Brille

Firepower: 1.) High caliber machine guns, machine canons or MGs with armor piercing rounds can penetrate buildings all the way through, especially those which are lightly build. (e.g. wood) This way you can reach enemy infantry or soft targets even if they take cover behind a house. Especially weapon systems like the shilka are best for that since all of their ammo is AP-I. 2.) In addition to the first point: In the ww 2 games the german halftracks are equipped with the ap rounds for their MG. It is possible to equip the riding infantry with it too. Those usually only come with the standard ammo, which often don't have the force to penetrate brick walls. I often give my Panzergrenadiers at least a belt (250 rounds) with them so they have a slight advantage in built up areas to pierce cover of the enemy. 3.) Some units like the soviet BTR will not use its main armament to fire at infantry in the open or on area targets. But if they notice that the enemy is in or behind cover (behind trees, in houses) they will use it. If you area target a building with them and they have ammo for their heavy mg, they will use those most of the time if not always.

Smoke: 1.) If your avenue of advance happens to be the same direction as the wind you can use that to your advantage. Place a smoke fire mission (or lay smoke via tank smoke rounds or smoke grenades) and watch how the smoke "walks" slowly in the wind direction. If the wind is not that strong it will stay relatively dense for quite a distance. So you can advance your troops directly behind it. But be careful that those rounds are not WP (white phosphorus) rounds because those will disperse very quickly even without any wind. 2.) With vehicles that have "smoke mortars" or "Nahverteidigungswaffe" (for the germans) build in, you can lay lanes of smoke. Simply give one of this vehicles several short movement commands, each 20 to 40m apart and put on each of them a "pop smoke" command. On each way point it will pop out up to 3 smoke grenades. In comparison to external smoke dischargers (who have maybe 1 to 3 charges - ww2 standard at least), smoke mortars can be reloaded from within and they have a huge amount of smoke bombs. So you can put multiple lanes of smoke with one vehicle. Directing fire: 1.) If a squad is in a house/cover you can direct/switch their fire. Give them a target command and a pause like 30 seconds. Then give them a movement command on their exact same location and draw another target on another enemy position. So they will fire for 30seconds on one enemy, then they move maybe slightly to get on target and then they will fire the rest of the turn on the second enemy unit. 2.) Always keep in mind that you will negate any cover arc or target command with the "face" command. The thing I often do is "hunt" into a position (like going up into 1 or 2 story building) while putting the hunter on a short cover arc to not reveal himself for distant troops or go prone on first enemy sight. After the unit has reached its position I either can give him another cover arc at the last way point or a face command, which means that he is free to engage on the spot. 3.) A rare thing players seem to be aware of or use is the cover circle, a addition or alternative to the cover arc. Especially if you don't know from where the enemy is coming from and you don't want to reveal your tanks to simple infantry, you can activate the "armor arc" and press shift. Now you can draw a circle around the tank on the distance you want. (or draw it over the entire map to be sure :D) It works the same with the normal cover arc too.

Can't confirm this for sure, so only speculation. I would say morale is tracked individually per soldier but only the average squad morale is displayed. So let's say roughly over 50-60% soldiers of the squad are pinned, so the ui shows the entire squad as pinned. You also see individual soldiers "cower" for a certain amount of time (if only low fire is taken), while the rest of the squad members keep a look out as normal. But it will show you maybe only "cautious" in the interface because only one or two soldiers are effected, the rest of the squad is still operational. I also had it that I split a rattled squad only to discover that the smaller team went directly to "shaken" but were not under fire at this moment or before. So splitting a squad to "conserve" morale for the other team might work but you also get enough penalties for it: lower situational awareness (especially if the team has no binocs or radio), lower firepower (obviously) and they break more easily under fire. And do t forget that morale will reach other teams of the squad /platoon, especially when casualties are taken. So a squad can get rattled or broken even when they didnt had that much front line action. Reports of their comrades getting slaughtered elsewhere sink through the comms sooner or later and, depending on their experience and morale, is not taking lightly by them. I split squads into teams mostly just so they don't get demolished by one he round of a tank, especially in the modern games. Other reasons are for scouting purpose, to get a lower profile (either with a half squad or two men) or anti tank teams.

