BletchleyGeek
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Posts posted by BletchleyGeek
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Just wondering: is it possible that these bunkers are intended as shelters and not as firing positions? Can infantry fire their rifles from them?
Michael
You're totally right, Michael. I just fired up the Scenario Editor and saw that bunkers - wooden or concrete - come in three types, MG34, MG42 and Shelter. I bought a MG Platoon an set it up in the appropiate concrete bunker type and:
There's a wooden mount there, allowing the gunner to fix the MG and swivel it freely. So no bugs here - it's working as designed.
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Not sure if that is the reason. I ve had HMG fire no problem through and behind walls or in buildings where the wall/windows were clearly above canon height.
I must admit that I seldom look at the pixeltruppen from so close, so I haven't noticed MG's shooting "through" walls.
But I'm pretty sure this is the reason for the problems we have found with this scenario. For whatever reason, the 1:1 physical modelling applies here.
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Well, it's hard to check LOS when the Target commands do not appear as available. Which might be something related to your comment on MGs not firing from inside a bunker.
I think I got it now:
As you can see, Target commands are not available. The Deploy Weapon command isn't available either. But I think it's sort of obvious why. The bunker slit is just too high, even if the MG is mounted on its tripod.
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You can only check LOS if the bunker is crewed.
BTW, don't know if it's bug or meant to be like that, but when you put a HMG team in a Shelter type bunker the MG won't fire, not even in LMG configuration. At least for MG42.
Well, it's hard to check LOS when the Target commands do not appear as available. Which might be something related to your comment on MGs not firing from inside a bunker.
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As has been noted elsewhere on the forums, the game also puts entire squads in good uninterrupted LOS to each other for longer periods of time than is realistic. Most infantrymen would not neccesarily see the enemy for long enough to get a good shot off, even if their squad was engaged. Probably a large % of infantrymen would have gone through the war without getting into anything like a CM style knifefight.
Well as Michael Emrys points out, it's all about experience and motivation. Indeed, squads are for extended periods of time in good LOS of enemy squads, but depending on these two factors the volume of fire directed at enemy pixeltruppen dwindles sharply with time as your pixelmen look for cover or just keep their heads down.
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I'm liking CM:BN a lot - and CM:SF for that matter as well - as I find it very realistic... if one disregards "established" literature on the subject of fighting men under fire, as presented by Marshall classical work "Men Under Fire" or John Keegan's very popular "The Face Of Battle".
I recently came across a very nice little book:
Canadians Under Fire. Infantry Effectiveness in the Second World War.
By Robert Charles Engen, Montreal- Kingston: McGill- Queen’s University Press (2009)
which basically thrashes the "rate of fire" theory proposed by Marshall and promoted so much by Keegan. It concentrates on the experiences of infantry officers in the Canadian Expeditionary Forces in Western Europe, while the former authors focus on American and British experiences.
I wonder from what sources did inspire Battlefront to write the infantrymen TacAI module that manages exactly this: how willing are your pixelsoldiers to shoot at other pixelsoldiers.
From my experience with the CMx2 engine, I'd say that things do not really fit into Keegan-Marshall discourse at all. And I think it's not bad modelling or whimsical AI routines, but rather, an example of using good sources.
BTW, how do other CMx2 players feel about this? Are the pixeltruppen too liberal using their firearms? Does it make sense to you?
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i suppose the only way to tell is to try a squad with -2 leadership but in c2 vs a squad with +2 leadership out of c2.
hmmm off to the QB screen again
I was thinking to setup a small "test drive" scenario for testing this myself. If you get some insight, please share
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Excellent question and I wish I had the answer. In general, your team benefits from being in C2, but I don't know if the effects of leadership have ever been publicly quantified by BFC. Presumably it matters or it wouldn't exist, but beyond that...?
Indeed. For some reason or other, I've been playing as the defender in a number of PBEM games and I tend to rely on splitting to setup a defence in depth, mutually supporting fire bases, etc.
