Rokko

Dividing the battlefield with a smokescreen sound like a pretty good idea, the flanking fire from the hilltop was actually the reason why I had to temporarily withdraw my attacking platoons until I could supress those positions with artillery and mortar fire and try another assault. I guess I'm not very proficent with using smokescreens, don't have much experience with it either, and timing and spacing is pretty important with smoke I guess, also I never know how long the smoke is going to stay. Gonna try it out in the second mission I think. Most of my casualties came from small arms fire I think, mostly in this damn woods that are full of foxholes, ate up half a platoon. Again, if the Germans had their CMBN 2.01 machineguns the entire platoon would have bit the dust I've also noted that with these extremely steep slopes soldiers tend to fight standing upright instead of lying or kneeling. I always set them to hide, elsewise mortar fire really takes a toll.

With the new module announced I thought I'd give CMFI another try after not having played it too extensively and started over with the Troina campaign again, and boy, am I glad that it still has the old MG efficency, would have been even more of a massacre than it already was. Lost 30 men KIA and WIA which I was pretty unhappy about even though I got Total Victory in the end. The platoon I sent into the woods got badly shot up and thus didn't reach the objective. The platoon I first sent up on the Northern ridge actually had to retreat temporarily and getting a bloody nose as well. Awesome campaign so far. Besides I'm pretty happy to manage to finish this without cheating (i.e. quitting and loading a savegame) despite being at times a painful show. Had I played in WeGo I bet my losses would have been at least 50% higher

So no Tunesia prequel for CMFI?

What? IMO 2.01 was the best (free) patch released for CMBN so far! Didn't get the feeling it was all that quick though

oh some jewish newspaper declares 'war' on germany after a violently antisemitic party gets to power, extermination of all european jews is the only and justified option...seems legit. please just stop posting this kind of bull**** here, nobody wants to read it.

I have, yet with and without diagonal hedgerows look like this (with 2.01)

Does this patch do anything about shaders or the weird illumination of diagonal hedgerows?

On a sidenote, the colonization plans were completely utopian. The German people simply wasn't big enough to achieve such a goal. 1915 was the last year where enough children were born to support expansionist goals. After that birth rates all over Western Europe declined (according to some theories that is the reason for the loss of the European colonies ~50 years later). Even the attempts to colonize parts of Poland, where the Polish population had been deported, failed and the German colonies were largely unsustainable and needed huge subsidies to keep alive. There weren't even enough people to colonize and 'Germanize' small parts of Poland, even though they settled people there that were deported out of the Baltic countries (the Baltic Germans) in a mutual agreement between the Soviet Union and the Third Reich. Given that, the idea to colonize everything West of the Ural seems just absurd. Had the starvation plan actually worked out as planned, Eastern Europe would have been probably devoid of human beings.

I believe the Soviet Airforce by 1945 wasn't bad at all, they just lacked any significant long-range airplanes IIRC.

Yeah but with a Panzerfaust it would actually look like throwing a spear I remember this movie that is set during the ACW (its more a love film but with a historic background) and in the Battle of Crater scene you see an Indian Confederate soldier throwing a musket with a bayonett like a spear into the crater, so I always wonder what it would look like throwing a Panzerfaust like that and how well it would fly.

Something a little off topic but there is a question that has been on my mind for some time. If a Panzerfaust failed to launch or you just wanted to look cool, could you actually throw it like a spear? I know it sounds ridiculous but I'm really wondering

Just made one quick snapshot. You can't see Tessel in it, but there are only some orchards and the roads there yet. If you wanted to feature Rauray, Cheux and Grainville on one map you would get into some trouble though. Only if Rauray was in the far far West you could hope to get the other two on there as well, and even then only partly. And due to said limitations you would have to remap it first. This is really a big issue to me. If not for that I could simply crop 3 km or so from my Cussy-Authie-Buron map and expand it further and further to the north, mapping my whole way to the coast that way (if I wanted to and was crazy enough ). If you load a new map it has this artificial center spot right in the middle, so you can only expand 2000m from there into every direction. So always make sure that the spot you put in the initial area is also going to be the center of your map later.

