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ClarkWGriswold

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Everything posted by ClarkWGriswold

  1. Until now I've mostly been relying upon Suggestions when choosing my forces for a quick battle. But I'm starting a new game and want to tweak my purchase a bit. I've run into something that seems like it should be dead simple, but I cannot seem to figure it out. When you begin the process of force selection for a QB you see infantry options on the left (Panzergrenadier Battalion, Grenadier Battalion, etc) and an empty box on the right for purchased troops (currently empty since nothing has yet been purchased). Let's say, for instance, that I want to purchase two or three tanks, then use my remaining points for infantry, artillery, etc. So, I click on "Armor Only". So, I buy a tank battalion and then delete units until I have one HQ tank and a couple of subordinates, saving the rest of my points for infantry and such. Once I've clicked on "Armor Only", how the heck am I supposed to get back to infantry selection? There's no button for infantry. You can't de-select the Armor Only button. Clicking anywhere else on the screen doesn't take you back to the default view. Am I missing something here?
  2. I'm pretty sure that Model Ts on rutted dirt roads don't bounce around as much as vehicles in CMBN. Steve (I think) said that movement was purposefully exaggerated to be more apparent from the player's perspective. Personally, I find it very distracting and think it was a poor choice.
  3. As far as I'm aware, there is no way to alter the win/loss conditions when playing a Quick Battle. If there were a way to apply such conditions, that might help immensely in making battles more realistic. People would be a lot less gung ho if they knew that 40% casualties would lose them the game.
  4. I think this is a biggie. I remember quite often in CMBB getting off several shots and taking out multiple AFVs with a single gun before it was ever spotted. In many cases with well hidden, entrenched guns I was able to either stay unspotted for a very, very long time or at least get off a few more shots after being spotted. In CMBN I find this to seldom be the case. Quite often guns seem to be spotted quickly. Once they're spotted, they're toast. Since they're not dug in MG fire will often take care of the crew. If not, you can rest assured that 60mm mortars will be on the way or some HE from the nearest AFV will deal with them. I think that more stealthy, effective AT and AP guns would be an immense help for the defense and be more true to life. I haven't bothered too much with keeping track of percentages. My last game playing as the attacker I took very few casualties. I'd say 10% at most. But it was an armor heavy game. I simply used scouts to flush out the enemy positions, then maneuvered to outflank. Since the defender was stuck using StuGs in the defense, it was relatively easy to scoot around and get side shots on them all. The game prior to that was the one featured in my most recent VAAR. This was infantry only and I was the defender. Without armor on the attack, I was able to mortar the attacking forces relentlessly. But even though I caused >75% casualties, my opponent was able to continue fighting and win the game. I chalk this up to the extensive use of crack and veteran troops on his part. We have since made an agreement to limit the use of these troops, but we've only played one game since then, so I'm not sure how much it influences things yet. My guess is that veteran and crack troop quality is the main thing that would allow a force to continue fighting after such losses. I only use Regular forces and have found that they break and cower quite easily after a few losses, making it difficult for me to keep up an offensive. I'd be curious to hear how many players use Regular quality troops versus making everyone Veteran or higher quality. My guess is that most long time players default to using Veterans, thus making attacks with heavy losses possible. Personally, I would love to see this addressed using rarity values, if possible. With strict rarity enabled a player shouldn't be able to have a force composed of 100% Crack troops.
  5. Sorry, I should have said anything smaller than .50 cal will not cause casualties. You can fire .30 cal at your own guys all day long with no wounded or KIA. You'll cause suppression, but not kills. It's only once you get to .50 cal, grenades, etc. that you have to worry about friendly fire kills. I went back and edited my post to clear up the confusion (hopefully)
  6. Anything smaller than .50 cal will NOT cause friendly casualties. I've done extensive tests and as long as you don't use .50s, friendly fire will not hurt you. It WILL, however, have other effects. Friendly forces can be suppressed and pinned by friendly fire (just .30 cal MG, .30 cal rifle, and .45 cal). It's pretty easy to send a friendly unit from OK to Nervous via friendly fire. Also, grenades, rifle grenades, bazookas, etc. all WILL cause friendly fire.
  7. Unfortunately, it's basically impossible to move AT/AP guns (you can, but it takes half the game to do it). Since these are, historically, the backbone of any defense, it makes for quite a quandry. As the defender you get relatively few points to spend. If you buy relatively inexpensive AT guns you've got one shot to inflict casualties against enemy armor before the enemy silences them (mortars or AFV HE rounds). If you buy tanks you'll wind up using a large portion of your point allotment on a relatively small number of units. SP guns can be a decent compromise on some maps, as long as they aren't easily outflanked and lines of sight are long. Not being able to temporarily abandon guns and then recrew them makes historically accurate defense extremely difficult. Not being able to dig in guns or hide them inside buildings makes it even more difficult.
  8. Someone did a comparison test and emergency arty is not just inaccurate, it's woefully inaccurate - like, hundreds of meters off target levels of inaccuracy. I wouldn't use it unless you've got no friendlies anywhere remotely close and are basically getting overrun.
