delliejonut

I like the technique! If the game had lasted a little longer, you know that the secondary explosions from the Shermans would've knocked out that Panther. It shows a highly developed tactical acumen to see that possibility and maneuver the Shermans close enough so it can work. A lot of folks would've tried to do that, but then ruined it by allowing their Shermans to actually SHOOT at the Panther. I laugh at their newbness.
 
DJ gets the award for low-level use of high-level tactical strategery.
 
Oh, and it's properly spelled "narwhalegangwaffe".  

Hey, I'm not complaining. I've had a bit of a losing streak lately but it's against great opponents and I get a great story for every loss. Not gonna say I didn't throw a few things during those turns though LOL
 
The screenshot alone was worth it. That Panther is just surrounding by death of his own making.
 
I knocked out that halftrack and the Doug positioned the Panther behind it. I knew he was there but my tanks couldn't get eyes on so I just area fired. The shots penetrated THROUGH the halftrack and hit the tank 4 or 5 times, immobilizing him. The whole time the Panther is just firing on every infantry it could see. I laid down smoke and moved up in stages till I was right on top of him with a whole platoon of infantry and 2 75mm tanks, one of which only had 3 crew members that had panicked and run around the map disembarked for the last 5 turns. The entire time I'm hoping my platoon on the other side of the map can just hold on until I take out this tank and move my armor to support them. My three man tank crew said no thank you and backed away, and then that damn nahverteidigungswaffe ruined my day.
 
Wouldn't trade it for anything

Hey, I'm not complaining. I've had a bit of a losing streak lately but it's against great opponents and I get a great story for every loss. Not gonna say I didn't throw a few things during those turns though LOL
 
The screenshot alone was worth it. That Panther is just surrounding by death of his own making.
 
I knocked out that halftrack and the Doug positioned the Panther behind it. I knew he was there but my tanks couldn't get eyes on so I just area fired. The shots penetrated THROUGH the halftrack and hit the tank 4 or 5 times, immobilizing him. The whole time the Panther is just firing on every infantry it could see. I laid down smoke and moved up in stages till I was right on top of him with a whole platoon of infantry and 2 75mm tanks, one of which only had 3 crew members that had panicked and run around the map disembarked for the last 5 turns. The entire time I'm hoping my platoon on the other side of the map can just hold on until I take out this tank and move my armor to support them. My three man tank crew said no thank you and backed away, and then that damn nahverteidigungswaffe ruined my day.
 
Wouldn't trade it for anything

I agree, they should flip. I think Bil could plan a lot better the second time around. To be honest though, I'm rooting for Doug to win. I'm a big fan of Bil's, but my record vs Doug is 3-2 in his favor, so him beating Bil will make me look better

I never use that one. The rarity is through the roof.

The Military Intelligence Division of the War Department originally issued this publication at the RESTRICTED level, but it is now, fortunately for us, UNCLASSIFIED. Organization, tactics, weapons and more are all there, with many TO&Es, wiring diagrams, weapon and equipment breakdowns, drawings, photos, weapon performance tables and much more. Handbook covers everything from squad up through Army. 
 
http://usacac.army.mil/cac2/cgsc/carl/wwIIspec/number22.pdf
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler
 

I stopped worrying about the price of BFC's products long ago. Why? Because I realized I'm not buying a game, I'm buying a drug And a powerful one at that.
 
You can do as many of the cheaper drugs as you want but you'll never get as high as the good stuff. And lord knows you don't ask your dealer for half price because "This bag has the same stuff in it as last time".

My experiences with Panthers have been similar. It seems like anytime you're fighting from a hull down position or the Allies have higher elevation than you your main gun gets knocked out. I'm perfectly ok with this- I've also taken a 290mm heat round from an AVRE and survived. Those Panthers are tough as hell.
 
