DaddyO

Sorry to read about your PC. Re: how I did, I was as surprised as could be given my blunder. I'm not as good as what the outcome of this battle showed. In fact I suspect that the attack plan for the Russians depended on their tanks taking out a couple of my Stugs without losing too many T-34's. Once the Russian tanks were gone, that was all she wrote. Thanks. I had always failed in my attempts to make progress in Combat Mission, but once YouTube video AAR's started to become more commonplace I found them extremely helpful in gaining the instincts I lacked. Best to you, keep lovin' those grandkids!

** SPOILER ALERT ** Just played the demo's small scenario Tankovia Desant (Veteran level) as the Germans defending the bridge. I'd previously seen ChrisND's video AAR of this scenario with him playing as the attacking Russians. My only changes to the opening setup: I moved the TRP's and the Teller mines in hopes of a delivering a devastating mortar attack on tanks and troops collected at the choke point entering the open approaches to the bridge and the river. I also moved the Stugs to what I thought were more advantageous positions with Target Armor Arcs covering those approaches and the choke point area. Despite the fact that in my haste I completely failed to set up an HQ team to order the mortar strikes (which, then, never materialized), a single Stug destroyed every enemy tank along their two attack axes, one through the choke point and one on a flank. (The Teller mines did take out one Russian T-34.) With no tank support no enemy troops even made it to the bridge, and my troops suffered not a single casualty except the small screening force in the buildings near the choke point. That Stug crew deserved a medal! I had fully expected to have to start the game over again because of my blunder with the mortar attack.

Hey, skunkle my friend. Good to see you here again. I'll probably end up getting CMRT myself. Over the last few months I've finally been able to make tiny progress in playing CMBN (in game engine version 2.0), having good fun with it but I'm still in the late stages of using training wheels. Wish I had the health and stamina to play it more often. When I can it's completely immersive. It's probably the only thing I can do for four or five hours or more. I like the idea many of the game enhancements available in version 3.0, particularly Command Lines and Tank Riders. Tough luck your White Sox losing Jose Abreu.

Chris, NO APOLOGY NEEDED! You provide a enlightening and entertaining FREE service, and it is much appreciated. I was just curious, since right before it ended you were mentioning that you were concerned whether your graphics card was close to failure. I guess it turns out you were right. Best wishes for the future with your Twitch TV site. I know I try to watch every Combat Mission video you put out.

For those like me who watched the ChrisND's video on Twitch TV after the fact, i.e., not live, what happened after the 1 hour 19 minute mark, when the video suddenly ends with no warning. I assume something went wrong technically, but did the live stream end this way, right in the middle of a battle?

Thanks. Yes, as you suggest, I am very nearly to the point where I can discontinue this practice entirely. At some point it is counterproductive to learning if you can just erase your mistakes and never lose. It sounds like you get the point of my doing things this way at the outset. I have found that the experience of getting into the middle and late stages of battle has helped me gain some sense of instinct as to how approach and begin battle. When I first picked up Combat Mission 1x I was an avid reader about World War II, but I had never been able to get anywhere with more detailed war games. In Combat Mission I quickly ran into trouble and was summarily dispatched. Do that enough times and you end up just setting the game aside as beyond your competence. But the last few years with more YouTube AAR's and tutorials available I began to get a sense of how to get along in the game, from game mechanics to tactics. The forum, of course, is very helpful. But at least for me this employment of mulligans early in the process has proved helpful, not so much because it helps me win, but like a toddlers walker it helps me develop enough "leg strength and balance" to eventually walk on my own. Or to use another analogy, it's like a kid learning to ride a bike with training wheels. His goal is not to cheat at bike riding; it is to get to the point where he can do it without training wheels. My Dad was from Louisiana. He learned to swim when his Dad threw him in the river and said, "Swim boy!" My Dad, on the other hand, paid for rudimentary swimming lessons. We started with floats to assist us. You can learn to swim either way. A couple of things I've learned by this experience: (1) Try to create situations where you can apply preponderance of force, (2) Try to create situations where you are attacking locally from multiple directions-- usually local defenders simply cannot handle this, and (3) suppress, suppress, suppress. I knew these from reading over the years, but it's different when you're trying to learn to apply it in a game environment. Experience is everything. Well, experience COMBINED WITH learning from it. I still have a TON to learn.

