Bulletpoint

This doesn't show a ricochet actually hitting the guy. What happens is that the enemy shell hits the tiger and ricochets into the ground immediately in front of the tank. If you watch closely, you can see the explosion. In the old engine, such ricochets would explode on contact, and the explosion would be strangely powerful compared to the size of the shell. I often noticed soldiers falling down though they were far from the point of impact. Well, it's not any more. It was later changed so that AP shell ricochets would not explode on hitting the ground. Later, the bug reappeared and was again fixed in the first CMFB patch. In short, I don't think this has anything to do with the issue of the original poster

This is a bug that has been seen before - in 2014 it was reported and a fix was expected in the next version. However, as we have seen with other issues in this game, sometimes fixed bugs later reappear.

Brilliant! I'd love a game where I can bombard and assault my neighbours...

There's a hidden option to disable the splash screen by pressing the v button during game launch. Probably you did that by accident. Maybe by pressing v again you can re-enable it.

One thing I keep wondering about though is whether there would be any crops in the fields of the Ardennes in December/January? I think the crops would be harvested that time of yeaar, leaving fields as stubble or plowed. In case the local people fled, the crops would quickly be beaten down by wind and rain that time of year. Leaving a dense mess that wouldn't be very tall..

If modern tanks are the same weight and have the same size cannon, then why are they not classified as heavy tanks?

I love these comparisons to show how close to reality it's possible to get in the game. The only thing I could point out in this one was that the buildings on the right are at an angle in real life, and this could be achieved in the editor too. Oh, and one more thing: The building with the big white gate has been represented by a barn in the game, because it also has a similar gate. However, that makes it really poor cover, whereas the real building looks very sturdy.

Hm yeah, that's just the problem - my tanks never got to that important last step, no matter how many times they got shot at. Still a mystery to me.

At that range, you must be in about the same area as me (given the layout of the map) It's in this situation I either can't get a spot, or when I do get a spot, it's lost a couple of seconds later..

Yes, I thought I had read a report about it before, but couldn't find the old post. If I remember correctly, back then the issue was identified but nobody knew how to reproduce it. So I figured that out at least.

Which direction and distance did you approach from? I was able to win the scenario by going along the road, which meant engaging at much closer ranges. At about 1000m my panthers spotted as I expected them to (not always first, but at least after bouncing a couple of rounds).

Sometimes during setup, deploying a machinegun team in a building will produce a waypoint that can be moved around but not deleted. It causes the MG team to pack up immediately upon starting the battle. It seems to be caused by deplying the MG, setting a covered arc, then issuing various facing commands.

The problem is not so much that the maps are too small. It's more that it's rare to be able to target the ground at long range because of crops, etc. I just played Meijel Mayhem the other day, and it's a nearly perfectly flat map with 2km+ sight lines. But because of crops, there's hardly ever LOS.

Impressive. It's not an easy one.

Maybe a line of text in the manual would work wonders to clarify this to new players. I lost track of how many times I saw this question asked (and I also asked it myself, back in the day)

I'm not sure it's an AFV as such, at least it's not a tank. But I've come to like the Stummel a lot: Unfortunately, they rarely get to shine in CM, because as soon as even just light tanks appear on the battlefield, it's curtains for these little devils.

I wanted to send this message to Kohlenklau, but the forum tells me that he cannot receive messages. So instead of just binning my feedback, I thought I'd post it in public instead. ---- Hello, I just bought CMFB and was able to play your little scenario When Trumpets Fade. Just wanted to say I played it and enjoyed it. Nicely done map and very challenging - and frustrating, but this is a Hürtgenwald battle after all, so it has to be frustrating My result was a tactical defeat. Managed to put the tank on one of the objective zones though. I resisted the temptation to making an all-out rush towards the objectives in the last minute. I'd like to play it again to see if I can do better, so I wanted to ask you if there's any replayability built into it? Or will all mines and Germans be placed in the same spots next time around? I could check this out in the editor of course, but that would spoil it...

You're right. Just tested it out. A much deeper field of XT grass and Tall grass starts to block LOS too, but the target line penetrates farther into the grass before it gets blocked.

At this range (1255m), the tank is basically trying to look through the crops. I did some more testing, and if I move the tank closer, it will start to look over the crops. The grass, however, never blocks LOS at any distance. Actually that's not quite true. Tall grass causes very sparse, patchy LOS blocking, seemingly without any pattern.

I did a little test of spotting through crops in CMFB. . Here we have a tank crew. The guy on the left is sitting in XT (extra tall) grass. The guys on the right are sitting in crops. It's clear that the XT grass is much taller than the crops. Using a tall tank (Panther in this case), it's easily possible to target the other side of the tall grass. However, the crops block LOS very effectively, even though the crops are much shorter than the grass. I'm guessing the problem could be that the graphics of the crops have been changed to look like autumn, but that the game still treats the crops as tall summer plants, blocking LOS.

I used to believe it worked like that, but there was some guy recently who demonstrated that trees and forests in this game are somewhat abstracted, so it's more a game of chance if you can trace LOF through X-number of forest tiles.

No problem, I don't mind a bit of digression. Main point has been debated anyway

*tips hat* Did you play the mission in question yourself? Meijel Madness. Would like to hear your take on it, and if you had the same targeting issues that I have.

LOS for crew-served weapons is traced from the gunner's point of view specifically. A grey target line means the gunner has LOS but at least one other crew member does not. So if the gunner does not have LOS, but at least one other crew member has, does the game then display "no line of sight" or a grey targeting line?

That's definitely a factor often in play. I did notice a similar problem earlier in the same scenario though, where I was benefiting from it: One of my Lynx tanks somehow got a spot on an enemy Stuart through what seemed like a lot of trees. The Lynx started firing and just kept shooting for many turns, all shots getting stopped by the trees. The Stuart sat there and never spotted my Lynx and never returned fire. Eventually the Lynx destroyed enough foliage that a few shots started to get through, causing the Stuart to back off. It seems like this situation is like the M8 situation above, just in reverse. One vehicle gets a very unlikely spot, and somehow manages to stubbornly keep that spot indefinitely, whereas in other situations, normally targets drift in and out of active spotting. I'm not yelling this is a bug, but it's something that seems very odd to me.