Glukx Ouglouk

AFAIK, they are shipped through USPS, not DHL. Mine certainly was, and some fellows from the UK mentioned receiving them through regular mail, not through DHL (when talking about the customs/taxes issues).

To be fair, claiming that the PZ IVG had "similar armour" to a Sherman is overstating it a lot... The Pz IV never got more than 50 mm of armor on its (almost vertical) turret front because, by the point they had added an L/48 gun and 80 mm of armor on the upper hull front, its chassis was already seriously overloaded - which obviously didn't help with cross country performance and mechanical reliability. The Pz IV was a great design for its time (with all the niceties like a 3-men turret, a cupola for the commander, a radio in every tank, and so on, which many tank designs of the late 30's lacked), but its chassis was just too weak for the kind of armor and guns that were needed by 1942-43 (and almost vertical armor everywhere didn't help with the weight issue). As for the T-34... It was a great design as long as you didn't need to cover long distances, considering its (lack of) mechanical reliability - not to mention the two-men turret (with a 76 mm gun, a dedicated loader definitely isn't exactly a luxury).

I personally just alt-tab between the game and Adobe Reader, so I'm fine with the PDF manual - but if User38 agrees to share his work, having an ePub manual certainly couldn't hurt. PDF is great for printing, but ePub is really useful for on-screen reading.

IIRC, it's been stated by BFC that this function isn't trivial to implement because of the way path-finding works, but it's somewhere on the list of features they'd like to add in future games. I think it would be a nice feature to have, but I would rank it lower in importance than a way to tell a column of vehicles to just follow a road - path-finding issues can be an incredible pain when there are hedgerows on both sides of the road...

Got mine sometime during the last week, no real issue (well, one of the tabs that hold the box shut was broken, but that's not too bad, when you see what can sometimes happen to packages...). No issues with the customs here.

Frankly, the French highway network was pretty much non-existent during the WWII time frame (unlike in Italy and Germany). It only got somewhat serious in the late 50's, and saw major development beginning in the 70's. As for railways, important ones would always have two sets of tracks, but small ones could definitely have a single set. And things can get a bit complicated near a train station, of course...

For pre-planned strikes at least, there seems to be a bug that specifically affects line targets (but not point or zone targets). It's been confirmed to be under investigation by BFC.

CBF for off map artillery is very far outside the scope of this game... Any CBF issues should already be included in the choice of which support assets are available and how many shells are allocated from each, because they're completely outside the control of a company/battalion commander.

You can change the 3D model detail level on-the-fly with some keyboard shortcuts (though I don't remember what they are by default, I changed mine in the shortcut.txt file). If you lower the detail level and set the camera to look from relatively far away, everything will be nice and blocky.

I'm pretty sure the Brits did some indirect fire without line of sight with their machine guns - but I don't think other armies did it. Game-wise, the difference should be, I think, that HMGs have better accuracy at long ranges, and a higher maximum range, than LMGs - not to mention either a higher practical rate of fire (either by being water-cooled, for the M1917, or by changing the barrel more often, for the MG 42) or a bigger caliber (for the M2).

1200 rpm isn't anything like a practical rate of fire, it's the (average) cyclic ROF. The "Handbook on German military forces" (here, p 315) claims a practical rate of fire of 250 rpm in the LMG role and 500 rpm in the HMG role. I don't know how good a source it is though. Or it could be simply that the US .50 M2 machine gun was often supposed to be used as an antiaircraft weapon (hence the mounts on the back of many tank turrets, making them almost useless for ground use), and the Germans preferred to go with 20 mm as the smallest caliber for dedicated antiaircraft guns. My understanding is that the US army's standard HMG for ground use was the M1917, not the M2 - though the latter could of course be used in that role too.

Vinnart, the problem with your approach is that, in the CMx2 engine, units benefit from all the cover that its between them and the units which are trying to see them/fire at them - so a cover/ concealment value based only on the layers present in their action spot is quit meaningless. For instance, a unit which sits at the edge of a field wouldn't get a lot of cover from enemies which are on the same side of the field, but would have a lot more cover from enemies sitting across the field. Another issue I can think of, is that things like trees can apparently block or deflect bullets depending on their actual position on the map, and not just on which action spots they are in - so even the trees which are in your unit's action spot would give a different cover depending on which direction you are firing from...

Not necessarily. Most panzergrenadier battalions only had trucks, not half-tracks, so being on foot would be their "normal" state for a typical CM:BN battle, not a specific "dismounted" situation.

First, if it's a German armored infantry unit, then it IS a panzergrenadier unit - panzergrenadier basically meant (edit: and still means, actually) armored infantry in the German army (from 1942 onward, as already noted). Apart from that, in the case of the German armored divisions (panzer divisions), at best one of the four panzergrenadier battalions was actually mechanized (with SdKfz 251 half-tracks), the rest were just motorized (with trucks). So most panzergrenadier units would be expected to fight purely on foot in a typical CM:BN scenario (since trucks would likely be left off map) in any case. What makes them armored infantry is that they are part of an armored division, and trained to fight alongside tanks - besides, being motorized on trucks was already quite a big difference from regular infantry units.

I forgot to had that there are tons of TO&Es for various WW2 units over there. It can be quite helpful!

