Bulletpoint

It sounds like you set a movement order by mistake. Try selecting AI group 1 and see if they have any movement orders. If so, delete the order.

Thanks @IanL. Didn't occur to me that it had been documented in the manual.

How does the area fire capability work in practice? As a scenario designer, how do I implement it? Do I select specific target points or do I paint an area to distribute fire over? Can I have units do area fire while on the move?

Try recording your voice through a cord phone while biting down on a carrot - just to match your voice to your picture Joking aside, nice videos.

It's sound advice, and it's also what I usually do. However, when moving in close and doing a pre-assault target order to throw grenades (as per Bil's tactical manual), I often waste a lot of SMG ammo shooting at the ground. And sometimes then get caught reloading.

I agree, and unfortunately even when doing a "target light" order, they still seem to use their SMGs.

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Nice writeup @IanL, and well illustrated. I particularly appreciate that you include your order lines in the screenshots. It's nice to be able to see how you go about it. Always interesting to get a glimpse into other players' way of thinking.

I remember being new at the game and playing the same starter campaign and also running out of ammo quickly The trick is that you often don't need to give target orders. You just get your guys in position and let them shoot when they spot the enemy. you only use target orders to suppress the enemy while you maneuver. So yes, it chews up ammo fast to do area fire orders, but you should only need to keep them active for a minute or two.

Another nasty trick we sometimes do is to make the setup variable, so even if the enemy was over there in your last game, there's no telling where he is in this game Not all scenarios have this variability, but I recommend all scenario designers to use it. Makes for much better replayability.

I think most players would find that to be a poor show indeed. The key to enjoy this game against other players is to find opponents with the same attitude as you have. I personally like to play against people who do their very best to win but at the same time display good sportsmanship, and I've been lucky to find a couple of them so far. I've actually never really had to agree on many rules with them beforehand, but they have been playing remarkably fair. I think this is one of the big positives about Combat Mission - I sense the player base is generally older than for many other games out there, and (at least for some) older means wiser

Not sure it would need heavy testing.. I think most buildings (apart from the churches) offer exactly the same (quite decent) level of cover. It's just the barns that should be shown as being made from wooden planks, since that's the level of protection they seem to provide in the game. Also if I remember right, there's one modular building in CMBN which looks like the bottom floor is made from wood, but it's giving the same cover as the other brick buildings.

@Joao Perru I have an idea about what could cause the situation you describe. In this game, some big buildings are in fact barns, and they offer very poor cover. But to a beginner, they may look quite sturdy. So it is possible that you were fighting from barns and your enemies were in real buildings. Especially if you use mods, this can be a problem. For example, there's a mod that makes barns in Normandy look like this, but even though it looks like a sturdy stone house, it still only offers the protection of a wooden barn in the game.:

I wouldn't recommend using a mortar to suppress a building while moving in an assault team And if I had an infantry gun, there would be no need for an assault at all.

Because getting the timing right is extremely tricky, and if I get it wrong by just five seconds or so, there's a real risk that the suppressed enemies will pop up again and shoot my assault team before they reach the building. So I often prefer to over-suppress a bit to be on the safe side.

I find that very often my guys won't shoot when they reach the building, because they won't immediately spot the covering enemies inside the building. Without active spotting, no shooting. And they don't have long to spot the enemies either, since when they are at the building, they will start to take suppression from the friendly covering fire. Unless I am mistaken, in real life troops won't run up to an enemy occupied building and stand in front of the windows and look inside. If they have just a minimum of training (or basic good sense ) they will take up positions at the sides of the windows and throw in grenades. It would be cool if the "throw grenades" command would be dependent on having an enemy contact marker within grenade range (just like the "mark mines" command needs a revealed minefield nearby). This would represent troops not just running around throwing grenades everywhere, but that you would need to make the assault squad aware of the enemy presence before they would do it.

I often feel the need for a command to throw grenades when assaulting a building. I can suppress the defenders and get an assault team right up against the wall of the house, but to throw grenades I then need to do an area fire order, which means my SMG troops will fire their whole magazine blindly into the floor and then get shot by the defenders while reloading.

Yes, this is normal. It represents pre-planning the bombardment. You'll find that if you order a fire mission during setup, you also get the option to set a delay and in some cases a choice between regular and anti-personnel shells (timed airburst).

Never expected them to be invulnerable, but a guy peeking around a corner presents a very small target. So I would assume he would get a decent cover/concealment bonus. Haven't tried out 4.0 so can't say if the level of protection is adequate, just that I would expect peeking troops to get quite good cover values.

Isn't that the whole idea of having a TacAI though? That we give orders and the pixeltroops carry them out in a sensible way?

Does the guy peeking around the corner get any cover bonus? As he is not very exposed...

I think the best thing would just be to make it dependent on the type of move order. If giving a QUICK move order, the game should assume the player doesn't want to go through places with marked mines. But if given a HUNT or SLOW order, the game should assume the player is fine with moving through the marked mines.

It's supposed to happen automatically if you type a @ and then the first characters of the username, but once in a while it doesn't work for some reason.

I think you're thinking of the Panther mantlet shot trap issue? But I was talking about the mantled being penetrated straight on.

Absolutely cracking job, @Fuser ! I especially love the details where it looks like they didn't bother whitewashing the entire vehicle (or didn't have time!). Little details like this really make the game come alive, and tell a little part of a big story. Thanks for doing the mods.