BletchleyGeek

Hi @Bil Hardenberger you staying in place at the farm house was a choice of yours or the result from being pinned down by Ian's fires? From your point of view is a forward slope position which I wouldn't want to occupy but probably deny.

Those would have come in handy at Teutoburg...

Very nice @BFCElvis how about showing some Free French too? Goumiers?

I am in agreement with that, even if the same problem would arise with regard the 1st (surviving) squad leader. As far as I know, C2 links do not reconfigure as casualties start to whittle down the command structure.

My bad - that was written on the go too. The second part refers to AF-Types 1 and 3.

Hi @Bil Hardenberger what is the intent of this rule? To account for reaction fire? And if the Platoon leader gets fragged, can you use the Coy CO or XO instead? PS: Apologies if the question has been already made up thread, writing this from my phone.

Interesting, looking forward to see how this game played out. Giving up control on direct fires is a big thing imo... kind of playing CMx2 the way I did back in 2010-11 when I "hadn't a clue"

Cheers @Bil Hardenberger for starting a new AAR - an actual AAR this time. The map looks way smaller than previous episodes - what are the engagement ranges like? Well under 1,000 meters I would say. Was this map selection intentional or a QB thing?

Red Thunder module with the Lend Lease? But I am not sure the Red Army still fielded that in late 1944.

Yay! Thanks John!

Here, sir, take a bow for that beautiful sentence.

One technique I learnt from a very crafty opponent is to issue "Move" in very short bounds (like 32 or 24 meters), if the team has no definite contact markers. If it has, then my SOP is to fire at the contact, until it is dead or gone. Otherwise, when executing a move order, the hardcoded SOP in the TacAI is that if the team/squad gets fired upon, they will switch to "Quick" and move at speed onto the destination. Besides the "if fired upon quick trot to destination" and what Sgt. Squarehead mention, units with Move orders will generally spot better and also will also, sometimes, engage the enemy with their small arms before starting to execute "quick" to their destination. I find that very useful. Also SOPs are made for breaking them - maybe you don't get definite contacts but you can area fire on them, or you are just smelling a rat. Last Edit: the above works best if you also bother giving your units a sensible Face command at the end of the short bound.

I was totally thinking in terms of the behavior you can expect from average 1944-45 US Rifle squads as modeled in most scenarios and by the MTOEs - Regular or Green, with not very high motivation and with mediocre command ratings. I have been playing quite a few games recently with that kind of troops, so it is quite fresh for me. What I mean for "trashed" is that they suffer enough casualties/stress to go into Rattled state. That propagates -quite quickly throughout a platoon or a company, not unlike a bad cold, and the whole unit gets "Nervous" or "Cautious". That is bad, more so if mortars or other indirect fires hit the unit. Rattled are also quite unsteady troops, far from optimal for offensive operations and need to be kept in the close vicinity of their platoon leader. Whenever I can afford to - which is rarely tbh - I send them to the rear to chill out.

That was a pretty good walkthrough @domfluff. One aspect to complement it would be to mention that German HMG sections can use the MG while semi-deployed (using the bipod). That is a MASSIVE boost to the flexibility of German infantry companies in the attack. Russian HMGs deploy quite fast too. For the Western Allies you need those light mortars very badly. Taking on an HMG with just rifles can be done but it will probably trash the rifle squad, unless they are marksmen.

I totally agree with all of these observations, and I am pretty sure the guy blogging does too. I think gatekeeping is a rather ungenerous characterization, motivated by many indie developers being a bit pissed off at the law of large numbers, that point at the rather obvious fact that Steam is sitting at the door of the biggest PC games market. People resent the "tax", especially when they get no service they are interested in getting in return. Steam is very pro-consumer (within the strictures of DRM, of course), and not every pro-consumer feature (like reviews, forums) is a pro-developer one (like auto patching, secure anonymised multiplayer, etc.). I wasn't posting to start a discussion on Steam and its suitability to BFC - that was settled by Steve ages ago as he said he would monitor the situation and see if his assessment would change. To be honest, seeing how things are going, I don't think the environment has become any inch easier for a niche developer. Graviteam has an "ace in the hole": they are based in Kharkov, Ukraine. Even after the Steam tax, and the publisher tax (the dodgy Canadian outfit, Strategy First), I am pretty sure that our dollars and euros convert to hryvnias (sp?) just fine. And quite sure too they get a pretty good salary for Ukrainian standards <removed link because of dodgy clickbait at the end of blog> Maybe some of the Ukrainian forumites can comment on this in a more informed manner.

https://www.winterwolves.net/blog/2019/04/fifteen-years-indie/ Observations on Steam from a niche indie simulator developer - very plain language there. I had a laugh when he complained of being recommended flight simulators.

Slowing down isn't easy, takes as long as accelerating. If BFC was using a Daedalus ship to host it's development we should be able to observe the trace of H bomb explosions changing direction... but it seems to be some quite magical and environmentally friendly reality distortion drive. So who knows.

It is a relativistic calendar, currently at about 0.6c and accelerating...

The - historical- facts go to point out that the last four Tory prime ministers in British history have been incinerated as a result of their policies regarding the EU. Thatcher, Major, Cameron and now May, seem to have find the end of their political careers on the same or a similar shoal. Always loudly demanding concessions from those "exploitative" continentals, always getting them, and all to, inthe end, have been summarily thrown out of a window by a faction in the Tory party. Rik Mayall totally nailed what those games are about with this impersonation 30 years ago!

I think you will find this game more enjoyable than playing the Italian Campaign in WITW as the Allies. I would rather have a couple teeth pulled out tbh. Give me a shout in a few weeks time if you want a PBEM buddy for WITW.

I don't think the EU needs an army, NATO will probably be reformed within the next decade. Brexit is yet another example of why a referendum result needs to obtain a supermajority in order to be binding. Not to mention also that those forgetting that wide consensus is always more important than internal party power politics do so at their peril.

That actually works in CM2 - sometimes it may mean you run into the enemy. That usually also means that you are doing what the enemy wanted you to, running into nicely planned interlocking fields of fire, minefields or a combination.

Halftracks

Not sure how many people are reading this forum @RockinHarry, have you tried to upload it to the new CMMODS? I think there this may be more visible.

Close calls like that were surprisingly common, especially in close quarters combat. I am reading Mark's Panzerkrieg and there were lots of opportunities in the battles for Voronezh and Stalingrad. Also a common theme in the 1942 to 1943 battles is one side being surprised by enemy tanks materialising from behind a ridge and at close range.