Ultradave

Apologies if this has already been posted. Having a hard time keeping up and just skimming. 
 
Three drone hits on the unit 6 containment dome. No real damage ( containments are VERY strong), but this is still not great. The reactors are all shut down at least, but decay heat and spent fuel still exist and must be mitigated. 
 
Really you could do more damage hitting infrastructure OUTSIDE the containment, like incoming power lines, diesel generators, secondary water supply equipment from the river/lake. Containment? “‘‘Tis but a scratch”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-drone-a28710a691f3259b5dd6586787838b60
Dave

Apologies if this has already been posted. Having a hard time keeping up and just skimming. 
 
Three drone hits on the unit 6 containment dome. No real damage ( containments are VERY strong), but this is still not great. The reactors are all shut down at least, but decay heat and spent fuel still exist and must be mitigated. 
 
Really you could do more damage hitting infrastructure OUTSIDE the containment, like incoming power lines, diesel generators, secondary water supply equipment from the river/lake. Containment? “‘‘Tis but a scratch”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-drone-a28710a691f3259b5dd6586787838b60
Dave

The usual Russia blaming Ukraine for it...
I tend to think Ukraine have better targets to go at.
Russia perhaps using it to stoke up the threat?
Let's hope they leave it alone...
BTW I saw some footage of the Russians blowing up the dam that they said Ukraine did...
Will have to dig out the link for checking if it is valid footage...
FWIIW
 

Apologies if this has already been posted. Having a hard time keeping up and just skimming. 
 
Three drone hits on the unit 6 containment dome. No real damage ( containments are VERY strong), but this is still not great. The reactors are all shut down at least, but decay heat and spent fuel still exist and must be mitigated. 
 
Really you could do more damage hitting infrastructure OUTSIDE the containment, like incoming power lines, diesel generators, secondary water supply equipment from the river/lake. Containment? “‘‘Tis but a scratch”
https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-drone-a28710a691f3259b5dd6586787838b60
Dave

I believe that German light infantry guns can also perform indirect fire missions on-map.

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

🤣 Yeah, imagine being there for real, eh? Nightmare.

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's not perfect. But you are overstating the problem (you can only issue orders once a minute in H2H play, and units still need to have a line of fire in order to use the target command), and ever worse problems would be created if you removed it.
To give an example of how much worse it would be without the 'target' command, in one of my battles in which I'm defending hedgerow country I sprung a couple of nasty ambushes against my opponent. I had my pixeltruppen hiding with short target arcs until his scouts were nearly at my end of the field, and then opened fire. Afterwards I repositioned my teams (which I think must have looked like I was abandoning the hedgerow to him), had them resume hiding with short target arcs, and I was able to repeat the ambush on the next group of soldiers to cross. If there was no area target command I would be able to repeat this tactic again and again with complete impunity. There would be absolutely nothing my opponent could do about it. You can't possibly tell me that that would be more realistic than my opponent firing into my hedgerows with everything he's got, spots or no spots (which he has very wisely, and very realistically, started to do)?

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

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

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

Absolutely!
Tentative contacts should both be clickable and "engage-able". Preferably there should be varying degrees of uncertainty about what side a tentative contact belongs to, so that your units might end up firing on friendlies thinking them to be enemies, and holding fire against enemies who they think may be friendlies.
Another feature which would be very fun and challengning (thought came to me when you mentioned that British airborne "linking up" mission") would be units or reinforcements which the player doesn't control or even knows about until his starting/"main" unit has spotted them. E.g. you start the mission commanding some paratroopers stumbling around Normandy during the night of June 5/6 and you know that there are other units out there, but you can neither control nor see them until your unit has found them, just as how you can't see or engage enemy units until they've been found.
I've seen people make missions where paratroopers are spread out and spawn as reinforcements all over the map (CMFI years ago I think), but there the player still has the God's eye view, knows where all different units are and can control them all from the start.
I don't suppose there's a reinforcement trigger in the mission editor, i.e. that all reinforcements are just triggered by the clock? Otherwise something akin to that could be achieved with hidden objectives which spawn reinforcements when found.

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

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

Mystery solved.  Thank you...

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