Bulletpoint

I think it does try to go to a spot where there's no LOS from the incoming fire though. Which makes sense. It would just make a lot more sense to also find a spot where there's some kind of cover. Also it would make the game more challenging. I often find that after flushing enemies from cover, they camp outside in the open, and I can then just move into their previous positions (buildings) and pick them off easily.

I think that's just that it gets lucky some times. I see a lot of infantry sensibly falling back from buildings under heavy fire, but then decide to camp outside on open pavement instead of falling back just 10 more metres and seeking cover in another building. It seems pretty random to me.

Not sure what you mean by this. I think the AI in most (maybe all?) games is more or less scripted by a scenario/game designer. Oh, by no means. Most strategy games have some kind of AI that makes the enemy move about. It's usually not very smart, but it's there. I think Combat Mission is the only strategy game I ever played where all enemy movement is scripted. I never played CM1, but I read that it also had AI to make the enemy attack - it was based on flags that the designer set down to tell the AI which zones to attack or defend, but then the AI did the rest, as far as I have heard. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

You noticed one of the issues with the game. It also happens when moving along a low wall or hedge - some team members will decide to cross to the other side, with bad results.

Welcome back Phil. Just the other day I was wondering if you went AWOL

Ok, for those keeping score at home, I cleared La Gleize after 50 minutes. Probably this is slower than expected, but my careful approach does mean my casualties are reasonably modest: 6 killed and 17 wounded.

This is a good point. I knew I would probably forget to move the TRP so after reading about it in the briefing I immediately placed it on the road in between the setup zone and the Moulin Marechal Farm just south of the bridge. I knew I would see it continuously as I plotted movement waypoints down that road. I guess I'll pretend the missing TRP is due to shoddy staff work by some recently promoted greenhorn. Peiper is führious.

Darn! I just found out that I forgot to place the TRP! Even though the briefing reminded me of it. You can't prevent user stupidity completely, but maybe it would be better to place the TRP together with the Panzerspitze troops - it's easy to overlook when it's placed down at the border of the map inside a forest.

Another bit of feedback: When you make a clump of houses that represents a big farm or mansion, such as in the middle of La Gleize or Chateau de Froidcour, I think it's better to have the buildings connected by doors.

As they say, your mileage may - quite literally - vary I'm now 40 minutes in and haven't even seen a single vehicle "bog", let alone immobilise.

The exeption that proves the rule Freezing temperatures don't prevent bogging completely, but it does make it much less likely...

Shaders OFF: Shaders ON:

It's a really impressive piece of work. A bit more detail in the village areas would be nice, but I understand it's also a tradeoff with performance. I think the main point is if you want to make the player anxious to leave the roads or not. As it is, I am able to bypass the roads, which is actually a good thing, because it means I have to plot much fewer movement orders. But from a gameplay perspective, sometimes interesting tactical situations can arise from constraining the player's armour. For example, in the beginning of the scenario, just after the bridge there is a big bend in the road with some hedge where it would be a great place to put a bazooka team in ambush. I spent several minutes making sure it was clear before moving on, but actually it was just roleplaying a bit, because I knew I could just have cut off that road bend and gone straight over the frozen ground. I think you made the right choice. In case anybody wonders how this fog glitch looks:

Here's a guy who says he knows, and quotes a source: "Tiger I It should be -8/+15 degrees Tiger Tank Owner's Workshop Manual by Bovington Tank Museum Pg 115" https://forum.warthunder.com/index.php?/topic/144089-tiger-i-and-ii-gun-traverse-angles-are-incorrect/

Thanks for taking the time to explain. I understand better now. The point where I disagree is that I place zero value on quick battles against an AI plan, so I did not understand why elevation might matter in that kind of game. The few times I played quick battles, i faced an enemy force of AT guns placed inside a forest or a force made up of a forward observer with several modules of artillery and not much else. In case the enemy had tanks, they suicidally rolled towards me and never really had time for elevation problems It's possible they fixed some of those things later because I haven't tried quick battles for a long time now. But that's what I didn't understand - i only thought of scenarios and PBEMs.

In the book Snow and Steel it says the majority of the troops were recent conscripts from the Kriegsmarine and Luftwaffe with most having only 3 - 6 weeks of training and no combat experience. The troops that had combat experience were intermixed with them and in most cases the leaders were of good quality. But as the battle wore on the leaders were killed off as they were always at the front so that left them basically leaderless as things started to bog down. I'm pretty sure that that most if not all the tank crews were pretty experienced. Thanks, +1 I do think the Spitze troops should have better than -1 leadership then, at this opening stage of the operation.

