Chris Ferrous

Just a thought, but if true it would be a minor glitch:- Had the cowering enemy guys (outside the green occupation zone at the end) ever been inside the occupation zone? If so, had they left any dead or wounded behind? If so, was the endgame calculation erroneously counting these wounded since otherwise that enemy formation still existed (and could be construed as still being partially inside the zone)?

This could be important:- are the former mortar crew all dead or are some wounded?

Also:- 1) Did you know the M8 existed before it appeared, i.e. had some of your infantry seen it coming? 2) Did the enemy know where your Pumas were, perhaps having spotted them with infantry? 3) Were your Pumas buttoned up or did they button up when the M8 appeared?

Womble: that's actually a very good point. In fact doesn't a covered arc instigate the turning of the hull in that direction in any case? Even before a target appears.

As regards, not managing to get off a shot, and the randomness of real life in battle, I'll quote the following example from an interview with a British tanker who was at Villers-Bocage when Wittmanns' Tiger went on the rampage:- I believe the tank was a Firefly which definitely had a chance of hurting the Tiger. The tank was parked in a yard beside and to the rear of a house aside the main street into town. The crew heard the fire and commotion and then the Tiger went straight past the opening of the yard presenting its flank as it did so. The Firefly never fired. Why? Because the gun-layer had stepped out of the tank to take a piss!

As regards the movement aspects of this discussion I prefer it as it is now in CMBN, and I'm primarily a pbem we-go player. Essentially, by choosing the correct movement command I can get the type of behaviour I want; in other words, advance slowly (move) with a reasonable chance of firing back (ideal against disorganised infantry at range); advance fast (fast) with a chance of getting to my next firing / overwatch position before the enemy can react and fire, or advance cautiously (hunt, with or without arc) so that an unforeseen enemy contact causes a halt and a reappraissal of the situation (by me) before recommencing the advance. I especially use the latter if my tank is emerging from concealment, so that it is likely to stop when it is either still near cover, or still partially concealed. I would be unlikely to use it in the open as my tank could stop anywhere and be over exposed, although I would expect the friendly AI to react if it were possible. As regards shooting on the move, I agree wholeheartedly that CMBN seems to allow far too great a level of accuracy in comparison to CM1. I have seen some seemingly ridiculous situations which individually could be dismissed as the 'luck of the draw' but which collectively cause me some concern (or at times even dismay!). Generally, tank gun accuracy seems much higher than CM1, which is maybe correct and an improvement, and when the firer is stationery I have no quibble with it. However, slow movement (move) seems to have minimal, if any, impact on accuracy, and even fast movement over undulating ground with trees and bushes around seems to make only a little difference. I say 'seems' because I have absolutely no statistics to back this up. It is an entirely subjective impression.

George Thanks for the tips. I've tried those though. I did do a test early on which demonstrated (with vehicles anyway) that each AI behaviour DID have a dramatic effect on how it progressed, but not on the route it took, but maybe the bocage map didn't really offer any realistic alternative. One thing I did notice, with infantry, was that max assault caused them to move forward in 'leaps' just as in the assault order BUT by crawling only! This certainly reduced casualties, but once the whole group were off the start line for that movement it actually reduced fire output AND tired them out as well. This meant even if they were successful they were too tired to doing anything afterwards. Whereas Assault simply mimics the assault order. Advance seemed very much to be a 'carry on regardless' type of order resulting in casualties until morale causes a reaction.

Womble: True. That's a good illustration. Not seen that myself though. I'll work on the 'over-engineered AI' concept and knock a few halt, re-group, and shoot zones from my AI plans to see what difference that makes. I suspect it'll produce the human wave massacres previously described but I'll keep an open mind.

George MC: Are you sure that the AI will try a different route on its own initiative? My comment below summarises the extent of variability in my experience. Rockin Harry: I have seen the AI make spontaneous repeated minor adjustments to position if threatened, but I'm talking about maybe a 40m radius of action from that 'suggested' in the AI plan.

I think they may have been journalists? Certainly journalists linked up with the Salerno beachhead before 8th Army got there, but then again one vehicle with non-combatants aboard is a bit different from moving a whole Army!

