Sailor Malan2

Yep, Latin from age 9 to 12, almost to Uk O level standard. Sadly undone by 30 years of neglect! And the phrase you quote is well know in Uk: it is the motto of various Scottish regiments, and on the Royal arms of Scotland

There is a logic - units without a heavy weapon don't get the option to Target Light. Your KT had no heavy weapon. Ergo... Of course, I will lay odds that this is an emergent behaviour not a conscious design choice by the designer... but thats why we invested Systems Engineering! (Sorry, 'in' work joke)

I am not sure I have read the grammar rule on titles versus text in on-line fora. Score draw maybe

OK, you asked for it You are correct in that it is obvious you cannot be talking about both. However 'it' is ambiguous as to which object you refer by 'it'. The last noun group was the AA truck, so you might have been meaning that. Pedants rule!

Agree, but there are many many products out there that provide that already. Don't try and change the only one that is a little bit different into another clone. I am not arguing that CM should be more realistic (my pc hasn't got a 'poke user in the arm really hard' feature anyway), but don't try and dumb it down for the arcade experience...

Given BF has admitted an unintentional error in CAS in the 2 older western Front games why would anyone want to test anything yet. The spotted bug is highly likely to not be the whole issue. Wait until they find and nail the sucker, then worry about it. And I am firmly of the belief that most advocates of change in the aircraft routines to make them more effective seriously need read up and analyse some stuff. CAS in a battalions rear area (in amongst the transport and mortars) is the closest most attacks were: 'A Bridge too far' 'fire the purple smoke' was very much the exception. Air power is powerful because something gets attacked near you most days (or aircraft fly over and you fear it)when you are 'safe' and not in the front line. NOT because some FO points his wand and cries out something in pig Latin like some Harry Potter clone!

I have yet to hear of a case where BF were not extremely understanding of cases like yours. If you corresponded with them before making your changes, and provided proof that it was the same machine (I am not an expert so I do not know what that would be, but specific, notified in advance and not regular complete machine replacements) I have every confidence that they will accommodate you. I am not a fan of locks. Why don't you remove all locks from your house and car? Admittedly I haven't bought anything from you, but neither have you bought unlimited rights to the software...

I like Jason's thoughts, but here we have a symptom of play style. I don't have a real issue for the route finding currently because I assume that troops will do it wrong, and use lots of waypoints where necessary. If I don't want them to run out of the wrong side of the building, I put the first point just outside the 'right' side of the building. Etc. Yes, I agree that this isn't consistent with the command level role of the player (company commanders etc do not order detailed move orders for individual fire teams). But this is by no means the only issue (they don't order individual tank commanders when to stick their heads out, change facing, set up weapons etc). I just live with it. I would much rather have the invisible tanks knocking visible gaps in walls issue fixed first (for example). But each to our own... I view the few times that my pixel truppen get it wrong as part of the innate chaos of war.

I am curious. How many people on this thread have military, or better, combat experience? One way we can all get some (poor) simulation of combat is paintball... not lasers, you need the 'ow' factor of those little balls hitting you, the sting and the bruise. Now go and find an arena with a resident team of competent players (they all have them). Get your team of mates together, and ask the competent team to play against you. Now try an advance (or even defend). When the bad guys pop up unexpectedly, and balls are clipping the leaves above you head, and you are thinking 'oh s*** how did they get there, now what do we do?', I want you to be aware of who in you team has been hit, where, how much ammo they have and what type of gun they are using. Use this information to decide who to help, whose gun to take, and whether you need ammo. Oh, and when moving to actually execute the above, don't get hit now - it stings! Then tell me if you think the current system in CM is that bad. Combat, once in contact, and especially when effective hits are being taken is noise, fear and chaos all mixed up and covered in mud (or dust!). Command your total forces and stop trying to play chess. Chess players calculate every option. CM players play the odds, use sound doctrine and improvise. Want to have more control? Play Tetris. My personal 2c philosophy.

Love the loader. "What have I got in my pocketsies?" . However someone needs t tell him to put the round in the breech not underneath it. Although the gun fires well enough so what do I know!

