Rafter11

Michael is right, the force adjustment appears to be applied to the attacker forces. On a tiny battle with a plus 150% attacker force adjustment I get a battalion. If I use minus 60% I get a reinforced platoon. Here is another oddity I don't understand. I have been choosing US Attacker and then selecting infantry only. For some reason I seem to have a high probability of getting dismounted armored infantry formations.

Ah, the issue is in the Force Adjustment. A no change setting gets me a US rifle company vs a German reinforced platoon. A force adjustment setting of minus 60% gets me down to a reinforced US platoon.

Yes I have set both force and map size to tiny

When I try to setup a Tiny QB with automatic forces selections, I keep getting a whole US Battalion. What am I doing wrong?

CMBN crashes after a few minutes into a saved game. Am I doing something wrong?

You can adjust fire by sound. It is less accurate and more dangerous. But when you can't see 20 meters because of the forest, you have to. The BN S-3 is supposed to know where all the good guys are. We could not fire a mission without his approval initials. So someone was making sure you weren't starting a friendly fire incident. Let's take the nightly TRPs for example, When I was an FO, the rifle platoon leader would come to me each evening when we were setting up camp and say, "I think we are here and I want DTs (TRPs) fired in here and here and here around the perimeter. First, you plotted them on your map and wrote down the grid coordinates. Since they were DTs, their locations could not be sent in the clear, they had to be encoded first. I then called in the coded grids for our location and the DTs to FDC. They decoded them and got S-3 Clearance initials, plotted the first DT and sent the data to the number 2 gun. When the adjusting round was fired, FDC called me and said "Shot Out on your DTxxx, time of flight 36 seconds". Just before the round landed they called me and said "Splash 05". Because I had plotted the DT on my map and I knew my location (sort of), I could connect the dots and get an OT line (Observer-Target) and compass bearing from the map. While the shot was in the air, I would turn my body w/compass so I was looking right down the OT line and make sure my head was centered on my body. When the round impacted I could tell by sound if it was right or left of the target line. I had to guess the range and call in the correction. I was surprised how close we could get to the spot.

If those are my choices, I would pick "just right". I think they have done a pretty good job mixing realism with gameplay. For instance, CMBN has simplified and shortcut some of the FO tasks with respect to the TRPs. In real life, each TRP would have to be fired in and the firing data retained for future use. But who among us wants to spend all that time in a game setup. The one complaint I have with the on board mortars is my inability to load a Duece and a Half with extra mortar ammo and drive it around behind the mortar section.

Great Question! Keep in mind that a WWII era Mortar was an area weapon. The short answer to your question is Yes, I think CMBN is fairly realistic on this matter and Yes a linear mission could be complicated. In the triple canope jungle mountains of Northern South Vietnam, nothing was square or linear, so I never once actually did a linear fire mission on purpose. We did learn to fire them at the Infantry School in Ft. Benning. That said, when I laid in my three tube section, I made my impacts linear. The mortar tubes were numbered 1,2, and 3. from right to left. First I fired in the center tube, which was #2. Then we adjusted the 3 tube to impact 20 meters to the left of 2 and adjusted 1 tube to impact 20 meters to the right of 2 tube. Once we had that done, the slip scales on all three sights were set to the FDC/tube 2 firing data. If my line of mortars was running North and South and I was firing to the West during section lay in, I could expect a North/South linear impact pattern when engaging a target to my general West. If the target was not located to my West or if the FO would have ever wanted a linear orientation other than North/South, the FDC had to plot each tube's data seperately. That would make things complicated and slower. Since I would do all the Adjust Fire shots with the #2 tube, I would expect the most variance in the initial rounds fired from tubes 1 and 3. I am going to run a CMBN linear mission and pay attention to what happens with the right side and left side initial impacts. I don't know much about 105s, however I heard one very well sourced story about a Marine FO protecting his escaping recon unit with a moving box of four sided linear missions fired from four different arty units. It is my understanding from reading WWII history that the Arty really put their pre-war time to good use and developed some amazing capabilities.

One point to consider is that the killing radius of a Vietnam era 81 round was 35 meters. A first correction of right 50 meters-add 50 meters for a first round was very rare. A more normal first round correction would be something like right 200 add 150. At the other extreme, if the correction ever came back around 500 meters, everybody involved would go, "whoa, something is not right". So to think you could do some good with a blind fire on a gird square is, in my humble opinion, unrealistic.

I was in the 101st and we had the airborne baseplate. It was lighter and smaller than the standard baseplate. I am going to guess it was 2.5 feet across. It has been 40 years, memories fade.

Well if the mortar crew can see the target, they can be pretty quick. No need for aiming circles or aiming sticks. If it was me, I would use the first round to set the baseplate. There is a card in each ammo box with recomended charges/tube elevations for range. 30 sec would be pretty quick for amatures. Veteran troops, maybe so.

