Bulletpoint

You can call (off map) artillery support without being in C2 contact. It's assumed that there's a field telephone link.

What makes it a headache in Iron mode? It's not like you lose control of the units if they are not in C2...

If we ever receive a cryptic signal from an alien civilization, I'll call you to work on it.

I fully agree, and I have been experimenting with making a very large map with very few terrain features. The difficulty is to make it interesting both visually and tactically.

Hi, I just watched him and I think he covers this with his later comments that the Sherman was successful on the strategic level. So it was winning against these tanks. He even mentions that people focus on the tactical level. Which I think you might be falling into that trap? So in context of his talk you should view it at the strategic level. I.e yes for those tanks that had to face head on those uber tanks they needed a better tank, but by having more Sherman's that worked it meant that they were available for the whole front and every company fighting had support. While the German uber tanks were limited and could not be every where. They broke down / were bypassed. Just my interpretation of where he was coming from. I understand his strategic points and agree with them. It's just that I am surprised that reports would be coming in from the front that the 75mm was dealing well with the German heavy tanks.

I think the defences tab only shows that it doesn't have any extra fancy defences against HEAT. In modern era CM titles, there might be some ceramic armour or reactive plates. But still if the steel is thick enough, it doesn't need it.

At 54:25 he says the 75mm Shermans dealt fine with Ferdinands, Panthers, and Tigers, etc. in Italy, but if you read the reports, the Ferdinands (called Elefants at this point) were actually knocked out by artillery, mines, fell down rivers when bridges collapsed, or in many cases were blown up by their own crews. https://mikesresearch.com/2019/07/28/elefants-in-italy-1944/ (obviously this guy knows more about tanks than I ever will, but I thought it was odd)

I noticed that there is no sound of incoming shells before rounds detonated on the target area. I noticed the same, but then again I assume the camera is placed in a fortified box of some kind, as it seems to take several very close hits and keeps filming. Also the explosions sound quite dim. So I'm thinking the box dampens the sound quite a lot, possibly making it impossible to record the whistling... this is of course just guesswork on my part.

I can see myself making the leap as soon as any CM sequel comes out with real improvements to fix graphics glitches, building targeting issues, fortifications sitting on top of the ground, rendering performance, etc. That's not to say it's not already a good game. It is. But it's also a game I don't find myself sinking more money into. Just like I don't buy new chess boards every year.

Maybe, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Distance is key. At long ranges, infantry can survive a lot of small arms fire. At 300m+ in the open, rifle accuracy drops like a stone, and you can even survive surprisingly long against an LMG42 (its accuracy seems to be quite low). At 800m+, you hardly even take casualties from heavy MGs such as deployed Vickers. In a recent PBEM, I maneuvered a platoon under the noses of 4 vickers deployed on a hill. They were unable to even suppress my guys, and caused very few losses.

I played the campaign twice, and as far as I remember, that particular defensive mission is not as difficult as the previous ones. The key is to make sure you don't go head to head with the Panthers but rather keep your Churchills out of sight, use infantry screen to figure out where the enemy amour is going, and then jump them with your tanks at a place and time when it's to your advantage. Infantry in CM have magical ears that can detect and pinpoint the exact location of an enemy tank at hundreds of metres of distance, even in the middle of a town with several blocks of buildings in between. So if you just place a few forward observation posts, you'll know exactly where those tanks are. If you have a visual on them, you'll also know which way they are pointing - then you can do the "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".

I've noticed that both bazookas and Panzerschreks now often can keep firing from inside a building. Previously they were not allowed to at all, but then it was changed so they could do it - but got suppressed by the backblast. Now I'm seeing them in some cases firing and reloading shot after shot. But it's not consistent...

"“Low Latency modes have the most impact when your game is GPU bound, and framerates are between 60 and 100 FPS, enabling you to get the responsiveness of high-framerate gaming without having to decrease graphical fidelity. “ This is pretty much the opposite of CM, which is CPU bound, and with relataively low FPS for most users.

That would definitely be a glitch. Troops are never supposed to be allowed to cross through barbed wire.

This seems to be another bug or issue. I've documented it and reported it, but what happens next is anybody's guess..

There is some kind of bug where sometimes, the position of old contact markers are not updated as the unit moves, so that you end up with markers that stay even in locations where you have your guys sitting for many minutes. It looks like there are still enemies there, but the last enemy has run far away into a forest.

Yes, we should not take training films as historical documentation, but I still think that because it's a film designed to teach new soldiers, it's interesting they have that scene that clearly seems designed to teach that "when you hear an incoming shell, duck down in your trench, then stand up again with a smile, no big deal"

I remember reading Danish WW1 memoirs where they would sometimes notice that an incoming shell made a different sound than usual. They called them "blindgængere" (literally something like 'blind walkers') because the droning sound they made was due to the shell losing its payload during flight, so it would not be dangerous.

Another thing I noticed is that the scene clearly shows the sound of the shell arriving before the actual shell. There was some discussion on this forum a couple of years ago about whether you actually had time to hear the shell and drop prone before it hit.

Hmmm the translations seem to be a bit off. At 00:50, a shell comes in, and the guy says "Zu kurz", which means "too short", as in "the shell fell short". But it's translated as "Too close" as if he were getting nervous.

I agree with your points about how it takes a long time and many clicks to move fortifications around, but I am personally not happy with the way the fortifications actually work in the game, once they are placed. It's been discussed in detail before in many other threads, so I don't want to derail this one. Just wanted to chip in and say the whole fortification aspect of the game could do with an upgrade.

I think you're right. The halftracks would be a means to quickly cover a lot of ground covered in hundreds of foxholes, and blast each one with a short burst of flame. Basically "cleansing" the whole area. I'm still not convinced that they had so short range though. In this clip, we only see then firing at short range, but that might also be for safety reasons in shooting a training film...

Beautiful work. The only bad thing about using high detail mods like these is that the parts of the game that are not modded suddenly look very rough...

The only thing I disagree with here is the suggestions to use smoke. When you have fire superiority, you want to use that, not block LOF. Smoke is rarely useful, and only then to blind key enemy assets and (very size limited) locations.