Hapless

Just as an outlier in case no one has considered it: There are two uniform options for the Ukrainians in vanilla Black Sea: Standard and Digital Camo. It might be that the mod only changes the Digital Camo uniform and the pixeltruppen in the campaign are set to wear Standard.

@BFCElvis Awesome! If I'm going to be totally honest, the first thing I'm going to do when i get the game is see how the Lend Lease Sherman stacks up against the T-34 and vice versa. Then fight over Berlin. Loving those wrecked Volkswagens too.

Oh wow. Err... I'm not actually up on my late war Eastern Front stuff. So I guess... an IS-2? Not sure whether we've seen one of those yet. Or who/what-ever shot those unfortunate pixeltruppen in your first screenshot.

Ruined wall segments? Those ruined walls don't look like they're part of the usual ruined building pile, or damaged existing walls, more like they're a specific placed object.

Yeah, I just had a play about with it. Definitely something weird going on.

See what happens if you put the HQ back in the BMP or if the HQ is out of line of sight of the infantry (behind a wall or a hill or something). It might take a second or two for the C2 icons to update when you move them. As a guess, everyone still has their radios but because they can now see the Pl HQ, they're now relying on visual signals in preference to the radio. IIRC, the icons at the bottom just indicate the means of contact that are being used, its not like an inventory.

Touche. This is what I get for being slow to CMFI.

Sloped armour reduces internal volume, which has some serious knock on effects on things like ergonomics, ammunition count and survivability. The other question mark is whether it would have helped in any way: the frontal armour would obviously be more effective than the side armour (it would be both thicker and more angled) and when was the last time you saw the Sherman bounce anything off it's front slope?

CMFFS would be an unfortunate acronym, though I'm sure we've all felt it

Nicely done @Bud Backer Just trying to get into the defence a bit more: what were the conditions like? It looks pretty snowy in a couple of the screenshots. We're all talking about how the defender should have mutually supporting positions on the flanks, but if you're fighting in poor visibility and those positions can't see far enough to cover one another then despite its drawbacks concentrating in the town might have been the least worst option. I think one of the things we're glossing over is that your opponent managed to generate so much uncertainty you felt like you needed advice . That's not a trivial achievement: CM is as much about attacking the enemy's decision-making ability as it is about killing his pixeltruppen. Its only a pity that he was unable to exploit it, but without going over the terrain and knowing the exact conditions and points available it feels a little premature to assume that he could. Not that any of this diminishes your victory at all: there are always things to learn from both sides.

Urban warfare 101: Do you actually need to go into the village at all? I would take a look at the time, the points allocated to each ground objective and the points available for destroying the enemy and decide off those factors. If you don't need to take the village, then why take the risk? Occupy the two minor objectives, surround the village and chip away at him from a distance at minimum risk.

Yeah. Apparently the Jackson can depress its gun to -10 degrees, which would make sense seen as though its a Tank Destroyer that's supposed to be fighting hull down (being open topped helps- means the breech isn't smacking into the turret roof!). Not sure if this graphical oddity is an issue with the model or if it is actually depressed -10 degrees and its hard to tell. Its a little off-topic, but interesting to see the projectile created at the end of the barrel and not where the breech should be. The shell tracers are bigger than the barrel, so I guess it would look weird everytime it fired if you could see the tracer going through the barrel, not to mention how that might interact with any collision logic going on.

It also works with min elevation: this is a M36 Jackson just after firing from a hull down position. Take that physics!

The distribution varies depending on the type of battle. I can only remember Meeting Engagements off the top of my head: the points would be split 60% unit objectives and 40% ground objectives. If you made a map with 4 objectives, each one would be worth 400/4= 100 points. I think you can change the points distribution between the objectives by varying their points worth in the editor. For example, if you had two objectives and you allocated Obj A twice as many points than Obj B, in a QB Obj A would be worth 66% of the terrain points and Obj B would be worth 33% (in our meeting engagement, that would be 266-133). The best way to see how this works is to pick a map and then set up quick battles against the AI in different game modes and surrender as soon as you get to the deployment screen: this will give all the victory points to computer so you can see how they're distributed.

My quick 2p: I don't have any problems with tanks in CM, I think almost all of the issues you raise have tactical solutions. Or to put it another way, don't the situations you describe imply that something has gone wrong somewhere? Why are defensive positions exposed to direct fire at all, never mind direct fire from tanks? If the defensive plan is to engage in a slugfest with a superior enemy force, what is the purpose of these positions (delay, attrite, destroy, bait?) and how are they sited to achieve that purpose? How has enemy armour advanced to infantry close assault range? Is the infantry too far forward? Are the anti-tank assets not set up effective? There are plenty of infantry tools (bazooka, PIAT, faust, shreck) capable of dealing with enemy armour- are these weapons effectively distributed or protected until they are needed? If all friendly AT assets are gone then something has definitely gone seriously wrong! But how would the enemy know that he can operate unopposed? Where was the AT reserve? Why are underpowered AT assets engaging overarmoured targets? If they're underpowered, what was the plan to use them effectively? Cumulative subsystem damage from non-penetrating hits isn't a trivial problem: tanks with no optics and no radios are a lot less effective. Maybe a different angle on the issue. Fortification issues are a different kettle of fish, but from a strictly (potentially unrealistic) gameplay perspective I would rather have ineffective or overly expensive fortifications than time consuming trench clearing operations, map spanning minefields and impenetrable walls of anti-tank obstacles.

