CM1fan

It may seem that missions are too short to accomplish the required objectives, but the time clock doesn't stop at 0:00. The clock just turns red and starts to count up. I haven't seen a scenario end because time ran out. My opponents and I normally agree on a cease fire or one side's surrender when there seemed no point in continuing.

Where did you get the idea I want the AI to spontaneously move my AFV to engage a target that poses no threat? In the situation I described, the Brit soldier did pose a threat. That's why I ordered him soft targeted. I wanted him eliminated by MG fire rather than dismembered by an HE round. (And the AI ignored my choice and instead dismembered a different Brit who was aiming a rifle and, in my view, a negligible threat to the AFV.) We already accept the AI disregarding our orders -- and moving tanks we didn't order to move. I'm just asking the AI to be more intelligent when doing so.

I agree. The members of an AFV crew should be able to yell to each other about what they can see, with nearby enemy troops being a likely topic of conversation. The crew member spotting the "Tommies in the shrubs" would probably also say something like "about 25 meters to the right." The radio operator would then say "I've got 'em" and fire his MG or say "can't see 'em. Back up and give me a shot." If one of the spotted men seems to be aiming an AT weapon, I'd have no problem with the AFV commander or the gunner firing an HE round at the man. However, if the spotted men are just aiming rifles and posing a negligible threat to the AFV, why not move the JP and use its machine gun. I accept that mistakes are easy to make in the pressure of combat, but this crew has made (what I consider) the same mistake more than a dozen times in six minutes.

I'm playing the German against the Brits in a Quick Battle in which my forces are defending five locations against about two companies of attacking Brit infantry. My force has a JagdPanzer IV and two Wespes for direct HE fire against the oncoming Brits. The JP carries around 50 rounds for its main gun and many hundreds of rounds of machine gun ammo. Unfortunately, it relies primarily on its main gun to pick off individual Brit soldiers and seldom fires its machine gun. After three or four minutes of shooting about a dozen rounds of main gun HE and averaging about one Brit soldier for every other shot, I gave up on just facing the JP and letting its crew decide how best to engage the Brits it saw. For the next minute, I ordered to JP to light target a particular Brit unit about 25 meters away. The JP crew ignored the order and instead fired two more HE rounds, one at the close Brit unit and the other at another Brit unit further away. The JP got its standard result -- one Brit soldier for two HE rounds fired. Does the JP have to fire off all its main gun ammo before it will rely on its machine gun? I recall reading that the 8th US army during the Korean War ordered its infantry units to request artillery fire only on groups of more than four enemy troops. I wish there was some way to make my JP perform similarly.

Playing the Last Defense scenario? I had the same problem. As I recall, a bazooka team can carry only four rounds. In a real situation, the jeep's occupants would be glad to hand over bazooka rounds in the jeep to any team that requested them. In CM:BN, though, the team has to board the jeep, acquire the rounds, and then leave the jeep. If the jeep has occupants, they have to leave the jeep so the bazooka team can board, and get back into the jeep to ride where they want to go. It might be nice to unload the bazooka rounds from the jeep at some useful location, but CM:BN doesn't provide that option.

Thanks, Berto. That cleared everything up for us Eyetalian readers.

Thanks, 007! I'm a WeGo type, so I'm not familiar with aspects of CM:BN useful for the real-timers. How on earth can you respond within a minute of my posting??? It took me five minutes to initially respond to yours.

The display for my StuH shows its main gun, the first item in the list, in grey text. All its other systems are in black text. What does the grey text for the main gun indicate? (The gun mantel has taken hits from small arms fire.)

The display for my StuH shows its main gun, the first item in the list, in grey text. All the StuH's other systems are in black text. What does the grey text for the main gun indicate? (The gun mantel has taken hits from small arms fire.)

While I've had great difficulty using jeep radios with mortar teams, I have been amazed by jeeps surviving multiple "lower hull penetrations" and "wheel hits." I don't blame the jeep driver continuing to drive in preference to changing a tire under small arms fire, but I do wonder how far a jeep could go on wheel rims with its driver hunching down to minimize his exposure to the fire before he ran into something. The jeep lasted three minutes (turns) before brewing up.

Speaking for myself, I want CM:BN modules to cover ALL of WWII plus the Korean war. North Africa, Market-Garden, the Bulge, Italy, the Balkans, the war in Russia start to finish, large (Okinawa) and small (Guadalcanal) islands in the Pacific, and combat in Korea.