In the older Combat Mission games you had something like hit percentages and probability of a kill through the various gun platforms. This kind you don't have in the Cmx2 versions but bfc set this on purpose. They want to give you some sort of feeling the troops back then would have: Not knowing much about the vehicles you are up against while only knowing slightly more about your own weapon performance. The more experienced you get the more you know what works against what. Otherwise you can test things out via the scenario editor in each installment or read/watch about the hardware performance of that Era. In the editor you can set up a shooting range and play it in hot seat mode with the enemy forces set on tight cover arcs. This way I'll often test various weapon platforms on what they can penetrate or how good they hit anything on various distances. It is not 1on1 representative with an actual game but at least gives you a good direction if you are not accustomed with the various vehicles, tanks and self propelled guns.

Getting more units into action than your opponent can is a valiable option indeed. But regardless if you are attacking tanks or at guns, you should do it from different angles (if possible). So the gun (which turn very slow) or the tank have to turn a bit to get to another target. If your units stand close side by side and the enemy has their range it can turn out to be a turkey shooting. By the way units spot better to the front than to the sides or back. Tanks are even worse at this regard, especially when their commander is forced inside. They are nearly blind if something pops up to their side. In at gun engagements you first have to locate the at gun (obviously) . If you know it's position you either destroy them with artillery, close assault them with infantry or bypass them. Only if you have the forces to suppress them properly you may engage them with tanks. They are designed to ambush tanks so the least unit you want to engage them with should be tanks. And I guess it is regardless if you sneak them into position, they will almost always outspot tanks. One tactic I use (if I have no other option) , if the map allows it is to gather some tanks together, roll into a hull down position fast and area fire the guns position at a distance. Most of the shots will be misses, especially at flat ground, but they may pin and or kill personal. If the gun stands in forests it is even better since some of the shots will explode on a treetrunk over or behind it. Sooner or later it will be either abandoned or destroyed. But it may take several he rounds and a tank or two. Don't know about the probability of a tank kill with low caliber shots but I guess you just had bad luck. I had engagements with 57mm churchills against a huge Panzer IV fleet with different effects. Sometimes they seem to get no damage at all and sometimes the Panzers exploded in all its glory or were at least silenced very quick. Once I even had a one shot kill with an soviet at rifle on a Stug whereas it is very lucky to even get a penetration sometimes. (talking about the sides of course). Is2 or any of the ISU versions can be very frightening. They are tough nuts to crack for anything armed with a 75mm L48 and even for better guns at a distance while the 122and 152mmm cannons will obliterate most of german afv. So you might think it is better to engage german armor at range, which is partially true. But you have only very slow rates of fire in the soviet heavies, so by the time they have the range, most German tanks may have already landed some hits at them. Though they probably may survive those, their subsystems will get degraded pretty soon. If you go into more close range you have better hit probability of course but you trade it with lesser armor protection. You can amplify the reloading speeds and hit chances with higher experienced crews so they may be valuable on range too. But you should outnumber the enemy forces, so they have more to shoot at while your other units may have the chance to range in properly.

How long did you wait to deploy the MG? In buildings the time to deploy rises significantly. Where in the countryside you may need just several seconds to deploy you'll need several minutes in a house (usually somewhat under 3 minutes maximum) All Soviet hmg in CMRT don't need a "deploy" command as far as I know. As long as they don't have a movement command active, they start deploying on their own. There is a bug that the gunner of the MG squad will constantly move around in finding a position. But he'll circle around forever with never ever starting the deployment phase. I made the experience that it is somewhat related to the "face" command. If that problem happens to you just move them out of their position and back in. Maybe then try to let them deploy without the "face" command.

I've once read that firing on "move" command is still somewhat accurate because the game abstracts a firing halt. So instead of stopping the tank visually, firing at the target, drive on, stop, fire again etc., it's just one fluid movement. But I don't know if that's official or just wishful thinking. Well I can not complain. Most of the time the tanks don't hit the broadside of a barn but in some instances I have a holy effing Schulz moment of an seemingly impossible shot. But in my game a Tiger struggles to hit a cromwell at like 80m while moving slow... Hmm...