While I wouldn't put my hand on a fire over this, I'd say that the - beneficial - influence of C2 is overruled by far by the leadership level of the team leader. Full squads with a good leader will get from OK to Rattled after weathering - say - an incoming 105mm barrage with light losses. A squad with the same quality and the same leader, but deployed into single teams, each team with +0 or negative Leadership ratings will surely get to Shaken or Broken.
Even worse is that splitted teams with bad morale status take a very long time to get to a Rattled or Nervous state.
In other words, splitting into teams can certainly be a sound tactical decision, but get prepared to see your chain of command to go down the toilet if a nasty surprise comes up or the enemy brings up a lot of firepower.
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Thank you for sharing. Very nice map and terrain layout. I will use it to improve my own map-making skills.
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Again, thank you for making it
That is one huge casualty count for both sides. You guys pushed 'em hard. I like that.I think I pushed too hard, too early.
In perspective, I dashed forward a bit too recklessly, and the screen of scouts, AT teams and MGs suffered from the concentrated fire of German infantry. Another major blunder on my behalf was that I didn't read well the situation, and kept the bulk of my infantry for too long duking it out at distance with German fire positions. The third and probably the most important error was to forget that US half-tracks don't have crew, so until the late stages of the battle I couldn't bear to the front the fire power of the .50 mini-cannons they have: my infantry formations have to provide the gunners!
One what? A tank? I was aware that in CM1 vehicles would pop bridges that way, but I (wrongly it seems) assumed this was no longer the case... and forgot to test for it.Which arch? A center or one of the two ramped edges?
It was a Puma, and yes, the one in the center.
If this is a steady-state bug, I will destroy the other overpass as well and release a new version.
A pity, because the one intact overpass was hard-fought by our infantry. I enjoyed that fight, probably because I could even deploy a MG on the other side and fry a good number of pixeltruppen.
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Hi,
I've just finished an H2H game on the scenario and I just loved it (playing WEGO over PBEM). I liked the US force composition a lot, very flexible and able to implement a wide variety of plans. The result was this one:
Very intense fighting along the highway, especially on the overpass. At the end of the battle there were quite a few destroyed vehicles there:
My opponent also enjoyed the battle a lot and reported that his most advanced units had ran out of ammo.
The only problem with it is that you uncovered a curious bug: my opponent tried to get one to cross under the overpass bridge and as it was getting below the bridge arch - presto! - it appeared on top of the bridge scaring the daylights out of several of my units (literally, some recon teams went from OK to Nervous).
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I'll let you research the farming practices of Normandy.
In the meantime, the simple answer to your question is that there are only two possible openings in the bocage in CMBN: soldier size and tank size. I would hope that people understand that there could not have been very many tank size openings in the bocage in 1944 (regardless of what you may see in other scenario/campaign/QB maps
).Thanks for the scenario - great work indeed - but I do share metalbrew observation. Regarding tank size openings: one thing is that there is a tank sized opening leaving you to enter a field, but another thing is that there is yet another opening that allows you to go in the direction you want to go.
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You can give Blast orders on vehicles, but obviously, approaching a Tiger from its front it's not gonna work well. This nice slideshow by Vencini from puntadelanza.net forums shows how to do it:
http://www.puntadelanza.net/Foro/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=248041#p248041
(text is in Spanish, but Google Translate should work reasonably well).
There was also discussion on whether infantry used demo charges and/or grenades and rifle grenades on vehicles while the infantry is inside a building. Vencini summarizes very nicely what infantry seem to be able to do or not to do to a vehicle while inside or outside a building:
http://www.puntadelanza.net/Foro/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?p=248619#p248619
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Thank you for posting the scenario as well. I regretted erasing the Demo from my computer before installing the full game since I hadn't had time to play through this scenario
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Thank you very much for the torrent
. I'll be seeding until I leave work.
New Bug: infantry don't abandon bunkers
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
There's still the issue with not being able to abandon them on PBEM games. I will try to replicate that and post a ticket on the Bug Tracking system.