Broadsword56

Yes, the TO&E table is showing a company in an infantry Grenadierregiment should have 3 x 50mm mortars organic to it. It looks like they just might have gotten rid of the 50mm section in every platoon.

So the German infantry grenadier platoons really didn't have any organic mortars at all in Normandy in 1944? I guess the TO&E in the translated German Company Officer's Handbook that the US Army published that year ( http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/wwIIspec/number22.pdf) was already obsolete.

This definitely sounds like the best way to go, LLF. You'll find making mini-maps is a fun and remarkably fast process when you have your master already done to guide you. Here's another benefit: You'll only need to make mini-maps for areas where you actually end up fighting in your campaign. Saves a lot of time. I certainly plan to use your map, so I can simulate the rest of the 35th ID's July offensive alongside the area I'm fighting through now in the La Nicollerie-Villiers-Fossard area. And [once sburke1959 and I finish our current playtest of the La Nicollerie map and scenario, I'll post it on the repository for all the rest of you to enjoy.]

Which sound mod is that?

ARMA2 actually has buzzing insects in it, which I always thought was amazing. But in CMBN I'd like just a few insect sounds like the occasional fly or bee buzz, and that cicada-like sound that you get in the brush on a summer day. Not a lot of it, but just something to make you feel creeped out and to make the bocage feel more alive.

Well, just to show you how sick we mappers are, I'm in California too and I find myself looking at Mount Diablo in the East Bay, imagining it as a spectacular defensive position that US forces could have fallen back to after San Francisco fell to the Japanese....

I run plain old Windows Vista Home Premium 32.

I'd take the idea that tile types alone are causing the problem with a big grain of salt. A tile is a tile. Things like map size, number of object and object density, elevation changes and amount/density of hard-locked elevation points, and number of units would all seem to have far more significant effects on whether a map would load, IMHO. My PC is 4 years old, had a modest 4MB of RAM, and just a fairly ordinary video card for gaming (Nvidia 9800 something with 1GB VRAM). I had zero problems making the 4 x 4 km master map with all the roads and all tile types placed, including tons of tall grass, crops, etc. So maybe it's just a question of some machines handling the game differently than others. Maybe someday BFC will help us out with this issue.

Yes, they do seem to get out too fast, even though I'm sure bailing crews are trying to escape as quickly as they possibly can. I wonder if anyone ever timed how long it really took -- they probably drilled for it so that they could do it in less than a certain amount of time. Maybe someone with modern tank experience can enlighten us.

I find the same problem when I make scenarios using the editor. Even after I draw setup zones and deploy troops in them, the launched game sometimes defaults to placing some troops at the edges of the map, outside the setup zones. Usually if I reopen the scenario and redeploy the troops to their zones, then save the scenario, everything works fine.

Well, it goes along with my belief that in WWII, neither side ever really wanted CC to happen, and when it did happen it was more often a surprise to both sides. There's a difference between the moment when, for example, Lt. Winters orders his Easy Company men to "fix bayonets" and charge in Holland, and the moment when those GIs and Germans actually meet at bayonet range. The actual contact is a "fight or flight" moment where reactions and reflexes take over -- In in a split second, the adrenalin kicks in and a soldier kills like a cornered animal, or freezes with shock. Remember that even if the "unit" is technically "attacking" or "defending," once hand-to-hand combat begins such concepts lose all meaning. Commands can't be heard or obeyed, there is no unit, and it's back to a medieval swirl of individuals caught up in the chaos of the moment. Each member of the attacking unit has his own breaking point and may very well be scared to death, just as the defending soldiers are. Even in the 18th Century and Napoleonic eras -- where bayonet charges were standard doctrine and soldiers expected them -- many were launched but few wounds/deaths were actually caused by swords and bayonets and hand-to-hand fighting. The reason was psychological: In the vast majority of cases, one side or the other lost its nerve before the bayonet charge drove home. Either the defenders cracked at the sight of the charge, or the attackers lost their nerve and cracked under the volume of defensive fire in that final 30 yards. In WWII, where soldiers were horrified by close combat and not encouraged to do it, I think this psychology would be even stronger. So in CMBN, I'd want a hand-to-hand incident to trigger sudden and extreme shifts in morale in either direction. Also, both sides should go to "exhausted" physical state immediately afterwards, regardless of the outcome.

+1 to this -- and to John1966's suggestion of a quick "morale check" before/after the actual fighting, so there's a good chance that some units would just become unnerved and break/surrender at the sight of enemy right next to them. This would also addr4ess my concern about players abusing hand-to-hand combat or seeking it out -- because there's every possibility that your own troops would crack or surrender and it's too much of a gamble, with the possibility of a good unit becoming immediately panicked or broken. I'm afraid the fence-jumping animation might end up looking too much like a karate kick or something -- actually, I'd go more with something subtle like the existing "Hunt" animation -- that wary-but-aggressive crouch-like stance -- and have the men alternate between aiming their weapons and thrusting them out in a bayoneting motion.

It might seem reasonable to ask for the close-quarters bayoneting, fisticuffs, etc., to be animated and represented in CMBN if it happened IRL. But IMHO this issue is similar to the one about fire not being represented in the game: Did it happen? Of course. Was it frequent? Maybe or maybe not. But should it be in the game? That's a separate question that depends on whether the cost of adding it is worth the supposed benefit. The benefit would be eye-candy and something "cool to see" that is typical in other mainstream WWII games. The cost might be a prohibitive amount of design and coding and animating work that would be better used on other parts of the game. And even if it were added, it carries a big risk of unintended consequences for gameplay -- something that could seriously unbalance or break the realism of the way the game plays right now. Real troops in the WWII era valued their own lives and NEVER wanted to come anywhere near bayonet, knife, or fistfighting range of the enemy, and would do anything to kill at longer range to avoid it. If it did happen, if was accidental when troops blundered into and surprised each other. But if it were in the game, players with no motivation to spare troops' lives would unrealistically send their units into close quarters fights just to enjoy the spectacle. CMBN battles could soon degenerate into rugby scrums or scenes out of medieval warfare, 18th Century bayonet charges, etc. And every time I played I'd have to worry that my opponent would send some fanatical SS guys with brass knuckles jumping out of the next hedgerow. No thanks.

