A Canadian Cat

It's officially action square but in this context spotsuffices. They are the 8m by 8m squares that make up the map. In my opinion the bigger difference is that you need to ensure your platoon leaders have LOS in order to direct the fire.

Nice @LiveNoMore. Keep it simple. Those are all the PBEM rules you need! Obviously that does not preclude both sides agreeing that they want to play just infantry or just amour. I'm a lot more interested in house rules for during play. Check out these rules. And the tweaked version that @Bil Hardenberger and I are using in our AAR

Several changes have been made over the years. In the original game you could run a platoon across and open field under the sights of a MG42 and members of that platoon could make the run in good order and kill of the MG team. Things were too easy. With the v3 engine upgrade (or was it v2 I cannot remember) the effectiveness of MG fire was increased. Then your platoon would not make it and instead would become a broken combat ineffective mess. Things were rightly hard. With the advent of the v4 engine the HMG team was to easy to force to retreat. So, while you could not rush out into the open again you could force the HGM to relocate to easily. Things went back to too easy again - different reasons though. Now with the v4 patch the HMG will hold his ground properly and things are back to rightly hard again. So, yeah the balance of some scenarios has changed. Depending on when a give scenario was created will govern what the effects are.

No you are correct. Fixes were made to the ROF of Bren and BAR operators.

Given BFC's desire to maximize accuracy they have to put limits on how far they look ahead. The TO&E list had a set time frame with a shortish look ahead. They did the same with Shock Force and made some tweaks in the update to fix some of their predictions that panned out differently. BFC's design strategy is to create a what if scenario (in the geo political sense) and build the story and time lines around that. They, so far, have not expressed a desire to create a generic sand box game. So, the design decisions they make are constrained by that box they created. Design, happiness and choices are actually governed more by constraints on choice that maximizing choice. The problem with that is the further out you go the harder it is to get a reasonable representation of equipment capabilities. If you look around YouTube there are some videos with some pretty out there claims of the capabilities of the T90 and those claims can be checked at least a little bit against reality. Something like the new Aramata platform vehicles have zero or close to zero reliable information available. Based on this I think reaching out more that a couple or a few years is totally off the table based on the way BFC have show they like to work. The contents of the next module for CMBS have not been officially announced but there has been open discussion about it being for marines so some of the forces you list above will very likely be in scope. We will have to wait for something official from Steve. Why would you catch flak? I suppose if you consider what I wrote flak then I guess so. But that's not intended as flak. PS. my notes on the lack of reliable information on the Armata is way way more likely to get flak.

No kidding - it's a base game plus three modules of content. Normally we get that in four chunks that are big enough on their own.

In general you are correct. Ricochets can cause casualties (what happened with the Panther here) and some players recently discovered that if a unit does not see friendlies they can cause friendly fire casualties. Which is much more common in low visibility situations - hence the examples.

I hear ya. I personally don't like the stories I'm hearing - it sounds like too much crazy behaviour - if its just a confusion from converting mid game then that would suck but not be the end of the world but if this a regular occurrence then its not good. I'm doing to play this in 4.01 and see what I get and I'll go from there. Thanks.

Question back to you is this from a freshly started game under 4.01 or one that started in 4.00 and was updated? What scenario or QB map are you using? Several of us are trying to look at this and are not seeing examples of this behaviour so we are trying to narrow down the circumstances. Saved games in the usual place would be appreciated. We have logged several bugs based on what you guys are seeing when we can reproduce them over the last few days. This one is another theme that has several mentions and I'd like to rule it in as "sorry that happened to you but war is hell" or present a bug to the boss.

LOL - looks like the rare two volume directors cut - the version that includes extensive the post war interviews with generals sharing their excuses.

Good idea - you can control that colour.

Reproduced and logged... Ack!

I have not seen anything like this. I just want to note that there is nothing special about stock scenarios they are just the same as those made by the community - in terms of what the game does during loading.

LOL sure if it turns out that poor leadership give bad directions occasionally that might be considered cool. On the other hand if every engagement is like this not so much. It cannot be every engagement after the patch since I have not see this at all and no testers have reported it either.

Yeah, that looks really not good. I suspect this is part of theBlitz's April Scenario of the Month (http://www.theblitz.org/message_boards/showthread.php?tid=72484) I am also playing this battle and have not noticed this so far. But you get I'll be watching for it from now on. We also updated the game with the patch.

Done - request made.

Ack! I had a look at the turn files and there two things to comment on: The friendly fire casualty. I am convinced that @Sgt.Squarehead called it right. The casualty is caused by the ricochet off the building not the direct fire. In which case that is nothing new and totally normal - but pretty rare. The basic rule is that small arms fire cannot cause friendly fire directly but after something is hit the ricochet is no longer treated as friend or foe so it can cause anyone casulties. So, sorry for your misfortune there @weapon2010 - especially given... The fact that the MG team seems to be aiming at friendly targets is surprising to me. As I said Ack! I have certainly never ever seen that. Here is what is happening. The MG team in the house has spotted an enemy unit in the trees far off (sorry I didn't measure any of the distances). Lets call that 0 degrees. The dumb-ass gunner decides to aim about 15 degrees to the right directly at a friendly Panther tank. This targeting is done all on the Tac AI's direction. That is the TC casualty that started all this off. In the next turn the player has directed the HMG team to fire on the enemy - no doubt cursing said dumb-ass gunner. Sadly the gunner decides to be even dumber this time and seems to directly target a HT about 30 degrees to the left. WTH is he doing. This guy is not just showing poor aim he is picking the wrong targets completely. As I said I have never see that kind of totally silly targeting before. I am going to consult with other testers and see if anyone else has and what the feeling is. My ask would be if any one else has saves that show this please let me know. What i am looking for is a unit that has an enemy target to shoot at but instead shoots at a friendly target instead.

I'm not really a big fan of using AT assests on buildings let alone in the open but the current behaviour is the way it is currently designed.

Just a guess but I think for a mechanized war we wouldn't send troops with just trucks for transport. So even the light infantry units would end up with someone else's LAVs for their rotation and therefore not really be light infantry. A better question might be why would the Brits, Germans and Duch send guys with out hard transport?

Cool, good. Agreed. It seems pretty much administrative. That's pretty nice. It does look like a good source but most of those units are reserve units. For a NATO mission with out full mobilization members of those units might serve tours but they would be on loan to the regular force and would therefore be part of the regular force units I listed above. So @Mord while adding reserve units would be cool (and fun) don't kill your self with all of them. Even my request for the Back Watch would not field a unit in battle on foreign soil without full mobilization and a prolonged conflict.

Sorry man those colours are not modifiable. Would be a worthy request through...

I was just asking @Bootie about that yesterday. He is not quite ready for that.

Cool. I do not think the brigade group has anything but I'll be sure to check (it is possible) but the division colour and regimental coat of arms will certainly work. Hummm CF doesn't have an airborne battalion any more they have groups with that capability but not in a large formation. I'll do some reading...

I don't have time now but a quick search looks like the divisions only have a colour while the regiments have the real cool patches. Each seem to have a few versions. For example for RCR there is the cap badge: or one of these from a combat uniform or this colour version of the above: I am assuming you want the colourful cap badges for your portrait mods. If not tell me otherwise and I'll dig up something similar for the rest.

OK insignia search is on. I actually don't really know about patches. We have cap badges that are unique. I'll let you know what I find.