Rex J.

No. Units only share ammo with units in the same platoon – or in the case of mortars arranged in sections, the same section.

Shouldn't, but nevertheless do. So far I haven't noticed any exceptions. All on map guns produce no incoming artillery sound. All off map guns – including 60mm and 80mm mortars – do produce an incoming artillery sound prior to the explosion. On a side note, the idea of replacing all the incoming artillery wav files with wav files of cats meowing is awfully tempting.

On map artillery/mortar rounds don't trigger an "incoming artillery" wav file before they land. So if you hear that roar or whistle before the shells land, then you know it's from off map guns.

Demo charges and hand grenades are never shared. Rifle grenades are shared. And yes, individual soldiers will grab one clip, magazine, round, etc at a time when they are completely out of ammo from a unit (in the same platoon that has ammo) right next to them. One exception to the platoon rule is that in platoons with section HQs below the platoon HQ, the sections will only share within the section (i.e. 80mm mortars in section 1 won't share with mortars in sections 2 or 3 of the same platoon).

One time I had the camera locked on a newly arrived tank as it approached an infantry squad. When it got within a few meters of the squad, the map suddenly filled with contact icons as it got all the latest spotting information. Then the tank rotated even though I hadn't ordered it to. When I replayed the turn, I saw that the tank was turning its front towards a contact icon that turned out to be an anti-tank gun. Another infantry squad further over had spotted it earlier in the turn for just a couple of seconds while it was moving. So the first squad saw the gun, told another squad (not in its platoon) about it, and that squad then told the tank, which responded to the information by turning its frontal armour to the threat. All in the course of one wego turn.

Permanent, if this is for the amazing looking Dog Red, Easy Green scenario you're working on, then have a look at this thread on ammo stockpiles. It'll work for German mortars, infantry guns, AT guns, and small arms. Pretty much everything but vehicles.

I was playing a scenario yesterday (name of scenario given below under spoiler alert) and I discovered a bit of an issue with anti-tank guns. My infantry had an ATG under observation (calling in mortars) and I moved my tank up to a position where it should have been safe from fire from the gun. It didn't turn out that way, and when I replayed the turn I noticed that the offending round was passing through the corner of the building that the gun was positioned behind. Moving the camera to the gun itself, I could see that the LOF from the barrel of the gun to the tank was blocked by the building, but the LOS from the AT gunner to the tank was clear. The distance between the tank and the gun was about 900m so the slight distance between the gunner and the gun barrel and the resulting difference in LOS was all the more pronounced. Is the LOF for an ATG calculated from the gunner, not the gun itself? If that is the case it's something for players to keep in mind. ***Spoiler Alert*** The scenario was: The Crossroads at Monthardrou and the gun was a German 75mm. (highlight the light coloured text to see it).

That corresponds with what I found in a similar test: I also ran a rather small test comparing the effect of troops in the open to those behind sandbag walls (as well as in foxholes, trenches, and medium and large shell holes). Based on limited observation it seemed the sandbag walls were beyond suicidal for troops. True, but in my test, all the explosions were on the opposite side of the wall (outside the building) and the damage was still severe. My guess would be that part of the reason for higher casualties for troops behind the wall is that it's easier to hit a wall with a rifle grenade than to land one among troops in the open.

Nooooooooooooo. But, but... there are so many other things on the to do list and this is a bug that is actually kind of fun. Hey, that's the spirit. Set it on June 6th, and have the freshly dropped troops trying to find their lost leg bags. Small groups of paratroopers scrounging ammo from one lost leg bag to another as they fight they their way through German patrols to reach their intended drop zone might be a little more CoH than CMBN, but what the heck! It might be just the thing to ease the twitch crowd into the game. Plus it would give us confirmed wegoers a chance to play a real-time scenario small enough that our heads won't explode. Start with one half squad (with "severe" ammo restriction) and add a freshly dropped squad every 5 to 10 minutes, scattering them all around the map. I'm only half-joking BTW. Such a scenario would probably be quite fun. I might even make one myself and see how it goes.

Well they do follow tank crews to make sure they have the right set of keys. Seriously though, if they're able to have tank crews leave and return to their vehicles, and make the 2 mutually exclusive, then there's no reason why they can't have gun crews do the same... at least in theory. I'm more than prepared to accept the "we're a small company and have too many other things to program before that" explanation because it's very true and the game is already infinitely better than we wargamers could have even dreamt of way back in our cardboard counter surrounded youth. But if it can be done, I think the reasons why it should be done are better than the reasons why it should not be done.

I had a chance to look at it some more today, and yes "ghost replacements" will share all types of ammo - with the exception of hand grenades and demo charges - with on map units. Regular sharing restrictions apply – units will only share within their platoon (or section), vehicles don't share with other vehicles, out of ammo units pick up one clip/magazine/belt/round at a time (per soldier) from the sharing unit, etc. So if you wanted to give an infantry platoon a stockpile of ammo, you would add a few "specialist teams" to that platoon – a MMG for .30 cal and rifle grenades, a scout for .45 cal (or a truck if you're not putting it in a building), an M1A1 and an M9A1 (the ammo for the two types isn't compatible) team for bazooka rounds – designate the teams as reinforcements, make their arrival time after the scenario's over, then lump them together on the map where you want the stockpile. The tactic is probably most useful when you want on map artillery with fewer guns but the same number of rounds in total. Right now there aren't that many places where infantry in a static defensive position would last longer than their ammo supply. Still, I suppose it's nice to know the option is there if you have the imagination to put it to good use.

