Ryujin

^this. Double the amount of ammo you put down. Tanks and such are great for this, having thousands upon thousands of MG rounds. Unless resupply is an issue in the campaign/scenario, find everywhere you'd be as the enemy and shoot the crap out of it. Sometimes just "prepare" an area with fire, even just small arms, for several minutes before you attack it. Maybe even 10 minutes of sustained fire if it warrants it. I do tons and tons of area fire and suppression, which usually works out pretty well as the enemy is demoralized and suppressed, sometimes already withdrawn by the time my guys get there.

I had a scout team with SMGs, cleaned out a MG42 team in seconds, very handy. There's enough dispersion to the bursts that they seem to be able to take out close groups of guys, but no sweeping bursts if that's what you mean by engaging multiple targets. However, they do blow through the ammo waaay to fast on far targets. Would be great if they'd then pick up a rifle once they ran out, I always seem to have some out of ammo SMG guys running around with the squad. The guys with the semi autos have the opposite problem, their rate of fire is hardly better than bolt action rifles in CQB. Hopefully it'll get tweaked in the upcoming patch. By the way that guy on the cover of the game with the Thompson looks incredibly bored. The guy behind him seems to be having a good time though .

Personally I duplicate the base layer several times (one for each camo color I want). Then I use hue/saturation or even color replace to adjust each layer to the camo color I want. Then I erase away from each layer to make the camo. A bit backwards, but it'll make sense when you do it. For stuff like details, say headlights, I just erase away to make sure the base version is showing. If you want to get more advanced, you can get into making and using special brushes in photoshop, like for mud/dust or even I bet you could do that whatever it's called coating the panthers have with a special brush.

The physical objects are guaranteed to stop bullets (or at least try, like a building vs .50 cal), but on top of that there is some abstracted cover to account for the AI/level of detail not providing quite enough cover (not every dip and bump, AI don't adjust posture for different pieces of cover).

There is some abstracted cover (i.e. dice roll if a bullet hits a guy to see if he's "actually hit"), which I think is mostly to compensate for the trenches/fox holes not actually being all that deep. But it's not a big chance to "roll a save", so I agree that more ducking to reload and such would be nice.

I think anything bigger than .50 cal or a hand grenade can cause friendly fire (think shrapnel from .50 rounds might be dangerous. Nearby small arms hits and such will still suppress friendly troops (but not rounds that pass overhead I think). So while small arms aren't dangerous, your troops don't like close calls (i.e. entering a building your suppressing or rounds smacking into the trees by them as you try to fire over their heads). So generally you still want to be careful. Also beware of shrapnel from large explosions, it can travel pretty far and a few unlucky guys might collect some fragments. Furthest I've seen was in CMSF, at about 150m from a 155m shell hitting. No enemy fire as far as I could tell and one guy just dropped wounded when it hit.

Yep, while the spoon (handle) is down, the firing pin is held in place and fuze is not lit as far as I know (don't trust me with any grenades ). The pin is just there to keep the spoon down. The game is fundamentally unplayable with this glaring error

Wow, that just made my day! I'm curious to see how you implement that version of the Tiger .

In CMN is what I think he's referring too. Because the AI probably isn't smart enough to employ a timed satchel, they detonate on impact if I remember correctly. I'd have to check that to be 100% sure though.

But, but... what do I do if there's small fluffy green things and big fluffly green things in the same spot on top of some green and brown stuff!?! My firepower tables don' t cover what to do! I can't predict the exact outcome of standing in that species of grass! ARRRGH! (but yeah, seriously, what's so hard about some common sense? What you see is pretty much what you and ground softness doesn't vary much, just stay on roads if it's really damp in the conditions. I don't understand where the memorization comes in.)

Yup, be careful with your infantry, some vehicles full of large shells can make some impressive secondaries. EDIT: beat me too it I geuss . Forgot to refresh since I left this open. Did see one potato masher drop most of a squad (2 guys dropped by SMG fire).

Targeting line should have all the LOS functions, there isn't a seperate tool. As for hull down, I think target will mention it from time to time, but usually you have to eyeball it as hull down is more complex with 1:1 ballistics. There is now a pretty wide range of how hull down you are based on how exposed the actual model is in the game world, so a Cmx1 style hull down command wasn't really feasible from what I understand (in CMx1, you were either hull down or not, no detail of how hull down your tank was). You should also be able to do turret down too if the terrain allows and just poke your turned out commanders head/vision blocks over now that things are more detailed. Turret down T-72 for example:

I believe there is sort of a "LOF" check between an explosion and your troops. If there's something in the way (like something exploding on the other side of a wall from your guys), they get blast and other protection from the explosion. Steve even mentioned that vehicles can help shield your troops. I don't think individual pieces of shrapnel and such are tracked, there is a just a percentage chance of getting hit by shrapnel based on distance, cover, and having "LOF" or not. If your troops are cowering in a trench and a shell lands next to it, there should be no "LOF" for the shrapnel to your guys, so they should generally be OK. If a shell hits a tree above the trench, it could get "LOF" into the trench. I don't know the exact details of how shrapnel is done in CMx2, but from playing CMSF, this seems to be the case from using all sorts of bombs and arty in that game. I've had guys survive a 500lb bomb hitting across the street because they had something between them and it while their buddies in the open farther away took casualties. It also seemed that this worked with air burst rounds in CMSF, if it could get "LOF" into a trench even though it was not directly on top of it, it would cause casualties. Where as HE quick needed to land pretty much in the trench.

