slysniper

your likely correct. I have no way of knowing if it was that ammo, but likely was. It really was not a test , just a qb type of thing , messing around and wanted to see if I could get the churchhills to take out a Tiger, thinking it would be hard. 20 seconds into the firefight and both were useless. I was:eek:

Here is a fun little side note for you all. Recently I ran 2 tigers vs 8 churchhills, figuring the same thing. That non of them could kill the Tiger from the front. At approx. 500-600 meters two Churchhills engaged the two tigers from the front, One churchhill had a 57 and the other a 75MM The first solid hit from the 57 destroyed one Tiger, with in a few more rounds the 75 dmaged the gun on the other Tiger. I was shocked. I figured I had a unstoppable little force there. But losing the Tiger to a 57 frontal hit was suprising.

Oh, I totally agree with you that suppression is likely the thing that needs tweeking and that My battle was nothing but a example to myself that without more suppression, the game just does not play realistically. I mean lets face it. without any support with arty or smoke . I ran plain infantry which cannot be split (since italion) in full units at the enemy in open ground and overran them in a trenched defence with odds no greater than 4 to1. The game is fun to play but as it plays presently. it does not protray things as accurate as many of us would hope it could to historical facts. Like you have pointed out, it was easier for BF in the old system to tweek the numbers to get a realistic results. Now with all the effort in details and realism, they have a hard system to just be able to make some simple changes to make it protray a little more realistic. I have to smile. the troops do not take cover like anyone would in real life and expose themselves way to much, but then I think they made the troops shoot so bad that it somewhat equals out. But MG's in general are lacking, the only time they shine is when you ambush someone at close distances. that is just the opposite of how they were used in RL. Of course there is many of us that still feel on board arty (mortars) is still too accurate, which again impacts the balence of play with any weapon they can take out in battle. Then pistols are just too accurate. So out of small arms weapons, that is alot of What the ??????? as to how they went about designing what they can do. Them tweeking these things are not impacting the scenarios all that much. Face it, do you really think they are balenced. balenced for who. For one player they might presently be too hard, for another too easy. When will people realize that there is no such thing as a balenced Scenario. Yes some of the scenario play pretty good if the players are about equal in skill and one of the two does not make a blunder. But many of the scenarios likely do not even play well if that is the case. This is not chess. And any scenario can be adjusted to make it play more even if the balence was to become too onesided.

I am home now and looking at my numbers I was pretty close to being right on. My loses were 116 to 33, with starting numbers of 164 to 39. As to the set up, The americans are in a area centered on the map that has two rows of trenches and cover a area about 50 meters across the front, this is in a map that was about 250 meters wide. So no they did not have a flanking position. But what I also saw was that they did not have problems with incoming fire much at all. All four gun crews were firing away pretty consistant untl I had enemy units at about 100 meters giving return fire. At the 250 to 200 range the italions were not doing much of anything as to pinning or hurting the Americans, problem was even at that range , the americans could not pin very many units for any given time. As has been pointed out before, the moment a unit is not receiving fire, it starts to recover. pinning effects are not long lasting enough. Once I had enough units at the approx 100 meter range, the Americans began taking losses and lossing important fire power and were seen beginning to cowered at a more regular basis. Now when I made the infantry rushes to get close to the trenches, many units did go down and some retreated. But in the end, I had low morale status's on units (Broken) which should make them break again so easy. but they had control of the battlefield and so it was not a problem. It really was a close battle and could go either way. but with the MG's fire on the adverage 500 -600 rouinds in this little conflict. With their supporting crew also firing their carbines, which was likely 2 men, since the leader was normally spotting and 2 were on the MG. Having my ammo bearers out preform my MG's just seems to show a flaw. As for not running a test at greater ranges. I have tested MG's at greater ranges before and already knew I would not get much of anything in results. I ran something similar to this test with 4 -50 cal mG's on jeeps and tried to see what impact they would have on the same size group of Italions, but the ranges were started at 500 meters and the jeeps would pull back and move and combine fire as i saw fit. The problem with that test was lack of ammo, the jeeps had limited rounds. Needless to say, they had a total of 18 kills, had retreated 400 meters and was lucky to have no one killed or wounded. but were not a impact at all at slowing down the enemy. Now when I run these test, I play both sides in a hotseat mode. So both sides are being commanded to what I feel is the best practices available. These are not being done against a AI unit on one side.