German armored divisions were supposed to include: - 1 armor regiment with two battalion (one PzKfw IV battalion, one Panther battalion) - 1 tank destroyer battalion - 2 mechanized infantry regiments with 2 battalions each (with, I think, one of the 4 battalions equipped with SdKfz 251s) - 1 artillery regiment with 3 battalion (one of them self-propelled) - 1 reconnaissance battalion At least, that's the theory - in practice, quite a few divisions in Normandy weren't up to the TO&E, for instance missing their Panther battalion. Anyway, in 1944 a panzer division would include more infantry than armor. Edit: Us armored divisions included 3 tank battalions, 3 mech infantry battalions (entirely on half-tracks I think), an artillery regiment with 3 battalions (all self-propelled) and a recce battalion. Edit 2: For the Germans, there was also one mech infantry division (panzer grenadieren division) in Normandy - I suppose it included less armor than the regular panzer divisions, or maybe no armor at all?

BFC will correct me if I'm wrong, but apparently: - It's not the same system as the one used for CM:SF - You don't need to unlicense before relicensing somewhere else - You have a limited number of licenses instead (4 initially + 1 per year) - Your license count won't go down when you un-install/re-install the game on the same computer without changing the OS or hardware, but it will go down when you install on a new computer ('new' as in: entirely new, or the same computer after major hardware changes or an OS re-install) - If you run out of licenses for some reason, just contact the BFC support.

There's been a discussion on this, an I seem to recall someone with actual arty experience explaining that SOP was to take some parts with them (including the sights) when leaving the gun unattended for some time, and that they would have been supposed to outright destroy the gun if they were to abandon it in actual combat.

I think that's because 11.5 just means that it's the may 2011 release (since they publish a new version each month), but they still use a more traditional numbering system for the actual driver version.

1. Just use any movement order to place a unit anywhere within the setup zone. Some scenarios don't have a setup zone though, in which case you can't change your units initial placement. 2. The key 2 rows above the return key (on a US keyboard, just above the return key on some over keyboard types) is the backspace key, not a delete key (edit: Apple labels it "delete" for some reason, but it does work as a backspace key). When typing text, the backspace key deletes what's before the cursor, as the name implies, while the delete key deletes what's after the cursor... And backspace definitely should delete the last waypoint of the selected unit. 3. In the game, the map is divided in 8x8 m squares, called action spots. When you are giving a movement order to an infantry unit, the action spot where they will go is highlighted in a yellow color. For squads, 1 or 2 adjacent action spots usually get highlighted too (in red colors), because squads include 2 or 3 teams each and try to spread out over as many action spots. When you get your mouse cursor next to a hedgerow/wall/whatever, you'll notice that you can highlight half an action spot just next to the hedgerow: if you click there, the unit will take position along the hedgerow. Repeat a bit further down the same hedgerow: the unit will follow it. 4. The backspace key deletes the last movement order, the delete key deletes the firing order (including cover arcs, orientation, etc).

1: You will get faster response times if you use a unit that's higher in the chain of command, like a company leader (I assume you meant a platoon leader rather than squad leader? I don't think squads can order artillery support...) or dedicated forward observers (when available). It's still going to take some time though, because it did take some time in real life. 2: Keep in mind that you are comparing different tank models, probably different engagement situations, possibly different crew experience levels, and that there are also random factors at work... 3: I agree with that. Playing 'Closing the Pocket' from the US side, I saw a Panther run from one side of the map to the other presenting his flank to my AT guns all the time... Needless to say, the kitty didn't survive very long. 4: There is a nice table here with minimal safe distance for modern US artillery. Commanders can, of course, order missions closer than that, but it gives an idea of how close is really getting too close... They give a minimal safe distance value of 260 m for 60 mm mortars (!) fired at a 1000 m range, and up to 680 m for 155 mm howitzers fired at a long range.

The demo lets you chose between English, German, French, Spanish and Italian - check in the options.

But a real company commander (let alone a battalion commander...) doesn't have to micro-manage each and every squad, team or vehicle in his force. That's not the way real life is. Wow! that's a bit more complicated than I thought!

AFAIK, the names MP43 and MP44 were used during the development of the rifle, and the production version should, in fact, be called StG44 - but I might be wrong.

It's real-time only. People have complained about the lack of wego TCP/IP play. About "grid-sticking": my understanding is that it's made necessary by the 1:1 simulation. In CMx1, squads and other infantry units were point target, and putting a point wherever you want on the map is easy. Now, an infantry unit is made up of up to a dozen individual soldiers, so you have to tell them to take position in an area rather than on a point - hence the squares. About fire mission: it take a bit of time to get the hang of it, but I don't think there's a lot that could be simplified without removing useful options. There are only three target types (personnel, general, armor), and the rest is quite useful to actually hit what you want (with the point/line/area targets) and to avoid wasting ammo (with fire mission length). That being said, there may be more options than really necessary for the rate of fire (you usually either want to destroy the target as quickly as possible or pin it down for a long time...), and I never really understood the point of having a separate setting for the number of tubes (since you can't fire at different targets with different tubes from the same battery). About units and HQ: seeing which units depend from a given platoon HQ is easy (their icons get highlighted) but seeing which are in command takes a bit more work than in CMx1. But keep in mind that units aren't just in or out of command range like in CMx1: the game distinguishes between visual contact (and short or long distance at that), voice contact and radio contact, so there are a lot more different status to report than in CMx1...