Bulletpoint

I wouldn't either. Not a good place to be in. But in a competition between a squad behind the tracks and raised gravel bed on one side, and another platoon without any cover at all, I would expect the first group to have at least a small advantage.

I went back and updated the test scenario. First I tested raising the rails 1 metre, then after that, i tested raising it 1 metre with ditchlock. Results were the same - the raised elevation means nothing for cover at the actual square where the railroad tile is. But it allows troops to slink back and duck out of sight when they take fire, so casualties decreased. Even without manually raising the tracks, the graphics show that they are slightly raised. Together with the steel rails, I think that should provide a small defensive bonus. Not a great fighting position, but at least something compared to troops that have absolutely no cover at all. But the problem is that the game doesn't give any micro terrain bonus for railroads, and that it doesn't let troops fire from a prone position. Probably I'm the only one who cares about this stuff. But at least I answered my own question Also I learnt the true meaning of "embankment" - thanks @Warts 'n' all

Oh dear, have a glass of eggnog. It's the season to be jolly I didn't raise the tracks in the test, because I assumed the slightly raised bed of rocks under the tracks, together with the tracks themselves, would offer some protection for a prone soldier. People are not that tall when lying down. However, what really happens in the test seems to be that the railroad guys line up against the tracks like against a short wall, so they get closer to each other than their opponents who are prone on the ground and spread out more. Also, the railroad team doesn't go prone much, so they are more exposed.

I always wondered if infantry could find a little cover along railroad embankments, and I finally decided to test it. So I made a symmetrical situation of 4 US rifle squads shooting at 4 US rifle squads at apprx 285 metres. One side was on flat pavement, the otther side was behind a railroad. Troops lined up along the side of the railroad like they do along a wall, so it looked like there might be some cover there. Flat terrain, no heavy weapons, and all regular experience +0 soft factors. My expectation was that troops behind a railroad embankment would gain a small cover bonus But the results after 3 minutes of shooting surprised me: The side behind the railroad suffered 17 casualties and 17 wounded. The side lying on flat pavement suffered 2 killed, 2 wounded. So not only does it provide no cover to place troops along railroad tracks; it actually makes them much more vulnerable. Should this be the result we see?

@wadepm That sounds like the game is running on the Intel integrated card. Do you know if your laptop also has a dedicated card (like a GeForce card or somefink) in addition to the integrated card? If you do, use the video cards software suite and set it to run on high performance graphics and the blurry text will go away. Did you read this thread? Might fix your problem:

Each individual soldier has his own soft factors. So even in a green team of cowards, there might be a veteran fanatic. The squad's visible rating is the average. Source: an answer I got from BF support once.

I've seen the same happen. But I think that's perfectly realistic to happen, as long as it's pretty rare.

Thanks. I am quite surprised that the Germans were able to hit peak production as late as 1944 and crank out 35,000 planes. But I still wonder why they did not ramp up plane production before starting the war. Also, with those dismal production numbers in 1939, I wonder how Germans thought they would ever be able to win. Again, it leads me back to my hypothesis that they simply underestimated how big a role air power would play.

It's not about making a self aware machine intelligence, but about adding a few more lines to the TacAI surrender code. There is already code that determines if a unit surrenders or not. Maybe it could be something like this: IF (low on ammo) THEN surrender chance +1 IF (out of C2 to higher level) THEN surrender chance +2 (This one is probably already in the game, but haven't tested it) Checking to see if a unit is surrounded would be more tricky, but I think it could be done. Units already have awareness of where their buddies are (as we see when playing iron mode). So basically you could do checks to see if the "weight" of enemy presence (number and strength) of enemy contact markers is much higher than the friendly presence within, say, 150 metres, and then also check if enemy presence is all around the unit. Then the unit could get a big extra risk of surrendering, but could choose to fight on if highly motivated/experienced/well led/plenty of ammo/rested/etc. In practice: 1: draw a 150m circle around the unit doing the surrender check. 2: count all enemy and friendly markers within the circle. Enemy markers that are closer towards the unit's friendly map edge than the unit doing the surrender check counts double (they block the way to friendly lines). Each marker is weighted by contact strength (if a contact marker is solid visible or fading away) 3: If the enemy contact marker score is significantly higher than the friendly presence, unit is considered surrounded. @Kaunitz, what do you think about this way of looking at it?

So many parts of the German defeat seem to come back to lack of air superiority. I wonder if Germans simply underestimated how much airpower had developed from WWI to WWII and failed to take it into account in their strategic planning until it was too late?