I ran an 81mm mortar section in Vietnam for 10 months. I believe our equipment was similar to the WWII stuff. Here is the deal on grid fire. When the mortar section is first located it must be "laid in", the gun base plates are settled, the aiming stakes are put out and the tubes are individually fired in to hit known spots. The slip scales on the sights are moved to agree with the FDC plotting board. The plotting board in FDC was grease pencil marked with grid lines. In an actual fire mission the FO could call in a grid coordinate as a target along with the FO-Target magnetic compass direction. FDC marked the mortar location and the target location on the grid board. They then produced the tube sight data which was sent to the guns. The reason you needed an FO to adjust the fire was because the first round usually wasn't on target. Why, because each time the guns had been fired since initial section lay, the base plates would usually move slightly. This fact screwed up the aiming stake-mortar-sight geometery and would produce a small error that grew until the section was re-laid. Other variables like humidity and ammo variables could make things worse. So the FO watched or listened to the first round and called FDC with corrections. By rotating the plotting board wheel to the FO-Target direction as corrections came in, FDC could view the problem from the FOs perspective. They then marked the correction with a grease pencil on plotting board, rotated the plotting wheel back to grid North and sent new sight data to the guns. Once a round was on target the FO called for "Fire for Effect". And good things happend.

If my memory serves me correctly, Danger Close for a Vietnam Era 105mm was 1000 meters. I know it was 400 meters for an 81mm Mortar. I can't remember the number for a 155. In any event, 250 meters is too too close to a 155 round impact when you are in the open.

Steve, Print size is a big deal for us aging Vets. The first thing I did after getting CMBN was to get an EZ PDF app for my Nookcolor and move the Game Manual PDF over to my Nook. It works great. I am hoping that you will update the PDF version of your FM 21-200 as things change with time. It could be posted somewhere on your website. I find the Editor program pretty intimidating and hope you could also do a simple tutorial in PDF format. Thanks for all your hard work and the great game you folks have produced.

Buying one small platoon for a QB took a little time at first to figure out, but I am fine with it now. Battlefront, you have a great game here, the more time I spend playing, the more fun I am having.

I ran into the same problem the HQ support had a radio, but my forward HQs were out of contact with the mortars. My solution was to move the jeep with a radio next to the mortars and things worked.

I have been playing these games since CMBO. All I can say is WOW!. This is the best yet. I am amazed at how well the troops respond to commands. I find it is often not necessary to micro manage. In Devon 3 the assault forces stay inside the trench and can be worked around the OBJ. In TF Raff 1 a move-platoon group command to the North Field sends the whole platoon down the road and through the correct gap in the hedge. What a deal. When something does not work for me, I usually find there is a reason. For instance, the mortars were out of contact in TF Raff mission first mission. What am I doing wrong? Oh, the platoon leaders don't have radios and the OP has lousy LOS. So I departed from the Game Manual and sent the mortars with the rifle platoons. Steve and All, Great Job!

I had the same problem. So I did an ALT T and got rid of the trees for a moment and found a couple of spots on the Base of Fire with "some" LOS to the OBJ. It worked for me and the mortar rounds landed on the trench line as planned. This is actually a great "Rifle Platoon in the Attack" training scenario. A little surprise on the way to the OBJ and all about fire superiority at the point of attack.

I found the QB unit selection system to be a little intimidating at first, but if you start the delete process from the bottom of the unit list and work up, it works pretty fast. I have gotten used to it. It would be nice to have a back button to take you back to the previous page

For what it is worth, I have never seen a 60 mortar in real life, so I can't answer about them. An 81 round is pretty darn explosive. I remember the killing radus to be 35 meters. Minimum range was 71 meters and we got shrap back on our own positions at that range. The shrap range on a hand grenade was farther than I could throw one, and they make a heck of a bang.

Snafu, Please tell your Son Thanks

Mortar range is controlled by tube elevation and the number of powder charge bags attached to the waist of the round. An Vietnam era 81 round came with 9 charge bags pre-attached and depending on the target range some or all of bags were removed before firing. The initiating shot gun shell in the base of the round was charge zero. If the round was fired with charge 5 or higher the noise was loud to LOUD. A charge zero round was just a "thunk" Since we used mortars mostly for close in defense about 50% of our fire missions were charge zero. The longer range targets presented problems for the mortars. As the range increased, the charge increased and the angle of the tube dropped. This combination resulted in dramatically increased sideways force on the baseplate. If the baseplate moved an inch the whole targeting math was compromised. The baseplates would have to be reset and the section fired in again. So, if possible, we tried to hand the longer range targets off to Arty. SSG D 1st Mortar Section, 2/501st INF

I can't seem to get my infantry to mount on a tank. I have tried split teams as small as three troops. What am I doing wrong?

FIRST AND FOREMOST, THIS IS A GREAT GAME. NICE JOB BFC. Being an former Infantry NCO, I am trying to figure out how to get a CMBN squad into an online assault formation. The existing Assault command initiates a fire and movement proceedure. It does not initiate the Online Assault formation I remember from my Ft. Benning and Vietnam days. So how do I get my guys up, online and shooting at the objective as they advance?

Nice Job Gang, CMBN Demo works great on my laptop with all controls and options wide open. Now I have to figure out how to play the game.