BletchleyGeek

Not just in a forest @Anthony P. this can totally happen behind a piece of wall, diagonal bocage, a sandbag "L", some bushes, a building corner etc. There are many combinations of terrain elements that compel the Tac AI to "bunch up" pixeltruppen. I agree with Vanir that some can be avoided during map making... others not so much. Light Mortars are specifically dangerous when used to fire directly on the target (the mortar leader is the spotter), due to their ROF and ease of transport. You can get one or two direct hits with very little forewarning and/or within a minute of in game time, causing 100% fatalities, and the mortar crew doesn't need to be very lucky. The most recent event like the above I recall was during my German game against @slysniper on the Drums of War 1st round a 60mm mortar fragged a split German squad lying along an awkward line of low bocage with two direct hits fired from about 150 meters within 2 minutes. That isn't an uncommon occurrence - in my experience - when playing against a human led US infantry force. 81mm mortars are heavier, have lower ROF, I am not sure they're very accurate when firing at targets under 300 meters, and last, most often are found off the map. It's been like that since 2011, really, so I agree it is not news. Perhaps now is better, since the bug with mortar crew target acquisition being magical was fixed when CMBN 2.0 hit us.

@sonar I am mostly with you - this is an effect of having the lowest level of command (i.e. the level at which you give orders) and the lowest level at which the TacAI functions (i.e. by assessing cover and deploying the troops) to be one and the same. Ideally, one would want the TacAI to understand that it could deploy troops belonging to the same "quantum" into more than one action spot. Do not dismiss @Vanir Ausf B answer, @sonar. I read his message more along the lines "this is an issue because of having to account for physical constraints and what the TacAI can do at the moment". @Anthony P. yes that happens to his adversary as well, but his adversary - if the game is CMFB - probably has 60mm mortars. Situations like the one in @sonar pictures explain a great deal of the lethality of 60mm, 3 inches, 50mm and other light mortars in CMX2. One well-placed grenade and you wipe out half a squad or a full HMG team (German HMG teams aren't broken down like their US counterparts)...

Wow @Thomm. Just wow. I know Nomada and I see that he's been enlightened by Slitherine... Thanks for the analysis @Battlefront.com - the only bit where I see TACOM being superior to CM is in the look and feel of their maps. But as you say, things become so much easier when the camera is rigged... And I do remember EYSA, or Squad Assault as it was later rebranded? by Matrix. That he edits that out of his resume tells us more about character than skill, there's hoping he's learnt from that

Thanks guys!

Wow, very nice Bil... the good old M10 put up quite a good show!

Me too Thanks for this George!

Nice review, Wodin, and cheers for the initiative of starting a blog devoted to computer wargames!

With the proviso that CMx2 isn't exactly WYSIWYG, most of my TC/gunners casualties come from what look like ricochets on the sides and front of the turret rather than getting a bullet between the eyes: the turret/pedestal is a much bigger target. What is good for deflecting incoming projectiles can be very bad for people standing by.

This - I also felt the sim was being unfair to me until I took active measures to limit the exposure of my tank commanders to small arms fire. In real time, it is very easy to manage, you just need to back off when the volume of fire gets scary. In WEGO, it is way more tricky. One technique, which I copied from Bil's AARs is to initiate movement towards enemy infantry in the second half or last quarter of the WEGO turn. That gives me the chance to back off when the next WEGO round starts.

With the period covered by this installment being so well documented in English, I can see many sensible and interesting what-ifs and other variants being made about many engagements (and this one is indeed one of the most notorious). By the way, the duration of the engagement is just about fine - clobbering that lonley platoon in the ridge requires more firepower not more minutes in the clock...

I ran out of time - I didn't want my pixeltruppen to be slaughtered. Things got a bit "easier" when the .50 was taken down. There was a quite nice machine gun duel going on for a while. The worst though, were the losses amongst my combat leaders: two platoon commanders, and six squad leaders... That didn't help with command and control.... Thanks Ian!

Just finished playing this one on real time as - surprise - the German side. Very nice rendition of a battle I have possibly read four different accounts about. Managed to get within 25 meters of Lt. Bouck position, after suffering just 10 KIA, 13 WIA. The scenario isn't attributed... whomever was the author (or authors), thanks, this was quite fun to "reenact".

In the case of the Red Army, their 76mm field guns were used often on a direct fire role... but it was more about overcoming the shortcomings of the rather crude systems available to coordinate cooperation between the arms than killing German armour. The almost ubiquitous 45mm gun was quite good at defeating the armour Germany used when it used to break through Soviet lines in 1941 and 1942.

Cheers, mate Who Dares Wins, right? At least sometimes...

What browser are you using on that ancient XP installation Harry?

What they have looks interesting. My understanding is that they're starting of a branch of the original Atomic Games/CSO Simtek codebase, so I think there's an actual game. There was a far bit of drama when TACKOM appeared, which was interesting to read, and made Slitherine and the devs of the most recent Close Combat games look quite bad. Since they're being featured on Wargamer.com I guess Sulla has smoked the peace pipe with the current holders of Close Combat rights.

Playing against the AI as the German I found the following (SPOILERS: drag your mouse over the text below to reveal the hidden text): * It was very hard to engage from a distance the T-34/85 in the village, you need to get your Tigers onto the crest on the right flank of the rightmost German deployment zone. While moving into position, you'll get exposed to enfilade fire from the Soviet armor in the village (that's how I lost a Tiger, due to a hit on the lower left hull). * The village is the fulcrum of the scenario, it hinders maneuver on the column of Soviet armour that the scenario initial intel suggests. Clearing the village is most important, but you don't want to use too much combat power on that, since then you would end up applying most of your combat power on the Soviet column head on rather than on a side. * Going into the village with a couple Tigers as Carius did was a really, really bold move. From what I read, it mostly worked because of the lack of experience of the tank crews and collapse in Soviet command and control. In a H2H match, I would be very wary of an opponent keyholing his armour and setting up ambushes in that very close terrain. A not so lucky hit on the weapon mount or turret can blow up the weapons controls or optics very easily... I have been engaging T-34s at 300 meters or less, which is way too close for comfort (I got to see a couple of awesome ricochets of 88mm on the rounded T-34 turrets, wow). * The StuGs are sitting ducks. If you use them against the village to support you, they will get smashed on the side by the oncoming pain train. And their guns are ineffective at ranges over 1,000 meter against the heavies armour... * The quality of the Soviet crews is appalling. The AI is of course incapable of anything interesting, but a human player should be able to mass the heavies to maximise their shock effect. Of course, this requires early warning about the Germans actions... something which I concede is only possible to obtain if one has played the scenario before

Thanks for the heads up Vanir.

Thanks for the links guys - I was looking forward to pay for a legit copy and get some royalties into the pockets of the authors...

I have been looking for that book for some time, Vanir. Any hot tips where to find a copy?

You certainly don't need to have the demo installed

Well, I tried them on the publicly available CMFB demo on Windows 10, did you try this with the demo? The interesting thing is that the installer didn't create a folder under my 'Documents' folder as is the case for CMFI, CMRT and CMBS.

Thanks for sharing Bil, I do like very much the "lighter" armour icons. By the way, seems that the demo uses the same old 'data/z' method as CMBN. I spent a few minutes juggling the brz file inside the UserData folder.

My first attempt at programming the AI in CMx2 involved two infantry battalions, a StuG battery, and two T34 companies. I didn't end mad, but I haven't touched the scenario again in over a year and a half...

Got almost 1 MByte / sec from Canberra, Australia - similar response time to Steam. Very nice.