A Canadian Cat

What was it that left all those marks?

The big advantage of dismounting or having guys on foot is actually hearing the enemy. So do the dismounted crew crawling to the crest of the hill followed by a peek and scoot with another AC and then the dismounted crew can hear any AT gun that might fire.

Also that command is disabled when the vehicle has any movement orders.

Let the fun begin!

Yeah it was a solid wall and I rushed across the open but the smoke screen lasted for longer than expected. My men could have walked 25lbr smoke screen. Four guns, I forget how many rounds. Yes those JadPanthers are awful to deal with. Especially when they can position themselves to protect their flanks.

OK - I'll use it for some experimentation of my own then - secret topic :-)

Lol. Pretty much. Sorry I have no experience with filemaker. When I do something like this I use MySQL or derby and create a Java front end. That gets the data in then I would use an off the self database explorer and writ SQL queries to explore the data. Or use mssql express for the database and write a C# front end. As for the database design I'm not super experienced. I have several experts that I discuss ideas with. In my professional life dedicated people design the database. But I have done a couple of simple db designs. My thoughts on this would be to create an ammo usage table that had colums for all the ammo types. Then create a unit type table that tells you which ammo is used by that unit type. Then when you create a data usage entry you can link to the ammo carry table with the ammo usage entry. That actually would not be great for exploring the data with a generic query writer since you would need to write a separate query for each unit type to avoid a lot of uninteresting zeros. But that is still possible. Anyway those are my thoughts for what they are worth.

Roger that, it's not a real fight.

Is this it? http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-fortress-italy/cm-fortress-italy-add-ons-maps/cmfi-ortona-city-map/ That listing does not say it is from Ben but it is an Ortona map

I just made new posts on my rather feeble AAR for the T4 East battle: The situation is not great - and not much time left on the clock....

Current Situation At location 3: 4 Coy is in good order along with the remaining three tanks of 3 Troop (flame thrower and mine clearing tank are also operational). They have a partial smoke screen laid down and have forced JadPanther A to pull back to a location where it no longer commands the entire open area in front of location 3. However that can change quickly and there is only 11 minutes on the clock. At location 6: 23rd Engineers are going to be able to clear the woods and perhaps make the assault into town. But JadPanther B can operate without any real opposition and spoil their plans if they are unable to make it into the town. Overall: The assault is heading to be a failure. At this point the 4 Coy and 3 Troop could withdraw without significant further losses 23rd Field engineers would take losses if they withdraw but it is possible. Continuing the assault will result in the clock running out without the objectives being attained and unknown losses.

Location 4 The 23rd Field engineers and the 2IG recce group crossed the river without incident. Figure 12 Crossing Figure 15 Arrived Location 5 Once they arrived at location 5, 23rd Engineers came under mortar fire in the woods and had to withdraw and wait out the barrage before moving back. At the same time their supporting tanks suffered the loss of the lead vehicle to JadPanther B. The tanks had to hold back. Figure 19 Barrage landing on 23rd Engineers Figure 20 JadPanther takes out a Stuart The initial attempt to cross the open to location 6 failed also because of the JadPanther B and its supporting MG teams. In order to force the crossing a major smoke screen was placed blocking JadPanther B’s LOS to the crossing area. Figure 73 Running the open Figure 82 Did not end well Location 6 Using the smoke screen 23rd Field Engineers made it to location 6 along with 2IG’s recon tanks. They were tired after making the run and have since recovered and begun moving along the woods keeping away from JadPanther B. Figure 126 Cover of smoke Figure 158 Moving up

Update This battle has been progressing but not going very well for me. There is now 11minutes left and my forces are still pinned in the woods and unable to deal with the JadPanthers facing them. Here is an update on how the battle has gone to bring everyone up to speed. Figure 160: Battle so Far Location 1 Scouts from 4 Coy and 3 troop spot a JadPanther at location A covering their main advance. Air support is called in – no effect. Artillery is called – no effect. During this time 4 Coy and 3 troop form up in the woods near location 2. Using the woods to shield their location. Several tanks become immobilized in the woods. Figure 22 Moving up covered by the woods Figure 25 First air strikes Figure 38 The hold up Location 2 4 Coy and 3 Troop made it to the woods fairly safely and were then hit by a very large artillery barrage – rockets I believe. They were forced to withdraw and return later. Casualties were not too bad overall but one platoon was depleted significantly. Figure 40 The Barrage Figure 41 Lead platoon Figure 56 The lucky ones Once the barrage ended they moved back up and the FO tried again to call air strike on the JadPanther A – no effect. Artillery next – also no effect. Location 3 Since the JadPanther A has not been dealt with 4 Coy and 3 Troop used the woods to mask their approach and closed the distance. Another artillery strike and direct fire from 3 Troop did force the undamaged JadPanther A to pull back. This resulted in the loss of one Sherman to enemy fire and another Sherman became immobilized in the woods. Figure 111 JadPanther A holding up the works Figure 153 Dueling Figure 156 Pushed back by artillery and direct fire

Sure, fire it up and send it to our drop box folder. It will be slower this way but I'm game. It is a long weekend up here and I am taking a few extra days off work but I'll be unable to play for two days or so in the next five.

