GJR144

On which front were the Germans beaten? The war in the east was won already. Ever heard about Wilson's 14 points? Or maybe you have ever heard about the planned eternal enslavement called "Versailles"? "Dolchstoßlegende" used to rationale WWII? Never heard about the Germans being massacred in Polish occupied territory, because the British guarantee to back the Polish chauvinists put the rationale Polish forces checkmate? But I guess someone has to live with the fact, that even if huge lies like the official 9/11 story have been proven wrong, people are not interested to question more than what is necessary. People usually prefer to believe what is the most comfortable explanation for their lifes. You prefer to live with lies, I prefer to look at the facts.

This does not convince me. I don't understand why this must be done with the map? Why can't the textures of the terrain that are sent to the graphics card be exchanged? For example the graphics card receives instead of the different green ground textures a plain green texture with white stripes. Streets and rocks could be colored with a grey texture and wood or fields with a brown texture with white stripes. Three tiny textures loaded into RAM, that are displayed instead of all the different beautiful terrain textures when the grid overlay is switched on. When switched off, the real textures are used again. The engine seems to use on the fly different textures anyway all the time, depending on viewing distance and performance.

Was a switchable terrain grid overlay mentioned already? BFC, your customers have been waiting for more than 10 years for this very helpful tool, come on, show some mercy.

If your Panzerregiment arrives with a handful Panzers because of enemy air superiority, then calling it only a morale thing is the overstatement of the year. In the east the Luftwaffe had air superiority and the Ostfrontkämpfer in Normandy knew the fighting with tactical air superiority. But the air superiority of the Western Alliies was something completely different according to these accounts. It simply was not possible to move without being decimated by 30-70%. In Normandy the battles were lost even before they had begun because of the incredible amount of Allied airforce. I understand that US people play down the role of the airforce, to give the ground troops a more favourable appearance, but the facts of German losses due to air attacks are there. As soon as the Western ground troops were without help from above, they always had huge difficulties. This also can be observed from WW2 over Vietnam, Afghanistan until today. You will probably find not a single account of a Ostfrontkämpfer who fought in Normandy, who will support such a statement while unison every German analysis shows, that the total air superiority with incredible neverending amounts of weaponry made any normal fighting almost impossible. As soon as the support was not there, things almost immediately changed dramatically in favour of the Wehrmacht. @Jason C: Rommel is hugely overrated and mostly only a Western propaganda hero because of several reasons. What are the facts about Rommel? 1. He attacked in North Africa without sufficient forces. The propaganda hails this as great. In fact 2/3rds of the supply over the Mediterranean Sea did not arrive. Nevertheless Rommel didn't care that for every tank he gets two others were lost even before he could get them. 2. Rommel is the main cause, that the Western Alliies could keep the Mediaterranean Sea as their base. The attack on Malta, their most important base, was already rolling, when Rommel flew to Berlin and made wrong hopes about pushing further to Alexandria. Rommel's promises were the reason, why the taking away of Malta was cancelled. 3. In his HQ in Normandy he accepted staff that openly admitted to want to lose the war. 4. He tried to convince (with other traitors) Hitler to remove the Panzerdivisions from Normandy. Hitler contrary to this "genius" expected the Invasion in Normandy despite all disinformation efforts of Fremde Heere West. The three Pz.Divs. placed in Normandy was a sole decision of Hitler. 5. A few days before the Invasion, Rommels HQ ordered the vision of the heavy artillery to be removed. Luftwaffe was removed, too. 6. When the Invasion was expected and the troops were put into alarm state, Rommel left Normandy to celebrate a party at home. In one of the three most important nights the invasion was expected, the most important commander left his place of duty and left the command in the hands of the open traitors. 7. With Rommel away his staff had free hands: When the Kriegsmarine around midnight gave alarm the HQ didn't respond. When the units in the back also gave alarm because paratroopers were landing, Rommel's HQ remained silent. When the ground units at the coast gave alarm. Rommels HQ stayed silent. The HQ was silent for several hours, although everywhere the messages were coming in, that this was the invasion and the next few hours will be decisive. It was that obvious from listening to the radio, that a commander of a tank regiment, placed close to the coast (IIRC it was the 21. PzDiv.), ordered his regiment on his own decision to the coast, after the Division couldn't reach the HQ. That was around 3 AM. The mistake was: they notified the HQ in case the HQ could hear them. Suddenly the muted HQ was answering immediately: Wrong direction, move away from the coast, enemy is behind you. When 1 or 2 hours later the regiment reached the location, there was no enemy at all. They lost three hours and instead of already being in close combat when the day will brake they stood far away from the coast and were shot into pieces by the USAF later. Speidel, Rommel's "successful" commander who did the dirty work of slaughtering the own troops, later became NATO-chief in Europe...

