FragerZ

So I played US vs AI, and I've got to say that the scenario has it's ups and downs, and the opening part of the town was really fun. But there were some problems that made the game quite frustrating. -The mines that you placed in front of the choke point on the western most point of the map where Echo(?) company comes in as reinforcements later were incredibly annoying. The problem is that the infantry can't jump over the bocage, so to head off to St. Lo, you have to go through that one choke point. But you can't, since there are mines there. If you try to move the company that arrived over the mines, the trucks will be destroyed. So you have to dismount all of the infantry, and manually make all of your units take the long way around through the trees, which is tedious and requires lots of micro management. - The AI is really bad at handling tanks. I would always recommend not ever giving the AI turret-less tanks. - The area on and beyond purple heart draw was completely empty. Having to move an entire battalion through half a kilometer of woods and open fields is VERY tedious and boring, especially since I didn't know that it was empty. I went to the extent of having my infantry clear the wooded areas before I moved my Shermans up, which wasted a lot of time. - You set up a lot of ambushes in front of the draw, all of which I didn't realize existed until I was reviewing the map. The ambushes didn't defend anything important - they were just sitting between the bocage in front of the cliff (which you can't traverse over). So I never encountered them. - I beat the AI with 1000 points against 0 point. You should really give the AI partial points for destroying some of my forces. I lost just under 100 men, and it didn't get any points for that. - Since the map has two choke points, the bridge and the western path, the actual "battle front" is quite small. You can't really cram a lot of infantry into the small choke points, and this lead me to simply leaving and ignoring a lot of my troops, since I wasn't about to cram two companies of infantry into a 50 meter front. I ended up never moving Echo company or their trucks the entire game, and ended up taking LOTS of casualties through negligence. I'd leave a platoon sitting in some woods somewhere, not paying attention to them since there was nowhere where where I could use them. Then suddenly I'd notice them again once artillery started landing ontop of them. - I couldn't really use the mortars in the town, since they usually take 6m to call down, and aren't that great against tall structures. So when I got to the road to St. Lo, I nuked it with all 300 81mm rounds and all of my 300 60mm mortar rounds. It provided me with some good screenshots I took the road to St. Lo with only 3 casualties, even through I literally ran my troops right at them

I'm taking the term off school, and I'm free all day. Email FragerZ at Hotmail dot com with the first move. I want to play through all of the scenarios, so send me a scenario that is designed for H2H play. I prefer Germans, and only play scenarios blind.

So I finished Panzer Marsch! and I am now done Road to Montebourg. The one thing that nagged me was that the mission briefings weren't helpful telling me how to ration my artillery. I never knew if this battle was the last one that I would have a certain asset available, or to what extent I would receive more ammunition. This lead me to leaving hundreds of shells unspent throughout the campaign. Also, I am now officially sick of having to run infantry through streams against pillboxes I also noticed that if you put hedgerows in front of a pillbox, it makes the pillbox immune to bazooka's. Not that this is an issue, but I made the Germans surrender in, literally, every single battle I played. I was also able to go through the second last mission, the farmhouse with the SP gun, without taking a single KIA. The very last mission was absolutely fantastic. It is easily the best map I have played in both this campaign and Panzer Marsch. The only real criticism that I can come up with for the last map would be that the AI tried to counter-attack the town mid-way through the game, and it did so in a really retarded way. Lots of infantry came running across the fields towards the town, and so I just gunned them down. The part of the mission that was really excellent was the town, though. It was cool how in one mission, you had to fight to take the town, then fight to get out of it. It really worked well, since you could provide support from the rural area to most of the town. Within the town, one of the best parts was when I was trying to take a tightly contested intersection. So, I sent a Sherman around the corner. You can't see it in this screenshot (since wounded soldiers disappear in the 'review map' phase), but I had a full platoon hugging the length of the wall on the side of the Sherman. When I moved the tank around and the StuG appeared, my Sherman exploded and took 7 soldiers with it. The rural fighting was really intense, and I want to do more of it. I also have a funny picture of a tank which had 2 of it's crew killed, 1 of it's crew wounded, it's optics, radio, weapon control and MG destroyed, but still managed to bag 64 kills before going rouge and driving uncontrollably through the town. Oh, and I don't understand why you bothered giving us the 105mm artillery 40 minutes into the game. Without a TRP, it's very difficult to use. If you're going to have heavy artillery come on as reinforcements where only 1 single unit has the authority to call it in, then you should add a TRP, in my opinion. Particularly when it takes a good ~9 minutes just to call in. Again, the last mission was awesome. You should make it a stand-alone scenario, where you add 15 minutes and remove the intel.

