Sgt Schultz

My feelings as well sir. My father was a WW2 vet(SeaBee in the Pacific), so I tend to cringe a bit when I see troops buy the farm due to obvious commander error, be it mine or my opponent's. That may have something to do with why I set troops to higher motivation and experience levels than historical accuracy may call for. I want them to have what they may need to make it through the battle alive more than I want them to be "Terminators". I wonder if the veterans and sons of veterans in this community have lower average casualty rates in battles than those without military family members. Not so much of a video game when that pixeltruppen could have been your dad/uncle/grandpa. -------- R.I.P Charles Durning

Veteran/High/+1 is my standard armor setting for QBs. The costs seem prohibitive to me beyond those settings. I also buy formations and then delete down to nothing but HQ tanks for all my on-map armor. This way if someone buys the farm, there is no loss of C2, as long as it is not the Co or Btn HQs. Plus arty can be called in from relative safety. Fit is the only choice... period. Experience, Motivation and Leadership all have their effects on total performance. Experience helps spotting and accuracy, as well as quick-draw efforts. A Vet tank will vaporize an AT team, while a Green one will stare, think about it, and die. Motivation will keep the crew on board longer under damaging fire, as well as keeping reverse and pop smoke to minimum unless actually needed. This can backfire in a big way with Extreme and Fanatic settings. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor, but Fanatics have blood in their eyes. Leadership helps the crew load faster, shoot straighter, see better. ----------- These are all very soft effects that can not be quantified in any exact way, but the difference is there if you play enough games.

Gimme back my thread guys!

Kudos to Steve for the nice big bone he threw us for the future. Just to jump in for second on the thread though... It seems to me that some enterprising soul could look up the actual specs for each vehicle and get the armor thickness and slope/gun velocity/etc data off the intraweb. Then arrange it on a spreadsheet and upload it to the repository. War is hell, and CM has wayyyy too many variables happening in real-time/during turn calculations to have a prayer of getting "actual" data. At least "for now" according to Steve. you da man. However, an historically accurate cheat sheet may give some help to those without the "mental muscle memory" that grogs use to just "know" what to do. Those vehicle specs were burned into my brain when I was in my teens, and I am 51 now. I trust Charles to be as true to the specs as possible, and it serves me well. - Make a list of every vehicle in CM and start a-Googlin'. -

This has been brought up before. I believe we have a "maybe"-type situation, as in the last module with all the toys may have them. +1 anyway since you mentioned it again. I need a four gun battery of 105mm to use in direct fire mode on a large battle I have planned. I also like having assets on the map so they can share in the risk of counter-battery fire. I believe there are enough folks that like larger battles and maps(3km+) to make this a valid request. Ammo crates, and any weapons system 105mm or smaller on-map, and we can really have some nice secondaries from a fire mission.

On the twelfth day of Christmas, A file was sent to me... With twelve Jabos humming, Eleven Ronsons burning, Ten Scouts a-peeping, Nine Pumas scooting, Eight Tigers bogging, Seven Trucks a-fording, Six Shrecks a-hiding, Five Orange TRPs, Four calls for fire, Three French tanks, Two hulldown StuGs, And a sniper 'neath a pear tree! ------------------------------ Happy Holidays to all of you out there in CM-land! May your artillery never fall short! -

I think it is past time for our CW bretheren to get some voice love. Any of you people know how to rip files from Monty Python/Benny Hill and insert into CM? - Clips I would love to hear on the field... "Run Away! Run Away!" Any number of lines from the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch skit. Parts of the legless/armless knight fight scene. Coconut clopping for infantry Quick sounds. The well is deep for great things to be fished out here. -------------

You have to be alive to be tardy. Otherwise you're just "late". Yes, I just thought that up as I was posting. Does sort of "sing" doesn't it? Words to play CM by for certain. One of my other faves is in regards to all the empirical tests that folks run to attempt to re-create battle results. Academia is just fine... But the real world is the real world.