Hello! Syrian Airborne troops seem to be equipped with night vision monoculars and night sights on their weapons, but only have a single piece of night vision equipment in their inventory. It seems a bit weird because the NATO units have an NVG set for each soldier (ie. 8 sets for an 8 man squad). Plus, the Syrian Airborne appear to have NATO NVGs magically attached to their helmet brims? I can understand how it makes sense to reuse the NATO night vision monocular asset, but in combination with the discrepancy in the inventory it seems off. I was wondering if all the squad members are supposed to have night vision, whether they're supposed to only have the night optics for their weapons or whether its only the squad leader seen as though they apparently only have one set between them? And more importantly, is it just a graphical bug or can they actually see at night?

One of the big differences in real life is that AA isn't confined to the size of a combat mission map: when air support in game is circling the map at a few kms distance it can only be fired at by whatever AA the victim has brought along, whereas in reality the planes would likley be having to contend with more significant AA fire from other positions in depth. I take planes as often as its sensible (strafe-only P-47s are 30pts in CMFB- so basically the only good reason not to take a handful is the weather) and I can tell you that while AA isn't hugely effective, neither are the planes. I've seen them strafe Panthers they can't destroy instead of halftracks full of infantry that they would collander, I've seen them strafe dead infantry in a wood instead of platoons of infantry running in the open... they're not exactly a reliable asset. They are vulnerable to AA- my planes abort all the time, sometimes they get shot down- but I find the best way to deal with enemy airpower is to have a realistic appreciation of how effective it is, plan to account for it, then ignore it. My airpower does very little physical damage, but has immense psychological impact on human players... which you can discount if you choose to.

Slight tangent, but just for reference, that's a really good rate of return for PBEM games 1 turn a day is pretty standard, more is a bonus, less isn't uncommon.

Thanks! All that time rinsing through the university library ten years ago wasn't wasted after all! The ruthless concentration concept came mostly from Viktor Suvorov's "Inside the Soviet Army". Suvorov is a somewhat questionable source: he was a GRU defector trying to sell books in the West and some of the things he wrote turned out to be wrong, but his sections on tactics are fantastic, very well written(/translated) and tie in nicely with other sources and the historical record. There were some PDF links to his book around at some point, but I can't find them after a quick look.

How far away is the mortar from the target? Those 120mm mortars have a minimum range of about 500m (IIRC). If you're too close the mortar won't fire, so you won't get any spotting rounds. That might explain why its stuck in the spotting phase. Try moving the mortar carrier further away.

Best to treat enemy held buildings like landmines: If you can go round it, go round it. If you can't go round it... blow it up before you go near it. If you can't blow it up... shoot the crap out of it in the hope that you'll hit something important that stops it going off. Clearing the building is the equivalent of stepping on the landmine- don't do it unless you literally have no other choice.

If you press spacebar in the force selector, you can see what formations/units etc come with each module. This is CMBN, but it works the same in CMSF2: The fun things you learn by accidentally mashing the keyboard.

Did someone say explosions? Fun fact: you can daisy chain IEDs.

How far apart do you place your order waypoints? The pixeltruppen will do a quick re-org at each waypoint: they stop, wait for everyone to catch up and then move on to the next one. The further away your waypoints are, the more thinking the TacAi has to do in between, the more strung out your troops will get and the more likely something will go wrong. For infantry, its always worth putting down a series of shorter waypoints instead of one long one. Of course sometimes they get confused anyway, but lots of little orders goes a long way to mitigating that.

A few points: 1. Syrian airpower is comically unresponsive compared to NATO. It can take anything up to 30 minutes to call a CAS mission in. If you are sat in the same place for 30 minutes against a Syrian force that is not only qualitatively inferior but has chosen to spend precious points on off-map assets that are not in your way then you are probably not pushing hard enough. 2. If you're playing against a human opponent, then just agree not to bring airpower. Or agree that airpower is only an option if EW is, then shut all his radios down. Or fight at night. Or whatever- just because its there doesn't mean it has to be used or can't be 'balanced out' by agreement. 3. Syrian airpower is noisy, dramatic and scary. It is also transitory, inaccurate and not likely to be very effective if you have stumbled upon the secret, ground breaking defensive procedures of concealment, dispersion, deception and keeping on the move. I can almost guarantee that learning how to operate effectively despite enemy airpower is going to be a lot more productive and useful than moaning about it. 4. Some of the light Hind missions are 14-15 points each. I assume that's a bug: it kinda makes sense for Allied strafing runs in WW2 to be cheap because there a thousands of P47s about. Not going to claim to be an expert on the Syrians, but I'm pretty sure that they don't have enough Hinds for that kind of thing.