Bulletpoint

Your answer is surprising, because in my recent game, I thought I was being very sneaky with my tanks that just arrived as reinforcements. But then my opponent tells me on game chat "Oh it seems like you just got 3-4 tanks". I'm pretty sure I was way more than 230 metres away from him, and for sure I was out of LOS as there was a slope on the map. Thanks for answering though. I'm disappointed my moving around on SLOW speed made no difference. I thought that tank engines in real life made more noise when they work harder.

I had a similar, but different, situation in my recent H2H game. Knowing a Panther had moved out of cover, I sent a bazooka team to crawl up along a hedge to hit it in the rear. Once they arrived, they spotted the tank, 50 metres away... the bazooka guy started aiming... then suddenly the tank disappeared and the guy with the bazooka went back to "spotting". Meanwhile, the Panther was starting to turn around, I saw this by another team that had a visual on it. After maybe 4-5 important seconds, the tank had almost completed turning, then the bazooka guy saw it again. He fired twice but it was useless now that the tank had turned. So, it was like your situation, a very close by tank disappears, even for a team of 4 infantry, so it's not just a matter of limited situational awareness for tanks.

When I move my tanks, I don't want my enemy to hear them and get sound contacts. I think I once read that if I use SLOW, tanks make less noise, is that correct? What if I use MOVE, QUICK, or FAST, does noise go up with each new speed, or is it a case of SLOW = quiet and all other movement types = noisy? And is there any rule of thumb about how close to the enemy I can drive my tanks without being heard?

Just had a battle where my tank destroyer fired on a Panther, the shot bounced off, then artillery fell and my unit's LOS was cut off by the smoke and dust. The crew stopped aiming and went to "spotting". Then the Panther fired through the smoke and killed them all. This happened two times in a row, so I'm wondering if Panthers have some kind of infrared vision or if smoke/dust doesn't really block LOS but gives a random spotting penalty so you might lose LOF or not depending on chance? In the same game, enemy infantry opened fire on my unbuttoned tank destroyer through several puffs of heavy arty dust, and the tank destroyer returned fire immediately. So I'm starting to think dust from artillery simply doesn't work to block LOS, or at best it's very weak effect. How should I interpret it?

I'm a newbie to H2H games, so for me, everything about CMhelper and the process of doing a multiplayer game was new. However, what happened was that I set up CMhelper correctly, but it didn't work. I know it was set up correctly, because when I downloaded version 1.5 and set it up the exact same way, then it worked just fine. When it didn't work, I didn't know what to do. My opponent told me to set the second folder, I didn't actually want to. Because I read the note saying "second folder is optional", so I assumed it wouldn't need to be set. However, once I chose to set a second folder (but in fact selected the same single dropbox folder), then CMhelper sent the turn to my opponent. However, CMhelper is clever enough to realise that I selected the same folder as both incoming and outgoing, so it reset my choice, leaving the screen to select folders as it were: Just one folder, the dropbox one. I guess what's happening here is the same as you noticed a couple of times. CMhelper gets confused somehow. Probably because we had in fact aborted the game once and restarted it without playing, so there might have been some files left, even though I had chosen "end game" and deleted the files. Maybe 1.6.2 would work if I reinstalled it and then manually copied the files as you suggested. But I don't want to risk doing anything stupid while we have our game in progress. If it's not broken, don't fix it...

Maybe you could also write a few words about you as a player, your skill level, what kind of scenarios you like to play, what sides you like to play, etc..

I only tried setting a second folder because the program didn't work with only one. I asked my opponent about it and he told me to set the second folder. So I did that, and CMhelper immediately sent the turn to him, but next turn I had to do the same thing, etc. Now, with version 1.5, it works as designed, using only one dropbox folder for incoming and outgoing save files

I started out by using version 1.6.2, that's the version that didn't work. When I installed 1.5, it started working as it should, with just one inbound/outbound folder (the dropbox).

Brilliant, it works. Thanks.

The BattleFront promotional splash screen (picture of tank firing) is nice and all, but I would prefer just to go directly to the menu. Especially now that I started multiplayer and enter/exit the game all the time. Is this possible?

My opponent suggested I install version 1.5, and it seems it's working now... fingers crossed.

Just started my first H2H game, and using CMhelper. When my opponent plays his turn, CMhelper immediately sees the file in dropbox and copies it to my game folder. But after I do my turn and exit the game, nothing happens. If I then go to right click and "edit game", I can then browse to set an "outgoing" folder, and point it at the dropbox folder. Then immediately, CMhelper copies the file. But next turn, the same happens, and the "outgoing" folder reverts to blank. Is it supposed to work like this or what am I doing wrong?

