AlexUK

Great, thanks Bil. In my experience use of small forces tend to result in them getting pinned and destroyed by weight of enemy fire - your approach has got me thinking about how I can do this better keyholing/using terrain to isolate units. I only play WW2 really, but I guess the same principles apply more or less.

Hi Bil
I was wondering why you did not have more of your Javelin teams online? Are you concerned that an artillery strike may take them out, or are you not wanting to waste Javelins on low-priority targets? In general you seem to currently be using only a relatively small amount of your combat force.
Also, you gave some examples above about how you would deal with Javelins. At this stage, what is your preferred option? I guess even a couple of concealed Javelin positions could wreak havoc on a charge of IFVs.

I was wondering about that! 
I now understand even better why Bil seems to be staying in cover and only advancing briefly to take a shot - a great tactic to defeat Javelin I guess (in addition to being effective in any case).
 
 

Hi Bil
I see you are using a tight target armour arc in the last post - I am very loathe to use them as I have experience of the target moving out of the arc, another threat popping up outside of the arc. How do you weigh the advantages/disadvantages when choosing whether to apply one?

MINUTE 10
LAV-AT #5 sat still in its hulldown position and waited to get a spot... I was hoping it would be able to get a shot on the Leo, however a Marder came trundling forward next to the Leo... the LAV instantly saw it and sent a missile on its way.  If you watch closely, right before the TOW is loosed the ammo from the LAV-AT destroyed last turn goes up in a fireball.

Right before the missile hit, the Marder spotted my hulldown LAV-AT and sent some cannon rounds their way which all went high.  I think the very small footprint of that launcher is going to be hard to hit (that’s my hope anyway).  The missile however hit the mark and that is scratch one Marder.  He won’t like that result and I can only hope it still had its infantry squad in the back. 

LAV-AT #5 did spot the Leo for a few seconds after hitting the Marder, but lost the spot soon after.  Of course the LAV-AT couldn’t fire anyway as it was reloading.

The LAV-AT carries two missiles in its launcher and this was the second one this vehicle has fired, so it immediately went into reload mode after firing and this was in progress as the turn came to an end.  Next turn I will pull this vehicle back over its ridge to complete reloading, then move forward one more time in an attempt to bag that Leo.

The Scimitar opposite T-90 #2 of course popped smoke and withdrew to safety. 
T-90 HQ never spotted anything while it was in position, but it did receive a laser warning, popped smoke and withdrew.  These Syrians are a challenge to use effectively, most of the time they can’t spot worth a damn... in the rare event that they do spot, they miss.  They have missed every shot fired so far.

This image shows my current dispositions, the enemy situation has become muddled as few vehicles are now firmly spotted.

The situation in and around DUMAYR isn’t great, the fighters I was moving towards DUMAYR are staggered and spread out from the river bank to their original start positions.  Most are exhausted, tired, panicked, etc.  I just want them over the river and in cover for now.


 
REINFORCEMENTS

The Main Body arrived in zone   
M1A1SA Section (x2 Tanks) D Company Mech Infantry on M2A3 Bradley (x13 M2A3 and x1 BFIST) The remainder of the SP Mortar Battery (x2 M1064A3 and x2 HMMWV) Battalion CO on HMMWV

Now I have some serious firepower to engage Baneman with.  Of course this means that his main body will also have arrived and the British Army are no pushovers, though I think my US Army forces have a slight edge.  It’ll be down to who uses them more effectively. 
I have a two stage plan that I have been waiting to implement and now that these troops are on the board those plans are getting implemented.  It will take several turns to get everything into position.
It will get very deadly now in this area of operations.  Stay tuned. 

I'm really looking forward to this! I bought Shock Force a few years ago and never got into it, so hopefully this will show me what I'm missing. I appreciate all the effort you go to Bil, it makes for an AAR that is a fantastic read and I also learn a lot.

Before the others show up with sticks here is how this goes...
Someone will explain Steve's reasons for not jumping on steam. Rather than do that here he is in his own words (make sure the link takes you to that comment):
 
Then there will be a ton of back and forth and meanness and name calling. It you want to experience it just read the rest of the thread. When it all ends it can be summed up in a few paragraphs:
It is now up to you guys if you want to read the long version or the short version and then you can choose if you want to repeat history or not.

