Bulletpoint

There's no real reason to prevent them from becoming exhausted. You could also just run them along a path without pauses, and then let them catch their breath at the end of it (if they survive). Pausing for 10x5 seconds along the way or 1x50 seconds at the end gives the same result. But they scout the path much quicker by just letting them run. This is also a good technique, but if you have an observer overlooking the area, it's more effective to simply keep the scouts close to the observer and doing recon by fire. No real reason to send the scout team forward. I find the cases where it makes the most sense to send scouts is to run along a forest path for example and see if there is any danger along the way. You're trading two scouts for a LOT of intel about where you can safely go and where you can't. Because you as the player will know exactly the spot where the scouts disappeared, whereas in reality, you might just hear two shots in the far distance and know that somewhere in that forest there are enemies, but you still have to slowly advance to find them.

Even if you had all the time in the world, there are some things the game won't let you spot. I set up a test where I put an AT gun in a forest tile and had a Sherman advance towards it, trying to find how long it would take to spot at various ranges. To my surprise, there was a hard limit at around 500m where I could park the Sherman at say 510m and have it sit there for 15 minutes without spotting anything, but the moment I moved it just one or two squares forward, it would spot the AT gun within seconds. I still don't know exactly how the spotting works, but it seems to me that in some cases, it's more binary than I previously thought. My impression is that this is how it works in clear weather and perfect visibility, whereas in low light and fog etc there will be a bigger zone of not instant spotting or not but some kind of pct. chance per second.

Scouting in this game is less about sitting still and hoping to spot something, and more about sending an expendable unit forward and having it draw fire. In real life, if you send two scouts running through the field or a forest, they can easily get shot without their friends seeing who shot them or even realising they got killed until they fail to return much later. But thanks to the all-seeing floating camera, we can usually see and follow the tracers (and replay the turn and listen for gunshots) to find the exact enemy position. This makes "throwaway scouting" very powerful.

Not sure why you'd do that?

Are HIMARS rockets really strong enough to penetrate several layers of concrete? I thought they were quite thin walled and optimised for explosive effect.

All of it.

Was it even getting into harm's way? Visiting Kyiv is pretty low risk. Even if Putin knew the exact location, he would find it very difficult to strike at Biden there. Too much AA, not enough missiles. Visiting Bakhmut would be a different thing. Also, Putin would gain absolutely nothing by killing Biden. Quite the opposite.

It seems the Russians are preparing an amphibious landing. At least the frogs will have many new ponds this spring. On a more serious note, I think we can probably add this kind of rocket launcher to the list of weapons that will be seen as obsolete after this war.

With Schrödinger's cat, at least you can open the box and see for yourself if it's dead or alive. Russia's offensive seems more like a certain parrot - even when it's obvious that it's dead, they will still insist that it's just pining for the fjords.

Well if they launch their "new offensive" and nobody notices it, it's a bit like that old philosophical problem about whether a tree that falls in the forest makes a sound if nobody is around to hear it...

I don't think there will be any big Russian offensive. They are already firing off everything they have. It's just wishful thinking for the Russians to dream of a new offensive on the anniversary of the invasion. And it's a useful story for Ukraine to repeat to drum up support for more weapons. Russia might fire off another volley of missiles to mark Feb. 24, and Ukraine will shoot down nearly all of the missiles like they always do. Russia will then claim another big success. Nothing is really going to change in this war until the ground gets dry.

I think you can also do this by adding empty reinforcement groups and inputting the text in the group name. That allows the popup to be shown at a certain time.

It's mostly an effect of the 8m square system rather than the 1m subsquare system - soldiers don't understand how to place themselves in a "hull down" position inside that square. They only find cover such as walls, shellholes, and trees.

I'm sure there are some minor niggles.. and the script can't place proper corner pieces for the roads yet, so you get some hard edges where the road tiles intersect. And I'm sure at least a few of the buildings are placed a bit oddly - and maybe have windows facing into other buildings. But in general, it looks brilliant, I think.

I'm very impressed, Butschi. That map looks both beautiful and tactically interesting. Did your algorithm do all the work, or did you place anything manually? It's good that you let it fill in forests with a mix of light and heavy forest. In my opinion, it looks and plays better than just having mono-block heavy or light forest. Does it also vary the tree density, or what did you set it to? I find three trees per square is too dense for most cases, and the best is usually a mix of tiles with 1 and 2 trees.

I like trade-offs. Clearly it should not be instant fire for effect. The issue is that you get the same call time no matter if it's the mortar's own HQ calling in the strike or some completely other unit HQ on the other side of the map, which has to go through a long C2 command chain.

It's just how the game works, unfortunately. I haven't played the old CM games (CMBB etc), but I read that in those games, it was possible to do what you are asking about - mortars behind a crest, spotter hiding on top. Then the mortars could fire as if they themselves had LOS.

What do you mean by this one?

All factors are tracked for each individual soldier. What you see when you select a team or unit is the average value. In a "regular" infantry team, there might be guys who are veteran +1 and also guys who might be green -1. Same goes for the current morale state. Notice how sometimes when a team surrenders, three out of four guys will put their hands up while the last guy will keep firing. That's because that individual had a better morale state than his buddies. It's also noticeable with AT guns. You can often kill nearly the whole crew, but the last guy who mans the gun will refuse to leave it. He might just randomly happen to be a fanatic, even though his team was only rated as +0 motivation. Other times, even a "veteran" crew will bug out after a few close mortar hits.

Depends on the vehicle though. I tested out some M8 scout cars once, and found that if they are buttoned, they are completely blind to what goes on behind them. Which makes perfect sense since they have no view ports or periscopes facing backwards. But yes, you can still draw a target line in any direction from a vehicle. So that also happens for bunkers. But they shouldn't be able to spot anything behind them.

It feels to me that the US army in WW2 was not that interesting in terms of tech, but it was extremely well put together. They have exactly the right tools for the job, and they have a lot of it. No need for a big zoo of strange specialised vehicles like the Germans or the Brits had.. just huge numbers of Shermans and Garands and 60mm mortars. At least the way it works in CM, I think the US clearly has the best OOB.

More balloon news. This time actually relevant for Ukraine. Russian balloons over Kyiv in new wave of attacks https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64661145

I'm old enough to remember you from back then. Time flies eh? Your campaigns are very good. Some of the very best I played. Back then, I cut my CM teeth on Montebourg, which I completed twice (the standard version and the revised version), and later played through the Scottish Corridor as well. Welcome back.