My favorite WWI story was told by a pilot who shot down four fokkers in one day and then said "Two of them fokkers was Messerschmidts." (Contact me privately if you want this comment explained.)

That story's hard to believe. Even if the AT unit's CO wasn't the person telling the unit to target the steeple with the sniper, no US court martial would be likely to convict members of a unit which swapped ammo in the field with an allied foreign unit.

My experience doesn't match yours. I find the AI purchasing too many AFVs and too few infantry. I still hit the "Suggestions" button, but I seldom hold onto much of the AI's selections. By the way, although the Infantry choice is always highlighted when the selection screen comes up, many of the available units to select are armored or motorized. As there are Mechanized and Armored choices, why aren't the lists of available units specialized accordingly.

You may have parked your StuG on top of one of winkelreid's TRPs.

How can I select a waypoint along the path I have given a unit? For example, I'd like my unit to pause for 10 seconds at its first waypoint. I select the unit, select the Movement panel, select the type of Movement (almost always Quick), click the map where I want the unit to stop, and then select the Admin panel, and select Pause twice. The unit shows the desired 10 sec pause, but the pause occurs before the unit moves rather than at the waypoint where I want the unit to wait. I can't select the waypoint directly, because clicking on the position of the waypoint just deselects the unit I wish to command. As many units may share a particular waypoint, clicking on the waypoint's position would be ambiguous in any event. Obviously, I must select the unit first. What do I do then?

My iMac has 2 Gb of RAM, which I will soon upgrade to 4 Gb, the max my iMac will accept.

Thank you for that info. I didn't realize how much of unit panel I could click on. I still don't understand why I can't select the floating icons of many of my units, but I see now how I can jump from icon to icon with single clicks. That makes all the difference in organizing and positioning my units, and in commanding them once the scenario is underway.

Not quite "almost instant." I believe TRPs just reduce the wait for impacts by a minute or two. CM:BN grognards may have detailed info, which I'd like to see. Those TRPs aren't free. They cost 150 points for five, about half the price of a decent AFV. I like them and buy them when I can, but others may not.

When I fight the AI in solitaire WeGo, I have to provide my units their orders for each minute / turn. Does the AI provide its units orders for the next minute and accept the results as I must, or does it issue its orders on the fly and react to the situations developing during the turn?

Hell, I'd be happy / happier if I could just toggle the ?s on and off. Is there any way to do this?

Using the off-map space could help with the setup problems being discussed on a thread I started a few days ago. It shouldn't be too hard to let us place units there, fiddle with their positions and organization as we like, and then place them back on the map. As CMBN stands now, though, any attempt to position a unit outside the set up area leaves the unit in place and generates a path to your chosen location for it. And, of course, CMBN won't let you choose an illegal position at all.

In an email game, my US opponent and my German forces have been fighting over a small patch of woods for about 15 minutes / turns. His defense started with around a platoon of infantry, and my assaulting force was comprised of a two dismounted PzG platoons, two HMG teams, a StuG, and four half-tracks with MGs. With none of my units selected, three ?s appear in the woods, one underneath my StuG! As I select my units in or near the patch, two or three ?s appear in different locations in the woods, but rarely very close to the selected unit. My opponent and I are playing a "friendly" game in which we tell each other what we're doing and what casualties we've sustained. He told me a few minutes / turns back, that my forces had taken out all his units in the wooded patch bar a few stragglers fleeing in the open toward the town about 100 m away. Do these ?s ever go away? Other than dropping a Nuke or a fuel - air explosive on the wooded patch, is there any way to get rid of those pesky ?s?

You may be correct. All I know for sure is that, with the exception of incredibly twisted paths sometimes given vehicles by the AI and discussed in many CM1 and CM:BN threads, my units in CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK acted pretty much as I expected, while my units in CM:BN don't. I greatly enjoyed playing the CM1 games, and I believe that my former enjoyment would return if I could control directly the stance of my units in CM:BN.

I said "different level", not "higher level". I like CM:BN's scale, and I enjoy playing against others as well as playing against the AI. I'd just enjoy CM:BN a lot more if I could get my units to perform the way "stance" gets the AI's units to perform -- the way I recall the units in CM1 performed.