Ultradave

I forgot one instance. Airborne unit's 75mm PAK howitzers can indirect fire from on-map. Probably the minimum range is so short that it falls within most maps. Dave

Yes, for artillery (but not mortars), if your artillery assets are on the map, they are there for direct fire support, and can be really effective at that. For indirect fire, the minimum range possible would exceed the map length in almost all cases. Dave

Shoot them? Seriously though, that's the time to hit pause, and issue some new orders. Cancel the current orders and take care of the unexpected threat. What you are describing is not unique. It's what's going to happen. Remember the old maxim "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" This is true in CM, and it's true in real life. Prepare to be flexible to meet new threats. Maybe look up movement techniques. Traveling, Traveling Overwatch, and Bounding Overwatch. Some variations on that will serve you well in any situation where you are advancing. Bounding overwatch mostly because we know contact is expected if it hasn't already happened. One element covers from a good position while the second element moves. Then they cover while the first moves past them. It's basic tactics. One acts as a base of fire while the other moves either to contact or to flank. Dave

"Cat and Mouse" is a whole different experience. You are supposed to find the enemy tanks without being found (and killed) yourself. That requires the opposite of massing your tanks and advancing forward. You need to carefully use covered approaches, keyhole firing positions that you can observe enemy movement from. Position your own tanks to be able to spot to the areas where enemy tanks are likely to be waiting. Treelines especially. You may need to bait them, and get them to shoot at you to expose themselves. You don't want to get into a running battle. Read the briefings carefully. For what you are describing as your problems, pay close attention to the parts about expected enemy forces and intentions. Look at the map and figure out likely enemy locations or approaches before you hit Go. That will help you figure out what to expect. And pause when you need to if you to react to things if you are playing RT. My experience has been that real time is fine for controlling maybe a Company (-) of infantry but beyond that it gets too hard and turn by turn is better. Cat and Mouse to me would be tough on Real Time because the map is huge and it's hard to see everything that is happening. I'd recommend turn based for that one for sure. Also, keep in mind this is supposed to be a fairly realistic simulation of real combat. You aren't going to know everything about the enemy. You'll know general things, but you won't know his exact locations. Good scenario designers will a lot of times design surprises and traps to fall into. Keep that in mind as you are moving and don't get sucked in. Dave

Real time can be fun for some small sized battles. Even then, you are going to want to press the pause button to issue or change some orders. Doing so on the fly while also monitoring what's going on is pretty hard. Real time or turn based is a choice at the beginning - one of the start screens, where you select, real time, turn based, PBEM, etc. Select turn based and the game will run in 1 minute increments. You can also replay each one minute to zoom in on a particular area. This is usually what I do - let it run at view 4 or 5, then re-run close up on a few areas depending on what I saw. Everyone has their favorite way of playing. There's no wrong or right. That's why there are different choices and views available. Dave

What might help your is that there are mods for gridded terrain, that help you see the subtle contours of the ground. Some people like them, others prefer to crawl around the map. Check the repository at The Few Good Men and look under the terrain headings. Dave

Well, I have to disagree with this and @Artkin. What you describe is *exactly* what I'd do in real life. But, hey, make any rules you want in agreement with your opponent. Taking away that capability, to me, would remove a perfectly valid tactic. I'd do that even without the TOW firing from the woods. Ooh, look, treeline ahead. Blast it with whatever we've got to keep their heads down, while I have maneuver elements close in. Is it really that much different than putting a smoke screen in front of the treeline even if you haven't spotted anything? Pretty much accomplishes the same thing. Dave

Can you explain more? I don't get this one. If you are on offense, you would call fire along a treeline, hammer a village you plan to assault, etc. On defense you'd target areas where the enemy could be assembling for an assault. Can't hit a whole patch of woods because you can't get a LOS to the middle of it. I suppose you could target the open in front of the woods and overlap into it. I see nothing wrong with targeting an open area the enemy has to cross to attack you with everything I've got, and hoping that that timing of the FFE works with the enemy crossing that area. Catching enemy in the open with artillery is a goal, not something that should be eliminated. Maybe I'm missing your point or objection (certainly possible - it's early, I'm wet from walking the dogs and need coffee ) Dave

