Bulletpoint

That's clever. But you still have to manually read the results of each test I guess? I'm not sure if you're aware that there was a guy some years ago who did a test of the accuracy of various CMBN weapons? He was analysing kills per bullet, whereas you're looking at kills per minute.

Thanks @Drifter Man for doing all these tests and sharing them here. Some of this seems puzzling, such as the K98 being so useless. Obviously it was no machinegun, but it was no pea-shooter either Would be interesting to see a comparison with the other basic rifles of the various nations...

Thank you for sharing this anecdote. I think there's a world of difference between a serious wargame such as CM and many of the instant gratification shooters. I personally think of CM as an "anti war game" - it shows how quickly any soldier on the battlefield can turn into a little cross, often for no good reason at all.

I like this idea, especially if the squad leader and his binoculars stay with the gun team to spot for the MG.

Now that we're all just happily listing our wishes for Santa, here's another one that would be great to have if the elves could make it work: Limited spotting when the sun's in the eyes of your troops. So, attacking in the early morning light with the sun behind you would give you an advantage.

I'd like to see a "limited direct fire order" for mortars, which would make the mortar fire spotting rounds to get the range, then drop 3-5 very fast rounds on target, then stop firing. If we can't get that, I'd just like to see fire missions going through much faster when using the mortar squad's own officers as the spotting unit.

Sounds very sensible. We can already toggle trees and smoke, so would be nice to add: Toggle darkness Toggle weather (fog, rain, snow)

I noticed that the tank commander of the Panzer IVG (late) and (latest) have the commander sticking halfway out of the turret when unbuttoned. The rest of the PZIV family only shows the commander sticking his head out. Not sure if this is a "bug" as such - I think it's an issue caused by someone forgetting to lower the commander of some tank models. By the way, I'm still on v 3.12. Not sure if it was fixed in 4.0.

You just enable extra night brightness (alt+B). That's what I think most people would do anyway, when playing night missions.

I agree. I think all troops should be "taken down a notch", both regarding when they surrender, how much fire is needed to suppress them, etc.

Having the graphics show what the actual conditions are. How dark is it? How foggy is it? Right now, we have to guess, because nights are always a sort of twilight, and even heavy fog only shows as a kind of mist at long distances, but these things have huge consequences for the battle. Also, I would love to see an update that fixed the graphical glitches such as shadows popping on and off, houses flickering between shaded and full-bright depending on the angle of the camera, etc.

I've read that some 75mm HE had more explosive filler than other shells. For example, the short barrelled "Stummel" supposedly had a 75mm shell that packed more of a punch, since the low exit velocity meant that the walls of the shell could be thinner, allowing more explosive filler. Is this modelled in this game, or is 75mm HE always the same?

I think that in realtime, any player can pause the game, so there's plenty of time to discuss and tell each player what to do ?

Co-play sounds great in theory, but I don't think it works out in practice. In my experience with boardgames, it quickly turns into "Argument: The Game", where players constantly communicate and discuss in detail bicker about what each player should or should not be doing. So you end up with both sides' forces acting like a big coordinated blob anyway. It could be fun if one of the players were the battalion commander and issued general orders to company commanders - advance, retreat, take objective, etc. but I think it would quickly turn into detailed orders like "Move your tank forward ten metres so it has LOS to hillock A". Individual players would be reduced to counter pushers.

According to the guy in the video, the Panther commanders rarely ever opened the hatch completely to poke their head clean out of the tank (like in the game), so the easy solution could be simply lowering the commander's unbuttoned position significantly...

In your case, it worked out well and looked like a movie scene, but I think it's actually caused by a kind of bug or issue with the squad cohesion programming. I've seen the same thing happen many times; that members of a squad will sometimes run back a good distance and then run forward again. Usually, I see if happen when I move asquad across a field and up to a hedgerow. When they get to the hedge, they take some fire from the other side, and then 1 or 2 squad members will turn and run back into the field, then turn and come back.

There are two main problems here: 1: The remaining lumped-up squad is too big and cannot split further. 2: The German squads are built around the MG, designed to split into two teams, each with one MG for mutual support. After splitting off the scout team, I'm left with one huge team that has both MGs. Obviously that team has a good bullet output, but it also easily gets suppressed. The loss of tactical flexibility far outweighs the concentration of firepower. I'm tempted to start using halftrack drivers, mortar ammo carriers etc. for scouts, but that just seems a bit gamey.

Lately I have been playing a lot more CMBN as the Germans, and found many of their squads can only split into two teams. This means that when I split off a 2-man scout team, the rest of the squad will stay together as one big blob. If the scouts get killed, this blob will stay together for the rest of the mission, severaly limiting the tactical options and making the squad vulnerable because it's so bunched up. With the US forces, sending out one scout team still gives me the option to split the rest of the squad into two teams. So, how do I do recon as the Germans (and other factions that can't split squads into 3 teams)? I've found that I started sending out scout teams much less, instead splitting squads evenly and then going forward like that. It makes me take higher casualties though. Any ideas? I don't have v.4.0 yet, but I read it has a consolidate squad button. Does that give back the ability to split into teams, even after the scouts are gone?

If you place a point target on a building, the fire mission will automatically cancel when the building is destroyed. I believe this also goes for targeting sections of walls, so be careful to target the ground if you want the fire mission to continue even if the wall is destroyed.

Thanks for taking a look at it. It just seems to me I have had tanks fire from similar positions many times in the past - both US and German tanks. Not sure what about this particular hedgerow setup that would make it different...

Not saying CM gets anything wrong. Not doubting artillery was the major killer. But I think comparing artillery kill rates over the entire war to small arms kill rates on any given day where a soldier goes into direct combat is making an apple to oranges comparison

There was an old Amiga500 game where each of your little dead soldiers would get a little cross on a hill on the opening screen. As you kept playing, the number of crosses would grow. Maybe CM could do something similar, so we could at least save some of them from getting a cross there. No, of course I'm not really serious. But I thought it was a poignant touch for an arcade game back then. Made my little stupid kid brain start to think about more than beating the highscore.

Isn't this mostly because the artillery toll includes lots of shelling of rear areas, troops during road movement, etc? Whereas CM only deals with the actual battles where soldiers get close enough to use their rifles.

To be honest, I had a bit of a "Hitler reacts" moment that evening, so I quit the game without saving But since you offer to take a look at it, I will try to see if I can recreate the situation.

Ok, after thinking about this some more, I think it must have to do with the tank's vision cone. Tanks get a restricted arc of vision when they drive up to bocage. Maybe it's possible that the TD was just off the main gun's cone of vision, but that the hull MG, being placed further forward, would get a wider cone of vision through bocage, and thus being able to target the TD? Meanwhile, the TD, not being in bocage, would have 360 degrees of freedom to fire, and thus be able to target the Panther. It just seemed like the TD was not that far off to the right. I've been playing this game for years, and it seems to me that I have been able to target before in those situations.