I discovered a minor bug that scenario designers can use to create stationary stockpiles for the US 60mm mortar – and possibly other weapons, though the 60mm is the only one I've tested so far. When a US 60mm mortar is scheduled to arrive as a replacement, its ammo is already considered to be on the map at the beginning of a scenario and shows up in the total ammo available to any on map mortars that are close enough to share its ammo. So to create an ammo stockpile for a company's mortar section, all you have to do is add a few extra mortar teams to the weapons platoon, designate the extra mortars as reinforcements, schedule them to arrive after the scenario is over, then place them on the map and voilà! When your on map mortars move to the area where the future replacements are, the extra rounds show up in the on map mortars ammo count. *edit* it also worked for the PaK40, so it should work for just about everything.

It just occurred to me, with the bug you can do exactly that. I tried it out in the editor and it works perfectly. Just add a few extra mortar teams to your weapons platoon, designate the extra mortars as reinforcements, schedule them to arrive after the scenario is over, then place them on the map and voilà! When your on map mortars move to the area where the future replacements are, the extra rounds show up in the on map mortars ammo count. I've only tried it with the US 60mm mortars, but so far so good.

+1 to that idea. It would also be nice if target heavy/normal/light were "states" that units could be set to. Being able to set other "states" too would be nice, such as move to contact, retreat on being spotted, etc – and having hunt as a state rather than a separate movement order, so that you could have the behavior regardless of the movement speed. Rather like the difference between having to use the crawl movement in order to hide versus clicking the hide command so that the unit goes into hide mode as soon as it stops moving. So instead of setting a 3m target arc for your bazooka team, clicking hide, and then ordering it to hunt to a location, you could set hunt, target heavy, armor only, retreat on taking fire, etc as states separate from the actual movement orders and assigned targets.

This was the Road to Berlin scenario in the demo, where only 1 mortar started on the map. Interestingly, before posting this reply I decided to run the demo again just to make sure. What I found was that the extra ammo for the mortar that started on the map was from the mortar that was due as a reinforcement on turn five. What's more, you could fire all the reinforcement mortar's ammo before it even arrived! So it appears there's a minor bug in that a unit's ammo starts on the map where the unit will arrive later.

I frequently see these "mortar mimes" loading invisible rounds, sometimes several feet away from the mortar.

I had that happen too the first time I played the demo. The mortar team that started at the farm had double the usual load of ammo for a 60mm. As soon as I moved them more than a few feet, that ammo was lost. I assumed it was some sort of "stockpile" bonus ammo that couldn't be transported.

Yes, that's true, I was using area fire. I didn't realize aimed fire would be different. Thank you for pointing that out, it does explain a lot of what people have been seeing.

The demo scenarios are a modified version of part 1 of the TF Rask campaign, plus Busting The Bocage and Closing the Pocket, both of which can be downloaded from the repository.

Would be nice... Some sort of indication at the very end of a WEGO turn of which units took hits/casualties that round, for those turns when you want to watch just once and not from a zoomed out vantage. Maybe the icons flashing at the end of the round or a text log type of thing. These, plus have icons shaded differently depending on their relation to each other – i.e. if you select 3rd squad/A team, have the rest of 3rd squad brighter than the rest of the platoon. +1 This, or at the very least have a little extra space (programming, not visually) at the side of roads. As it is now if the lead vehicle goes even an inch off the road it slows way down and the convoy is mucked up. +1 but URL isn't working for me, did you mean this one: http://www.battlefront.com/community/attachment.php?attachmentid=966&d=1307041444

I set up a test map with squads hiding in buildings, and platoons outside firing at the buildings from 30m to 80m ranges. Using just rifle and LMG fire (both German and US) there were no causalities among the 20 test squads (10 each German and US). When I ran the test again using the regular target command (as opposed to target light) and the platoons started using their rifle grenades and bazookas and panzerfausts, well that was just a bloodbath. So the buildings seem to provide perfect cover to prone soldiers from light arms fire, but not much from even light explosions. I have no idea if that is historically accurate or not. Can anyone enlighten us? +1 to that A possible issue: from what I've noticed, submachine guns seem to be causing a lot of casualties at ranges over 100m - that is, beyond their effective range. Has anyone else noticed that?

You're right. Looking at it again (and using headphones) and comparing it to the test map, what happened was that the driver must have been killed by the .50 burst which caused the tank to stop (not immobilized per se but stopped), then the 75mm shell knocked out the engine. BTW, the "23 second mark" I'm referring to is in the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpbSkVNkR3U, not the original video.

The main gun certainly finished the job, but I'm sure it was the .50 cal that caused the tank to stop abruptly – as opposed to a dumb decision by the AI (or a second dumb decision at any rate). Anyway, I decided to test my theory. I set up a shooting range map with 12 M2 s v 7 Pz IV s, rears to the guns at short range. Note: there were no AT weapons on the map – no bazookas; no rifle grenades; just the .50 cals. The details of this game are amazing at times (all the time really, but sometimes more so than others). Check out the 23 second mark of the video. There's a hit on the rear upper hull, a penetration is noted, "engine shutdown 0.wav" plays, then 2 seconds later the panzer explodes.

In a game I was playing, a Panzer IV tried to pull away fast from a flanking Sherman, turning its rear to it in the process. The gunner missed twice but the commander put some .50 rounds through the engine immobilizing the Panzer.

I believe units will move faster to their destination when they come under heavy fire. So perhaps what you're seeing is the units changing from a "quick" movement to a "fast" movement which will definitely cause them to be tired after less than a minute.