  9. That's a good point, and something I should have mentioned earlier. My opponent in my most recent game normally buys all veteran or crack units. After experiencing that he was able to continually attack despite suffering heavy casualties we made a gentleman's agreement to limit the number of veteran and crack troops that could be purchased. In our most recent game he was on the defense, so I haven't really been able to see how much effect this new change makes. I wish that the rarity values would take care of this issue. When rarity is set to "strict" it shouldn't be possible to purchase 100% veteran troops, but it is.
  10. I will say that the times I've played as defender and handily won has generally been in "unfavorable" conditions. That is, rainy, muddy, foggy, and dawn/dusk when sight lines are short. Rain and mud seem to be the great equalizers in this game. Attacking troops get exhausted much more quickly as they slog through the mud, and the precious armor that spearheads any attack bog so very easily. Under these circumstances I've found defense much easier.
  11. That is bloody brilliant! I'm going to have to propose this idea to my buddies.
  12. We generally setup our games to be 1:30 in length, but I don't think we've ever taken anywhere near that long. I think this last battle was only about 20 minutes total, and that was on a medium sized city map. You would think that this would pretty much be taken care of by the game's morale system, but it's amazing how well you can continue to fight even after taking heavy casualties. Is there any way to setup a Quick Battle with conditions that would prevent taking more than X% casualties? This is true, but arty wasn't a factor in several games. It mostly came down to the defender losing their last piece of armor. Once that happens, it's all over. The attacker can stand back and just pound you with HE.
  13. I routinely play CMBN via PBEM with two friends from work. We're fairly evenly matched, having all started playing this game (and CMBB prior) around the same time. We've played dozens of games between us and it seems that only a handful of times has the defender been triumphant. I just finished a game yesterday where I, as the American attacker, soundly beat my opponent as the German defender. He had three Stugs, an armored car, a handful of men (mostly MGs), and some artillery. I had 6 Shermans (75s, 76s, and a 105), an armored car, a halftrack, 6 or so .30 cal MGs, and many, many squads of men, along with a generous helping of arty. He simply did not seem to have enough men or machines to fend off my onslaught. The last game that I played against this same guy I was defeated (my latest video covers what happened). I was the Germans on defense and he was the American attacker. Even after inflicting 75% casualties against him, I was finished almost to the last man. His forces were just overwhelming. It seems as though almost every game goes this way, regardless of which of us is attacking or defending and regardless of which side (German or American) is defending (though I will note that the only time the defenders have won were both games with Germans on defense). So, we've decided to try giving defenders a 20% troop bonus to see if that evens things up a bit. I'm just curious if anyone else has noticed a similar pattern or not. Perhaps all three of us just really suck at defending?
  14. I've seen this behavior several times as well. Additionally, I've seen one member of a team get separated from the group and then, after giving the group a movement order, I've had all of the other members run back towards the lost guy. It's as though they're meeting in the middle before they can continue on to their destination. In these circumstances most of the team ends up getting slaughtered because rather than moving to cover as ordered they run out into the open to join their lost comrade.
  15. I haven't played any of the Achtung Panzer games outside of a single demo. IIRC, it didn't support PBEM so I didn't bother. Having said that, there is a LOT there to like (especially from a graphics/physics perspective). I like that tanks coast to a stop (or not!) when hit. I like that parts fly off, hits are shown graphically, treads can be broken off, etc. Even the little stuff makes a huge difference in immersion. Watch a tank drive through a fence in AP versus CMBN. One looks very realistic while the other basically just disappears (and only after the middle of the tank touches). Tank treads throw dirt and leave substantial tracks. It looks like a 50 ton object went across the ground. Trees fall over rather than simply disappearing. Vehicles slip and slide as they move and when they get stuck they LOOK like they're stuck, rather than just saying "immobile". I love that you can see the shockwave near a large gun's barrel when it fires. The headlights at night look awesome. The way that things catch fire and the fire spreads is incredible. The animations are very nice. Watching a crew pick up the legs of an AT gun to change the way it faces is a joy. I get a LOT of enjoyment out of CMBN (despite the fact that I'm often extremely critical of it), but from a graphical perspective I think that Achtung Panzer just blows it away. Beyond the graphical stuff, I really wish objects in CMBN acted more realistically. The exaggerated way that tanks sway when they move and fire is annoying and unrealistic. The way that vehicles start and stop moving is jarring, and the way that objects intersect (or rather don't intersect) often looks wonky. I love CMBN, but I'd really like to see the next game adopt some of this stuff from the Achtung Panzer games (along with a much needed UI revamp).
  16. I've had lots and lots of trouble with this aspect. Quite often I have mortars that are "out of command" when indications are that they shouldn't be. For instance, I'm playing a game now and have two 60mm mortars in a rear area, with both of them literally right next to an HQ unit with a radio (can't remember if it's battalion HQ or company HQ or what). My HQ units and spotter up near the front can contact one of the mortars, but not the other. This makes no sense to me since both of them are right next to an HQ unit with a radio. I've had this sort of thing happen more times than I can count.
