[Snow?]

I'm reminded of The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer, a book written by a German soldier on the eastern front. He participated in many battles in deep snow. It was like a battle in slow motion, with troops on both sides struggling to move forward even a bit. They would walk behind their tanks and vehicles, moving along the tracks they cut into the snow. That isn't possible in CM unfortunately, but I would be very surprised if BFC didn't make everything move much slower.

[New Gameplay features ?]

I really want this Bulge game. The setting is fascinating. My grandfather was in the battle, attached to the 84th Infantry Division. So a CM game set during the Bulge? Yes please!

I can understand why some might be disappointed though. CM can be so time consuming to play. There are already an enormous amount of campaigns and scenarios in the other CM games. Some people just don't have time to play all that. So why purchase CMFB when it's mostly just more campaigns/scenarios? 

There are a ton of other scenarios in the other games I haven't even touched yet. That's not gonna stop me from getting CMFB though. 

[CM Final Blitzkrieg - AXIS (Attack) BETA Battle Report]

This is awesome so far. I always miss the AARs for the previous games until after they're finished.

That's such a tricky situation. I think if I was in that position, I would hold the tanks back. They're just too valuable. You have a lot of infantry so I would just keep sending them forward, spreading them way out and infiltrating every part of the map they can. You never know from where they might spot something.

Then once you know what you're up against, you concentrate all the armor together and strike! 

[Red Hordes]

I've played this scenario a couple of times and I haven't lost it yet. I found it pretty easy to knock out the Soviet tanks coming in on the left crossing, but difficult on the right.

On the right, those guys you have in the village are gonna get blown to bits no matter what it seems. They will get overrun but will probably destroy quite a few tanks in the process, depending on how lucky they are. I didn't move anyone from their starting positions. Their purpose is to die gloriously for Das Vaterland.

On the left, the Soviet tanks are easy targets trying to ford the river. While the enemy was busy fighting over the village, I moved my Stugs inside the forest on the left flank, where the trenches are. This seemed to be the key to the whole battle. I put them in cover behind the trees near the trenches, in a way where they can overlook the crossing. The moment the enemy tanks appeared out of the trees opposite the river, the HMG teams in the trenches opened fire and forced them to button up. Buttoned-up Soviet tanks on the move are very unlikely to spot Stugs with a low silhouette in the woods before it's too late. The combined fire from the Stugs and AT gun on the left was able to wipe out the whole enemy force at that ford easily. The AT gun was knocked out, but it didn't matter. I never had my Stugs leave the woods for the whole battle. They're very effective in there, and can move around concealed back and forth, in order to counter each new threat. I'd have them pop up at the edge of the woods now and then to flank a Soviet tank or three.

Once the Soviets were done cleaning out my guys from the village on the right, they would eventually start moving in on the town in the rear. I moved most of my infantry in the area into the center of the town, inside the buildings. Any Soviet tanks that got through, or managed to slip past my Stugs on the left, were easy enough to take out. By the time they made it into town, their tanks were spread out, isolated, buttoned up, and without infantry support. And they were moving blindly into an urban area. Filled with guys with AT rockets. So they didn't last long. 

[Armour combat footage]

Sometimes I feel more comfortable attacking across open ground in CM. When everyone can see everything with those wide open lines of sight, I can more easily achieve fire superiority with my superior numbers as an attacker. What really sucks is attacking into forests or urban areas. The defenders can get more even match-ups with the broken up lines of sight.

Maybe that's why I suck so much at Black Sea though. I don't understand modern warfare at all. Maybe it would actually be more difficult to brute force your way across a field like in WW2. With all the ATGMs and thermal optics and other fancy modern stuff, being stealthy must be more important. It feels like I'm playing a stealth game more than a war game sometimes. 

Playing the Germans in CMRT, open ground always felt like my friend. With all the Soviet SMGs around, staying away from close combat in dense terrain was important. I would just bypass any forests without clearing them of Soviet infantry if I didn't have to. They're not a threat to me out in the open. I would stick to open ground, spread out, keeping my distance, while advancing slowly but steadily to avoid enemy artillery fire. I would just destroy any buildings, walls, or trees that break up my LOS, never getting close until I absolutely have to. And it would work pretty well for the most part. 

 

 

 

 

In the case of the situation in this video (something I and others have discussed at length in private some months ago), it would be to dismount the infantry and have them advance without the BTRs.  There appears to be some treelines that could be used for infiltration.  If I had time for recon I'd send a couple of 3 man teams off to the left and right so they could get a view of potential enemy firing positions in the space between (i.e. the big open field).  If the coast was clear then I'd advance the BTRs through the field, otherwise I would not do so until I eliminated the threat to them (i.e. the T-64).  If I could not eliminate the threat then I'd pull back, regroup, and develop a new plan based on the information gained.

