Bulletpoint

Apparently the most powerful Swedish grenades don't come with a pin included

That's only true when playing quick battles against the computer, which, in my opinion, is a waste of time. I'm talking about playing scenarios.

Minutiae

I think people focus too much on main battle tanks and tend to forget that there were huge numbers of lightly armoured vehicles fighting too, not just tanks. Without anti-tank rifles, those light tanks and armoured cars would have be able to operate much more freely and dominate infantry much more.

Actually trees protect quite well against artillery in this game. Because even though the trees correctly make bursts more dangerous by moving point of detonation up above ground level, either the trunks block many of the LOS checks to individual troops, or there's simply a protection bonus for being in wooded squares that more than makes up for the tree burst effect. At least with 60mm mortars and smaller bombs. But I've also seen a 150mm shell burst in a small tree directly above one of my scout teams. One man was lightly wounded.

I think this is pretty much how the Allies won the war. As long as you have tanks, mortars, and artillery, and plenty of time, that's the rational way to fight. However, I personally like infantry centric battles, and I find I've slowly come to learn when I need to micromanage, and when I can be more loose with the orders. Usually what I do is that I will have some scout teams run forward and detect safe routes of advance, and I will then loosely move platoons up along those routes. When I detect enemy presence, I will then form up the platoons (again, in a loose way), and move them closer. Then before real contact, I will start splitting squads and consider the finer points of the terrain. I very rarely play battallion+ sized battles.

In the scenario I'm currently designing, I set the Germans to "typical" EQ level, and the first 2 times I playtested, they got the usual MG42s, rifles, and MP40s. But in the latest playtest, I noticed all the squads suddenly have STG44s instead of the MP40s. So it seems like there's a small chance to have better equipment, but it's not on a per squad basis - it's the entire formation that either gets it or doesn't. Their amount of grenades etc seems the same though.

Right, I forgot for some reason we can choose bazookas directly for some of the US forces.. but for the Germans, it seems we cannot do that. I'm under the impression that the equipment level affects things like the chances of getting STG44s instead of MP40s, but maybe it actually doesn't?

No. Not as far as I know. We can change what kind of tanks and vehicles are used, and adjust the amount of ammo, but we cannot change small arms, infantry AT weapons etc.

The other day I was googling around for an answer to the question but didn't find any. Now today after posting the question here, I did a bit more searching, and found this thread that explains it: It seems what confused me is that we cannot change equipment level after the formation is purchased. This is quite unfortunate when building a scenario, because deleting the formation and re-purchasing it deletes all the carefully placed defensive positions and customised levels of experience and leadership, and even worse, it erases the assigned AI groups. Would be very nice to just be able to change the equipment level and play around with the setting until it gives the right results.

When purchasing formations in the editor, there's a button directly below the "formations" button - this button lets us select the formation's level of equipment. However, I'm not sure how to actually use this button. Do I need to select the equipment level first, then purchase a formation to give the newly purchased formation the selected level of equipment? Or can I select an already purchased formation and use the button to change their equipment? Playing around with the settings don't seem to change anything once I deploy the forces on the map. So I think I'm doing something wrong.

Hi Steve, thanks for explaining things. Looking forward to see what you come up with.

Are rifles supposed to be useful beyond 300m range? In the game, they seem to be useful up to about 250-300m range, as far as I can see.

Actually what baffles me the most is not so much the competence of the American defenders as the sheer incompetence of the Germans. Imagine being a German general looking down on your maps and then the news comes in that your division can't advance because 500 paratroopers got stopped by 18 reconnaissance troops, suffering a 98:1 casualty rate. Even for a penal battallion, that would be bad.

Good looking map. Ivana live there.

Sometimes I will dial in a pre-planned bombardment of suspected enemy positions, but then add a delay of 10 minutes to give me time to scout out the place. If enemies are found, I let the bombardment come in, or I cancel it if the place is empty. Sometimes, I will do this even after replaying several times and knowing the place will be full of Germans.

How do you prevent the Germans from simply firing back and suppressing the 18 defenders?

Once upon a time, I played a game called something like 1942: Pacific on the Amiga. I was amazed at the detail - there was even an aircraft carrier on the ocean! (said carrier being comprised of 3-4 drab grey boxes)... Now we can notice if the soldiers we are strafing polished their boots this morning, and probably if they shaved too

Amazing level of ground detail for a flight simulator. Even grass bending down as the tank passes over it.. The soldier animations could do with a bit of work though

I wish Battlefront would just come out and comment on this issue, saying whether it's a bug that's being looked into, or if things are working as BF thinks they should. And if so, I'd love to understand their thinking. Why their AI behaviour seems the opposite of most wartime accounts I've ever read. World War 1 would have been over very quickly if soldiers got out of their holes to flee across the fields when the first shells started landing.

No problem, I understood you perfectly the first time And yes, the important thing is to have fun.

How did you emulate the complete German incompetence in this battle? Conscript "paratroopers" with -2 leadership? I only stumbled on the Lanzerath wikipedia article, and it leaves me pretty baffled...

Never played it from the German side, but of course the mission is much easier if you happen to guess right where the enemy is, and bring down some artillery on them. But if you guess wrong, you just wasted your fire support.. and some scenario designers are really clever in that the obvious defensive places start out empty, then they get occupied later after you wasted all your shells. So you never really know As far as I remember, the first time I played this scenario, I kept the mortars in reserve, because the LOS is quite good from the hill to most places on the map, so I thought I'd better be flexible with the fire plan. Then in next playthroughs, I knew the enemy was in the village, but it felt like cheating to use this knowledge to bombard them.

Isn't there something about modern MG42 shooters firing at a lower rate of fire and with somewhat different ammunition compared to during the war? I read that somewhere but can't remember where...