of a kill. I wouldnt have thought a P3 was unkillable by any means.

Your right about the U-boats but again RAF patrols would make their life harder. you have to remember that the further West you go in england the further you get from france - the channel generally widens as you move west. The RAF may not have had supremacy over the channel in the east but in the west the range would have made life much harder for the germans. I dont think you would need much RAF prescence to make a real mess of things. I think its probably safe to say that anywhere in cornwall is way out of range of any artillery based on the continent so unless your going to fly a lot of unescorted bombers over the channel or put some serious naval firepower in the area your not going to have much backup for your landing force. Also if youve been to some of these small cornish ports you really wouldnt want to try attacking them. Outside the big towns most of the fishing ports are really very small harbours with very poor access back into the town (although admittedly I've been to more N cornwall than S cornwall). But you would have difficulty getting a kubelwagen ashore and off the beach/dock let alone a panzer! Theres also a suprising amount of coastline with very large cliffs! Although molotovs may be all we had its about as good terrain as you could wish for given that is what you have! Given the inevitably heavy defenses at plymouth I would have though trying to land anywhere east of st austell would be suicide. Falmouth would probably be well defended too which leaves you looking west of the lizard. You could maybe manage on the bay between penzance and porthlever...

you do occasionally get KOs abandons withe the 105-150 stuff but try dropping 200+ stuff on them and see what happens! I remember one game where I used a low experience FO (I think a russian 305mm?) to whack a group of tanks that had attacked my line rather too close to a TRP. one turns fire KOed/abandoned a pair of tigers, forced the others to retreat and totally shredded their supporting infantry. I love TRP/big arty defenses And of course you can always use the same TRPs to boresite some AT guns.