John1966

I recently got a squad who were out of ammo to join in on the endgame charge into the enemy trenches. They still had plenty of grenades so thought they'd make a useful contribution. But they didn't throw a single one despite my other guys' willingness to do so and the enemy survivors' willingness to do the same.

I tend to give up on broken troops as first whiff of gunfire and they're off again. But they can do buddy aid (although not much advantage in them picking up any weapons) and they can occupy victory locations that the fighting has moved on from.

I'm not so sure. Yes, no-one would want to be in a Sherman when the tank could go up with a shot from an anti-tank gun you haven't even seen. But when the threat is right in front of you and vulnerable because it's pointed the wrong way, I'd think your safest bet would be to shoot it again. I'd also note that in RL, the Panther couldn't have even rotated its turret in the narrow street but I don't think CM models that.

It occurs to me that in RL, the best you're liable to do with a grenade is immobilise it. Blow a track off. (In ASL that would be the "Defensive Fire Phase method") To get a kill, you'd need to be shoving grenades through vision ports or hatches. (In ASL that would be the "Close Combat Phase method") But the current engine can't really model the latter. So I assume (as someone has already said) that it's abstracted to account for that plus specialist anti-tank devices, grenade bundles etc.

When I got that Panther with infantry, I actually had a Sherman stalking it. But the crew were rattled. They got behind the Panther and fired one shot. Even got a penetration. What did they do? Finish it off? (It was short range, they were unlucky not to get the kill with the first hit) No, they popped smoke and reversed. *sigh* Then the infantry in the building next to the Panther (who'd just taken multiple casualties from the Panther's MA), KO'd with two grenades. Go figure.

Yes, curiously armoured vehicles are more intimidated by tanks than infantry appear to be. On the other hand, maybe that makes sense. Infantry at least can hope they've not been seen or there's something more important to shoot at.

The lack of HtH fighting has never really bothered me. They fight with their weapons at close quarters. SMGs and grenades are the killer weapons. But what happens if they're out of ammo? In RL they'd fix bayonets. Is that modelled at all (even if it's invisible)? Or are they doomed?

Yeah but it's fun. To be honest it genuinely doesn't bother me. Tanks shouldn't be getting too close to infantry. If they're forced to in urban terrain then close infantry support should keep them reasonably safe.

A Stuart? I got a Panther with two grenades last week.

My hunch is that, currently, there's no TC involved. (And also that grenades are more effective against tanks than perhaps they should be)

If it does (and it might), I've not seen much evidence of it lately. I've had more AFV kills with grenades than actual infantry AT weapons in the last couple of months. Many unplanned. As well as the aforementioned "distraction" incident, I had some engineers blow a wall behind a tank to give the a PIAT LOS. But as soon as they blew it they shouted "Enemy armour!" and started throwing grenades, knocking out the tank before the PIAT could fire. Curiously they didn't even use a satchel charge. Watched it several times to make sure.

That sounds about right. I've been playing 20 years and I've just returned after a long gap. My comments here are based on what I've seen recently but I must admit that I don't remember infantry being quite so effective against armour in the past. That's why it took me a while to notice. I never used to let my infantry anywhere near a tank and only discovered how easily they could dispatch one with the incident I described further up (when I used them to distract a tank but they ended up knocking it out). Done it repeatedly since which may or may not be realistic. To me it makes perfect sense that a tanker would be nervous of infantry in closed terrain. I thought they avoided it without infantry support (which will stop the enemy infantry's anti-armour antics pretty effectively). Not actual history but every time I see that Tiger go down the street on its own in Saving Private Ryan I think, "What are you doing?!" Even though it's only a movie it illustrates exactly how vulnerable a lone tank is to determined infantry.

True enough. But as frustrated as often get with my pixeltruppen, they never seem to be shy at chucking grenades at tanks. Mind you, I'm always surprised how effective those grenades are.

Actually, what I should have said was, "It's easy to forget just how vulnerable tanks are to infantry at close quarters in Combat Mission." As I've never tried taking out a tank in RL, I'm not going to comment on whether it's actually realistic. But I think you mentioned playing a lot of ASL further up. And as we all know, infantry can't try to take on a tank at close quarters in ASL without passing a TC first. That's something CM's pixeltruppen don't have to do. Perhaps they should have to do something similar. Morale dropping temporarily while next to an enemy tank? Tanks were/are pretty terrifying so maybe they need a psychological effect in CM. In fact, I seem to remember in COD that infantry had to pass a TC just to stay adjacent to an enemy tank whether they planned to attack it or not. (Although that's a 30-year old memory and possibly wrong)

And I always look. Never worked out what he was looking at. I'm doing Market Garden at the moment so I assume it's the windmills.

