Brille

CMRT is the only game of the CMx2 series where you can't control air attacks. They will engage automatically over the entire map. En route means that they are under way to the battlefield. It is not defined on how long this can be. So they can show up very soon or rather late into the battle. When it reads as "coming around" the aircraft prepares for a strafing run and you can expect it to engage in the next or following few turns...if it actually spots a thing that is. When it reads something like "attacking" it is in the process of an attack (duh). So it either is about to engage, already fires on a target or disengages from the run. However note that while the aircraft will be active over the entire map, it probably will consider your forces as targets too (friendly fire). So keep your forces spread out and maybe dont so anything fancy while it is in search mode.

Correct ! My bad.

Well the maximum range of SMG in general is 200m in CM. If you can keep them under that range you simply cannot be hit back by them except for the single DP machine gun they usually have. They may be not as effective at this range but the further the range goes down the more they grow in potential. Around 100m they will most likely pin any opposition when they get the chance for it. Go further down and they will shred enemy infantry. The germans however can obviously hit farther with their rifles and MG. Farther than even 300m but the effectiveness will go down and so does the ability to spot.

At the moment Im doing 4 games but one is at a really slow burner. Turn rate of my oponent there is several weeks or months even. 1 CMBN, 1 CMRT, 2 CMFB. That would be my comfort zone actually, especially when the games last longer turn-wise.

Soviet/russian vehicles are more likely to throw their smokegrenades much further to give room for maneuvre. However it takes longer to build up, while western smoke dischargers are quicker in that regard. In any case I believe those are fixed charges in most of the cases that are set at a certain angle with a certain distance in mind. And while it probably was used to give infantry a helping hand, it is first and foremost a defensive capability of the tank/vehicle to escape unfavored situations. For the game I prefer those vehicles with internal smoke mortars over the external smoke dischargers. You have plenty of smokebombs and you actually can use them for offensive purposes as well. When you know that there is no serious AT threat in the area or you have a Tank that cannot be harmed by it, you can set up some short waypoints and set on each one a "Pop smoke" order. With this you could rush a tank infront of the infantry and lay a wall of smoke to conceal their movement. Here is an example of it from one of my games:

"top-notch offensive unit". That depends on where you use them. Usually they are with their tanks that they should guard. That means they are in tank favored environment/ more open ground. That´s where they will be superior to other infantry formations. If you want to clear out a forest, supposedly filled with smg, well....just don´t... or call for the specialists like the "Sturm" squads. They are just the opposite of the soviet SMG squads: Those like to close up and fight in knife fights, while Panzergrenadiers are best for fighting mid and long range. Choose your tools wisely. If your really want to fight the soviet in the forest I usually go with one scoutteam cut off of one squad while the rest stays intact. This will function as a tripwire. The other squads I can either use fully deployed or cut into teams (usually I choose the second). But against a soviet SMG Platoon the chances of winning are rather slim. Usually I go as far as the (dead) scoutteam has traveled, set the weapons to "Frieden" and area fire the MG42 to suspected enemy positions, rinse and repeat....or die at the spot. (most likely )

I´ve made a short test and you might be surprised: The position of those soldiers matter. So it is not just a graphic issue, more so a heavy gameplay one I might add. When infantry fires at the tank from the left or right the mounted infantry is almost invincible... Most if not all shots are intercepted by the wheels/tracks. You can see that the soviets try to fire at the direct location of the soldiers. Now when you therefor position those soviets in front or at the back of the tank (notracks or wheels in the way) and let them fire, casualties will jump upwards to a point where the infantry decides to disembark the tank. As they are clipping through the tank in the middle, they seem to be targetable at this point. I only tested this with normal small arms weapons, no explosions. @BFCElvis could you please note this as this seem to be a big one. I can provide video evidence if need be.

It worked fine in my game, like I´ve said. Pioneers mounted the PanzerIII perfectly within the setup.

Mounting the normal Panzer IIIM with infantry is no problem in my game. For the Flammpanzer III though it is like you mentioned. First of all it is not in the "Single vehicles" menue and can only be obtained with a formation and secondly there seems to be a placement bug. The soldiers are "visible" but they are not on the right spot. If you move inside the tank you can see them in his innards, each soldier within the other.

Nothing substantial here but boy that is frightening. And yeah, soldiers most likely would not have been firing this way if not in immense panic or danger but still...

Simple answer: The crew will move the MG with the tripod attached for a few meters for quick repositioning. To give you a picture: Each soldier grabs a leg of the tripod and runs. The weapon in this configuration is heavy and unwieldy. For the MG42 with tripod and ammo is, I believe, somewhat around 20-30kg. So soldiers probably won´t do this for longer marches. Though they could do it farther than it is depicted in the game but you have to set the rule somewhere. I believe the sweetspot of when the soldiers will move instantly is around 30m (3-4 actionsquares). After that they will pack up the configuration in 2 pieces again.

