Freyberg

Thanks for this level-headed comment.

Given that this is meant to be a WW2 thread. Lets pay tribute to the women.
 

I think in light of all that has gone down in the last few decades that that quote needs to be changed: "The proper study of mankind is woman."
Michael

Hahahaha. I have tried a bit of my own research, it looks like we carried on using "pounder"for tank and AT guns through the late 40's and 50's, and finally caught up with the rest of the world in 1959. 

My thoughts exactly - 'fanbois' is such a juvenile term.

That shot defines epic.  I got a chance to re-watch that film recently during a long flight and the cinematography is astounding.

I'm with you - one of my favourite war movie scenes is that amazing long tracking shot of the Free French in The Longest Day.
The heroism of the French and French North Africans is under-appreciated and I'm very much looking forward to playing them.

My thoughts exactly - 'fanbois' is such a juvenile term.

…..Personally, I'm most pumped for the Free French.  Grandfather on my Mom's side was a Francophone Quebecoise immigrant to the US.  Next, I can't wait to see the South Africans and the Brazilians.
 

So 76mm is not name calling while name calling.  WTF is wrong w you?  complain about BF all you want, but stop acting like you are somehow smarter and more tuned into reality than the rest of us.  Ever write any software?  especially with a small team for a crowd as demanding as this one?  where every little tiny detail is seen -- like german squad should have X smgs and Y rifles in some month of 1944 and BF gets it wrong by one, it starts a whole thread that runs for two weeks.  That's a tough crowd to please.  Having more patience than you does not make me stupid (most other things I do qualify as stupid, in the spirit of full disclosure).   I hear that you are impatient, I am too.  I just don't see why you need to insult everyone who's more patient than you with this idiotic juvenile 'fanbois' slur.  

Hopefully this will work. I've checked the dates of my files and from what I can tell only the Tank Riders scenario was included in both the demo and the full game.
Monster Mash.btt

I don't know if this works generally, but it has been working for me.
When a soldier gets stuck in a terrain (trees, hedges, walls, etc), if I get a unit shoot at them they get unstuck and run back to their unit. Previously I used to kill them (with HE), because having one stuck soldier in a team was annoying, but shooting with small arms, that doesn't kill or injure them, seems to be working - and is actually a borderline realistic situation.
I can't say I've tested this exhaustively, but there you go...

You cannot go wrong with any of the games. They are all excellent. I am playing an email CMFB scenario right now with a friend. The snow is falling and  artillery too. Lots of immersion, tension, and fun. 

That will never change so I just take it as status quo.  Due to RL BS I haven't had much time to actually play the darn game, but plenty of time to read on the state of the gaming industry in general.  Take a wander over to the Ubisoft forums on Ghost Recon Breakpoint if you want to see a dumpster fire of poor judgement.  BF may be slow but they deliver the product we want consistently and don't muck it up.  Ubi apparently has not made the same commitment to their user community.  Breakpoint sales tanked badly, so badly the company has released a survey to try and figure out how best to fix it and has delayed release of other games to figure this out before they trash all their intellectual property.
Yeah we are impatient, we always want more and BF is slow and very bad at estimating dates.  However they will deliver and right now there are few gaming companies that can still claim to do so.

Re: Tank MGs are too accurate
I suspect part of the "problem" is that the game does a "hit calculation" by the shooter and change the point of aim for the gun depending on whether the shooter hits/misses. On a miss the point of aim is going to be off of the target by a certain distance. Vehicle mounted MGs, when they miss, don't miss by nearly as much as tripod mounted MGs. So the chance for collateral damage is much higher. Whereas tripod mounted MGs will "miss" and just go totally wide of the entire element its firing at.
This isn't necessarily a bad interaction, but it is visually very weird because it feels like the gunner is intentionally throwing his aim to meet the calculation the game is doing. Whether its correct or not you'd have to do a fair amount of testing for. But visually it feels off which, imo, isn't something that can't be totally discarded since the game has gone 1:1. The results need to be right, but it also needs to visually look correct too.

As an aside I would really love to see MGs traverse their fire more often. They don't really seem to do it at all.


Re: Fortifications
One of the key problems I run into, and this shows up elsewhere, is that the exposure of the man really determines how survivable he is. Essentially not being hit is better than being hit with a good saving throw. Fortifications tend to increase the amount of visual exposure in most cases. Meaning that even though the men are getting good saving throws they are also taking more hits than they would be if they were just prone.
 
The most obvious example of animation/exposure causing deaths is with half-tracks. Where the men are sitting bolt upright and take far more hits than if they were hunched over in the track. Similarly men don't fire over the lip of a fortification, but do so at a full kneeling position. Often leaving much of their upper torso exposed. Its been a problem in CMx2 as far back as CM:SF where there was a store window option for buildings. Resulting into entire squads essentially lining up to be killed at the window. If there is one improvement I would like to see in CM is an increased number of positions/animations since they track so closely with lethality.

