MOS:96B2P

Using armour arcs is a double-edged sword. A big "map-covering" circular arc is good for making sure your tank isn't distracted by infantry, so not much problem there. A smaller "segment" arc, though, can sometimes be drawn too small, and the movement of the hunter or the target can take the target out of the arc, meaning the seeking tank doesn't fire on it, or even doesn't stop its "Hunt" move when it does spot the target. Given that assigning a Target Arc doesn't "focus the unit's attention" beyond rotating the turret so the better optics are aligned with the axis of the segment, ATAs are mostly useful for having the turret pointed in (roughly) the right direction at the point there's expected to be a firing opportunity that's off the hull's fore-aft axis. To achieve this orientation, a very wide, just sub-180 arc is sufficient, though more difficult to judge the central axis of. However, firing over your side armour at a target means that any return fire hitting your hull will be hitting your hull's side armour, which is a waste when you've got that lovely thick sloped glacis that has at least a chance of deflecting or mitigating the impact.

So the best way to approach your firing position, if it's possible, is to move in a way that presents your front armour to the enemy when you break cover, which will also mean your gun is pointing at him if you've set a map-blanketing target arc. No chance of the target not being in-arc, and you have the best chance of surviving any return fire.

Second best is the "short pop-out" where your turret is pointed at the target, meaning your engagement time is short enough that you can reverse back into cover before the enemy can rotate to bear. This needs good observation on the target to make sure his gun isn't pointed at where you're going to pop out before you show yourself.

Thanks for the compliment, but I have to say it sounds like I've failed to dispel the misapprehension that TAs help your pTruppen do anything like "zoom in" on anything. All they do is point the turret. While that does mean that more optics are pointed approximately the right way, it doesn't mean they are solely looking at the area of the arc, or anything like. And it's even arguable that it's a less-optimal thing to do as the range increases, since the arc rotates with the hull and a smaller angular deflection is required to throw the arc completely off the target if the arc only just covers it. You should be using broader arcs at longer range, not shorter.
On the whole, the concept of "zooming in" is one you that should avoid associating with TAs in general.

I think there is some truth in what womble says. At least logically and realistically it should be that Churches offer more cover than other "light" buildings and barns should be the weakest of these. Since Battlefront doesn't really say, or even give a hint in the manual, all we can do is go from experience or perhaps run some tests. I do remember some old threads where this topic was discussed but all I remember is that Modular buildings offer more cover than the independent ones.

Did a bit of a test to see. A British MG platoon with both its MMGs dismounted and other elements used to man the UC-carried MGs inflicted casualties at about 3x the rate on individual "houses" compared to individual "churches". The targets were 3-storey with an unsplit squad of Grenadiers on each storey. The Grenadiers were Elite, Fanatics with +2 leaders. The MG platoon was Regular Fanatics. The shooters never saw a single German; this was all area fire. While the Germans were "Hide"ing, they didn't take any casualties. As soon as they "unhid", they started taking them, in both building types.

Another test with Conscript grenadiers as the target dummies didn't change the casualty rate noticeably, nor did it mean the Tommy machinegunners saw anything more of them; still not spotted at a range of 200-250m after minutes of hammering away.

Drop the covered target arcs, cancel hides and let 'em have it! One more building, on one more block, on one more street, in one more neighborhood, about to be secured.

The UI during the orders phase is exactly the same in Iron and Elite. It only differs during playback and in real time.

Red Thunder brought triggers and a necessary learning experience for me. I now have a better understanding of the depth of this process. CMBS will introduce some refinements to the QB Game to improve the player's understanding of the maps and scoring. I have also been working on the AI groups, their orders, and how they respond to triggers. It's been an exciting time.

