Heirloom_Tomato

I assume you have the 4.0 upgrade? If so, go to the store and find the my orders section. Find your purchase of the 4.0 upgrade and select it. It should take you to a sharefile page and a folder for CMBN 4.0 upgrade. In this folder you should one for the full game installer. Once you have it installed, all you need to do is run activate modules and enter your codes to unlock your modules. Since this install has all the content for CMBN, you should not need to run any other installers.

I would like to see the triggers carry a separate side branch set of orders. For example, you plot out a set of orders for a meeting engagement based on the assumption the enemy will be coming up the left side of the map. All the orders are plotted out for the whole battle just like normal. A terrain trigger is placed on the right side of the map and can only be used once per AI grouping. All orders for this trigger are placed in the trigger pop up menu section. As the scenario designer, it will be up to you to decide when to have the potential for the trigger to be tripped, say between minutes 10-20. The AI group will wait for either for the trigger to go right, or if the trigger isnt hit, go left according to the original plan. It could also be used when designing an attack plan. A and B company are given to you for this battle with the main objective being a large village, and a secondary objective of a small forest near a crossroads just past the village. A company has the potential to sieze the village alone, leaving B company to take the woods and crossroads. Yet, if A company runs into trouble, the village is far more important and the crossroads objective should be abandoned in favour of taking the village. B company is given orders to move to overwatch positions and join the attack on the village from the right flank 35 minutes into the battle, as well as a Terrain Trigger with plans to bypass the village and seize the crossroads. If A company reaches the terrain trigger on the far side of the village before 35 minutes, B company takes the crossroads. If A company doesn't trip the trigger before 35 minutes, B company joins the attack on the village. Editted to add: I would envision once a trigger is tripped, all other orders not in the trigger section would be forgotten and only the trigger plan would be followed. If the trigger is not tripped and the timer passes the preset time, the trigger orders are forgetten and only the orginal AI plan is followed. Since each AI group could be given only one branch, it should help keep things relatively simple. Clear as mud?

As I continue to add to this story, feel free to chime in with your tactics suggestions and what you think you see developing on the battlefield. If there is an area of the map you would to see a screen grab from, let me know and I will see what I can do.

Turn 2: On the left, C company continues to take up positions, no enemy seen. On the right the story is completely different. First Carrier with the scouts, rounds the corner and speeds off to the church. Enemy halftrack in the distance! Second Carrier with the snipers and the Preacher reach the corner and begin to turn just before the clock runs out. They don't make it. 20 mm autocannon fire rings out and the Preacher goes up in flames. All the snipers make it out alive, several with severe burns. They are given orders to double time it to the church and hopefully safety. Overview of the battle just before the preacher goes up in flames.

Turn 1: C Company on the left hustles to their first positions. A Staghound rumbles past in the background taking up an overwatch position. On the right, the scouts in the first carrier race to the church. The route up into town looks clear... but is it? Can you see the enemy in this pic??

This weekend's Challenge Battle features a Soviet Infantry platoon clearing out a small village after the main attack has passed. It is late in the day and your tanks have just passed a small village and knocked out a German Supply platoon attempting to snag last minute supplies before fleeing. Sunset is fast approaching giving the Germans a chance to escape into the night. Battle is to be played as the Soviets against the German AI. There are 3 AI plans for this battle. Good luck! https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k5v42gds4y7e2so/AADyXv9MCabs64EVeJJFv0jua?dl=0

Dynamic weather for me is the top of my low priority list. I really want to see snow squalls and thunderstorms roll in, ground thaw in a Spring scenario, freeze up at night in a Fall/early Winter setting. Oh and farm livestock. I really want to see a nice pasture full of grazing cattle with a Sherman racing across the background, chickens freaking out of the hen house when a GI busts in, pigs feeding in the apple orchard as an FO calls in fire on a distant target. But whoa be unto Battlefront if they get the genetics wrong. If we see any Norwegian Landrace in Normandy... I will demand a full refund!

I setup a quick little test in CMFB with 10 251/16 halftracks and 20 houses, in 5 blocks of 4 houses each. Each block is separated by a tall wall. The houses are 5 action squares apart separated by a main road. On the road in front of each house and roughly 20 meters from each house, there is a halftrack facing the nearest section of wall. This will prevent the halftrack from engaging targets with the MG and encourage them to use the flamethrowers. In each block of houses is a full American platoon, one section per house. I have the Americans as Elite Fanatics and the Germans as regulars. For this test battle, you play as both sides, giving the Americans short covered arcs so they cannot engage the halftracks. Let the flame tracks engage as they wish. In the three test runs I did, 30-40% of the flamethrowers fire both sides at the same time, which according to the source given would limit the effective range to 30 meters. I will post the test battle when I get back to Wifi so you can flame away and see what your results suggest. I will ask again, can you name another weapon system in any of the CM2 games, where having both main guns fire at the same time results in the effective range being halved? I can't think of any. If this means the 251/16 is either always locked at potential half effective range so both flamethrowers can fire at the same time, or the vehicle is excluded from the game due to limits of the code, I will take half effective range and dual flamethrowers.

