Wengart

Yes, I'm aware that they do not engaged buttoned tanks. My point is engaging unbuttoned tanks it tantamount to suicide currently. If my men had never fired they would all still be alive and hiding in houses and behind bocage. Everyone is telling me if an unbuttoned tank is rolling towards my men they would do well to button it, because they'll be in much more danger otherwise. However, in game this just doesn't play out. Infantry open up far too often from concealed positions where any number of tanks would not spot them had they not opened fire.

This isn't quite the black and white issue you make it sound like. Most maps have quite a bit of cover/concealement. This could be in the form of houses or better yet the ever present Bocage. I could have a platoon of infantry 75M, maybe closer, from an unbottuned Panther, and as long as they were behind Bocage not only are they proof from quite a bit of direct fire, but that Panther isn't going to be spotting them. now once those troops tried to peg the TC that's a different story, but until that time they're going to be quite safe. Hell they could stay there to ambush advancing infantry and then bug out the next turn, chances are they won't be too much worse off for the wear. Even a house will prevent them from being spotted, although it won't protect them from fire the same way Bocage would.

My point was if I set a cover arc at 100M and a tank rolled into the arc my infantry would fire upon it. Since my plan was to engage and then quickly fallback (most likely because of a preponderance of enemy indirect fire assets) I would be forced to give up the position with nothing to show for it. Ah, It's been quite sometime since I've played CMx1 (upwards of 3 or 4 years at this point. I don't ever recall my infantry giving away their positions to tanks. At least not enough for me to remember it.

Also does anyone know if the tacai can evaluate a situation before making a decision? I know that if they see 3 tanks, a halftrack, and 4 squads of infantry the tacai can prioritize targets and select proper weapons, but can a scout team of 2 men decide that shooting at the infantry right now would be a really bad idea?

It seems that we're throwing in a historical reality (infantry firing on TCs) without supplying the player other historically accurate options that effect this historically accurate action. Historically i'm sure that I could (as the company commander) lay out a plan to my platoon commanders who would then brief their subordinates and so on. In this way I could make sure that my infantry knew not to engage enemy armor because we have the field in front of them covered by a Tiger or something, or because they need to fire at enemy infantry for a bit before quickly falling back to a new postion. In CMx1 this was represented by covered arcs of different types (and iirc troops were much more reluctant to fire on exposed TCs) while in CM:BN we just have to hope that the Tiger shoots before the infantry decide to give away their position.

Just ran a quick test, 4 with infantry behind bocage, 4 with infantry in houses, and 1 with infantry in a house with a short cover arc. The infantry in Bocage were only engaged when there were multiple tanks observing them, and then they only suffered light wounds (yellow wounded). Infantry in houses where engaged and destroyed in all but one instance.l More to the point of this thread I think, is the instance where a squad of infantry were in a house surrounded by tanks. The closest being 130 meters away and the farthest being 200 meters away. They could move around freely within the house without being spotted, but as soon as I removed the cover arc they engaged the unbuttoned tanks around them, and were all killed. In all cases the tanks did not spot the infantry until the infantry began firing. End results: 1 TC casualty 32 infantry casualties Tried it again 1 TC casualty 26 infantry casualties

What exactly are a lot of TC casualties, and more importantly what are the infantry casualties in return? So far I've only confirmed 1 TC kill in my play time, although I could imagine it being slightly higher. But I've most certainly lost entire platoons engaging unbuttoned TCs. The alacrity at which infantry engages armor is more than a little absurd right now. I literally cannot leave my men without a restrictive cover arc if there is armor within 800+ meters of them. Edit: Even if troops were effectively engaging TCs is that even a good thing? Usually tanks work together, where there is one there are probably more, so an infantry squad that exposes itself to kill a TC would be subjected to HE eradication by the other tanks.

But how often was this advice followed? Commanders would have liked their riflemen to put fire down during an advance even if they didn't have a target, but did riflemen do this? No, because it made them a target. And without player set SOPs it severely limits your tactical options when the opponent has armor. What if I want my men to fire for 5-10 seconds on the advancing infantry before falling back to a new hedgerow? What if I have the terrain in front of them covered by AT guns or friendly armor? And on top of all of that the tacai in CM:BN can't judge the situation as a whole well enough. Sure if one tank rolls up buttoning him may be a good idea, but what if its a platoon of tanks? Button one and chances are the squad is as good as dead. And this may be only anecdotal, but as I've said I've lost upwards of 50 men to this action, and I've only confirmed a single TC kill. It's just not worth it. On infantry firing at buttoned tanks: I sometimes see troops continue to fire for a small duration after the tank buttons. This is usually at long range, so I just it was FOW in action.

I often see infantry firing at unbuttoned tanks. Even if they had an outside chance of hitting the TC its still an absurd thing to do. 30-40 Ton tank rolling towards your position, what do you do? Open up on the TC or hunker down and not get shot? I mean hell even if an HMG manages to peg the TC the end result will almost certainly be a lost position, lost surprise, and a better than average chance of a dead HMG team. Seriously I've probably lost upwards of 50 men in all my games combined to this stupid decision making, and I've only ever seen one TC go down this way.