You can test PBEM yourself. Here is what I do: put the name 'test' in the battle name, create a batch file that moves the outgoing email file into your incoming email folder (only for turn files with 'test' in the name). Then when you play a turn you run your script and it moves all test PBEM files for you to play the other side's turn for. Rinse and repeat. I'm at work so I do not have access to the actual script - I'll post a link later if you like.

Yes, I was very pleased with their performance! Ditch the covered arc! And by all means in low visibility stations like this you might as well fire on the sound contacts. If visibility is good this it is less clear if you want to revel your location early but with crappy visibility you want to start firing early. Think of covered arc this way - they are used to *prevent* your guys from shooting. So, if you have a place where you do not want your men to shoot use a covered arc to exclude that area. What?, you say, why would I want my men to now shoot? Exactly! Don't get me wrong they have their uses - prevent HQs, FOs and scouts from firing and exposing them selves. And in the odd specialty case where you want to turn the turret of a AFV while it is on the move (even then remember arcs are for preventing engagement so you really want to use a 180 deree arc). Correct, Correct and Correct. The crossed the bridge and crawled to just below the crest of the hill so they would not come under fire from the farm and have a look at what was in the field next to the road. That had them popup outside of your cover arc right next to your guys. There is something we all learned recently, in part thanks to @MOS:96B2P and his testing, that the visibility in the game is much better for us players than it is for the pixel troops on the ground. So while we look at the screen and think - they can see the bridge area no problem, they actually cannot see it very well. The LOS tool is more like a "could potentially see something" tool as well. This applies to good visibility as well of course it is just that in good clear conditions units usually have no trouble spotting something there fairly quickly. But in available darkness that get trickier. Even though they could see something there they can miss things and it will take longer to spot soemthing. The take away from that other thread was that fog, snow, rain, mist and darkness are significantly under represented by the game visually to us. This by design since it would be very hard to play if we could only see 40 or 20m out with the game camera. The downside is we do not have a good picture of the true visibility. And the LOS tool is showing the optimistic LOS distance too (which again makes some sense because you would not want to be moving where you think you cannot be seen only to find out your opponent can see your guys). It has been suggested that the game actually do this on a toggle - like for example smoke. If you get down to troop level in smoke you can quickly see that your guys will see nearly nothing but trying to actually navigate orders with smoke in is very challenging so you need to turn the smoke on and off. @c3k has a good overall view of this situation IMHO.

I don't think we have played that many times but half a dozen anyway. Yep, those guys did some good. The are even less robust than BMPs though. But yeah missiles took out T64s Yeah, getting to the bottom of why they choose to fire and why they don't will defiantly help. Good luck. Hopefully between everyone here we can figure it out.

Those BMP's had missiles? I had no idea

Cool. I'll have to try this out.

Oh cool. Usually people want uber LOS information and there is a steady stream of people wanting more information about LOS. I like your idea actually. A new Titanium game play mode?

Play at the basic training difficulty level with top notch FOs, artillery and TRPs? I have no idea how to get call times at 30s the fastest I have ever seen is 2min for indirect fire (that was Elite or Iron with veteran FO 81mm mortars and a TRP - IIRC). What effects call times? Here is a list of what I think does (note not including skill level here since that is a decidedly artificial way to influence call times): Skill level of the caller Presence of a TRP LOS of the caller on the call area (this will not effect the time to the first spotting rounds and does not apply if using a TRP, otherwise, the spotting cycle can be quite long if LOS to call are is spotty for the caller) One more that might make a difference but I have never actually tested this: Skill level of the battery? Is there anything else?

When I started reading your post I was thinking - "he's nuts this is not a FPS game there is no way it would be a good thing" Then I kept reading. Yeah that would be really cool. I could play the game that way very likely. Neat.

@mjkerner Surprised me as well. @Bootie here is the link I found when I searched for it after someone mentioned it here (sorry I cannot remember who it was): http://www.howtogeek.com/219947/how-to-record-pc-gameplay-with-windows-10’s-game-dvr-and-game-bar/

I have not done any map work since Lanzerath ridge map I used in my CMFB scenario. The only scenario work on the go right now may never actually get done I like to play too much

Brilliant stuff as usual. Great story!