I would think this is why we are seeing the shorter range in game. I can't think of another weapon system in the game that would have its effectiveness cut in half if both barrels are firing at the same time. The code then must be set for the short range to keep things "balanced". Sort of a choice between letting both fire at the same time at the shorter rate or only let one fire but at a slightly longer range. The real question now becomes @Bulletpoint can both flamethrowers fire at the same time? If not, then I would suggest it is something worth asking for a fix.

Well so far we have @slysniper in for 10 points and @mirekm61 in with 6 points. Anyone else want to post up their results? This weekend's challenge battle is going to be a CMRT battle. I have a few ideas running in my head right now for it but am open to suggestions. Do you have a vehicle or unit you would like to see featured? Something you think is cool but never seems to make it into a scenario?

Using my sweet Photoshop skills, you can see my basic plan. I planned to take companies of infantry, C company on the Left represented by the Green arrow and D company on the Right, represented by the Blue arrow. The Red arrow in the centre is where the AFV's will be travelling. I plan to seize the church to use as an observation post and possible strong point. Once I have cleared the right side of the map, including the church and surrounding buildings I will wheel left and attempt to push as far through the town as possible. The AFV's are in the middle to help the first company to come into enemy contact. Each motorized rifle company comes with three platoons of three sections of 9 men, and one 2 inch mortar per platoon. Each Platoon also has one section with a PIAT. When I chose the men, I left selected all my men and vehicles as regular, with high motivation and left the leadership settings at Typical. Each Rifle company also came with two tubes of 81mm mortars in carriers. They have 58 rounds of HE per tube and 8 smoke rounds. These are my AFV's, 9 Bren carriers, 4 Staghounds, 3 Daimler II and 2 Humber IV. While we had agreed to only take AFV's with two rubber wheels, RH made an exception for the little Bren carrier, if I win this battle, he will claim I cheated and take the victory by default. All of the AFVs are split fairly even into two platoons, one under each company. They will be working in close proximity to each other and should be able to help spread communication through all my ranks. The Bren carriers are part of the scout platoon of the Recce Regiment, so they came with a 2 inch mortar and rounds. There is a know, documented and hopefully fixed in the upcoming patch, issue with these mortars. The scouts can acquire them, but then they are not able to use them. To avoid this problem, I unloaded all my scouts and gave the rounds to the platoon level mortars. They started the battle of with 9 HE and 9 WP rounds. They now have 26 HE and 13 WP each. Each company then has 78 HE rounds and 39 WP rounds for the 2 inch mortars and 116 HE rounds and 16 smoke rounds for the 81mm mortars. You have probably noticed I did not take any independent machine gun teams. Each Bren carrier has 2000 rounds for their Brens, the Staghounds have 7000 rounds for their mg's and the Daimler and Humbers are also carrying 2-3000 rounds of mg ammo. My plan is to use them as mobile mg's and other than the Brens, they have the bonus of their main guns to help clear out any serious opposition and any enemy AFV. The Staghounds have a 37 mm main gun, while the Daimler and Humbers come with a 40 mm gun. Gunners in Bren carriers seem to be quite well protected, hopefully a little better than the German halftrack gunners will be! Here are my orders for turn one. The 81mm mortars and Company HQ's will remain stationary, everyone else is heading out to find RH and his men. As a surprise for RH, I have hired some special janitors for the church. These two Brens will be heading on FAST for the church. There are two Crack Scout teams, 2 Elite sniper teams. The sniper teams will be given orders to climb the steeple and get eyes across the map while the scouts will take the lower floors to provide some cover. No, that is not a spare tire for the Bren carrier but rather an Elite flamethrower team, nicknamed The Preacher. I hope to have The Preacher in the church before RH shows up and he can rain down fire and brimstone from the pulpit onto RH's men!

What settings did you use for your quick battle? If you selected Infantry only, you would only have infantry forces available, maybe an unarmed truck or jeep. If you want to use the technicals and other vehicles, you would need to set the battle to mixed.

You did great! The two little buildings can totally be sacrificed, but the houses on the edge of town needed to be given the white glove treatment if at all possible. Glad you had fun with this battle.

I thought of the idea of not hitting the houses yesterday afternoon and ran two test runs with a preserve objective. The results were not quite as I expected and since I didn't have time to run more tests to determine I was using the preserve objective properly, I took it out of the offical scoring. Since I can be thick headed sometimes, I still wanted to include the idea, even if the only way to verify the results is a little bit of a pain.

