dugfromthearth

I can't tell if you are trying to be funny or are serious. I design scenarios. I have two up on proving grounds for CMBO. I know it is a hobby. I cannot figure out what you think my assumption is since your comment was in no way related to what you quoted from me. and my name is not capitalized. nor are my sentences. but then posting on message boards is a hobby of mine, not a public service.

"American troops often armed themselves with captured 'fausts because they were in despair over the relatively ineffective bazooka rounds." So when are we going to see this option in scenario design?

disclaimer: I have read only the first few posts on this thread Any review is valid if what is written is the reviewers honest opinion and feelings. There is a difference between detailed editorial feedback (like my friend telling me that 75mm artillery support should be 81mm mortars instead), and general feedback. If someone says "I hated the scenario my side had no chance to win" then they clearly felt that they had no chance to win. It could well be that they played poorly or based on false assumptions. That raises the issue of managing their assumptions via the briefings. If you want someone to start with recon and then launch tank attacks, it could be suggested in their briefing. Discounting a review because the assumption is that the person played poorly is foolish. Most people who start playing a game will be bad at it at first. A scenario designer may decide that it is an "advanced" scenario only for expert players. That is reasonable. But that should be an explicit decision the designer makes, not just that people who can't win suck and should be ignored or insulted. Now I'm not saying that an angry, insulting review is well written or the best way to handle things. I'm just saying that designers need to view reviews as a tool for them to use. Use them to challenge your assumptions instead of interpreting them based on you presumptions.

another player wanting an opponent

At Zama, Hannibal formed a line of veteran mercenaries backed by an unreliable line of Carthaginian conscripts. He had some light cavalry. Scipio had fewer infantry but many more cavalry so he used light cavalry to extend his right flank to match his opponent. This cavalry was African tribal cavalry. Could be done giving Rommel a solid line of Germans backed by an unreliable line of Italians. Patton would have more armor, which would compose most of his right flank. To make it allies, make it British armor.

thanks

thanks

he just fakes it. he decides what each side would do knowing only what they should know. I have to say with no offense to my friend (who typically beats me in these sorts of games - I never beat him in a game of Steel Panthers) that he doesn't do anything clever. He will think "I need to defend a ridgeline with infantry against armor" and will set up in the proper way to do so. He uses his units properly, does good coordination. Whatever he decides to do he does well and by the book. So if he is playing one army looking to seize a town he deploys them in a standard way, nothing innovative but not making any mistakes.

If the defender buys a pre-determined artillery point and you place it, does the artillery spotter have to have los to it to get the benefits?

I need to know for a scenario briefing.

sneaking units don't really fire

I also should add that since this game seems a labor of love by the developers, I would hate to see them driven to put out a game that they aren't all that interested in and so don't put in the detail that the other games have.

good job avoiding the artillery

I would suggest a point victory system. You win the campaign by achieving a "total victory" worth of relative points. Assign point values to each victory level. After each battle the points are used to modify a sliding chart (ie you don't track each sides' victory points separately, you have one chart and each victory moves the towards one side's ultimate victory.)

interesting idea. my friend just plays solo and uses a board wargame for the strategic scale and then plays the battles out against the AI using CMBB. a campaign system for quick battles is interesting. do you want to have any strategic decisions, or just tactical? like choosing to attack, or defend, or meeting engagements? off the top of my head: 1st battle: meeting engagement either side can abandon the game at the start (just looking at the battlefield). If they do, then they have to be on the attack in the next game. The winner of a battle gets to choose which type of battle for the next engagement.

oh I agree it is realistic not to know los ahead of time. It's just that I expect my opponents to be able to do so.

I have tried two attack vs the AI. AI had 700 I had 1050 (but only spent 999). First one I scouted cleverly with some half squads. Lured their wespe forward. Popped out with my Jacksons (I use those now in place of Challengers) and destroyed it. Then they popped up 3 AT guns in the back and destroyed my Jacksons. My wasps tried to rush the AT guns just to see it could be done. I couldn't. I was left with my infantry clinging to cover being chewed up by their guns and gave up. I did a second one and held my armor back until I had spotted their AT guns and taken one out with mortar fire (then I ran out of mortar ammo). I ran my Jacksons to where the other AT gun could not fire at them. I was bad about the terrain and ran through a half-tracks LOS and lost a Jackson. My second one took out a jagpanzer but then was taken out by an armord car with a 75mm gun. I was able to push forward with infantry on the flank. A half squad got behind a machine gun pillbox and took it out. I raced 2 wasps down to help clear out the infantry - one was taken out by the armored car on the way. The surviving wasp cleared out their infantry quickly. I sent my bazookas around my rear to try and get to the armored car. The armored car trundled over and took them out at range, which gave me a chance to race my 3rd wasp down to help clear out their infantry. All they had left was the armored car and a little infantry on one side of the map, but that held 2 flags. I raced a wasp to try and take out the armored car, and ran a squad behind some buildings to close with it as well. My other wasp cleared out some buildings of infantry and then raced into some woods to avoid the armored car, only to be killed by infantry hiding in the woods. The other wasp saw the armored car and backed quickly out of sight, never firing. But my squad entered a building right beside it and took out the armored car. My remaining wasp cleared out their remaining few infantry squads. I won a minor tactical victory but lost 2 Jacksons, 2 wasps, my mortars, bazookas, etc (62 total casualties). So this would seem to be viable on the attack against the AI, but I have to learn how to handle mortars better and check the terrain better for LOS. I'm not ready for humans yet. My main problem is being bad at reading the map. I suspect I would be ripped apart by key hole attacks as I stumbled around.