1. Embrace field fortifications wholeheartedly, not as an addition to the "core" gameplay. Ideally, players should be allowed to place trenches and the like into the ground-mesh, and they should not be visible to the enemy at the start. Players should have a good selection of fortifications (hastily dug firing positions, foxholes, slit trenches, AT ditches, hesco blocks, etc.), a choice of fortification shapes (it's fiddly enough to place them with the current size of action squares) and all fortifications should work properly (versus direct and indirect fire). That being said, I could also imagine to give the defender some options before the scenario starts (blasting through housewalls, perhaps even cutting a few trees to get fields of fire, laying down telephone wire (--> info sharing), barricade some doors/windows, etc.). But I understand that this might be a bit extreme.
2. Shoot and scoot/fire and run orders (as mentioned above)
3. Ability to chain together multiple "fire briefly" orders in one turn without using waypoints. This is a bit related to point 2. I often find myself wanting to give several targets to a vehicle in one turn (mostly for suppressive fire), i.e. I want to chain together "fire briefly" commands. Right now, it's quite tedious to achieve what I want (by setting lots of short waypoints, moving back and forth if I want the vehicle to keep it's position). 
4. LOS needs to become more reliable in some cases - Right now, it can be very bad when your unit decides to go prone instead of kneel down behind an obstacle. In case of doubt, give us an override button ("force kneel/stand" - unless suppressed/under fire, of course).
5. Give us the option to camouflage weapons/vehicles/positions. I know it's already in the game for AT guns, but it would be great if we also get it for other stuff and get a visual indicator.
6.  Let us area-target "reverse slope" spots.
7. UNIT SELECTION: Give us a 3D preview of the unit in the unit selection menu.
8. EDITOR: Greater variety of wall/fence variations (new options to make them run at the border of an action square, not in the middle of it). More bushes/trees in between the size of the tallest bush and the smallest tree. Narrow ditches and dykes as mentioned in point 1. Right now, terra-forming ditches is not really very satisfying due to the large size of action squares. 
9. EDITOR: Add info about all kinds of effects (movement slow-down, LOS shape/effect, etc.) to all terrain pieces.

Well frankly its done when its done has been BFCs policy since I remember reading Moon and someone else fighting a pbem beta of CMBO.
How many times do they have to repeat themselves? Its ALWAYS been when its ready and its never changed.  What I dont understand is where this extreme pessimism is coming from - people are acting like they contributed to a gofundme and dont have a product already or that BFC hasnt made about a dozen games now.
These prophecies of bankruptcy doom and gloom or sock puppet companies.. it all seems to be realllllllly jumping to extreme conclusions.
 
(nvm)

@sublime why would you be so surprised at allegiance to Putin after what we have been going through here in the US?  No need to look overseas for examples of blind allegiance.  People like simple answers that don’t require they change their behavior or challenge their beliefs. Life is just easier if it conforms to your own predetermined bias. It is the very reason human social evolution is so damn slow and will probably be the reason humans become a failed evolutionary branch. 

Well, now it feels like the old Board again, people arguing furiously about Bren guns... Also a bit over-zealus defence of the company, a bit of hyperbole on the side of the complainers, and to top it off someone who doesn't believe in Charles and Steve's existence... makes me feel young again.
All that aside, this silence on the issue of the patch and the complete lack of updates on the website is a tad worrying.
I couldn't care less about the patch issues in comparison to the idea that the guys who has given me endless hours of entertainment for the last 20 years are in trouble in some way, since most of us here are in 'middle-age' we know what a lot of **** that life can throw at you once you hit 40 or thereabouts.
So, here's hoping it's just that the patch is turning out to be a right clusterbuck to adjust and that's all.

Wow, I would never have thought to do something like that. Presumably a risk is for the attacking force to get cut off and destroyed - but in this terrain your support could presumably interdict any attempt to do this, given the dip between your forces and his support location. 
You presumably also needed to decide between fast movement - before he can react, and while his forces are hunkering down, vs slow, with less chance of detection. How did you approach this?

Have a plot twist to the story, and it involves the CMBN side of things for the CW. Just got off the horn with brother George, who informed me the British, for reasons he didn't understand, did not do the upgrade kits that put the wide mantlet and the all-important telescopic sight on what had been narrow mantlet Shermans with their associated optical deficits. He thought this was pretty shocking, considering it was the British who raised a ruckus about optics in the first place. He further noted they didn't fit the protective plates to the near vertical driver and bow gunner bulges in the glacis and didn't always have sponson armor added, either. Said the overall situation was the norm in Normandy, and that they were still campaigning narrow mantlet Shermans at Arnhem! Seems to me this is something which ought to be looked into because of its potentially substantial impact on combat performance and also addressed by scenario builders. He sent a photo to my phone of a British welded hull Sherman in Normandy in June 1944, and that tank is very much the OEM first model with the narrow mantlet. Not sure what the situation was for the Canadians and the Poles.
Regards,
John Kettler

I've made sure to help John along his way to reaching his personal nirvana. 

