Sgt Schultz

No way would I skyline myself like that unless the Hannomag was on fire. Choice 1. Deploy out a pair of steel doors into ground you know was just traversed(and therefore safer than other ground). Choice 2. Fling yourself over the side in full view of the reason you have to deploy in the first place(enemy). Take your time deciding ....

I would suppose it depends on how close the fire missions are to each other. Spotting round overlap may possibly lead to targeting error. I have no clue if this behavior is coded in or not, but have not seen any degrading of ability from my seperated missions that take place simultaneously.

I have found that when using 81/105/120mm off-map assets, a Heavy/Short/Linear around 100 meters long will do just about any reasonable target. If the target isn't dead, it is hurtin'. I do like the idea of going light intensity for longer missions. Will have to see how many rounds a cease fire burns. -

Oh, I wasn't thinking of taking out the weed lines, just the actual bocage/terrain that lay outside the battle zone. Bocage the main roadsides and major fields, and weed the rest. Maybe detail smaller outer areas that have FO/other units on them.

That was a hilarious article. That dry British wit gets me rolling every time. Press "Up, Left, X" to persuade and hug.

Still have two large boxes full of ASL maps, counters and rule sets. Ahh, those glorious days of yesteryear... when 2 hours of setting up was undone by a cat running across the table. BTW, I have an great pair of old catskin gloves on ebay. Panzer General to CMBO and never looked back. BFC keeps a lot of older guys from playing with army men in their yards.

That is an awesome achievement LLF! Just making a fictional 1km X 2km map was an effort for me. I would suggest as a work-around... delete all 'secondary' bocage rows to consolidate fields. Larger fields, and maybe just lose the rows that weren't brimming with Germans. Then pick a part of the actual battle that happened near the center of the map, and detail that a tad more. More or less a level of detail with distance tweak. The farther from the action, the less stuff there is on the map. I would think there were a few more or less primary boundary rows/roads/etc that could be used as detail demarcation lines. Mod a poster to display "Beyond This Point There Be Placeholders" - in French of course. -----

I seem to remember that ground pressure for each vehicle was available in the UI in CM1. If we had this info available, it may help mitigate our perceptions re: bogging. Ground clearance is also a factor. Once the frame/body hits the ground... it's over. I do think that immobilizations on roads may need a tweak. -3% extra chance of bog on any road tile maybe? -

I agree that rubble could use a small LOS tweak. In addition to a better more persistent dust cloud, the LOS blockage should correspond to the size and type of structure. One has to be careful observing this behavior though. Elevation plays a large part. If the spotter has even a small elevation advantage, then the rubble means almost nothing. ------ Until/unless rubble is tweaked you just have to wrap every building wall you can. Makes a world of difference.

It looks like your M8 needs one more meter of elevation. All hail whoever made that map. The indentation, coupled with the sandbags, gives the ATG the perfect 'dead zone' to live in. I will bet you your M8 that the best elevation to hit the gun is right in the sweet spot for the gun to kill you. Quick forward two tiles... Pop smoke at endpoint... REVERSE to old spot ... After one turn you should be able to slow or hunt through the smoke to shoot-n-scoot the gun. -

Thanks!! ----

I have found that a reinforced Company w/armor on the map at any given time is a decent trade-off for us CM1 large-battle types. You can still have a battalion, you just need to kill off a few then reinforce to keep things manageable. So battle durations and distances may increase to compensate. We won't be in the damn Bocage country much longer, so maps can open up with less stuff on them. This allows larger/longer maps. By the time your first Company runs out of steam/has to garrison/etc, the next comes on. --------------- Back to splitting squads .... Yes, I do it almost every time. I run full squads for approach marches, but once the 'line' is reached, they split. Protection of AT assets is the biggest driver for me. I may need that tube guy, so he gets to stay back. This becomes one LESS unit that will be dealt with every turn as well. Many splitting situations are for just that reason ... you want to keep someone safe. Therefore, they probably wil not be getting every-turn attention for orders. -

Was the vehicle operating under a cover arc order at the time? Non-turreted vehicles have to show they care in some way. Was something spotted over there that would interest a JPz?

