womble

Because there was a clamour for them? With all the pissing and moaning about how bad they are, I'd hardly expect BFC to be keen to throw a bone ever again. Though they're probably used to the ingrates now.

I would certainly expect the TacAI to at least start getting squirrelly with the tank, if its external systems are being stripped off by whatever can bear on their current location. Low motivation crews might feel they'd better back up. Better quality crews would have the ability to recognise that staying put was the better option, in terms of battlefield dominance (even if their first shot performance is degraded).

Because there was a clamour for them? With all the pissing and moaning about how bad they are, I'd hardly expect BFC to be keen to throw a bone ever again. Though they're probably used to the ingrates now.

I agree that him saying "it's the most detailed" wouldn't mean much without a measure for comparison, not that not playing the game means he knows nothing about it; he might have seen the code/system laid out bare to analyse for all we know. But that isn't what he's saying when he (and his crew say, collectively, and I'm synthesising and paraphrasing), "Every polygon of every model has its own armour rating and angle, down to Brinell hardness and considering the characteristics known to us of modern composite armours, and every shot's precise characteristics including velocity, mass, net angle of impact in three dimensions, type, material and shape is compared to the rating of the exact point of impact. The behind-armour effects are determined by residual energy after penetration and the path of the shell or pyrotechnics through the 3-D model of the components of the vehicle modelled as best we can research them." I wonder what other considerations might be taken into account by any system you claim might be more detailed.
 
Unless you're saying BFC is lying because they distil the result down into "[Partial] Penetration [Armour Spalling]" and damaged subsystems rather than providing us with any access to the precise mechanics.
 
Of course, some of the numbers might be off, because there haven't been many real impacts for all combinations of round and defensive system, but that's a weakness for any simulator not built by and restricted to those with very secret knowledge.
 
Can you definitively say that GT uses the path of the penetrating round to determine which subsystems (including the meatware components) are affected? Or might it be that they model a greater number of discrete systems because they're using a "damage table" for behind-armour effects and it's easy to put a few more specific things into a table?

While this is true, the range at which they can "close assault" from cover is very short. Frankly, if a tank is that close, it deserves a good kicking from the infantry that its owner couldn't be bothered to screen for. Sure, sometimes there might be an MG42 that would, if every motion of every pTruppe was explicitly modelled, provide overwatch and scratch the fleas off the back of the armour, but 30m is too damn close to cover, and it only takes one bit of covered approach the MG can't reach for the grunts to ruin the tankers' day.
 
As an incentive to keep your arms combined, it works real good.

Essentially, given the way BFC models arty, I don't think there should be any eventual difference between firing single rounds and firing the same number of rounds in larger groups. Firing them singly has the advantage that if you get lucky earlier, you use fewer rounds because you stop and don't waste. Firing in groups means it takes less time until the group which contains the successful round arrives at ground zero (but you waste the rounds in that last stick that didn't hit the target). So it all depends which pressure is greater: time or ammo conservation. And with either approach you can be lucky or unlucky

It's been explained. You've been around. It's logical. You just don't accept that it's necessary. I agree with you that it's a suboptimal choice of architecture, and, like you, wish there was one "spine" of the game into which you could plug the components you want to play with, and then play against someone who brings their own components. Maybe they'll change the architecture if they ever go to Cmx3, but for now it's fixed in stone by decisions made many years ago.
 
One of the reasons I think BFC chose the compromise they have is that they simply aren't interested in hypotheticals about WW2. The conflict is interesting enough if confined to historical parameters, in their opinion, and keeping a product focused on a distinct period and region mitigates a lot of problems. For example, if you're ever going to allow early-war vs late-war fights, your algorithm for determining the points cost of the assets has to hold up over a far broader range of capabilities than if you can be sure most of the assets involved will be in a narrower range of capability; points cost arguments are another thing BFC doesn't favour.

Zero casualties isn't often attainable. WW2 commanders were a lot less casualty-averse than modern ones, though CM's casualty rates are at the very extreme end of the scale, and compressed-in-time (because we force tempo a lot) to boot. If your base of fire is taking enough incoming to suppress it, it's probably in the wrong place, or too spread out. Try and find ways of minimising the incoming while maximising the concentration of outgoing fire.
 
 
Only you can answer that... Do you think you made any stupid errors? If not, dial up another enemy and see if you can do it again.
 