Brother Ed is happily making craters on a 3-D printer, and I unearthed this to help him. Turns out this is a blast from my past, in the form of a runway cratering study I used when doing a report on US rapid runway repair capability in my early days at Hughes. This is, in part, quite the tutorial on crater configuration from aerial bombs and addresses dimensions  for a range of bomb sizes against both a range of runway types and against bare soil. It's called BOMB CRATER DAMAGE TO RUNWAYS and was authored by Peter Westine of the Southwest Research Institute. 
http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/907456.pdf

P.S.

I give up! This post won't delete. Tried doing that after realizing I put it in the wrong place. Should be in CM GDF, not CMFB. Mods, please move it. Thanks! 
Regards,
John Kettler

The whole marking people down like that smacked of childish schoolyard bullying.  I was appalled at the adolescent mentality of the folks who did that to John.  Glad we can at least mark him back to neutral.  Then it's up to him.

It would be interesting to know how you were planning on using your on and off-map artillery Bil.

An AAR from Bil - great! I am definitely going to enjoy this - thanks for all the time you put into these Bil!

Is it normal that the 4,000 rounds are not accessible by the vehicle MG? Rivers of Blood scenario.
 
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KwZklAage3hVxbKB3

:-)
It can get kind of addictive - at least I can console myself when I lose yet again to the AI.

