A Canadian Cat

Good glad to hear it. Yeah patience is important. There have been times when I did things right as I approached each possible contact location and each time there was no one there. Inevitably the time I loose patience and just get going is the time I make contact and get ambushed. I remind my self of those early battles to make sure I do not do that any more.

Hey, Holien I am not sure what is wrong but I already sent the invite and email with the tool link. I just sent them again I PM'ed you my email so you can contact me if you need to.

Here is what the spotting looks like at the end of the turn. Figure 56 Spotting at turn end

Minute 26: Orders Contact has been made. The orders reflect this. The scouts back up squads are split and spread out for protection and to shoot back. Figure 46 Spread out The HE left the scouts pinned although they recovered from being shaken. Figure 47 Pinned 3rd squad spreads out to deal with the contacts in the trench works. Figure 48 More spreading out Two company mortars move up to fire on the AT gun. Figure 49 Bring up the mortar Here is what the fire order looks like. Whenever you are targeting something behind a bocage row with a mortar you can usually find a place to land shells behind the bocage. This time it is right on top of the AT Gun’s suspected location. Figure 50 Target behind the bocage where the gun is I am going to try @MOS:96B2P’s tip about using a covered arc on your HQ to help guide how much your men spread out (http://community.battlefront.com/topic/119361-what-are-your-favorite-cm-tips-and-tricks/?p=1604371). As you can see 1 platoon looks pretty good and a quick check confirms that everyone is under command and happy, happyish anyway. Figure 51 1st Platoon area @C3K pointed out that if I am going to be breaching to get off the road I need my engineers closer to the action. I started bringing them forward including getting one team into the jeep. Figure 52 Bring engineers forward Also the members of 2nd platoon are getting a fair way down the road now and they might need some fire support. I am moving one of their tanks up to just behind the minefield so it can see down the road. Figure 53 Position tank to cover the road Here is a composite image of 2nd platoon’s lead members as they head up the road. Figure 54 Moving up the road Here is 2nd platoon HQ with its area of operation’s cover arc. Notice how some of his men are outside that. It turns out they are out of command. Oops get that HQ moving up and past the minefield. Figure 55 2nd Platoon's area

Minute 27-26: Things started happening this turn. Suddenly the scouts and their backups in the woods got contact after contact. Fire was exchanged. Casualties were taken. Men were shaken. A little over half way through the turn the scouts in the left side of the woods spotted an AT Gun. OK it could be an IG gun they are not sure so I’m just going to call it an AT Gun for now. Figure 38 Scouts spot an AT Gun Here is a better look at where the Gun is: right at the bend in the road covering the woods. Figure 39 The AT Gun icon's location The remainder of 3rd squad spots enemy soldiers in some trench works across the open ground near the farm. Figure 40 3rd Squad spots trenches Here is now the contacts look at the end of the turn. Some of the solid contacts have turned to ‘?’ because my men shot at them and they shot back. Between all the ducking going on solid contacts were lost. Figure 41 Spotting at turn end Let’s look at some of the details of the turn. At the beginning of the turn 3rd Squad fired on their contact from the previous turn. They quickly lost sight of the enemy who ducked behind the bocage. Figure 42 Turn starts with firing on enemy spotted last time Soon however 3rd Squad had other things to worry about – new enemy contacts. The exchanged fire between them. Figure 43 Soon they are taking incoming fire Meanwhile on the other side of the woods not far away 1st squad ran into much closer enemy contacts. The scouts encountered them first and quick ducked down but not before taking a casualty. The rest of 1st squad returned fire and hit one enemy solider. Figure 44 Right side of woods more contacts As the small arm exchange was going on something much bigger entered the fray. No casualties were caused by this but it did leave the lone remaining scout shaken. Figure 45 Scouts take casualty and backup inflicts one

Well if they did not do that then your post would have been about how it was crazy that your M1s did not take evasive action when they knew they were about to get killed OK with that out of the way here are a couple of suggestions. Say thank goodness they are all OK now let's think about how to approach the objective another way or through better cover or with infantry leading the way so we know what is there. Here is the thing, if they spot the enemy and start the engagement cycle they will compete it before popping smoke. So if you get them into a place where they can spot first you will do better. Give them fast move orders over the crest some distance. If they have fast move orders they assume you are leading them to a safe location and that popping smoke is the wrong thing to do. But choose option one - don't lie to your men

I thought exhaust fumes of unspotted tanks was also invisible. I am sure I have watched tanks disappear around a corner and noticed their exhaust stop forming at the point my men lost contact.

NO NEED TO YELL Got it. Yeah I'm not sure if you really want that. Perhaps you might want more then one fired at once to as you say make sure it's dead but if they fire all of them then they have none left. You might not like that later... But on the other hand if they don't take the tank out...

Oh man yeah that would be confusing. Those gaps are just the result of the way the target arc is rendered. It is a arc or circle shaped section of a plane at a certain distance above the start and end points of the arc. Those gaps are just places were the terrain pops up above the plane of the arc being drawn by the engine. There is no information in the rendering of the arc about visibility at all - it just shows you the extent of your orders.