 
The Target tool assesses LOS from the current posture of the selected unit to a point in the centre of the Action Spot you're assessing, at 1m height (IIRC). If your team is Cowering or even simply lying down behind (but not adjacent to; they'd likely kneel up if they were adjacent) a linear obstacle they won't be able to see. Targeting arcs are different to the Target order, in that they are explicitly instructions to hold their fire until a target enters the area of the TA. Of course, they still need LOS to the target, and I can't offer any possible explanation as to why they couldn't see, without more data. Note also that LOS doesn't automatically mean successful spotting of the enemy at that location. And that LOF sometimes differs from LOS (though most of the time, the Target order compensates for that). If your troops could "Area fire" (a Target order at the ground) then they had LOS to that point.

Especially if they found a way to bring the RT and Bulge content together and do a CM: Operation Unthinkable.

Apparently you have to pay careful attention and get it right first time. There have been a few people posting abortive "poll" threads that didn't have a poll because they did something wrong, and they've not been able to fix it once they've hit "Post". It can't be too difficult, given that caution in advance, to do, though, because I managed it; I guess it's mostly gone wrong because people have thought "that'll do for now; I'll fix it when I come back to it" and found that wasn't possible. One thing that confused me briefly is that the poll remains a "separate interface" and once you finish "managing" it, you are returned to the message input box so you can add your first post in the thread, explaining the purpose of your quiz.

So everything BFC produces should just be a free upgrade? Or is AI programming somehow a free side outcome of other programming tasks? Newsflash: programmer time costs money whether they're coding interface elements or AI. The whole point of this poll was to see how an AI focused upgrade (rather than one where AI improvements were secondary to gameplay or interface features) would be received by the keeners in this community. I guess some demonstration of the lack of understanding inherent in some of the userbase was useful as a baseline.

I sometimes use that; if I do, I try and remember to put an "indefinite pause" on the unit I'm using for a "pathfinder" so they don't go running off, even if I forget to cancel the movement.

For any putative MP unit to smooth out traffic snarls, the "convoy movement" algorithms would have to be developed significantly. And if they're fully developed, the need for MPs to actually be there on-map goes away. MPs shouldn't really be directing traffic in the places where a snarl can kill vehicles, though.

Yes. An HQ higher up in the same CoC will be able to take over command of an element from lower down the chain if its immedate HQ is out of range or hors de combat. This can only take place at "Sight" or "Hearing" (or both) range though. There is no benefit from seeing Bttn HQ way over there in "Distant Sight" command range, or from having the "stand-in" HQ on the radio.

I'm not sure this is 100% true. I just discovered upon ceasefiring that a lIG18 (that I thought pretty much had to be dead, since it had taken over 90 60mm mortar rounds in direct fire...) which was still represented by a "?gun" icon was completely de-manned and knocked-out. So there are definitely circumstances where you don't know for sure the element is dead. There are also times when the icon vanishes and the element isn't totally neutralised yet. I think this happens when every component of the element you've actually spotted is seen to have been killed.

You're also having to leave the troops to their own devices. Even in RT, you can't follow each troop, check what it's seeing and stop it when the vista looks good. You also don't have the squad's ability to say to itself "We can nearly see that from here; if we went 10m over there, we'd be able to shoot at it, pretty sure," on a continuous basis. "Advance your platoon and set up a base of fire that covers the farm buildings at grid ref xxxxxxxx" is a perfectly reasonable order from a captain to a lieutenant to conceptualise, and you need to be able to assess at what point the Lt's squad sergeants see the target and deploy their squads into firing positions. That farm could be a lonnng way off, as well.

The game requires some careful and detailed management of your troops because the environment in which they are operating is complex and intricate. There are lots of things you have to pay attention to, because there are lots of options of how to go about things: for example, when your fire support teams are crawling into their final covered fire positions, do you have them on short covered arcs at their arrival point, or set them straight off with area targets on suspected enemy positions, or just leave them to the TacAI's tender mercies? Three broad-brush options for one waypoint, two of which have more detail under them. Winning against a human takes effort and skill.

To expand a little further
Every polygon of the 3D model has its own armour rating. And hits can penetrate, penetrate partially, cause armour spalling off the back of the plate, or bounce.
 
And some of these can be damaged even if the incoming shot doesn't penetrate the armour.
 
And that "not-invincible" nature is a combination of weaknesses in the frontal armour array and many other factors, all of which are, as far as is possible, derived from the real characteristics of the vehicle. The same will apply for the Chally2 and Leo when they get included in a module.
 
Echo that. And that's just the vehicular combat. The trajectory of every small arms round is also calculated, and intersections with the pixels of the targets determine whether there's injury (subject to an "abstracted" saving throw to account for protective terrain and other features). Every individual pixelTruppe has their own morale status too; what you see in the interface is an average.