I'll reply to my own question in case anyone else ends up here looking for the same thing. I found there's a scenario called Le Desert that comes with the game, and it looks good. Will be quite a challenge for me as the US side I think

I forgot to mention that I only hav ethe base game (but updated to version 3)

About to start my very first game against a human opponent, and I would like to play as the US on the defense (because I played single player so far, and nearly all maps have the player as the attacker, I would like a new challenge). My opponent says there are almost no maps like that though, and he recommended Barkmann's Corner. But I don't think that mission is what I'm looking for, really.. I'd prefer a smaller map, mostly infantry but maybe with a bit of armour support.

Yep, fully agree that the shot should be able to go right through it, but not without a penetration message and a decal.

AT gun shot goes straight through M8 scout car, kills a crew member, but doesn't say "penetration" and doesn't leave a hit decal (neither entry nor exit hole) Following 2 shots both hit, give penetration messages, and leave decals. Savegame available if anyone's interested.

The editor would really benefit from a general overhaul. AI plans are just one of many convoluted aspects of it. It would make me personally more interested in doing more scenarios, and I suspect I'm not the only one who might be interested in doing more, if it were made more accessible. But one thing is learning curve and accessibility. Another is basic features that make better and more realistic scenarios possible. Such as a facing command. The important thing is not so much facing itself, it's that troops end up on the wrong side of cover. I'm surprised a "take cover towards" command at the end of a movement order hasn't been implemented yet, surely some of the volunteer official scenario designers must have needed it, especially now that we have a simple AI-trigger system that really begs to be used for fallback plans. It wouldn't need to be a 360 degree command like in the game, a simple drop-down menu to select a general compass direction would be just fine. (north, northeast, east, southeast... etc).

Yes, they can be set up to hide. Yes, they can then be given a move order when an enemy enters a trigger area. Yes. No to all of these. The unit will just end up facing in the direction of travel. I wanted to do the same as you, a triggered fallback AI, but it's useless because the AI will not be able to take advantage of cover. If you order a unit to fall back to a wall or a hedgerow, they will end up on the wrong side of the cover, facing away from the enemy. You can, however, order infantry to fall back to foxholes or trenches. They will then sit there facing away from the enemy, but reorient themselves quite quickly once the enemy appears. Still looks dumb though. There's a workaround possible where you give troops two orders - first an order to move one square behind the hedgerow, then another order to move up to it. Then they will end up on the right side with the right facing, but this is a bit bothersome to work with. Also it means the fallback takes longer to complete. If you want a tank to fall back, it will always turn and expose its backside.

In my experience, even the wooden bunkers are now invulnerable to indirect fire from anything smaller than 105mm artillery, and I'm pretty sure not even the 105mm will do anything. Direct fire 75mm will still take out wooden bunkers though, after a couple of hits. Concrete bunkers seem extremely tough, but played very little with those, so can't say exactly how tough. All bunkers are still quite easily spotted. Not sure if they are less easy to spot now than back then - I had not discovered the game yet back in 2012 when you did your tests.

You don't set arcs like in the normal game. What you do is to change the "stance" of the unit group to for example "Engage 200 metres", either at setup or at the end of an order, and it means the unit group will only open fire at targets within 200 metres - effectively working like a circular target arc. The downside of this is that you can't give such orders to individual units unless you assign just that unit to a specific AI group. In my small scenario "Crossroads at Pierrefitte-en-Cinglais", there are only few Germans, but a lot of various AI groups, allowing me flexibility of setup and orders.

I might be wrong about this, but I suspect that during the orders phase, you might need to do the face command first, then click the pop smoke button. If you click the smoke button first and the face command afterwards, they'll throw the smoke before changing facing. This advice is just based on my general experience with the game, I haven't done any testing. I don't have my CM computer with me right now, so can't do a test of this.

As I understand it, a squad's Leadership modifier is only based on how good their leader is. If he gets killed, the whole squad loses his bonus. But the squad's Motivation modifier is based on all squad memebers. If the leader gets killed, the rest of the squad retain their motivation (or lack of it). So, if you have low motivation troops with a great leader, they may perform well until their leader is killed, at which point they'll suddenly turn pretty useless. On the other hand, experienced and motivated troops with a poor leader will not change much if that leader is lost. I've never seen any squad *increase* leadership modifier if their -2 leader is killed. You'd think if your crappy sergeant (and team leader) got shot, there would at least be a small chance some random squaddie would take command and show just a bit more talent. But no. Never happens. This makes me believe that the game assumes that the worst possible leaders simply provide no leadership bonus at all, basically same as being absent. So, a -2 leader doesn't provide a negative modifier, he just does nothing. In reality, I suppose a really bad leader might actually be worse than having no leader at all.

But probably what actually happens in the game is that the player just rolls up his tank and starts area fire on the location of the at-gun, not waiting for the tank to spot the gun itself.

Your problem might be your mouse driver. Try updating it and if that doesn't work, uninstall it and use the generic windows mouse driver.