Dietrich

I know this is, in effect, anecdotal evidence, but I have read many quotes from tank crewmen who said they could hear very little (if anything at all) outside their tank, such was the noise from the engine, the running gear, the tracks, enemy fire hitting the armor, etc. In a video I saw on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FpEXKJRRwQ&feature=related), Otto Carius said: "I had to have my head outside of the turret, so that I could oversee everything. If there was an anti-tank gun firing, you could then sense what was going on. If the hatch was closed, then you only had a limited view." According to Soviet Rifleman: 1941-1945 by Gordon Rottman (Osprey Publishing), standard practice among Red Army machine-gunners was to urinate on the ground from which dust would otherwise be kicked up when the MG fired. Just because Michael Wittmann, Otto Carius, et al, survived long enough to become as experienced as they were doesn't preclude the possibility that oftentimes they found enemy AT guns bafflingly un-spot-able. Several German accounts I have read stated that Russian AT guns were virtually impossible to spot until after they had fired.

Speaking of sound mods -- I've downloaded Tartari's mod, but I have no idea how to install it, and there are no installation instructions in either of the zips. (I though there was a thread about Tartari's sound mod, but I can't find it.) Any advice?

Tanks crushing any and all trees in their path makes one able to spot them even before any of one's units sees them. In WW2, the only time tanks were not easy to spot was when they were dug in deep and thoroughly camouflaged. While on the move they were loud, both because of their engines and because of their running gear.

A cool idea, PanzerkwVIIIMaus, though it seems to me that a number of the vehicles (especially the heavy tanks like the Tiger, etc.) are unrealistically fast, especially cross-country.

I too have created battles (or downloaded them), been dissatisfied, and tried to delete them, but to no effect. So I too am keen to know how to clear these from the battles list.

Good points, JDski about observation and taking advantage of terrain. It works in ToW because it works in real life. =) Yesterday I was playing a mission (one I created, loosely based on Franz Staudegger's Knight's-Cross-winning solo interception of 50+ Guards T-34s on July 8, 1943) in which my elite-crewed Tiger was in hull-down position on the reverse slope of a hill, facing north. In the distance were a dozen or so T-34s driving westward at about 1000 yards' range. Because of the trees and the undulations of the ground between the T-34s and my Tiger, the Tiger could see only one or two of them at a time; sometimes it would get one in its sights, fire, and by the time the shell was on its way the T-34 had winked out of sight, so it was anyone's guess if the shell had hit its mark. What was surprising, though, was that apparently the T-34s halted to return fire or changed course to head towards the Tiger -- perhaps the crews weren't certain where the fire was coming from; sometimes in ToW you take fire from someplace but the thing firing is effectively invisible. And I didn't even know there was a quick-save! lol

In ToW, the last tank standing decides the battle. Campaign battles often end for me this way -- I've managed to knock out all but one of the enemy AI's tanks, but then that lone surviving tank wrecks my last tank or AT gun; then my remaining forces (infantry) have no recourse but to crawl hopefully out of LOS, and I can do nothing but wait for the scenario to end by default. If attacking, my troops can't advance to the objective (so as to finally 'win' the scenario) because the tank will charge after them and wipe them out. If defending, my troops have no recourse but to cower in their trenches or otherwise in cover. (Also, having your infantry in trenches at the start of a battle is often foolhardy, since the AI typically bombards any trenches when the battle begins.) But as far as effectively dealing with enemy tanks: -- Put your AT guns in bushes or in as much cover as you can find. Estimate the direction along which the enemy will attack, and rotate your AT guns so that they will be able to fire on enemy tanks from the flank. Also, toggle Hold Fire on your AT guns until the enemy is well within effective range; this will prevent them from firing too early, getting spotted, and then drawing fire not only from the tanks but from the accompanying infantry. -- If a tank or AT gun of yours is firing over its target, aim for the chassis or the hull. If the tank's or AT gun's shells are hitting the ground in front of its target, aim for the hull or the turret. To help your infantry survive, toggle Hold Fire on them until the enemy is well within range, then un-toggle it. That way the enemy infantry will not spot your troops until they have opened fire.

Good point, Gnasher. =) What you said is what I meant by "visual guesstimation." Being a fan of the Combat Mission games, I admit I'm a bit spoiled. The maximum map size in ToW seems to limit the size of battles to including hardly more than a reinforced platoon (though sometimes *heavily* reinforced, i.e. with artillery, air support, tanks, etc.) per side. At company level, though, one might have available infantry guns (short-range howitzers) and medium mortars. I think that there should be one- or two-man foxholes in addition to (or to supplement) the stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb trenches. Also, why no pits for AT guns and HMGs? Why must they have no recourse but to cower (or lurk) behing a minimally protective sandbag wall? One last thing -- tanks run over infantry too easily. An infantryman need be no closer than ten feet (or so it looks to me) from a tank to get run over by it. I think the 'crush' range of tanks and other heavy vehicles ought to be shrunk.