Yep, that definitely happens. More often with vehicles that are not stuffed full of systems and consumables (and infantry) than with tightly-packed explsions-waiting-to-happen like BMP-3s When the first target is sufficiently lightweight, and the projectile sufficiently powerful, you can even get more than one vehicle being cored out by the one shot. Mostly happens with top of the line KE rounds hitting the side armour of light AFVs.

You're probably closer to historical if you never use the TacAir. Good choice.

Or you could use Point missions. They hardly ever go awry.

Yes.

I've just run up against a too-sturdy-to-incapacitate wooden bunker in Road to Montebourg. Half a dozen direct hits from 75mm pack howitzers, some of which looked like they detonated inside the bunker (rather than on the roof) weren't enough to break one bunker... So I did a little test of 5 bunkers vs 5 modules of pack howitzers. 5 full loads of howitzers from Elite guns with Elite spotters (to do everything I could to narrow the sheaf), and one of the bunkers was no longer functional because it had been evactuated. The others were just fine, as were their occupants. I'd do a bigger test, but  wonder whether it's worth it: should wooden bunkers be all but impervious to 75mm arty? Concrete bunkers, I can imagine, and I can see that bunkers would be built to withstand 81mm mortars, but the impact of actual artillery seems more penetrative than even the same weight of filler out of a mortar...

Any resources diverted to this would be wasted. Really. Just think about how the AI plays, and ask if you'd want to watch the equivalent of two blind men fighting with bulldozers more than once.

Any resources diverted to this would be wasted. Really. Just think about how the AI plays, and ask if you'd want to watch the equivalent of two blind men fighting with bulldozers more than once.

My thoughts were along the lines of such a feature giving you information about stuff you can't see. If you know there's an enemy squad in a location, say a building, and you're hosing it down with half a dozen units, you could get good info on how many of them you've geeked by keeping track of the killstats of the units firing. That's information you're not really supposed to have at levels of FoW beyond "Basic Training", and would make urban combat, especially, a lot more predictable. It's only minor, so it's not a drastic erosion of FoW, but I don't think there's much value in knowing in-game which units are racking up precisely how many kills; generally you've probably got a pretty good idea that the tank putting AP through-and-through loaded half tracks is going to have the largest killstat, and if it's something like the effectiveness of a sniper you're wanting to assess, it's pretty easy and fairly quick to FFwd through a turn watching for when they shoot (and decrement their ammo count), to see their kills...

Well it does. Ammo sharing only takes place within an organisational unit ("platoon", is often used as shorthand, but "whatever highlights when you click that unit" is a more practical definition, given the proliferation of sections and other such subunits) 
Good for you. 
I don't think it's crazy, as I'm going to try and explain, but a misunderstanding of what you're seeing.
First to check that you know the two mortars not mounted and not part of the halfie's orgunit are 60mm not 81mm, and there are no mortar round for them in the M4A1. The only 60mm rounds are HEAT for the bazooka.

This is where you're misinterpreting the numbers. The green unit info pane shows the number of rounds available to the mortar, not the number of rounds being carried. If you'd used "Acquire" to grab any 81mm HE, the number in white-on-black where the small arms ammo count is registered would have increased. While they're in the M4, that still shows 16. But since the M4 will share with them, the mortar could expend 88 rounds of HE.
 
That's because sharing only works over about 16m or so, so once the mortar tube (or the icon which represents the 'centre of gravity of the team', or whatever the game engine measures the relevant distance from) moves a couple of AS away, as seen in the video, the ammo from the half track is no longer available.
I hope I've answered that question.
For my next trick, I'll have a go at answering the question of the disappearing ammo. Shakier ground here, but I'm basing it on the fact that you've highlighted the non-mortar-platoon 60mm mortars in the video to show something about them, and postulating that those are the ones you loaded on and Acquired mortar bombs from that disappeared. I am guessing that you grabbed 81mm shells for them. These wouldn't appear in the green "unit info" pane, where it shows "available ammo", because the unit can't ever use them, not having and never being able to get, an 81mm mortar. They aren't visible in the white-on-black unit ammo count area, because they are already carrying as many different types of ammo as can be displayed in that small, un-scroll-barred-because-scroll-bars-are-not-useful-in-the-interface-honest (yes this is a hobby horse of mine) display area, in the same way as you might not be able to see the white-on-black count for WP for the 81mm, even though you know they've got 'em because they're there in their "available ammo" count on the green info pane.

I don't think so, since this is all, as far as I can tell, working as intended, though obviously not intuitively to the new guy.