A Canadian Cat

Yeah, just as I did not think much about what broken troops under the AI control would do - which apparently is sit there in the open and get turned into KIA.

Oh man playing with the trees turned off increases the difficulty by a lot I'm going to write up some tips about how to get around and examine a map - tree settings will be part of that.

This is the main thing I would like to see @MehodGamer coming out of this at least starting to get. Frankly I suspect this is one of the biggest barriers to new players success. So, lets hope that we all contribute and do a good job discussing the problems and solutions as we play. Yep, you did get one tank kill though. This kind of behaviour is going to be more difficult with this scenario. It is a lot tighter quarters. I see much less opportunity to keep tanks 100m + back from the enemy and still have them firing on you in this one. Your biggest problem in that last game was not trying to cause attrition slowly from the beginning. In this game, and even more so in our last, the defender needs to find a good place to ambush the attacker. Hit them and then move back to be ready to do it again. Easy to say more difficult to do. AT guns are tough to place in most scenarios because the ranges are so short. In these tight spaces AT guns can be used to cover a specific avenue of advance and they work best if they have very narrow field of fire so there is also a very narrow area that the can be effectively fired at from. Artillery is a big one. I still have not looked at your order of battle but as the defender you might have target reference points (TRP). Those allow faster artillery calls, do not require your FO to have LOS to the area and eliminate spotting rounds. Very useful - but you have to correctly "guess" where the attacker is coming from. Regardless artillery really only works if you can get the other guy to stop for a while. If you can setup a defensible location and start shooting at the attacker and then while they figure out what to do / bring up assets to deal with your defenders you drop artillery on him. In other words your plan for your artillery should be to hit the enemy after your defenders made him stop. Do that multiple times and hopefully the attackers will not have enough troops in good order left to press the final assault. Yep, if you cannot have fun loosing you should not be playing this game (or any game really). After I started getting the hang of this game I joined theBlitz and went straight to playing only guys in the top 10 on the ladder (as measured by ELO score) to this day I still have a less than a 60% win rate there which is one of the lowest of the top 20.

I just though people would like to know that we are starting a tournament over at theBlitz for CMRT. Read the details here: http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=67917 The summary is there will be random group assignments for a round robin from which those that do the best will move on to the elimination rounds.

Thanks for chiming in there Chris. When I look at the idea of a kickstarter campaign I could see it working if a third party group was assembled and approved as good to go by Steve and Charles (i.e. they were happy with the people, agree to send time getting them up and running). Then those people could start and run a kickstarter campaign to raise the funds needed to pay for the development. As Chris points out having BFC spend time raising money and then organizing more people to come and do the work that comes at a significant cost to their existing projects. If a third party were to spend time time and effort getting organized and raising the funds then the drain on BFC would be significantly reduced. But it would never be zero so none of this can succeed without BFC being on board.

I should also add I took some screen shots of the view from the farm and I'll share my thoughts on defending too. Something you should always do when you are attacking is thing about how the objective might be defended. I think this is going to take a little time to get started...

Next I'll write up some notes about how I navigate around a map for the first time, what camera positions I use, what controls and other settings to consider. In the mean time discuss the plan - convince me to change it.