Nice discussion of the issues of bursts vs squad spacings etc. To come back to another theme, someone asked that pixeltruppen take account of the squad weapons and ammo profile when scavenging under buddy aid. I hate to worry anyone who thinks this. An average WW2 infantryman did not have a misspent youth playing FPS, nor an encyclopedic knowledge of most modern movies (good job, as we all know that the bad guys can empty an entire mag into a confined space but miss, and goody can ricochet a bullet off a metal post at 100m with a pistol to release a giant bucket of molten metal! WW2 Squaddies are not well educated logical gamers. They are basically educated and variably trained frightened teenagers/early 20's (with exceptions - some are practically pensioners in VG units!). Anyone with initiative and brains is in the command group behind the squad (or probably already dead) . Stop trying to make them action heroes!

I am not sure to what extent this is modelled, but you need to factor size in to effect. Clumps of trees come in two sorts (in RL). If the woods are not too big/thick, there is often undergrowth that can conceal people. Tanks are way too tall to benefit much from that. If typical thicker darker (e.g. pine woods) there is no undergrowth, but individual men can hide (lying prone behind trees). Tanks are too wide to do that! Thus woods give much more concealment to people than tanks

This is getting down to too low a level for the CM engine. The video shows all tanks doing neutral turns (i.e. one track forwards and one in reverse, to turn on the spot). Many WW2 tanks could not do this - the best they could do was one track braked to a halt and one driven forwards. For some tanks that was a good way of throwing a track and the best they could realistically do was to brake one almost to a halt, giving a tight turn but not a pivot. Thus changing the behaviours when caught in flank do not necessarily make for a better (more realistic) game. For CM3 I would like to see tank transmission modelled in issues like this, but for CM2, the delays whilst the turret turns and the hull fights it is not tactically unreasonable, although a little graphically odd. But it's not the worst of those! How do you think German tank aces routinely killed multiple tanks in ambush without getting nailed?

Please search on this. BF has said many many times that what you see in the video is an approximation of what is going on in the games engine. The trenches are like this (IIRC) because of graphical issues with fully sunk foxholes/trenches. They used to be fully sunk but were changed. Ido not believe the effect was changed.

Completely agree - my point was effect on the Western Allies, not Japan. If we use Japan as a measure, Germany wins the u boat war hands down, and finds the short 75mm Pzkw IV a little over gunned!

I agree, economic activity is not the same thing at all as military capability. However nor can you divorce them. I think you are slightly oversimplifying the issue. I will put a few comments in response to some of your points. You are right at one level - the 'general' effectiveness of a unit of appropriate technology tanks is probably higher than the equivalent bomber of the same cost. However you seem to divorce 'economic' effect from 'military' effect. They are two aspects of the same thing in the medium/long term. Why was Germany defeated (at the very highest level of thinking)? Because they could not stop the advance of the Allies, to occupy Germany, and physically prevent the elimination of their capability to resist. Why was that? Because (ignoring the poor leadership decisions so capably discussed above) their economy could not produce/sustain enough combat capability to resist that of the Allies (I include replacement troops in the 'economy', as you have to in this style of thought - people are 'machine operators' in this way of machines, and the recovery mechanic, repair facility etc are at least as important as the tank driver in this respect). Why couldn't the German economy produce/maintain the combat capability? Because of all aspects of the war. The aim is to render the machines of the enemy ineffective. You can blow them up on the battlefield, behind the battlefield, in the depot or the factory. You can strand them in any of the above, you can prevent them getting spares and ammo, etc etc. The only question in anything other than the short term is who can do all the above most effectively. Note: not efficiently - USSR was not efficient by Western standards, but by goodness it was effective! (I know that the money spent per dead German, by USSR was probably less than the West, but you need to normalise the equation -USSR was a low wage economy. It was damaging its economy far more to kill one German than the West was- the west spent primarily non-human resources that could be sustained in the medium term, the USSR spent finite, though large, human ones) Completely agree. But in late 1944, the sea mine, whilst economically still efficient, was fast becoming less effective. If Germany put the V1 programme resources in to sea mine production, would it have produced the same effect as the V1 programme? No, because it did not have the means to deploy them, and they are easily countered by sweeping. The V1 programme was not ineffective. Hitler had vastely over inflated expectations, sure, and the pure material effect was not huge, but it distorted Allied air and ground strategy, caused a huge diversion of medium and heavy bomber sorties to launching sites etc. A 'V1 sized mine programme' would have been countered far easier and far less cost, and hence the extra bomber sorties would have been spent doing something to reduce Germany's power faster. Killing soldiers is not the right measure of success in war. Look at France 1940 and 1914. Far fewer casualties in 1940. So presumably 1914 is the better victory? No - rendering troops combat ineffective is far more efficient economically. Which is exactly what I am arguing. Military effectiveness is inextricably linked to other factors. If European Russia was like France in terms of road net, would things be different? Yes - I suspect Germany would have got further east, but fundamentally, the Russians still build up faster than being defeated, German Navy still loses the Battle of the Atlantic, the bomber war stays as history.... Germany is able to exert more combat power in to Russia, and the war lasts a little longer, but the ecomonic balance remains unchanged and hence the war remains unchanged in the very highest level. Here we get out of Total war and in to limited wars. You have to be very careful not to mix the two, and draw invalid conclusions. Political will to pursue a war is a whole other issue, and not really relevant to WW2, with a couple of notable exceptions (France 1940, Japan 1945), where the final prevention of physical ability to continue to resist was pre-empted by a collapse of political will. I do not intend to divert by arguing these, as we could be here for ever debating what actual resistance (e.g.) France could have continued to put up. The point we need to be clear is that modern conflicts have not shown that high tech armies cannot defeat low tech ones. They have shown that the modern myth that high tech armies can do so without significant losses or economic effect is incorrect. Thus the 'low tech side' can lose the battle militarily but because their ability to resist is not eliminated, they can continue until the high tech side gives up. My view is that it is pointless to argue who won the war more. Which of your two legs helps you walk more? If you take one away you cant move right? No, you just have to move differently. So with the war - USSR undoubtedly suffered more, no contest. But this does not mean they 'won the war', nor does it mean they didn't.

