sonar

If you have a veteran battalion in a campaign and it takes 100 kia and 70 wounded, in what was not intense fighting, after the first action you have lost more than a full company of vets, after three such battles, you have sustained 100% casualties more or less. How will this affect your core force? I'm not familiar with the new system. The thing that worries me is the accuracy element because if this is maybe too high, then you will suffer higher casualties, irrespective of tactics.

mjKerner, I hear what you are saying about abstracting the kill ratio and this could be worked around but what effect will it have on campaigns when your force carries on to the next map ? unrealisticaly high casualties will result in very skewed results will they not? In cmx1, I always tried to play with casualties in mind and could obtain results much closer to reality than what I'm seeing here, I too imagined the lethality rate of ww2 weapons would be lower than cmsf...hmmm.

Normal Dude, I already stated that I'm aware of this point but I'm wondering if the weapons are a little too accurate in the game,as I said, it did not look to be such heavy going in the video and the ai did nothing suicidal yet the casualty rate is comparable with close quarter fighting.

I just noticed in the video aar, the Germans lose 100 men kia and 70 odd wounded. I know the arguements about the units at the sharp end bearing the brunt of a divisions casualty returns and players pushing harder than in real life but 100 hundred kia, in what looked like a not particulary heavy fight, is in my opinion too high. What is streetfighting going to look like ?

+2 for morale to the allied player and any german units who have sound contact on the pipes become rattled until they piper is silenced. I think this should be a top priority for BF.

This is one of my favourite scenes from the oldies, in particular from 20secs in, where the attack is all shot in one take that is about 1.20 min long. I always thought it gave it an authenticity as it has a combat photograhper, documentry feel to the scene, like something from "The world at war", D'you know what I mean ?

Ok I apologise, Franco didn't actually form the team but look at the history of his involvement in the club.

Did you know that Real madrid, were formed under Francos order with the explicit remit of hammering Barca, they were a state funded, facist propaganda tool. Come on the Barca.

German 3 para regiment,defending Cassino town 1944.Between 14 and 23 March, during very heavy fighting they lost 50 men killed, 114 wounded and 270 missing. from a force reckoned to be 700-750, 60% casualty rate.

In the Wermacht, wasn't it pioneers, who used smoke the most, assaulting fortifications and clearing mines/wire. So for them I'd say yes, though I can't say I've ever come across accounts of smoke grenades being used by infantry squads, not saying they were never used but not enough to make it into the game. Keep it for pioneers/engineers, it gives them that little bit extra edge that makes them more useful in the specific assault roles they were historically given.

I think the fault of most briefings is that they are devoid of any kind of useful intel, the kind of which a lot of commanders would have had. most actions would be part of bigger operations and therefore, local intelligence may well be very good on such things as enemy positions. Even in the worst war movies, where they get everything else wrong, you'll see the "Ok, son whats the situation here?" " Well sir, There's Germans are holed up in the village, were pretty sure it's remanants of the battalion that was holding xxx, they're a prettty ragged bunch. They have an a/t gun in the village square thats knocking out anything that comes down the main road, and thats the only route through to the bridge for our armour, there's also a sniper working in the area sir" Now thats a crap movie yet I have played many good scenarios where the briefing is only really used to tell you what your facing, in the sense that at the end of it all you know is that There are a company of germans, with tanks holding a village, now that level of intel is ok but not all the time, every battle you fight should not be a point unit advancing into the unknown. Now if you look at the intel maps for some battles, you see known position of weapons pits, mg sites, mines, pillboxes and such all marked. Granted not every battle would have that level of intel but most times your forces would be relieving other units or such like and there would be local knowledge that would be shared.

Great, thanks Bertram. It will take a bit getting used to not seeing that comforting red command line linking your platoon together though,ha.

HI, JasonC don't you think the scripting element will be a bonus if it is used to make the ai act more realistically,for instance if I'm not mistaken it will be possible for instance to have the ai patrol between two villages, using time on objective element. This I think means we have much more flexibility/realism available, as long as it used to assist the ai to be more covincing in it's behaviour.

Hi, can someone explain the new system and how it will affect gameplay? Are there still, for example, command delays for out of command units?