Perhaps they already did have guys trying to infiltrate through those treelines. Maybe they had been trying to do so for hours beforehand, and simply couldn't see anything except a screen of enemy troops. The guys in the video might have been part of a much larger advance, and the T-64 might have showed up much later, after the BTRs had already been committed. I know that kind of thing has happened to me many times before playing the game. And then I watch in horror as my troops are cut to pieces. 

[Armour combat footage]

Since it seems this video is old, does anyone happen to know where i could find a version to see it? My curiosity kicked in and the link is no OP's longer available.

I think it's this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N0rplcH32g

Pretty interesting video. Would be freaky to have to advance across a giant open field under fire like that. 

Or maybe not. Maybe it would be worse to have to attack in an area with a lot of cover. Then it would be a lot more confusing when you can't see anything. At least in that big field you can see what's going on.

[Infantry canonfodder in CMRT]

ASL Veteran - would it slow down the game?  It might.  But less rally power might also reduce "board stalls" that occur when each side has enough firepower to suppress the enemy, but the men shot at rally from those effects and the battle continues as a result.  With lots of further fire exchanged because of it.  My diagnosis of the cause of high losses is that the men "last too long" under fire, in a morale sense rather than an actual men hit sense.  Brittler troops don't obviously equate to less decision.  They might lead to more decision, to a side giving way at a lower level of losses received to date.

I will agree that some of the other measures I've discussed, more modeling of confusion and command delay, would indeed tend to slow down the game.  Realistically so in my opinion, but I can see that being independently undesirable for a broad group of players.  That is also the only set of the recommendations that can't be implemented without code changes. (Turning down rally power could be done more thoroughly with code changes, but a start can be made in that direction just by making a heavier use of green troops).

As for the loss threshold cease fire option, on its own it would tend to end fights earlier than they end now ,which would tend to reduce the number of game turns played per scenario (and losses with it).  It might slow fights down by more tentative play by the commanders, within the turns played, but overall would probably make games go faster, even if less death happened per game turn actually played.

Fair question...

 

I just wish they would make troops rout off the map, instead of being pinned against map edges. Whatever happened to that feature in CMSF, where panicking troops would disappear off the map with an exclamation point appearing over their heads? That way you would have guys deserting their ranks one by one as well as surrendering. In the later games, they can only surrender or fall back a short distance. Then their morale recovers and/or they get killed later. I agree that morale recovers too quickly.

And I really, really wish they would fix the crazy, suicidal tank crews already. Tank crews are sometimes even more dangerous than regular infantry. They like to jump out of their tanks pistols blazing until they are cut down. The crew might run away a short distance, and then their morale recovers and they ambush a bunch of guys at close range later on with a volley of rapid pistol fire. I might think I'm doing quite well in a scenario, moving through fields of wrecked enemy vehicles, thinking I destroyed the enemy force, only to have an entire squad decimated and broken by a sudden, violent tank crew ambush from the wheat field nearby.

There is also no reason not to throw your own bailed-out crews right into the front line if you want to.

If I have guys swarming around a tank, close assaulting it, then the crew will jump out with that really fast bailing out animation and then cap some of my guys in the back of the head at point blank range before they can react. Then the crew gets gunned down. The game doesn't allow them to just surrender right away.

I just played a scenario in Black Sea where one Ukrainian tank crewman killed I think seven of my guys by himself. It was like he was Rambo or something. He had no other friendlies nearby for hundreds of meters. It was just him alone in the woods at night, the sole survivor of his crew, repeatedly ambushing my guys over and over while he moved through the woods like a ghost. I would try area firing into the woods, but then he would run away and relocate. It took an entire platoon hunting him in order to bring him down (after he killed half of it). It's hilarious, and I suppose that's great for Hollywood, but it's hard to claim the game is a "serious combat simulator" with things like this.

Dismounted tank crews controlled by the AI will also continue the same attack orders they had when they were still in the tank. So this leads to bailed-out tank crews charging mindlessly toward your positions, trying to capture them with their pistols. Most of the time this isn't really noticeable because the crews usually get killed so quickly, but it was very noticeable in the "Red Hordes" scenario in CMRT. That scenario is designed as Germans vs AI, with the AI Russians attacking you with dozens of tanks with almost no infantry support. After knocking out a couple dozen of them at long range, you start seeing waves of tank crewmen streaming across the fields, attempting to storm your trenches all by themselves, shrugging off the heavy losses and machine gun fire.