Artofwar,
 
The only way extra ordinance will get the job done is if the code of municipal offenses hits the TC's head hard enough to cause him to duck and close the hatch.  On a more serious note, the US Army concluded after careful study that forcing a tank to button reduces its combat effectiveness by 50%. The IDF decided the combat effectiveness delta was more important than the TC casualty risks, so IDF tankers fought brilliantly, under heavy fire, during the Yom Kippur War vs Syria, but took terrible TC losses. When attacked by armor, the first priority of the defenders is to force it to button, for this both cuts enemy effectiveness and paves the way for a whole series of antiarmor measures. In CM terms, forcing the TC to button is always desirable (greatly complicates spotting and adds delay to the process), but wounding or killing him is better. In CMx1 the last two put the tank into Shocked state in which it was pretty much paralyzed while the crew sorted things out, and during which many a tank died. It's not quite as extreme in CMx2 and CMx3, but a TC casualty can still get a tank killed while the men reposition inside and such. Play "Barkmann's Corner" in CMBN if you doubt this. And for a real world look at what happens when the boss falls back into the turret (in this case while already buttoned), see the account of 3 AD's Oda Miller. The combat memoirs I've read talk over and over again about British TCs sniped, shot in the head or chest by MG fire, hit by mortar or shell frags, even decapitated by an AT shell. 
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

It sure would be nice to have an off toggle for that. I love using the mouse buttons and drag for my camera control, but very frequently catch the screen edge with the pointer and get catapulted into oblivion.
 
Usually, just as I've framed things for the perfect screenshot...

I would ditch the camera movement controls whenever the mouse pointer is near the edge of the screen.

When approaching infantry transport:
 
Anything that has four wheels is functionally the same as a jeep.  The exceptions to this are the american HMMWVs that fit MK-19s, TOW missiles, or what looks like a big box.
 
   Tangent: MK-19 has already been discussed.  Its murderous against infantry, unarmored vehicles, and some of the APC type targets can be knocked out by it with some luck
                  Treat the TOW version a lot like a 17 pound gun that's somehow merged with a speedy prime mover.  You don't want to place it somewhere it can be shot at at all, but it will reap a terrible toll on tanks if you give it a chance.
                  The Big box is the LRAS3, which is one of the most powerful sensor systems in the US Army.  The upside is it is a great tool for calling for support, or keeping sneaky things away from your flank.  The downside is it is not especially better at either of those than an Abrams, and is knocked out by anything more than small arms fire.  This sensor is also mounted on the Stryker scout vehicle.
 
 
Anything with 6-8 wheels/tracks and a machine gun: Treat like a halftrack.  They're really not that well armored, but are great for getting infantry forward fast.  Semi-exceptions to this:
 
    The BTR/MTLBs with 30 mm guns are great against not-tank type vehicles, and very good at suppressing or killing enemy infantry.  
    The Stryker with MK19 is just good enough to use forward, great at digging out infantry from buildings, or suppressing trenchlines.  
 
IFVs (tracked things with troops, some sort of autocannon, and ATGMs)
 
Imagine if your halftracks, light tanks, and AT vehicles all had a beautiful baby!
 
    Treat them like halftracks until they get to the point where they can deposit troops, once the troops are kicked out, then feel less nervous about using them as the mini-tanks they can be.  In a lot of ways, think of them like the M5 tanks from World War Two, they're great against other light vehicles, they're amazing against infantry, but you do not want it anywhere near something that can be called "anti-tank" or a real tank for that matter. 
 
Re: ATGMs
 
Here's the important caveats to remember when operating ATGMs from any platform (except the Javelin)
1. Bullets are faster than missile. The longer you fire the missile from, the longer it takes to impact, the more time the enemy has to react to missile.  It takes a TOW missile about 30 seconds to reach its max range around 3750 meters, that's enough time for the enemy to pop smoke, or return fire with a tank gun, which could very well kill the launching crew before the missile is even close to the target.  To this end it can be wise to ignore max range shots in favor of letting the enemy close in a bit (or it takes a tank shell 2ish seconds to go to 4 KM, it's flight time is fairly constant, while your missile fired at 2000 meters will only take 15ish seconds, which is a much harder thing to react to than 30 seconds)
 
2. ERA is built to ruin your ATGM.  APS also will wreck your day.  With that said, both systems degrade the more missiles they have to deal with.  To that end firing more missiles is often a good solution, so rather than spreading out your fires, massing 2-3 missiles on one tank will often overwhelm the APS (or deplete it's ammunition), and strip away a lot of the ERA protection.  
 