View=1, lock view to tank. rotate POV to direction of desired move. Move forwards until you can see a hull down view (ridge/wall/terrain in front, bottom of picture and view to where you want above it). Place way point. Hunt if you like for added safety, although doesn't work if you can already see a target or you spot one early before the hull down point. Think that covers it

Ah - yes of course, I forgot. my mistake. I've been playing Italy 1943 recently. They cant fire Bazookas from anywhere! Look, you spend years getting used to the laws of physics and then Einstein comes along:eek: Or put another way, I am right, just not in this time zone:)

There are a couple of other things I think you have yet to encounter/understand. - The game works in Action Squares or points. These are (IIRC) 8m squares that the game engine accounts action at. Thus when you target (or move to) an area, the waypoint/target jumps to the centre of the square. Thus, targetting the ground infront of the bush may actually be effectively targeting the bush. - LoS is caculated per firer, so any LoS tool would be an approximation. You can have one guy in a team able to see and fire, and the other not. This can be significant if the AT weapon firer is the guy who cant see... Bazookas cant fire in buildings (backblast) Troops panic (especially green ones). This is WAD - you are the commander of the force, not a single squad leader. Hope his helps

Muat resist urge to join. Must resist... Oh Heck, I cant stop it... 10% difference in casualties per round average in CM is NOT the same as 10% difference in effectiveness. This is the 'In RL Sherman is rubbish and KTs rule, because that's what has best results in CM' fallacy. In RL many many more factors apply. In the same way the Sherman was a war winning tank, and the KT wasn't, HMGs and their team have other factors than CM casualties. For one, (as you have said), you have extra men to carry barrels and ammo (try firing an LMG for hours on end with only 2 men. You cant. once you have fired all your ammo, someone has to get more. The Tripod enables longer range fire etc. So, no more 'CM only makes it 10% more efficient, this cant be right or no one would use it...' rubbish. Also please repeat after me 'it is illogical to complain about CM2 modeling of MGs and use CM1 as an authoritative reference!'

There is a further effect on large (relatively) projectiles hitting thin highly angled plates, especially with openings as here. The Aluminium sheet example is a perfect example of it. Penetration tables assume a fixed armour sheet able to withstand the pure 'collision'. If the bulk stiffness of the target armour is not large (compared to the energy of the incoming round) you end up with the sheet being unable to resist the pure impact force of the shell and deflecting (bending). The shell doesn't need to defeat the armour (as in, penetrate through it by a combination of shear forces and compression), it can just knock it bodily away (bending the plate as it goes). Thus the shell can defeat the plate without classically 'penetrating'. This is a large factor in overmatched plate issues - you see it a lot on WW1 battleships - the plate knocked out of place (up to say 6" inwards at one end) due to a hit on the plate join but no penetration of the plate. Still wouldn't want to be standing behind the impact! In the case of the 20mm plate in question, the bulk stiffness will be rather low compared to the front plate (say) and may well deflect and let the round in rather than be penetrated

