WynnterGreen

Air assets!!!! They're the best 'area denial' against infantry and light vehicles in the game. For the time being they can't be countered and are perfect for an open map in rolling hills like this. The US owns the skies. Swap out any 'off map' 80mm mortar sections you might have been considering for three, or even four, of the cheapest aircraft. Add the forward observer team and a few well placed TRPs and you can basically deny the enemies infantry access to a flank or a couple of critical areas for the entire game. His infantry will be sweating, ducking for cover and disrupted in areas that are out of line of sight, in gullies and over the horizon for your ground troops, denying him his much needed staging points for attacks. Without the infantry screen, moving armour on an air covered flank becomes a hazardous affair. You need to be careful about moving your own infantry close to aircraft attack templates though, as the fly boys will strafe anything that moves. What pre-game agreements do you have? Any maximum or minimum percentages for points spent on armour, infantry etc????

A couple of thoughts. Taking on this Scenario is the first time I've attempted to play in the 'Scenario' format. In hindsight I can see it was a mistake to play it mirrored. Normally I only play QBs on a Ladder against Humans. In that situation I never know my opponents force composition other than a bunch of pre-game stipulations, such as a maximum of one third of points can be allocated to armour. I also, of course, know the how many points my opponent has to spend and maybe a history of their 'play style'. For me CM a bit like playing chess rather than making attempts at recreating real situations. I currently lead the pool of about 40 players in the group I game with, so I think I have a good enough grip on the mechanics of the game to have an opinion, tactically at least, on what may or may not work. So with that in mind, I made a post in this thread, during set-up of this Scenario as Mirrored Ladder game, outlining what both my opponent and I saw as the 'obvious' outcome. When I was directed to the reality that it might constitute a 'spoiler' for some, I removed the post immediately to preserve the aspect of 'surprise' for those wishing to play this map in its Scenario format. I can see that theoretically a scenario can only be played 'purely' once. I can also see that in a scenario, as in war, there's no need for balance. In fact balance it's an anathema to maximizing your advantage in every aspect possible. Which is also fine. It just doesn't happen to suit my particular play preferences. I'm hoping my opponent will wish to continue playing out the scenario, mirrored and pre-informed as it now stands, so that at least I can validate or falsify my earlier (removed) prediction. Sadly I can't 'un-see' and put it to the test in a 'going in blind' capacity. The map itself, as I stated earlier, is excellent and I'm sure will give many hours of enjoyment, and possibly grief, to those who play on it.

Had no idea scenarios were play once and throw away........ deleted the offending Spoiler post.

Because we're playing it mirrored..... and yes, I know quite well, how to play a hit and run tactical game..... my opinion remains the same.

How many good Americans stood up to stop Bush from invading Iraq????

I'm aware of that Jons, and I didn't qualify, or make, the statement properly. I was actually talking about the Russians fighting in their own back yard, coupled with the other things mentioned, cultural, racial etc, that helped fuel the ferocity and animosity in that theater. Things which contribute in varying levels to the capacity of one protagonist or another to dehumanize their enemy.

It wasn't and isn't my intent to be an apologist. I'd prefer to see my view as humanist, in both the best and worst sense of rationalizing what people are capable of, and capable of becoming, given conditioning and circumstance. Both the British and Americans only fought expeditionary wars against an enemy that hadn't been dehumanized the way combatants had been on other fronts and in other theaters during WWII. Fighting in your own backyard changes the rules. Cultural, social, racial and historic animosity fueled hatred in a way that wasn't as evident in the conflict between the US and Germany. Fighting in the Pacific took on a different tone, partially because it was easier to dehumanize an Asian enemy. While my opinion smacks of being the apologist, to me, yours smacks of the very jingoism and moral superiority that causes nations like WWII Germany to feel entitled to invade a neighbour.

Dehumanize your enemy, EVERYONE does it. It's more easily achieved when racial and cultural divides are greater. Easier still when their's a history of conflict between the parties. Westerners do gloss over the atrocities commit by the Russians, because the enemy of my enemy is my friend, or because it was 'justified' as 'payback'. Soldiers are trained to support their mates, no matter what and through anything. It doesn't matter if it's Marines covering up murders of Civilians in Iraq to support their squadies, or soldiers destroying entire villages in Vietnam out of rage and frustration. The majority of German soldiers turned a blind eye to the atrocities perpetrated by a minority who'd been enlivened and encouraged by an ethos of National and racial superiority because they were told to. Very few people who know anything about the reality of war want to take part in one. Fewer still want to kill people because of the colour of their skin or their cultural identity. But it still happens, in civilian life, let alone war. Put a uniform on *******s who've been indoctrinated to hate, give them a gun and tell them that they're being a patriot by killing human vermin. Some will do it, some will even enjoy it. The majority will not, but they're caught in the machinery of the military, to decent is to break cohesion, cohesion is survival. In the case of the Germans during WWII, the encouragement from the very top to perform 'dampnum', total war against both civilians and soldiers became more and more normalized as the military moved further into territories held by nationalities and cultures the Germans were able to dehumanize through social and racial divides. As the casualties mounted for the Germans and the war became one of survival, rather than conquest, things deteriorated further. There's no excuse for what happened, but it is understandable. Statements like this highlight how it easy it is to dehumanize, even at a range of 70 years and from the comfort of home.