Initial situation My orders are simple – capture the farm. To accomplish that task, I have a company of infantry supported by a platoon of four Stuart light tanks and a platoon of Engineers. Also available is some 81mm mortars. The Stuarts do not have smoke rounds and neither do the organic 60mm mortars. So if I need smoke it will have to come from the 81mm mortars or the infantry them selves. There are three main avenues of approach: A1: Go from field to field across the northern field A2: Go down the central road A3: Go through the Southern forest and then cross the open area to the farm. Figure 1 The map A3: Go through the Southern forest and then cross the open area to the farm. For the first part of the trip to the farm there is good cover in the wood thicket and some low bocage to use as cover at the forest edge. The open space is not a wide open field. There are plenty of dips and rises and bushes scattered around. Figure 2 View into the Southern woods – A3 A2: Go down the central road This is the most obvious route. There are numerous ambush locations along the road plus the narrow space makes it difficult to bring more fire power to bear when you run into trouble. On the other hand you can move along the road without being seen at the farm and there is cover for your men too. Figure 3 View down the central road A2 A1: Go from field to field across the northern fields In my opinion this is the worst route because there is two back to back open spaces to cross. I am not sure it has any advantages. Figure 4 View across the Northern Field A1 The road is my favourite route but only if there is support from the flanks. What I mean by that is if there are units along the other two routes that can prevent ambushes from outside the road area then the units on the road itself can handle any ambushes that are in front of them. By having units on the outside of the road over watching the bocage that lines the road many possible ambush sites can be made useless. Personally I do not like to take just one route on the attack. I would rather put units down two paths that support each other and have reinforcements that can move up to press the advance that is succeeding. My draft plan: Send 1 platoon with a mortar team and two tanks along A3 into the woods. Send 2 platoon with a mortar team and two tanks along A2 down the road. A MG team or two will go across the road to setup to cover the open field at A1. This will prevent or a least warn of any flanking counter attacks The engineers and 3 platoon will be held back except for a squad that will make sure the trees along the bocage at the beginning of A1 are actually clear so the MG team can setup safely along the bocage. I will also call for 10 minute delayed linear barrage along the defenders side of the bocage between the bocage and the barns next to the road.

I believe it is set to Elite - that was my intention. I, personalty, do not think that there is really much point learning on anything but Warrior or Elite. Iron adds a bit of additional work that you can save for once you have learned how to handle troops and the UI. Many people like what Iron adds so it is definitely worth trying out. I just recommend doing it a little later. Anything with the lower artillery call times changes the game a bit and some of the things you learn will have to be unlearned. I prefer Elite over Warrior because it has better fog of war.

LOL, Yeah I'm not sure you should listen to the attack advice but Ken writes a good AAR - if you have not seen this yet it is worth a read just for the fun of it: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/110127-allied-cmbn-market-garden-beta-aar-the-better-beta-beater-reader/ Screen shots and maps with arrows we will provide. The pots of coffee with have to be brewed by each of us.

The opposite side of this DAR can be found here: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/119230-allies-cmbn-buying-the-farm-crowd-sourced-dar/

The opposite side of this DAR can be found here: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/119229-axis-cmbn-buying-the-farm-crowd-sourced-dar/

Yeah, I have made a few youtube videos but I do not currently have the setup for recording my voice (at least not well). I figure that occasionally a video would be the right way to explain something though so there might be a few. True. These kinds of slip ups are not too important to the goal of this though so I'm not going to spend a lot of time worrying about it. You can be the arbiter of this and remind us i you like That is a good idea. We are playing the Buying the Farm scenario from CMBN.

I imagine it will evolve as we go. Be sure to chime in if you think slowing down or speeding up would be beneficial.