It's easy to forget just how vulnerable tanks are to infantry at close quarters. In a night time scenario I had a Sherman closing on a Panzer IV but in the dark, they couldn't see each other. They were at either end of a road and the conditions were wet so leaving the road was likely to result in bogging. It was going to be who saw the other first. If the Sherman was the one moving I surmised the Panzer IV would get the first shot in as they were facing each other. So I ruthlessly got an infantry squad to charge the Panzer IV. The idea being that it would rotate it's turret to blow them away giving the Sherman a chance to get a couple of shots in as it charged down the road. Didn't work quite as anticipated because the infantry who charged the Panzer IV lobbed a couple of grenades and the German crew bailed before it fired a shot. That sort of changed how I viewed infantry vs tanks. I always try to get them close and they're often very efficient at dispatching tanks. Stopped me thinking about nothing but my AT assets. Recently sent a couple of squads after a Panther in urban terrain with similar results. Not an AT weapon in sight. So if the AFV overrun was available in CM, I doubt it'd ever get used that much.

Don't know who designed the Scottish Corridor but this was basically my problem with it. I'm fine with a difficult scenario if it's a one off (as opposed to being part of a campaign). But I practically never replay scenarios. If I got it wrong, I got it wrong. No point playing it again with all sorts of intelligence information I wouldn't have in RL. Recce etc. is part of the game so there's no fun removing the need for it with multiple replays. So I sort of expect campaign scenarios to be easier (I'm sure many are) so that I can gauge how committed to be and how much of my force I risk. Should I commit my reserve? If every scenario requires Maximum Effort then you need to replay (or cheat as I think of it) to get anywhere. Well the above is pertinent in this. It was the fictional MG scenario with the British recce troop encountering the Kriegsmarine in the suburbs of Arnhem. Don't think I quite grasped the briefing and sent out a brilliant flanking move to encircle them. SPOILER: But there was a seemingly endless supply of the Kriegsmarine. Despite inflicting many casualties my boys ran out of ammo and were pretty much wiped out. At game end I discovered there were nearly 400 Germans on the map! I think my attacking force was about 150. Had I realised, I'd have played it a bit differently.

In CM an "AFV overrun" is best described as "losing an AFV to hand grenades".

Considerably less than I got in my last game. I don't wish to talk about it.

Is that Nowhere to Hide? Finally got thrown out after that one. Very strange scenario. A draw and at the end 90% of the casualties on both sides (that were pretty high) were caused by the artillery spotters (including most of the tank kills). The incoming is so heavy that the Brits get chewed up too badly to do much but if you get your FOs performing, you can demolish most of the German attack with your own artillery. Hardly a shot was fired by anyone on the map. Interesting enough but not sure I want to be playing many like that.

Blimey. Not sure it's that I'm seeing. Not unless moonrise happens quicker than I think.

They could but I'm sure in real life soldiers occasionally (or quite often in fact) used movement that was faster than Move and slower than Quick. Move is a gentles stroll and Quick isn't far off Fast (although I've never raced my pixeltruppen across a field to check - bet someone has though). They could call it "Gentle Jog", "Get a Bloody Shift on" or (my preference) "There is a War on You Know".

I remember reading a review of CMx1 many, many years ago that came up with the minor criticism that there were too many different movement commands (can't remember how many - 14 or something?). I don't know if it was taken to heart but we now have much less. This is supposed to be a good thing (or simplification of the interface). Personally, I liked having all those different options. Apart from Move to Contact there was Advance which meant they stopped and fired. I wish there were more. I'd like an option that's a bit faster than Move but slower than Quick. For all those times when it's quite a long way but there is some urgency involved.

But it was dark at the start of the scenario. I get that it doesn't work until it's dark. Just puzzled why it gets very bright after about three turns.

I didn't know about the covered arc with Hunt. I was recently playing a scenario where there was an enemy SP gun on a distant hill. I'm pretty sure it was actually KO'd (it'd taken several hits) but no-one could confirm the kill at that range. Suffice to say it wasn't firing and it wasn't moving (so it was at least immobile and the MA was out) so it was no longer of interest. Took me a while to work out what was going on but basically I couldn't use the Hunt command. Eventually dawned on me that as nearly everyone could see it, it was Hunt-cancelling contact. Should have used covered arc. (My tanks continued to waste ammo on it until it caught fire and solved the problem)