I think you guys over analyze things that we cannot have great data on from the game. But I agree with this statement. I just did a little test scenario of my own a few days ago, not set up for hard numbers. Just something to see what would happen. 4 American 30 Cal heavy machine gun crews on a hill with oversight on pretty open ground, dug in with trenches that connect and unit leaders. Task was Stop approx.. 160 black shirt Italians that are approx.. 200- 250 meters away from the trench line. They have no mortars, just the other typ. Firearms found within the unit. The desperate assault is on. I will need to post later to get the actual results of the mission. But in general it was about 15-20 minutes to take the trench system. Lost 120 men doing it and the Americans, 33 dead or wounded & 6 survivors. Some of the MG’s were still in action until the enemy was able to get into hand grenade range, which was a fun part of the battle. But here is the point, there is some problem with the MG’s in general, we all know it, it’s just how we get BF to get into it and fix it. Why would I say this? When the result were reviewed in this battle The ammo bearers which were 3 man crews had more kills than the MG units. Like I said, I have the data at home. But out of approx.. 120 dead or wounded. MG’s count was under 50 (approx. average 12 per unit) Leaders had approx.. (15 dead or wounded) That left 55 being taken out with the ammo bearers with the carbines. So that was odd, don’t need too much science to know something is wrong. Second thing, sure made me miss the day when the game should have an auto route that triggers for all units when a certain level of losses accrue. Not likely to see a real unit take 75% losses and still be gung oh about assaulting into enemy trenches. But in the game you get to have such hero’s

He only uses it in the winter, it is the only way he can drive in the snow anymore- what a grog

Ok guys, you heard it, We are all meeting Steve to buy him a beer, Lets say a week from Friday. Lets see, that should be about 85 beers now if we all buy him one. This should make for a entertaining evening. Now we all just need the directions to that local pub that you enjoy visiting.

We have a couple of whiners , but what blows my mind is the number of replies to try and rebuttle them. If you cannot tell, you are not changing their twisted minds. Let alone their lies. (Like I have not played it hardly at all but I need it updated for the opponants I am playing. The two do not add up.) Anyway, I cannot beleive I wasted part of my time even reading and now responding to this post. It is not worth the effort.

that book has a ton of photo's. Many I have never seen before. It is interesting for just that aspect of it. I wonder where he collected all them from.

The more I mess with the QB feature vs the AI. I will totally disagree with the comments that it is worse than CMX1 This is not how i play the game generally, but this thread made me wonder how well is the AI working in QB's since the first few I tried the set ups were junk and it did not perform relistically at all, back when the game was first released. Well, I created two more battles. First one I selcted a probe for the attacker at night and decreased my force by 30%, figuring it would reduce my advantage as the attacker to very slim. I selected my forces and let the AI auto select from mixed. It was a town med battle and it played very well. Map was ok, nothing to write home about but better than a random generated one. I had a company of engineers and 2 churchills. The defence had infantry, plenty of armor cars and a Stug. Again it held a battle line and multible times it acted like it was counter attacking, either to plug a hole in its line or to swing up on my flank. It gave me a decent fight. nothing too challenging. but it reacted much better than the older games. I played a second game in CMFI, this time as the defender. I set the attacker in a assault game to receive additional forces, I think 10% and another medium size map, these were played on elite. This time I was plesently suprised. The map was fantastic. Felt close to any scenario map you might come across. I was way outnumbered, I had a company of Armored infantry, which had plenty of AT guns, I had some 81 off board mortars and 2 Shermans to use to help stop any breaches. The enemy had approx. 300 infantry, again a ton of armored cars, A Stug and a Marder and also some off board Arty. I assume that these maps might have some human programmed AI battle plans. But what I saw was the AI attack, split its forces and attack in two locations. Thus forcing me to play somewhat honest and making me hold my troops across my front. it forced me to move units to secure the breaches it made at the two concetrated attacks and caused me to thin my lines below decent levels. Now it is not human and if it was it could have adjusted its units at the breach points and overrun me, but being a machine following simple orders it had a tendancy to keep moving troops to the same locations. But once in awhile a few would get off that path and create a little excitement. but again, though nothing fancy and it appears it is not going to do more than just its programmed paths. It still is for sure not worse than what we had before and given a little battleplan human programming. could make for some good challenges, Note: I played these both in one evening. I set the game for 45 minutes, real time and spent some time to select my Units. I will rate my games as a 7 out of 10 compared to maybe a 5 out of 10 for how something like this played in CMX1

That is absolutely correct. And I want a command to tell him when I want him to do it

Oh maybe for the simple reason that if you have managed to get a shot off without the enemy knowing where you are at, its time to stop firing MG so that he does not spot you by the mg rounds and returns fire because of it. many a story of tankers being hit and not knowing where it came from. when you fire a MG its becomes easy to track where you are at. It is a choose as to if it matters or not in the situation. Not sure how they have the game programmed to do it.