Right, the main thing the AI does wrong is expose its armor too soon for me to kill. But it doesn't have its AT weapons out of place. They are just irrelevant for the most part. I've had wasps charge and destroy panzershrek teams. The thing is that the normal ideal infantry terrain is the worst terrain for infantry vs wasps. I do hope that humans make tougher opponents. With my 1,000 point army it has become trivial to defeat the AI in meeting engagements. I routinely achieve a total victory with the loss of 1 vehicle and 50 or so casualties. I certainly do recognize that the armor fight is the crucial factor in my plans. And this all may change with CMAK (which I have pre-ordered).

I've heard the war is going to be over by Christmas and I want to see some action before it ends.

wasps are just godlike against the computer. after their armor is taken out, or on a flank bare of armor, I can just rush my wasps up to their infantry clinging to cover and devastate it. The wasps eventually get buttoned but rarely get taken out. The key is to move in fast and hug cover. That limits what can shoot at the wasp. The infantry right there gets broken almost instantly by the flamethrower. crocodile tanks are not a good buy imo. I want armor to take out their armor and flamethrowers to rush their infantry. A crocodile can do both but not at the same time. And the crocodile is at greater risk then the wasp because I would need it for the initial armor engagement.

"Having fired up cMBO agian, I was amazed at how few vehicle types there were also, compared to CMBB." Yes, the armor list is long and the other lists are short. Which would seem to indicate an armor bias. I do not have CMBB. I have heard that infantry changes dramatically between CMBO and CMBB, I have not heard that armor changes so dramatically. I think that is also because CMBO is armor-centric and so infantry was not handled as well as it might have been. This is not to say that they ignored infantry. Like they included a very nice map/scenario designer but do not let you choose particular building skins to use, they are random. Likewise the maps in CMBO lack decorative elements such as graveyards, fountains, haystacks, shallow streams, etc. This is no doubt because they wanted a nice map editor to make functional maps, but they were not interested in highly detailed "artistic" maps that some players (including myself) are. I suspect that they were really just interested in a functional game and hadn't realized that the audience would be so interested in having a battle where the town hall of some town looked just so, and the armor had just the right camouflage for the army, time of year, unit, etc, and the the exact troop mix, etc. In a large part it comes down to "the more you give the players the more they want". I've played games with just generic armor, infantry, and artillery and been reasonably happy with it. But CM does so many things so well, you naturally want to see even more things done just as well.

I have never actually used smoke. I am sure it is a major element I am missing. I will have to try that.

employing them massed is my tactic, but I notice the AI does not seem to do this. It scatters its armor across the line.

so in conclusion. We got to see the tank. And the devs in their mercy are not letting anyone field one.

Initially when playing I would deploy homogenous formations. A platoon had a piat and mortar assigned to it, so I fielded them with it. I have found I do not like that approach. In my more recent games I tend to strip off the supporting elements and deploy them en masse where they seem to be the most useful. Basically mortars back further with good arcs of fire, machine guns to cover decent sized open areas, and infantry where I expect shock to occur. I had pulled my piats and bazookas and deployed them as groups where I thought my infantry needed more anti-armor support. I have found that to be bad. Given their short range they are weapons of opportunity and having them scattered amongst my infantry gave me more chances of a tank killing opportunity. So those I do deploy generally one per platoon. I also have taken to deploying my armor as a group (usually just 2 tanks) and worry more about massing then going for flank shots. The goal is to keep the armor hidden until it can pop-up and get a flank shot. I am generally unhappy with my armor handling, just because armor duels are so quick and decisive I find it hard to take my experiences as being gerneralizable (like taking out a tiger with a 76mm jumbo sherman with one flank shot that had said I had a rare chance of a kill).