Bulletpoint

In the game, even a Stug is safe from strafing... it can knock out optics and radio though.

Good to know the game now accurately models desertion..

I think the manual just confuses things really. It's not really about waypoint distances and all that. Exit before and after timings just specify the time the AI group will exit their current order and start executing the next one. "Exit" means "Exit current order". So if your 'Exit after' is set to 5 and your 'Exit before' is also set to 5, then the unit will start moving after exactly 5 minutes from the start of the scenario. If your 'Exit before" is set to 10, then the unit will randomly wait between 5 and 10 minutes from scenario start until it starts moving.

In the game, the sniper rifle would probably win though. Because the way it works in the game is that the SMG chooses one (1) aim point and then the whole salvo either hits or misses that location. There's very little spraying or scattering effect that would increase the chances of hitting. In real life, you might know there's an enemy in a group of three bushes, but you don't know which one. You can then spray all three very quickly with your SMG, and have a good chance of hitting something. With the rifle, you'd have to slowly fire shot after shot. In the game, it seems there's little benefit from the additional bullets in each burst. The whole burst effectively counts as a single shot. Same goes for LMGs. I'm currently in a game where my LMG team has been firing for two full minutes at an enemy soldier kneeling in the open about 180m away, but they just can't hit him. First burst goes 4 metres to the right, next burst goes 4 metres to the left, third goes 4 metres to the right again, etc. etc. (sorry for digging this thread up again, I keep thinking about accuracy and how it's modelled in the game)

I already split the squad, so it's just the MG team there. Would be nice if they shuffled around automatically to let the best gun fire at spotted targets.

I'm playing around with facing commands, but so far no luck... I wonder if there is any "trick" to this.

I have a German team in a building that only has one single window. The team has a machinegun, but they don't use it. Only one soldier is firing from the window, and he has a rifle. Any way to make the machinegunner do his job?

Mods are a matter of personal taste. They only change the appearance of the game, so I would say look at some screenshots and decide what you like the game to look and sound like. I personally don't use any mods...

Only if they spot that enemy. Which they won't, if they are behind a low wall or bocage. Because even when they are briefly "spotting", they are still prone, which means LOS is blocked and there is no chance to spot anything. To pull off an ambush like this, I think you need to be in forest terrain.

Thanks for the elaboration. I guess another factor is that when you're firing your MG at the aircraft, you're using your tracers to aim, but at what distance does the tracer burn out? At what distance does it become to faint to see, especially in daylight? Even more so with the sun in your eyes, if the aircraft attacks with the sun behind it. Heavier AA weapons would likely have bigger, more powerful tracers that burn longer - but this is speculation on my part.

No offense taken, sometimes it's necessary to ask 'stupid' questions if we want to learn something. However, I know about gravity The thing I don't understand is how longer range is an advantage in this case, because I assume an aircraft would need to get closer than 1000 metres anyway, in order to see and hit the target. Maybe this assumption is wrong? Edit: Or maybe we could say 2000 metres. From what I read, an MG42 has an effective range of 2 km, and a max range of around 4.7 km.

I also love real curvy... roads. On huge ... tracts of land. Seriously though I'm surprised you say hard dirt tiles flatten the surface. I never noticed this. How does it work - you mean it changes the elevation of that point?

Not sure I understand why such tank-mounted machineguns would discourage or chase off enemy airplanes, if the ammunition was not effective? Also not sure I understand why attacking aircraft would have a range advantage, since a MG42 has an effective range of more than 2 km? What distance/altitude did aircraft engage from? If more than 2 km, how could they even see the target? By the way, I'm not attacking anyone's argument here, it's just that I genuinely don't understand

I would like the same thing, but I guess it's because some guns are unable to fire that fast. So the interface would have to change for each battery. Still would like to see it implemented, or some other means of better being able to control rate of fire. Maybe give the player a preview screen that said "Ok, so you chose to fire 2x81mm mortars at medium intensity. That will give you a rate of fire of apprx. 20 rounds per minute. Yes/no"?

The only problem with BattleFront is that they know they are the "only show in town" when it comes to this particular genre. Some good old fashioned American free market competition would help to give them a run for their money.. but I'd still cheer for them to win the race.

That's one amazing tree. I wonder how old it is. Most trees are much smaller though. I would like to know how strong a regular big oak tree (too big to wrap your arms all the way around) would be against bullets and shells.

"Turd forests". It's a term I've come up with for those maps where the designer believes forests are made by painting a turd-like area with 100% heavy forest tiles, then adding maximum number of trees for every tile. Because to do a forest you need to paint it with forest tiles right? That's what they are there for? And forests have lots of trees, right? The result is a ridiculous, impenetrable and ugly thing to look at. In real life, even the heaviest forest terrain has some patches of less density, some open areas, and they don't just stop at an arbitrary border. Rather, there will be some smaller trees, some bushes, etc. (this is a pet peeve of mine, but fortunately it's rare - I've also seen many designers doing great looking and very believable forest terrain)

Yes, I believe they will do an Africa game or module eventually, because they need an income, and it doesn't seem like they are keen on making a new engine that would make the most famous theaters sellable again. So once the other famous battles are exhausted, their eye will fall on Africa. And I think it could work out well. Even quite flat maps can be made interesting by making gentle undulations of the terrain, to mask movement, but this kind of warfare would probably need an engine upgrade to allow for larger maps - 8x8km at the least. Maybe hard on the computer, but it wouldn't have to do much foliage, or hedgerows, or other terrain.

I think this is one of the rare moments when the ASSAULT command would have been useful. Because then the second team would also have been suppressed when the first team took fire, and so they wouldn't have completed their movement.

I believe it's not just about having fewer "spotting" cycles, but more about being behind a wall, as you say. The hiding troops will stay prone even while hiding, and this means the wall or bocage (or anything really) will completely block LOS, giving the troops 0% chance of spotting the enemy. Because they never come up to peek over the obstacle as they likely would in real life. So if your guys are hiding behind bocage or a low wall, they will never see anything on the other side, even if the enemy walks straight up to them.

Yes, exactly. Setting textures to "best" should be no problem if you have a 4 Gb GPU. At least it doesn't decrease performance on my system.

Are you talking about "graphics quality" or "texture quality"?

Sorry for derailing the thread, but I can't look at that screenshot without wondering why there are haystacks in the middle of an un-harvested field On topic, you should easily be able to use "best" textures, since you have a 4 Gb graphics card. No reason to keep it on "balanced".

Sounds like you are talking about texture quality. I was talking about the setting graphics quality.

In reality, wouldn't an AP shell just go straight through the trunk? I would love to see a slow-motion clip of that.