Bulletpoint

Oh, that's a bit disappointing to hear. I always liked to believe that taking out enemy leaders helped degrade their morale faster.

Actually the maps in that campaign seem to have only little to do with the real places. At least when I looked up the Remichampagne map I'm currently playing and compared it to the real location on Google Maps. The basic road layout seems reasonably close, but the amount and location of buildings seems made up. The designer also added a huge church that is not there in the real town.

That makes some sense in the game, but I think it's a bit silly that flimsy countryside fences cause track degradation to a tank in the first place. Tank tracks are not invulnerable, but they are not made of glass either. I don't think any tank commander in history ever rotated his point tanks because they were going through old wooden fences around fields.

Pretty sure it doesn't. It's the type of terrain multiplied by the ground conditions. The wetter, the worse. When the ground is very dry, you can even cross mud patches without too much worry. When the ground conditions are muddy, even regular ground starts to cause frequent bogging and immobilization.

Not sure if you find it helpful but the below statement is where I took my understanding from. This is how I understood it all along, but somebody then claimed it was the suppression alone that caused combat stress. Or the toggling of different states. At the end of the day, the permanent moral hit is all due to casualties.

I can at least now answer this question. Yes, a unit can get shocked and even panic only by taking incoming fire (with no casualties in that unit or in any other friendly unit). I know this because I am right now playing a scenario where I have taken zero casualties so far, but one of my scout jeeps is taking long range MG fire that has caused no casualties but caused the jeep to first get shocked, then panic. After 5 seconds, it rallied and now shows "OK" again. Crew has +1 motivation. I wonder if the "shocked" status depends on taking fire while in a vulnerable position? So that in cover, troops just get suppressed, but they are likely to panic if taking fire in the open?

So, at the end of the day, is it possible to degrade a unit's morale permanently (giving it 'combat stress') by only suppression, or does it need casualties? I'm assuming that it's going into the temporary shocked and panicked states that causes combat stress to build up. But can suppression alone cause a unit to become shocked? All this is not just an academic discussion. If I find out that suppression grinds down enemy morale, even in situations where I am extremely unlikely to cause any casualties, I'm going to use it much more than I do currently.

As always The guy knows his stuff..

The release of CMSF2 has allowed me to shift from complaining about the wait for CMSF2 to playing CMSF2 while complaining about the wait for the v4 patches! No, I have been waiting patiently for the patch all along. Have no interest in CMSF2.

So basically you can destroy enemy morale (or at least degrade it) simply by area fire, without causing casualties. I've never noticed this happening, but then again in all normal battles you do take casualties, so the suppression effect would just blend into the situation. Have you ever tested this out? I guess it's difficult to set up a situation where you can keep area firing on a unit and make sure they don't take any casualties.

I always just thought that little red light was another way of saying the unit was broken. I see now they are not quite the same thing.

This is new to me. So what you're saying is that going back and forth between 0 and 100 pct suppression is what wears down the morale state? How about being under continuous fire? Also this is new to me. Do you mean the "broken" state? I don't think they ever return to OK condition.

Another benefit of Iron mode is that you get a better feel for the weather conditions - what can be spotted by whom at what distance. I don't use it though. For beginners, I definitely recommend starting on the lower difficulty (actually "realism") levels.

Should/could/might be soon now that CMSF2 was finally released..

Sounds like quite a challenge. Germans attacking Russians. In woods. Through a minefield. With little time on the clock No wonder it's labelled as "advanced" for the German player...

I have this same problem in CMFB (seen it affecting M8 Greyhound armoured cars i believe)

I can't speak about this particular campaign, as I haven't played it, but talking in general terms, would this situation have been more acceptable to you if the scenario briefing explained that some mistake had taken place and that your company had advanced too far ahead? (communications snafu, misreading of maps, running into an unexpected enemy position due to lack of recon, etc.)?

Not to discredit your experiences, and I think your feedback is well thought out and valuable. But the war in Iraq was probably as close as the US will ever get to a perfect textbook war where one side had such a crushing dominance in everything from air power, logistics, firepower, and military intelligence that it could realise its tactical doctrine nearly 100 per cent. I'm not going to say any war is a picnic, but I can't help but wonder if your experiences as a USMC infantryman during those years might have influenced your view on the fog of war and the sometimes chaotic situations that meant more risks were taken - willingly or not - in WW2.

Then you need lots and lots of mods.

Thanks, I stand corrected then.

I think something was changed about area fire in 4.0, because I'm pretty sure the target line used to snap to the centre of buildings. Now it snaps to the middle point of the outside walls.Anyone else noticing this or is it just my memory getting rusty?

I think your troops shoot into the floor when you order them to fire from one building into an adjacent one. So that's the issue, not that shots don't penetrate interior walls.

Looks interesting. I've invited someone to try out the first scenario.

That is a bit different issue though. I wish flamethrowers would be useful for this situation (for WW2 titles) or special forces breach-and-clear techniques (for modern warfare)

There is no enemy AI. In singleplayer, everything the enemy does is scripted by the human designer of the scenario.