Broadsword56

Nice to have, but it strikes me as a level of eye candy beyond the scope of what CM usually tries to be. Personally I'd be happy with just some NW tiles that add fallen snow to the tile we have now. What's very important is that they blend well, so we don't end up with either solid white Siberia looking maps or ones with ugly jaggy snow patches. And I'd expect to see building rooftops and winter bare trees, both with dustings of snow.

Agreed. So the real remaining question is whether (and how prevalent) the person-sized gaps in bocage should be. I don't think anyone here has the authoritative answer. Over many months I think I've read posts ranging from... 1. Those insisting that dismounted troops should be able to pass through bocage at will (perhaps with some delay for hacking/digging through), 2. Those saying it was impenetrable to infantry where it was solid, but it had frequent gaps and thin spots that a person could crawl through, 3.Those saying bocage was (or should be) like a green wall that only dynamite could breach. I think there's never going to be any definitive formula. So it's a matter of finding "the sweet spot" between a tactically challenging green wall and meaningless swiss cheese. The best maps, IMHO, are the ones with the most variety. So a good mix of high bocage, low bocage, hedge, people-sized gaps and the occasional vehicle-sized gap seems best to me. The worst thing is to make it uniform and predictable.

There's a compromise to be made by map designers: Yes, fields should have at least one proper entrance/exit for the farmer. But does that mean the entrance/exit would have been 8 meters wide and permitted AFVs to go through them? Much of Norman agriculture in this era was still horse-powered and the landscape reflected it. I can only speak for myself, but on my maps I make most entrances/exits with a gapped bocage object to reflect that it would have been too narrow for AFVs. I also make occasional fully open entrances/exits, usually in areas where larger fields and wheatfields suggest the farming may have been more mechanized. I also make a lot of man-sized gaps at random spots. This is also a matter of debate. Some say the bocage, while thick and impassable to vehicles, had a fair amount of thin spots and gaps that people could wriggle through. Some might say this makes the game unrealistically easy, and neuters the bocage, but your enemy will also know where the gaps are too, and is likely to have them covered. So we've found that it doesn't really change things that much. You'll still need engineers to blast your own route, and to deal with mines. And if you don't make some bigger gaps yourself, you won't have any armored support to follow your footsoldiers. Bottom line: It's definitely not realistic to have a solid matrix of fields, bounded by unbroken walls of bocage without gaps or openings.

+1 to night flares. The lighting effects are already in the game, as we see when vehicles are burning. But since flares also have to burn out after a certain time, maybe that puts them into the same category as fire. Still the flares would have a greater tactical significance to the game than even fire would. I'd also like to see a type of flare available in the fortifications category that would be a trip flare. you place it like a minefield, and it uses exactly the same logic as a mine to goven when it gets set off ... But instead of blowing up, it shoots a flare. Great to place a few of these in a night perimeter defense along with your mines and wire and TRPs.

The overall map's resemblance to the period aerial photos is stunning.

That's about 20,944 action squares -- and well within the 25,000 we've been tending to view as the playable limit for highly detailed and realistic maps. But it's hard to know for sure until you've completed sveral test games on it. If there's a problem, it usually doesn't show up in loading or immediately in play. It shows up well into a game, often once there's a fair bit of smoke in the air and artillery missions in progress. It doesn't always happen. But if it does, then at some point the game hangs (usually, just as it starts to get really fun and interesting) and can't be rescued. BFC has been sent files of these types of crashed games, so we just hope that there's a fix in the works for the next patch. It's happened even with some smaller user-maps, so size alone doesn't seem to be the cause. We don't even know whether it's something due to map size, some artillery bug, something related to the OOM issues, or some combination of all of the above. So, here's hoping your fantastic Carentan map will play smoothly and completely at full size and detail. Great work!

Sounds cool, and thanks for sharing -- can you explain in a little more specific and simplistic detail exactly what you've done here? What does it accomplish, and how is the effect achieved?

What's the meter dimensions of this map? Hope it will run OK.

Ditches are great -- nice improvement. Just curious: What tile did you line the ditches with and how many meters lower than the road did you lock their elevation?

It's called MILSketch.

Whatever and wherever the KT distribution might have been, the thread still seems relevant for our upcoming Commonwealth Module, where the Shermans will need good tactics to counter even the Tiger I.

Good suggestion, LLF. One very partial remedy that already exists is that on maps using authentic bocage patterns from real places, the field and boundary patterns lead to many more odd angles of high bocage that won't let an AFV cozy up at 90 degrees to it to get a proper LOF, and often not even a LOS (as I'm sure you're now discovering to your dismay on my Hamel Vallee map )

Sharing ammo only within the same platoon would be an absolutely pointless rule, if true. What reality is that designed to simulate, BFC? IRL, units shared ammo everywhere and anywhere possible, and it was everyone's job to push ammo up to the front to whoever needed it. Any spare soldier from any unit should be able to acquire ammo and share it, provided it's compatible with the weapons of the receiving unit.

