A Canadian Cat

Which I think is the right thing. Most of the time when things go off the rails for a squad it is easy to chalk it up to "well bad things happen" after all your opponent is trying to kill your guys. I only get bothered when things go off the rails and I think "damn a real squad leader would never have done that". Yes, I know that leaders make dumb mistakes too. Clearly a crack +2 squad leader will make less than a conscript -2 leader. Frankly I do not feel this happens often - IMHO (clearly from the discussions on this forum many people have a different definition). I think the disconnect usually comes from an inability to give orders that make human sense. For example, and this has happened to me several times, my enemy has a tank in the street (or a bocage lane) and I have unspotted infantry in the next lane (or in the bocage). The order I would like to give is "sneak up behind that tank and close assault it" or " sneak up behind that tank and use your AT weapon to blow it up". Instead what I have to do is give the squad a series of movement orders along the street to get behind the tank and then through a house and into the street so they are behind the tank where they will blast it. This has worked well. The trouble is that when the turn unfolds if the tank moves even 20m down the road the squad just follows the movement orders and ends up standing alone in the street in full view of the tank. In real life **** can happen and it is true an inexperienced leader might burst out into the street and have an oh **** moment - could happen. The thing is most humans would notice that the tank is not where they expected it to be and skip the part where they run into the street and get killed. Very True.

Yes, I helped a lot of my mates figure this out in real life - which is one reason I was feeling so dumb not getting it in the game. I am defiantly going to install the suggested mod. If it does not look like a compass then I will no longer be confused (about direction at least).

Well that was much more poetic that I was going to write but that pretty much sums up how I tell which way the wind is blowing. Sooner or later something is on fire and if you really want to tell before your valuable tracked asset is burning you can always have it pop smoke to test things out.

Do you mean this one?: http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1084

Oh, yeah for sure. I have never been able to make use of wind direction in the briefing. Time to look for that mod...

Thanks guys.

I knew I would feel dumb after seeing the answer:-) Which only leaves the question with Juju's UI mod is the red arrow or the grey arrow pointing to the direction. I am thinking red.

Very cool. Was that against the AI? That was a pretty nice looking map - what scenario or QB map was that?

I know, I know it seems silly but I just do not get it. In real life I am perfectly capable of using a compass, really I am. But in game I just do not get it. It has never mattered before - I can tell where the objectives are and where my guys are what else do you need to know? Well I just started a scenario where I have no terrain objectives my only objective is to prevent the enemy from reaching the south edge of the map. But I have no idea where south is :-(. The units I have started with are in the centre of the map and seem to be facing every which direction. I have no idea which side of the map is what. My only help is the compass but it just spins around - help. I have searched the manual - no mention of compass. I have searched the forum - lots of mentions but nothing that explains it. The basic question is how do I find the south edge of the map?

OK might be true. A much more likely scenario which I do in pretty much every single game: With a tank that is stationary give it a 30s pause along with a fire order and then move to a location with a new fire order. I would think that this bug would mean that for those first 3 or 4 shots my tanks accuracy will be reduced even though it is stationary and has not moved. I am glad Phil has cataloged this bug.

Yeah, those images are pretty big. I do not think there is anything you can do with the tag. I usually resize them to be 1000px wide for posing on the forum. If you resize in your images in your favorite image editor that will keep our horizontal scrolling down.

The biggest problem the attacker faces is their armour support not being able to effectively engage the enemy in a town. I cannot properly assault a street with armor support because of the problem of not being able to target building fronts down the street. Try this: have a platoon of infantry try to go building to building down a street. Your tank support will be unable to target building fronts sometimes even one door down. That means that as your men are entering a building the tank cannot fire on the building next door or two doors down even though the face of the building is clearly visible. When the enemy ambushes your guys and guns them down the tank will spot them and then magically it will be able to target those enemy troops - in the windows of the very building you could not target the turn before. Hair starts hitting the floor when the tanks spots enemy soldiers in the middle of the turn, shoots at them, and then looses sight of them by the end of the turn. During the next orders phase you cannot target those very same windows again. Which means your tank is useless to try to save you guys who will likely get gunned down next turn too. I am convinced this is because of the way actions squares are handled - you cannot area fire on a building that you cannot see the centre of its action square. So, on a city street the two buildings next to you block LOS to the centre of the action square of the building two doors down and it blocks the LOS to the centre of the building next to that etc. This means that even though your tank has a clear field of view down the street and should be able to target any one of those building fronts it cannot.