THAT IS WHAT I THOUGHT ALSO, Except when you select a M10, there is no target light option. So in other wards, pretty useless. It would be nice to see a member get out and use it in the forward direction. I mean I have had a commander stand on top of a turret to get a view before. Dont ask me how that happened, I cannot remember if it was a dismount and the dude decided to hang there for a moment since he could see the enemy.

OK, Can someone give me any advice how to get this MG into the action. I have M10's vs enemy infantry. I am out of HE rounds and this appears to be the only decent weapon left to use. Do I need to be unbutton and do I need the turret turned away from the enemy.

Now I will disagreee with this to some extent. First, If CMx1 AI can give you a good challenge, You either have to know how to tweek it to make the odds pretty unfavorable or you are just not a very good player. Because I found the AI doing terrible things with its troops in movement, thus the reason it was only semi good on defence. But even on defence it had a tendancy to want to move its troops from good placement locations to stupid positions. Now , just for giggles. I played a QB vs the CMX2 AI last night just to see if it would be as terrible as I like to point out it is. Without spending a ton of time to set up and play, could I get a decent battle. So of course I selected to be the attacker, since the AI does better on defence. I selected the map and I let the AI pick its forces and I selected my forces and gave myself no arty to help improve the challenge and a nice short time frame so that i could not take my sweet time disecting its non- mobile defence. For armor I selected a company of cronwells, that should make it interesting and a company of infantry minus about a platoon & the heavy support weapons. So I had a few light mortars plus infantry. I can gareentee you I had a better battle vs the AI for the first 20-25 minutes, playing Real time on elite than I likely would ever get from the old system. First the enemy was not on the objective, it had made a good battle line between it and me. Second it held its position well and even at one point in the game counter attacked with a stug to get itself in a flanking position to the other flank in which i was pushing. I lost two tanks before I could even get a spot on a enemy location. (Surely something that would never happen in he old game). Which included taking out my one and only firefly. I lost two more tanks one to a unseen unit as i was pushing the flank and the last was a cronwell that I rolled down the enemy flank once I had control of the battle, he was trying to mop up and take out any remaining armor that might be on the battle line. I knew a stug would have its flank exposed to it. As I moved it in position to take it out. I opened the hatch to take a better spot and My commander was killed by a hidden infantry unit i had missed in a area i had mopped. The tank lost command control so i watched helplessly as it rolled into a spot that likely could be spotted by the stug and was and watched my tank go into flames. In the end. I lost 3 cronwells and the Sherman, The AI lost 4 Stugs and a Pv4. It did not have any infantry to say, just a few scouts that I located and keep me busy early on and a FO with arty that tried to hit me with 3 fire missions within the game. Now if I knew how (which I dont) give the enemy more units than the preselected point value. Because i had a 2-1 advantage almost in that game. So if I could have tweeked it to give it 50% more units, it might have been a real challenge. Even so, I did not win the battle, I played a battle that the outcome was given since I had the advantage and it would show. I felt the AI played me pretty even and for its limitations, thats not bad. The things that gave it the ability to do that to me was the spotting and fog of war aspect that is within the CMX2 engine that you will never see in CMX1. Either you like it or you dont. But it adds the unpredictability of battle (Of course i played the game in a way to make sure that the enemy might get the game engine advantages of that part of the engine) But I set up played and finished the game in about a hour and a half. So even with all the complaining, I will still point out, it is a game, learn to use the tools and you might find it is useable after all. I do smile how we all love to complain about things the game lacks and what it should have, but it is up to us to make the most of what we have also.

isnt that the truth. You have basically pointed out how about 90% of the battles are played in the scenario's provided. I blame it on the designer some. Its hard to find battles that this is not the best approach.

wow, it just blows my mind that you have figured out a way to get sturdy protection by this much manipulation of what the map maker presently supplies. Nice Job, but it would just be nice if they provided us some tougher options for use in the system.

Yes, but you speak to a American who 1/2 his blood line is English. I knew I get a little reaction from some of the Brits:)

Battlefront works at the same speed as the British during WWII. Sloooooooooooooooow!!!