Well I remember a recent CMRT match where my HMG42 switched positions with no "deploying" phase in the new one. Could you be a bit more specific ? Which game ? Which scenario ? Which weapon ? Savegame ?

So you want to know about (tank) tactics? That did not come over well from your Initial post. With "Box formation" I guess you mean "massing tanks" ? And yeah that is what is favored in real combat and it is what works best in Combat Mission. The problem is that you can't do that very often or just in a limited style in both realms. Limiting factors are the terrain (swamps,forests, towns) and ressources at hand. In your mentioned scenario "Cat and mouse" you dont need to fight at all...at least on the german Side. But If you need to do it, it is best to have multiple Panthers to engage a spotted or suspected enemy position. Overwhelm the enemy with local numerical superiority. Always consider that the other tanks shoot back and hit. So it would be beneficial to have one or two additional tanks that hopefully spot the ambusher and take care of him. My general tactics are often to move the tanks in a pack pairs, so If one missed a shot or gets taken out, the other one can step right in to finish the job. It is one of the simplest tactics honestly and a fundamental one that translates to mostly all encounters and to all categories: Never let a unit walk alone! That goes for tanks as it goes for infantry. There may be some instances where a unit will turn rambo and actually achieve a thing but most of the time they'll get chewed up with no real gain.

This is a quote from the CMRT manual: "In Real Time, the action will be continuous and you can issue orders at any time; you can also pause the game by pressing the ESC key and continue to issue orders." (Page 9) It also tells you that in the "hotkeys" option ingame. So if you struggle and can´t keep up: Pause the game, give orders, un-pause and so forth. If you haven´t enabled floating icons you surely should press ALT+i to get them. Those surely help with identifying enemy forces quickly.

Is no one playing CMBN anymore ? Well lets try to kick start it with a few pics of my most recent and still ongoing battle: Cromwell and 6pounder guarding a bridge. Rivercrossing with suppressive fire from the Cromwells. German Panzers guarding any entrances to the objectives. Mortar battery ready ! Smoke covers the rivercrossing and a Cromwell transitions to another fire position. A Churchill Crocodile clears out a german held forest. Screams are heard somewher in the woods. In the back a Sherman Firefly keeps a overwatch from the woods. One Cromewell climbs out of a trench. Another Cromwell was not lucky at all. He spotted a Panther, retreated a bit back and bogs down. This is where the Panther spotted him....

Well I cannot say for sure as surrendering troops are rather rare and even rarer to rescue them. Though one might think that the reason for surrendering on the field is out of desperation. Nowhere to run to and no means to fight back. I would guess that takes a toll on troopers permanent morale or they surrender because of it. So my bet is that they would at least be rattled once you get them back.

Well usually I post my mentioned 2 houserules to my oponent and see if he agrees to them or not or if he wants to add anything. When we do more games and rather frequently then we may add some more or not...depending on how serious we want to get. It´s just that simple for me. I don´t want to turn it into a religious contest or so. It is just to make clear that we are on the same page. Well...it is unrealistic for a tank to instantly know and instantly shoot (by manual orders) at a place where a fireteam just encountered an enemy squad, especially when he is not seeing a thing. Artkin is right in that regard. The command structure may be as good as it can be but it comes with a delay for sure. Just imagine you are sitting in a tank 500m away. Maybe you see the fireteam attacking and getting mowed down in the street, but no signs of the defending enemy. You could plaster the **** out of the area but you don´t know nothing at this moment. You don´t know where exactly the rest of the friendly platoon is, you don´t know where the enemy is. IF the platoon is in good radio contact with your tank you maybe get a clearance of the situation in the following minutes and start firing. The thing is that CM don´t reflect the blindness of tanks and lack of situational awareness (when closed up) in this way...or let me say with players bypassing the spotting system it hardly feels that realistic. And I don´t mean to offend somebody, I played and still play this way myself sometimes, just the way how serious I and my opponent want it to be. But calling it realistic is not right by any means. I don´t want to ban area fire because there are realistic applications for it but reacting to troops the tank doesn´t know anything about is not it.

In addition to that surrendered troops can un-surrender themselves too. I once had a soviet soldier in CMCW who surrendered in some woods. His buddies already retreated way back to another defensive line but the american soldiers never really came close to him to take him into custody. So after several turns (don´t know the actual ammount anymore) he said "Screw this !" (but in russian), took his rifle and ran like hell to friendly lines. Unfortunately he was gunned down by american troops that were still watching. But to answer the question: Rescued prisoners can be regular infantry again. But since they already have surrendered once they are maybe in a questionable moral state and be not of much value in actual combat.