Aside from the occasional wonkiness, which could and does happen to either side and therefore falls into the "war is hell" category, CM AI is the best thing going from what I have seen to date. I still get jaw-dropping moments when team members displace to better positions all on their own hook. More than makes up for those times they behave more like other games' AI. 50% increase in strafing area-of-effect would be nice, but as you say, that is a much simpler thing to change if it turns out needing it. I am used to the amount of input required to keep my boys healthy now. With the 2.0 addition of moving waypoints, there is very little reason to take casualties due to movement issues now. When it comes to waypoints now I say ... Pile 'em on and drag 'em around. Add pauses. Take breaks. Slow and Hunt are fine. Never a need to rush. You have to be alive to be tardy. Otherwise you're just "late". ----------------- Back to the OP... I want to see screenies of the Moments of Doom here. Come on now.

Wow, just wow. King of Grime indeed. It couldn't look any more real unless there was a chipmunk carcass stuck in the tracks.

Beautiful as always! Rarely are mods a reason to upgrade one's comp. There is only one thing left in the entire game(other than modulars, and that ain't happenin').... Please for the love of (insert deity here) help our poor Haystacks. Don't leave us with those stacked "Moe" haircuts made of wheat standing out in the middle of all our modded goodness. -

TRPs make for great -2 moments for the enemy. I have a battle buddy that I have played so many times that I can guess where he will go in many situations. I have a few screenies of his boys sitting on my TRPs. -

Air strikes suck, no doubt about it. Much more of a dice roll than artillery though, so I do not worry about Jabos too much. If I hear them, I just figure I am about to lose a few hundred points. --------------- Hunt will get more of a line-abreast formation(or at least offset) as well as Team use, as opposed to full squads. At least this has been my experience, especially in rougher terrain. Keeping an extra tile or two between the teams helps as well it seems. Deep woods are a cast iron biotch to deal with when they are occupied by the enemy, but there are ways to deal with troops that are dug in like ticks. I got tired of the same behavior that you experienced. The lead man dies before spotting anyone, and no one else "saw" anything either, so the death march continues.... lather rinse repeat. I used to get frustrated that my area fire commands did not reach to where I "knew" the enemy was, so I would try to ease up another few action spots. This resulted in death from the unknown ghost troops. Now I just spray the area fire as far as it WILL reach in the general direction of last contact. Enough suppression effects reach beyond to give the enemy pause, although it takes an extra turn or two to get them to break or leave. Attacking with Slow, with tiny forward cover arc from an angle works well. I have had crawling troops with a cover arc set BEHIND them spin around and zap troops coming up behind them... then turn back and keep crawling the way they were going. Do not think that Slow is a moving Hide... your boys are looking and listening hard. Acute and short cover arc really focuses their attention.

My bar is modded to a nice wood grain finish with a parade of little tanks marching across. Makes it a little more tolerable to stare at.

Is Crane Technique Klaus-san... if do right... no can defense. ----

If it says "Aris" in the title... get it. Vehicles and terrain. Like Pokemon, you gotta catch 'em all. If it says "Juju" in the title... get it. Walls and such are awesome. Mords' faces(unless you already have CW) Mord's voices. Think of the poor man sitting in his basement making all those while wife rolls her eyes... hehehe Vein makes great effects. Tracers, muzzle flashes, explosions, etc. Sounds are mix and match according to your preferences, but there are a few nice options out there. Drakenlord(I think) has awesome photo-realistic flames. The "NO Red Cross" mod has been on my comp so long I forgot that they used to be there. Red crosses kill immersion, so they went bye bye early. ---- You may wish to turn your gamma and/or monitor brightness up once you have modded to Ari's hi-rez terrain. Worth it, big time. It should take about two hours or so if you just hunker down at the repository and the mod whor... warehouse. Then a few more hours mixing and matching. Then keep all the "extras" in a folder for future tweaks.

Epic!