  17. Does this tool handle the heightmaps too, or just the terrain types? If it does do terrain types, then I'm thinking you could use the Google Earth "shaded layers technique" to take care of the height mapping.
  18. This. The reason we need an accurate, usable LOS tool is because these computer units are stupid. They can't make decisions for themselves. A real commander would say "go to that house and lay down fire on the men behind that wall". You can't do that in CMBN because men stop in action spots, don't peek around corners, don't squat to fire under trees, etc. It's quite easy to be in a spot where you SHOULD have LOS but NOT have it simply because someone is kneeling rather than standing, or standing rather than prone. Until the AI can make intelligent decisions to work around these issues, we as human commanders need to at least have a decent idea of who can see what when giving orders. It's similar to the problem in 1.0 where tanks would sit there shooting at trees that were in the LOF until ordered to move. That's a problem that would never occur in the real world (at least, not repeatedly for a full minute) because the commander would hit the tree once then realize the issue and move the tank 2 feet before trying again. But the issue affected the game greatly because of the relative lack of intelligence of the units and the relative lack of control of the commander.
  19. As soon as CM has AI that's on par with a real human then I'll concede that we don't need to know exactly who can see what. But as long as I have to micromanage my men, I don't think it's too much to ask for the game to do a better job of conveying who can see what. This is obviously a problem or we wouldn't constantly have threads about men who can't see things they look like they should be able to, tanks seeing things you wouldn't think they'd be able to, tank commanders seeing a threat but the gunners not seeing it, etc., etc., etc. It's way, way too easy to move a unit someplace where, by all rights, you should have a great view, only to find out you can't see squat. And it's equally easy to move somewhere you think you've got cover only to find out that you had cover from some point on the ground but not from an enemy unit in that very same spot.
  20. They most certainly can see and fire out once the building begins taking visible damage. So, you might get away with firing on them with no repercussions for a turn or two, but after that they will likely be able to return fire (assuming they live, which is unlikely).
  21. Sounds to me like you didn't deselect the waypoint before you tried to issue the reverse command. So, you essentially turned what was supposed to be a forward movement command into a reverse command. Make sure you click off your movement command before you issue a new one. Edit: What ^^^he said.
  22. It often takes more than one HE round to take out a tree, but they DO get taken out by heavy caliber fire. There's an example of it in my first VAAR, with a tree being destroyed by a 76mm Sherman. Personally, I think trees should disappear much more easily, and it would be nice if they left a stump behind, but that last part is probably beyond what the engine is capable of.
  23. Another tip is to give your FO and spotting HQ groups short cover arcs to prevent them firing at enemy units and giving away their position. In general, they don't have weapons or numbers that are effective at long range anyway, so it's a waste of ammo AND draws fire.
  24. I can't speak for the US commander, but I'll give my thoughts from the German perspective. I think I did everything right except for my counter attack. Unfortunately, the way that I executed it meant that it happened in a single turn. So, by the time I had the chance to change orders it was already too late and both squads were dead/surrendering/panicking. If I had not performed that counter attack, I think I could have held off the Southern front without TOO much trouble. The other major problem I had was my MG bunker not working properly. I think it was caused by line of sight issues caused by bushes, but really don't know for sure (everyone fired BUT the machinegunner). If the MG had fired, I think I would have inflicted a LOT more casualties. 60mm mortars are devastating in direct fire. They bring their power to bear so quickly and are insanely accurate. If you have decent concealment, don't even bother with using HQs to call fire. Just put these guys where they can get a decent line of sight and let them do the heavy lifting. The last thing that I finally learned is that buildings are frickin' deathtraps. I had three men in the 2nd story of a brick building and they were all taken out in under 30 seconds by four ammo bearers with rifles. From now on, I'm avoiding buildings like the plague. They are okay for concealment, but worthless for cover. "2) Troops sent in squads or platoons through gaps that were obvious ambush points rather than sending recon teams in first." This is something we discussed at length after the game was over. It was a costly mistake for the Americans, but not nearly as costly as I thought it should have been. My MGs killed probably less than a dozen men when they opened up. I would have thought everyone not behind the bocage would have been wiped out. But, to be fair, I don't think that Sizzle-Fry had any idea I'd be deployed that far forward. My guess is that he planned to take cover behind the hedge that I was using, thinking I was one hedge further back (at best).
  25. Well said. This is the problem I have, as well. In my last video several people commented on the fact that German units who were stationary behind good cover (tall, thick bocage) were spotted by advancing American units who were out in the open. The chances of these guys being spotted in real life would be extremely, extremely small unless they opened fire, moved, or were being fairly loud. There is really no way they should have been spotted, but they were (twice!). For ambushes to be effective, units that are behind good cover/concealment need to be able to remain hidden without being given a hide order (simply using a short cover arc and not moving).
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