Bulletpoint

weapon2010,
 
 
Combat Missioners? Had to happen sooner or later, I suppose. CM does, in may ways, have religious attributes, not least of which is the fervor of its adherents. There is ritual purification (hitting the toilet/head/lavatory before beginning). There are sacrifices (beer, chips, etc.) and propitiation (promises to mow lawn, clean gutters and such, plus agreeing to go to dinner with her mother) of a separate, jealous deity. Confession ("My tanks were getting shot up, and I forgot to walk the dog!") Sometimes even absolution. ("I forgive you, but you have to take me shopping and out to dinner") Neither let us forget proselytizing. We'll tell anyone who'll listen about CM. Even those who may not want to know!
 
What's that? CM missioners aren't clergy? They're not?! You say they're people who play CM? Gotta go!
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

Bulletpoint,
 
Not exactly. Absent the opportunity to view high quality gun camera footage frame by frame, I'd be very hesitant to place much stock in parts of the narration. We can't see who was in the field or how many there were, but the pilot isn't going to go shoot up some Italian farmer plowing away. Given the amount of firing we saw, and it was a lot, it seems to me there's a distinct possibility, though not stated, infantry was caught moving in the open. Shooting up German vehicles parked practically at the house is fair game, as is bombing the house, for enemy occupation negates the prohibition. There may've been something with those other houses that was, well, off. There are distinct differences between the way civilian life looks from the air and the way military life looks. That may've been what underlay the attacks we saw. It may've been, as the movie line goes, "too quiet," therefore suspicious. There may've been intel the Germans were doing something like this, too. I can assure you, though, US pilots didn't go whizzing about shooting people and things willy nilly. All other considerations aside, every time you pulled the trigger, it activated the gun camera. The intel types and the CO went over that footage with a gimlet eye, and woe betide the pilot who blazed away and couldn't explain why. I was going to post a couple of pertinent vids, but my data rate just imploded. Can't get the vids to load at all. Not enough bandwidth, apparently.
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

Yes.

Rifle Platoon Leader Part I - The Approach March is posted.
 
Enjoy!
 

I have started a new series of posts on the Battle Drill blog, the introduction is up now: RIFLE PLATOON LEADER
 
Starting with the Rifle Platoon I will cover the following topics:
 
RIFLE PLATOON Approach March Scouting The Attack The Defense The Pursuit The Support Platoon Role Integrating Support Teams into the Platoon Approach March section is almost completed and will be posted this weekend.  I will try to do at least one post in this series each week, followed by the supporting tactical problem scenarios.  I hope this series makes up in some way for my lack of posting content.

I've just run up against a too-sturdy-to-incapacitate wooden bunker in Road to Montebourg. Half a dozen direct hits from 75mm pack howitzers, some of which looked like they detonated inside the bunker (rather than on the roof) weren't enough to break one bunker... So I did a little test of 5 bunkers vs 5 modules of pack howitzers. 5 full loads of howitzers from Elite guns with Elite spotters (to do everything I could to narrow the sheaf), and one of the bunkers was no longer functional because it had been evactuated. The others were just fine, as were their occupants. I'd do a bigger test, but  wonder whether it's worth it: should wooden bunkers be all but impervious to 75mm arty? Concrete bunkers, I can imagine, and I can see that bunkers would be built to withstand 81mm mortars, but the impact of actual artillery seems more penetrative than even the same weight of filler out of a mortar...

Also, please note that I'm talking about the situation BEFORE any mines go off. You're walking with your mates through a field when you suddenly see a red signpost with some German words you don't really read well, but you do recognise the big drawing of a human skull - literally not a good sign.

LOL. I ran some tests, years ago. I took about a 100 tanks, dismounted their crews. Then, I ran them through sniper alley. Next, I sorted the surviving crew based on which crewmember(s) had been removed. I then remounted the crews. (Just for grins, I really, really, really want anyone to dismount 100 crews, run them around, and then try to figure out who goes where. No, there is no "tank 7/crew 7" logic.)
 
This gave me 100 tanks with various crew positions empty. Most had lost 1. Some had lost 2. A few, 3.
 
Then I put the tanks through their paces.
 
Then I repeated the test a couple dozen times starting with a new batch of 100 tanks each time.
 
The game did a very nice job, IMO, of prioritizing positions. Especially if you imagine the crew is an organic group, not robots.
 
Some tweaking may be nice in certain configurations, but I shudder at the thought of replicating that test...
 
Ken

Of these I've only played The Outlaws. It has great maps and a good story line to follow. Sadly it does fall away in the last couple of missions when the fictional Panzer IVs and even a Panther appear. It seems a shame to me that designers ignore the fact that none of these tanks were available to the Wehrmacht on the Cotentin Peninsula in June 44.

Hi all.
 