I think part of the problem you had according to your post is that your using your Panthers to get initial contact. While this certainly works because of the high quality optics those tanks have, it's not optimal. There's always a chance you're not going to spot in time and get blasted. I think what might have happened is those ATG's got sound contacts on your tanks rolling up so they knew where to look. If there was enough time before your Stugs got there C2 could have informed his tank destroyers of where your tanks were.
 
So you always have to keep in mind how much noise you make. You always want recon units to spot for you, and you want the contacts they see to show up for your attacking units. If you had already spotted his units and your tanks had "?" signs on the contact when you clicked on them, the battle might have gone the other way.
 
And ATG's reload realllllly fast compared to tanks.

Lolol. To be fair they didn't take his gun away. He was in a room full of Dirty Harrys

You might just be undersensitive It was funny though

In general the rule is shoot first ask questions later. Like he said if you have a soft spot on a contact you should light them up. It takes a lot of fire in this game to fully suppress an enemy position, just experiment with it and see how much you need. You want the enemy to be cowering on the floor, cause then they can't see you coming and they can't fire at you.

It's obvious you cheated Ian, BigCats are invulnerable to all fire from any direction, excluding of course the super rare Deathstar that fires laser beams straight down from orbit but we all know that was a German weapon as well. It's amazing the Allies got anywhere at all in WW2.
 
What I think Pete is talking about IMHO is that Allied tankers and big cats would not want to maneuver that close to each other to engage. The size of the map is very limiting considering they have a max range of, what, like 2 kilometers or so? Besides that the Allies would probably opt for air support first.  This seems like the tank version of a story I read somewhere about the Brits in Market Garden. A green German squad was walking down a road to reinforce the front lines, and as they walked they noticed a dirty, beaten down squad of Brits walking the other way with their heads down. They just assumed it was the troops they were relieving. As they came abreast of each other, one of the German troops asked them a question. "Bloody hell, it's the Germans!" they shouted, and the shooting began.

I've looked at that map in passing before. I don't know if you allow preplanned arty in QB's, but I don't so I'll give you advice based on my experience. If you're allowed to have TRP's, get them. It also helps to have a single highly trained FO team. The idea with the TRP's is to put them on top of obvious infantry cover- in buildings, reverse slopes, woods, and whatever you deem necessary. You don't need to put them everywhere you think they might go, only in places where they can set up and fire on your forces. This is dependent on where you plan on maneuvering. You might want to cover one flank with arty so you can maneuver to the side. You might just want it on the objective. It just depends on your plan and your preference.
 
As far as cover goes, it looks like there's plenty of light woods cover for your infantry, but they could easy get cut off and destroyed if they try to hunker down and fight from them. They mostly need to find good cover and stay down unless they have good odds to kill or are suppressing for other maneuvering units.
 
You don't want to use woods for your tanks. What you need above all else are good hull down positions and reverse slopes/smoke. The way I use my tanks is pretty simple. Use some to provide overwatch from a hull down position (if possible) and maneuver with the others. The idea of the hull down overwatch is to give the enemy something to worry about and cut off fields of maneuver. In all likelihood his tanks and yours will see each other and open fire on each other. They will probably miss and yours might hit but will cause no damage. This is fine. At this point you begin maneuvering your other tank force to get side shots and use your overwatching tanks to shoot and scoot against enemy infantry. The point isn't necessarily to cause a whole bunch of casualties, the point is to be a threat and stay alive. Keep your maneuver force safe from 'shrecks and behind some sort of screen until you can get into a good firing position of about 90 degrees from their front. Once this happens the enemy will have to pull back or risk getting shot in the side from one direction or another. Assuming you don't lose forces at this point you are in control

Of course people wanna help each other.
 
Everyone wants to fight Bil H, but we have to settle for each other- might as well share all the tricks we know

Is this a bad thing?

Is this a bad thing?

Yeah womble, they were crack American engineers with +1 leadership and morale IIRC. It was during the infantry only demo mission for black sea, can't recall the name. I believe I gave them a fast order across the street. They might have tired and changed it to quick though. I agree about the overwatch, that's what they were there for. What I found really interesting is the way the ambushed team moved in 1-2 meter bounds, firing on the seen contact at every pause. They were only about 10 meters away from the contact. Of course this is normal behavior for crack troops with a quick order, but it was interesting nonetheless.
 