@Bulletpoint made a good question, by asking whether it would be possible to abstract the impact of good tactics and what passes by battlefield leadership and command and control in a "gamified" simulation as CMx2 is. So this post is not a dismissal of @Hapless observations, which I subscribe 100%. Still, sh*t happens all the time.
One interesting data point for this discussion is the following diagram, which I found the 2nd edition of this wonderful little book I bought recently
https://www.amazon.com.au/David-Rowlands-Stress-Battle-Quantifying/dp/0244203059/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=john+curry+the+stress+of+battle&qid=1573119600&sr=8-1

For this table/summary/statistical model they used data from 29 WW2 and WW1 battles (adjusting the latter to WW2 standards), where the attacker successfully forced the defender to vacate its positions, and indirect fires were not a factor (at least a documented one). To give a sense of the temporal spread of data points used in this analysis, the battles go from the 1918 Allied counterattacks after Operation Michael, to Operation Veritable in 1945.
I would love to hear what you guys think, but the casualty estimates seem to me to be on the lower side (not by much) of what I have come to expect from playing CMx2 either against the AI in well-crafted scenarios or a human opponent that has done the work to keyhole guns and check for micro terrain providing reverse slopes etc. 
The analysis of these results led to confirm the following tactical "verities" one can find discussed in memoirs, treatises on tactics and what not
- Well placed HMGs trump rifle/LMG fires
- Tanks trump HMGs
- AT assets "suppress" tanks, enabling HMGs to do their work on the attackers
What is evident is that AFVs are king... when it comes to keep suppressed the defender. I think that CMx2 does a reasonably good impression of these relationships (and Graviteam eventually got there too), from a statistical point of view. Which is admittedly, not the most fun point of view.
 

I feel sorry for players who only play one theatre.
I'm checking multiple times a day for news of both the upcoming modules, but I still have oodles of scenarios and QB maps I haven't played in all the WWII games. And I've barely scratched the surface of CMBS, although I've played quite a bit of SF2. You'd have to be a full-time gamer to run out of fresh battles.
Once you include the vast range force possibilities in QBs, I'm still a very long way from having lost interest.

I feel sorry for players who only play one theatre.
I'm checking multiple times a day for news of both the upcoming modules, but I still have oodles of scenarios and QB maps I haven't played in all the WWII games. And I've barely scratched the surface of CMBS, although I've played quite a bit of SF2. You'd have to be a full-time gamer to run out of fresh battles.
Once you include the vast range force possibilities in QBs, I'm still a very long way from having lost interest.

Steve had posted elsewhere that it takes an average of a year and a half to get a project to completion. But that year and a half  is not a single block of time. If the project gets interrupted by CMSF2, then CMFI R2V, then V4 game engine enhancements, then 'government work' only seen by the staff, then that 'year and a half' gets cut up into separate chunks with long gaps in between. The biggest culprit for the delay is CMFI 'Rome to Victory' module which turned into a nine nation hydra-headed monster. The module is very impressive but geez, it was a struggle. In the meantime, CMRT 'Fire and Rubble' module  has been worked on, and worked, on and worked on some more until there's little left to be worked on.

Says the guy spouting off about "bolshie lovers" and "red bastards"?  Seriously? 
And ignorant about what, exactly?  I've lived in Germany for five years and in Russia for 15 years, so know both countries reasonably well.  I've read hundreds of books about the Eastern Front, so don't really consider myself ignorant about the war either.  Spent four years in the army, so know something about military stuff...  So what please enlighten me how you are so much better informed that I am?  Or perhaps are you one of those people that considers anyone that doesn't agree with them "ignorant"?

Yes, the last stand of the "glorious" Wehrmacht!
Fanatics, 15 year olds and old men who were either forced to fight by threat of death or made sure that the suffering continued needlessly for the last few months.
Luckily your line of thinking is finally dying out now that our understanding of the war has moved on from Guderians memoirs. Christ.
Edit: And those "Red bastards" you speak of were the true heroes, they endured the whole sale slaughter of their families and countrymen to finally destroy that disgusting organization and naziism in general. I'm no fan of Stalin but I have to call out the absolute deafness in your post. Go read a history book that wasn't written by a German general who desperately tried to save his career.

Bolshie lover?  uhhhhh, the wehrmacht et al killed around 25M folks in soviet russia.  Russia did not attack germany.  So yes let's 'honor' them??  for a war of murder and extermination??  Hitler's plan was for the enslavement, banishment or murder of 160M people.  So yes, the russian invasion was certainly a most 'honorable' endeavor.  As long as we all agree that those 160M weren't actually people, but some sort of subhuman eastern hordes like all those twisted german memoirs always say (I've read piles of them).    
The last stand of the wehrmacht was utter madness, not something honorable.  It was the reckoning of their murderous actions.  Having said that, I am really looking forward to fighting on the Oder and in Hungary.  As either side.  Yes, well, I have to reconcile that somehow.....
And having said that, I am currently fighting through Blunting the Spear as wehrmacht, so where do I really go with this......
 
 

Actually most of us Bolshie lovers won't get too upset, because those red bastards got the last laugh, so to speak, and we are too-well-used-to wargame developers pandering to players that glorify the German military.
That said, I have no idea why you'd consider that "honoring the last stand of the Wehrmacht" would be more "fair" than honoring those that defeated Nazism after it had treacherously invaded their country?  Weird...

Just a warning when using the assault command. The AI will allow the teams within the squad to move independently of each other. However, because they are still part of a single squad they share state. This means that the moving element, if pinned, can then cause the static element (who should be engaging the enemy) to become pinned.

It makes assault pretty useless when you really want it to work as suddenly the ~five guys you expect to cover the maneuver element decide that they too are taking fire. Splitting teams splits the state of each team. Meaning that your overwatch element will not become pinned by the maneuver element being fired on.

That last part I don't recall - it has been so long since I played one of the CM1 games but I like that the paths go away when you deselect a unit. That way I can switch between seeing all the move orders and having a clear view just based on clicking the mouse (select a unit, deselect all units) and not have to toggle show all paths on and off. I like to play with show all paths on and leave it there.
Yes, but that will not work well when you allow way point editing. Right now when you have a unit selected you can reposition way points - yay! If clicking on a movement path selected the unit moving way points would be come extremely difficult / impossible in high traffic areas. Picture convoy management with even a handful of vehicles. I you want to tweak the move orders of one or two vehicles good luck clicking on the right move order segment. Miss it by just a tiny bit and suddenly you are editing a different unit's orders.
I personally like the way it works now. I would never want to make editing way points harder or have it removed.