If the AT gun didnt even got a shot of first then you either have really bad luck (maybe the enemy is doing recon by shooting) or you have chosen the wrong hideout for the gun itself. The at gun should always be first to spot because of the concealment it hopefully is in and the small profile. Bigger AT guns (even the 8, 8cm in Pak configuration) are hard to hide and can be spotted from quite a distance. Smaller at guns like the 57mm gun or Pak 40 are better for an ambush. Though I must admit that I have the feeling that at guns are easily spotted as soon as they have fired a shot...maybe a bit to easily. But that's just me. Once spotted though it is logically that the gun will have a hard time to survive... Stealth is its main protection after all. So if the enemy has the right tools for the job (either guns of his own or artillery/mortars) it is just a matter of time. The question is how experienced your crews are because if they are motivated and high experienced they can be quite sturdy, even when they take losses. (at least till the gun itself isn't damaged). Only advises I could give you (though you probably already know them) is to get the at guns more to the side of an enemy approach. Spotting at the front of an enemy tank is the strongest, while it isn't as good to the sides and back. Try to keep enemy tanks closed, either by small arms fire or with artillery. Position your guns wisely. Don't go for maximum visibility on top of a mountain to observe all. Choose one or two small lanes it can cover (hard point). You may not see and fire on much of the enemy but also can he shoot with only a part of his forces at you. Put them in good concealment. If you put them in forests make sure that it has good undergrowth.

I count myself to these people who have the opinion that no player input can determine if a vehicle will unbog or get immobilized, at least not by simple move orders. If a tank/vehicle gets bogged you actually see that the crew starts its own process of unbogging: The tracks/wheels go forwards and backwards on the spot, while the beast rumbles a bit. So I would say (without knowing 100% of the facts myself though) to the people, who think that reversing matters, that they just have wishful thinking - no offense. The problem is that even intensive tests wouldn't bring you any believable results I guess... Maybe a hint in a certain direction but a real clearance not so much. In my games most of the time vehicles get unbogged by themselves, sometimes they get immobilized, sometimes more, sometimes less and sometimes they don't even bog once in a battle. So how does one determine if reversing really helps to unbog? To me they would have unbogged themselves, regardless for the additional reverse order. They are just 2 stand alone procedures. So if the process "unbogging" (if this one fails=immobilize) is finished, then the vehicle will go on with the next command which will be "reverse" in this case then. Some people also believe that a marked anti tank minefield heavily reduces the chance of a tank triggering a mine. (ok another topic) But I can decline that because this one you clearly can test and I did.

And good lord it is gone! Theoretically you never needed to open up your tanks if you had an "infantry belt" around your tanks doing all the spotting. Now in Cmx2 tanks with ****ty visibility actually have ****ty visibility.

Most soviet vehicles have some spare RPG7 rockets for their dismounted infantry. But recon infantry usually don't have RPG7 launchers with them so they are kind of wasted in their vehicles. They most likely have some single use launchers (RPG 26 I believe they are called), which as the description implied, can't be reloaded. If you have a Ural Truck with you I would check those. Often they have an additional RPG7 launcher (not just the rockets) with them you can equip whomever you like with. But be careful: it may say that the RPG7 may have a range up to 600m but the chance of hitting anything is rather slim. Better use them for ranges not more than 200m. With very experienced troops you maybe want to try it a bit further than that.

Strelas (and Iglas) are manportable soviet anti air assets and anti air only. I don't know if they fire their launchers on tanks if you really force them to, never tried it. But I suppose they would abort that command because of the little effect they would have on armored ground targets. (if they could be fired at all) What you are seeking in the units description is something like RPG7 (unguided, 600m range), Spg9 (unguided, 1700m range, I believe) , AT7 (guided, 1000m range), AT4 (guided, 2000m+ range). Those are the anti tank assets used by infantry (not including the 100mm At gun). That they already have some rockets missing indicates that they either fired on a Helikopter or jet you haven't noticed or that they indeed tried to shoot at ground targets with (rightfully so) no effects

I see your point there. In my opinion if it is not point blank range (like below 100m) you can benefit from a tripod. The MG is more accurate and gets out more bullets in theory (never tested, only from the feels). The biggest question would rather be if you have to turn the MG often to get to shoot at the enemy. If you need to then the bipod configuration is the way to go because you get on target quicker. Getting away faster if things are getting hairy is a valid point but the hmg should not be in the front lines in the first place. And even in urban areas you have some longer lanes you can cover in a narrow arc. Those are intended as point weapons after all.