Tanks spotting to easily when alone is an issue as well as the whole problem of infantry having to expose them selves fully to get any kind of shot off. Just walk around your city's down town and see all the paces you could hide - OUTSIDE - and use an AT weapon with easy escape routes and nearby additional cover and concealment. This is partly a map design issue as well. Again look at your down town - how many alley ways are there. I have been burned by this so many times (OK four or five now) where the enemy tank moves even a small amount and ends up too far away for a close assault and then spots my men and takes them all out. What I would like to see: - Some kind of close assault command for attacking vehicles that would automatically abort the whole thing if the vehicle speeds off and leaves no chance for my soldiers to catch it and automatically follows if it just moves a slight amount. I would even be OK with it aborting if the vehicle turns and faces their direction of approach. - Infantry able to effectively peek around corners both for spotting and attacking. But that brings us to the biggest issue with urban fighting...

LOL, no promises but I do agree it warrants investigation.

Perhaps I was being overly cautious. Half tracks seem to be particularly awkward in this regard. I tend to just do that for all vehicles as my SOP. Perhaps a test - a race is in order:-)

No, it is not the trees that I am trying t avoid. It is the sharp turn I was evening out. Sharp in place turns tend to take a long time for vehicles to execute. At least that is what it feels like to me.

Right but you cannot tell how much of the enemy you can see located there. It could be almost to the wheels or just a sliver of the turret. That is why I recommend looking with the camera. Of course that does not help much if there is no enemy vehicles to look at.

Thanks for the comments. The target line (which I did not record me checking) says that the area under the target Churchill is on a reverse slope and is not target-able. From my experience that means either there will be nothing of the enemy tank visible or almost all of it might be visible. The only way to know is to look - IMHO - YMMV. As for the reverse followed by movement orders I respectfully disagree. Asking tanks to move off in a direction to their side is asking to watch half a turn go by with them turning in place to face the new direction. I probably could have gone forward and then direct him across the field but I chose what I consider to be the faster way. Again based on my experience YMMV.

There have been a few recent discussions about determining visibility plus I met a couple of friends for lunch the other day and we talked about their frustrations with determining visibility in game. I told them what I did but figured a video might help clarify it better than describing it. Here it is - comments welcome: This is my recording of me setting the movement orders for a Stug in the game documented here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105660 PS. Yes, I know the trees are set to trunks only and I say "turn on trees". Bit of an oops I know. When I did the dry run to test out the movement plotting I did turn on trees and then I turned them back off again and forgot to turn them on while actually recording. I did not notice my mistake until a couple of days later. In this particular case they matter very little. The target Churchill is not obscured by trees at tall and the Churchill I am trying to avoid is behind trees with foliage that is very high up. Really only the trunks are protecting the Stug.

Interesting. I have not noticed snipers shooting at buttoned tanks. Could it be the cover armour arc that is causing them to do that. I usually try to get my snipers a good spot in over watch if possible and just let them do their thing. I never use a cover arc of any kind and I have not noticed them shooting at buttoned tanks. Try it with just a normal cover arc or no arc at all.

Awesome news - maybe. I spoke with Dungeon Tiger yesterday - in real life - and he said that I destroyed an Achilles and he had no idea where the fatal shot came from. I spent sometime weaving a story about how it was a Panther that caught site of the Achilles between some buildings and then lost sight of it again when it moved past the opening. Usually I am pretty good at getting small bits of information and planting useful miss information in his head but lately he has become better at resisting. So, either I did destroy his Achilles and he thinks there is an operational Panther in the town. Or he is messing with me and the Achilles is OK and he knows the Panther in the town is messed up. The thing is, he has no real way of knowing that the Panther's main gun is broken so he has to at least accept that it is a possibility it was a Panther. I will not spend time assuming the Achilles is destroyed but I can hope:D

The AT guns get orders to setup in the woods with over watch of the bridge and one side of the woods where 5 Company is positioned. Tweaks to the Stug crew and HQ unit. Hopefully I will get to withdraw another Stug next turn.

This is officially frustrating. I give that AT team similar orders from last time but with a face command and a 5s pause. This has to work – right? That squad that slipped past the tank also has a Shrek team. I split them and send the fire teams to positions with good LOS to protect the Shrek team from any pesky scouts there might be. The AT team has a long pause to let the fire teams get into position and then they will have a go at attacking that tank from the other side. I also have a platoon HQ reposition themselves so they can see the approaching enemy and call in some mortar fire if needed. The Brigade HQ unit has recovered enough to get back into their AFV as well.

Meanwhile over at the orchard a Stug crew is getting close to remounting their AFV. And the mortar teams are deep in the woods now.

That AT team failed to fire again! I have never had such trouble with a set of orders before! Here they are turning around and heading back to cover. You can see the orders in the last screen shot above. The spotted the tank just before the turned around and headed back. The time in LOS of the tank was just not long enough. But with a little luck they spot an Achilles turn and fire. And then something I have never seen before happens. While the round is in flight they lose site of the TD. But score a hit any way. No hit text telling me what was hit. I checked, the round did not hit a tree. It hit something invisible but solid between and behind the trees. Amazing. Hopefully it is destroyed or there will be HE heading their way next turn. Here is the squad the squeaked by that pesky Churchill tank.