John1966

Well the fact that WP and smoke rounds are listed separately in the ammo loadouts means that you'd assume they are handled differently. But I have to admit that this has always been a CM mystery to me. We know they have different effects in real life but we can't select which to fire and I have no actual idea what is being fired because, if there is a difference, I don't know how to tell in the game.

Oddly enough, I don't experience much difference if the TC gets hit. Someone takes over and it runs with one less crew. Which is why I risk it. It's if you lose two crew you really start to get problems (like the guns being greyed out).

Opening the hatches makes a world of difference. I keep them unbuttoned unless the enemy is close (in which case they button up of their own accord pretty quickly anyway). And it's always worth getting some small arms fire on the AI tanks if they're unbuttoned so they close their hatches. If the tanks are at a distance then it'll basically decide who spots who first and that might make a difference as to who wins a tank duel. Although I've never "tested" it, if you're playing a big scenario, go round and unbutton all your tanks and you'll suddenly find they can see all sorts of things they couldn't see the previous turn.

No, it usually just sits there because I thought I'd given it the move order I gave the passengers.

You should show them to guests at Christmas if you think they've outstayed their welcome.

Curiously, I'm the other way around. I often think I've ordered a whole platoon to do a thing, only to see the lieutenant and his HQ run off on their own. Only use the group command when the enemy is distant so not normally a big deal. My favourite error on my part is dismounting the passengers off on a walk when I meant to send the vehicle itself.

That would be sensible. After all these years I'm still not 100% on what a tank can/cannot drive through.

Something that occurred to me the other day is that you can't buddy aid a casualty in a vehicle. Didn't notice whether the ammo still gets shared but you lose their weapon.

I would concur on that. The biggest problem with crew loss seems to be when a 5-man crew gets down to 3 and the guns get greyed out even though someone is listed as "gunner".

Sherman Firefly (immobilised due to conditions) and German TD (forget which) spot each other at about 650- 750m. Fire simultaneously. Shells pass in the air. Both KO'd. I didn't take a screenie as they were so far apart I couldn't really do a good one. I now realise I should have tried to get one of the shells passing each other. Oh well. Let's just say you had to be there.

I get quite excited if, at game end, my sniper got a single kill. Mind you, I'm doing Road to Nijmegen at the moment and if you lose your FO (who is the only person who can call in CAS or the stuff that makes really loud bangs), he's out for the rest of the campaign. Playing last night and I heard "End of mission" after a single spotting round. Puzzled, I looked at the FO unit and all the arty was "DENIED". Somebody had got the team leader! As he was over 600m from the nearest enemy unit, I assume it must have been a sniper. So they do have a point but they only seem the luck out for the AI.

I did that and got a tactical defeat (my best result in three attempts). I'd won the first 4 missions (German surrender in all cases) but I've got completely stuck on this one. It might be (just) winnable but it says you'll need your forces to defend in a later mission. As I assume your paratroopers are not going to get resupplied, they'll also be having to do it with hardly any ammunition too. So I've decided the best way to handle this one is cease fire on the first turn resulting in a defeat but at least you'll have your force intact with a full loadout to deal with whichever mission they're next required in.

You had to bring that up again.

If you get buddy aid right you can lose a whole squad trying to bandage one guy.

Is it wrong that I've only recently started the buddy aid obsession because I realise you get the weapons and ammo? And if you're the Brits you really have to retrieve the Sten and Bren otherwise your squad is fairly useless.

I'd actually called off the airstrike at this point too. This was nearly a minute later. I did get radio chatter of "STOP!!! STOP!!!" straight after the friendly fire so I can't complain the immersion was broken. Believe it or not it happened again later in the scenario (after a strike was called off). But there were only lightly wounded (no actual casualties) so I didn't bother with a screenshot (and strangely nobody shouted "STOP!!! STOP!!!").

Don't quote me on this but I thought anyone who was a proper casualty (as opposed to light wounded) was out for the duration. Back to Blighty or out for weeks/months.

Well spotted on the scenario. Still got a tactical victory. Only points I didn't get was for not keeping 80% of my force intact. Didn't get my calculator out but I suspect this was the incident that took me over the line.

I know that in the great scheme of VPs etc. that this doesn't matter (I think) but I'm curious. I played a scenario in which I took only two casualties. Both had the light red cross base (as opposed to the dark red skull & crossbones) so both wounded rather than dead. One was buddy aided off and one wasn't (scenario ended soon after he was wounded). In the AAR I expected to see 2 wounded, 0 dead. But actually there was 1 wounded and 1 dead. So what happened to my pixeltruppen? They don't die if you don't buddy aid them (as far as I'm aware - I've had loads of non-buddy aided wounded before and they weren't all dead in the AAR). Can they expire after evac? Either case would be realistic but they don't go from wounded to dead during a game, so why after? Never noticed it before as there's usually too many casualties. Only noticed here because of the low numbers. Which one expired and why?

Friendly fire courtesy of the RAF. Bloody flyboys.

Saw him do it live in 1983. (Probably 1983, possibly 1984)

I thought we were. Still waiting for your turn...

Isn't this technically cheating? I try to do this to stop all my tanks getting damaged tracks. I think @JoMc67 just told me one of his. Of course, they could just have invisible tanks.

But does the animation look cool?

I was genuinely thinking of the Culin hedge cutter. Yes, he's a human (and probably reading this). That's the thing. Never worried about such concerns against the AI.