My first reaction too Rokko.

Ummm are you mistaking the 'Typical' price for a unit displayed in the 'Available Troops' Roster with the resolved price that's allocated when a Platoon, Section, Company, Whatevea' is actually purchased and costs for its Experience, Motivation etc... is applied to the Activated Troops????

I'm pretty sure it's a display of Dropping Arty on setup zones is also designed to It's also an excellent way to avoid timid souls

Just because a meeting is 'random' doesn't mean a location is. I'd happily play 'with' or 'without' TRPs as an agreed rule in any QB ME. There's no reason why a chance encounter can't happen in an area with a fire plan.

I've asked how current PBEM will be affected in the Tech Support Section.

No mention of the Loadscreen QB crashes being fixed........

Not sure about Normandy, but I've got it happening in a Fortress Italy 2.0 PBEM at the moment.

I wish they'd fix the fact that if the FO becomes a casualty while calling in a stonk, neither the radio operator or other members of the team can can call it off. Which means endless spotting rounds, and or, loss of the arty asset completely because NO ONE can call cease fire. Meanwhile in another game I have going, I was able to call off artillery with a unit who's radio operator was KO elsewhere. Yet the unit, stranded with no radio and completely out of C2, was able to cease the fire mission.

Your right the AI will never be as competent as a human can be with this game. Seriously, just play v Humans. It's not difficult to find opponents, especially if you play WEGO. Once you've had a few games with a humans you'll wonder why you bothered playing v the AI at all, other than to learn the mechanics of the game. Sticking to playing v a PC opponent is like never taking off the trainer wheels in my opinion.

Same version of the game...... perhaps one of you is patched to version? If you're using version 2.0 and your opponent is using 1.10 then you wont see the game.

Personally I'm not sure why you would consider improving or altering v1.x after launching v2.0 accept for bug fixing so that the product 'works as intended'? A couple of things while, hopefully, I have your ear. The first is in regards to the quantity of people being plagued by the various PBEM [crash dump], [5% hangup] etc. How did this get passed testing? As a member of the subset of players who only play HTH PBEM games it's been an extraordinary disruption. v2.0 is simply unplayable for a large percentage of the people I regularly play with, including myself. Which is fine to the extent that I know, it will get fixed, and I can continue on with v1.11 until it is. But, to me, CMBN 2.0 smacks slightly of being 'rushed out' before Christmas. It would be really good to hear a simple explanation of the issue and a rough but realistic time frame before a patch. To be honest, the real problem from the perspective of a user is the break break in coherency of the community of people I play with, which is quite large, into those that 'can' and those that 'want to, but cant' us there v2.0 of this otherwise amazing game. The second thing is, in the 'Casualties, Wounded or Dead' thread. You made a comment about 'needing a dedicated ambush button'. Do you really need a dedicated button???? Couldn't you adjust existing behaviour so that; If a unit is hidden and given a face command, it remains hidden no matter what happens, unless self preservation overrides all else. But, if a Target Arc, or Target Armour Arc is set, the hidden unit remains so until it spots an appropriate enemy within the arc, at which point the unit simply un-hides. That way you get both an Ambush, and Ambush Armour effect built into the Hide Button. Cheers, and thanks.

PARDON??? Yep, got a dual install running for the legacy version. Cheers

Can someone confirm for those of us with a lot of PBEM games going that this is the procedure for getting turns to function with the new patch: Load all your PBEM games that are on your turn. Save each one during the Command Phase (NOT the Replay Phase) BUT DONT HIT THE RED BUTTON PATCH Load your PBEM game, issue commands, HIT THE RED BUTTON

Actually this thread IS NOT about the SOLO GAME! This is the title of the thread: Are quick battles vs the AI worthwhile? This is the entirety of the original Post: This thread is about the possibility that Quick Battles are 'particularly' awful, probably due to 'inferior' AI. The reasons for the AI being weak have been pretty clearly explained. Playing with Humans is the only practical way to overcome the shortcoming of the AI, and will be for the foreseeable future. If you refuse to play with humans, you refuse the only practical solution for improving the opposition quality. I see very little room for complaint in that regard. Your other complaints are largely personal taste, if you don't like it, do something else, or petition for change.

Each to his own I suppose, but I can't help thinking that you're not even playing the game if you're not playing verse humans. AI that can compete with a human with even rudimentary strategic aptitude in a free form environment like Combat Mission is a LONG way off. The nuances of human behaviour in planing, taking risks, being patient, observing patterns in an opponents tendencies, adjusting on the fly or even esoteric notions, like intimidation are well beyond the scope and resources of Battlefront. That's not a disparagement of Battlefront, that's true of AI specialists and research groups with resources that dwarf those available to this game. In my opinion playing vs the AI should constitute a few scraps to familiarize yourself the 'mechanics' of the game in preparation to play humans. You can stack the teams in favour of an AI opponent, add volume or wind up the difficulty, but everything that makes playing verse a human complex and rewarding is missing. It's just 'different' playing with a person. Matching wits with a human being is a primal thing, even via the conduit of a PC.

I managed to knockout a Stug and immobilize one next to it with a heavy 80mm off map mortar stonk in a PBEM recently. I needed all the help I could get as he was playing an extremely armour heavy game.

OK, so I put my money where my mouth was. Donated a tenner.