Bulletpoint

You can actually kill it with rifle fire from about 50 metres distance. I know because I played a lot of armoured infantry only games lately, and I had one instance where I had to bring up an M8 to provide close fire support inside a forest area. However, it does seem to be a bug of some kind, as there's no "penetration" message (or maybe they aim for the vision slits? But in that case, it should display 'Hit:Opening', I guess? There's also another bug with it, where it acts as if the two front hatches open up when you unbutton, but they are not shown opening. Had long-range machinegun fire kill both the crewmen inside the wagon, without any penetration messages. I reported the bug and Vanir sent it to BF.

Main thing is - if you pay the extra points for the mobility of a tank destroyer, you better use that mobility. If you're just letting it sit in a nice keyholed position, you might as well save the points and get an AT gun. As long as you trade guns for enemy tanks 1 to 1, you're winning.

I'd like to try it out..

Anyone did that?

Very true, but the same could be said about going from CMx1 to CMx2. And next time, they could choose to start with the early war and progress in time from there. That could also serve as a kind of "open beta", to test and fine tune the new system before moving to the eras that have more mass appeal. However, I don't think we will ever see a Cmx3 from the same guys. I think they will keep their business going with the current system until they retire, then sell off the brand and assets to some younger folks who grew up with modern programming and hardware.

I don't care too much about the price really, it's not that much. I'm willing to pay good money for good quality, and these games have superb gameplay quality. But I do care about the game developing, both with regards to features, content, graphics, bug-fixing, etc. I personally don't think the series is progressing enough, at least not where it counts. The new features added over the years are decent, but often seem a bit half baked in their implementation (air support, flame throwers, tank riders..), and while old niggles are sometimes eventually fixed, they are often left festering for ages (people had to resort to mods for years just to be able to turn off the music, before the option was finally included - as part of a 10-dollar upgrade). The new Bugle title apparently won't change much in the way the game works either, but will add some new units and artwork, which is nice enough, but not really moving the series fundamentally forward. I know Battlefront is a small company working on a tight budget etc. and I'm not complaining or blaming them for anything. But that's what's affecting my motivaton to buy, much more than price.

Definitely true they get tired when crawling, but that's why I only use the "crawlsault" when I am pretty sure where the enemy is, within a few squares. If I only suspect an enemy, I will use HUNT. If I don't think there will be any enemy, I send a couple of scout teams through on QUICK.

And a Tiger beats a Sherman every time that's why Germany won the war.. no, wait... (not to be snarky. as you said, it's also about points cost)

Maybe the tank commanders are poking up too much from the turret? I guess in real life, you'd just need to get your eyes above the level of the hatch to take a look around. Not your whole head, and definitely not your torso. Of course, if you wanted to see the area immediately around the tank, you'd need to raise yourself a bit more. But I suppose you wouldn't really want to do that if you had any suspicion there might be enemies next to the tank. (there is a loading screen with two tank commanders quite far out of their hatches though, spotting something in the distance.. not sure if this was standard practice or just in that moment)

If you're playing static, then why bother with tank destroyers, just buy yourself some AT guns..

I've been wondering the same thing myself. My conclusion so far is that the most efficient use of the ammo is to fire as slow as possible, with a 'point target' that you then adjust to a new target when you estimate that you had enough close hits, or when you can observe the target has been taken out. This is a bit "gamey" though, as it exploits the way the pixel soldiers act. When they hear incoming, they duck down, but then quite soon after, they pop up again. If you fire fast, they stay down during the whole barrage, making them much harder to knock out. But with the slow barrage, they come up after every shot, like whack-a-mole. If you don't have time for this, then a short barrage is better, firing as fast as possible. Especially with mortars, as they have very high ROF. so you can put quite a lot of bombs on a target before all the enemy troops manage to duck and cover. Also, I think there's a higher chance to "shock" the enemy into retreating if the volume of shells is very high during a short time. The only thing I never really use are medium rates of fire. I don't know why anyone would ever choose that. It would be nice if firing very fast came with an accuracy penalty (each mortar bomb shaking the mortar a bit, causing it to lose aim, but firing at slow or medium speed would allow to make continual adjustments to keep on target...) but as far as I have seen, the spread of mortars is the same whether fired slow or fast - only "emergency" firing mode has an accuracy penalty, as far as I know. When you double the radious, the area is not just doubled, it gets squared. So you'll need 4 mortars to achieve the same weight of fire and four times the ammo to achieve the same saturation.

I agree with your reasoning, but I don't agree that it's few scenarios and QB maps that require you to either occupy or pass through forest.

