Bud Backer

To the best of my knowledge they offer no benefit beyond their guns and eyes, until the HQ is killed, whereupon they take over that role.

I think without a discussion of map size, battle type, and general strategy it’s impossible to have a convincing commentary on how “useless” Move is and how one can do everything using Quick. I can’t have my units move all over the map using Quick. They will get tired. I use Quick a lot, it’s incredibly useful but it has its limits.

That’s for damned sure.

It’s really difficult for anyone to answer “is it worth it?” That is totally dependent on the individual. What I can tell you is that CMBS is cheaper because it has less content. It has 3 nations, whereas CMSF2, if you buy all the addon content, has British, US Army, US Marines, Canadian, Dutch, German, Syrian forces. The Syrians can be used to represent a number of possible countries that use Warsaw Pact/Russian equipment. So at this time CMSF2 offers a lot more toys to play with than CMBS. It also represents about a decade earlier in technological development, so the T90 or Abrams are not the same as what you see in CMBS, nor are other vehicles and hardware/weapons. So it’s not merely CMBS with a few added countries. Even the stuff they share is different. Hope that helps.

WIP

Also, not everyone is equally adept at handling infantry to attack tanks, nor tanks to defeat infantry. So single-instance anecdotal information does not a crisis make.

That is much closer to my in-game experience than a squad taking a platoon of tanks out. While it is possible, it’s not something I would like to count on, even 1 time in ten.

Who’s to say one grenade didn’t go down a hatch? Then all it takes is one man, not a fire team. Given it’s fairly difficult it is to close Assault a tank in general, I don’t see a problem.

Confirmed and reported internally. QA 8089 Confirmed and reported internally. QA 8090

This is not meant to be taken literally but rather it represents "Infantry Close Assault". Disregard the animations in this as the game was not designed to display the precise actions that take place in this sort of attack on a vehicle.

Thanks for commenting. It’s nice to see this still is enjoyed by someone.

I've had multiple tank commanders get shot and not seen something like this. Morale here isn't exactly terrible. In fact, it improves from Nervous to Cautious, so it seems like morale is pretty good. Based on the cancel move order and go the opposite direction right after an artillery shell exploded nearby, I suspect that the commander loss is not the driving factor. The rest of the game they sat quietly and didn't do anything funky. I hope @Battlefront.com can give some insight - especially about UI refresh rates and if there is anything the player can see that would suggest this unit is going to lose their sanity. Edit: I want to make clear I am not complaining about this situation - what I am trying to get is some insight into how one can look at the UI and make any conclusions about why they did what they did. It's easy to explain the behaviour from a humanistic standpoint, what I am focusing on here is what does the game "say" about their state of mind in the moment.

When I was scouting the woods to the left of the field you see before the hellcat, the M18 spotted my recon team and fired on them. They returned fire and killed the commander (with SMGs at 250m!) and then went deeper into the woods. That would be 30+ minutes before this screenshot.

Yes, we can explain it; you're absolutely right - and I did just that. The issue here is not whether one can plausibly explain what happened here in real life terms. It's whether this behaviour is bugged (going out of cover toward enemy lines) or if the crew was really freaked out and not thinking - in which case why is there no indicator. The key factors that are confusing here are that at the time it rolled out of cover, the hellcat has 0 suppression, and the crew was in "Cautious" morale state. Is that because the states are not updated real time and so they were in fact panicked and running but the indicators simply do not reflect that, or is it something else? @Battlefront.com maybe you might be able to shed some light? I'm not trying to split hairs here. What I want to know is if from a game UI perspective what would explain this. I know real life people do all sorts of crazy stuff.

Yes, that’s what I thought initially too. But... The screenshot is taken 15 seconds before the turn where the behaviour is odd. Why is it odd? Because in the next turn, it started a reverse move as ordered by my opponent. The suppression meter dropped to zero despite nearby shelling. The shelling appears to trigger cancellation of the move order and it then rolls forward. But the morale improves, going from nervous to cautious. So, if morale is better, and suppression is zero, why would it charge toward the enemy? Doesn’t the AI know that direction is where the enemy comes from?

See the image below for reference. In a recent battle against a human player, my opponent's Hellcat, selected in the picture, disobeyed their orders, and drove forward into the guns of my waiting King Tigers (which would be in the plowed field where the top-left two arrows are pointing). The Hellcat was given orders to reverse. It began to do so during the turn, and then two of my artillery rounds landed in the area circled. The Hellcat stopped and then went forward, past the building in the shot, and right toward my Tigers, which of course killed it instantly. Some context: You can see there are no contact Icons for my tanks. So However, the village has been under attack by my forces from the top of the map for some turns. The Hellcat shows some suppression now, but that is entirely gone in the turn that they drive forward, and their status changes from Nervous to Cautious, which suggests that they are actually less stressed than before. I can see that the unit would cancel a reverse order because heavy artillery landed some few dozen meters away. However, it moved forward, past cover and into the open, in the direction of the enemy (me). Despite not having contact icons, does this move make sense? Is this the retreat bug in vehicle form? If you need clarifications to make the situation easier to visualize please let me know.

Personally, I hunt tanks and other enemy armour with them...

Yes, that is correct, you’d have to exchange a saved game file.

