A Canadian Cat

And with that post I am almost up to date. I played a turn this morning but I have not written it up yet or processed the images. Since I am off work today I was able to catch up. With a little luck I can get to that turn tonight. If not it will be tomorrow morning.

First contact. One of 5 Company's 75mm gun Hts spots a Churchill on the other side of the valley. The recon 250/9 spots a second Churchill near by. The lead members of 1 Battery arrive at the Orchard near the first river crossing. 3 Company's first platoon arrives in the Orchard on the other side of the village. Minute 1:57 Orders: I give fine tuning orders to 3 platoon of 1 Battery to take up positions in the Orchard to cover the approaches to the village with the road bridge crossing. Since the recon 250/9 is no match for a Churchill I back the half track off and an assault gun takes his place. With any luck the StugIII will spot the Churchill too. What I don't show is that the group of 5 Company Half Tracks in the field waiting to move out. One of them has spotted a Churchill so they all have to move. I give all 12 of them orders that takes the lead vehicles into the tress and the rest up close to the tree line. Hopefully that will be enough to break contact with the Churchill - if it has spotted them. Not a gamble I am willing to take.

Ah memory, I just posted the next installment and contradicted myself. Plus I watched the latest turn and my convoy issues around the bridge are getting worse. But other convoys are progressing well. 3 Battery is text book - I shot video of how well it is going. 3 Company is moving very well and the last truck left the jump of point at minute 156. 5 Company is also going well but you might not think so when you see the pictures. One of the HTs spotted a Churchill and so I mass moved them out of their jump off field so they look a little disorganized at the moment. I recorded two videos of me managing convoys. The mess at the bridge and 5 Company. I have to do some editing. Hopefully I will have them ready when I get to that point in the battle.

One of the three AT guns I have attached to the battalion has been tucked into the trees on the far left flank. It has a view of the hills across the valley. Here are the half tracks of 5 Company passing the AT gun as the setup. The 250/9 Recon half track reaches the tree line ahead of 5 Company. Minute 1:58 Orders: Clearing the convoy of 1 and 2 Company plus 2 Battery across the bridge is going slowly. There is way more vehicles in this group than the others and they have to all corss a single bridge. Lots of convoy managment issues here. 2 Company has not even started yet since I keep having to put more and more pauses on the trucks and assault guns already on the road. By the time I get to the jumping off point for 2 Company the vehicles on the road are at 45s and 1 min. Pushing the start of 2 Company further behind schedule. The other groups are moving out fine.

Traffic jams have not been too bad. 5 Company has halftracks parked in a field waiting their turn and 1 and 2 company are experiencing delays going over the bridge. I am getting better at managing traffic.

Not much to report. No contact with the enemy as yet. A short video showing 1 Battery and 5 Company movnig out from their jump off point. http://youtu.be/PtFs_r562gE Minute 1:59 Orders: No changes to the orders I just added to the 3 Company convoy heading to the road crossing and to the large 1 and 2 Company plus 2 Battery convoy going over the bridge. Here is what the orders look like from on high.

Afternoon on the 10th of July brings bad news. My battalion of Grenadiers is being pressed into action early. We have only been in theater for five days and were supposed to complete two weeks of training and refit before being deployed. The trip to France was long and we took a couple of days off before beginning training with Kuntz's Sturmgeschutz assault gun brigade. I have just received word that the British have broken though our lines and are heading this way. We are the only fighting force close enough to interdict. Given the rate of their advance I have the few hours before night fall to plan while my men get ready. Overnight we will have to get organized and be in our jump off positions by dawn. In addition to Kuntz's Sturmgeschutz assault gun brigade we have an additional mechanized infantry company plus the remains of a Panther company – six tanks in all. My 120mm battalion heavy mortars are just being unloaded from the train so thankfully I can have them by morning. Plus two batteries of 150mm and an FO have also been assigned to us. My primary goal is to ensure we seize several crossing points along the river I also have a secondary goal of taking the high ground around a nearby town. Along with Osterhaus the FO we have given one of the 150mm guns a pre planned missions using previously registered locations - the high ground north of the main town. The two 120mm mortar batteries also have two pre-planned missions – on to the furthest village and another along the road leading to it. 1 and 2 company along with 2 battery are going to cross the river and head towards the town and the high ground to its south. 3 company will proceed to the nearest village while 5 company (the mechanized infantry and 1 battery will move along side them towards the rail crossing. 3 battery crossed the river in the night and will be a reserve as well as protect our flank. My initial orders look like this:

Here is the full order of battle. This is from the spread sheet that I used to keep track of my force choices I think the various columns should be fairly clear http://www.lesliesoftware.com/forforumposts/EpicBattleAAR/ForceSelection20KBattle.pdf

Oh there will be plenty. Sorry for the delay - we have played three turns so far and I have content ready to post but my partner is a bit behind and wants to post an into here before we start with the content. I did not realize he has to work today so I got a little ahead of him oops.

Mine is not a high end rig (but I do have an updated graphics card): Windows Vista Home Premium SP2 (64 bit) HP model a6500f AMD Phenom 9150e Quad-Core Processor 1.8GHz 4 Gb RAM with and upgraded video card: Radeon HD 6770 with 1Gb memory Stephen's machine is more powerful than mine so we have arranged things so that his machine is performing the turn calculations. So far each turn has taken my machine 8 minutes to open. I am still getting between 13 and 19 frames per second with model and texture settings of Better. No, we are fighting the whole battle all at once. When I play a large battle I think of it as several smaller ones. I will try to highlight that as I describe my turns.

Actually you do not have to only purchase small amounts at a time. When you go over budget it still gives you the total points. So just purchase away and watch the total go up over the budget allowed by the QB system. It's OK because you have your own budget. You could treat rarity the same way we just chose to have no restrictions for our battle.

Thanks - I forgot to test it. All fixed.

Good afternoon. I wanted to introduce a DAR for a huge, no epic, "Quick battle". Along with my long time friend and the person that introduced me to this fine game Stephen (aka Dungeon Tiger) we plan to fight and report on our Quick Battle meeting engagement using a force worth 20 000 points each. We have played many scenarios and quick battles over the last year in CMBN and before that with CMAK and CMBB. We wanted to do something a bit different - we wanted to go big - really big. Quick battles are interesting but they only go to 7209 points and we wanted bigger but still to maintain the pick your own units aspect to the fight. We decided to design a method to use the Quick Battle force selection mechanism to allow us to pick forces with any number points we desired. First we did a dry run with 12 000 points. From that we put together the following instructions on how to use the QB force selection screen to pick units for even bigger battles than the QB system will allow. Here are those instructions: http://www.lesliesoftware.com/forforumposts/2012/Force%20Selection%20Instructions.pdf Then we needed a map - a really big one. We looked at a few QB maps and found one we liked from the CW module. But then Pete W posted a huge 2km by 2km map in the repository. http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=1921 It was bigger and we decided to go with it. I made a few tweaks to the land around the bridges because I erroneously thought it was the maps fault when I had trouble getting tanks to drive across during testing. Even though we established that the map was fine we went with the tweaked version just because we used it during testing. So welcome to what will become the German side of the DAR. After a hello post from Stephen he will not read this thread again until we are done. He will start a thread for the British side of the DAR later today. This is a meeting engagement where each side has a force worth 20 000 points with no additional restrictions. We have no rarity restrictions and no force selection restrictions. Pre-planned artillery is allowed but only after a 10min delay. Let the fun begin.

While looking for Italian WW2 tactical symbols I found this http://comandosupremo.com/italian-infantry-squad-tactics.html The link at the bottom points to a pdf. I have downloaded it but not read it fully. It looks promising though. I figured others would like to know...