Also when playing against other players, it's much more likely they'll reverse out of an engagement if one of their tanks gets piled on by a few missiles, vs the fire being more spread out.
 
3. Reloading takes a bit.  This is especially true with vehicles like the Bradley or BMP series that have their launchers external to the vehicle.  When engaging with ATGMs, don't be afraid to mass like I said earlier, but hold a few launchers in reserve to continue to engage while your first salvo is being reloaded.
 
4. Mass your missiles.  If you've got two or even three different flavors of missiles, find their average optimal engagement area, and plan to hit the enemy in that range.  Using the Americans as an example the max effective range on the Javelin is 2500 meters or so.  To that end, holding off on firing off your TOWs until the enemy is 2000-2500 meters out ensures that target area is saturated with missiles, and rather than returning fire effectively, the enemy is evading and trying to leave the kill zone.
 
5. Trees give bad vibes.  Anything that is described as "wire guided" needs to be kept away from trees and similar obstructions to ensure the missile's guidance wire doesn't get snagged and cause the missile to rather dramatically miss the target.
 
Random errata:
 
1. Q. Which American units are spotters for artillery and aviation?
 
    A. All of them. Some are better at it than others, but if it's a team with a radio or digital communications it can call for a fire mission.  Plan accordingly from both ends for that one.
 
2. Borg spotting actually does kind of exist now.  Given the advances in battle tracking, all US, and many higher tech Russian units can share situational awareness to varying degrees.  They may still not be able to engage, but if the scouts up front spot your dudes sneaking along, odds are the rest of the force now has at least a very strong idea where your forces are at vs vaguely there's enemy somewhere up front.  
 
3. Fear the Abrams.  No.  Really.  Fear it.  It is the apex predator in this game.  If the enemy has them, you really need to have a plan on how and where to kill them vs simply having some AT assets on hand.  The APS and ERA ones appear especially dangerous at this point.

If only such things were so simple.
Bounding overwatch doesn't always involve continuous suppressive fire. But if you want it to, in CM, you can assign Target commands from movement waypoints of either split teams moving alternately (use pauses to hold them still while their companion team is moving), or of intact Squads ordered to Assault (the static element should fire at the assigned target. Or you can leave it to the TacAI to pick targets for the static element(s).
The point of overwatch without continuous suppression is to be able to respond to enemy presence not previously detected in order to give the moving element a better chance of being able to survive because any surprise resistance will come under fire from the static element. There are many occasions when you want to move without firing, and if you're needing to fire, you probably shouldn't be moving the under fire element much (besides getting it to cover) until the enemy are properly suppressed.

It's the "very close" situations where I've found Hide can help. Often. It's not perfect, but it can mean an extra team manages to get into position before the game is up and you have to tell everyone to go all "Mad Minute" on whoever spotted the last team in...
A downside of using Hide is that they will often not be able to spot out of the building, so you just have to "unhide" them and let them spot naturally and choose their own targets. You have to be judicious in its use.

Absolutely. Yes. Move Slowly in any building where the enemy can see the building.
Very. In buildings, if you move Slow, give very tight target arcs and Hide at the end, you can remain unobserved across even quite narrow streets. If you "Quick"ed in the same position you'd get spotted immediately. Behind vegetation, at least prior to the proliferation of IR vision aids, you can pretty much consider Slow to be as hard to spot as static troops, plus Slow keeps them on their bellies. In addition, Slow moving troops will retain much of their situational awareness, as long as there's not something solid they can't see over from their crawling posture.
Not as much as being dead or not having reached your firing point in time. My assessment is that going to Tired doesn't have much, if any, effect on accuracy, just stops you hitting Fast, which is a consideration.

One thing to be careful of is that if you blast a tank-sized hole that includes a pre-existing (in the map, not created by Blast) hole in the Bocage, there's a good chance your tanks won't be able to roll through it. I try never to hav a Blast order that might incorporate "natural" breaks.

