Brille

I split soviet squads Iike I do with western squads and haven't witnessed that much of an impact until now. However in my last game I got quite more POW than usual. My opponent split all of his squads too. Even whole fireteams surrendered which I rarely got. They were all of regular experience with mixed morale - some good, some bad. Maybe my Sturmpanzers got a lucky hit on the platoon hq and tipped them over this way. I will keep an eye on that. Sounds like you are dueling with tanks. And while I do this from time to time too you are far better of to rise your numbers. Better fight with 2 (or more) of your tanks against 1 of the enemy. So even if one of yours gets destroyed, the other one may pick up the muzzle flash and spot the enemy tank and finish him. You really only can afford to send in one tank if he has the armor to... well.... tank incoming shots. Otherwise you need to put the odds against your enemy (attack from the side, make him close the hatches/kill his commander) or you are more of a gambling person. But luck works both ways.

Do you have a save file or picture of the incident ? Did the crew bail out on your orders or were they forced to do it ? (enemy fire) Haven´t witnessed such a bavior yet.

I guess he means a target loop: the gunner turns the turret/traverse the gun to a target, aims and suddenly disengages (gun in neutral position) only to start the process all over again but never actually firing the gun. I had it too but rather rare. Most of the times it happened to me with heavy machine guns. They kept switching targets again and again for several turns but never really firing. They did so until I repositioned them all together.

I guess I understand what you mean and though it is an interesting method it is not quite what I'm looking for. This method includes more micromanagement than it should while I meant to reduce it. And your method is only valiable If the unit spots something/someone in their pause-hunt time if I understood it right. So if a unit reveals itself after that your squad will be behave like the movement order obliged them to regardless if under fire. Don't want to undermine it, just for clarification. We all work with workarounds here. I guess it works best with teams because they are faster to reach a certain way point. Otherwise a way point is only triggered when the last soldier has finally reached it, which can take more time with a full born squad especially when they oddly "search" for a place in their formation. I've used the "stacking" of movement orders too but mainly for switching suppressive fire, while staying in the same square.

Have you tried to restart the scenario? I played it not so long ago and it worked fine if I remember correctly. Though it was taken out early after being into the fray for 2 or 3 minutes.

Can't say that I dislike it but it can be very time consuming if you micromanage everything through. Other than That I like overlapping movement of fire teams, blasting my way through walls, using smoke grenades to cover my approach/retreat. The whole motto here should be "shoot first, ask later". Keep known and suspected enemy positions under fire otherwise the casualty count may rise up very quickly. And take an extra ammo truck with you... or maybe 2 or 3. I just got to know that high caliber sniper rifles CAN make a difference in this urban environment. They slice through walls like nothing. So if a sniper team is able to cover your *** from further away: use it!

Almost right from the get go to be honest. But I started with the old Cmx1 games back then. I first read about some After action reports and was hyped up for pbem (back then it was in the german CDV Community) and bought the games as an Anthology (cmbo, CMBB, CMAK combined) I rarely played against the ai because it was cheating to a certain degree and that turned me off. I started to play against one constant player and got constantly beaten too. It took some time till I could lay some hurting on to him but victory was still far away. But I got to know more and more players and got better. I somewhat hated bfc a bit for getting the new series started with a modern battlefield: Shock Force. I was more of a ww 2 type so I could not understand why they would not adept to my desires. Regardless of that because of the lack of money and lack of time I started very.... Very.... Very late into the Cmx2 era. But I monitored every little step Cmx2 has done till then, like a little stalker in the bushes. Then when money was flowing and gaming time ramped up again I collected every title one by one, even the modern titles. But now I quite like them. I may take some breaks from time to time but I somehow always come back to combat mission. And looking back on my gaming career it would be my most played series I guess.

Well I learned my ways to work around it but it is still a workaround. And you would have to micromanage the whole thing instead of plotting one single move order. I don't shy away from micromanagement. I probably do it more often than I should and this results in more time taken to process a turn on my part. But I know some folks don't like to micromanage at least not for such simple tasks. If you just want to, for example, move a platoon in a straight line over some distance but want them to still be defensive about possible enemy encounters, a "move to contact" would be great. You could say that I should have properly scouted the area ahead with some 2 men teams. But that is not always possible and especially in forests you can have stragglers that you were totally unaware of or enemy elements that moved in after your scouts. This way the platoon would at least stop and engage the threat at the spot rather than start running like maniacs through the forest after getting under fire. I know the hunt command is doing this right now (in terms of unit behavior) but you can only do it for what? 300m until they start tiring? (don't know the actual value) Not really complaining though since I got along with it till now but on big maps with lots of none mechanized forces it could maybe be a nice addition. But I'm not naive enough to believe that BFC will include this in the existing games, so no worries. But maybe when a newer engine comes along...

I played the scenario Riva Ridge in fortress Italy and this manual grenade lobbing over said ridge was very helpful in some cases, especially because the ammo was quite low. And even if it didn't kill anybody, it suppressed opponent squads long enough for my soldiers to get into position safely and in turn shoot at them. For flamethrower teams in general: I find them highly dependant on the situation. You need areas with short sight lines or low visibility to use them for maximum effect. So heavy forested/built up areas or low light/special weather conditions are where they shine, especially at defence. Try to set them up so they only can be seen by a small part of the enemy because once they fire up they stick out like a candle in the dark and turn into a high priority target. If they hit the enemy squad or team it is nearly done for even if they didn't kill it. Suppression is nearly instant and you most likely will root them out very quick. So the big problem is to get them into position but once they are and you get the jump on some soldiers they can be quite effective at that.