Proambulator has just put up the first two in a series of YouTube videos on this very subject.

Rankorian, One thing I found useful as a growing tool was the concept of a mulligan in golf applied to Combat Mission. My early attempts at the game proved thoroughly frustrating, but watching videos helped. Still, I found it impossible to develop instincts without battle experience. However, when I tried to gain experience, I would often get pummelled right out of the chute. So I decided until I learned better, I would allow myself mulligans when turns went disastrously. The idea was not really to cheat, although it could be called cheating. It was to be forced to grow by negative reinforcement. At first mulligans were frequent. I'd save the game every turn after I'd given orders but before hitting the Big Red Button. If things went badly, I'd simply quit the game and restart it from the save, then modify my orders as needed. This allowed me to learn from my mistakes instead of just quitting. It allowed me to learn what worked and what didn't by experience. But I determined that as my skill improved my mulligans would become more rare. Pretty soon I was down to one a game. I've learned that most of the time I can handle it now, but I won't let one turn ruin hours of work. I've pretty much reached the point where I'm ready to eliminate mulligans altogether. This is not to disagree with the concept of the 10 minute scenario, just to suggest that there are ways to overcome the frustration you describe of wasting hours of in-game work because of rookie mistakes. What a rookie like me needs most is game play experience.

I have to say I tend to agree with the OP in theory, although it would not be necessary for Battlefront to devote it's scarce time to such ABC scenarios. Look at what Bill Hardenberger has done with his training site, which has small scenarios in progressive sequence with simple, basic lessons to be learned from each. So what you suggest in a sense IS being done by the community. One the other hand, anything Battlefront can do to help the new user during the intial stages of use ought to be high profile. It ought to be put on a very low shelf, easily accessible, as close to can't miss as possible. For me the best teacher has been YouTube videos. Anything Battlefront can do to continue and encourage the proliferation of video training will be immensely more helpful than the training campaigns and the manual. If a picture is worth 1,000 words, then a video is worth 10,000 or 100,000. Thanks so much for Armchair General, Ithikial, Chris, JonZ, and others. Their generosity with tutorials and AAR's got me over the hump.

Of COURSE! Glad to be corrected.

Further, later thought on this question. It seems I am prevented from splitting a squad while they are loaded in a halftrack. They have to disembark, split, then the split scout team has to re-embark. In WeGo this means three turns (someone correct me if I'm wrong here). I'm not sure if there has been any discussion of this, but I can see no reason other than a game engine restriction that would prevent splitting while seated in a halftrack. Lt. Jack says to the team, "Rick, you and Frank stay in the truck and man the gun, the rest of us have a job to do..."

Probably my great great grandfather on the Combat Mission Civil War forum.

I brought this up a few months ago. It was an interesting discussion that followed. I'm sure if you do a search you can find it.

Good point. I think a human opponent would be much tougher, but I'm sure there are situations where the unpredictability of the AI and the player's inability to influence it very much can be a handicap. A clever player can sometimes turn an opponents strength into a liability.

I actually adjusted my defense during the battle. The choke point in this scenario is kind of a side battle to the main show. There is an American HQ isolated and stranded behind the choke point on the far corner of the map with just a few assets. One element of the scenario is to prevent the enemy from successfully penetrating the choke point, another is for the main force to rescue the HQ after gaining their own objectives. [** SPOILER ALERT **] There was no enemy use of mortars prior to crunch time at the choke point, and as it went no enemy use of smoke at all in the scenario. But you make a good point, and I wouldn't have thought of it.