Well the beauty of the way BFC is developing the game now is that should they ever decide to go onto Steam at some point in the future all the games they make will be up to date and current.  So really there is no need to rush onto Steam.  Maybe if sales slow to a trickle at some point then going onto Steam will make some sense.  BFC can also take their time and polish the game up and prepare themselves for Steam if that's a route they want to try. So you never know.  BFC has dealt with different ways of publishing ... I think ShockForce was sold in actual stores .... they just have an aversion to dealing with publishers.  I don't get the impression that BFC is absolutely 100% against it no matter what.  I am under the impression that they are continuously evaluating what their options for distribution are and at this time they have decided not to go the Steam route.  That doesn't mean that we won't all wake up one morning and see BFC games on Steam some day.  I doubt that forum postings are going to sway them one way or another though.  I'm sure the decision will be made in a deliberate fashion when or if it makes sense for BFC to go onto Steam.
 
I think that if BFC ever decided to go onto Steam they would want to do so making sure all their T's were crossed and the game was as polished as they could make it.  What is it that they say?  You never have a second chance to make a first impression, so if your game will suddenly be exposed to a larger audience you want to ensure that you are putting your best foot forward.  

Wanted to pass the word regarding an inexpensive ($3) Kindle book on Cold War Russian armor and other mobile weapons, to include SAMs. It's called Red Steel, is by Russell Philips, and it covers from immediately after WW II through the collapse of the SU, with tank coverage through the T-80, SP arty through Pion and MSTA-S and SAM coverage through SA-10. On balance, it's a pretty good book. Except when it isn't. There is a wealth of material, much of which wasn't in the threat docs I had back in military aerospace, so likely reflects post Cold War discoveries. Images are all over the place and confusing to people who aren't familiar with the systems to begin with. For example the acquisition radars for both the Shilka and the Tunguska are shown stowed. The picture of the T-64 is tiny, because the shot is the somewhat iconic one of a column of T-64s going through the TMS-65 jet powered decontam. The T-10 is on its angled war memorial plinth, and there are quite a few pics of AFVs in foreign armies and, in one case, a dead AFV but not obviously so. Two vehicles are represented by 3-view line drawings, which look like they came from an AFV ID guide. There are repeated surprises on what went into service and when, with many AFVs in full service before we started getting threat data (I started in early 1978 and watched developments unfold). In one case, the gap was around a decade.
 
What I found helpful in the book were the enumeration of the various tank model designators, the alphabet soup changes to the baseline and what they mean by way of changes. Pity he talked about the (US Army lingo) Dolly Parton and Super Dolly Parton (think her endowments), but  showed no pic at all. Rather marked appearance difference from baseline T-72s. Also good was the laying out of various protection options for a number of tanks (ERA, applique, Drozd, Shtora--alone or in combination). Again, most of which wasn't in the threat docs. He seems to think that for the T-62 w/ horseshoe armor, the armor is monobloc, when it in fact is spaced and w/o any inserts. He contradicts himself a few times, such as when he claims the SS-12 was the longest range TBM to serve, then later talks about the SS-23, which didn't serve long, but was a real sore point until the Russians killed it, as a gesture of good faith during the INF Treaty discussions. He doesn't realize that the 2 A3 Kondensator (406 mm Russian answer to US 280 mm Atomic Annie) was ever in service when claiming the Pion was the largest SPA to serve. Likewise, he completely missed mentioning the SA-6b (one TELAR and three TELs), the transition between the SA-6 and the SA-11. Some of you may be shocked to discover that certain SPA formations jump strength by 50% in wartime. Gulp. 2S1 is missing its nuclear capability, but you'll never look at FROG rockets the same again. The highest yield setting was a whopping 22 KT (Hiroshima was 15)! Another surprise is that the BMD seen running around in Ukraine with a ZU-23 atop it is NOT a field expedient; it's factory and is not only gun armed but carries two 2-man MANPADS teams--at least as originally intended. I wish he's said more about some of the technical issues, but what's there is pretty good for a mass audience book. Speaking of which, there's a German translation of this due out in February. Amazon's taking preorders now.
 