Excellent advice. You can also upload directly to this site. To do that replace the <snip>ed out section with these steps: Click on the "More Reply Options" button to go to the full editor Use the "Browse..." and "Attach This File" buttons to attach you picture to the post. Click on add to post to actually included it in the post Right click and the the path to the image (this will likely be the path to the thumbnail...) Use the add image button to insert the image full sized where you want in you post and past the URL into the image dialog box (if the file ends in "_thumbnail" delete that part to get the whole image. It may seem longer but it eliminates dealing with a third party web site (or your own site) so for me it is faster.

LOL thank you. Wow that was bad - now fixed. Insta-spot and perfect pixel troops are my fake trade marked way of mocking the whinny babies that sometimes appear and complain that their units are not able to instantly and perfectly spot everything they see from their god's eye view with the icons turned on. Nothing to do with the OP's discussion question.

I know nothing about CM SF but I believe that in the newer games the marksman designation does make a difference. Thankfully no one can mod the game in such a way. Can you imagine the mayhem

Using an armour arc does not automatically mean anyone with an AT4(or other AT weapon) will stow their rifle and hold the AT weapon. They seem to make the choice on their own - as you seem to have observed. Any team member packing at AT weapon can use it. Something like the Javelin does not seem to switch from person to person (not including buddy aid) but other AT weapons do. Depending on how you split a squad you will get different distributions. At any rate whom ever has the AT4 will use it. Yuck, that happens occasionally and I do not believe it is intentional. It could be a bug or it could have been caused by something in the orders. People would need more info and probably a game save to have much hope of figuring it out. Well they will keep firing, eventually. What are they doing / not doing that concerns you? Which just uses commands that we all have access to to implement - cover arcs.

I was going to point out what @womble said. However I still do this form time to time. Why? Because if they hunt forward and spot something they will engage it. If they do not spot anything they will pull back into cover. There is no point in hanging out in the open for no reason. I am very careful about how far out of cover I send vehicles using the hunt command: because this game does not have insta-spot, tanks sometimes drive forward a bit further than they need to before they spot the enemy. So, my hunt commands stay pretty short and the way point at the end is, at least I intend it to be, hull down or otherwise not too exposed. Edited to fix missing negative as pointed out by @womble

Lots of people, including me, use FRAPS. NVidia has a screen capture capability built into their latest drivers that I personally have not tried but have heard others using. There are other options too probably but there are two that I know of.

Yes. Using a circular arc is to keep the unit from from firing at targets and therefore giving advice their position.

OK, thanks for clarifying. It seems that when you create something that is playable against the AI by both sides it at least gives you a fighting chance that it will work in H2H play too.

I am surprised to hear that. Mind you I was surprised to hear that Iron was any different than Elite too but someone did the testing for that. How did you determine that the AI spots like Elite even on Iron?

Who vs the AI? I agree - and while the Germans have been suffering it is no cake walk for the British paras either. This "little tanks" sure seem big when all you have to deal with them is this little tube thing and no protection. For me as the Brits dealing with those tanks was nail biting and withdrawing from objectives was hard - but the right thing to do. My counter attacks are getting no where so the Germans can use the woods to their advantage too.

Yes, there is <alt>H but it turns them either all off or all on. What is being suggested here is that the hit text information be reduced for the higher skill levels, so that for your vehicles you see what you see now and for enemy vehicles you only see Hit but no details on penetration / effects.

That is a very open ended question. My head hurts just thinking about all the things that could be said. I'll try to kick things off with something: Get down at the unit level and look at what things look like from their point of view. It is often crystal clear that there is a best path over the fields because of the way the ground folds. The single best way to move without getting your tanks nailed is to not even be seen by the enemy. Not just useful for movement but finding a good place to hang out on the defence too. Turn the trees on and try to position your tanks so they can see out of the trees fairly well but are not out in the open either. Trees are your friend, enemy ordnance might hit the trees near your tank before hitting your tank and even better you can arrange it so that the forest provides good protection to your flanks too - just make sure there is someone there who can alert you if trouble starts heading your way.

Welcome. In case you had not noticed - since you are likely not reading everything here - @Bud_B has written two After Action Reports in a comic book / graphic novel style. You might not have a war-gaming hobby but you might appreciate his work. One completed: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/118397-the-battle-of-la-ferme-dupont-a-caar/ And one on going: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/119204-somebodys-hero-a-caar/#entry1601715

Good news. He is rushing back to kick someone out of a tank from 3 troop so he can get back into the fight. Are those two fading contacts of AT guns new or the ones already dealt with? Interesting that no one has a solid contact on the tanks / vehicles moving in the town yet. The weather is hampering visibility.

Yep, good way to use TRPs and I do this kind of thing alot. The fact that you can call artillery using reference points 50m away from the centre of the TRP actually give you a lot of flexibility. You can often create line barrages down two or more different streets with the same two TRPs. And lots of variation of circular barrages around the area the TRP is located. That looks interesting. I'm going to give this a try and see how if feels.

PM sent for additional info.