I picked Czechmate with me as US. Gives him a lot of resources and I gave a few hints. It's also less of a long range tank duel, of which we've just played a couple WW2 versions of. This one has lots of woods and hills and I have a thin defense. Dave

There is no PBEM++ for Macs, only PCs. The Matrix/Slitherene versions are PC only. They are the same as the BF PC versions. The Mac version are the same with the exception you get them from BF only (Fine with me) and no PBEM++. But PBEM the dropbox way still works just fine. Dave

If you mean the hotkey settings they are a text file. If you changed any of those, you can edit the text file back to original, or you can copy/paste one from another CM title. Dave

Looks good.

Need more info to answer properly. What version are you currently on? There are all in one downloads for the current version and your license key will still work. Or there are updates up to the current version. However, to do those, you need to be on version 4 of the game engine. How old is "this old game?" and then we could point you in the right direction. And no, there is no automatic update download unless you are on Steam, and I'm guessing you don't have it installed there due to your "old game" title. Dave

Along with this I'd like to be able to click a sound/tentative contact and have it highlight which of my units has that contact, just like it works for a solid contact. That would tell me who I need to maneuver to get a better contact on it. I think this is realistic. For example, a squad gets a tentative contact. Squad leader splits off a scout team "See if you see what that is." As long as they still remain in C2, that would then tell me what I'd need to do to fire on it. Sometimes it's only a small change in position or cover, but right now we don't know WHO needs to do that. We just have lots of tentative conctacts and have to guess who MIGHT have a LOS to one. Dave

Its maximum range is in that order, however it has a significantly smaller effective range (like about 1/10th the max range - roughly). It's a recoilless rifle, so that is correct. Dave

I remember one scenario from CM1 where you (if I remember right), the British airborne troopers dropped into Normandy and trying to assemble and take a few houses. You were only allowed to use view 1 - the eye level view - and just tab switch between each unit. It was HARD. Lots of view blocks, so it was really difficult to form up or even determine where the objective was compared to you. I thought it simulated the confusion of the first period after the airborne drops pretty well, minus actual bullets flying at you. Dave

Easy answer. It doesn't have more HE. Scroll back a bit. A 155mm howitzer shell has over twice the explosive weight as a 120mm mortar round. In general terms a mortar is going to be less accurate than a howitzer. The velocity of the shell is lower, the trajectory much higher, making it susceptible to winds aloft more so than an artillery shell. That's something that can be calculated for and input corrections, IF you have time for it. The artillery battalion Target Acquisition Battery will fly a weather balloon a couple times a day and report direction and speed at various altitudes. You (the various fire direction centers) use those to look up deflection and elevation corrections to add/subract to the firing data, based on your expected direction of fire. Now obviously 2x/day still only gives a rough idea and weather and wind can change, so even those corrections are ballpark. In the game, I use mortars for a few things. 1) Against unprotected infantry they are good, or in trenches you'll get the odd direct trench hit which is great, and even if you don't it usually keeps their heads down. 2) Short harassing mission against armor to make them button up. 3) Smaller mortars especially are great for suppressing MG or AT gun positions and are usually quick response. Against buildings or anything substantial, I leave that for the field artillery, unless mortars is all I've got. Mortars can do pretty well against pillbox positions too. They probably won't knock them out, but they can suppress them. Nothing like a couple dozen mortar rounds landing on the roof and all around to disorient them and give them a headache. It helps anyway. Dave