I'm still working on my first, reasonably small, fully fledged scenario (Beyond Briquebec), having done lots of 'little tests'. *still need some playtests so if anyone is interested please contact me* My experience with the AI hasn't mimicked what has been described here, but I can see how very elementary 'programming' of the AI could lead to the massacres described. HvH of course presented no problem; make a map, paint reasonable set-up zones, pick a reasonably balanced OOB for the tactical situation, and away you go. Hv AI defender wasn't much of a problem either and the 8 slots and 6 plans were enough to do the job, and provide a bit of variability. The only problem was whether or not to create different time limits (and timelines for the AI) for We-Go and RT play. I did notice though that any movement by the AI is either done at some speed or at a crawl. H as defender v AI attacker has had me stumped for nearly 2 months now. I nearly got it right first time, but contrary to the massacres described, the AI WOULD NOT advance any further after becoming brittle, so they get halfway or part way into the objective and then just sit there till their ammo has gone. I've tried second and third waves but when they get to the sticking point they stop too!? In this regard the 6 plans is ok, but only 8 slots is really limiting options. To prevent AI 'random spread' I keep the painted target move zones fairly small and directly in line of the line of march I want them to take. Thus any criss-crossing of teams is only within that platoon's operational zone. This seems to work. If the plan needs a flank switch, I've taken them back to cover, and moved them across the rear effectively to advance again on the other side. This seems to work. Overall though it is a real problem to get the AI to move aggressively effectively. Again, overall, I'd judge the attacking AI to be hardly any better than the objective (flag) controlled auto-generated AI plans of the old CM1. And for the designer CM2 plans are a lot of work!

I agree with all that's been said here. I did start a discussion quite early on to try to assess whether different time limits were needed for RT and We-Go, but there was little meaningful feedback at the time. I'm currently working on the principle that RT needs one and a half times more minutes than We-Go does, and that CM2 'does things' about twice as fast as real life, as opposed to CM1 when things could get done about 5x faster than reality. So, when I finally get around to releasing any custom scenarios there'll be two versions; RT and We-Go, plus in all probability HvH, and AI versions for each side. That's six versions all told!

I firmly believe all scenarios MUST have properly deployed forces for BOTH sides, and that the set-up zones should encompass all those units and allow a reasonable amount of extra space for adjustments. I would recommend however that designers inform players in each side's briefing where they can find the senior HQ so that players wishing to redeploy can easily cycle through their OOB and thus redeploy logically. As regards opening bombardments, either the designer should ensure that the defender has sufficient excess units to make it likely enough units will survive the enemy bombardment or if its the AI doing the bombarding, the registered target zone is big enough for the shells to fall randomly across the defended zone and not specifically in just the most likely spot. Having looked at the 'support target' system in CM2 I don't think designers have any excuse for making unrealistically pinpoint accurate barrages.

Yes, that's pretty well what I've been doing but without the manufactured mini-ridge round the forest edge and without the second ring of double shrubs which I honestly think you can discard.

Good test LLF! I've been thinking the same; we need a bushy mid-height foliage (about 1-2m height), and a thorny thicket (0.5-1.0m), the latter being almost impenetrable except to tanks which can crush it. Currently, my best fit for the 'bushy' tile is low bocage with gap in every tile plus the three type C shrubs same as you, plus brush (which seems to have to be added first), plus various ground tiles, again same as you, i.e. forest, weeds or long grass. The long grass is environmentally wrong because that's the last place you'd find it, but it blocks the mini-trunks of the shrubs. :confused: Not done a firing test though. Other than fiddling with barbed wire I can think of no solution to the thorny thicket. I suppose the ubiquitous low bocage does it for infantry but not for tanks.

Logical, Rockin H. An answer would be informative.

I have to disagree with the idea that all / most (leg) gaps should be floored by dirt etc to indicate their use as a means of going into and out of the field. Only some of the gaps would be official entry points and in all honesty they'd usually be slightly wider than the 1-2m representation we have in the game. These can be floored by dirt as proposed but many more would simply be weak points in the foliage screen, e.g. due to a dead bush, weather damage, small mammals pushing through etc. These would probably have a very narrow flattened grass appearance if frequently used for feral animal traffic, but if not would be more overgrown with weeds than the rest of the hedge because of increased light. As I wrote earlier, what we really need is a 4-5m gap representing vehicular and cart access. Currently we can only use a wooden fence 'gate' or a blank gap for this. If used frequently then these would of course be hard ground or dirt but they'd be highly visible anyway. I think a yard surrounded by a wall for instance but with vehicular access, i.e. a full 8m gap, looks very unrealistic at the moment. A 3-4m or at least 4-5m gap would be more reasonable.