6: Maybe change the name of the campaign. "Mission to Maas" is a cute pun, but when dealing with a historical scenario, I personally prefer keeping things a bit more serious. Opinions may vary on this of course.

Almost all of those dudes were dead by this point in time. There are plenty of contemporary accounts of German officers bemoaning the poor quality of their troops in the Ardennes offensive.....IIRC I have exactly such an account from a major within KG Peiper itself, but I'd have to dig to find it. I'd be interested in reading it, if you have time to dig it out. The important thing for me is not that if they are good or bad quality, but that they reflect the historical conditions. Especially when playing a historical scenario such as this, I like the details to match real history as closely as possible. And also that it should be consistent. There are several tanks with crack level crews in the Panzerspitze in this mission.

Ok so I booted up this mission, and some first impressions: 1: Wow, this thing is huge. Very impressive. Is it a master map or did you do the map, yourself? 2: For the first time ever, I actually miss having some recon jeeps to scout ahead and find clear routes 3: Some of the house placements in the towns seem a bit odd - for example, there are some small shacks at odd angles to the roads. Also, I think towns back then had less space between the buildings than nowadays. But I haven't been able to find any WW2 aerial photo of La Gleize to compare. Just disregard this point if I'm wrong. 4: I noticed that you set ground conditions to muddy, and temperature to freezing. If you want there to be a bogging risk and force the player to keep his tanks on the roads, you should not set subzero teperatures, because it overrides the muddy conditions. Basically the game treats all mud as frozen solid. I've played several scenarios where the designer warns against mud, but where there's actually almost no danger of bogging, because he also set temperatures to freezing. 5: The infantry in the Panzerspitze is mostly regulars with poor soft factors. I think the spearpoint of KG Peiper would be the place where the Germans put some of their very best remaining units. Not saying they should all be elite +2, but I think it would be warranted to bump up their quality considerably. I haven't checked what quality later units have, but I think they should also be quite capable.

Micromanagement is one of the downsides with the CM system. Also road movement is a major pain in large battles. The game system is best for smaller battles. However, you don't need to always split the squads. When I began playing, I kept squads together. Then I learnt to split them and always did that. But now, I am starting to keep squads together much of the time. As long as you're just moving troops up to the front through safe areas, it makes it easier to handle. Then I split them when contact is imminent. It takes a bit of practice to recognise when you can do it safely and when you can't.

And no vehicles ever move during a match? Of course they sometimes move, but then they often end up in places where there's no LOS or the vehicle is not properly hull down anyway. Because the scenario designer can only tell the vehicle to move to a painted zone on the map - even if you only paint one tile as destination for a specific vehicle, that's 8x8 metres. The final position it ends up cannot be precisely controlled. In any case, the designer can just send the vehicle to a position without need for extreme gun elevation/depression. While giving orders, you have to pay attention to the terrain in the first place. Elevation changes is part of that..

I'm just some half-baked hack, but... ...I'm pretty sure the first is the correct. I've played through several campaigns where I won some missions, and lost others, but at the end of it, I still got the message that I won. Which is a bit funny after actually losing the final, climatic battle.

I've been thinking a lot about how to design something like that. Now I can play one and get some inspiration Thanks @theforger

I suspect its almost entirely do to with AI problems. TacAI is only reactive and there is no strategic AI whatsoever so it would certainly cause a ton of problems in any scenario that wasn't a flat plain. But in scenarios, it's the designer who places enemy tanks and guns. Good designers check LOF to make sure the guns can target the areas they need to target. If elevation were modelled, the designer would just see a little "out of elevation" under the target pointer for certain locations. I'm not saying Battlefront are stupid for not including elevation. I'm sure they have their reasons - all I'm saying is that I personally don't really understand why. Edit: I should also in all fairness say that I don't have much of a problem with lack of elevation restriction. It's extremely rare that I see situations where it looks silly (like in the video above). I'm just curious about the design decision.

The rest of the game doesn't work like that though. If you want a hull down position, you need to place the tank very precisely. Same with keyholes - if you're not at the exact spot, you won't get line of sight. It can be done, and then you get an advantage. But when it comes to gun elevation, the game works differently...