Well so it was not the backblast that hurt them, more so the fallen planks that were coming down on their heads. Though I didn´t believed that a backblast would destroy a building, even though it is some little shack. Are you sure it wasn´t something else ? Note that even small arms fire can bring down a building, especially if it is such a fragile one.

The way I understand ME is that 2 forces encounter each other on the move, more or less surprisingly. So there is supposedly not enough time for preperations like mapping out the sector for almost instant artillery fire (and I count TRP´s in there too) nor predicted countermeasures. From a gameplay preference I don´t find it that attractive to smash everything with artillery beforehand and round up the leftover. On small or medium maps at least this can turn out to be a problem when there is not much room to maneuvre. But like I´ve said this one is not set in stone by me. On bigger maps with more room and more options to keep the opponent guessing it is not as much of a problem per se. With this rule however you often ban those bigger artillery assets as they take ages to arrive, I know. And I´m talking mostly about quick battles here because that´s most of my games actually. So you cannot just put it into "reinforcements".

My rules are as follows and agree to most of the Community, I guess: - No artillery or air raids in the setup zones or close to it for the first turns (except on defenders setup zone) - No preplanned arty or air raids for meeting engagements. Just 2 simple ones Id like to have for every engagement. The last one can be discussed with the oponent, so it is not set in stone. Everything else is optional. Some I like to take for more immersion and a more realistic feel, some I like to take to make matches more balanced. (e.g. italian vs everyone else ) In general I like that one but in my opinion it would be wrong to cancel area fire all together. However I have sometimes seen players standing behind with their tanks and blast everything at an instant as soon as their infantry has found the enemy. And while Im guilty of this myself to a degree I really try to play like that more often than not. Keeping a good C2 between infantry and tanks to make them notice contacts faster is one way to go. In general though I find the disadvantages of keeping no command structure not great enough. Would be cool that you could only area fire with a delay when no contacts are noted by the unit itself. Imagine it pretty much like calling artillery. On the other hand you could call for fire at an instand when a tank knows that enemy troops are around that point. Another thing I wish for CMx3...

You can shoot out of buildings, even though they have a backblast but it is not always the best way. Usually when you fire it indoors everyone in this floor gets pinned which makes follow up shots difficult and gives the enemy a chance to retaliate. So rooftops, ruins, foxholes, craters etc. might be a better option if they are available. There was a time in CM where it was not possible to fire those weapons indoors but BFC patched it out later. No offense but I call this a myth or maybe it was patched out as well some time ago... I don´t know. In all my matches I never had a wounded soldier because of the backblast of those weapons. They get pinned or even panic but I doubt that they can be wounded this way (even though it would be realistic in some cases).

@AdamPraha Just to be clear: What are we talking about ? (On map) cannons or off map artillery ? Anti tank guns and infantry guns need to have a direct contact that they aquired themselves. It is pointless if or if not another trooper of their formation has seen the target before. No contact, no shooty shooty. Information can be shared by soldiers but that only means that the unit will have it easier to spot the enemy. It is not automatically visible nor is it guaranteed that he will spot the enemy too even with the same Line Of Sight. (LOS) Infantry guns and some howitzers may be called in like artillery while being on map. However most maps are not big enough to use them properly (minimum trajectory). Guns will only shoot automatically once an enemy appears in their sights and when they have a chance to destroy it (unit in effective range, proper AP-ammunition and so on). Mortars are almost the same. If you are getting them up front they need to see the enemy for themselves to automatically engage them. Otherwise you need to set an area fire command on the desired place or you call them in via the artillery-setup option with an HQ unit. The forward observer you mention is mostly there for artillery pieces like heavy guns and mortars. They usually can call those in faster than normal HQ teams and is therefor an important asset. He won´t do any magic in terms of spotting. He has binoculars...that´s all. For some heavy artillerypieces you even require a forward observer. Otherwise you have no access to it and therfor cannot fire it. But again: Artillery will also not fire automatically, it needs a straight up input from you.

That´s not how things work here. Every unit needs to have a solid spot for direct fire. Units will carry their information to another units in their proximity that is right, but it only assists spotting nothing more. Each unit has to see the target with their own eyes (or optics) before they can fire at it. You mean some kind of so called "borg spotting": One unit sees a target, so everyone sees the target. This was the system in CMx1 more or less, the older games, but in CMx2 it is no longer the case.

It depends... The range of communication between units is drastically reduced besides the inferior spotting. Imagine that a unit on hide keeps his head as low possible, maybe occasioanally looking Up to scout a bit and only whispers to others to not reveal its position to possibly nearby enemies. So if the gun/unit is close enough they may still be able to communicate with each other but only at a short distance.