Amedeo - I wouldn't mind there being significant differences between the SMGs, based on their muzzle velocities for instance.  The PPsH was better at 200 yards than a Thompson, for example, simply because the 7.62x25 round has nearly twice the muzzle velocity of the 45 ACP.  I don't think that the hard cut off is the way to handle that.  Neither should be firing beyond 200 yards, and neither should be competitive with a bolt rifle in aimed fire at 200 yards.  The latter is the *reason* why they shouldn't be firing beyond 200 yards - because it is a waste of their great close range firepower to shoot off all their ammo at their least effective ranges, ranges where a bolt rifle seriously outperforms any of them.  
Get the effective accuracy fall off *correct*, and that will all handle itself.  Including allowing a hard cut off at 200, where nobody would want them firing, because the hits per burst would have already fallen to levels where the players would rather save their ammo and use them in closer.  To me, the issue only arises in the first place because the fall off is *not steep enough* right now, and therefore the SMGs appear too effective at 150 to 200 yards.  That leads players to *want* them to fire at those ranges and longer, and to feel "gyped" if they can't fire the PPsH at 250, say.  If firing at 250 just missed and blew the ammo, nobody would feel gyped about not being able to do it - the cut off would be acting as the designers intend, and would be a feature, and everyone would be all for it (most already are, no doubt).  I think it is a feature regardless, because bolt rifles and LMGs *should* be dominating firefights at ranges of 200 to 400 yards, and "turning off" SMGs at 200 is a step in that correct direction.
To me, this reduces the difference between me and Amedeo to, he would like to see the PPsH significantly more effective than a 9mm or a 45 caliber SMGs in the range window 100 to 200 yards. That'd be fine by me, but it is a much less important issue than the fact that all of the SMGs are performing too well in that range envelope.  Absolutely, and compared to the rifles and LMGs.  Arguably the PPsH should do better than a Sten in that range window, maybe especially in the second half of it.  Bully.  But neither should be matching a bolt rifle at 200, let alone exceeding them, and that is what is happening now.
I see two reasons that is happening.  One, the increase in the difficulty of a shot with an increase in its flight time to that distance is undermodeled.  Range makes a shot harder for all weapons by increasing the impact of aiming misalignment, and of the lighter automatics by increased bullet dispersion from muzzle climb and shake from recoil and all that.  All of which effects all the rounds.  But range also makes shots harder with slower bullets, even with a sight with range graduations, because it increases the flight time, thus the bullet drop, and thus the "golfing" aspect of shooting - the holdover, and the need for an accurate range estimate, and such factors.  All make it so the difficulty of a shot grows as a function of both the range (all weapons) and the flight time (affecting the lower muzzle velocity weapons the most).
That's all reason one.  The second reason is just that the bolt rifles are firing too slow, too infrequently, and this is exaggerating the benefit of the ROF of the automatics, because their short bursts are being compared to frankly muzzle loader rates of fire for the bolt repeaters.   Bolt rifles in aimed fire shoot 10 to 12 times a minute, not 3 to 5.  What we get as things are now is the SMGs firing 6-9 round bursts with each round 1/3rd the modeled accuracy, for 2-3 times the expected hits per shot, in the 100 to 200 yard range window, and even out near the far end of it.  At 100 with the PPsH I'd buy that relationship, and at maybe 70 for the 9mm SMGs.  But by 180-200 they should have a lower chance of hitting with a whole burst than the bolt rifle does of hitting with a single (supported, aimed) shot, while using 6-9 times the ammo to do it.  And to keep from running dry almost immediately, they aren't going to fire 6-9 round bursts 10-12 times a minute, where a bolt rifle readily can fire single rounds that often.  The bolt rifle will thus be getting more hits per minute at those ranges, while also being able to keep it up for far longer, because it is getting not around 3 but around 10 times the hits per round, at those ranges.
To me, all of that is way more important than whether the PPsH has 33% more effective range than a 9mm SMG.  You don't need to worry too much about the relative SMG effectiveness - the PPsH armed infantry are going to rock anyway, because they have SMG numbers and they have cyclic rate of fire advantages as well, and both are modeled and modeled correctly.  We do, however, emphatically need to worry about SMGs seriously outperforming full LMGs and bolt rifles in the last 50 or so meters of their effective ranges.  Because that isn't historically accurate and it messes up the actual tactical relationships of combined arms tactics and such.
I don't think there is any reason for BTS to change the 200 meter range limit.  I do think they could look at adjusting the rate of fire of the bolt rifles upward, and the rate of drop off of weapon accuracy with range more generally, and of the slowest muzzle velocity weapons especially.
 A uniform formula could do the latter objectively, if it has the form, per round accuracy is a function of three variables (actual range, flight time, inherent weapon dispersion).
All automatics have higher inherent weapon dispersion, and the lighter SMGs the largest, and in unsupported fire especially so.  But basically this can be taken from weapon specs as 1 MOA sniper rifles, 2 MOA single shot rifles, up to 10 MOA SMGs, and a middling figure between the last 2 for full LMGs.
The lowest muzzle velocities have the longest flight times, and the difficulty of a shot grows slowly for flight times over 0.25 seconds and rapidly for shots longer than 0.5 seconds.
Range causes a linear increase in the importance of any error in the angle for all weapons.  The initial error in the angle is determined by firing stance (prone and supported best, standing upsupported worst e.g.), some quality and morale state adjustments perhaps.
How I see it, for what its worth...

Zemke,
 
Both games (RT and BS) have pros and cons. The biggest issue is whether you want to play with modern weapons or WWII. WWII is more "honest". Modern is brutally lethal. If your fundamentals aren't there, CMBS will expose them via KIA/WIA and pyres. CMRT allows a bit more forgiveness. 
 
As mentioned, that "laser warning" tells your tankers that they're about to die. There are tactics that can ameliorate the disruption that a laser warning causes: FAST move, higher motivation crews, overwatch units, etc.
 
(As for John Kettler's cathartic prose, I think he'd be the first to admit (in fact, he has, and on multiple occasions) that he has some coping issues with complex situations such as those presented by these games. Take the good from his posts, but filter them based on his own admissions of how easily he can become overwhelmed.)
 
Regards,
Ken

When troops use MOVE, they will start to run FAST towards the next waypoint when they take incoming fire. Which is usually a bad thing.

Nobody said CM was easy and Method was surely given a tough hand and a tougher opponent.  I stand behind my position that he was too passive which led to the result.  
 
As to the mortar comment, I am well aware of the difficulty in adjusting it.  After re-reading my post "Sweeping" is probably not the best word choice.  I do think he had the time to walk it slightly north after his initial barrage which if done might have nailed Ian's spotter and own mortar teams which took out methods ATG and then after a couple of rounds marched it slightly further north to the center.  However, you are right that the time delay on the arty is tough to manage and while I dont play much any more, I was usually one step behind where I needed it when I did play.

It would be helpful if there was an intermediate stage (ducked down), as often shown in Fury.