They really are poor bloody infantry. So many defensive battles have gone for me this way: my infantry mow down the charging enemy troops, and my tanks and/or AT guns knock out all but one of the enemy's tanks but get knocked out themselves in the process; then the lone enemy tank machine-guns or steamrollers my remaining infantry -- most of my infantry could have survived to that point, but they're useless against the tank and get wiped out. And it's as if the AI tank has infrared sights -- it systematically hunts down and takes out my infantry no matter where they are, prone in cover or not. In real combat, wouldn't infantry be able to hide from a tank, sneak up on it from behind, and plant some kind of explosive on it to damage its tracks or traversing mechanism or shove a grenade down the cannon barrel? Effectively tanks in ToW are overpowered versus infantry. German infantry, for one, had grenade bundles to attack enemy tanks with (and the JSH mod improves their lot by giving them such, though it seems a bit much for three or four guys in a given Gruppe to have two 'geballte Ladungen' each). As far as infantry surviving in general, I have found it effective to apply real-world German squad tactics (even when you're not playing as the Germans). In the advance to contact and before launching an actual assault, have your men hold fire and have them be prone when not moving. Having them hold fire until attacking or providing covering fire makes it harder for the enemy to spot them. When enemy targets come into effective range, select the squad's machine-gunner (or closest equivalent), have him target the enemy in question, and de-select Hold Fire. (German tactical doctrine called for use of only the MG in delivering fire while the riflemen hold fire until ordered otherwise by the squad leader.) As realistic as most other aspects of the game are, I dislike that not only are HMGs given only two men but they cannot be moved at all. (Did the game developers feel it would be too gamey for a HMG to be moveable, or did they feel it would involve too much animating?) Having just two men manning an HMG means that the enemy has to take out only that many men to render the gun useless -- you then have to send two more guys to the gun to bring it back into action. The immobility of an HMG, combined with the inability to check lines of sight during the setup phase except by visual guesstimation, means that one could place one's HMG it what looks like a good position but actually affords it only a narrow field of fire. (Of course, if a keyhole position is what you're going for....) Also, the infantry have no *light* mortar support. As it is, one usually has no more than a platoon's-worth of infantry, but an early-war German platoon, at least, would have a 50mm mortar. (I suppose, though, that if light mortars were added to the game, they would be immobile just like HMGs.) One thing that really hurts the infantry's survivability is that trenches are visible to both sides even during the setup phase. (Is this un-camouflage supposed to presuppose prior reconnaisance?) In real warfare, trenches would be camouflaged as much as possible, since if they aren't camouflaged, the enemy can just send a patrol with a forward observer, spot your positions, and call down artillery on you before you even know the enemy is within visual range. (In accord with this, the AI typically begins a battle by shelling whatever trenches are on the map. I deploy my infantry well back from the trenches and under cover and wait for the preliminary bombardment to end; sometimes I don't even bother sending them forward into the trenches.) Also, having a unit in a trench seems not to help it last much longer than if it were prone on open ground. There seems to be no way to have a rifleman or LMG-gunner stay ducked inside the trench except when firing. On a lighter note, thanks Nikki for the tip about area-fire grenading. It had always been so frustrating when my men grenaded themselves or hustled round a corner only to get mown down by the enemy lurking on the other side of the wall.

Tanks & trees -- Trees is ToW don't vary much in size, but whatever a tree's size, almost any vehicle can push it over. I think it's quite gamey that pushed-over trees dissolve into the ground. And don't shellbursts just knock over trees, rather then shearing them laterally in half through the trunk? Then again, the game's engine *is* that of a now-kinda-old flight sim, albeit one that I love. Awards -- In Company of Heroes or most any other RTS (I think of ToW as a combat simulator rather than an RTS), you feel bad when a unit gets killed, not because you care about it's 'identity' but because now you have to build/'create' another one. In Combat Mission and ToW, though, you see your units as men -- their names give them identity. When I have to send my men charging across the open to take the enemy positions and they suffer heavy losses on the way, I feel bad because they've been killed. It can seem laborious, though, to manually sort through one's forces after a battle to ensure their XP is applied to key skills like Scouting, Gunner, Driver, etc. Of course, I prefer the campaigns in which the battles take place in a short period (rather than one battle per year over the course of the entire war), wherein a soldier wouldn't realistically gain all that much experience and probably wouldn't be promoted either.

I applaud Battlefront and 1C for Theatre of War! That said, I'd like to bring up a point or two. To illustrate, in playing the German campaign with the "Ignore Campaign Loss" option selected, my force was decimated when the two groups of Russian tanks counter-attacked. I lost a lot of good soldiers, and only a handful of my men survived to see the 'You have lost - click here to continue' (obviously not a direct quote ) box pop up. As a wise tactical commander, on seeing my lead squads being wiped out by T-34s, I would have had my reinforcement squads pile back into the trucks and get the hell outta there. But, as it was, the AI hunted down my half-dozen remaining men, and I was forced to tackle the next mission with a bunch of green troops (with my force understrength to boot). I think the "Ignore Campaign Loss" option is worthwhile -- it provides a realistic alternative to the you-didn't-do-it-right-so-do-it-over rule of most games. But without the ability to leave the map -- and thus forfeit the battle in hopes of not losing the war -- I can only forfeit the battle and my valuable troops. Consider it a suggestion: In moving off the friendly side of the map, you forfeit (i.e., 'lose') the battle but thus are able to prevent your forces from being wiped out (or as close to it as makes no odds). Whadya think, folks?