Bahger

Well it's a lot more collectible than a DVD that arrives in a paper sleeve! And the manuals are sturdy enough to accompany me on a long flight this week, during which I might learn the mission editor. It's a pity I do not have a laptop.

Yes, sad though it is to admit, I want the new, shiny game icon, too. However, rather than risk updating CMH with a PBEM in progress, I will do it when the dust has settled on that battlefield.

I'm very impressed and wanted to say thank you to Battlefront. The tin container for the DVD -- I will probably never need to use the disk but am glad to have it -- is attractive, distinctive, military in appearance without being over-the-top and turns CMBS into a collectible item. The two manuals are of a high quality in printing, materials and binding. They are exactly the right size for both portability and legibility and this kind of spiral-binding is the perfect choice for ease of use. I could, but won't, immediately name three specialised milsims which charge more for lower quality supplemental materials, both manuals and DVDs/custom cases. Although so many of us are digital consumers, what BF has done here is make the game collectible. Well done, guys.

If you get right down onto the terrain on each side, Michael, you will see very attractive defilade positions with good LOS to the diagonally opposite side of the map. The yellow colour of certain farmland terrain makes it difficult to discern undulations in that terrain without virtually getting down on your hands and knees and "walking" it. I had four vehicles, two on each side, survive the entire engagement in those positions, and that included artillery barrages. Tanks on the right, properly placed, will kill enemy vehicles approaching the office complex down-slope. Vehicles (I had one M1A2 and a CO Bradley) placed in defilade in the wheat field on the left can see and bring fire to bear on the objective, the high ground in the extreme top-left corner of the map, and counter-attacking vehicles coming down from the treeline above and to the right of the village.

As others have said, you do not need to get boots (or wheels) on the objectives if you can methodically eradicate the Red force's combat effectiveness. To do this, you need to move carefully, bounding all units and having effective intersecting lines of fire from the tanks as an additional layer of protection for IFVs on the move with embarked infantry. Really thorough terrain analysis is warranted here, because it will reveal by far the best defilade spots for both tanks and stand-off ATGM platforms. Make the office complex objective your main effort, as from here you can gain valuable LOS of the battlefield once it is secured. By far the most effective way to take the office complex without getting into a nasty mugging contest is to intercept Red vehicles that have to cross open ground in order to get within striking distance of the objective. For this, you will probably need both good UAV coverage for spotting and at least a section of tanks placed on high ground on the far right of the map. Recon by fire rather than disembark infantry into enemy fire from outlying buildings. Remember, UAVs won't spot infantry in buildings. Be careful and methodical when pushing down the middle. Get a good spotting position for a CO and a JTAC and take it slowly, avoiding speculative moves of either vehicles or infantry into ambushes. When you see enemy infantry in trees, pound the crap out of them with airburst rounds, two-gun barrages and grind them down before you expose vehicles to RPG teams and infantry to HMGs. Be careful about enemy tanks turning long approach roads into kill zones as soon as you send a vehicle around an un-scouted corner. The only way to kill cleverly placed tanks in the center of the map is with precision rounds and Javelin fire from a certain position within the office complex, otherwise you'll be in a bloodbath. And don't forget, you do not need LOS to task air on a target group. Finally, do not expose troops and vehicles to the right of the main approach road to the village to a possible counter-attack from the treeline to the right. Even if you position your own tanks high on the right, they will not see Red armor approaching downhill from the right towards the village. If you expose your flanks to this, or do not cover such an approach (probably from defilade on the large open, barren field high on the left) your move on the center objective will grind to a bloody halt. Finally, watch ChrisND's playthrough of this mission, with commentary, on YouTube. Good luck!

Fantastic little utility. Since I have the pre-update version working very well with CMBS, and with one PBEM in progress with both players using pre-update CMH, should I update?

If you order engineers to blow a hole through a wall surrounding a yard, will the hole be big enough for vehicles to pass through?

I will never learn what the approximate safe distances are from suspected enemy units to deploy UAVs until I learn what knocks them down and from how far away, etc. Is there any way to look at the turn replay and deduce what might have happened? I do not believe you get any notification of a hit on your UAV, just red type in its deployment box that says "Knocked Out".

