Bulletpoint

I'm also playing "To the Meuse", but it's not the mission shown in these screenshots...

Is this the final mission in the campaign? It looks completely different than the one I'm playing. Maybe because you're on a different storyline branch?

Exhaustion doesn't affect accuracy or spotting. Hiding your spotter does.

Not that I'm aware of. My first guess would be a problem with the spotter having a good line of site when the spotting rounds were called etc. At least that is generally where the problem is. If there was a problem in CMBN with mortar / artillery accuracy @Bulletpoint would probably have noticed and would have some insight. As MOS says, the most common problem is that the spotter doesn't see enough spotting rounds. In this game, the spotter eventually calls Fire for Effect despite not getting a visual, and then the fire mission goes way off target. It's particularly a problem in the bocage in CMBN, but can happen anywhere you can draw a line of sight to an otherwise mostly hidden area. It's not enough to be able to draw a line. It's typical strafing behaviour in this game. I've often seen planes keep strafing an MG position or a vehicle several times. I don't know enough about the real air war to say if it's realistic/intended behaviour.

It true that chess is hundreds of year old and people still love it. On the other hand why don't we continue to play CM1 as that's only 20 years old? If CM1 had been incrementally improved that would enable us to play the entire war from 1941 for the last 20 years, and not have to wait another 5+ years. It's only in the last year or two that CM1 has dropped off even at Band Of Brothers. The reality is that, unlike outliers like chess and GO etc., entertainments need to evolve/improve in order to continue to attract the market. I was playing the devil's advocate there, because I actually agree with you. I love Combat Mission, but I haven't bought more of their games in a long time. Not as any kind of protest, but just because I don't really feel I need more than two games in the series. CMBN for the bocage, CMFB for the more open battles. Personally, I'm not interested in the modern settings. If CM3 appeared, I'd definitely get on board again, if it offered the same leap as between CM1 and CM2. Or if a new CM2-based game fixed the many graphical issues and improved fundamental things.

Well, if we can play a 12+ year game system when the tech has moved on so much since 2007, why not a 17+ year game system?

There is no "computer player". In a singleplayer scenario, you're playing against the human designer.

US soldier posing with captured Sturmregenschirm 44

Countryside boy here. The game is able to simulate extremely dark conditions, and nobody is saying it can't be pitch black in real life. However, in the game, you can send a whole battalion of infantry running at top speed through a forest completely blind, yet arriving exactly where they are meant to. But they are unable to figure out there's an enemy team feet away, or that the tank that just ran them over was enemy (despite getting an "enemy contact" marker). It's this mismatch that's the problem, not that visibility can be extremely low. So I agree that night battles could use a little tender loving care to make them more believable. A good first step could be for scenario designers to stop making scenarios where visibility is so bad that it would be impossible to coordinate any troop movements.

I thought there would be higher level commanders taking care of securing Peiper's supply lines, leaving him free to keep going towards his objective, and divisions of Volksgrenadiere etc. pouring in after the initial breakthrough. It's pretty interesting that a single US battalion was able to cut Peiper off, in such a high profile, long planned operation.

They are useful, but not necessary. Both of mine got shot to pieces, one by a 57mm AT Gun which penetrated the King Tiger through the front turret at 700m. I used the Panther and especially the Stummels to support my infantry to knock out US positions in the town.

I'm wondering why the Germans failed to reinforce the place properly after Peiper passed through. As far as I understand, KG Peiper was only the tip of the spear, with lots of more regular forces supposed to follow to secure gains and set up defences, supply lines, etc. But those are historical questions, not critiscism towards the campaign, which is generally very good.

I just played and won that mission yesterday. Only managed a tactical victory, but it was enough to make me progress to the next (and I believe final) battle. Agreed that it's a quite frustrating mission. I should add that it's not the first time I try it either. I think I played it at least four times now, maybe five. I managed to knock out five of six Priests, and fully capture the South Stavelot objective. I then contested two more, and the last objective stayed in enemy control. I think the key to the mission is that you don't have to fully capture all the objectives. Just capture the southern one and then get a small foothold in the others. Also, every time I played, I sent the engineers up on the hill, supported by the Pumas. I think this might be a waste, though. They don't accomplish much up there, and get targeted by artillery. Also, their satchel charges would be much better spent in the town.

