Bulletpoint

In Danish, the literal translations of our terms for sniper are either "fine-shooter" or "sneak-shooter". So, what's the difference? It's whether he is on our side or not...

"Those tactics were also a consequence of changes in German enlistment. After several years of war and heavy losses on the Eastern Front, the German army was forced to rely more heavily on enlisting teenage soldiers. Due to lack of training in more complex group tactics, and thanks to rifle training provided by the Hitlerjugend, those soldiers were often used as autonomous left-behind snipers. While an experienced sniper would take a few lethal shots and retreat to a safer position, those young boys, due both to a disregard for their own safety and to lack of tactical experience would frequently remain in a concealed position and fight until they ran out of ammunition or were killed or wounded. While this tactic generally ended in the demise of the sniper, giving rise to the nickname "Suicide Boys" that was given to those soldiers, this irrational behavior proved quite disruptive to the Allied forces' progress." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sniper

Haha, yeah me too To me, CMSF2 is the soggy broccoli someone else has to enjoy before we can get to the dessert...

Completely agree. Options are always nice. Games like Civilization offer a lot of optional house rules that can be ticked off in the settings before starting a new game. I think that's a quite elegant way to do it.

I would like to see this too. I tried a match where we agreed to play only regular troops with +0 in all soft factors. After the battle, I could see he went for +1 veterans. Probably he just forgot the house rule, but in any case I like options to make the game keep track of such things. Also it makes things easier than to have to bring out the pocket calculator before every game.

I think you are talking about the mission "Night Music". In that one, you get foxholes, so if you start the battle by ordering everyone to hide, they can ride out the nebelwerfer barrage with minimal casualties. I only lost 2-3 guys when a rocket made a direct hit.

On larger maps, I don't find them unbalanced at all. They are useful for smashing a suspected strongpoint, but they also have drawbacks. Very long call times, huge dispersion, risk of friendly fire all make them more suited to pre-planned bombardments, which means you're playing a game of "guess where the enemy might be". Very often, he won't be there. I remember playing one or two stock scenarios in CMBN where you get Nebelwerfer support, and in neither case did they have that much of an impact in my playthroughs. Usually, the scenario designer doesn't just put all the enemy in a small village - eggs in the basket and all that I agree. But if they don't even show up in the very large scenarios that take place on the first day of the Ardennes Offensive... that feels a bit like D-day without naval support. On my blue moon wishlist for sure. More options for soundfiles and varied explosion textures based on the cause (for example direct shot vs indirect) would be a nice cosmetic bump up for the CM games. I don't know for sure, but I think the Werfers got the nickname Moaning Minnies from the sound of them being fired, not so much the sound they made as they fell from the sky? Some of the NWs had quite short range, and the launch would have been heard. But yes, I'd definitely like if each artillery sounded different...

It's @MOS:96B2P who did the testing. I just noticed in various scenarios that the MP40 area fired on target light orders at about 60-100m distance, whereas the Thompson didn't. I guess the rationale behind having SMGs fire on target light is that it makes it easier to use in forests? That is, in forests at close range, you want all guns firing, because there's a chance that area fire could hit hidden enemies, but you don't want the team to fire rifle grenades, because that would be dangerous to friendlies? In city fights playing the Germans, it's just often a bad thing to have the team leader waste all his MP40 ammo shooting at a house, when what you really want is the MG42 and the rifles suppressing.

It seems the US SMG doesn't fire when using a "target light" order. That's great, because it allows me to choose to save ammunition for the SMG in some cases, and let loose with all guns in other cases. However, the German MP40 does actually fire when given a target light order. Shouldn't it behave like the Thompson?

I think there is an issue in the game where moving units are possibly too easily spotted, even though of course in real life, it's easier to spot something that moves. But I feel it might be a bit over the top currently. I've seen many cases of tanks moving slowly into a very good hull down position, yet get spotted after about 20 seconds at 800-1000m distance, despite misty conditions. Of course feelings and anecdotal evidence don't go very far, but that's my impression for what it's worth.

Thanks, +1.

If that's the case, then I am pretty impressed actually, that they managed to cause 18,000 casualties, even though it cost them 23,000 - if the Wiki numbers are correct. (not trying to argue anything here - I understand you said not all the German units made human wave attacks).

I don't think it's the shot calculations that eat up much computation time actually. I don't see any slowdown even in the moments when there's hundreds of bullets flying at the same time. But in situations without any firing, scrolling around over a map feels sluggish to me, even when reported framerates are at a level that should be reasonable, around 30 FPS. It doesn't seem like normal low FPS lag like in other games I played. More of a "stuck in molasses then sliding on ice" kind of feel.. if that makes sense

Good detail. The wiki talks about apprx. 89,500 US casualties from 16th of December through 25th of January, of which 23,000 are captured and missing. The rest are killed and wounded. So the Germans must have had some tactical successes somewhere, I just haven't really found any stories about that (admittedly I'm only an amateur armchair historian at best, and my only source for this is what I can read online...). I can only find reports of Germans attacking in hordes and getting cut down by Joe Greenhorn and a couple of his buddies. Stuff like: The 395th was outnumbered five to one and was at times surrounded. They initially pushed the Germans back with machine guns, small arms, mortar fire, and hand-to-hand combat. Without any significant armor support, the 395th stopped the German advance cold.

