A Canadian Cat

Minute 25: Orders - continued Meanwhile 2nd squad moves up to protect the others. They have speculative fire on other possible enemy positions in front of the woods. Figure 71 Reserve moves up to help The mortar team did not reach their destination last turn so they have work still to do. Figure 72 Mortars just a little further

Minute 25: Orders Tank will fire on the ambush team. The target order is to just behind the bocage. When you target troops behind cover you should: 1) target them if they are spotted, 2) area target behind the bocage and 3) target the bocage in front of them. Figure 62 Tank to return fire Sometimes it takes a bit of fiddling to find the spots you can target behind the bocage but it is time worth spending. More rounds will go through the bocage and HE will more often explode on the enemy’s side of the bocage. Figure 63 Tank aims behind bocage The men on the right side of the road cannot see the place the shots are coming from. Figure 64 Right road side cannot see shooter The men on the left side of the road can see the location of the ambush team and they return fire. Again aiming behind the bocage. Figure 65 Left road side can Figure 66 Again aim behind bocage The left flank MG joins in too. Their LOF does not extend all the way to where the ambush team is but they can fire along a trajectory that should cause some bullets to go their way. Figure 67 MG on left joins in Over in the woods the orders are to fire on the known enemy locations. 3rd squad on the left of the woods fires on the enemy in the centre. Figure 68 Left woods fire plan 1st squad on the right fires at the enemy on the right and those fleeing. With the MG joining in. Figure 69 Right woods fire plan Figure 70 MG joins in

Minute 26-25: Members of 1st Platoon take more fire in the woods. At least they can see who is shooting at them. Figure 57 Taking fire on the left side of the woods Just a little further away other members of their squad have no idea where the incoming fire is coming from. Figure 58 Taking fire from a head On the right side of the woods 1st platoon continues to exchange fire with the Germans in the fox hole. Some of the Germans flee but some return fire from their position. Figure 59 The view of the foxholes Over by the road the Germans have an excellent position to shoot down the road. It is like shooting fish in a barrel for them. Figure 60 Shooting fish in a barrel In the barrel things are not great many teams are pinned and a casualty is taken. The good news is the tank is now in position to return fire. These guys are some nasty fish. Figure 61 In the barrel

Fingers crossed for them then

Did you expect different Javelin behaviour? Just checking. I do not see that much difference in the ability of precision rounds to take out enemy vehicles. I always used three rounds at a time any way. Using three precision rounds still pretty much guarantees a mission kill just like before. And M1s can still kill anything even without APS - they are just more vulnerable to other threats.

I have been noticing that manned guns do not have tell you when they are setting up. The activity string is supposed to show setting up but instead it just stays at spotting. So, far all has been well and after a time they setup. Just make sure they are done with any movement order and the Deploy Weapon is down in the special menu and they will setup. I think, I believe. I hope. I keep meaning to actually set this up and verify it so I can report it and I keep forgetting. Maybe this time...

Right my point exactly. You say certain - I say encouraging. Design (like the points on your list) is all fine and dandy and a prototype is even better but next you have to show that the prototype actually lives up to the design. Contractors of any type tend to say stuff with lots of confidence. Some of it turns out even to be true Quite true - if the lessons have been learned. Don't get me wrong it would be good to see if they have been. However if someone has a track record of behaving a certain way just because the *say* they have changed their ways does not mean they have. Hence the term track record. If they start actually executing on what they say then that's great. If the follow through repeatedly then I say they have earned a new track record. Right now we are at a point where the MoD *says* they will do better. Now we have to watch and see them *do* that.

Ah, you cannot say that at this point. OK you can "say" that but it is very far from certain - we really have no idea. OK, for sure there do seem to be improvements we can see (like better egress) and there are statements of the design goals that sound good (better crew protection). But none of that is a sure thing yet and no one knows if there are any design issues that we don't know yet. Which brings us too: Which is totally the right thing to do. Clearly just designing something and driving it around a test track and then putting into mass production is a bad idea. It is good to see that they will spend time really working with the vehicles to uncover any issues. Hopefully any issues will be small and tweak-able. I am sure this process is the right way to go. Which then makes this statement less strong: The issues is you are saying: Good design + Proving period = Much better results. I think it is more like Encouraging design + Proving period - Track record = Likely better results Then there is Steve's reasoning that looks more like: Encouraging design + Proving period - Track record - Cost and bad economy = Believe it when I see it results Most of the discussion here has been around is the new design "awesome" or "encouraging", is the track record "bad" or "fixed a long time ago" as well as is the economy a factor or not. In other words we are really arguing about degrees. And the bottom line is it will take that proving period to see how the design is and maybe by then the economic conditions will be different too.

Yeah I experience the same as you and the others posting here. Oh you think that statement is incongruous and strange? Then let me explain. 500m is close - really close. 500m is cannot miss close (OK not quite but hardly ever miss close) and not only that but everyone's AP rounds are still packing close to their maximum punch. If you are at knife fighting ranges with tanks then they *are* going to die with one hit most of the time and there are hardly going to be any misses too. Get those ranges up over 1500m and you will see a big difference. I am fighting various tank duels in The Passage right now at around 1600m and there are lots of misses, scratched paint and multiple its to kill. Just like the other posters are reporting.