Well better overview I guess. Yes the germans have a tripod that you can set up on higher elevation but never the less a higher position may be favorable especially if the landscape is uneven. Apart from that a building gives you concealment and cover... At least if not setup in an old barn.

Well it takes several minutes to deploy a heavy machine gun inside a house, as stated by the others here. But if it really takes up to 4 minutes constant deploying without them being somewhat otherwise occupied (taking cover from enemy fire) then this is not normal I guess. One problem I had in Shock force 2 is when I had a face command applied to an MG team. The gunner of the MG would, in rare cases, move around constantly around the gun, so the deploying phase would not start. If I then remove the face command again (sometimes even moving the entire MG to another position) it will work again.

@BFCElvis: Don´t want to push anyone but are there any news about the CMRT demo ? I understand that the priorities are elsewhere at the time (very busy year 2023, looking at the mid year update).

I've witnessed this the first time in CMRT as I played a scenario with partisans in the night/early morning. They have clearly mistaken their comrades for the enemy multiple times. Though casualties were very low (only 2 guys). I guess friendly fire is toned down in terms of actual casualties (not including explosives) because of the frustration it would bring. My assumption is that low visibility, bad or no communication (radios) and poor experience rises the chance of it happening. I set up a thread in the CMRT category not so long ago, if interested: https://community.battlefront.com/topic/141587-friendly-fire-added-through-fire-rubble/

The reason you haven't witnessed it in the ww2 games would be simply because there are not that many roof mounted MG around. And even if you have any, they can mostly only be operated when the crew looks out or is not occupied with other things. Besides that there are some mounting configurations that makes it impossible or at least very hard to use these MG against ground targets. (M10, some sherman versions...) Most of the tanks in CMCW have a remote controlled MG on top or at least, in case of the M60, full armor protection for the operator/commander while using it. I don't know if this is/was common practice to fire those at enemy armor but they can do quite some damage even to MBT. They can hurt/kill crewmembers, while they take a lookout or they can damage or destroy optics, smoke launchers and other externally attached equipment.

If a vehicle of yours spots an enemy that is able to threaten it, it will respond accordingly. For example if one of you ifv or apc spots an rpg gunner and happens to stand in his effective range, it will most likely hit the reverse and smoke itself if possible. But the tac ai don't just react to clear contacts. If one of your tanks for example knows via command link, that an enemy tanks is in it's flank but can't see it yet, it will most likely turn its turret or the entire vehicle in that direction if no other threat is present. But in general you can say that vehicles with no or light armor will bail as soon as the big tanks roll in sight. And a distance of 1km is no big deal in modern combat even for older soviet hardware in terms of accuracy. Ifv with atgm option however may try to get one of their missiles on the way first before they evade... Depends on the units experience and the threat level... The toughness of infantry depends on soft factors like experience, leadership and morale. They can be tough as rocks even when getting under big caliber fire or crumble under a well placed MG salvo. So you can have crack troops but if they have low morale they may be worse than green troops full of fanatics. Note that heavy beaten up infantry may reach a permanent status "broken". From this they cannot recover again and can get panicked even by light fire.

Just as people said: On big maps any kind of transport is a godsend. I had one battle where only infantry was allowed with the exception of unarmed vehicles. We both had to take a bridge in the middle of the map at dawn and on a big map. So I got myself 15 jeeps and loaded them up with 2 platoons plus some supports (flamethrowers, forward observer, scouts and a machine gun). They were tasked to get over that bridge before my opponent could and pin him long enough so that my main force could occupy the area. Those machines are damn fast so I don´t need to say that I got into positions right on time. Both platoons were either destroyed or completely broken but they fullfilled their task. If not for the jeeps it would have turned out to a battle of attrition right at the bridge with noone gaining anything. Later those jeeps helped me to quickly ferry troops in my backland to counter enemy attacks from another angle.

