Bulletpoint

Yes, I really do think so. And it's exactly because CM is so detailed in other aspects that players get confused and frustrated when explosions often seem "off". Many cases can be creatively explained away, but I have also seen prone guys on the far side of big buildings take casualties from 81mm mortars landing a good distance to the other side of the building.

I think this whole debate comes down to players assuming explosions in CM are modelled in high detail, where actually they are very abstracted, based on my experience playing the game over the years. All the game cares about* is that an explosion of size X goes off at distance Y from a soldier. Then the soldier gets a modifier to his "dice roll" for being in a building and for being prone. If he rolls low, he gets hurt, no matter if he's on the other side of the building looking out the other direction, if three of his buddies are outside standing next to the explosion and should be much more exposed, etc. A dice roll is a dice roll. *There are probably few more factors, such as ground type, ammo type (mortar VS shell), etc. But basically it comes down to chance if the guy gets an unlucky dice throw or not. No fancy shell burst pattern or fragment tracing. Also, I think hand grenades are even more abstracted... I see very little connection between where the grenade lands and whether it causes casualties or not.

Would trade them all for a new, fundamentally improved game engine to be honest.

(For anti-infantry) there's currently no real reason to use any gun bigger than 75mm in this game. I believe it's because infantry fortifications are undermodelled, and big HE is undermodelled. If you can hit them with 75mm, they're done very fast.

Maybe they are finally prepping the TacAI for war in the Pacific?

Yep, that's why I posted... @IanL should I stop pestering you now?

I think all war crimes should be discussed openly, and I find interviews with the people involved interesting, no matter if they are with the SS or the crew of Enola Gay. The main point is - how do people explain to themselves that they did horrible things? But I've yet to find an interview with anyone admitting he was wrong, or expressing remorse.

@IanL How to test: Open up Kampfgruppe Peiper campaign, first mission. You have 2 halftrack mounted mortars. Deploy one outside its halftrack, keep the other mounted. Keep distance so they cannot share ammo. Plot a fire mission for each mortar during the setup phase. Distance 300m straight ahead. Parametres: Point mission, Heavy Rate of Fire, Maximum duration. Both mortars start with 90 HE rounds. Both are in C2. Results: After 1 minute, the mounted mortar has fired 6 rounds. ROF: 0,1/sec. The unmounted mortar has fired 23 rounds. ROF= 0,38/sec. After some turns, the mounted mortar stops firing while it has still 57 rounds left out of initial 90 rounds. The mortar in the open fires all HE rounds as expected for a "maximum" duration fire mission. Conclusion: Dismounted 81mm mortars fire roughly four times faster when deployed outside the halftrack as when firing mounted. Mounted mortars stop firing after expending less than half their ammo, even when given a "maxium duration" order that for all other artillery types fires all available ammo.

Could any beta testers please confirm if these two issues have been logged? @IanL do you know if it's on the BF radar?

Also mounted mortars still stop firing even though they have plenty of ammo left. Both these bugs can be easily reproduced in the first mission of Kampfgruppe Peiper (Die Spitze)

I had hoped this bug had been fixed in the 4.01 patch, but mortar teams mounted in halftracks still fire at a very slow rate of fire when given indirect fire orders.

I take it you haven't done any battles with the patch yet. Only one, and I didn't notice anything like this. You mean troops firing at contact markers, or firing on-map mortars by themselves? They always did the latter...

?

Try with the MG bunkers, that's what I was commenting on .. since you were talking about putting MG nests in bunkers for protection

Are you sure? From my observation, bunkers are treated like vehicles. When they get hit, a vehicle-hit-info pop ups ("penetration", etc). Unless they hit the opening (which took a few minutes at a range of ca. 1km), the Shermans failed to penetrate the bunker. (The bunkers were still spotted way too easily though...) I tested it out, and found hits from the front cause the same casualties on average as hits against a 2-story modular building. Bunkers are bugged.

Did you paint the tiles with heavy woods to model antitank ditches? Another way of doing it is painting ditches with mud tiles and making the conditions wet. That gives a chance to cross the ditch, but the attacker knows he runs a big risk of bogging. I think that's more fun, and looks more natural than somehow having heavy forest growing in all the ditches. They don't, actually. A concrete bunker gives about the same protection against 75mm HE as a modular building. Unless something was changed in the 4.01 patch.

I like the thinking behind these ideas, but they are not that simple to use, and they are not really enforceable. I've seen good, intelligent, and honest opponents forget way simpler house rules. Instead, these good design decisions should be implemented into the actual game system, forming the core of a new, optional difficulty level above Iron. Something which many players have politely requested for years. One funny thing: This is clearly an oversight by Battlefront. There's a whole realism level (Elite) only dedicated to turning the contact icons into "plain infantry markers" to prevent the player from knowing which type of support weapon is where. But they forgot that we can still click the enemy icon and see if it's a mortar or MG etc... This oversight has persisted until the point where people are starting to make elaborate house rules around it - why not just fix it?

Sad to see that the issue of infantry firing off AT-assets against close enemy infantry in open terrain hasn't been addressed

Thanks John, I did see that page and there has been some discussion about whether the numbers presented could be wrong, since they possibly list the range when both projectors fire at the same time.

Sure but this is not their intended role. They're nearly useless for the things they are supposed to do: taking out bunkers, trenches, and fortified buildings.

+1 Didn't know that. I'm sure it was dangerous to use in the real war, but in the game, it's nearly impossible to use flamethrowers at all. I think it has more to do with the game mechanics than realism. This weapon could do with a re-think of how it's supposed to be useful in game terms.

Seriously guys...

Unfortunately, just like in his case, it will have to be awarded posthumously. My opponent tired of the gunner's conspicuous gallantry and brought up a Panther...

Nope, you got it right Apart from the slapped about part. I remember it more along the lines of "BFC receiving much well thought-out and reasonable feedback".

In short, I'm just asking: should a fully suppressed and pinned and rattled AT gun be able to spot and engage targets? if yes, what's the point of suppression?