nik mond

... And ball bearings. Lots and lots of ball bearings.

... And ball bearings. Lots and lots of ball bearings.

Grenade attacks on tanks are very effective in this game. The grenades represent an inclusion of RPG, gammon bombs, stick bundles in the mix in which case its possible to disable a tank, or KO. Although anti personnel frags shouldn't do anything to a tank that's buttoned. It often comes down to last tank standing. But they still have to keep their distance from infantry to stay alive. Its difficult to maneuver suicidal infantry attacks on a tank but there are ways with a little distraction and luck.

I just did a test, ordered my bog standard CMRT Russian infantry to close assault a Stug III. Lo and behold, one of them tosses an RPG 43 at the tank and knock it out! Apparently RPG 43 is listed generically among 'grenades' in the weapons menu.
 

I like it. reminds me of those war docs from the 70's. The cut scene photos are a nice touch. Looking forward to see how you make out.

Grenade attacks on tanks are very effective in this game. The grenades represent an inclusion of RPG, gammon bombs, stick bundles in the mix in which case its possible to disable a tank, or KO. Although anti personnel frags shouldn't do anything to a tank that's buttoned. It often comes down to last tank standing. But they still have to keep their distance from infantry to stay alive. Its difficult to maneuver suicidal infantry attacks on a tank but there are ways with a little distraction and luck.

Just a warning when using the assault command. The AI will allow the teams within the squad to move independently of each other. However, because they are still part of a single squad they share state. This means that the moving element, if pinned, can then cause the static element (who should be engaging the enemy) to become pinned.

It makes assault pretty useless when you really want it to work as suddenly the ~five guys you expect to cover the maneuver element decide that they too are taking fire. Splitting teams splits the state of each team. Meaning that your overwatch element will not become pinned by the maneuver element being fired on.

Ah, the details ...... .  First to define scouts.  Game mechanic definition: Scouts are obtained by the administrative command split for scouts that split off a two man rifle team or the three man purchase screen of scouts that generally have three dudes with SMGs. 
These above defined "scouts" generally have lighter equipment than the remainder of their squad.  The rest of the squad has LMGs, AT weapons, etc. that they are the prime movers for.  So the difference in equipment carried may have resulted in different fatigue states.  That would be my first guess. 
Below are some notes I have that I thought you might find interesting.  Most of the below notes came from some experiments run by @Josey Wales who looking at the four soft factors (Experience, Fitness, Motivation & Leadership). 
Fatigue states best to worst are;
Rested > Ready > Tiring > Tired > Fatigued > Exhausted
Keeping troops stationary recovers their fatigue relatively quickly. Hiding troops has no additional benefit.
Troops will recover fatigue whilst at the Move but it is at a slower rate.
Experience, Leadership and Motivation do not effect Fatigue states or recovery times.
Fatigue has no effect on Morale either persistent or temporary.
Fatigue has no effect on accuracy nor the range at which targets are engaged at. 
Fatigue will affect your movement options:
Tired troops cannot Fast Move.
Fatigued troops cannot Fast, Assault or Hunt Move.
Exhausted troops cannot Fast, Assault, Hunt or Quick Move.
 

Making a movie is not built in to Combat Mission. 
You need some third party video capture software. You turn off all the stuff you don't want to see, such as unit icons. You replay each turn several times as you capture the pieces of video you want. You save those small video snippets in files organized so that you can easily find them again. Then you need more third party software to assemble the clips into a movie, add text or voice, special effects, title, credits, etc. Playing Combat Mission is a hobby.  Making Combat Mission videos is a whole separate hobby.