In a MOUT attack mission I have just received a CE platoon, divided into a squad and two teams and mounted on two M2A3s. I am unsure about the best way to leverage this asset. I wonder if I should just be using them as another assault force or whether there is some tactically useful deployment of their breaching capabilities that I might be missing. There are no minefields briefed (which, of course, isn't to say they do not exist) and I would much rather bypass buildings on my way to the objectives rather than push infantry through them except where I feel I will get a very useful OP with good LOS for Javelins and SAWs. As far as minefields are concerned, I know my CEs can move through a suspected minefield using a "Mark" order, thus enabling follow-on units to follow a safe path through, but if minefields are not briefed, is the only way to discover one getting hit and possibly killed or immobilised by one, or can CEs both on foot and mounted reveal mines without being killed by them? As always, many thanks.

Well the OP's use of the word "coward" in his header and his confrontational style of expressing his views on the issue have tended to skew the debate, forcing people to respond defensively. My non-defensive response, FWIW, is that most of the anomalous infantry AI behavior I have come across stems from task-saturation resulting often, but not always, from questionable judgements made by the player in how, and in what circumstances, he has chosen to deploy said infantry. Having said that, there are certain circumstances in which the tac AI benefits from hand-holding; it is to the game's credit that these instances are a lot less numerous than they used to be.

CMH is such a godsend and works perfectly for me. The only tricky bit in the initial installation is that when it asks you to direct it to the root file for CMBS, what it really wants is the root file for the data. Once you get this right, CMBS will no longer be greyed out in your installation list.

Very useful info, thanks. I assume that using "Assault", which automatically splits squads into teams, offers the same advantages as manually splitting the squad. Unless I want to assault two floors simultaneously, I guess, in which case I'd be better off splitting the squad first and moving both teams independently.

So company-sized US forces IRL do not deploy with any vehicle-mounted AAA or SAM? Is it all handled at battalion level? The lack of it in CMBS makes scenarios with decisive Russian air superiority ("Objective Delta") virtually unplayable for me as the US because I cannot for the life of me imagine how my task force can be expected to fend off Frogfoots and assault helos with no CAP and one Stinger MANPAD team.

I would argue that this makes such perfect sense that I am now going to find, and learn from, every other post that The_Capt has reluctantly made in an "outer board".

In MOUT missions such as the second US campaign scenario, there are many very large, four or five storey buildings that can either be cleared or bypassed. Clearing these buildings with one squad of infantry is a slightly abstracted affair given the relative sizes of the structure and the squad. I have a couple of questions that I know many of the more experienced players here will be able to comment on very knowledgeably: - If I want to move infantry through a multi-storey office building for cover rather than systematically clearing it, and I decide to restrict the passage of my squad to the ground floor, will my infantry always be spotted and attacked by enemy troops on other floors? - If I want to move infantry through an office building on the top floor, can they bypass enemy troops on lower floors or will they always have to fight their way through the building? I ask these questions because in MOUT battles it is often advantageous to move infantry through buildings rather than in the open, yet the size of an infantry unit disembarked from a Bradley is not suitable for systematically clearing a five-storey office complex. Obviously, much of this is (necessarily) abstracted in CM (i.e. there are no stairways or routes through buildings) but this makes the tactical judgement call re. whether to move through a large building or bypass it a difficult one. It would be good to know that, by moving my squad through the ground floor only they would not automatically be picking a fight with enemy troops on an upper floor when I should be bypassing them in favor of mobility. Thanks.

That is a very good point. A cluster of foxholes is a real 3-d object but there is an action square placed firmly in the center, giving me the impression that, yes, it is partially abstracted.

Thanks for the tips, guys. Does "Hide" help?

I am doing a setup turn and when I move an infantry team to a cluster of foxholes it does not appear that they actually go in the foxholes. Obviously it is important to get them to avail themselves of the protection; is there any way to make sure that all the infantry are in the foxholes rather than merely adjacent to them? Many thanks.

First time using TRPs, I'm wondering if they enhance spotting around where they are placed as well as improving artillery delivery times. In other words, in order to capitalise fully on TRPs, should I put UAVs or spotters in overwatch or will this be redundant if TRPs enhance local spotting capability all by themselves. Logically I would think they do not but I may be mistaken. Many thanks.