Help me understand your meaning better. As I understand TRP's, they assist targeting for all that side's weapon systems; from small arms to heavy artillery and air support. Unless the AI knows which weapons you've selected (MG-42's, 2-inch mortars, 81mm mortars, 105mm howitzers, and such) there's no way to know which radii circles to apply and display. Correct? No matter if you use TRPs for bringing down artillery or to assist aiming during ambushes, they only affect a circle of 50m diameter. So if a house is within 50 metres from the TRP, you can call in indirect fire on it, no matter if you have LOS or not. And when ambushing, any weapon you fire at enemies within 50 metres from the point will enjoy increased accuracy (as long as your firing units haven't moved) I was suggesting that a graphical circle always be drawn around the TRP (or at least when it's selected) to help placement. What you can do is to select a unit, give it a waypoint, then select that waypoint and draw a circular target arc of 50 metres. That gives you a moveable circle you can place at various points to help put your TRP in the best possible location.

This is one of the most bizarre things about the whole campaign. Unless they had paratroopers to secure the bridges, the attack would obviously never make it very far. The briefing text says Peiper shouted "Those damned engineers" when a bridge was blown just before it could be captured. But surely he knew it was going to happen, maybe not immediately because of the surprise attack, but they would have to pass many bridges, and surprise doesn't last forever.

My focus would be on increasing fidelity and realism within the current map sizes. Also I'd look at adding an operational layer for the bigger picture and make it possible for players to do multiplayer campaigns. Meanwhile, I would try to put in some quality of life improvements, such as a road movement system or solution of some kind. Some of this stuff would be pretty easy to implement. Such as TRPs automatically showing a circle to mark their area of effect. Making the fire support interface less cumbersome. Adding scroll bars and increasing font size in unit purchase screens. Etc.

This is definitely on the top-five of the biggest issues with Combat Mission.

Mine is different. That's good. My experience is based primarily on one mission where I had a large number of German AA vehicles, including many Wirbelwinds, against 2 US strafing planes. It's a mission from the Road to Bastogne campaign. I replayed the mission three times and noticed the planes would happily spot and engage my AA vehicles despite taking an enormous amount of flak. During two of the three replays, I eventually shot down one of the two aircraft, and in the last game both planes survived. What's your experience?

I've seen it hundreds of times. But never saw it penetrate the top hull when doing that.

My experience is that AA is not effective at shooting down, nor driving off, aircraft in this game (CMFB). Also AA doesn't seem to have any effect on the planes' ability to spot or hit ground targets.

Strange. Is it worth spending time and energy on trying to get something designed for CMBN to work in CMFB? I know my personal answer, only you can decide for yourselves. Obviously not. I thought it would just work... Then I thought there must be some little mistake I made that caused the problem. After several hours of trying to fix it, I suddenly realised I wasted an afternoon and evening. Since there's obviously no easy fix for this, I'm going to spend my time on something better

This is in the Peiper capaign timeframe, so it's before there was snow on the ground. Here's a strange thing: Testing with the 251/9 Stummel, the game does load the interior mod texture for the vehicle. But not the exterior. None of the files are tagged with anything. Meanwhile, @MOS:96B2P has been trying to help me out by testing the same vehicle on his end. And he does get the full mod texture, both interior and exterior. With the exact same files (through dropbox).

Yes, it was full. Today's not my lucky tech day. But thanks a lot for taking your time to help me out with this. You should be able to PM me now.

Thanks, appreciate that. I just crosschecked once again that the Stummel mod works in CMBN and not in CMFB. I did this by removing al mods from both games, then adding only the Aris 251/9 mod folder to each game. It appears in game in CMBN but not in CMFB. Could you send me a dropbox link to all your CMFB vehicle mods?

Yep, restarting every time. I just made a little test scenario in CMBN and loaded all the 5 different kinds of Panthers. They all worked with the mod texture, including the single Panther VG. AND including the SPW 251/9 Stummel. So the conclusion must be that the files work, but they are somehow not compatible with CMFB. Maybe they have the wrong file names? Is there anywhere I can download all the Aris vehicle textures in a version sure to be compatible with CMFB?