Bulletpoint

Oh patch, won't you buy me, a fast-firing Bren... my enemies got MGs - I must make amends! When mortars are fallin', my guys run away... So patch, won't you buy me, an AI fix then...

Thanks. That's what I thought too. So I still wonder how come the version on the halftrack is listed as having a much shorter range? Could it be because the numbers were somehow mixed up with the range for the small hose flamethrower on the back?

You mean the cases where the game will place the gun in the painted area, but somehow won't achieve the LOS you could find by placing manually? Yes, that can be an issue, but mostly in marginal LOS conditions.

You are not guaranteed you will get a different AI Plan though. Currently, designers nor players can select which AI Plan to play against. So I can create three to four AI Plans but no guarantee you won't end up playing the same one on subsequent occasions. But you don't even need more AI plans. Put AT gun 1 into AI group 7 and paint its setup zone along a whole hedge on the right flank. AT gun 2 goes in group 8 and you paint its zone on the left flank. Now you have both flanks covered, but the player can't know where the guns will be, exactly. Meanwhile, Inf. platoon 1 guards the bridge in any combination of building 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8... etc. All this is within one single AI plan

Not to school you, because I know you're an experienced designer, but just to recap: The designer can paint a zone for each AI group and the group members will semi-randomly deploy in that zone. If you think about where you paint the zone, you can have variable placement that keeps making sense. And all this can be done within one single AI plan. A typical example is to make AT gun locations vary, but also stuff like which building has an MG covering the bridge is a good thing to make variable. Or infantry placement inside a city block/forest. I wish more designers would use this kind of setup, because when I play great campaigns like KG Peiper with its meticulous maps, I really want to have a second and third go. But then I know the enemy placements...

I often do the same thing. Would be great if more designers added some variability to the enemy setup, to give more replayability. A pet peeve of mine.

German 14mm flamethrower in Panzer III: 60m range http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2-germany-panzer-iii-flamm/ German 14mm flamethrower in Hetzer: 60m range http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_flammpanzer38t_hetzer.html German 14mm flamethrower on halftrack: 35m range? https://books.google.dk/books?id=dyRYDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA176&lpg=PA176&dq=Gerät+916&source=bl&ots=V2OsGi9o42&sig=ACfU3U3GAS7wfcB1heWVTlrZWTi5_y5iFw&hl=da&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwixocKrucfgAhVByaQKHQFTAGoQ6AEwBXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Gerät 916&f=false

It looks like a much bigger one on the halftrack? Used a "Koebe Flamethrower" with 66 yards (60m) range. Looks like the one used on the halftrack too. Could it be... that these devastating weapons were identical? (History Channel voice)

It wouldn't make sense to throw away a .50 team to have a small chance of scratching a tank's optics. Also, you could say the same about any other weapon. A rifle firing at a vision block could probably scratch it too, but I don't think anyone would try.

I think there's a difference though, because I read your post as saying the destination waypoint had positions both behind and in front of the hedge. But if you look closely, the destination point is actually well behind the hedges, it's located in the square with the bent wall segment. That's what I thought at first, too, but if you look closely, you see the guys start running before taking any real fire. It's like when you order a team to hunt a long distance through forest, causing them to be spread out. Then when one of them spots an enemy, the whole team stops moving and drops down. And then they start to move/crawl towards the average centre point of their team (where the team icon is), because that's where the game engine considers the team to be officially located, even if members are scattered. That point becomes the rallying point. But in this case, the rallying point is somehow set on the wrong side of the wall. Either by random because the game does not take sides into account, or because the team decides to gather on the other side of the wall compared to the spotted enemy contacts (which would make sense for low walls - they'd jump over and take cover)

It's a bit like quantum mechanics - while moving, a team is spread out (like a wave) but then when the movement is interrupted, the waveform collapses and the game needs to decide where the exact location of this team actually is. So it decides the team is in the square with the wall, but there's a side A and B, and it picks the wrong side... Ok, I should get out more

You got me curious, so I loaded this scenario up in the editor and made a special small test version. I can't reproduce the running away when just moving a team around without enemies. Things seem to work as they should. So I think it is caused by the team on hunt orders being caught out by spotting enemies while passing through the square with the wall. They then for some reason think they have to deploy to the other side of the wall. So basically this would be a small bug in the TacAi code. Possibly, when the TacAI decides to stop the hunting team, it then points them to the wrong side. That's my hypothesis anyway.

One of the great tragedies and ironies of WW2 was that the Nazis had much the same rationale - their military was fighting for freedom from the evil of communism. We now know different, but that's the story they told each other. For the US, the memory of the war is something glorious. For each American casualty, how many soldiers returned in triumph? For the Germans... well, maybe some Germans also now look at their military and think it made their country what it is, but reaching a different conclusion.