I remember this happening all the way back in CMBN, and yet this was still happening using the latest version of CMRT a couple of weeks ago.

[What have been the most frequently requested features / tweaks]

I´m as well a sound freak, beeing musician for more than 30 years and it would be great if more distant sounds get muffled, or sounds adapted on the fly, when beeing in urban terrain, within buildings, in forests or in changed environmental conditions (fog, clear nights....). I´ve no idea about OpenGL audio filtering features, but I´m fairly sure that these features can be added without adding gigabytes of new sounds to the game. I´d expect additional lag and dropped frame rates though, so this should better be then a switchable option, in case some people have less powerful hardware and such.

Would you really get that much of a performance loss with that though? Unless you're using a really, really old computer or something. Maybe some longer loading times? It seems like extra sounds might be a small hit compared to all the AI, pathfinding, spotting, and ballistics calculations going on. I'm not a programmer or anything though, so all I can do is compare different games to each other. I mentioned Red Orchestra earlier, but perhaps some of the best gunfire sounds I've heard in a game come from Project Reality, and it's a mod for a 10 year old game.

I was trying to find examples of the sounds in that game that don't have people talking over them. I love the way the distant gunfire sounds. It can really get the adrenaline going when you're getting shot at in that game and you crank the volume way up.

https://youtu.be/FIH46l4hVz8?t=466

https://youtu.be/yVdICtjDZ04?t=958

Red Orchestra 2 also has a system where sounds not only change according to distance, but location as well. Like firing in a tight space would sound different from firing outside. But like I said earlier, I don't expect BFC to ever have a fancy realistic sound system as a priority. That doesn't stop me from fantasizing about it though.  CM does such a great job at simulating all the munitions flying about on a battlefield - everything except for the sounds. The sounds are just so plain and bare-bones. So many players consider sound mods to be essential, and they help, but they still don't do the trick for me. Just having them change according to distance would make a big difference.

 

Whenever a unit is selected, having the end of the movement lines of units of the same command display a "capped line" so it looks like a "T" at their stop points would be very helpful. This way when the movement lines of several units overlap you can easily tell if the units of the same command stop in the desired formation and area.

Oh and I love this idea.

[What have been the most frequently requested features / tweaks]

Well here's my wishlist. 

1) Better artillery interface, for adjusting duration/intensity during the middle of a fire mission.

2) Fortified buildings. Not bunkers, but up-armored versions of buildings that simulate things like sandbag reinforcement, furniture removed and space set aside for AT guns, MG nests and mortar positions inside, etc. Bullets go through walls, and it's usually not a good idea to set up in buildings, or stick your face in front of a window without some kind of reinforcement. This was pretty common practice. I'm reminded of George Orwell's account of the street fighting in Barcelona he took part in. When the fighting broke out, pretty much everyone on both sides just ran into the nearest buildings and fortified the hell out of them, then camped out there and took pot-shots at each other for the next few days. In WW2, whole towns would be turned into fortresses, with networks of fortified buildings with communication trenches in between, but that's impossible in the game.

3) Better sound design. I am a sucker for good sounds. Somehow I doubt this will ever be a priority for Battlefront, since they still use that same damn artillery thumping background effect from all the way back in Shock Force in 2007. Still, I really wish that the sounds would change according to distance. You would want a couple of different sounds for each weapon - one for distance, and one for up close. A gun firing from 500 meters away should not use the same sound effect as one firing right next to the camera. A lot of games have had this feature for many years now.

I always loved the way Red Orchestra did it. Every weapon had two sounds. Simple as that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQSkcZn8i3

 

[Infantry canonfodder in CMRT]

+1 to having friendly casualties having more penalties.  Maybe I got used to playing CMSF where friendly casualties were heavily penalized (at least for the western nations).  But, the WW2 iterations of CM2 all seem to almost encourage profligate friendly casualties. 

Especially for the Russians. The briefing for the CMRT Russian campaign outright tells you to ignore friendly casualties, and just focus on overrunning and killing as many Germans as possible. So you just charge in going URRAH while annihilating whole companies of Germans down to the last man.