I completely agree. What took me so long in this battle to get to actually attack the town itself was that I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the “trap.” The idea that the 95% of the whole enemy force would be within the confines of the village was so inconceivable that I kept looking and looking and looking for an enemy that would actually be a credible threat. And my caution is precisely because I also believe that I could have been in serious trouble here had different deployment and purchase options been chosen. One of the reasons for this thread was my confusion that I had an enemy I could not see. As it turns out, there really was a lot less to see that I anticipated.

Good questions, @Hapless My opponent’s statement after surrendering was that fighting King Tigers when there is good LOS is pointless. He was taking into account the weather. I could see pretty much across 2/3 or more of the map; I was spotting hidden infantry at 400m+ so despite appearances (and frankly, my own expectations that visibility would be bad) there were no difficulties in obtaining longer range LOS. I really dislike urban combat. I know this is a small village but still, it’s a PITA. His tactic threw me off completely. In another urban battle, in a much larger town, I was able to spot and effectively destroy his forces even though I was outnumbered 2:1. But not seeing them here gave me pause, for sure. I never encountered that sort of defence before. And maybe for good reason as the counter to it is fairly painless so no one uses it.

@Bil Hardenberger You know I’d be willing to try it!

For the curious, I've enclosed the final screen from the game, and some other tidbits and comments. As you can see, I destroyed almost everything he had. The remaining men are one intact squad, an HQ team then a collection of singles from mortar teams, ammo bearers, and ATG crews. Had he not surrendered the last objective was going to get hit with a large rocket volley from my Nebelwerfer, and I have 5 intact squads with half-tracks as well as Stummels, autocannon halftracks (20mm) and so on. So all it would do is delay the inevitable. In terms of my losses, I think they were mild. I lost a full squad of infantry when a halftrack went over a mine and blew up. I lost an HQ team with the same thing. A few single men here and there killed, and my scouts lost half of the four teams I had doing their work. But they more than anyone made this victory possible because I knew where he wasn't. On another note, I saw in a different thread some people discussing the usefulness (or lack thereof) of Stummels. They were an essential part of this battle, pounding enemy buildings relentlessly, causing them to collapse, breaking the enemy squads or killing them in their hiding places. I consider Stummels indispensable. I kept them far back and out of harms way and they were completely worth it. The King Tigers turned out to be overkill. But that is a reflection of my opponent's choices. I was prepared for a more powerful AT capability than he had. Speaking of the Tigers, one lost the use of it's gun about 1/3 of the way into the battle to an ATG (the only effect of the ATGs my opponent had. And he had 8 ). Nonetheless, it was an amazing mobile MG bunker, and killed an ATG as well as 18 enemy infantry, the second most kills in the entire battle after.. Dora. Meet Dora, she has a lot of kills.

That’s what I thought too. I actually preferred to buy less expensive tanks; I almost never use King Tigers but as assault tanks they fit the bill here.

All right, so what I read above dovetails with what I thought. When I went into this battle as the attacker, my purchases and strategy were based on the expectation my opponent would use an elastic, mobile defence. I bought King Tigers because I feared ATGs sniping at me from the woods and knew I could not keep my front to the enemy at all times, so a thick hide was needed. I bought quite a bit of artillery so that I could bombard the various hiding places in those same woods, and of course the town itself. I bought several recon teams so that I could scout the periphery of the map where he might hide in wait and then hit my tanks and other units in their thinner sides or rear. I kept my units back for a long time as I scouted, and that was a mistake. There was no reason to delay bombarding the town from a distance. That cost me 20 minutes and almost cost me the battle as I was under time pressure to destroy everything and kill all his units in the objectives. My biggest fear was that he would buy a pair of M36s and use them sparingly from the fringes. It would not be insurmountable but would post a serious threat and slow down my operations and limit my ability to maneuver considerably. His ATGs did not cause me much concern once I saw they were 57mm. Yes he had plenty but my recon spotted each one before he ever engaged me with them. When he did it was because I exposed my tanks deliberately to engage them, and progressively took them out one by one. His Hellcats were bottled up in the village, unable to exploit their one asset: speed. I located them with recon and then maneuvered to be able to destroy them one at a time. Once recon was done and I knew there were no surprises on my flanks it gave me free reign to take his force apart with impunity from long range. He said yesterday “If this is so effective why would I not do it all the time?” We have not had a debrief yet but it seems obvious to me why this worked so easily for me: once I understood that the threats I expected were non existent there was nothing to worry about and he had no capability to slow me or damage me more than incidentally. What I did not expect and what triggered this thread was his using short target arc range and hide commands to make his infantry quite difficult to spot in town. Once I used the ideas here and my own ideas it was actually shockingly easy to defeat and frankly, a puzzling move as he is actually a very good opponent. For my part, I think I could have reduced the KT’s to three and better spent the points on two Brummbärs instead.

All right, so my opponent surrendered, with 10 minutes left on the clock. The town is almost entirely rubble. My opponent has concluded that there is nothing that can be done against king tigers if there is reasonably good LOS. I know what I would have done were our roles reversed but I wonder, do you guys have some suggestions for forces, tactics or deployment that you'd recommend? Base it on what you’ve seen in this battle.