That's what I'm guessing too breeze. It was just funny to see the TacAI really do EXACTLY the right thing for the situation earlier in the same mission I lost two men because rather than go in the back door they were next to, a fireteam decided to go 30 meters around a block of houses, into the street, to get to the front door.
 
I should have taken video. The response looked textbook to me. It would be neat to improve the TacAI to the point where it did things like that on purpose.

IMHO, mortars in a direct fire mode have two distinct (and potentially huge) advantages.
 
1)  As you already stated, Directed Fire mortars fire much more quickly. They are also much more accurate than a point fire mission with a spotter. They are much closer to the target than off map mortars and there is less dispersion of rounds. (I don't know if there's any difference in accuracy for DF or spotted missions for the same on map mortar team)
 
2)  DF mortars have a LOS advantage over all infantry units. You can test this yourself if you like- Put a rifle fireteam and a deployed mortar team next to each other facing a reverse slope. When you try to area fire with the fireteam you'll get the usual REVERSE SLOPE message, and if it slopes enough, NO LOS. However, the mortar team can direct fire onto the reverse slope, and even into areas where the fireteam has no LOS. 

Lots of great stories never happened

This isn't an in-game tip, but I find it helps me a lot. 
 
I like to take a screenshot of the entire map from a top down perspective, then open it in paint and start drawing out a battle plan. I mark key terrain, masked avenues of approach, and overwatch points for both my side and the enemies. It doesn't have to be fancy or all that coherent, as long as you know what it means. Here's mine from a PBEM I'm playing now.
 
 
 
I've used pink for my forces, blue for his. This is from before the battle actually started, so the blue is just speculation. However, because I took a look at everything carefully, my predictions were spot on. As a battle goes on I'll update the map with enemy sound and visual contacts, ect. 
 
The important part is identifying lines of sight, movement paths and overwatch positions. 

This isn't an in-game tip, but I find it helps me a lot. 
 
I like to take a screenshot of the entire map from a top down perspective, then open it in paint and start drawing out a battle plan. I mark key terrain, masked avenues of approach, and overwatch points for both my side and the enemies. It doesn't have to be fancy or all that coherent, as long as you know what it means. Here's mine from a PBEM I'm playing now.
 
 
 
I've used pink for my forces, blue for his. This is from before the battle actually started, so the blue is just speculation. However, because I took a look at everything carefully, my predictions were spot on. As a battle goes on I'll update the map with enemy sound and visual contacts, ect. 
 
The important part is identifying lines of sight, movement paths and overwatch positions. 

No problem. Anything to save my fellow gamers from a few minutes of needless clicking  

Looked and couldn't find these values anywhere. A list of QB battle sizes and types, and their corresponding amounts of purchase points. 
 
Attack   TINY   Defender- 738 Attacker- 1164   SMALL   Defender- 1185 Attacker- 1908   MEDIUM   Defender- 1945 Attacker- 3175   LARGE   Defender- 3236 Attacker- 5327   HUGE   Defender- 5432 Attacker- 8986   Assault   TINY   Defender- 695  Attacker- 1206   SMALL   Defender- 1112 Attacker- 1981   MEDIUM   Defender- 1822 Attacker- 3298   LARGE   Defender- 3027 Attacker- 5536   HUGE   Defender- 5076 Attacker- 9342   Probe   TINY   Defender- 780 Attacker- 1121   SMALL   Defender- 1257 Attacker- 1836   MEDIUM   Defender- 2068 Attacker- 3052   LARGE   Defender- 3445 Attacker- 5118   HUGE   Defender- 5787 Attacker- 8631   Meeting Engagement   TINY   951   SMALL   1547   MEDIUM   2560   LARGE   4282   HUGE   7209