OK, its official, the MG42 was a combination death ray and magic wand, and I bow to your superior persistence as I give up. However: No 2 is fully occupied ensuring the existing belt feeds cleanly into the gun (have you seen how much a belt jumps around?). I do not know exactly what the length of a 50 round belt is, but say (conservatively) 10mm per round. That means the gun 'eats' a 50 round half meter belt in max 2.5 secs. So poor number 2 is trying to keep adding these length to the end of a belt that (in your model) is being swallowed at 1.5 m spurts. Unless he has a great length of belt pre-attached, he hasn't got a chance. Too long a belt makes for twists and misfeeds. If the belt runs out, it doesn't matter who reloads the gun, someone has to (actually the gunner) and no firing will occur whilst it is done! Who said it did/was? Not me for sure. My point is that no one can keep changing a barrel every 15 seconds for long... have you ever handled one? You need an asbertos pad to handle them when hot, and I am told that putting them on sand/soil when hot isnt a good idea. I don't know the barrel weight, but they are 1/2 m of high quality steel, not a bamboo stick. Except some one is doing it twice a minute (almost) under your model, and under tactical conditions... "Where's the MG Sarge? Just next to that idiot running around humping ammo boxes!":) It isnt the cool down rate of the barrel that is significant. It is the poor guys humping 16kg of ammo a minute, and multiple barrels all whilst someone is trying to fire effectively. I am not discussing what the gun is capable of. Rather what actually happened in battle conditions. Out of interest, what is the record for rate of fire of a standard British Army Lee Enfield? No? "The current world record for aimed bolt-action fire was set in 1914 by a musketry instructor in the British Army—Sergeant Instructor Snoxall—who placed 38 rounds into a 12-inch-wide (300 mm) target at 300 yards (270 m) in one minute" What is the fastest anyone has sustained (for more than a minute) from the same rifle in battle? No, I don't know either, but I will guess is isn't higher than 10 rounds per minute. This is what we are talking about. Oh, and could Sergeant Snoxall have hit 38 men? Not in a month of Sundays. They take cover, they move, they observe. They don't perform like static targets. Anyway, far too much time wasted already.

So, not one of the men in your test cowered? At all? What were you using, Star Wars Storm Troopers? I must have missed that option in QB:confused: You dont think you have introduced another variable now? Where is the gun positioned? Where are the enemy relative to the gun? I can beat your figures for disappointment quite easily - I routinely have HMGs score no (zero, zilch) kills - I tend to keep them safer, at the expense of fire opportunities. You have shown kill rates of 100 per gun in a short scenario. I have quoted zero kills in a long scenario. The game must be broken, there is no way HMG effectiveness varied that much!

Seriously? You are kidding right. So your poor No. 3 has c15 seconds to get the replacement barrel, give it to No1, collect the hot barrel, put it somewhere safe (preferably in the open barrel container), all without getting in No1 or No2's way. All whilst someone else (No 2?) is clipping extra 50 round belts on to avoid running out (having to refeed the belt would certainly dent your 'fantasy times'!). BTW, an ammo box is 250 rds (5 50rd belts I believe) so every 20-25 seconds, someone is humping a box to where No2 can reach it to retrieve the next belts. That isn't a description of a machine gun crew in action, its more like a sped up comedy silent movie sketch! Oh, and I am no expert, but cooling the barrels in air takes a good few minutes, so you have an impressive row of spare barrels. All whilst staying low and hoping no one shoots at you!:eek:

400-450 rds per minute sustained is 18-20 secs continuous fire (I do not accept your 1500 rds/min rate), and 1 'and a bit' barrel changes. In 3 minutes, you have at lesst 3 hot barrels, and a shortage of cool spares. There is no way 400-450 can be sustained. Do not forget the abstarctions in the video represenations. I do not know exactly how it works, but I have had casualties and supression in an adjacent square to the target area fired at. This suggests there is already some dispersion modelled. All a longer burst should do is increase suppression. As I explained, the rest of the burst will not hit other targets (or not likely to). More rounds does not equal more hits.