I just had a Sherman destroyed on the first shot by a panzershrek, 280m away Anyways, the campaign AI is fairly good. I got pwned real hard when I ran a squad in to try to medic two other squads that were crushed by artillery, after the artillery stopped. But a minute later, it started again and killed that squad. So I though, "well, okay. Now it MUST be over". So I sent another squad in. I was wrong

LA Noire came out today, and I'll be playing that while I wait. The game is absolutely amazing... You should check some trailers for it on youtube. It's the best detective game ever made IMO.

Angry rant below: K, so I've played as the Americans vs human in Closing the Gap a couple of times now. And it's INCREDIBLY frustrating how COWARDLY the American tank crews are. I manually make all of the m10's cover arc, unbutton, and hunt into view of the panther all at the same time. But once they eventually spot the panther, they all withdraw. It's incredibly annoying, since it means that there is no way of destroying the panther. My tank crews refuse to engage it, despite that there are 5 of them, and they will still destroy it with a front turret and lower hull hit.

I refuse to play on noob difficulty.

Right, but he's capturing it in uncompressed movie format. To be able to replay it, you'd just need the game data. So it would be like combining a slew of PBEM turns. Except even smaller, since each PBEM turn transfers map data.

It makes panthers much better, though

Maybe a bit off topic... But does anyone find that front turret hits are much rarer than front hull hits, when compared to CMAK?

I played online, and you can not pause it in the demo. It's weird though, because it'll often freeze, and the words "PAUSED, waiting for network traffic" will appear on the screen. So the game CLEARLY has the ability to pause. They just don't want you to.

How about you buy a PC? That would solve everything. Edit: Actually, join the Steam group. Look for a Battle for Normandy one.

Well, I'm going to the beer store right now. If you're in the chat channel on the Battlefront tool bar in 2 hours, then I'll have a ip game with you. Although, I have a PC, so I'm not certain if they are compatible.

Yes, we find it odd. I'm in The Blitz Hamachi. Google and download hamachi, and join me. When my download of the demo finishes in 3 hours, I'll game with you.

It's going to be impossible to play like that... I think you'll realize that you're being silly half way through your first game.

While we wait, why don't we all play CMAK and CMBB? Nobody but me is on The Blitz's Hamachi channel

Oh, and in the VAAR the crew bail out of their tank and clobbered a squad with their pistols. When crews bail, are they auto-pinned and often panicing or routing, like CMAK? Or are they often as strong as the VAAR showed? *never mind, this is a pointless question. I don't know how to delete it.

hahahah, exactly. I mean, I don't even like going outside. If you think about it, it's always a nice day inside.

While we're on the topic of censorship and violence, let's see some other games that my 16 year old cousin and I are playing: *turn down your speakers for the last one.

Nobody likes Mac's. Begone, Muggle.

Only ever played CMx1... So how would a battle ever end in modern combat mission, if both players managed to avoid heavy squad casualties??? Are there lots of stale-mates? I'm finishing off a CMAK game where everyone in two of my companies is dead, so I'm sending the Company HQ's to the front.

"Engaged in combat all day" is the BEST status update ever. I'm gonna go post that to Facebook.

I'm fairly sure Campaigns are different from Operations. So in Campaigns, damage is not preserved. Also, I'm fairly sure that they don't have operations in the CM1 sense. I'm guessing here, but I think you can simulate an operation by manually making the next battle map be an extension of the previous map.

How realistic is it to be able to precisely guide air strikes?

That would be an incredibly minute detail... Their time is better spent doing other things, like implementing flamethrowers.