Bulletpoint

My point is that we would not need to go that far. Just making the AI stop and take a pause when it passes some good cover would be very useful.

I think it's a bit beside the point to keep asking for more AI groups to fix the AI. It's a bit like saying WE NEED MORE HORSES... when what you really need is a truck maybe. As I see it (after some experience building scenarios) is that we need the game to interpret AI orders orders in a better way. When given an advance order, the units will just run towards the designated destination. If each team made a short (30 sec) stop each time they reached a place of cover (hedge, low wall, etc.), the order would be massively more useful. It wouldn't mean the AI would suddenly start acting like a world class player, but it would make it much easier for a designer to make the AI attack in a reasonably believable way. As it is, we can use an assault AI order (not the same as the assault command in the game), which makes the units of the group move in bounds, but the individual legs of the bounds are way too long, so units can't suppoirt each other, and no attention is given to cover along the way, which means units will happily run straight past a place of cover and then hunker down in the open field 30 metres ahead. Currently, the only way to do a sort of workable AI attack is to very carefully use a lot of individual move orders to micromanage exactly where each AI unit will end up and for how long, and then sculpt the landscape of the map to make sure the odds are stacked against the player.

There's no operational and strategic AI in this game, there's just the TacAI and then the orders the scenario designer put into the scenario..

Well, it only took two nuclear bombs to force the fanatical Japanese to surrender. Also, probably the Russians didn't know how many more bombs the US might have in stock at that time. But they must have known that the US production was ramping up fast. It would be a full four years before the Soviets could even conduct their own first nuclear test. So, if the Russians wanted to take Europe, they would need to do so extremely quickly, against an Allied military machine in full swing, and under the shadow of the US (and British) strategic bombers. My point is that it would not be rational for the Reds to attack in that situation. But yeah, this is not an argument against Combat Mission 1946. I think it could be good. I just thought the historical side is interesting, and I think the assumption that the Russians would be the aggressors is unlikely in that moment in time. Not defending Russia, nor Communism.

I think you're contradicting yourself a bit here - why would the Russians attack when they knew the Allies had nuclear weapons? It's far more likely that the Allies would decide to push back the Reds a bit now that they had the atomic advantage. In real life, of course they didn't do that, but in terms of game theory it would make some sense to attack while you have the ultimate weapon and your opponent hasn't got it - yet.

He's the guy who made the Road to Montebourg campaign that came with the CMBN base game, as well as the Scottish Corridor campaign for the Commonwealth module.

According to Wikipedia, there was only one single Super Pershing sent to Europe.. I wonder what the rarity value would be

I think your arguments are good, but what if they changed and updated the engine a bit as part of the new game? Just like CMRT came with flame throwers and tank riders. I could imagine CM Vietnam coming with improved fortifications and a system to let the US player target by grid coordinates. Whether or not the game would be fun to play is another question. I think it would depend a lot on scenario design. "Cleanse this jungle area of Viet Cong" would probably not be a fun battle. It's not much fun to clear a dense monobloc forest of SS troops in CMBN either, if you ask me. But "Land in dropzone Alpha and proceed to destroy arms cache in village, then evacuate wounded and dust off" might be.

Just be aware that his mods change the barns so that they look like they are made of solid stone. But the game still treats them as wooden barns, so don't take cover there. Also it seems the mod introduces some graphical glitches: the texture for the roofs of various buildings is put on the wrong way.

I suppose AT guns were used in much more flexible ways in real life, but I guess they are sluggish in the game mainly for gameplay reasons.

I'm starting to believe you might actually be an old English oil painting who gets on the computer when the lord of the manor is away...

You'd be surprised. Some lefties play wargames too

I know you just shared a story about how you nearly got shot, so excuse me for a change of focus, but .. you dumped your trash in the river?

So, pretty much as the present Hunt command? Yes, if you think Elmer Fudd is dashing when he goes hunting...

This picture shows the mantlet to be much thicker and more sloped than the frontal armour. In my test, shots go through the mantlet all the time, but in no cases penetrate the front hull.

Just did a bit of fast and loose testing with a US scout team, and found that only their marksman fires at 199m distance. At 167m distance, one of the two Thompsons fires (the leader) but the other guy holds fire. At 159m, both Thompsons fire. This is all doing area fire, using v. 3.12. So, it seems to not be a feature of the 4.0 patch.

Thanks for taking a look. You find the penetrations of the mantlet to be in line with what can be expected of this plate and angle of impact? Again, I'm no expert, but that part seems awfully thick and well angled against hits coming in head on.

Actually I didn't mention it. Thompson has a shorter range in the game. Troops with Thompsons will engage enemy within a target arc at ca 170 m but no farther than that. At least they didn't for me. Thanks. Just learnt something new then. I just assumed all SMGs were capped at exactly 200m, without ever really testing it out

Those are the special forces though. I was talking about the regular Iraqi Army. There's a reason why Mosul is largely destroyed - they called in a lot of airstrikes against snipers. Would I have done the same? Probably. Not out to bash anyone here. My point was just about how wars are fought today. If you can put your finger on a map on your smartphone and five minutes later that building is hit by a bomb, why would you bother with suppression fire and movement? For anyone who feels their mood is too good today, here's the long and extremely depressing read about how the battle of Mosul was fought and the torture and murders of prisoners that followed: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/21/after-the-liberation-of-mosul-an-orgy-of-killing

My point was about the tactics used. Not saying they didn't have a tough time.

I sent you a savegame an a mail about the possible issues.

I also use Nvidia, and I've tried everything to fix the shadows. No luck. I don't think it has to do with the settings you can adjust in that panel. It's apparently due to some deeper driver issues that the game developers are unable to fix - apparently because the game is built on outdated tech that is no longer supported by the graphics card companies.. A damn shame, because it keeps bugging me a lot too.

And the Apache is wasteful compared to a Predator drone piloted by some ex-teenager playing with a joystick somewhere in rural Kentucky... War has changed a lot since WW2 ! From what I've read of the recent war against ISIS, there was no real fire and movement going on. Instead, the Iraqi army would advance shooting wildly into the air, then when enemy snipers revealed themselved in this way, the Iraqis would dial in an airstrike from their US friends using an app on a provided smartphone.. Rinse and repeat till the town was ruined and no enemy fighters were left. But I suspect this tactic only works because there were not that many enemy fighters to begin with, only some tens of thousands - compared to the millions of soldiers in the Wehrmacht for example. Anyway, this is getting off topic. With the focus on WW2 tactics, I think CM models suppression quite well, as I understand it.

How come the Thompson data stops at around 160m, whereas the other SMGs continue until almost 200m? Sorry if this has been explained before, I tried reading back in the thread and could not find the answer there...

Not a Scooby.....Makes no sense to me either, just offering possibilities. It's all good, I just forget to add a smiley sometimes