The big question is ... Is the Bren coming with a tripod??? --

GaJ has it right. I gave up on making one version of any battle. The AI needs what it needs, which is almost always more than a Human needs for the same task. I want to get above 1 battle every 3 months production, so AI plans are falling by the wayside for a while. --------- Oh and by the way.... None of us 'designers' have a certificate or anything special. You folks out there have the same editor. Help us! You want AI plans? I will feed you battles and you figure 'em out. Take any H2H battle that is out there now and start messing around with AI plans... then use scenario author test mode to watch your creations come to stumbling, retarded life. Then tweak them into room temprature IQ. Then they get dangerous. See ya in a few weeks... -

Wall-wrapping a barn makes it look better and gives proper cover to cowering troops. Lots of design options have been discovered and shared since most of these maps were made. Go fix it until we designers can ... become a wall-wrapper and fortify your buildings.

I am still waiting for someone to replicate each one in the game, and post a matching screenshot. Don't make me waste a weekend...

There is a thread that covers this deep in here somewhere. Basically it is what xian stated. Place team next to obstacle. Blast next tile over on same side. Move order diagonally away from blast. Testing with different settings(Exp/Motivation) will give you blast times. Pioneers usually blast in 10 seconds, scout teams in 30. Once you get timing down, then assault forces can be issued appropriate pause orders to go through right after the blast.

AI plans can be a cast iron biotch. tweak, test, tweak, test.... As much as I like seeing an AI plan that acts like anything other than a short-bus graduate, they vastly increase the time required to put out a scenario. Then there is the balance issue. It is a non-trivial exercise to make a force that both the AI and/or a human can use without unbalancing the battle. Now this is just me, but it took over 2 months to make my first multi-plan scenario, and it didn't get much easier for the next. I would rather spend the time making better maps, but will return to AI plans once I get that out of my system.

I believe that I recall pushing disabled vehicles out of the way in CMBO. Or at least being able to nudge them. "Push" and "Tow" ... just what the GUI needs... more buttons. ----

"Fortified" or "wall wrapped" buildings/rubble need to be placed in profusion, and also be part of the VL structure, to be of any real tactical use. Low Bocage and Low Stone/Brick Walls will offer COVER for COWERING/PRONE soldiers as well as a concealment bonus. This means if your boys are hiding or cowering during a mortar barrage... it takes a direct hit to inflict casualties. Rubble is the big winner here. Bocage and all High Walls include a ground floor LOS blockage as well as enhanced protection for the structure itself. Near-miss artillery has to tear down the wall before working on the structure(bocage not so much). Demo charges tear both down with one shot. --------------- Until/unless AT teams can either fire from buildings or roofs, all these tweaks function to make rubble survivable for AT units, and believable to look at. That's it. You fire from 'fortified' rubble in a CMBN 1.01 MOUT environment... or you turn some nice tactical tricks with smoke and other distractions, along with incredible timing. Low walls work ... for a minute. ----------------------- I agree AT teams should get some form of MOUT love, but not sure which would be easier to code. 1. Fire from inside with chance of suppresion and yellow wound. The more crowded the structure tile... the more it hurts everyone. 2. "Deploy" button for AT-capable units to clear currently-occupied structure tile. Let's say 60 seconds for giggles. Dollars to doughnuts this cannot be "remembered", so if you move you lose the cleared space. 3. Allow access to rubbled upper stories/flat rooftops for AT unit use 4. Any combination of the above. Ohhhh PHillllll ..... Steeeevvve ..... where for art thouuu? possible? probable? on the list? beuhler? beuhler? ---

I use my German XOs to man the halftrack MGs. A lot of German HTs do not come with a gunner as standard equipment. This way they get their radio and can contribute some MG42 fire. -

Yowsa sburke! There is a Knight's Cross waiting at HQ for that truppen. Got to love the close-in ROF increase. The sounds of him slapping that bolt must have been hilarious. My center sniper in same battle is having a hunting day like that one. Although all his kills have been at 300+ meters, spread out over 10 minutes.

Oh my Lord. I wonder how the engine would cope with that much deformation of terrain. Craters on top of craters. ...and to think I shy away from including more than a single 155mm battery in a scenario...

I believe that American Paratroopers were trained in the use of, and encouraged to scavenge, enemy weapons. They traveled light, and the thinking was that proper training in enemy weapons would keep a unit effective once it ran out of ammo for its own weapons. ----