Here is this weekends Challenge Battle. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/k5v42gds4y7e2so/AADyXv9MCabs64EVeJJFv0jua?dl=0 Since the first battle had issues with scoring and the second battle arrived late, this battle will be the start of a revamped Weekend Challenge battle process. All Entries will be given points based on the following scoring: Total Victory: 10 points Major Victory: 8 points Minor Victory: 6 points Tactical Victory: 4 points All other scores: 2 points First player or players to get to 40 points will be in the running for the tomato seeds. To qualify, you must submit your FIRST play through only, playing on Iron mode. To qualify, please post a end game screenshot only of your results by 11 pm EST Monday night. Please also keep any spoilers to a minimum. For this battle only, please post a second screen shot, with all the icons OFF, of the houses in town. Points will be deducted if you have caused severe damage to the houses.

We didn't add any additional game play rules to the battle other than the ones stated. I am pausing the replay turn a lot to try to get good angles for screenshots. Nothing is going to get me lambasted worse than setting up an idea like this and then posting horrible pictures. I am also watching the turn over and over again, from as many different positions as possible, all in an attempt to understand what each unit can see or not see. As for letting the AI choose what targets to shoot at, right now that is how the battle has been going, mortars being the sole exception. I am actually a little afraid of giving a unit a target command only to have them blindsided and ambushed by an enemy I never saw.

This battle is being fought in Iron mode so arty calls and medic times are increased. Other than this, I am not too sure if there is more we can do.

I was swamped with Valentine's day, but no @Mord I did not spend $300 on flowers. Chocolate and handmade cards still get the job done around my house. I will have more of an update tonight after posting up the weekend challenge battle. You have seen the map, and read the rules. You now have 2850 points to spend picking your force. What do you take? What do you avoid? I would love to hear some of your choices to see how close they come to what I picked.

I am going to need a bit of time to finish up the briefing for this weekend's challenge battle. I plan to have it up later tonight. It is a CMFI battle featuring American Rangers attempting to clear a bridge and secure a foothold into town. The recon element sent forward to scout out a path, were machine gunned by our own forces while returning to the lines. The lone survivor, clutching a blood soaked and bullet riddled map, manages to groan ".... gun.. by.. bri....." before passing out. Looks like the attack will go in blind.

With the icons off, it really is an information vacuum. There is a strong desire to react swiftly to what you can see occurring on the battlefield. However, the even bigger question is always where are the rest of his men? If I go charging in, am I walking right into an ambush? I am sure there are members of this forum who can see one or two units and know exactly what formation they belong to and how many others should be out there. I have a decent guess but not solid knowledge to risk everything. Sticking to the plan means there should either be enough eyeballs giving me accurate information to send in reinforcements or enough guns to crush any opposition encountered. Hopefully.

With no icons or markers of any kind visible for the enemy, and by none I mean absolutely nothing, no sound or spotting contacts at all. If 1st platoon can see an enemy halftrack, I have zero visual clues 2nd platoon knows about it. In fact, the only way to know for certain if 2nd platoon can see the halftrack is to click on each section in 2nd platoon to confirm. I have some examples of what this means in this battle already, I just need some time to get the screenshots processed and posted. Since RH is busy on the weekends we won't be sending over any turns, so I should be able to get a fairly decent chunk done this weekend. As for playing realistic battles with you, RH made the invisible icons, so I had to give him first dibs. If you would just hurry up and surrender in our CMFB battle and we can start a new one in CMRT with these same rules and mods!

I cannot tell how many people have downloaded them unfortunately.

Before I get into my force selection and battle plan, I want share a few thoughts on this battle. The biggest concern I have without any icons visible, is the complete lack of notice I will receive of where enemy units might be. I will only know where they are once I can see them, hopefully before they start killing my men. I think it will be key to try to get as many eyeballs as possible into an area and try to patiently wait to see if any enemy units are present. I also think it will be very important to craft a solid plan for my attack, and then stick to it as much as possible. Keeping my forces together, in communication and mutual support, will be the only way I will be able to get fire superiority once contact is made. Knowledge of C2 sharing is going to be impossible in a battle with no icons. My plan to counter this challenge will be to attempt to follow a small command delay strategy. Members of the same platoon, who are in C2 will be able to respond to enemy units within the same turn. If they are out of C2, they will need to make contact with their platoon mates before they can respond. Platoons in the same Company, again in C2, will be able to respond to enemy units one minute after contact has been made. Company to Company communication will be assumed to be 2 minutes. There is one caveat to this rule, if two platoons are in contact with each other, information sharing will be assumed to be instantaneous. Since we are playing in Iron mode, it will be very easy to determine which units are in contact with each other. I hope to be able to put up my plan for this battle tomorrow night. It is Valentines Day though, so it will depend on how my night goes...

RH and I discussed map choice a little bit and decided we wanted a decent sized map, with some open areas and preferably a town to fight over. We also chose to have our battle take place in Holland. The map we are fighting on is Holland Town Large Meet 049. Here are a few pictures of the map: Here is an overhead view of the map: From the right side: From the left side:

I work in a barn and usually come home dirty and smelly. I promise not shower before I write up these posts. As for the intermittent mortar fire.... I live in a household with 7 females, one of whom is learning to drive. Does that count?