While droning on and on(and on) about 1.11 and 2.0 is fun, how about we get back to the actual playing? hmmm? What have you done in a battle that has made you feel like your personal leadership modifier should be a -2? Just how badly have you screwed your boys over? Come on, 'fess up. My latest minor error in judgment turned an intact platoon into a ragged band of screaming survivors. My hidden defenders made contact, and then fell back in good order through some deep woods. A TRP'd linear fire mission was called in, that the defenders would cross over with time to spare, thus catching the pursuing enemy. NOT. I failed to take into account that variable nature of the fire mission timer, as well as the fatigue level induced by traversing that much wooded terrain on QUICK. One missed orders phase of checking on both timer and progress resulted in sixty seconds of 120mm fire that caused me some minor wailing and gnashing of teeth, and my boys some not so minor anatomical re-arrangement. I swear I heard them cursing my name. ---------- CM 3.0 needs a court martial option in the AAR screen for commanders who do things like this.

Yep. Nothing like that PBEM feeling on defense when you notice it is not just the scout sneaking out... it is the entire platoon... that until that moment was perfectly concealed with their defenders "HIDE from start" bonus. Sixty seconds of cursing and praying, and still losing forever the HIDE bonus. Then scurrying back of course. It makes me feel like I should have a big -2 next to my picture in the leadership modifier area.

Remember to watch out when you PBEM between the USA and Europe. No telling what may happen when you mix American Standard bytes with those Euro Metric bytes.

Give a deployed HMG an area fire command across the line of advance of any infantry you care to set on the map, so that the fire ends well beyond any possible route of advance. Run that test as many times as you like. See how many boys make it across the line of little lead love notes. Place a building to either side of a line of fire set to about 200 meters, and send troops across. They will still take a loss or two and maybe get pinned in the open, or fall back. The closer the endpoint of the area fire command(or any fire command for that matter) the greater the rate of fire. If the HMG is firing at an actual picked target, as opposed to area fire, the the ROF will increase markedly as range decreases. (pucker-factor ROF) What you experienced in your test was most likely the TACAI picking the "most dangerous" target and staying on it. What you may have wished to see was a spray being swept across multiple targets to keep everyone suppressed. That ain't gunna happen. See above... and take positive control of all support weapons in area fire mode to get as close to what you expect them to do. Otherwise the TACAI will pick the target it likes best and stick like glue until a better/deadlier one shows up. -

From the patch notes... "Wood bunkers are a bit tougher to knock out." So, number 9 is taken care of. Thanks Santa! Now gimme ammo crates with the update and we can call it done and done. I'm not greedy.

Maybe. I do have a few battles going at once.

They were not ALL placed in trees. I was hopeful that the trenches would reduce, not amplify, the effects of treebursts. The negative effects that I was trying to convey were in regards to direct hits, with explosions either in or just outside the trenches. The troops that were not in trees fared no better. Sometimes the boys just have to ride out the occasional barrage, and I was trying for the greatest protection value. I found that it is better to be in a foxhole than a trench, at least by these anecdotal experiences. Less room for ricocheting shrapnel I suppose. Even had an HQ that was surrounded on three sides by trenches, and he got slapped by a shell that burst on the other side. He was NOT on hide, but still the protection value that I assumed was present... was not. Trenches could use some love. Nothing major, just another half-meter or so depth and about a half-meter less width. Add another course or two of sandbags to trench walls and it should be fine. Slit trenches with occasional firing steps/slits would be a nice addition, that could be alternated with our current trenches. Trade an ever-present GREY LOS line(no room for everyone to take a position) for more protection from indirect fire. I still have an itch that I am missing a work-around though. This editor has hidden depths that I have yet to plumb. If I can bury an eight story house/bunker, I can find a way to ride out a lousy 81mm barrage. ----------- By the way, I am not attempting to ask for invincibility here. Just a little better than the wholesale slaughter that LLF has shown, and I seem to experience, with the current fortification values. When the bodies get two or three deep, it is time to send a memorandum, with endoresement requested, to the Commandant of Engineers.

Well, in addition to the preponderance of empirical evidence, I can say with certainty that trenches more or less do not do the job one would think they do in battle. Even being placed behind the crest of a ridge, on a hvy forest tile, with trees, and on Hide... my boys die are dying like flies to medium mortars in all battles that they are in use. At least foxholes do not have ends that let the shrapnel fly down and strike more troops outside that tile. ------------ Have you tried a long line of foxholes instead of trenches, sunken 1 meter below grade? ----