I know that real life battles often end when one side thinks they might lose. It doesn't matter if that's true or not - the moment they think so, they quit, and the whole force retreats, or calls off the attack, etc. A single tank getting knocked out might be considered the turning point that completely drains the will of one side to continue. I suppose that's why you have forces like the Taliban and the Islamic State rapidly capturing entire cities with few losses, despite being vastly outnumbered. Morale is a dangerous thing. I remember an old CMx1 scenario about the Germans attacking a village with a platoon of Tiger tanks. It was based on a real engagement, but in real life, the Germans called off the attack after losing one of the Tigers. There's no reason for a player to do that in the game. You might as well use the other Tigers if you have them, until you either win, or they're knocked out. Why put the toys on the field if you're not gonna use them?

[Infantry canonfodder in CMRT]

In the attack, split teams and echelon the leader section somewhat back and put the other teams up front. NKWD style so to say. 

Yeah, but that's not as much fun as having the officers personally lead the attack. Lately, just for fun, I've tried throwing not just squad leaders, but my higher level HQs right into the thick of the fighting, leading from the front. Like Lt Col. Robert Cole's bayonet charge in Normandy or something. Sometimes it actually works because there are so many SMG-toting officers.

If they die, well, it's better they die on their feet at the head of their men than cowering in the back! 

A while ago I had a game where I made my US airborne company HQ personally lead an assault on an enemy trench line and Flak gun position. Not only did it work, but the Captain himself personally shot a surrendering German right in the face with his M1 carbine, at point-blank range. He was shot the instant he put his hands up.

[Infantry canonfodder in CMRT]

Because of the lack of hedgerows I would imagine. Hedgerows made for such fantastic cover in CMBN. They are almost indestructible, and a pain to deal with, especially if there are well motivated troops hiding behind them, like the fanatical Germans in the Scottish Corridor campaign. Normandy also has a lot of strong stone buildings that provide good protection from small arms fire. 

In CMRT, the maps are often much bigger and more appropriate for big tank battles. There are a lot of scenarios in which the infantry seem like little more than bodyguards and spotters for the tanks. You might have only trees and shabby wooden houses to hide in, and that nearby platoon of IS-2s with their enormous 122mm guns will blow you to pieces the moment they spot you. Your foxholes might as well not even be there when one of those shells explodes on top of you.

Each CM game plays a bit differently. Playing with powerful US airborne infantry in Normandy and Holland is gonna be different from playing Soviet troops in Poland. The Italy game plays differently from the others as well. 

As for leaders always dying first, well that happens in every CM game! You just have to embrace the inevitable death of your officers, and tell them to charge into battle, leading from the front. They have to set an example for their men. 

[ETA on version 3.0?]

Denying the player control over air support would be a bad idea in my opinion. A few days ago I finished reading "By Tank Into Normandy" written by a British tank commander, Stuart Hills. There was an interesting passage in there about their advance during Operation Bluecoat. Their standard procedure upon encountering enemy tanks was to fire smoke shells at them and call in air support. They didn't even need RAF observers to do it either, although they certainly made things easier if they were there. If observers weren't around, the tankers would contact Brigade HQ themselves and get them to bring in a spotter plane followed by Typhoons.

During one morning, the British column had been stopped at a T-junction in a road, which was mined along with the fields around it. They were calling up sappers to deal with it when a Tiger appeared on a distant hill and fired from 2,000 yards away, hitting one of the Shermans further back in the column. The British tanks responded by firing volleys of smoke shells downrange. They fired some red smoke at the Tiger as well while their air controller brought in four Typhoons. The second Typhoon got a direct hit with its rockets and, when the smoke cleared, they could see the Tiger lying on its side, minus the turret.

I think it should work in the game like it does with regular artillery. It should just take longer if they don't have a dedicated observer. I wish the game had colored smoke shells, though.

Anyway, I can't wait for Normandy 3.0. I've been getting that annoying bug in Red Thunder with troops unable to enter buildings, so I haven't played it much. I switched back to Normandy for the time being.

[Great Advertisement for Red Thunder]

Ha. Now that is funny. During the playtesting of this scenario, the Hill on the right flank was mostly used as the way to crack the the German line. Intense firefights on the Hill ensued. Later on I introduced a gap in the AT obstacles on the left flank besides the railway, to open up a possible axis of attack there too. This was suggested by a playtester and I decided he had a point.

Going through the center however, was more or less discarded very early on as near suicidal. And here comes Pickett charging in . Actually, this way of attacking conforms more to the stereotype Soviet style attack: charge! But it worked for you apparently. Resulting in a brutal, high casualty fight, but effective nonetheless for a breakthrough was achieved.

Perhaps many of us are still a bit stuck in the West front mindset. Reluctant to throw our troops in a meatgrinder knowing most will not make it to the end of the battle despite perhaps achieving a victory that way. I too play mostly like that, carefully guiding my troops to avoid casualties as much as possible. Silly me.

