Offshoot

I see you've tried with other terrain features behind the troops, but out of interest have you tried with a building behind them? I imagine this is a relatively common instance of finding a wall and terrain feature 'close' together. If you do check, probably a building without a door on the troops side would be best Thanks for the testing everyone, After seeing bullets bouncing off walls my automatic assumption would have been that they were better than no cover as well.

The problem we have then is knowing, within the context of the game mechanics, what those situations are when walls provide better or worse cover. To my mind, such information is fundamental to good tactics, but the manual seems to be very vague when it comes to what provides good cover and concealment. From other posts I gather that certain cover can have abstracted elements, so the question is, do low walls have an abstracted element of cover? If not, perhaps the height of the wall could be raised a little to come up to just below the rifle as I doubt anyone firing from behind a wall would do so in the way the game animation shows, which unnecessarily exposes too much of the upper torso.

===Spoilers=== Actually, there are three, but the one in the small woods had been knocked out by my preliminary barrage I think - at least I never heard from it. On a first run through you couldn't tell, but in my second go I noticed a significant drop in enemy artillery fire, so their ability to call it in must have been significantly degraded (as it turned out in the end they had one very resilient member of an HQ still hanging on, who I assume had been doing the spotting - the rest of the German troops on the hill were utterly shattered). This is why I was thinking of a light-maximum barrage on the hill - you may not kill the FO and HQs or know that you have, but you make it significantly harder over a longer period of time for them to do spotting through suppression . With hindsight I should have been able to use foresight to think of all this, but lessons learned

===Spoilers=== Not necessarily. In my game, the last of four tanks to cross was immobilized by a mine despite the engineers previously blasting the tile, so at least one mine obviously remained.

===Major spoilers=== My first, blind run through (elite difficulty) I got a minor victory - I was too cautious and left my run to the territory objectives too late. I wasn't happy with my performance, especially with my use of the artillery, and I wanted to try some things out, so I did it again, winning with a major victory. Both times I started with a fairly sustained, planned 81mm mortar barrage of the small woods on the right. Even if wasting ammo, it seemed like an ideal spot for an ambush and I felt it was important to clear that flank (it's also a smallish, contained area ripe for an area barrage). To start out I sent a two-man scouting party up to the bridge. Once they were in position and had spotted the barbed wire, I sent a team of engineers to blow the wire and the secondary FO to try and help spot enemy positions (the main FO I kept in the building, where they never came under fire). I set the 81mm mortars up right at the back to the far right. The 60mm mortars with their accompanying machine guns were placed in the field with long grass to the right where they have reasonable oversight of the right side for direct fire as well as suppression if there is anything left in the small woods. I also set up a couple of machine guns on the stoney mound in the ploughed field to the left. Remember to set close in cover arcs so they don't reveal themselves too early. The tanks appear when it is still quite dark, so I lined them up in the open field to the right and moved them forward slowly until the were parked up under the trees for cover. Perhaps I just got lucky, but this popped the remaining two AT guns, both of which were knocked out for the cost of one tank (the same tank took fire from both AT guns). The 60mm mortars were able to provide direct fire suppression of these as well. The main difference in how I played both games was in the use of the 105s. First I used them for smoke cover and firing on the forward defences, but I think it is best to use them to neutralise the troops on the hill. As the hill is the best position for oversight for the Germans, with bunkers and tree cover, it is logical that this is where FOs will most likely be. So the second time I forgot about smoke and used both 105 batteries to lay down linear barrages across the width of the hill - doing this I noticed a drop in the amount of shelling my side took (it also felt really good to give some back). Given this, I am wondering if a light-maximum barrage (if only with just one battery) would be best to keep them suppressed for longer. Once the 105s started to fall I began moving the infantry forward in well-spaced teams eventually followed by the tanks for close support. The 81mm and 60mm mortars were kept for clearing the troops in foxholes and the reinforcing machine gun company was put in the same field as the 60mm mortars where they could suppress the entire right side. By the end they took some shelling but nothing too devastating after evacuating them after seeing the spotting rounds. In the end I lost around 60 men I think, and stupidly one more tank to a shreck because I started to lose focus. I'm sure it could be done better, but I hope this might help.

===Spoilers=== I mean to do some tests but I think the reason they pin each other is that their charges blow mines in front of the bridge. When I did this it left a big crater and wounded one of the engineers. If that is the case, it is odd that the engineers don't figure there are mines there: -"You're only supposed to blow the bloody barbed wire off!" -"But I used the usual recipe" -"Then why did it leave a bloody great crater in the middle of the road?"

