Sgt Schultz

All the "Jagds", or turret-less tank hunters, should be positioned in such a way that LOS is blocked to their flanks. Houses, trees, hills, etc will all work. By only exposing the glacis plate and forward arc it becomes much safer to keep the commander up. No turret means keeping an arc is less dangerous that it would be to a turreted vehicle, which may lose a possible shot. The combination of arcs and keeping your commander up should greatly increase spotting ability, and decrease response time. Unless you are at some seriously short ranges, and/or getting flanked/shot in a weak spot... one should not see M10s beating a JagdPanther. That glacis should turn almost everything at ranges greater than 300 meters or so. I know my Jagds laugh at everything thrown at them. It only takes one hit from that 88mm L/71 to settle the matter.

The payoff for pushing through the woods to a nice spot... -

Conscript/Green Experience Extreme Motivation -1 Leadership Motivation seems to have more to do with tenacity than true combat capability, so Extreme/Fanatic should be fine.

Time to start mopping the pool of cold sweat off the floor ... right after a quick change of underwear...

Reverse the truck/halftrack right up to the gun while packing up. Make sure the truck is backed up to the rear of the gun. Give gun crew move order into truck. Drive away. Back into new spot, and move and deploy.

From my experiences in testing scenarios, it seems to me that Leadership modifiers add a very small multiplier to a range of unit behaviors. The boys are just a little quicker on the uptake, pass info along better, stay on task a little longer, etc. Leadership has an effect across all the other specific modifier types. The same unit traits that are covered by Motivation, Experience, Morale, Fitness... all of these can be affected over the course of a battle by the leadership modifier of both the unit and directly superior HQ. Good luck quantifying it. It seems to be a tiny .01-type variable that is also subject to many other situational variables. Bottom line in a game engine sense... if you are a QB player ... +1 is worth it for HQs, tanks, zooks and other heavy weapons. Stacking(CO/plt/squad) doesn't make for uber-troopers, but may make you think "wow what a lucky shot" every now and then. I have tried, gamey b@st@rd that I am. Charles doesn't give stuff away.

Go here and follow all instructions for 2.0 upgrade. http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=273&Itemid=459 This is the Repository, where all mods, maps and player-made scenarios reside... http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=select&id=41 You may wish to mod your game from there. Lots of wonderful mods to vehicles, terrain and effects.

Having a "clean" version as well as a full-flavour one is a very good idea. Leaving sheds and "outhouses" is one thing, but having scads of telephone poles, rubble, woodpiles etc can really add to load times for lower-end systems. Looking forward to downloading this one.

.. the EM-50 Urban Assault Vehicle ...

Half-done fictional map. Could finish in about two weeks. More or less a Hürtgen Forest-type thing. Buried Modular buildings, surrounded by trees to offset indirect-fire damage potential to the damaged roof. ---- Many(manymany) trenches in locked elevation, with various built-in revetments... (edit - btw that is an immobilized tank acting as an 88mm bunker that we don't have yet) --- ... and bunker complexes large enough to hold a platoon in C2... --- Downsides - The almost irresistible temptation to adjust the Rubic's Cube-like trench system. Lock 'em or suffer six week set ups from the defender. The buried structures are obviously what they are and where they are. Countered by putting more than the available artillery should be able to negate. Had to put a lot of decoy locked tiles to simulate trench lines. Otherwise gridded terrain mod users would zero in on all trench lines. ----- I think that it could soak up as many troops as you care to use like a sponge. A battalion could walk in, and maybe get a ragged company out the far end of the haunted forest.

The Stuart had a field day. Hard lesson in flank security taught and learned there. The A/C crew is most likely looking down from Valhalla screaming "Use The Hunt Command Next Time!" Grenade storm. It has been a great DAR and battle from both sides. All around, I have to state that I am pleasantly surprised at how well this force choice has worked out for you so far. I would have thought it to be a limited and unwieldy force, but you have made full use of it. The flanking and spoiling attack actions of your light vehicles really showcases how speed and surprise can work .... or sometimes not. I do agree that a single infantry company mounted in halftracks/carriers could have paid major dividends in scouting, screening, and garrison duty. We will have to watch and find out. You seem to be smacking his troops around fairly well as things lie now. I know I would be a tad beyond nervous by now if my boys were getting constant glimpses of ever more armor. The PsyOp factor just cannot be ignored at both the tactical(TacAI) and commander level. Scary waves of Deathstar Churchills that just don't stop coming.

