Baneman

If I thought there would be any chance of seeing a Fulda Gap or France 1940 game, I would ply both Steve and Charles with fine South African wine until they caved in and agreed to do it.

AT-AT's man - that's where the future ( and the development budget ) is going !

The fully-tracked mobility scooter brigade. Genius !

<bookmarks thread>

With regards to artillery DENIED - it's worth playing around in a setup screen with a minimal force - an FO, some HQ's etc. and different types of artillery. Use Alt-Z to turn on the command lines and then move units around to have them in and not in command and note when the artillery is and isn't available. That should quickly give you a good idea of how to arrange your troops so that your artillery is almost always available and on call. Hope it helps

My bold - my experience in game is that targeting short is the best option to hit something you can't quite target directly because pixeltruppen just love to overshoot ( a lot ! ). Quite often you'll see heaps of tracer flying off the map because Kronik Klaus can't bring the barrel down...

Somehow I've missed this, but it looks extremely interesting. Ping me when you pick up work on it again and I'll be happy to give it a test drive ( I'm a fan of large engagements )

Beware ! I could be wrong here, but I vaguely remember someone saying that if there is a gap in the numbering, the game engine will not "look" beyond it to the later numbered variants. Worth checking - if true you would be better swapping its number with the last in the list...

My own style when buying for a QB is to set everyone to Regular / 0 / 0. Then I will tweak some up a tad ( a couple of HQ's to +1, a couple of squads - usually 1st squad in a platoon, to Veteran and a couple down to Green - the new guys. ). That seems mildly more realistic - there's always some old hands and some replacements. Also, I have to think about who to use where and how, they're not all clones. Maybe one HQ will be Vet and +1 - and they're sure to get the dirty jobs A couple of teams might be Veterans - as others have said - snipers are much more useful if they have some skills. And someone like a schreck team might get +1 motivation because they may have to hold their ground in hiding ( but already I'm straying from realism to gamey ). Complete armies of veterans ? No. Never happened irl, not going to happen in my force. Each to their own of course, it's only a game.

lol, did you miss this thread over in the CMFB forum ? See Steve's post about halfway down the page particularly : "* New vehicle follow capability. Yes, yes, I can hear the CMBO customers saying “FINALLY!” since they were the first to ask for it’s inclusion nearly 20 years ago. While this is not an all encompassing “Follow Command” as we wanted (sorry, we tried… it proved unwieldy) it does allow vehicles to follow each other in a column with appropriate “traffic control” behavior. The UI is very simple. You select Vehicle 1, plot a path, select Vehicle 2, hover the mouse over Vehicle 1 (similar to embarking infantry) then click to associate Vehicle 2 to Vehicle 1's movement. Vehicle 2 will now follow Vehicle 1 as best it can. " And in this one : in Steve's October 12 post : Holman said : "By the way, in remapping my keys I noticed that there's a new entry call "Hull Down"..." Steve said : "Good eyes!" Hilts said : "Yeah, I noticed that too but it doesn't seem to be operative even if you assign a key to it. I'm thinking it may become available in the impending 4.0 upgrade" Steve said : "Good guess"

Shift-Esc, my man. Other than that, nice pic

In WWII titles, you need ( as alluded to above ) to develop your attack. Choose a point for your attack and take the time to assemble the force so that you can bring a lot of firepower to bear at that point. Isolate it from assistance with smoke ( no thermals in WWII ). Remember, in Modern context, he who spots first generally wins ( due a lot to the lethality of the weaponry ). In WWII, it's he who gains fire superiority ( because often the weaponry is largely similar and not as lethal ). So in the WWII context, you're not expecting to "wipe them out", you just need to stop them ( largely ) from shooting back ie. pinned and/or cowering so you can get close with a couple of squads and then wipe them out. Direct fire mortars are your friend because of their speed, although remember to keep them well back - crawling them into a good position in cover may take time, but can pay off bigtime. And yes, patience is needed. Admittedly some scenarios are short of time, but that's because the AI needs the help. In a PBEM against a human opponent, you can easily spend half the battle or more, jockeying into position. Sometimes that's most of the fun and the Big Push, when it happens, can be over just as fast as in the Modern title.

That's what I did, but I hadn't moved them before giving the necessary orders. See, this is why testing is so tricky - you have to be soooo specific. I'll have another go moving the HT's first. Edit : ok, tres weird, you are correct, if the HT's move first, oddness ensues. I'll have to do some testing outside the campaign to nail down the specifics.

Yes, they should work both in and outside the vehicle. Edit : Sorry, should have said - the 81mm mortar is supposed to work in and out of the vehicle. I just ran the quickest test ( ver 1.02 ) with a normal Quick order and all 81mm mortars exited their vehicles and deployed. I'll have a go with Dismount command and other move orders. Edit2 : Dismounted one team so HT could drive off afterwards. MOVEd another out, HUNTed the 3rd out. All deployed mortar successfully ( although for some reason the Deploy command was not available in the dismounting turn. That seems odd. But in the following turn all were able to deploy ie. mortar was not left behind. ). So I cannot reproduce the problem - this with starting the campaign fresh in v1.02

Damn that is a lovely screenshot ! Perfect lighting and colour.

I agree with CHEqTRO above - if you already have CMBN, "building it up" will probably net you the most additional play. On a personal note, I believe that as the titles have come out over the years, so the scenario makers and map designers have evolved their art and the maps in the most recent release, CMFB, are truly excellent work.

Nice one Hmmm. Trains to Norwich ...

Ah, redemption Belgian beer indeed rocks. As does German, Austrian etc. And they know not to burn all the flavour out ... <runs>

Very informative thread, but I couldn't let this pass ... Ewwwwww, you like Guinness C'mon man, there's outstanding dark ales out there, rich with flavour, and you choose "burnt" flavour ? You must be a Mac user or summat.

Hang on - when DNR / LHR "rebels" fire artillery from within their cities and Ukrainian responses cause collateral damage casualties, you blame the Ukrainians. Yet Russia or Syria can level a cityblock with cluster munitions because "there's rebels in there somewhere" and it's ok ?

Nice one @Chudacabra - what was the "everything" they hit it with ?

Why not ? There are surely thousands of people in Donbas who did not want to rebel** and would rather not be living in a war zone. ** The majority in fact, otherwise Russia would not have had to send in Girkin and other paramilitary types to get the "rebellion" started.

Hang on, didn't Russia say that if it looked like Ukraine was going to join NATO ( unlikely though that is ), it would be war ? Actually, flying around in civilian airspace without transponders is NOT "in coordination with international law".

Trappist Ale - a pretty good defense Carry on !

And the replacement didn't last long either ...