The way this particular situation (with no armor of my own and only armored vehicles-- no tanks-- for the enemy) set up, I had a perfect location for a bazooka team behind the chokepoint hedgerow that was also covered by a building in front of it. I had an MMG in a hedgerow nook to the left near the bazooka team and another to the rear right, also an HQ team behind a hedgerow to the immediate flank behind the choke point, and farther back an infantry squad hidden behind a low hedgerow. I set an infantry squad behind the initial hedgerow to the side of the choke point and had them hide and spot, and I had a company HQ in a multi-level building to the rear who had a good field of vision over the approaches to the choke point. It was ideal. It worked out that three armored recon vehicles entered the approaches to the choke point and stopped just outside my bazooka team's Cover Armor Arc. Next turn I extended the arc and within a few turns I had two smoking recon vehicles. The enemy did not attempt to even approach the Choke Point again. All this, I'm sure, was made possible because I was playing vs. AI. A real-life player would have seen the danger and either taken steps to overcome it or avoided the situation altogether.

Thanks for the answers all.

I am playing the A Strange Awakening scenario, and the Allied player is provided with 5 halftracks at the start of the game, each unmanned except for a driver. I am putting them to good use, but if I transport troops and then offload them, leaving just the driver, can that driver man the machine gun?

So far so good, I ended up placing the machine guns in ambush. It turns out the enemy does in fact have light armored vehicles, a halftrack and a utility armored car. I did finally get some infantry scouts up to the bocage, but it turns out my headquarters unit in a two-story building to the rear had a better field of vision than I thought. So far no enemy forces have tried to even approach the choke point. This is a fascinating scenario, 101st At Le Lieu Vary. A hodgepodge of unit remnants trying to eliminate a rear-positioned flak gun while also taking two hamlets, and for good measure, another smaller set of hodgepodge cut off at the far side of the map holding out behind the choke point. It's two battles in one, an attack with the larger force and a defense with the smaller, with German units in control of the hamlets in the middle. ** SPOILER ALERT ** The AI opening gambit is a total shock and surprise, but my initial positioning allowed me to deal with quickly and decisively. Still, it's going to be a tough nut to crack, I think. All my machine guns are light and I have no vehicles, while it appears the enemy has quite a few MG-46's in addition to their light armored vehicles.

Thanks guys. Your giving me what I was looking for, which is not just a recommendation but the reasoning behind it. All comments are appreciated.

If a map has a road that goes through a bocage-induced choke point, and my task is to defend the choke point with only a couple of LMG's, a bazooka and some infantry, generally speaking, which of these two alternatives is best? 1. Position the two LMGs in good locations on either side of the road behind the choking bocage, and the bazooka in an ambush position near the choke point, given that the approaching terrain is pretty much open and flat. Blitz them before they can even get to the choke point. Downside: the LMG's are more subject to enemy spotting and therefore suppression. The bocage is only decent concealment and only so-so cover. 2. Position only scouts behind the choking bocage, and wait until the enemy comes through the choke point before letting them have it from a flanking position farther back. This has the advantage of keeping the LMG's from being spotted before the choke point is reached. I realize that there's probably innumerable undefined factors that could tip the scales towards one or the other, but I'm looking for comments as to what would generally be preferred. Let's assume for the sake of argument that no enemy armor is involved.

All's well that ends well. I learned something from you guys. And, as it turns out, the mortars were nearly irrelevant to the battle, a German surrender and a Total Victory for us Allies. Halftracks with nasty 75mm main guns appeared towards the end and got a couple of my M8's, but the two self-propelled assault guns received as reinforcements quickly dispatched them. A fun battle.

Well, everybody was right, and I was blind. Actually, I'm guessing wombie pinpointed the problem correctly, that any movement orders must be canceled. I could swear I was checking with a stationary unit with no movement orders, but then again there's Alzheimers and then there's MY memory. When I check this morning, the Dismount command now shows available. I looked yesterday and it was there but not available. Thanks so much for your help and, um, overlooking my membership in the Dumbkopf Society.

Either I was blind when I looked specifically for a Dismount command in the Special menu (which I do not absolutely discount), or there wasn't one. That's why I created this post. I'll look again tomorrow. Thanks for the feedback.

Right. That's appears to be the case, but if so, how one can command them to deploy and fire is not clear to me, as explained above.