agusto

In general i do it that way too. I even try to give buddy aid to every casualty and retrieve the gear if possible (especially automatic weapons and AT assets). Note the "if possible". Suceeding in acomplishing the mission is the most important thing, though. However i must admit that i am much more willing to make a sacrifice in order to be able to advance in games where i know that the game will end afterwards than in games where i know i will have to use that same force in a number of battles in a row. Since i ve started getting into CM games, i ve made the observation that the amount of casualties is largely determinded by the outcome of the battle. If your wounded are located behind the enemy lines you, cant retrieve them and thus they have a 25% higher chance of beeing KIA at the end of the battle. In campaigns, i usually get a KIA:WIA ratio betwen 1:2 and the 1:3, depending on the campaign. However in single battles that can vary a lot, sometimes i end up with a 3:1 inverted KIA:WIA ratio. I also found (or at least i think it is that way in CMBN) that high velocity rounds like 7,92x57 IS are more likely to kill a guy than for example a 9mm or .45 round is.

Ok, here s a- 2 moment: I was playing a small night recon mission, i only had ~ 10 infantry, 2 armored cars and 4 APCs. I carefully moved the inf out, kept my recon cars in the back to avoid ambushes. Ten minutes into game the 5 men who were on the left flank becam victims of horrible 10 minutes of drama: Everything seemed to be quiet and they moved up to the next hedgrerow, when one of them was shot out of nowhere (it was a dark night) and fell to the gound, wounded. The rest of the group made it to the relative cover of the next hedgerow. They started to surpress in the general direction the shot came from and called in an armored car for gaining fire superitority and an APC for extraction out of the hotzone. However the enemy did not continue to fire the men at the hedgrows and after a minute, they ceased their fire. As it arrived, the armored recon placed itself in a way to provide physical cover, so the wounded men in the open could be treated. Everything was going well until at somepoint the armored recon car started taking small arms fire from an enemy it couldnt see and retreated (what a coward!), exposing the 2 soldiers giving buddy aid. They were able to finish their job, but then becam WIA themselves. Now i was popping smoke, moving in the recon car and the APC for physical cover, gave them and orrder to surpress the hedgrow the enemy must be fring from and had my last to guys on the left flank treat their wounded buddys. But again, those cowards of vehicle crews retreated, one even panicked although the small arms fire they were taking wasnt a serious threat for them, and my last 2 medics were again wounded in action after fnshing treating their comrades. I had to leave them there, hoping the enemy would treat them well.

The Russians mounted huge guns on their SPGs. The ISU 152s HE shell could rip the turret of a german tank just by blast effect. Oh, and look at that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanonenjagdpanzer That german turretless JPIV revival was in service till 1990, when the gun was removed and the platform used for arty spotting and as a TOW missile platform.

Merry Christmas everyone.

YankeeDog, Vanir Ausf B, sfhand Thank you for the hints where to find useful information. Marco Bergmans mod looks great, i must try that! Exactly that is the point. Probably a full scale encyclopedia was the wrong thing to ask for.

+1, sounds good

Wow, what a long thread. :eek: Havent had the time by now to read all of this, but while i was skimming through the pages, i found an intresting statement of someone who had appearently been a Battlefront official back on 2000: " [...] Combat Mission does not use tabular test results for armor penetration. [...] Charles" Is that true for CMx2 too? If yes, how else is determind if the ballistics model the CMx2 engine uses is correct? After all, a mathematical physical model can always only be an approximation of the real thing and one would be only able to judge if the model does approximate the real thing with satisfying accuracy if one conducts real life tests and compares the results. So i cannot believe that Battlefront has not used any reallife statistics at all when creating the CMx2 engine. If my assumption is wrong, please educate me. I think i d still pay them 10 bucks for releasing all those statistics they must have collected piecemeal, even if they might be slightly inaccurate and only represent the ingame results to some certain degree. Just for curiosity.

That s exactly the point. I d prefer spening time on actually playing the game instead of spending time on the virtual shooting range. Currently i use the penetration charts of Theatre of War when i really need to look something up (wich fortunately is rarely the case, since i know most statistics well enough by now). I know, what might be true in one game is propably not in another, but since ToW also attempts to simulate realistic armor penetration, the data provided there is usually suffiecient to judge wether a shot would go through in CMBN or not. After all both games ballistic models are based on real life statistics and real life tests that were conducted on the shooting range back in ww2 and immideatly after, i guess. Now obviously Battlefront has to have those real life statistics all collected, so why not release them to their customers if they already did the work of researching them? I have not been asking for some data beeing compleactly extracted out of the game engine in real time or something like that, just to access Battlefronts knowledgebase on ww2 weaponary. I d even willingly pay them another 10 bucks if they d inculde that in the next upgrade and i am pretty sure many new players would appreciate such a feature too.

i sometimes use my speelink medusa 5.1 headset that i still have from good old counterstrike times. sounds great, when you turn the volume up it really feels like the grenades would be detonating right next to you in your room.

In another Battlefront game, Theatre of War, players could access an ingame ecyclopedia that would list all important vehicle specifications, like armor thickness and gun penetration at 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1000m at a 90 degree anngle, maximum speed, ammo capacity, rate of fire and such. I d love such a feature in CMBN and afaik CMx1 games had a similar thing, where you could right-click on the vehicle and it would show all the important specs. Especially a gun penetration chart where you could look up if you re already within effective range would be very useful, i find, also because that data is quite hard to find if you try to look it up yourself on the internet. Of course we already have what is in the manual and the armor panel in the UI, but thats still very inaccurate info.

they had been using turretless tank destroyers like te jp iv for years by then...shouldnt this be enough experience with that kind of weaponary? i m taking quite an advantage of its low profile in CMBN and i love the jp iv for the same reason. but on the other hand, it s just game. as for judging if the stug was a failure, one also has to take into account that it was way cheaper than tanks with turrets. afaik a panzer iv did cost almost twice as much and i personally would trade a single panzer iv for 2 stug with a 75 mm L48 gun anytime.

It would be such a pitty if such a promising mod would die!

What i really find great in CMBN and what similar games (like the TOW series, for example) lack, is that your infantry in general doenst behave like mindless borg drones who dont care for their lives. This kinda adds to immersion a lot, i find. However, i regularly see the AI ordering bailed out tank crews to charge what ever superior enemy formation there is deployed on the map, solely armed with their .45 calibre pistols, just to get mowed down one after the other. I dont find this neither to be wise nor likely behavior for a vehicle crew who just got shot out of their AFV, loosing their commander and 2 of their buddys.

Panzer V takes out 2 Shermans with a single shot: + The first one caught fire, the second one had its crew bail out.

I played a scenario called "Saving Privat Ryan" and had him had him killed by friendly fire...

You know, one time i had a hill bombed, for over 12 turns. When it was all over, I walked up. I didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body...

You can combine quick and hunt orders. Have bunch of dudes quick for something like 50m, then pause 10 secs for spotting, then hunt for just one action grid, then quick again and so on. If they spot an enemy within the 10 secs they stop for spotting, they ll not continue their route as soon as the hunt movement starts.

b'ak'tun? what language is that? klingon?

Just finished playing it. Thats truely one great scenario, can only recommend it.