Or if Native Americans discovered gun powder first and/or perfected the art of producing high quality steel first. Much has been made of the tech difference, but I think the important thing was that the pox crushed Aztec society, and that they had made lots of enemies, whom the Spanish skillfully rallied to their cause.

I wonder what the world would be like today if the deadly smallpox disease had not spread from the old world to the new, but the other way.

One thing I noticed is that "broken" troops are not very broken. They can still be used to scout, they spot and relay information just fine, and often they can actually keep fighting too. I think broken troops should be much more likely to surrender to enemies. Also, I think being cut off and surrounded, and low on ammo, should also play a part in surrendering. I don't think it's taken into account currently. At least I haven't noticed units out of ammo more likely to surrender.

Thanks. I'm wondering if something changed in version 4. Are these wooden or concrete bunkers? I haven't played the scenario, myself. Do you see shells actually hitting the bunkers, or is it because you find it difficult to land hits because of terrain sloping or intervening terrain? Hedges in front of the bunker, or similar... Were you hitting from the front or the side?

Actually this is modelled to some extent, because accuracy drops as the suppression meter fills up. However, it takes a very big amount of fire to make the meter increase, and it very quickly resets once fire stops. I think it should fill faster and empty slower, unless troop quality, leadership, motivation etc. are high. Yes. Because tunnel vision doesn't seem to be modelled. I haven't tested this, but it seems to me troops can aim and fire at a spotted target, and it doesn't make them less likely to spot another target. In real life, once you're looking down your sights, you lose awareness of what's going on to the sides. Also, there's the game engine quirk that fully suppressed troops "wake up" from suppression once enemies get close than about 90 metres. Then they often stop cowering, spot and engage approaching enemies. I have tested this.

I'm curious about this too. What version of the engine are you using on CMFI? What kind of tank rounds were you using?

You don't need a 105. In the real war, all sides invested heavily in large-calibre HE direct fire guns to take out fortifications. In this game, 75mm is all you need, even for the heaviest bunkers. As I see it, the reason is that bunkers are: Too easy to spot Too easy to hit (literally a "log cabin" instead of being dug into the soil) Too easy to knock out. In the game, the bunker in this example would not an obstacle at all, but the AT gun and the infantry would be.

Yes that is how they are supposed to work, but they don't currently. Wooden bunkers are usually taken out by one 75mm shell, concrete bunkers might need 2-3 shots. Bunkers are not the obstacles they should be.

I'm actually quite good at keeping my scouts alive, and they usually rejoin their squads later. Remember that recon is basically about making sure there are in fact no enemies in areas where you are pretty sure there are no enemies.

Me too. Bunkers are pretty useless, both wooden and concrete, because they are immensely easy to spot, and provide very little protection.

You don't really need to intersperse fast movement with slow movement for observation. I find my 2-man scout teams often spot distant enemies even while running through forest. Probably they get a little bonus to spotting if they are stationary, but it doesn't seem that important. Most spotting is done when enemies open fire anyway, not by sitting still for a long time. At long ranges, chances of spotting an unmoving AT gun are practically nil unless it fires. For close terrain though, it's often a good idea to move in bounds and leave the scouts to spot for the remainder of each turn after moving. At close range, enemies can often be spotted without firing.

Observation.

Browning machine guns, the M2 mortar, the BAR, and the bazooka are all still organic to the formation. Those weapons are the chief tools of an American ToE in reducing an enemy position. So you mean players rely too much on the firepower of the Garand, and with the Brazilians, they will have to learn to use the support weapons better?

?? You want scenarios that are easy? Ego - nope. Who wants to design a cake walk? Who wants to play a cake walk? Nobody said anything about cake walks. Or easy scenarios. I'm saying that many scenario designers make extremely difficult scenarios, and I think the reason is they don't want to feel the player "beats" them. I know this from my own experience designing a couple of battles. I kept telling my tester that I didn't want to do a cake walk, so he just had to try harder. Then later I tried to play it myself and found I couldn't beat my own scenario! Next scenario I did, I started out making it really easy. A tester asked me "is this all? I already won after 15 minutes" and I got red in the face and added a lot of stuff that - once again - made the scenario too difficult. The reason for that was ego. I felt he had somehow beaten me. Also, the scenarios people talk about are usually the ones that are super difficult. Who doesn't want his battle to be the talk of the town? So my philosophy is: Let the player have some fun. If you design a big Soviet assault, give the player a battery of rocket artillery to use as he wants. If you make a Peiper scenario where you know he had King Tigers in real life, don't tell the player that unfortunately they ran out of fuel just before the scenario starts. Etc. You can still balance the mission in other ways.

You don't have these moire patterns in the fields?