So now I made a short clinical test via the editor. Again there are partisans, again it is around 21:30 in July. It is dark but not to dark. No planes available this time. However there are some germans around of which only one straggler group can be seen by the partisans. They shot up some of the partisans so don´t you wonder the dead bodies. The germans have tight cover arcs, so they are unable to participate in any kind of firefight. The partisans however are free to shoot anything they like... And I don´t have to wait long for the first results. In the first case I wanted to see if area fire has an effect on passing infantry, so I fired on the single house, while part of the formation is passing by. In the second scene you clearly can see how one mp-gunner reacts to approaching soldiers and promptly opens fire, killing one of his own partisans. Note also how he changes his aim as new partisan soldiers arrive. So he is aiming for their actual physical presence. Edit: It seems that the situation like in scene 2 can only happen if there is some kind of enemy activity or threat possible. So if the unit has been or is in some kind of danger, under fire or is firing itself, then there is the possibility of friendly fire. If no "threat" is near, it will not trigger, as it seems for now. That makes about sense because you may have several casualties alone if some maniacs would shoot each other every now and then on the way to the front. But there has to be done several tests more to be more specific (or some bfc members could clear it up immediately, no ?! )

Your first point I can at least partially deny. Often they fired at tiles which had no enemy units in, around or in line to them, only friendlies all together. And yes I know that the tac ai sometimes shoot at old enemy locations too (without direct contact). And yes there were planes present. 4 IL2 came every now and then down from the skies and fired upon the germans in the trenches and foxoles. Mostly they fired with canons/mg but sometimes they dropped a bomb. I would have to re-watch the turns to be sure that the casualties are not caused by them but I'm at least very confident that they had nothing to do with them. But to be honest I would have thought that at least one plane would make a mistake and would come down for one of my units. But they reliably shoot up the enemy every time. @womble

Well I just made a little video example about the situation, so you decide for yourself: You might be right that small arms won´t inflict casualties...Im not that deep into that stuff but I also read otherwise...under certain cirumstances that it can happen (and I do not mean ricochets). But as you can see I got 2 casualties in this video alone with no probability of richochets because the shots came in a direct line, right through the pixelsoldier. Friendly fire accured at least once a turn as the fire fight broke out and I got 3 to 4 casualties this way. One of these I´m not quite sure if it wasn´t inflicted by actual enemy fire but the rest was indeed due to friendly fire.

Hello guys and girls, I currently play the scenario "Now or never" on the partisan side in Fire&Rubble. In short: It is an attack on a dug in german aa position in the evening, so visibility is somewhat bad. As the firefight errupts I witnessed that some of my men make some target practise at their own guys. Lucky for me that they are really bad shots and miss most of the time. It happens very regularily in this short battle though, so now and then they going to hit one of their brothers, until they realise their mistake and turn to the germans again. This happens to green and regular troops alike... I won´t complain at all because it is reasonable that friendly fire happens because of the bad visuals and no real command structure because of that. So Vasilij can not know that Kiril has already taken the trench in front of him, unless Kiril shouts some nasty curses back at him as he gets shot. What I want to ask is as follows: Has direct friendly fire been added (or buffed) with this addon ? I played some dusk, dawn and nightbattles already in other installments but haven´t noticed friendly fire at all. This may be due to better command structures (radios, better organisation), so every unit knew where the other was...I don´t know. Or do the partisans have some tac ai tweaks in particular to simulate their different or non existant military training ?

I have no problem with vulnerable tankcommanders or halftrack crew to be honest, as long as I stick with my own rule. I almost always let my TCs have a look out until they reach somewhat around 300m to a potential enemy position. If I get under that line I will loose commanders now and then but not to a point I would consider unrealistic. But to be sure I often button up at this line. The frontshield of a Sdkfz 250 or 251 seems very robust to me. I haven´t lost that many gunners, at least if they receive low volumes of fire. Enemy MMG would be the biggest threat to them. But I would say it is reasonable that out of mulitple bursts one bullet will find the small head part sooner or later. But you have to keep in mind to position these halftracks directly to the source of fire. A little bit to the side and the gunshield will have only a small or no effect. One thing that bothers me though is the accuracy of the PPSH41. Those little machines tend to be real commander killers at least up until 150 to 200m. Maybe it is just my bad luck on my part but I lost more commanders to them than to anything else... @chuckdyke: Would be interesting to know if this relationship between infantry and tanks was practiced this way back then. I mean the german tank commanders tend to keep the hatches open even at ridiculous close distance to the enemy. So communication could have happened and was practiced. The US even had phones installed (on shermans I believe) to make this possible even more. But it would be hard for soviet tankers, whoms machines are known to be very noisy, would have practiced that effectively. Especially when closing all the hatches at first enemy sight. But I don´t know as mentioned.