Bil Hardenberger has a nice homepage with some useful stuff. Like in reality also in CM players tend to have a way too high unit density. If you are frightened, you pack up and feel more safe. The player wants to give his units more firepower and so he keeps them bunched up. But that's wrong. Spread, spread, spread! As wide as command&control allows. Why? Gain fire superiority. Fire supriority is not established from one point, but from several points against one enemy. The wider the angle the better the effect. A HMG can easily pin a squad or even a platoon. Spread the squad and the HMG can only supress one team while the others can move/fire. Moving a squad over open ground against automatic long range fire is deadly. But a squad broken up in teams, spread over 50-70 m? The enemy will have to decide where to fire or he will need to show more of his defenses. Then you know where he is and then the heavy support weapons come into play. So spreading is not only necessary to gain fire superiority, it also denies it to the enemy (tank combat is different). Fire effectiveness: fire from the front and into the sides is WAY more effective than shooting from one place with exactly the same weapons. You could hide behind a wall from HMG fire and be safe, but a single pistol aiming behind the wall can change everything. Units in CM react very realistically to multi angled fire. Only by spreading out you will recognize the weak spots or opportunities. And it allows you to keep one or maybe even two platoons of the company as reserve quickly available. While the normal player always is attracted by enemy units like a magnet, it's better to avoid them. Move into their side. This is only possible with a wide spread infantry. If one team or even all teams of one squad come under fire, the other squads probably are not. They can keep moving. And when spread, then the chances are high, that a team will already be close to where you want them to go. Even if the team is way to weak, it nevertheless has eyes and you know what is going on in this area (until the stronger forces arrive). For example if your leading platoon recongizes a gap in the enemy's front, the whole reserve platoon can quickly flow though the gap, while the leading platoon could even be under fire, put pressure on the enemy and has no need to move under fire. You are moving the StuGs close to the front although you don't have an infantry screen and don't know much about the enemy. You can't bring your StuGs into action without knowing where the enemy is. If the paths of the StuGs are given, recon the area. Locations where you expect ATGs? Shoot shortly with small arms at these locations and hope for a potential enemy reaction. If still in doubt, or too far away to have good vision of the spotting units or HQs, support the infantry with a Sdkfz while the StuGs wait patiently. It's a powerful unit. I wouldn't waste it with a task, everyone else can do. Give it an infantry screen and let the infantry find out, if the destination for the FO is secure. Patience. And last but nor least: Do not push infantry forward under enemy fire. Imagine what you would do in that situation in real life. Watch the area from level 1 and imagine you would be there. Would you cross the open field that is under fire if you could walk around? And how would you move? Would everyone walk or would one team lead (hunt), while the others keep their eyes open and stay behind? Once the lead element has reached it's destination, the behind elements move forward.

No need for formations. Split the squads and spread them.

Don't project yourself into others.

Gents, you see, it works miracles, to remind you of not being girls. Btw, I agree that it would increase micromanagement even more and there are several ways as workarounds. Good answers, problem solved, case closed.

Herr Hauptmann Crécy, this is not Napoleonic wars! Advancing in lines, and being bunched up that way, is begging for a martial court. Where you have one company, there should be currently not more than one platoon. A forward observer is not a recon unit. You are presenting your StuGs on a silver tablet. Ende der Durchsage.

The tone is harsh, the complaints have substance. I find it strange that so many are ignoring the substance and instead concentrate on the tone only. Didn't know that so many girls are playing CM. Superwoz, if you do not want to upset the girls here, you first have to tell em, how beautyful CM is and then you must choose the words very carefully otherwise it is not good for their mood.

Do you really believe that many players will enjoy the snowflake graphics? CMx1 snow IMO looked better and was less wearing to the eyes. And I can't remember that the flakes were ugly round dots.

Is it possible to switch off the "snowflakes" or reduce them somehow? Looking at the white noise all the time during the order phase is hard to bear.

How many shots can be fired until reload becomes necessary?

I don't want to sound bold, but the armor protection with the tiny slits seems not to be modelled yet? For the most realism and I guess also a very nice improvement to gameplay would be, if the player could decide if he wants to apply the armored vision slits independently from button/unbutton of the gunner.

Good argument, but in combat the vision armor is applied. I'm wondering if the armored vision slits are modelled when buttoned? In my tests there were quite some hits of the drivers even in buttoned state and although the vehicles were driving fast.

Glad you discovered it. I'm curently in the third or fourth battle of this brilliant campaign and will now wait patiently for the patch.

It's even worse: you can drive with Kübelwagen into close combat range without the snipers opening fire on them, while any halftrack would be long gone: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1475099&postcount=19 Use tiny covered arcs for the HTs and you can open them up, have good spotting ability and they are safe. Since recently a bug with the new flat rooftops was discovered, because the new graphics model was not prepresented correctly within the inner game model (LOS blocked by the new flat roofs despite the graphics showed there was no roof to block it), I'm wondering, if there could be a similar bug with HT gunners. Maybe as soon as they use the gun, the internal model places them eratically on top of the vehicle, instead of moving them a few centimeters lower aiming behind the gun?

@Seedorf81, you might give the vehicle's gunner a covered arc as a workaround. ps: the automatic opening up of tank commanders in CMx1 was the reason for me to quit playing it after many years - I understand you, but gladly with the covered arcs we have at least a workaround to this problem.

I always wondered why the in-game KT looks and feels plump while in reality and on film it looks beautiful. It seems to be the distorted proportions ("too thick?") due to the too low skirts. Excellent observation. It's always about the proportions. With these changes any potential mistakes on the turret could become more obvious, too.

Interesting idea. But only adoptable freely by players with all the backdraws of motivation, once things don't go as expected during a game. For me looking all the time at the rules and reading and checking them and finding the appropriate rule during cool action does not sound very attractive. There is one mode that greatly increases realism and also avoids the god-view knowledge and a mode BFC could implement as a normal difficulty level without the players to cheat or ignore the rules: The iron man-mode with no free movement on the map but viewing locked to units at unit height only and with an overview level at 8 or 9.

Fantastic! Ofcourse I also very much honor Juju's work, but your silhouette pics contain for me so much highly important data. To both of you: thank you very much.

How can a complaint be a result of bad tactics if at least me doesn't lose any HT gunners at all? Why? Because I keep them away from any small arms fire and use them like trucks. Good tactics but unrealistic. Therefore my complaint.

But still overmodelled compared to clueless city fags.

I think a more clear feedback to the player about the LOF condition would be nice. Would I have LOF to a tank? Would I still have LOF to standing or moving infantry? LOF down to the ground?

That's grrreat news. I just wanted to open a topic, if there will be an updated Alternate Silhuette mod for CMBN:MG. Will the option with color coded numbers be included?