This is the thread for my half of the experiment with @Method Gamer. The plan is to have me on the attack against him defending in the scenario Buying the Farm. The goal is for this to be a good introduction for new players to how to play the game. Clearly my goal will be to execute a well thought out attack and use good tactics but the main purpose is to illuminate "the how" of playing the game. We want to show how to use the game commands to guide your troops to bring your tactical decisions to life. I know @Method Gamer in real life and we have worked together in the past but keep in touch now. We live about a 10 minute drive away from each other. Between himself and @Dungeon Tiger they introduced me to the CM series. One day outside @Dungeon Tiger's office I heard them talking about a new version of one of their favorite games that had just been announced. I'm not a big gammer (I only play CM games and the odd game with my kids but that is it) but I love hearing their stories. But when I head about Combat Mission I could not believe it. They were describing the game I always wanted to play (I gave up miniature war games long ago due to lack of players and rules that got in the way and never did much for the fog of war). So we bought the CM1x games CMAK and CMBB and the three of us played them the whole time we waited for CMBN to arrive. Once CMBN arrived we never looked back. Except I lost them, a couple of times. They both gave up and stopped playing and started again. I think this is due to the steep learning curve with the CM games. I also think that the changes away from borg spotting were another large issue that @Method Gamer and @Dungeon Tiger had trouble figuring out how to play. @Method Gamer plays a lot of Eve Online (I totally love to hear stories from that game) where he has been part of the corporation that teaches newcomers to the game how to play. So, he has put a lot of thought into how to help people to learn to play. In fact we have been discussing a couple of projects to help people learn. This is just the first one that we are executing on. To test the waters so to speak. Over the last few weeks with the three of us playing against each other they hit problems and I shared solutions which is when @Method Gamer came up with first the idea that we should play an open game - like when you teach a new player poker by playing with everyone's hands exposed. That quickly evolved into this concept. Why play an open game between two of us and talk amongst our selves when we could do it with all of you? More is better right. So, here is the plan for this thread. Both @Method Gamer and I will be posting and commenting in here (and his thread too). This will be the place I post the AAR portions from my side of the battle but I want you guys to join in with you tips and comments. By all means talk tactics but more importantly talk execution share your tips on how to make the tactics happen. Read both threads spill the beans - cause we are going to be reading both sides anyway. Hopefully this will be a little different and helpful for future players.

And we are off.

@Bulletpoint by "turkey shoot" are you talking about playing against the AI? I really only test against the AI and when I play a human that kind of thing does not happen. I quite like the way broken troops behave as a human commander. Well by like I mean it feels like I think it should - it is a true PITA to get them to do anything of value Which is good. As the human player I can still get them to do a few jobs for me so I like how it plays now. Now if the AI is leaving these guys lying around it would be an improvement for them to do something else. Like find cover and the like. It would take some work on the part of the AI that issues orders as per the AI plan. The TacAI works fine when the broken troops are controlled by a human so the AI would need away to issue orders to the unit that are a bit different than following the plan - which they are likely incapable of doing.

They have not really given a time-line or anything. If I recall correctly Steve mentioned that he eventually wants fire to be modelled beyond the smouldering effect that we have now but that it was quite a bit of work. They have lots of time on the calendar to fit it into the engine with three more game families in the eastern front and their modules. I hope sooner rather than later. You mean to represent forests destroyed prior to the CM battle because trees can be destroyed now by HE. Mind you I have no idea how much HE it would take in game to render a forested area treeless.

You have lots of good advice and answers to your question. As usual @womble beat me to the one thing that I thought could use elaboration. I have to get up earlier or something The main use of hide is if your men get caught in an artillery barrage. If your men are in a trench or fox holes and you give them a hide order they will be well protected. Even if they get caught in the open hiding is better than running through the shells. To me that is the primary use for hide. Many other times I have used hide my men end up failing to see threats as they get near and they end up suffering for it. You will have to manually download updates and run the install. BFC have been making changes to improve the install process but they have not announced anything about doing updates automatically.

Eek, I don't recall anything related to AP rounds over penetrating as a result of the dead vehicle becoming a ghost as the shell passed through it. If I missed that somewhere I would love to read the posts around that. Interesting discussion here BTW.

Hey, lots of us think it would be cool. We have been told "not bloody likely " before. So feel free to discuss it again and get told the same or just not hear anything. @womble was just providing an expectation setting service. It would be loads of fun to watch a battle from the beginning with free camera controls. The thing is I don't really think I would want BFC to spend the time solving the problems and getting it all to work. I would rather they create more content or work on their UI revamp, or move earlier in the war, of do my three favorite feature requests (see sig). But that is just me. Bottle line if this feature dropped into the next version that would be cool but there are a ton of things I would want them to spend time on and BFC have already said this poses technical challenges.

Cool, more scenarios. What is your intention regarding head to head play?

Excellent, that is the one. Thanks! I got home way to late last night to look that up.

Some one posted an app that can extract the brz files on a Mac. I forgot which forum it was on but searching on my phone is nearly pointless so I cannot help right now. Have a look in the maps and mods sub forums.

Buzz, buzzzz. Did you hear something? No? Ok must have been a fly or something.