Way back when the game was first released, I ran some test on what a machine gun can and cannot do in the game. Just how we set up the test can make things hard to get any data worth understanding. But some things I learned while doing the test. Any test with one MG only is likely to reflect on a machine gun poorly. Once the gun is pinned or stops firing for any reason, incoming fire will pretty much keep them in a state where they will have problems from that point on to recover and win the firepower battle. The real question is, what can a machine take on in enemy troops and control the battlefield by generally pinning the enemy and with time killing exposed troops that do not find cover. What I found or use as a rule of thumb for the game anyway is. One machine gun will generally always win against a group of 10 men. One machine gun will hold its own against 20 men, but the battle will swing either way. One machine gun will always lose against a group of 30 men. Now if I tested this with 2 machine guns against double the units , the results were more consistant. Also, rifle grenades were a big impact in any results. If I removed the rifle grenade. The Mg's preformed much better. in other words, I noticed most of the time if the MG was to lose the battle, it started with a Rifle Grenade hit and generally the MG unit never recovering from that to gain control on the battlefield again. So after thinking about my results, it dawned on me, one crew served weapon was handling 10 enemy guns easily, somewhere between 15- 20 enemy guns the advantage is starting to swing and at 30 guns, there is no way it can take on them odds. So from what little of this post I thread i have read, I would question is there really a game modeling problem or not. (maybe your expectations are incorrect and how you test it might not be helping the situation.

Well, very true, but playing someone now on a computer game, takes much of that away. There is no rules to fight over, (except some old men want to make them here). There is no should or should not happens - you get what the game gives you- except some old men will whine on this forum how game results are incorrect, but they are doing it here, not to who they played. So sounds like to me your ready to start playing Humans again, since the game has removed most of your biggest issue:)

Maybe Steve is just a "Glass half full" Type of guy. But he has proven time and time again he is terrible at estimating what it takes to get one of his game products done. I would start to worry if they did start coming out on his schedule. It likely would mean that there would be all sorts of programming issues in them still.

Streety, you are not stuck with playing CMX1 if you would just dedicate yourself to learning how to work the editor and create yourself some battles. Is it easy , no, is it fast to do , no. But once you create one that works, you will see that The AI is actually a little better in that with human aid in giving it commands, Like holding a trench line or fox holes (which in CMX1 the AI troops get out of all the time if there is a flag anywhere on the map) That you can have more challenging battles. I do feel your pain in that the game cannot provide any real challenge on its own at the moment. But if you understand why they removed that aspect of the AI and basically has AI battle plans designed by humans, it is presently the way they found to allow the AI to be a better challenge. As for pointing out how they have not invested in making a AI that also creates a decent battle plan and can give you some challenge. Many have given their opinions as to why it is not being done or the challenges of doing it. I am afraid that in the future you will be seeing more tools for a human to program what they want the AI to do, but I doubt you will see AI programming its own plans anymore any time soon.

First , you need to position your F.O. so he can see the battlefield. The high ground right of your set up area is a good location. Send no other troops there and he will be fine and should not get spotted. Then move down the left flank towards the beach. Use smoke and the the terrain to help cover your moves. But send forces that will draw fire and that you are willing to risk, Hopefully get a spot on some of them AT guns and then you can take them out with Arty. As for the Shermans you have no good answer in that they outclass even your best Panzers. So you are only going to win battles where you are getting 3 or 4 tanks firing vs 1. Not easy to do with that wide open map. thus the reason to move down the left flank. find the enemy and try to take them on against one unit at a time - do this by trying to position a plantoon looking around the edge or side of the hill, thus allowing the hill to provide cover except for the side you are creeping around. Watch out, you forgot to mention the T30's and the Rocket arty that can also wreck your day in this Battle. Needless to say, This final battle is a extremely hard challenge, and even if you do manage to do good. You will likely find you have lost it anyway. The scoring for it almost makes it impossible to win. So play it, enjoy the challenge and accept the fact it is going to give you a loss. If you came on the map with 22 tanks, then you played the campaign well. This Battle is Gruel though, I have a post that is about 30 threads old on this same battle. You can get the rest of my opinions there.

I agree with you. If anything, the AI in the game is actually weaker. Because now it requires a good AI plan and has been pointed out. Without someone crafting a good plan, like in a scenario, the AI basically sucks. So in a QB, in general, you are not going to get a good battle unless you have the skills to go into the game and craft the AI to work correctly. For many, this is not what is wanted or do they have the time or skills for wanting to do it. So in some ways CMX1 actually was the better product, in that the machine at least gave you some type of fight that was a little realistic. Now it does not function at all, unless you know how to correct the problems and make it work at times. (but I would not waste my time with it unless you are willing to learn to get in the editor and create good quality Battles. But you are correct in pointing out how in general, computer games are more fluff and less substance. If you want substance, it is up to you to provide it. And they wonder why many complain and do not want to continue to buy the latest product.