I'm also having trouble distinguishing between hedges and low bocage, especially if they're used in combination. To be honest I'm not really sure low bocage deserves its own tile except that some high bocage could be on a 2-3m bank while low bocage may be barely on a bank at all. IMHO the actual foliage should really be the same height, after all it's pretty well the same plants! Likewise the hedges should be higher for true stock field hedges, but lower and much thinner for crop hedges. For the latter I'm using hedge with gaps in nearly every tile. Generally I don't think designers are putting enough gaps in bocage. BTW, what we are really lacking for all fence style tiles (including bocage) is a vehicle size gap, e.g.4-5m wide as opposed to a leg gap of 1-2m. Currently the 8m wide gap needed for vehicles is too much.

In a similar vein, I tried tanks in buildings but it didn't work for me. Although they looked to be partially in a building wall, they weren't. Tanks placed with a building on top so they didn't intersect the walls at all were 'pushed out' so they were just clipping the walls. So, from my experience vehicles hidden in buildings seems impossible so far. I though I'd experienced a similar thing with bunkers also. All this was v1.0 btw.

Is it true that trees have two blocks on LOS; a cylindrical trunk and a spherical crown? If so, would it be possible, and might the solution be, to increase the size of the trunk cylinder slightly (visually only, i.e. not for movement) so that the chances of drawing a line through a patch of trees would decrease? I was thinking that such a solution just might replicate what really happens, i.e the difficulty of spotting a patch of painted metal in a sea of green.

True, Siffo, it's not whether these 'strange' things can happen at all, it's just how often that matters!

I recall similar discussions about CM1 and at the time felt frustration equivalent to that some posters have mentioned here. There were two things which frustrated me with CM1 at first:- Slot fire between buildings seemed very gamey (and often it was) but the fact remains it DID happen in RL. The scattered tree tile seemed (to me then) a bit variable as to when or how many were needed to block LOS. I suppose in many ways that's what we're discussing here, the CM2 version of a scattered tree tile, it's just graphically far superior and much more variably represented (and designer controllable) than with CM1. Again, in RL, tanks DID get hit being targetted through treelines, broken walls/buildings* etc. so CMBN may well be doing a very good job of this. Personally, although it's only a game, I wouldn't want a spot to be determined as 'safe' with something like a green spot on it! * I have read of successful 'indirect' tank versus tank fire when the gun-layer would actually use the curvature of the trajectory to fire behind an obstruction, e.g. wall, embankment, or low ridge, without the target ever seeing his vehicle. This could be achieved by firing at pennants, aerials, exhaust plumes, waving foliage, or even the noise or by some brave spotter on foot waving to say fire straight over my head! We don't seem to have any of these featuring in CMBN so I'm going to sulk.

I've not seen any significant incidences of soldiers using small arms against tanks EXCEPT for unbuttoned Tank Commanders and even then at 'sensible' ranges. Could small arms hits on tanks actually be aimed at infantry nearby? HMG quite often target tanks and that can lead to their destruction just as easily as infantry, but I suppose the chance of doing some minor but incapacitating damage to the tank is higher. In a recent pbem game I asked a squad to target a tank to distract it from the real kill threat. They fired a single rifle grenade at it and not one single rifle round, spending the rest of the turn avoiding contact. That seems like entirely realistic behaviour to me. So, overall I really don't think this is an issue, honestly.

That really doesn't look realistic given the apparent density of the trees near the ATG. However, you've left a lot of potential questions unanswered:- Did this occur after patch 1.01 was applied? I assume the ATG was unlimbered and stationary? What terrain type was the ATG in? Had the ATG already fired on the tank? Just how illogical is the 'straight line view' through the forest beyond what we can see? Was the tank moving and buttoned when it spotted and fired on the ATG? Could any other of your units already see the ATG? And possibly an important one, what is the predominant ground cover in the intervening wood? It would be nice to know there were some mitigating factors.

I think it is entirely acceptable for players to customise maps and scenarios to suit their own preferences in QB providing that they then do not 'publish' the scenario in any way and certainly not as their own even if they've 'only borrowed' a corner of someone else's map. I'm not a great proponent of QB but whenever I have played them in CM1 as pbem or in CMBN vAI I/we have always chosen a map and conditions which suit my/our requirements. I would certainly recommend doing so to avoid disappointment. At the moment I think players are expecting the QB engine to do too much and a little more hands-on effort and preparation would be rewarded.