In fact, when I made Bunkers Burning I really did envision a Saving Private Ryan opening scene kinda scenario, but now on the Eastern front. But like I said, it did not play out like that during testing. Not anymore! Casualties be damned. Charge!

That hill was a tough objective for me, so I just kept it under fire and bypassed it. The bunker up there was in such a good spot that my tanks could not even see it, much less hit it. I would have to rely on infantry alone to deal with it, so I just left it there.

On both flanks there wasn't much room to maneuver the large forces you get either. The center gave me enough room to deploy the entire large Russian force all at once, which worked pretty well.

My result:

Maybe 40% casualties? It doesn't look that different from the result posted earlier in the thread. That same HMG that gave him 51 casualties gave 13 to me. Another one caused 10. Most of the German units didn't cause that many casualties, but I took enormous losses from blundering into minefields like an idiot, charging across the field like that. If I had to play it again, I would tell my men to stick closer to the ground torn up by the pre-battle bombardment. Those craters give pretty good cover.

I'm also not used to taking heavier losses than the AI, coming from CMBN, so this scenario was a bit of a surprise. It was one of the first scenarios I tried in Red Thunder.

You might want to consider releasing a soundmod

Alot of people seem to like the sounds (me included!) and most soundmodders are very lenient on using their sounds in your mod. And if anyone opposes you, I'm sure me and jorge can have a chat with them to make them realize that it's good for them to help other modders

You really want me to release it? Hehe, maybe I will try cleaning up the horrible mess that is my sound folder sometime then.

[Great Advertisement for Red Thunder]

Hey, that's mine!

That was the first video I had ever made before. I am kinda surprised to see a thread on it here. It makes it all worth it to see that someone enjoyed it. I only wish I had a better computer to make these things. The recording software made it run pretty slow even with the graphics and shadows turned down low.

He he he, I recognize that battle. It's Bunkers Burning. And the video he made is really good!

But I have never seen it play out like this before! Nobody of the Beta testers (or me for that matter) was able to do an all out assault on the MLR like this and live to tell the tale.

Maybe we are all just bad players . Or I should have made the battle a lot harder (can't imagine, the Beta's comments pointed out in the exact opposite direction: make it easier). So I wonder how this was done.

But anyhoo, great to see this little piece of cinema. Saving Private Heinrich on the Ostfront . That was the aim of the battle when I designed it and with a video like this it comes close.

It was an awesome scenario, thanks for making it! I suppose the video is a bit misleading, since so much of the battle was left out of it. I didn't start recording until quite a ways into the battle. The firefight between my tanks and the German assault gun was left out of it for example. I may have made it look a bit easier than it really was.

The video was showing my first attempt at the scenario. I didn't reload any saves or anything, and I ended up taking much heavier losses than the Germans. I lost one tank to the German assault gun, and another to that very resilient PaK crew. The bastards still managed to get a shot off even after that mortar barrage and the storm of small arms fire directed at it.

I spent the first 20 minutes or so scouting around and building up virtually my entire force behind the crest of that ridge going across the map, just out of view of the enemy. I found that the orchard on the Soviet right was a great spot for some of the machine guns.

When everyone was at their jump off points, I put down a big smoke barrage and had everyone just go "over the top" all at once. With so much open ground, I didn't see much alternative except to hit them with overwhelming numbers and force, all at once, all at one point of their line. I had everyone stop at the crest of the ridge and just start shooting as much as possible, while my platoons went across the AT ditch one by one.

The smoke helped quite a bit, allowing me to concentrate fire on different points of their line. Some of my platoons took heavy losses from all the mines and enemy fire, while others made it across the AT ditch without a scratch, amazingly enough.

By the time the video starts, most of the German bunkers and heavy weapons had already been destroyed or suppressed, and my infantry had mostly made it across the AT ditch and were launching their final assault. I managed to get a total victory with a German surrender, although the two bunkers on the German flanks never fell. I threw everything I had at the German center and broke through. Maybe you could call it a WWII Pickett's Charge, except a bit more successful. I sent probing attacks at both flanks but it didn't go so well. I pulled everyone off the flanks and hurled them straight at the center.

LMAO... not default for sure, im not sure they are mine,, this is going to be a mistery or maybe is a mix

Yep, it was a mix. I honestly can't even remember which sounds belong to which mods at this point. I keep picking and choosing sounds from different mods all the time.

I was using a tracer mod and an explosion FX mod too, but that was about it.