I see a team moving up to cover, then deciding to run out of cover the moment they spot nearby enemies. Was your team broken? Because in that case, it could be that the broken team spotted enemies, decided to run away, but they decided to run to a spot on the other side of the wall. Then they took the shortest path to that point, which was straight through the enemy line of fire.

Heff, is that you?

It's because the TacAI thinks MG ammo won't penetrate. But it can, in some situations. Meanwhile, the US 50cal will happily open fire against most German tanks, at long range, achieving nothing apart from getting HE in return...

One of the ideas that's been knocked around the forum is a house rule to not allow area firing any kind of HE against locations without enemy contact markers.

To reflect this, I think it would have been better to have a mix of elite and green units, but in the campaign, it seems to be mostly regulars with the odd vet or green. That's what struck me as a bit odd.

I just finished this campaign, and from what I can see, it's a bit overlooked. When it was completed by @Lille Fiskerby, it seems most people just said thanks, but they had lots to play at that time, so they just put it on hold, and as far as I can see, there was never any real discussion or feedback. So I'd like to talk a bit about it, to share views and also to give credit to a good campaign designer. Overall, I enjoyed this campaign. The operational situation was interesting, and there were many hard tactical problems to solve along the way. Briefings were well done, and the historical side of the campaign seemed well researched - it had that air of authenticity that makes the campaign feel like a real military operation, not just some tabletop game. Also, I liked that some of the missions were split into a recon phase and a proper attack phase. I did feel, however, that many of the battles were simply too big. In most cases, those battles were effectively 3-4 smaller engagements going on at the same time, that did not really affect each other. While this meant a great sense of scale and some fun stuff like being able to call in fire support from on-map Grilles, it also felt exhausting to me to keep mental track of so many individual tactical situations and switch between them again and again. And this comes from a guy who played these games for years, so it's not just a matter of getting used to it. I feel the campaign would have been more enjoyable if these big battles had been split up in a couple of smaller engagements. The quality of the maps was decent (I believe they were stock maps?). However, a minor gripe was that the layout of the towns left something to be desired, as they did not look like WW2 era towns, but more like modern suburbia. The difference is that towns back then had more houses clumping together, while modern towns are usually with each house separated. I confirmed this by looking at a WW2 aerial photo of St. Vith, and while it's difficult to see details because the town is in ruins and covered with snow, it's clear that many of the buildings would have been physically joined. As a final point, I think it was a bit odd to command a supposedly elite unit (The Führerbegleitbrigade, Hitler's bodyguard brigade), but then seeing that they had the same level of experience as any other standard unit - mostly regulars with a few greens and veterans here and there. I'm not asking for SSupermen. But even at this late stage of the war, I believe the Germans did have some quality units left, and the Bulge was where they saw action. Despite these small points, in conclusion I would like to thank the designer for making this campaign and letting me have a go at fighting my way to Bastogne. I was able to win or get a draw in all the battles apart from the last one, that ended in a defeat - but with a combined campaign win. I hope to see more campaigns from Lille Fiskerby in the future.

Twelve is correct in an Armored Panzergrenadier Battalion. Remember, the other three Panzergrenadier Battalions in a Panzer Division are motorized, and they don't have Stummels. I think the Armored Recon Battalion in a Panzer Division had thirteen Stummels, but CMRT gives them six. I don't have CMFB, so I can't comment on how the TOE shows there. If you are seeing too many Stummels maybe play with the foot slogging PzGrenadiers more. Thanks a lot for clearing this up. I didn't have any problems seeing too many of those things, it was just a matter of curiosity. I generally play with foot sloggers and not with a lot of armour

+1 That's me on the right, typing away on the forum...

I don't think CMFB is harder than CMBN - they're both hard, but the way they are difficult is very different. I played CMBN for years and got pretty good with bocage fighting, but I'm still learning new hard lessons when it comes to the more open maps of CMFB. Suddenly range plays a huge role, and it's more about dips and bumps in the ground than about solving 'bocage puzzles'.

While I admit I was wrong about the Garand being better, I still think the Stg44 is undermodelled, actually. The pixeltroops don't really fire it like an assault rifle should be used - short rapid bursts. And at range, it fires very slowly for an automatic rifle.

True, but usually teams are spaced out more, so each team will not have so much concentration of incoming fire. It also means they stop shooting and leave cover. It will be interesting to see if/how that behaviour changes with the upcoming patch. It does seem like it, yes. The 6 vs 3 casualties seem consistent with the ratio from the closer tests too. Also, at this range, there's no running away on either side.

You made me miss the good old days so much that now I want them back. I demand a graphics downgrade. BF please unfix or something.