One interesting thing I just noticed now is that the Germans and US actually suffered apprx. the same amount of casualties during the Ardennes Offensive (about 90,000 casualties), and the Allies lost significantly more armour and planes. So obviously the Germans didn't get mown down everywhere. They must have had success somewhere. Was it the Hürtgen Forest battle that made up for all this, or were there simply many more battalion sized actions that we don't hear about where the Germans did better? Is there a kind of victor bias at work here - or am I just reading the numbers wrong?

Reading more about the battle, it strikes me again how there are so many anecdotes about how just a few rag-tag green US infantry survive massive assaults even while extremely outnumbered, causing huge losses. I've yet to read about any action post-normandy where the Germans had any real success with anything. From the wiki: Just after noon, at 1235, the Germans launched their attack again, and they were pushed back by artillery and mortar fire. The result of the first day of what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge were 104 Germans dead "in an area 50 yards (46 m) yards in front of our lines to 100 yards (91 m) behind the line, and another 160 wounded counted in front of battalion lines."The 3rd Battalion lost four killed, seven wounded, and four missing.

Thanks for the good reply. I could imagine it's because they wanted to avoid destroying the two bridges in the town. Would make sense. I'm sure there are similar good explanations for many of the absent heavy guns in many of the German scenarios. It's up to designers what battles they want to recreate - I just sometimes get the feeling I keep fighting battles that were the exception When fighting a huge battle with a regiment, it would be fun to get some bigger support assets to plan how to use ...

Yep, but I prefer not to - out of respect for the scenario designer and because I don't want to spoil the challenge of a scenario that was balanced to not have those weapons. But I just did change the weather to avoid the snow flurries. I find the graphical effect doesn't look very good and because it slows my computer, so I replaced it with mist (to still get a bit of effect on visibility).

Just wondering why the designers of the various scenarios are so hesistant to give the Germans any kind of real artillery support, even in the largest battles. Finished KG Peiper and found no Nebelwerfers there, but with the level of detail evident in that campaign, I think it's safe to assume that it was because he didn't have any in reality. Then I started looking at the other huge scenarios that come with the game. In "Day of Attrition", you command most of an entire regiment of Volksgrenadiers, but your fire support is a medium mortar platoon and two 75mm infantry guns. In "Hot time in Hatten", you have a battalion of Panzergrenadiers, and about 25 tanks, but your fire support is.. two 81mm mortars. Now, I understand arty might be held back for balance reasons, but when tasked to take an entire town, a module or two of heavy artillery would hardly be an "I-win-button". Actually I did some tests of the various sizes of Nebelwerfers, and while they are powerful, they don't fight the battle for you. Even firing a whole module of the biggest rockets as a point mission (against infantry in a small village), I'd still find a couple of survivors in the beaten zone afterwards. But, as I understand it, they were quite often used, especially before assaults. So it would have been nice to see them used more in CMFB.

Good spot, you're right. Also, the US teams that can take over are called XO.. but this one is called HQ Support Team. I wonder what its purpose is. I guess that in the game, it's basically just an extra team with binoculars for better spotting.

Thanks for the reply. I was surprised, because it's one of those things where I could swear I've seen it happen once. Maybe I am confusing it with what happens on the squad level and on the company level? But if it works there, why wouldn't the same thing happen at the platoon level?

Yeah, it's far from being a super realistic game - apart from when compared to most other team-based shooters. Then it seems a proper history lesson.

It's because the game doesn't model any of the nifty angle/armour plate/distance/ballistics that we are used to from CM (and World of Tanks, which I don't play). It's one of the shortcomings of Post Scriptum that tanks are basically boxes with "hit points". You hear the guy say "what's our health at?" after the engagement. So, no one-shot kills; you have to chip away at the hitpoints before the enemy tank gets destroyed eventually. But I think I read somewhere that they wanted to improve the system and make it more realistic. Still, at the ranges combat takes place at in this game, I'm not sure it would really show the differences in armour...

I love how the entire Panther manual is in verse - all 120 pages of it. Funny how it compares the Churchill tank with the fat, greedy colonialist Churchill sitting at a table consuming the globe with knife and fork. While the Matilda and Valentine tanks are portrayed as streetwalking prostitutes - easy hits for the German "Fachmann mit Routine". (last two pages). Lots of lovely ladies in the Tiger manual, too