I can certainly proceed with Google Earth but I was just wondering if anyone found a source for areal photos of Sicily in the 30s, 40s or 50s. I want to try out the 2.0 editor features and want to start with a small scenario rather than the grander plans I tried last time. After participating in this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=105105 I thought I would do some research into pathfinders and their missions. At first I found out that the British did use pathfinders in Sicily and the US did not. Rats. We do not have the Brits yet. But I could always start with the US paras and switch it to the Brits when the next module comes out. Then I discovered that the US used pathfinders for a mission during the invasion of the main land. I got all excited and started compiling information. The mission was a success and was a template for how the Normandy pathfinders operated. http://cgsc.cdmhost.com/cdm/singleitem/collection/p4013coll8/id/103/rec/17 But I glossed over the fact that the Italy jumps by the 504 and 505 from the 82nd were behind *friendly* lines. Not much of a scenario there. Back to looking at the Brits again. But the pathfinder missions did not go as planned at all. The pathfinders landed after the main force: http://www.pegasusarchive.org/arnhem/batt_ind_coy.htm So that leaves me no where really - at least in terms of historical reality. So, I have decided to go with a bit of fiction. US path finders in the invasion of Sicily. Pretend their Italian main land invasion plan was executed during the Sicily invasion. Forget the fact that the reason that it worked were because of what they learned from the failure of the British pathfinder plans during the same invasion. Primarily that you need to use specially trained pilots and air crews for your pathfinder drops. I have found a nice order of battle for the three planes that made up the group for the 505th (from the same pdf scan of the 82nd after action reports as above): But really I am looking for any areal photo sources for Sicily.

This is incorrect. Steve (and others) have chimed in that the CM1x tanks did *not* move stop shoot, move stop shoot. They fired on the fly just like the CM2 tanks do. I did not search for the post where Steve cleared that up but I have read it. And I have played my share of CM1x games - no stopping and shooting while moving that I can recall. Unless I ordered it with the Shoot and Scoot command. One of the many wonderful tricks our minds play on us:)

Only in a limited sense. There is even a mod that gives the foliage on trees transparency which will make it easier for you, the human, to see into the forest and look at units you know about. So a smoke mod with more or less transparency would effect how you, the human looking at the screen, would see units you know about. You can also toggle smoke off in game too - which also effects how you, the human, sees units you know about on screen. However the game handles spotting between units without regard to mods. So smoke and tree foliage block (or not) the view of the units in the game as determined by the game's engine. So if smoke makes one of the enemy's units invisible to your units will not be visible regardless of what mod or setting you are using for smoke. So, if you are playing with a thick smoke mod it might mean *you* fail to notice a *spotted* unit in the smoke but the game cares not what mod you are using.

That's awesome - thanks Steve.

I hear you coughing. I'm not feeling all that well either.

Can we just rename a file or copy a file to a new name? Any idea which file and what the name should be? Or could a mod be produced that just provided the right file? It it really is as simple as a missing or misnamed file it would be nice to not wait for a patch.

I do disagree but not vehemently:) I try to keep my guys in C2 as much as possible and teams that get shaken and end up rattled or broken get more attention from their commander. This is where I find being in C2 helps the most. However specifically regarding your question about AT guns and other Heavy weapons: I totally agree with that. Pick the spots you want your AT or machine guns and then try to find a place for your HQ where either your most important gun in is C2 or perhaps you can get two guns in C2.

I have been reading your comments on moving and spotting and they are of course spot on. I am not sure what exactly is going on because I have yet to see moving infantry get the jump on stationary defenders. In fact I have a friend who is trying CM2 for a second time (he rage quite on me 6 months ago because he was frustrated with spotting - I'm exaggerating but he was frustrated - really frustrated). I got him to try again - and first thing that happens is his two man scout team hunting through the woods gets spotted by my three man scout team behind some bocage, 100 rounds of MP40 amo later his guys are down and no sound contact at all visible by his guys. This is a small 200m 300m map with just a platoon sized force and the rest of his squad is 20m away from his scouts - albeit over the crest of a hill. And none of his guys have any idea where the shots are coming from. Pretty much the opposite of what is being described here. If his guys died fast and quite I could see not having any sound contacts. But my scout team each emptied a mag, reloaded and started on the next one before the fire fight was over. If I were him I would be a little concerned that I was never going to find the enemy too. As he said "I don't mind loosing but I would like to have some kind of chance to see where the shots are coming from".

Are you thinking of game play movies or the web cam footage while the players argue about how messed up the plan and whose mother wears army boots. There could be some good footage there.

You have a local that will put a war game up on their 80" screen - very cool. I'm just a bit to far away in Ottawa.

Would you guys stop doing this kind of arithmetic - Steve reads these posts you know.