I've just done some tests and have not been able to replicate this. My tests were preliminary and not exhaustive, but the impression I got was that troops (I was using engineers) have to be moving through a mined tile to have a chance to locate them. Indeed, if a unit stopped in a mined tile without detecting mines, it would then still not detect the mines over quite a few turns if it did not move. Perhaps this is why infantry don't detect AT mines - because they have no chance of triggering them? This is in no way a criticism. I would just like to know how one should best use troops to look for mines. If being next to a mined tile is not sufficient to detect mines, then there is no point trying this. One thing I found interesting was that it takes a full squad of 10 engineers around just 1 minute to fully mark a mined tile (when not in combat).

This is really why I asked - I have done this and no mines have ever been spotted (in the School of Hard Knocks scenario), so I wondered what the conditions required for spotting (without walking over the mined area) are.

So how do troops 'spot' mines? I'm assuming that they have to move through the tile where the mines are located rather than just stay beside it.

You'll always get scenario writers who think it is their job to 'beat' the player rather than provide an enjoyable and challenging experience. The only choice you have is to not play those scenarios. As far as 'non-parallel' objectives go, I'm sure it is possible to hint at them in the breifing without being explicit - for example, 'beware of counterattacks' or 'make sure the enemy does not locate alternative escape routes'.

To add another question to the mix, is there a limit on the number of simultaneous fire missions a single observer can direct and/or does adding more than one affect the accuracy or timing of them? In one scenario I had a very busy veteran FO but I did wonder if I should share the work around with less experienced spotters.

I'm running it on XP64 fine - no crashes so far after 20+ hours

Does this abstraction apply to the entire tile that the foxholes sit on or just to the foxholes themselves? I haven't mastered getting even all three men of a team to go into the foxholes with face so it would be nice to think that the guy scurrying around up top is still getting some protection.

Regarding RAM, how much can CMBN actually utilise anyway? I'm running it on 64-bit Windows XP, but will CMBN be able to use more than 2GB if not properly 64-bit (extra RAM would of course help with other programs open at the same time).

There can actually be some overlap between 'apparent' model complexity, textures and lighting when normal mapping is used. To perhaps answer the original poster's question about what might be missing compared to other games, normal mapping is pretty common in current games but I don't think it is used in CMBN, probably for good reason (although I think it would make a world of difference for the buildings, which I think are the weakest aspect with respect to the graphics). But personally, gameplay ueber alles, and I like the graphics just fine, especially looking down tree-lined avenues at ground level.

Cancel this - this was my user error and is not an issue.

OK, forget my nonsense. I have a modded compass and was reading it wrong. My apologies to the scenario writer for being such a tit.

Then perhaps we have a bigger problem than just an error in the briefing? I checked again last night before posting and the smoke for me was definitely blowing in the opposite (incorrect) direction. Just to double check, this is the School of Hard Knocks scenario, the second in the Courage and Fortitude campaign. I'm going to check again, just in case I've done something stupid and will try to post screenies.

Apart from the road up to the bridge, which I assume is TRPed to death, the shelling seems completely arbitrary. Some heavy machine guns on the little rocky mound in the ploughed field have been unmolested for ages but two big shells fell right at the back in the exact round the reinforcing company turned up, taking out the Company HQ and the XO. I had my big mortars behind a hedge on the right and they have been untouched so far. I'm seriously considering running all the infantry across open ground and hiding them by the water on the near river bank to see what happens.

Ah yes, I know the windy conventions, but I see that my comment was unclear. To clarify, the scenario says "Wind: light from SW" when it should say "Wind: light from NE". So I meant that the wrong wind direction is given, rather than that the phraseology is wrong (which isn't a typo as such).

I've worked in publishing for a couple of decades now too and my eyes are also drawn to typos, but they don't really bother me here so long as the meaning is clear. As far as typos in briefings reflecting badly on the game, I don't think they do given its total scope. The manual is a far more important part of the overall impression and I think it is an excellent example of non-technical technical writing. I did notice an error (not strictly a typo) in the briefing for The School of Hard Knocks mission. In the designers notes it says there is a light wind "from the south-west" when it should be "to the south-west" - thank the war gods for my saved game when my smoke barrage started to blow the wrong way. But looking at the writers name I imagine English is not his native language so it's just one of those things. Besides, I have other reasons to hate him for because of that mission besides something as comparatively trivial as an error in the briefing

After reissuing shoot and scoot commands to five AFVs over several turns in the same spot, one thing I would like if it were at all possible is a 'replay last' command string button.

If there is a pattern to this, it could be used to overcome the desire of the breach teams to charge through the hole to admire their work in some situations. Simply set your team to blast the opposite bocage to that you really want to breach when the opportunity avails itself - work-behind as a workaround.

Whenever I lose one member of a team, it is always the gunner. Whenever the enemy has only one member of a team left, it is always the gunner.

The title "Move shoot, move shoot again..." reminded me of the game I played last night where I was shoot and scooting 5 Stuarts and sometimes a couple of Shermans against some AT guns. It got pretty tedious having to reset the same orders every round, so I was fantasizing about order macros or at least a 'replay last turn for this unit' function