Well, that is a story about an ambush inside a town. At short ranges in built up areas, I think most here agree tank commanders should be very vulnerable if they poke their heads out..

I agree.

It's a pretty well known issue, but people seem divided about whether or not it's a problem. The tank commander poking only his head out of a tank seems much more vulnerable than private Joe standing in the open outside. It may be because soldiers in the open get a cover modifier, while tank commanders do not.

I suppose it makes sense within the confines of the game, since it makes a single lucky hit more unlikely to decide the outcome of the battle. It's a bit opposite of real life: In real life, you saturate an area with artillery knowing that most of the shells won't cause any damage at all, but the one lucky shell that hits the right spot is going to absolutely destroy the enemy there. So, on average, the barrage works. In the game, you saturate an area because the effects of repeated overlapping low-probability damage areas will wear down the enemy, even if all the shells land some distance away from them. On average, the barrage works.I think I understand why BattleFront have chosen to design it this way, but I just personally like the idea of the lucky direct hit.

Your overwatch needs to be very close to spot the enemy in forest. Just one square can make all the difference. I think of it this way: Enemy sitting still: you need to be in the square right next to him to spot him. Enemy firing: you can spot him from 2-3 squares away. Enemy running: You can spot him from 3-4 squares away. Also, sometimes there's a small bump on the ground that you can hardly see, but it's just enough to hide the enemy when both he and you are prone.

I'm not sure I agree that it works like this in the game. Depending on how heavy the forest is, you'll often be lucky to target beyond one action square. If you can only target one square distant, that's about 12 metres (one square equals 8 metres, plus half of the square your guys currently sit in). And while bullets can fly far in forest, the problem is that your troops don't shoot in the general direction, they target the surface. So most of your bullets just go straight into the ground. At longer ranges, this doesn't matter, since there's deviation to aiming, so many of the shots will go high or low, spreading the impacts more and less distant, because of the shallow angle. But extremely close by, I can't get it to work. Also, trees in this game are very effective at blocking bullets. Anyway, your mileage may vary. The idea of my SOP is that you sneak so close to the enemy that once he detects you, he has very short time to shoot, as your overwatch comes down on him like a ton of bricks. Doesn't guarantee you won't take casualties, but it seems to minimise them, Takes patience and time though. Against a human opponent, you could be vulnerable to flanking, and/or mortars being dialed in while you sneak forward.

Well, it's just that SLOW is the best assault move order in forest, when you know pretty much where the enemy is. I played a long time before I realised that. Before that, I used to HUNT or QUICK, thinking I would heroically rush the enemy, but standing up is very dangerous in forest fighting. My SOP: Break all squads into teams. Leapfrog them forward in a checkerboard pattern, using only SLOW movement, one (1) square at a time. Basically like pawns in a game of chess. I don't use too much suppression fire in this sitiation, it's simply too difficult to get it where you need it. Instead, I wait till one of the crawling teams either spots the enemy or gets spotted and fired upon. Then one or two of the other squads in overwatch will usually spot and take out the enemy using small arms or grenades.

Are you playing the original version that came with the game, or the updated version from the Repository? The original was not so difficult.

The commander never seems to use his binoculars when unbuttoned though. Is that just a graphical limitation? Infantry are frequently shown spotting with their binoculars.

Part of the issue is that the game's limited graphics makes it seem like even panicked soldiers are cool as cucumbers, firing and reloading with complete calm no matter what the situation. Also, remember the "secret assault command" - SLOW. When you know where the enemy is, don't use HUNT.

Congratulations. Sounds like a combination of skill and some damned good luck I also finally managed to complete this mission. Not sure how you could take the main village without shelling it? It's full of big walls. In some of my playthroughs I have dumped more than 400 shells on it and reduced it to ruins, but there is still some resistance there and it's still far from a cakewalk to take it.

I doubt it tracks individual fragmentation pieces, or if it does, then it must be a simplified version, as real-life shells send out thousands of fragments. Instead, I think it works by drawing a line from point of impact to all troops within a certain distance, then doing a dice roll with modifiers for cover etc. But this is speculation on my part. In any case, there seems to be a large random factor. I've seen explosives go off at the feet of running soldiers many times, without effect, and also the opposite, people falling down from the impact of an tank AT shell at 100 metre distance, which seemed a bit odd to me. No matter how the HE simulation technically works, I think it is a bit too weak at very close ranges, and a bit too strong at very long ranges. In my personal experience.

Hm, that sounds a bit silly to me. I prefer to just use what was actually used in real life.