JamesT73J

I know it can seem a bit of a shock when you encounter certain aspects of CMBB in comparison to CMBO. Heavy tanks are one area, and the care you need to exercise over infantry is another. German infantry is still very effective in CMBB (the LMG's are superb) but you can't expect them to just steam forward in the open without any consequences. If anything, it's due to the increased effectiveness of HMG/LMG fire. I can quite imagine that a single tank's machine gun gave your squads a nervous fit - it's happened to me many a time, and I have also inflicted it on the opposing forces too. The big tanks are quite a surprise. You'll get frustrated with the T-34's rather alot as well. They have a high firing rate, fast turret traverse, and their armour (all round!) is excellent. I've lost scores of PZIII's and IV's trying to battle it out with them. I remember reading in Anthony Beever's 'Stalingrad' about a Panzer groups early encounter with T-34s on the Steppe that were camouflaged - they ended up defeating the Russians via coordination and maneuver, rather than trying to take them on directly. This kind of thing is impossible to simulate at the moment. In an ideal world, your virtual tank crews would plan their own flanking maneuvers on their own initiative, but I guess that's something we'll have to wait a few years for!

Thanks for the replies guys. I'm going to practice some more QB's with the advice given and see how I go.

I've found (in my admittedly limited experience) that the Russian tanks aren't great on their first shots from long distance. I suppose this might be the optics modelling. My hassle with PAK weaponry is getting it moved around, although if there's one thing I've learnt about heavy tanks, people tend to think they're invincible and start touring the map with them, thus providing you with lots of opportunity to shoot at them. In the meantime I have to work on the other problem of this game eating my life.

The big problem I've had is the 'all round' armour on T-34's - side shots and rear shots don't really help The only chance I'd had with my existing AT teams is when I'd got them elevated and they'd managed to hit the tanks much thinner top armour. The infantry, when the tanks have strayed close enough, have been brilliant.

I have a couple of small-scale PBEM games ongoing at present, with me playing as axis, which are good fun, but I've not gone well equipped to deal with heavy tanks, and it's caused me some fairly interesting problems as my inexperience led me to believe I'd encounter more infantry. In fact, In the meeting engagements I've seen a trend toward heavier armour use. My typical force disposition is: 1 x infantry company (occasionally I use recon squads if I want to invest a little more in heavy mg support) 1 x understrength tank platoon (usually three AFVS, mixed, whatever I can afford) 1 x Spotter (75mm radio arty/81mm mortar) 1 x AT Team (AT rifle or bombs) 1 x Recoilless rifle team (small). 1 X kubelwagen (to rapidly position AT or recoiless crews) On the plus side, it's made me think about infantry vs. tanks far, far more than I'd normally have. I've had my AT and recoiless rifle guys shooting away many a time, but of course there's little they can do to a T-34, save immobilising it if they're lucky. Anyone recommend some good equipment mixes for 700-1000pts that work well on the offensive?

I've not tried human opponents yet, for this very reason! I think you can easily get into some bad habits versus the AI, certainly the 'Vegas mentality' displayed in the first post affects me playing against the computer. I only recently bought CMBB, having had CMBO for a little while, and heartily enjoying it. After downloading what felt like a million megs of patches I tried a quick mission game (God bless whoever designed this format. It's heaven!). I played Axis attacking on a reasonably flat map with moderate tree cover (which turned out to be the village type with diagonal road crossing so familiar in CMBO). Things went surprisingly well. For a start, the AI opened up with a medium tank at extreme range. Educated in CMBO, I expected instant death for the Medium tank he was shooing at. In fact all his shots ricocheted, and my tank plugged him effortlessly in one shot. So far so good. The trend continued, and I was able to steadily advance right on top of him. Here's when I got sloppy. He had two guns (I never found out what they actually were!) right at the back of the map, next to each other in a small wood. They were actually quite ineffectively placed, only able to cover the bottom quarter of the map, and limited in LOS by the village buildings. Well, idiot here marches 3 medium tanks in. They got knocked out one at a time. Should have learnt my lesson after the first. So I sent two half tracks in left and right, to try and supress them. Both got knocked out. Eventually I brought my 50mm mortar man into a house nearby and just Arty'd them..but you get the point. I broke all my own simple rules about mutual support and coordination...again. I won the scenario, but couldn't help but think a human opponent would have harried me all the way, and generally made life difficult. Shame the AI still tends to open up far too early on these quick maps. It encourages my laziness.

I've read the FAQ, and the printed manual, and the definitions seem clear enough, but I'm still not quite sure what is happening when the infantry use these orders. I tried using 'advance' to get a squad of infantry 50 metres to a house. I knew the path would take them in LOS of an OPFOR unit. Worked well enough, but I couldn't really see the difference between that and 'move'. Perhaps that's a habit from CMBO though. Edit: Just tried it again. Is it just mathematically modelled, in that they are a less susceptible to panic/shock? Still not 100% on this. Please help! [ January 07, 2004, 05:13 PM: Message edited by: JamesT73J ]