Since I no longer have Milsom's Soviet Armor 1917-1970 (purloined but may eventually get back), I find this book, especially for the tiny outlay, to be quite helpful. It has tons of tech specs, armor material, , weapon stabilization, gun launched ATGMs, construction details, performance and such goodies as armor slopes, composition and thickness, where available. I recommend this book, but encourage additional checks before presuming something of importance to you is correct.
 
Regards,
 
John Kettler

After playing CM games for almost 10 years I finally decided to try my hand at scenario design and started fiddling with the editor. I must say it is a ton of fun. It adds another dimension to the game and it gives your creative spirit a lot of freedom. And it is truly exciting to see your ideas come into fruition. Having messed around with the editor also makes me appreciate well-made scenarios in a whole new way.
 
Up until now I've been intimidated by the editor, but I would like to urge all those who enjoy playing the game to give it a chance. And in the process of having a new fun tool to play with, the community as a whole would benefit from more scenarios to play.
 
The editor is the same for all CM*2 games, but as it is now scenario design issues are dealt with in the seperate sub-forums. I would like, and I also think it would aid more people who wish to try the editor, that there was a seperate scenario design forum. In it there would be links to video tutorials, guides, discussions how to create realistic maps, villages etc. AI plans and so on. It would also be a place where you can ask for or sign up for play testing. Having everything in one place would IMHO help a lot.
 
What do you think?

Welcome to the grand opening of the New CMRT Theater!
 
I thought it would be cool to start a thread similar to a screen shot thread dedicated to cinematic CM vids now that the forum has video imbed feature. I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent vid created by Macisle, and thought it would be a good idea to open the CM Theater thread as a collection point for those to show off their video editing / directing talent, and to make everyone's movies easily found and seen. Although I do not have any video editing programs personally I can enjoy watching what others have made. Artistic style using video editors, or unusual/ interesting things that happen in the game movies of any length will be the focus. Macisle's vid is a good example of what the Theater would like to show as opposed to AAR type vids with voice over commentary by the player. So, if you have a good CMRT vids, or know of any such as this one please post it for us to enjoy and find it easily, and to build our CM Theater collection. Please remember to give credit to the movie maker if you did not make it yourself.
 
 
 
Get the pop corn popping, the beer head foaming, and enjoy the show!
Hill 527 by Macisle

   

Welcome to the grand opening of the New CMBN Theater!
 
I thought it would be good to start a thread similar to a screen shot thread dedicated to cinematic or just crazy cool CMBM vids now that the forum has video imbed feature. I started similar threads  at CMFI, and CMRT like each game has its own screen shot threads, so check out, and post movies in those CM theaters too.
 
I enjoyed this awesome vid created by JorgeMC, and thought it would be a good idea to open the CMBN Theater thread as a collection point for those to show off their video editing / directing talent, and to make everyone's movies easily found and seen. Although I do not have any video editing programs personally I can enjoy watching what others have made. Cinematic style using video editors, OR just unusual/ interesting things that happen in the game movies of any length will be the focus. Jorge's vid is a good example of what the CMBN Theater would like to show as opposed to AAR type vids with voice over commentary by the player. You don't need to be a Spielberg, if you just want to share something interesting or crazy that happened in the game as a video. So, if you have a good CMBN vids, or know of any good ones such as this one please post it for us to enjoy and find it easily, and to build our CMBN Theater collection. Please remember to give credit to the movie maker if you did not make it yourself.
 
Get the pop corn popping, the beer head foaming, and enjoy the shows!
Barkmann's Corner 3.0 by JorgeMC

Yes, Pause only affects movement. It won't "pause" a unit's firing. Pausing to fire is a major use of the function, especially now the progrmming oversight of having Paused vehicles receive penalties as if they were moving... Otherwise all "popup" attacks would have to happen in the dying few seconds of a turn, so you could end a unit's movement path at "up on the firing step" and order them back down into defilade during the orders phase... A Paused unit behaves in many ways as if it has no further waypoints, for the duration of that pause. The only exception I can think of is that its passengers cannot dismount, but there may be others.
 