Frustrating -- but if the driver of the Kubel acquires the ammo, then dismounts and remains adjacent to the depleted unit, wouldn't the guy with the ammo eventually share it with the ones who need it? I thought ammo sharing happens automatically. I know it's not under player control, but it does happen, right?

Hold your fire there, soldier! There's no sign of the Commonwealth Module being out that I can see.

So, when we've got the Commonwealth Module and we've got not only 88 flak and AT, but 88s running around on the turrets of Tiger tanks, I pray that CMBN will have been patched enough to let us play on adequately sized maps (granted, the stated max is 4 x 4 km, but experience is showing that the game has trouble supporting authentic and properly detailed maps at less than half that size.) This limitation hasn't mattered as much in the bocage, but in Calvados it could be a deal-breaker.

I was shocked to set up German heavy AT teams and 88 flak teams and then discover that -- correct me if I'm wrong -- the 88s are totally static in CMBN. Even if you give the Germans some Opel Blitz trucks it won't do any good because the 88s don't seem able to limber up. Any reason for this omission, BFC? Given how hard CMBN makes it to realistically conceal AT guns, and that the only way the game gives us to "dig them in" or protect them is sandbag walls, it would seem that at least these guns ought to have mobility so they can arrive and move in as reinforcements, be moved to alternate sites, into action, or out of danger.

Because you can suppress any enemy that might be there. And because it's indirect fire, you can do this without revealing where your own forces are or their avenues of approach. By the time the enemy recovers from the shelling and emerges to look around, it's too late and your attackers are already in assault range.

C'est magnifique!

And even before you start breaching with the engineers, make sure they won't be under fire. In some cases you may need to suppress the far side of the field with artillery, or cover it with some smoke.

I thought you lot call it "sh1te."

For those that like to tinker with AI plans but aren't into mapping, FYI, there are three interconnected historical maps (the first 2 already on the Repository, the third one completed and to be uploaded soon) that would be an awesome basis for some scenarios: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1334806&postcount=204 I have no interest in coding AI, but I'd love it if my maps became more played because somebody made some terrific scenarios or even a campaign with them.

Good points, Schultzie -- I wasn't thinking of this for QBs, but more for historical scenarios or situations where play balance isn't a consideration. I'm assuming QB players will steer clear of artillery on this scale just because it's so devastating, and as you point out, so costly to buy all those TRPs.

I'd call the learning curve of CMBN high, but satisfying. Because if you take it slow and enjoy the ride, play the tutorial and early easier scenarios, you'll enjoy good results and a rewarding experience at each stage. One thought: The learning curve is really only steep and frustrating if you think of CMBN as a game. Stop looking at the game and look at the WWII reality that this game is trying to simulate. So, as someone mentioned earlier, forget there's a time limit because your soldiers don't know the "clock" runs out at a given time. Instead of studying the game manual or looking for CMBN tips/tricks, I'd recommend just getting comfortable with the interface after the basic tutorials and then go straight to real-life WWII infantry manuals that are available online, for riflle platoons and rifle companies. Learn the basics of fire and movement and other sound tactics, then just try and apply them in CMBN. The more you learn about the real-life history and what worked or what didn't work on the WWII Normandy battlefields, the better a CMBN player you're likely to become. And the side benefit to that is, you'll learn all sorts of interesting things and be a better person for it, even when you're not gaming!

To answer my own question -- after some experimenting: The setup is a battalion-scale battle. One full battalion (3 x 4 guns 105mm, ammo supply FULL) seemed just right to put good coverage on about the 2-company front that a this battalion would be attacking on, about 470m wide. A mission of "medium" rate and "medium" duration was just right for approximately 3 minutes/turns of FFE on each step of the rolling barrage. In this case, the delay between the FO calling in each mission and the FFE was 3 minutes/turns, so I called in the next step of the barrage on every 3rd turn. Interestingly, the heat on the barrels from 3 minutes of firing like this had totally cooled by the first turn after "end of mission," so each battery was immediately ready to receive a new mission again. Having 3 batteries just allows for more steps to the barrage (because 3 batteries bring 3 times more ammo to the party). Each medium rate/medium duration mission for the a 105mm battery used 36 rounds, so that would allow each battery to do 4 missions. That means the rolling barrage for a full 105mm artillery battalon at full supply could be as much as 12 steps deep (some 960m), if the batteries fire successively and use all their ammo. Coordinating this with infantry: From what I can find online, "danger close" for 105mm shells in WWII was at least 350m (and even there in CMBN we've seen occasional friendly casualties from the odd fragment). In the bocage, of course, the fields are often smaller than this and the bocage offers some protection from HE. So an advancing infantry wave would probably need to stay 350m behind the barrage in the open, or one bocage field/terrain feature behind the barrage in the more covered areas. That would let your troops stay on the "safe" side of a bocage field while the barrage falls on the opposite side, then Quick across the open field as soon as the barrage lifts to the next step. All the friendly mortars, tanks and MGs can area-fire on the far hedgerow to continue suppressing any enemy that survived the barrage. Next I'll try to apply this with infantry, as described above, and see what the results look like against a good bocage defense line in foxholes, etc.