LOL, it is a bit funny now (in a dark humor kind of way) but at the time I was really annoyed .

Why would anyone do that? You clearly are just angry and not interested in a discussion or information. So, why would any sane person engage you in a meaningful way? I probably should not bother to feed you this much.

Wow that is totally amazing. I never knew that was there. I just tried it in CMBN - excellent. It works in both the QB menu and the scenario editor. Plus for somethings such as the US Engineering battalion it will show up with a "vehicle pack" indicator but if you buy it you can got company by company and remove the flame thrower sections and the "vehicle pack" indicator will disappear.

There is no default hot key for target smoke.

Yes, it makes a big difference. I have not done extensive testing but I have witnessed a Panzer Shrek team take themselves out of the fight because I had them fire from a shed. This was in CMRT and the shrek team was inside on of those small long sheds. I saw them trying to take our a T34 and eventually becoming casualties. Naturally I tried to figure out where the enemy fire was coming from. My eventual conclusion was there was no enemy fire. The first round went out and the assistant went down and the gunner became suppressed. After the suppression wore off the gunner aimed and fired again and became a casualty. So, not a test just one example but I have never let a rocket AT weapon fire from in a small space again.

Oh yes and it has been brought up before a bunch of times. Lots of people would like to see it but BFC are reluctant because they feel that it would expose the game to crazy skill level shenanigans. I forget the full reasoning. One thing you can do is get your OK HQ team into another vehicle with a radio - such as a half track and then they can take command of the tank platoon again.

I have a fair number of games going at any one time and I have used both strategies. Having two versions of a game installed is pretty smooth really. The only issue is with Windows on titles other than CMBN. Those games share the Game Files directory and so you have to be careful and not open the older game files with the newer install. I have had very good luck but not 100% with upgrading. I would not hesitate doing it but I would have a plan to keep the older install around just in case.

Yes, do not forget the deploy command otherwise your mortar crew will just bang away with their rifles looking kinda goofy. It might be hard to see in the screenshot but there is a small clearing right in front of them so they should be ok firing. I would not have done it in the middle of woods. So they should set up at at the edge of the clearing and fire away.

That is very true.

You make a good point about the clock speed for sure. I would agree about not skimping on a GPU but CM does not need the very top of the line either. When I bought my GTX760 there were two cards in the line up that were faster which cost lots more $ and I do not believe they would have given me any better game experience in CM than what I have.

Definitely some randomness involved but really only for how fast things get spotted. If there is a good sight line eventually the other guy will get spotted. The randomness factors how long that takes not weather you will or will not spot the other guy.

The date and therefore the phase of the moon is modelled which changes the brightness. Just a possible explanation.

I think CM is CPU bound rather than GPU bound. Not that I am saying use a poor graphics card I am just saying that I think for CM you should trade the other way - get the second or third best video card and use that to get a faster CPU. Mind you I am very happy running the game with my machine which has an i5 CPU. I saved on not getting the top GPU and pocketed the savings and stayed with the i5 chip Not a laptop mind you but I play with the quality settings on Best and any sized scenario I care to: Core i5-4670, 3.4GHz GTX760 2GB Windows 7 16Gb memory SanDisk Ultra Plus 256Gb SSD drive Western Digital 1 Tb 7200rpm With all the problems AMD have with the OpenGL standard I would recommend you pick an nVida based card.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the May Scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMBN: MG Lonsdale's Block CMFI: GL The Keep of Majella The form post on theBlitz for sign up.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the May Scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMBN: MG Lonsdale's Block CMFI: GL The Keep of Majella The form post on theBlitz for sign up.

I think of them differently. Hit text notices are a visual indication that stuff happened to one a vehicle. If the red lines shows up then the stuff that happened is likely much worse than if there was no red text. What that means is that when you are watching part of the battle you can still monitor what is happening elsewhere. Then you know which vehicles to have a closer look at or, if you are playing WEGO, you can re-watch what happened to them. That is how I use them for my vehicles. Without them I would have to scroll through all vehicles every turn to see if any new damage showed and then spend time looking at what happened. For the enemy vehicles it is nice to know when your guys finally score the hit (I said finally because I am currently playing "The Passage" and the long range shots my opponent and I are taking are not hitting first time :-). Again it saves time by letting me not watch places where stuff is not happening. But as the shooter I really do not have any right to know if I am doing any damage to the enemy vehicle - until its burning anyway. So summary: Detailed hit text for your side is fair because I can find that out the same info by manually scanning the damage screen for all my vehicles every turn, while the hit text greatly shortens the process. So on your side it is a game play-ability aid that does not tell me anything I cannot find out another way. It just makes things easier. Detailed hit text for the enemy vehicles is not fair because I really would not be able to tell when damage is being done but the hit text tells me too much. It tells me stuff that I cannot find out any other way. So, on enemy vehicles it is giving my gamey information that I should not really have. Having said that I also agree that it is not a super high priority problem either - after all my top three feature requests is right in my sig line. The thing is, sometimes features that might not be a huge effort are worth looking at even if you cannot get to the higher priority items because they take longer. When that happens it is nice to do a few smaller scale things that help make the game better. Note: I am not making any comment on how easy or hard or what is above or below this in priority I leave that totally up the BFC dev team.