Very nice. Fictional maps are my favorite.

Terrain that offers concealment when observing is NOT the same as terrain that offers concealment when firing. Example .... the proper choice of terrain allows this panzershrek team to stay prone throughout the entire process of firing and reloading.. Resulting in this ... That may help. -------- The bush ain't gonna help ya' none there son. Get down in the weeds if you want to live. ----------

Wow, you mean everyone else doesn't walk around with a director's monocular just to get that effect? Everything looks better with lens flare. ---

Having a towed weapon "stay" inside a structure is dependent on two conditions... 1. Size of structure. Multi-tile Modulars work best. 2. Placement of structure/gun tile. The gun should be in the middle of a tile, so wall-wrapping becomes problematic. -------------- Looked into it a while back for my scenarios. It works, but replay is compromised as the gun's location is known forever more. It's not like the commander can just slap it into another structure, and if you place it inside a valid setup zone... any commander tweaks can make it pop out on start.

If you want to have the gun deployed in a certain area or small number of places, then there is another solution. Create a "revetment" by locking the "gun" tile one lower than all surrounding tiles, or by creating a "horseshoe" around the spot by raising a line of tiles one higher. Place Light Forest and then three bushes on the raised tile in front of gun position. Place Foxholes in gun position. You're done. ----------- Creating defilade positions in this manner can greatly increase survival times for towed guns. Cover to the front, but shots to either side into tactically significant areas.

+1. I am constantly giving my assault teams the spare PF from my Hannomags, while watching the organic ones sit unused. The effective MP40 range is under 100 meters. The PF of the "future" will go up to 100 meter range. It's a match. Shrek is 300 meter range, so it could be placed with the LMG team without crimping anyone's style - Even if the assault team is not issued all the Pfs available to the squad, it should get first choice of at least one. Make mine a 30K please.

Wow, by the looks of the posts here we are definitely the AARP demographic. Imagine the warehouse full of hex-map boards we could gather if all our Avalon Hill collections were to be brought together. Get your dice and grab some string! Prepare to argue, we're playin' ASL! ---- Ahh, the days of fighting over LOS and rules, just to watch the cat settle the argument by strolling across the battlefield. Which reminds me.. I have a nice pair of vintage catskin gloves on Ebay. ---- Need to get a modder to make up some Ensure and Metamucil posters for flavour objects.

Very well done sir! My volcano is coming along slowly, but should be available soon™. Caldera full of burning vehicles makes for a nice plume.

WEGO always. My battallion-sized forces need a tad more looking after than RT can provide me the time for. Plus, as stated above, there is nothing like being able to watch the action over and over from different angles. The amount of work put into this really shows when you are level 1 or 2 and watching the TACAI do its thing.

I have turned the 2x2 that ian and DT are playing their 20K on into an attack map of approx 1.9x1.8. It has significant alterations to the base map. Let me know if you want it.

I think Jason made excellent "walk before you run" points on the basics. Movement, indirect fire tactics, misdirection and smoke usage, etc can all be taken up by a player as his comfort level grows with his current knowledge. Smoke can be a forgotten asset. A King Tiger threat is negated if it is blinded by a single 81mm mortar smoke round. With the right wind conditions, you can move the Rose Parade down a map unseen by using nothing more than a platoon of Shermans and their pop smokes. Infantry pop smoke can be critical to the "flight" part of Jason's advice. You can misdirect by laying smoke with nothing behind it, while the true attack takes place elsewhere. It alters the terrain on your schedule for the time you wish it to. Terrain is a four dimensional condition. Time of day changes LOS. Temporary "terrain" such as smoke screens or dust trails from convoys can drastically alter a battlefield for a set amount of time. Rain will cause ground condition to change over the course of a battle. Fire is coming, and you can imagine those effects on terrain over time. Structures collapse and alter LOS. A tree can be vaporized by a single 150mm round. Be mindful of ways you can shape the battlefield, and ways that the enemy may shape it against you. The same piece of ground can be shaped from traversable into fatal terrain in the space of a few minutes. Some will get that, others will Google. -----------

If you change map dimensions, then fortifications jump. -

Born on Sept 5, 1961... You do the math you young whippersnappers. ------ I'm as old as Enterprise CVN-65