+1 to the idea of a fortified house model -- just a modular building that simulates an improved structure where the troops barricaded the entrances, sanbagged the walls, piled up furniture, and knocked loopholes in the walls to make an urban mini-fortress. Seems simpler just to have a new object than to try and make the game handle the issues that happen when people try to use elevation tricks or other things to harden existing houses.

From what I've read, US troops in Normandy learned to generally avoid buildings because they were known to draw enemy fire (many of them even preferred to avoid being near their own tanks, for the same reason!). But, like other posters, I like them for FOs, scouts, outposts, or ambushing. Hiding behind/between them is great, too, so you can get "keyhole" positions for a MG or an AT gun and a flank shot on an enemy moving past.

+1 for making the master map just tiles and overall elevations, leaving the objects and detailed locked elevations for the submaps. This seems to be working well for us in the XIX Corps central AO. The latest hypothesis we're testing is that the "sweet spot" of submaps is something under 25,000 action squares -- where you can have a map big enough for battalion action, and realistic terrain and massive detail. The current La Nicollerie submap that sburke1959 and I are playing on has two sunken roads on it, each of which has a solid line of locked elevation tiles along a substantial section. Please don't give up, LLF! Get the simpler master map finished, and then you can be enjoying your submap battles that much sooner.

I love the unpredictability of this behavior and I think it's entirely realistic. WWII accounts are full of stories about how tanks would advance, covering the infantry, a tank or two gets brewed up, and suddenly the entire tank force is pulling back, to the dismay of the infantrymen. The tankers in their accounts blame the infantrymen for going to ground prematurely and failing to flush out the panzerfausts and AT crews in their path. I'm OK if things like global morale become options that some players can switch off when they want total control over what the units do to make it more gamey. But soft factors and fog of war and "friction" in combat are what BFC do best in CM, and what keep me coming back to the game again and again.

+1 to "drag by his webbing straps" animation -- I keep imagining a "medic" unit that could be split into a medic team and a litter bearer team. The litter would behave like a vehicle -- in that once the team got to a casualty, the WIA figure would change from a guy on the ground to a guy in the litter and the two litter bearers carrying it. Once "loaded", the litter could be sent off to a safer area in the rear -- that would also be the place you could keep other medics to do the actual aid. The medic unit could also come with a special jeep, where "loading" it with casualty would place it on a litter across the hood. Of course, this would probably take years of coding and troubleshooting for what is tactically meaningless eyecandy -- but I guess I can dream, can't I?

Personally, I find binary casualty victory conditions to be useful in my transitions between an operational board wargame (Saint-Lo) and the CMBN battle scenarios that it generates. The boardgame uses "step losses" (battalions are eliminated after two steps, companies after one). So I use the binary casualty VPs in CMBN to represent a "breakpoint" or cohesion theshold, beyond which the attacking or defending unit loses a step after the results are translated back from CMBN to the boardgame. In case anyone's curious about the details, here's an excerpt from my conversion rules: 7.3.1 Battalion breakpoints: At the end of CMBN battles, players check who occupies the objective, and whether any participating units should take a step loss. Based on the overall losses (KIA + WIA + POW) at the end of the battle, any battalion or company that lost over a certain percentage of strength should go back into the boardgame with a step loss, as follows: 7.3.1.1 Attacking battalions: Each 20% casualties per attacking battalion (average for the entire battalion at the end of a CMBN battle) triggers 1 step loss. 7.3.1.1 Defending battalions: Each 60% casualties per defending battalion (average for the entire battalion at the end of a CMBN battle) triggers 1 step loss. 7.3.2 Company and asset unit breakpoints: 7.3.2.1 Attacking companies and assets: If total size of a player’s starting force was less than battalion, each 60% casualties per company or asset triggers one step loss (elimination) of that company. 7.3.2.2 Defending companies and assets: If total size of a player’s starting force was less than battalion, each 80% casualties per company or asset triggers one step loss (elimination) of that company or asset. (Note: The actual percentages are a work in progress, and may be adjusted up or down as we get more CMBN battle results and see how well the rules work.)

One concept that can be helpful in scouting/recon on attack is "gaps and surfaces." This is going to sound a little Zen-like, but think of your force as a stream of water. Your advanced elements flow over the terrain, seeking the gaps and flowing through them. When they encounter a "rock" or hard surface, they flow around it. These penetrations pull the rest of your force through and the follow-on forces exploit and widen the gaps. As you commit more forces, reinforce success, not failure.

Please, can someone give a direct answer to his question? I'm confused now, too, and would like to be sure.Someone said earlier that tanks and art at 105mm and above can breach wire. What about engineers/pioneers using demo charges?

Move the Co. Cmdr around a bit to some other locations on the map and see if the radio communications to the platoon come back.

Escape from Colditz!

You could just raise one action square by 1m in elevation and cover it with mud tile.... Just be sure to lock down all the tiles adjacent to it to the flat lower elevation, otherwise the dung pile will slope too gradually and pull up all the terrain around it. Looking forward to the screenshots -- maybe a "most realistic dung heap" contest is in order.

I wish this thread could be stickied -- we'll be referring back to it for ages to come! Thanks LLF!