All right, time for another behind the curtain view of what is going on and what I hope to do about it. 
The mortar and 88 fire on the crew and accompanying infantry that maybe was next to the Sherman the 88 killed gets clobbered. There were more crosses at various points but this was quite satisfying:

 
 

Terrain readability is crucial for assessment of and ease of planning for tactical options. Readable height differences can reveal a slight slope that could shelter your movement or be the cause of your troop’s deaths. Furthermore, the nature of a hills slope, convex or concave can to make or break your defense. Without getting down to ground level for all movements and positions the player is blind. To make the map convey information from the birds eye view several changes are proposed: first and principally, hill shading; secondly togglable contours, and lastly and not too important Hypsometric tints. This will go into what those things are, why it would be needed and why it should be considered for development.
Hill shading. 
Both relief shading as well as shadows rendered. The reason to do this is quite apparent, no gully or ridges missed- I can pull out a pen and start planning operations right away! Now the picture is something I made Blender and if this where to make it into Combat Mission it would look like the examples bellow. Not only can you see generates good looking shading on the fly but the code is also provided. Implementing it in combat mission could be a worth while instatement as it provides great benefit too relatively little cost, code is provided and something similar is down with clouds in the game at the moment.
Example: https://observablehq.com/@awoodruff/diy-hillshade   
Code: https://observablehq.com/@sahilchinoy/a-faster-hillshader
 
Togglable contours.
Have a button that turns on/off a contour overlay. Contours are at regular height interval with thicker index lines at a larger easily referenced variable. For example, every 25 meters and 150 meters for each respectively. This is to more easily show exact terrain shape in a easy and accurate manner. This though harder to implement.
Hypsometric tints.
A shader that tints ground texture to have gradient darker green to light yellow based on their evaluation. Hypsometric tints make subtle grades visible and provide a non-intrusive way to discriminate evaluations of different locations. Is this that ridge taller or shorter than this one?
 

A PIAT assistant without a tube will share rounds with another PIAT team in its near vicinity. I recently had an orphaned assistant move next to an empty tube guy and they had a reeses moment.

Minute 0:48-0:47:
First shot seems to hit the bunker on the plateau near KT5. That is good news but it is the last...

 
The tank is hit and destroyed.

 
A few moments later someone spots why. Yikes. I wish my men had seen that before it fired.

 
Meanwhile the barrage I feared was aimed at KT3 or my men in the woods along the hill turns out to be aimed at the treeline in front of them. My guess is the enemy is trying to block my advance.

 
Meanwhile the barrage falling on A Co in the woods near the village continues, as do the casualties.

 
Minute 0:47: Orders
First things first what can I use to fire on that newly spotted AT gun. It turns out the scout team near the tank has a 2in mortar. It's not much but lets get them firing.

 
Now that we know the men of B Co are not under the barrage I send them back into the woods. They will position themselves in defilade again. Here is a shot of the orders for the FO to get back to KT3.

 
Some of 2nd platoon A Co are able to take orders – get out of the barrage.

 

Minute 0:49-0:48:
2nd Platoon's transport cannot get it into gear fast enough and a round lands right next to their trucks. Both trucks are disabled and a roughly 10 men become casualties right away.

 
As they try to take cover more shells land. They take more casualties.

 
Everyone else pulls back successfully.

 
Including across the fords. I think this is a result of the enemy using TRPs. They clearly have one near the woods opposite the town but do not have them in the woods on the hill at KT3. So B company can with draw once spotting rounds are seen but A Co just do not have the time to get away.

 
Speaking of spotting rounds two more land. This is a composite image showing them bracketing the bunker at KT3 (the first at 20s into the turn and the second at 55s). So it looks like they are not targeting the woods where my men are but are targeting the hill top where my FO is heading. Oops. I sincerely hope that the enemy FO cannot see the spotting round #2 in below and that will delay fire for effect just a little longer.

 

Haha I didn’t even think of it that way. Thanks, mate, appreciated.

Minute 0:49: Orders
A Co and its supporting tanks pull back. All vehicles reverse away. The lead section of 3 Platoon will actually go forward out of the barrage and the mortar team will head for the barn. No one else is taking instructions.

 
Given the spotting rounds the scouts on the hills near KT3 also pull back.

 
Whit the exception of a tank that will move up to try to get LOF on the newly spotted bunker.

 
I check that the tank can do that without taking fire from known positions in the town. Here is how: set camera position 2 scroll wheel two notches down (bun barrel level for a Sherman) and position the camera just at the end of its move order....