Such an interesting question; I started a similar thread about this. I am tempted to fight the perfect battle, to make all the right calls, to preserve my own forces while achieving all tactical goals and eliminating the enemy's ability to resist my genius as a commander. The problem is that if you accomplish this by reloading turns (i.e. taking "mulligans") it becomes a Pyrrhic victory and you're gaming the game. It is much more satisfying to take your lumps and, as other people have suggested, settle for a tactical victory; after all, what real-life commander would not settle for that rather than a loss? I played the first mission in the US campaign and made many mistakes that resulted in far too many losses and a mere tactical victory. I realised that, because the game is essentially glitch-free as far as AI behavior is concerned, I had nobody to blame for a too-high friendly casualty rate but myself. My terrain analysis was not good enough so I wasn't reading the cover properly and above all I was too determined to push forward when the prudent thing would have been a much cannier combination of force preservation and carefully controlled aggression. So, I decided to restart the campaign and replay the mission, determined this time to win a major victory. All the time, I wondered what I would do if I made a regrettable mistake; would I take that mulligan and replay the turn with corrected orders? Deep down I knew that I would not take any real pride in a victory won this way but I saved every turn just in case I felt unable to live with a particularly boneheaded decision. However, I resolved to be as un-boneheaded as possible and to be patient and prudent in my command decisions; I had my arty and helos pound away with good spotter LOS where applicable, I placed my tanks where I could leverage their range and above all I was patient; I decided never to cross open ground without cover from intersecting lines of fire and never to move into ground that had not been fully spotted by UAVs. The trade-off was time; what if, by making force preservation a priority, I failed to accomplish all mission goals in the allotted time? But here is a big secret about CMBS; you don't have to take the ground if the enemy surrenders. If you advance patiently, stay in cover wherever possible and only move units forward with adequate fire support and if, through doing this, you spend forty five minutes killing six enemy units for every one you lose, you will probably force a surrender and achieve a total victory, as I did, without making a number of hail Mary moves on objectives. So what I learned from this is: you tend to use mulligans when you have been impulsive. The alternative is to resist such behavior and try to behave like a real-life commander in the field. If your priority is truly to preserve your forces then even when you lose a vehicle to a lucky arty round or you misjudge a maneuver, resulting in an infantry unit taking effective fire from an unexpected direction and retreating, you won't be tempted to replay the turn with new orders because the loss was the result of effective AI maneuver (and a little luck) rather than your own deficiencies of command. Much to my surprise, with half an hour left of that first US campaign mission, the enemy surrendered even though I only had boots on the ground on one objective because I had decided to see how tactically effective I could be by concentrating on force preservation. I wound up with only two vehicle losses (one was a Humvee) and a total victory as I had managed to whittle the enemy's combat effectiveness down to virtually nothing. It's a delicate balance between force preservation and territorial aggression. And, somewhat to my amazement, I never felt the need to replay a turn once, because I was determined, no matter how long it took to plot all my turns, to "own" every decision I made. It was by far my best experience in CM.

Good to know.The Battlefront devs are both enthusiastic and honorable so I would expect no less, but it's a thrill that CMBS is so good "out of the box" that all patch discussions have been about how to make a great game even better rather than how to fix broken features. The modern battlefield environment is really harsh, making this command simulation of it very difficult to master, so it's particularly important that sound tactics (and a little luck) are rewarded rather than jeopardized by unpredictable glitches. I love CMBS; it is easily the best in this series I have ever played. I give ChrisND huge credit.

I still don't understand why there is no vehicle-mounted AD for US forces. I gave up on Objective Delta because IRL if my task force was that vulnerable to enemy air (both helos and fixed-wing) there is a big problem higher up the chain of command and, with nothing better than one Stinger unit, my choice as commander is either to get my units killed when they advance in the open or hide everything and hope for friendly counter-air that never comes because it isn't modeled. Neither option is much fun, or much of a tactical challenge. If I find myself facing the same kind of decisive OPFOR air superiority in the US campaign, and can deploy so little in the way of AD, I might be tempted to edit the mission files, although I would hate to have to do so. Can you edit campaign mission files or are they locked?

The main reason I admire this game so much, especially after having abandoned SF in despair, is because the basic mechanics are really squared away now, with very few AI glitches. For example, last night in a WEGO campaign battle, I saw a scout Humvee spot a distant tank platoon and smartly reverse course, breaking the T-90s' LOS while doing its job by placing spot intel markers on the map. There was a time when one could only wish for this level of AI in CM and the expectation was that the Hummer would either freeze in the tanks' gunsights, or pursue its plotted course for the last three seconds of its life. This might sound small but it is huge, and the main reason I play the game.

No such luck, Ian. Won't happen again!

Thanks. My fault.