Yes, more or less. Normally a American squad consists of three fireteams, and when you move the squad each fireteam will deploy in an adjacent action spot. So if the Xs are action spots the squad would look like this. XXX 444 with 4 men in each X But say 7 men are killed. 4 from one fireteam and 3 from another. When the squad moves now it will deploy like this. XX 14 One for each remaining fireteam, however one of the Xs contains only one man, while the other contains 4. It would be possible for a squad with 3 men left to be spread across 3 action spots. One man in each action spot. XXX 111

I'm talking about the same squad. Even if a squad takes heavy losses (only 2-3 guys left) the squad will still split into multiple action spots based on fireteam.

I've noticed that if a squad takes heavy casualties they will still retain their fireteam deployment across multiple action spots, even if a fireteam has only one man in it. In another example a German squad is down to 2 men (both basic riflemen), but they retain the fireteam deployment of two action spots. Is this just a limit of the engine, or is their a way to fold the surviving men into one team?

As AKD said there are abstracted benefits to being in cover. I think of it as a dice roll. You have a D6 and depending on the terrain number you need to roll to survive being hit is lowered. So in open grass you might need to roll a 6, while in rocky ground you may need a 4, 5, or 6. Disclaimer: I have only anecdotal evidence for the workings of abstracted cover, but thats how I think of it and I find its a useful way to understand the abstracted cover. AFAIK mortars burst upward and out when hitting the ground. So if the / and \ represented shrapnel there will be more of it the higher a particular space is from the ground. So its often quite possible to survive a nearby hit while prone, because there is less shrapnel directly at ground level immediately around the blast. While standing up means that you are more likely to be hit by shrapnel. ..\\\\\\\ /////// .......\\\\ //// ______\\//________________ In other words, its often best just to keep prone and hope a round doesn't land close if the barrage is heavy.

The 3 second collision pause vehicles have seems to be triggering when they are a good 5 meters apart. This makes moving in any type of column slow and painful, and really slows down movement through bocage. Anyone else notice this/is BFC aware of it?

If you want even more faces you can also set these for the Americans and set the original German to the American faces and vice versa. Although I didn't use the two guys with eye wounds for the Americans as I felt they would be more likely transferred out than the Germans troops. All together I now have 40+ faces for each side.

If you allowed players to buy by the the platoon you would probably end up with a single Company Commander commanding 5+ platoons in a match. Thereby saving all the "overhead costs" of a second or even third company.

Using the face command prevents this from happening. Not sure what they are talking about. Intelligently concentrating your forces is bread and butter attackers strategy, but making a giant blob and running at the enemy will also end up getting a lot of your men killed. This is an actual issue. I The hedges they are talking about are actually bocage.

Anyone up for a tiny QB with Standard rarity?

Any word from BFC on this yet? I just lost an entire platoon in a QB because they were a little optimistic in their ability to peg TCs.

I played CM:SF real-time, but I just can't bring myself to play CM:BN real-time. There's something about the pace of CM:BN that makes real-time seem unnatural.

I also did some tests using green rifle platoons and a few with 2 HMGs instead of one. In general all that happened was a higher casualty rate and slight bogging of the attack (maybe a minute tops in most cases) the HMG teams were still overrun. Just finished my first Rifle Company sans Weapons PLt. vs. pioneer plt. + HMG42 test. US Army 77 OK 21 KIA 27 WIA Germans 4 OK 26 KIA 10 WIA The HMG, due to poor placement in a crater by myself, ended up getting only two kills, both from the German rifle squad situated to its front.

I did one test with the M1917 which ended miserably. I think the HMG team got 4 kills the the MG and 5 kills with rifles, and 2 of the 4 mg kills were made while the Grenadier Plt. was entering its trench. I definitely think suppression needs a look at, or possibly morale recovery. I consistently had 5-8 man remnants of a platoon take orders and overrun elite experience HMG crews. Anyway I'm setting up a Rifle Company attack over open ground on a single defending platoon+HMG in cover. Is there specific information I should be looking for?

One thing that stood out to me in my tests was the ability for an Elite HMG42 team to be overrun by infantry platoons that had suffered 23-25 casualties. This means that there were anywhere from 5-7 men left. Also, probably my final stats update.

The numbers are the number of enemy killed at that range so a 1 by the 600 meter mark would mean one American was killed between 600-699 meters. Result: Destroyed is what happened to the HMG team. ---> represents when the HMGs small arms component began to fire. DNE did not engage

Just finished, TRPs help out regular crews quite a bit while veteran and elite crews do not benefit much, or at all from them. Using target area on places the American platoon is running through results in more kills for a regular crew, however they lack the kill rate jump when small arms joins in and the 0-99 meter range netted them no kills. Once again all HMG teams were destroyed. It seems that if the HMG is unable to break them the platoon will overrun their position while if the HMG is able to break them the broken squads will set up a base of fire which proves devastating to the HMG team.