A couple of ways Pause can be used:
 
During infantry advances, having the element Quick or Fast a movement leg a couple of Action Spots long, then attach a Pause to the waypoint of 10s or so, with a target order, if you know where you want them to shoot, followed by another 2-AS movement leg at good speed lets a unit "advance by bounds". If you have two elements, give one a 10s pause at their initial position, and you can have them leapfrog each other to advance in bounding overwatch or caterpillar overwatch.
 
An AFV in defilade can pop up (preferably to Hull Down relative to the expected enemy positions) to a waypoint that has a Pause attached, long enought to acquire a target, fire one or two shots and then reverse back down the slope or back behind the building.
 
An AFV can advance, pause to fire on a target, then advance again.
 
It's worth noting that any leg that's "Hunt" mode, where the unit stops because it's spotted something or come under fire will cancel all subsequent movement legs, so it's not possible to "Hunt" up to a crest, using Hunt's "reactive ability" to stop just in sight, and back away having fired on a spotted target, since the act of Hunt stopping the movement will cancel the reverse-once-fired portion of the order sequence.

For the first, I'd suspect the overuse of "Hide" orders. For the second, "Hunt" provides no concealment advantage and it's very likely indeed that you're misinterpreting the terrain your men are Hunting in, and somewhat likely that you are, in addition, expecting too much concealment of too little vegetation depth.
 
To expand: if you're using Hide in foxholes, your troops will be face down in the dirt and even the ones occasionally "Spotting" may well not peek over the rim of their scrapes. They will spot very ineffectively. The enemy could have spotted your troops with an asset other  than those that are advancing on you, on a well-concealed elevation out of effective weapon range (if it was within effective range it'd be firing on you and you'd know about it).
 
As to the "Heavy Woods" thing, you first have to grok that "lots of trees" does not equal "good concealment for the troops among them". Then you have to refine your understanding by recognising that the terrain under the trees is the important thing; it can vary from bare dirt to heavy woods. Heavy woods is rare; most terrain under trees is "Light woods" which gives some concealment, or lesser levels of vegetation which might give almost none to standing/moving soldiers. You can identify the heavy woods action squares if you have vehicles by selecting a vehicle, choosing a movement order and hovering the mouse over wooded Action Spots: Heavy Woods ASs will change the mouse cursor to "impassable". The third element of the terrain troika is the depth of the terrain. What matters is not what terrain your troops are standing in, but how much concealment-providing terrain is between your most visible troops and the observer. If your team is in an edge AS of a light woods patch, there's probably only a couple of metres of concelament between your most exposed pTruppe and any watching eyes. Being one row back in the woods will make that more like 10m. The average goes from 4m to 12m.
 
This is not your normal wargame where puting an element in a "woods hex" gives your harrassers a "-2". It's orders of magnitude more nuanced than that.

Can I second the, watch, wait, observe, act cycle. Had some Marine recon move into a building and open up as soon as they saw Syrian Paratroopers in the building opposite. The first time they took three casualties and suppressed the force, but had to rely on more and more assets being employed to help them, End result, a Ko'd LAV and a team out of action and the enemy still lurking, though badly shot up.

Next time, I put the recon on hide and short target arcs, they snuck in and watched for 3-4 minutes, locating a sniper, squad of paratroopers and RPG team. As the intel filtered down, I moved assets to prepare for an assault. Once everything was ready, I launched the assault. End result: one lone Syrian survivor retreating, sniper and RPG team dead and best of all, the Syrians had themselves to commit reserves to bolster their defences. Those defences were pinned and a precious BMP-3 lost, with the Marines suffering one red and three yellow casualties.

So recon, recon, recon, then plan and only then, strike.

Chris, any chance we will see a beta CMBS scenario on Twitch tomorrow?

Yes, this is a very cool game.  Not just the mortar rounds but also the tank smoke canisters are detailed.
 

 
Even if it was in English instead of German (maybe this was corrected by now).  I was still very impressed the first time I noticed the writing.