A trench is handy, but has no top cover. The rounds bursting in the trees will be far more dangerous than those hitting the ground near a trench. The tree bursts will shower shrapnel down into the trench from tree height, bypassing the cover offered by the trench. The tree bursts would have to be pretty close to get shrapnel into the trench though. A trench in a clearing would be far safer in woods.

I'd rather they kept it the way it is, 99.9% I use area target because I think someone's hiding over there, not to try my hand at hedge trimming with a cannon. It seems like it would such a rarely used tactic due to the massive ammo expenditure that I wouldn't change the behavior of target or target light for it.

Your clearly mistaken, after seeing some of the ground breaking realism features of other comparable titles, like Call of Duty and Wolfenstein, BFC decided to accurately model a chance of zombification as this was clearly a tactical factor in WW2 battles. But as we all know, a casualty's propensity towards becoming a zombie is directly proportional to their Nazi-ness. Seeing as only American and Wehrmacht forces are modeled, they don't make for very good zombies, you'll have to wait for the SS pack to get controllable zombies. (but yeah, I've seen the bug, it changes their death animation. Also seen it with guys who weren't the final squad member)

I had similar problem with the German 81mm being way off. The FO then did the only sensible thing to be done when you don't know where the spotting rounds are landing and called fire for effect. Which landed nowhere close. I don't think hedgerows make for easy arty spotting. My arty guys were probably all deaf anyway and it was just a C2 feature. "Hans, target bearing 062" "roger, target bearing 247"

The Sherman banzai teams are an actual bug, under AI scripts they carry out them same attack orders even when their tank is knocked out. So they'll run across open ground and attack a German platoon in cover as if they still had their tank. Usually resulting in them getting cut down for trying to play tank with a .45. But I agree, it seems the UberGerman mentality is strong with a good chunk of wargamers. To many it seems the Germans are supposed to be unstoppable badasses (except for the part where they lost...) and the Americans tactically inept cannon fodder. It does get a little tiring.

In addition to what others mentioned, I just found it to be a couple simple flanking maneuvers. Step one would be focusing on securing the field by the farmhouse, don't worry about actually taking the farmhouse, just clear out the Germans enough so you can have some infantry hug the hedgerow the follows the road and flank all of the bocage positions in the small fields, they'll go down really easily. Then move some guys through those small fields to flank and destroy the remaining German position by the cross roads. Then take the farmhouse or any remaining pockets if they haven't surrendered by this point. Didn't actually use the tanks much, had them clear out the Germans on the other side of the large field (from spots that couldn't be seen from the crossroads after one took a hit) and that was about it.

Using my late war German faces mod. (not too sure why they didn't just stop and shoot him... their buddies got him in what should have been some major friendly fire)

If I recall correctly there is also a "schrodinger's ammo" fudge, the game doesn't decide which shell type is loaded until the tank fires on a target, so the AI will always fire the right round for the right target, it doesn't have to plan ahead.

As shown by this highly accurate and detailed chart I found, the relative low velocity and large size of the .45 makes it limited in effective range. .45 gets a bit of a boost from being fired by the longer barreled Thompson/M3 as opposed to the M1911, but it's still pretty slow (usually subsonic, unlike 9mm).

I don't think the download is so bad, you can make your own CD/DVD with the installer and just hang onto the serial. Then just put the digital manual on a netbook/Ipad/etc and have that on your desk when you play. Can't use ctrl+F to search your paper manual can you? If you don't want to deal with customs, it's still pretty easy to get most of the "features" of a hard copy on your own. I almost never buy hard copies anymore.

Yes, but ammo seems to be scarce, 2 carried shots per vehicle. You just have to get used to the Canadians being allergic to anti-armor weapons and firepower. The have the pea shooter LAW, the Carl Gustav with no HEAT rounds, and the SRAW, which hits the ground in front of the operator with unerring accuracy. I've only had two SRAW missiles malfunction and hit an enemy target so far. I just wish they'd pick up some RPG-7s so they'd have a decent AT weapon

I don't think so, I think like mines you can only find it by setting it off. Smoke is the only thing I've found to be reliably effective, use loads of it to cross suspected IED areas. Also you can check bodies to see if you killed an IED trigger man (just click on a dead body you can see and it'll tell you what type of unit it was. So really your options are very limited, just try to avoid em.