 
...then click away to deselect and zoom in on where the Stug in town is located. I cannot see it.

 
Just for fun I check to see how much further the tank could move before being in danger. About 50m NW

 

That is still in there. "Come back you coward." If I'm not mistaken it is heard when surrendering troops are rallied

Don't worry, Ian does a mean Chico Buarque impersonation. You will be convinced. His Tony Montana is pretty good too but that's for the next module chu cockaroach. 

Don't worry, Ian does a mean Chico Buarque impersonation. You will be convinced. His Tony Montana is pretty good too but that's for the next module chu cockaroach. 

In the "In the Shadow of the Hill" scenarios (4 separate scenarios) I cover a Brigade attack, with the map based on google earth and period maps and the forces at play are as accurate to reality as the game will allow. This shows how the forces were made up based on AAR documents and in all cases the various battalions attacked with only two companies up and with armour and artillery support. 
If you look at the scenarios in detail you will get a good idea of the tasks allocated to the three battalions (4th Dorset's, 5th Dorset, and 7th Hampshire's)
mission 1 & 2:  C & D Co 5th Dorset's, plus supporting arms (armour and artillery) are tasked to capture two farm complexes
mission 3 : A & B Co 4th Dorset's, plus support are tasked to capture a small village.
mission 4: A & B Co 7th Hamp's are tasked to capture a further village.
As shown below each action allowed the next to take place, allowing the Bde to move forward in bounds as it secured it's objectives in turn. Each battalion had roles within the Bde plan, while each company had a role in it's respective battalions plan, (and each platoon within each co and so on)

The master map for these scenarios is 1.6k wide by 4k deep, with the first three missions seeing the forces needing to cover 1.6-2k, with a similar distance covered in mission 4 albeit the start line for the advance is 2k deep into the master map. 
These missions are very histrionically accurate in terms of the terrain and British forces involved, and so give some insight into what was asked of the actual units on 10th July 1944
P

War Diaries are always a good place to start. The link below takes you to the 2nd Battalion, Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry's War Diary. Have a look at the account and Annexes of the battle for Manneville La Raoult on 25-26 August 1944.
http://www.pegasusarchive.org/normandy/war_2ndOxBucks.htm
Here is the contemporary 1:100,000 scale map to help you follow it:

The Easting part of the Grid References are not on the image. To help you, the first Easting you can see is the 60 Easting, then 61 Easting, then 62 Easting, then 63 Easting.
The 13 Northing is shown, so the one below is the 12 Northing
Here is a 1950s Aerial Photograph of the same area:

In fact, I do not need CM3. I will be more than happy with just few enhancements :
1. Ability to split squads inside vehicule to dismount only the needed team.
2. Ability to keep damage on a map like the old Operation of CM1 (a modern urban battle could be splitted In several scenario on the same map)
3. In the editor, increase the number of AI groups - 32 instead of 16 (to allow more flexibility)
4. In the editor, increase the number of Terrain objectives - 30 instead of 15 (to add more AI triggers)
5. In the editor, allow Setup of AI group to be linked to an AI trigger (to add an AI group on the map depending on the location of the other side not only of a time period)
6. In the editor, allow more control of AI indirect fire missions (duration, smoke or normal rounds, initiated by AI triggers)
7. Add more default flavor objects
 
But, if one would like a wish for CM3, introduce machine learning for AI so that it can learn battle after battle the best way to defeat you (both for StratAI and TacAI).

Made this guy for you today. Took quite awhile!
 

 
He ended up being a much different style than the first guy so I whipped up this dude to get a bit closer to the same art. Isn't perfect but fits better than the first one.
 

 
This is how I arrived at him.
 

 
 
 
Mord.

I had remarkable opportunity to talk to a Lancaster navigator many years ago. For them spotlights were a real threat as they were tied into the sighting and plotting of the flak. If a Lancaster got lit up they immediately changed course and altitude. I mention this after watching wicky's video link above where it was not a factor for American crews on daylight raids.
Digressing further, but this gentleman showed my father and I has flight logs, he would flip to a couple entries and well some pretty hairy stories.