I found in the old engine,as a designer, you were always trying to find ways to get over the ai's limitations and make them act in a convincing manner. With the new editors ai planning feature, even having the ai forces moving to respective objectives, arriving in their correct formations and then having them stay put, will be an enormous help in designing better scenarios. I imagine, this is only the tip of the iceberg, in terms of what will be achieveable with the new editor and for me, it is one of the most exciting features of the new game.

Ok, here is the definitive answer on the grenade vs tank situation. No.1 tank, panzerfaust, No.2 Panzerfaust and No.3 handgrenade. From 3:05 to5:45 you see the platoon being placed, pause when they are highlighted and you can see the inventory for each squad. The squad at the treeline, which kills No.2 has a panzerfaust. 26:20 to 26:40, panzerschreck has a go, listen to the sound of it's discharge and impact. 26:42 team behind building fire a rifle grenade then a panzerfaust in quick sucession [watch their inventory as they fire, and watch the grenade and faust dissapear as there used]. Once again, listen to the sounds of these different types of weapon, in particular the faust. 27:56 the sqaud in the treeline let fly with their panzerfaust,See it is no longer in their inventoryand kills No.2. See the smoke from it's discharge,hear impact sound. 37:60 to 38:40 we see a miss from the last faust but no one else has a go with handgrenades, till the squad in the treeline whom the tank is literally sitting on top of, throw one. By chance I paused at 38:40 and in the frame you see the stickgrenade, on it's way, in mid air where it explodes... above the rear engine cowling, listen to the difference between this explosion and the one that gets No.2. I am completely satisfied with these results and my initial response was instigated by the misleading video commentary. Now what was that someone said about chinstraps....cheers

Kwazy dog, I don't think think your last post is relevant, it's not whether the tank is completely Ko'd its the fact that something that rarely happened in real life, happend twice in the same scenario that sets my alarm bells ringing. The germans awarded the tank destruction badge in recocnition of the fact that it is a feat that is well out of the ordinary and takes a lot of luck and a brave man to accomplish. Out of all the photos of the wermacht you see, you only rarely see this decoration on the sleeve of a soldier and that is awarded for the singlehanded destruction of a tank by satchel charge, grenade bundle and panzerfaust or any hand held explosive. I stick by my original statement a single grenade taking out a tank, is pure John wayne stuff, twice in the same scenario is worrying, cheers.

Hey Kwazydog, I hear what you say about the possibility of knocking out tanks with grenades but in real life you just don't come across many instances of this happening, you would have to time your throw so it would explode on or above the rear deck and then pray it would get through the grill and hit something vital, thats a tall order. In the AAR the yanks ko two tanks this way and the first one is 5m away, more than 15feet...sorry but no, not buying that.

Shouldn't crews be automatically pinnned/supressed on bail out or even broken, they should stay out of and try to get away from the fighting. Tanks getting knocked out with hand grenades is pure john wayne stuff, apart from these gripes it looks very promising.

I read something interesting on this subject, apparently the rel problem wasn't the gauge of the rails, it was that Soviet engines were larger than German ones and therefore had a longer range, so things like water stations were at a greater distance apart than western european ones, the actual gauge change was a simple operation in itself. I'll have to dig out the book to refresh my memory but that was the jist of it.

The thing is,as the war progressed, the PzIV was the backbone of the panzer divisions and got the job done mostly, so I wouldn't write them off as useless. There is the argument that if Germany had churned out large numbers of the PzIV and stug, they would have fared better in the long run, as it seems attrition played a key role in the decline of the panzer arm, due to the bleeding away of its strength and slowness to replace combat losses in machines.The Germans would do all they could to recover and repair armour from the battlefield due to this very consideration. I like the PzIV, the photogenic big cats, bag the glory while the IV, keeps it's head down and gets on with the job.

But can they detect mines in an area, before a vehicle has set one off, i.e. you see a road into a village, is it mined ? Will my engineers be able to find and mark mines or do I have to drive something down the road and lose a vehicle just to determine if the road is mined or not?

Hi, will engineers, be able to detect mines without a vehicle having to blow itself up first? If not, then what if any capabilities will they have to distingush them from ordinary infantry? Cheers

Wooh, chill out, mr policeman, anyway I thought it was pretty relevant to CM Normandy as it looks like it could be a competitor and as there is no forum for CM:N yet then this is the correct one, seeing as it is the same engine.

Achtung Panzer 1943. This games looks promising anyone played it ?