I really would like to have an alternative move command like in the older games which was "move to contact". This way you can decide how troops under fire would react: either speed up the pace to get to the destination (probably cover) faster or abort all movement and hit the ground/fight the enemy where they stand. This would not tire squads out on a distance, while giving the player more options. The hunt command could stand as it is with a bit tweaking of course. Something like a higher situational awareness/shorter reaction time in comparison to the normal move command, since it is more of a "sweep the area" command. So enemy contacts are expected close by, while the move commands would be mainly for getting from A to B with different sets of behavior to enemy fire.

It helped in multiple instances now. Any chance of making it sticky in the forums ? I guess there come more in the furture having this problem.

That´s somewhat good to hear honestly because that problem seems to occur frequently right now. Good thing is that Wolgang500 seems to have found the solution to that. Try this one out:

Well I remember the first and only time I actively went for a short cut through a vineyard was in the CMFI Demo. There it was already possible to run through multiple lines but very soon my tanks got all tangled up. I don't think that was changed but I would have to test that. So you usually don't get immobilized at the first, second or third line of the vineyard (though you might suffer track damage) but after that it should go down very quick. How many lines/tiles of vineyard have you passed?

Well there is not much else you can do. Maybe next time you could save the installation files of each game as a backup together with the activation keys on a separate hard drive. This would certainly be faster though you would need to update the games from there on whereas the ones on the Battlefront servers are always up to the latest version.

When in history did bombing major cities stop a war? Not counting in Hiroshima and Nagasaki because of the scale it had. Germany has suffered tremendously because of the bombing but despite all that it didn't surrender because of it. Nor were there any uprisings of the population against their government though probably more growing hate against the actual bombers. Was it right to bomb Germany? As a German myself I say no. Bombing on civilians in general is a war crime, regardless of who performs it. It might help the own military effort because it will hinder the economy (less (motivated) workers, damage to the infrastructure) and so hinder the military options for the "enemy". But it stays a war crime non the less. Assuming that the russian population have at least decent information on what's going on in the war they might also have the opinion that "their" war is a rightious one, due to propaganda and such. So I doubt that they would revolt internally against the war if ukraine massively launches it's drones against Russians cities. The opposite could even be possible. Standing together against the external threat and even rising the war effort. In Germany we call that "Burgfrieden" (peace in the castle).

Phew... Don't know which vehicles that was honestly but I would say I had it with ww2 style and modern tanks too. I can surely test it but not before next Monday. Though it would be like your tests... just with the commander sticking his head out.

Is there a test somewhere around that compares standard equipped troops to troops that have extra equipment and/or ammo allocated? I know that a squad that gets for example a Javelin with 3 rockets and maybe some additional AT4, looses the ability to use the "fast" command and I suppose they will tire out faster (or do they?) The game obviously tells you when a unit has too much of the good stuff by greying out the things it can't acquire anymore. But is there a sweet spot between good mobility and well (over) equipped troops? Or does it matter not that much at all?

I usually relief those halftracks of anything like Panzerfausts or bazookas plus spare rockets. Maybe I need those and don't have the time to run back or the halftracks decide to catch an AP round and go puff, taking their precious load with them.

@PEB14 Here for comparison: One picture with the trees (mostly) intact and 12 minutes later they are gone.

I can show you some pictures of an ongoing CMBS match of mine with a good harvested part of woods due to constant fire of 3 to 4 Bradley's. They don't even leave a trunk once they are gone so one could easily miss it if you are not on low level with the camera.

Yeah this is a thing you'll notice from time to time when fighting in woods or if trees cross your line of fire. Usually the tac ai switches it's aim a bit if multiple hits don't do the job but sometimes this won't work as well. You can either keep shooting in hope one shot gets through or destroys the blocking tree or you just can try another angle to the target. The bigger the tank Canon/the round the better a tree gets destroyed by it. I've seen Is2 destroying one tree with one hit (AP). You can also put some big arty in the woods if you have any, to make it less dense and create better shooting lines. This however would be more of a desperate solution.

I had it multiple times now that my commander could spot something over a crest or behind a wall if he is looking out his hatch, while I couldn't actually shoot the target and the target couldn't shoot at me. So it is possible though a bit difficult to pull of sometimes (and sometimes bad for the health of the commander) . I would rather use proper inf scouts for this. But it is sad to hear that the roof mounted optics are somewhat broken. But thank you for pointing this out @Grey_Fox and @Millien.

By the way: has someone a good source (or multiple) that specifically focuses on optics of the various vehicles, including commanders sight? Maybe even with some pictures through the actual things to get an understanding as a non-tanker. I often read that soviet style optics have a poor field of view while they may have some decent magnification. I had found some technical data on T55 and T72 commanders sights which would confirm this. Haven't found anything (despite the gunners sight) on a T34/85 to compare them and see the evolution of optics there. So magnification is good and all but if you are looking through a toilet paper roll it might be hard to actually spot something because you have to be right on point. And this shows in CMCW I guess.

I can confirm this. Had it in multiple occasions until I now plan my movements like you do. Had it once that my Sherman firefly should rotate somewhat to a 90 degree angle after he reached his last way point. Unfortunately a Panther was in full view of the site. The crack sherman crew spotted the panther right away and swung it's turret in his direction but the tank kept turning and turning never firing... Fortunately the Panther had a similar problem: My opponent seemingly wanted to switch to another position and got stuck, leaving the panthers side and part of his back open to the front. His turret was not faster than my rotating tank so he got blown away. Lucky in an unlucky situation I guess.

@ALBY @Erwin @Splinty My post over this one might interest you too.