This probably isn't really accurate either. FOs or FISTs are well trained to do so, and have the radio nets "dialed in" and ready to go. The "almost any unit," whoever they may be, will have varying levels of ability to effectively call for fire. Variables like map reading ability, knowledge of the TRPs in the fire support plan (they may or may not depending on the level of command), being able to quickly switch to and make contact with the battery by radio, and their proficiency at using a call for fire, which has a specific format, and how good they might be in zeroing in on target with adjusting rounds, all play a part. It takes some practice to learn how to bracket and estimate distances well. Every battery and mortar section does some training on how to coach an untrained observer, but that adds time to getting the mission going, so mission times for FOs are justifiably shorter than infantry HQ units or whoever else might be calling. So, yeah, the general answer is that artillery call and adjusting in CM is quite abstract and generalized across periods, and some things don't carry directly from real life experience. This was my job for years, so I have a lot of detail in my head. Do I need it in the game? Well, I probably would have fun with it as an artillery simulator. Others might find it tedious In RL, a 120mm shell does in fact have a lot less explosive power than a 155 shell. I was in the Airborne and our direct support artillery was 105mm howitzers, rather than 155mm. In that setup, a 120 and a 105 are roughly equivalent. Roughly. A 105 also has a lot less explosive power than a 155. Hope that helps. Doesn't change anything of course. And my experience is Cold War era, which pretty well translates to WW2 with better comms. There were the beginnings of computerized fire calculations and GPS, but we didn't have those. TACFIRE was a computer based battery fire control system, but it came in 5ton trucks. Can't airdrop those. We had a digital-analog computer that used paper punch tape input (yeah, a dinosaur). It hardly ever worked right and it weighed 400 lbs, and usually broke if you airdropped it. "Charts and darts" (manual paper, protractors and slide rule calculations) were faster anyway. And those methods have changed little since WW2. The physics of ballistics are a constant Dave

The question you asked was real life tactical use of the 120mm mortar. So I provided some real life background.

No. A 155mm howitzer shell has approximately 2 - 3x the warhead charge of a 120mm mortar. (comparing a US 4.2" mortar HE shell to a US 155mm HE shell). I'm sure other country's ammunition would be in the same ballpark. Battalion mortars are more versatile, are under the infantry battalion's direct control, so therefore can be more responsive to the infantry. They are also less susceptible to counter - battery fire as they can pick up and move and then re-emplace faster than a howitzer battery. This becomes more important the more modern the era. It is also more of a difference with towed howitzers than with SP howitzers. Even so a 155 battery is a lot of stuff to move and it's all heavy. In the Cold War period to the present, there is usually a 155 (or 105) battery dedicated to each maneuver battalion, and that association is permanent, so that units train together. Obviously that can be modified depending on circumstances, so there is usually a dedicated direct support artillery battery as well as battalion mortars, so response is fast. In WW2 this wasn't the default organization, so call times to the artillery would be a little longer, not even counting the advances in comms since then. A 155mm howitzer has significantly longer range. While that may be important for targets of opportunity in the rear areas of the enemy, for CM game purposes it doesn't matter much. The normal real life doctrine would be to select firing positions for both mortars and howitzers so that the expected ranges to targets fall at around 2/3 of the max range of the weapon. Mortars then, would be placed closer to the front lines. In game purposes, if you have off map assets, then they are already placed appropriately and can reach the whole map. If you were playing a game a scale level higher, where you control the batter position, it matters more. One last pretty important thing. A mortar section can put A LOT of rounds on the target in a short time. The sustained rate of fire is faster than a 155mm howitzer and they can keep it up longer before having to slow down. A 155 can fire at a high sustained rate but not for very long, if you want to use it again. It just takes longer to load and fire as well. Dave

I've been in a M60 tank buttoned up and I can say spotting anything is hard. It helps when the other guy fires Muzzle blasts and smoke puffs make things easier. But just seeing things tucked in a treeline? That's really difficult. Sights improve, for sure, with the development of thermals, but thinking more of the TC or driver being able to see and ID things out the ports? That was hard. Never been in a WW2 era tank, even in a museum, but I can't believe it was better. It's probably STILL just as hard today. Just a lot easier to hit and kill something once you do locate it. Dave

All I can say is that George's scenarios will challenge you at every turn with surprises. It's not unreasonable behavior. A unit on the attack is going to plaster any suspected enemy locations either by direct or indirect fire, whether or not they spot anything. If nothing else you keep their heads down. Treelines are obvious targets where enemy might be expected. Dave

Steam versions are Windows only. So are Slitherene/Matrix versions as far as I know. The only way to get a Mac version is through Battlefront. Keep in mind that the PBEM++ feature is only available in the Windows versions, not the Mac versions. Other than that, there is no difference. That's no big deal for me, but it might be for others. For Mac, PBEM still works the way it always has. Dave

It goes through the end of the war in Europe.

My wife and I lived in England for several years. We watched ALL the episodes. Dave