Funny thing is, I actually did that. At least for the Rauray map. With Villons-les-Buissons I'm not so sure, that was more a fun thing to do when I was fed up with drawing squaremiles and squaremiles of different fields. But the Rauray map has Rauray itself very much in the center, so it would indeed be possible to add about 1km (+/-). I actually had to remake the big 4x4km map because I did not pay attention to this stupid limitation that you can only add so much space in each direction. I simply started a new map and simply mapped the abbey in (which is far east) and expanded it where I wanted until I noticed that I couldn't expand it far enough. That almost made me stop working on it entirely. So now I always pay attention to this issue, and with Rauray I knew that there was very interesting terrain around it as well like Fontenay-le-Pesnel to the north or the Tessel woods or Cheux or Grainville to the East.

Each about 2x2km.

Not sure if that is a good advice BTW you can turn off unit icons with some ALT combination. Looks better in screenshots

I believe the early versions of Jagdpanzer IV had a Ball-Mounted MG42. The prototype even had two. I think I have also seen a ball-mounted StG-44 on some late-war tank.

I am actually making better progress on this than expected. Might be I manage to finish this before February. That is a raw and lite version without objectives, units, AI plans, etc. and without Flavor Objects. BTW I also have some other maps in WIP status some of which are in near equal completion status like this one. One featuring Rauray-Tessel-Brettevillette and one featuring Villons-les-Buissons just north of Buron.

I have begun putting elevations in. The differences are not steep at all. Something like 30m from lowest to heighest. Still, any elevations make a map really come to life. So far only the general contour lines are roughly implemented but I can already note very gentle rises in the terrain. Also the Abbaye Ardennes is now what I should be: An optimal artillery observation post! Perfect for directing artillery into Authie: ...and into Buron as well: It is of course not like an all-seeing eye, you can mostly only see rooftops from there, but that is enough for calling artillery strikes. The Abbaye served as HQ for Meyer's (later Millius') 25th Regiment and as major military hospital.

Figueres. Seems to me that the HJ Panthers in Normandy generally performed very badly, running pointless attacks that achieved nothing and left many Panthers burning without even getting good exchange rates. I'm working on an OOB file for the 12th SS (including information such as which leader took over command after this or that leader was killed on this or that day) and I think I'm going to give most Company commanders in I.Abteilung negative leadership ratings. Especially v. Ribbentropp, whose 3rd Company apparently was the worst led considering the famous Panther massacre at Bretteville in early June which rendered the company combat ineffective in a matter of minutes. All these men had months and years of Ostfront experience, yet in this particular campaign against this particular foe they simply didn't perform well. Interestingly the 2nd batallion which was "only" equipped with Panzer IVs seems to have performed much better, often performing very good feats against enemy armour.

Thank you! Do you know precisely how Flavour objects affect performance? I was somewhat under the impression they didn't matter much. But I think I will refrain from placing further flavour objects until everythin else is finished. That way I can make a lite version with next to none flavour objects easily.

Sorry but I can absolutely how long this will take to complete. The general look of the towns is almost finished and so is a good portion of the fields inbetween, but I still have to place a sh*tton of flavour objects, the entire elevations, and a lot of terrain detailing. I am now mostly done with detailing the Abbey and also Buron is pretty much done in terms of building and orchard placement. I had to redo like a third of though because I was unhappy with it but now it looks pretty damn close to my reference pictures. From the South-West: From the North-East: A close-up: And here the original as of 1944 (that would be a view from the East):

Well, I can't make any screenshots until the weekend, but I have begun fleshing out Buron a little and have added the outline of St. Contest to the far North-East. Unfortunately, I couldn't place St. Contest the way I wanted it due to the way the map is made up to that point, probably due to small distance mistakes I made to that point (I started in the South and small errors accumulate I guess). Anyways I had to angle St. Contest at 45° which keeps the distance to Buron correct, but also extends too far to the North and unfortunately I have already reached the map size limitations (4000m) which means I can't portray St. Contest completely. Luckily only a small part will be missing.

Don't worry Rake. I myself am now pretty unhappy with my own St.Barthelemy map and my motivation to continue is slim. I would suggest not to rely on modern sources too much. The map you've posted is defeninately a modern one. There is a website on the 30th US infantry division where you can find a map from 1943. And here you can find aerial photographs from 1947. http://www.geoportail.gouv.fr/accueil

I hate WeGo, so only real-time. Though sometimes it's sad to miss some details when playing big battles.

it works in a 8x8m square I believe