Here is what I've identified so far:
 
Courage and Fortitude-Base Game US
The Road to Montebourg- Base Game US
Devil's Decent-Base Game US Airborne
Panzer Martsch- Base Game Heer
Task Force Raff- Base Game US
A Bridge Too Close-Base Game US Airborne
Die Lezte Hoffnung- Base Game Wehrmacht
The Outlaws- Base game US Airborne
Blue and Gray-Base Game US
A Bloody Ride-Base Game Heer
In the Fields Where the Poppies Grow-Base Game US
The Scottish Corridor- Commonwealth Module British
Kampfgruppe Engel- Commonwealth Module Heer
Operation Deadstick- Commonwealth Module British Airborne
Benouville Battle -Commonwealth Module Heer
The Road to Nijmegen -Market Garden Module British
A Moment in Time- Market Garden Module Heer
 
I'm not including the training campaign. Please let me know of any others. Thanks!
 
 

It's not about the difficulty per se as I think the first one is almost equally bad and that one is an embarrassing cakewalk.

It is about there been one bottleneck that is subjected to nonsensical preplanned defensive fire, barbed wire, mines, loads of arty, defending infantry in dubious positions, ATGs in overwatch, cruddy positions for the attacker to start off from and to top it off wide open spaces on either side of this bottleneck.
In short, every effort has been made to limit the player in his options which are little more then the choice of where to drop the arty and how much meat to push through the grinder. Fun? Not for me it wasn't.

And while I certainly put it stronger then most, it is clearly not a well liked scenario. You can defend it all you want but I cannot recall a community ever disliking a scenario to this degree. That is not the sign of a scenario maker hitting the mark.

No, what the designer did was prevent the player using any other tactics apart then "once more into the breach". God forbid any of us have fun!

That it is so bitterly complained about by a community that is used to what Rune cooks up should give anyone pause. It is a turd of a scenario and I hope we do not see its like again.

"
An error occurred You have reached your quota of positive votes for the day
"

I modded me a cool Valkenswaard milestone sign in place of "Lent". All happy and ready to plop it on my Valkenswaard map.
I loaded my map and in the 2D editor for flavor objects milestones I only see a "1" and a  "2" for picks. Oh boy. I am used to like many more. Oh well, let me plop a bunch down and then 3D preview and delete all the others that are NOT mine. So I happily did.
But then reloaded the map and it says ARNHEM.
I am used to CMFI and if you plop a sign down there then it will always say the same thing each reload of the map.
It is new to me that CMBN MG seems to treat the milestone signs like those posters and just randomly deal them out like cards?
WTF?
This is very disappointing for me. I hope somehow I have misunderstood this.
Who thought that was a good ideal?
Now I gotta go and edit an mdr and ...

Great job Bud. I will handle the advertisements!

 

I struggle greatly with balancing simplicity versus giving sufficient information.

Just so that no one is confused I'll mention two things:

1) The Germans start all in the Wood Lot. The Americans all start in the Southern Wood.

2) If you know Operation Cobra, you might wonder why the Germans are in the north and Americans in the south. This is because this small German unit fled overwhelming forces and ended up choosing a direction it saw no enemy forces in. In a sense, its enabled it's own encirclement in that it's now been bypassed by Allied forces and hence, the Americans are approaching from what would normally be the German direction of retreat. As the map and text reference the compass I wanted to clarify why the Americans are on "the wrong end" of the map, so to speak.

Some time ago I began my first foray into the editor to see what it worked like. I made a map, the smallest size possible (208m x 208m) and tried to give it a realistic, inhabited appearance.
 
Kohlenklau and I have had a lot of fun battles that do not exploit the full points afforded by the Quick Battle generator. We decided to explore this little world I created, and see what happens if we limit points to 325 each, and show a chance encounter (meeting engagement in CMBN terms).
 
I've always had a hankering to do an AAR, but Bil Hardenberger really set the bar very high - and the work involved was quite daunting. The magic of the iPad and the software for photo editing and layout that is available for it encouraged me to try. I'll admit I had to resort to Photoshop a bit but this is otherwise entirely a product of CMBN, Kohl's and my battle, and the iPad.
 
Despite what seemed like a simpler course than following Bil's incredible work, I can tell you that for what is essentially a battle between two opposing platoons, it takes about a day of work per minute of battle to present to you what follows. It is shown from the German perspective, with the limitations and erroneous assumptions the man would be subject to. I do not write this with a global perspective because I don't know what Kohl is up to with his GIs.
 
What is a CAAR, you ask? A Comic After Action Report. Done as best as I can as if you're reading a comic book or graphic novel.
 
I hope you enjoy it.

What skill level are you playing?

Also...in the first beach battle you ran Bright and his team through a "Suspected Minefield".


Edit...more feedback.
I am guessing in "Echoville" you used the move command for the sake of film making as it has no real use in the game. You should never really use it. Quick or hunt is a much better choice.

Otherwise very entertaining videos.

Fixed that for you