[Tank Armor/late war metal shortage]

I believe so. Check out the vehicle descriptions in the manual, and you'll see notes about the armor quality on various tanks, particularly Panthers. 

[Idea: Troops on "hunt" should drop down if they take fire]

3 hours ago, Erwin said:

Have any tests been done on how units react on MOVE?   IN CM1 it was very bad/risky to use MOVE unless one was 100% sure there were no enemy in the vicinity. 

However, in CM2, I get the sense that MOVE is more akin to "HUNT LITE" and am starting to use it more and more when it is merely possible (as opposed to highly likely) there is enemy in the vicinity.  When shot at, units on MOVE are not as vulnerable as they were in CM1.

I agree on this; Move seems to have decent spotting and no more vulnerability to an initial attack than Hunt. The problem is that they switch to Quick when fired upon, which can make them more vulnerable. Using short waypoints helps.

I think v 4 helps make Move more viable since troops don’t form a conga line. 

[Idea: Troops on "hunt" should drop down if they take fire]

3 hours ago, RepsolCBR said:

A second version of this order could perhaps be something like LOW AND SLOW...The troops will move forward in a crouched mode with weapons at the ready and not stop until they take some serious fire/ casualties (like other movement options). This option should keep the stealthyness of the original HUNT command. 

 

Isn't this a lot like what Slow currently does, except for the animations? Slow is tiring of course, but I imagine this would also be.

14 hours ago, Erwin said:

In WEGO this is usually fatal for vehicles.  It would (usually) be better for survival to have the vehicle reverse as fast as possible to cover.  Hope this goes on the master wish list.

Isn't this already there for when vehicles, regardless of movement commands, encounter much more heavily armored vehicles that they can't hurt? It seems like it would require a lot of coding to make it apply to ATGs or infantry fire as well, since "whether you can hurry them" is much more complex than just an armor penetration calculation. A T-70 *can* hurt an 88 that it sees 1500m away . . . but you'd probably still want it to back up when it notices the gun. It seems like we'd need two Hunt modes--one for this, an another for when you want Hunt to mean that a King Tiger should move forward until it spots the enemy, then open fire.

I would love it if (as others suggested at some point) Hunt could be a toggle rather than a command, so it would govern how soldiers in any movement command would respond to enemy contact--in Move, for example, it would make them drop down instead of switching to Quick if they take fire.

[Are AT guns too fragile?]

Perhaps I was being overly snarky, but yes, @sburke is right, my point was that there's a very good reason you lose the scenario if you don't make the attack--you haven't done what you were ordered to do. In real life, there could be dire consequences for that. Since this entire discussion has been about whether the scenario is realistic, I'm not convinced "it's a video game" is a useful response.

11 minutes ago, sburke said:

Given that I would say there is absolutely no grounds to conclude from that thread that there is anything to actually correct.

Exactly. This is becoming a circular discussion.

48 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

If your response is "there were no lessons we got it right"

If this is implying that I'm part of the "we," I should clarify that I had absolutely nothing to do with designing "Crossing the River," CMRT, or any CM scenario.

[Are AT guns too fragile?]

40 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

Why does the mission fail you if you call your attack off upon the very early realization you will have that the pre-mission bombardments have not worked

"Why did I get demoted and put in a penal battalion? All I did was disobey a direct order, leaving the neighboring battalion's flank in the air and exposed to a counterattack! And then my own battalion, sitting still on the start line, took 60% casualties to a German artillery barrage. It's not fair!" The plans for Bagration weren't premised on individual battalion commanders being able to cancel attacks just because they guessed (based on what?) that the prep barrage didn't do enough damage. (In any case, if you Cease Fire immediately you'll get a Major Defeat but you can still go on to the next mission in the campaign.)

40 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

pushing ahead even if you completely disregard your own casualties is literally impossible

Again, have you played it? This is simply not true.

40 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

Since you agree with me that it's an intentionally dysfunctional scenario

I don't. Atypical, maybe. If you read the earlier thread, you'll see that there are ways I think "Crossing the River" could've been more realistic. But not "intentionally dysfunctional.' Plenty of things happened in WW2 that, if you read only the doctrinal manuals, theoretically should not have happened. That doesn't mean a scenario representing such an occurrence is "intentionally dysfunctional." By that logic, we should never see US TDs in scenarios except fighting as whole battalions, stopping enemy breakthroughs. All those scenarios where TDs are infantry support? All "intentionally dysfunctional." And don't even get me started on CMFB "Lanzerath Ridge." One US I&R platoon would never face down a whole Fallschirmjager battalion on its own, let alone without artillery support; that wasn't their job in US doctrine. And the Fallschirmjagers would never simply attempt a human wave attack; that wasn't German doctrine. Certainly not during "the biggest and most meticulously planned operation the [German] Army has ever [or at least recently] conducted against an unpummeled, immobile enemy on a sector of front that hasn't moved in weeks." Yet . . . it happened, and there's a scenario on it. And that's a far, far more severe and unlikely event than anything in "Crossing the River."

You seem to be echoing many of JasonC's concerns about "the typical case," and I think BletchleyGeek had a good reply to that in the same thread: 

40 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

rewarded the player's agency, including his right to walk away from a loaded scenario

No one is forcing you to play the scenario. As I noted, you can even hit "Cease Fire" and it'll still advance you to the next battle in the campaign.

One last thought on prep barrages: I think it's inherently difficult to represent them in scenarios where the AI is defending because the AI can't do what a human would do: put the defending troops on Hide until the artillery lifts and/or the enemy gets close, then un-Hide them. So the next best alternative is to abstract out the bombardment, as "Crossing the River" does.

 

[Are AT guns too fragile?]

3 minutes ago, SimpleSimon said:

And then even more convincingly struck down on page 2 by Apocal for reasons I agree with him on. Has Joch designed many other scenarios in the CM games? I think I know which ones i'll be cracking open first with the editor from now on. 

You can see my response there. Have you played it? I found the rockets, with a 15-minute delay, plenty useful. It's entirely realistic that the mortars would be on-call to the infantry as they advance--maybe they were used earlier along with heavy artillery in the prep fire, but that's mostly over before the scenario starts (and in contrast to Apocal, I found it pretty easy to call in the mortars--there are plenty of German positions that are "Reverse Slope--No Aim Point" but that's just fine for calling indirect fire). Would the Soviets *want* to make an attack this way, with the preliminary bombardment having failed to do much damage and infantry lagging a few minutes too far behind it? Probably not. But did they do it sometimes? Surely. Things go wrong, and CM often pays particular attention to the occasions when things didn't go exactly according to doctrine.

[Soviet Mortar Usage IRL]

6 hours ago, DMS said:

I don't know exactly what "by chain" means, I guess that "chain" of soldiers would stretch from OP to mortars and they would shout to each other: "Add 200m! 0-05 to the right! One more spotting round!" So if you roleplay, just make a chain of units and call mortar strike.

I had never thought of this, but it makes a lot of sense that they would do it. From that document, this suggests to me that the mortar teams would rely on direct-lay fire frequently when new targets appeared once an attack was underway: "351. С захватом пехотой переднего края и проникновением ее в глубину обороны минометная рота (батарея) повзводно быстро выдвигается вперед для поражения целей, наиболее мешающих продвижению пехоты. / 351. With the capture by the infantry of the front edge and penetration of it into the depth of defense, the mortar company (battery) platoon quickly advances forward to defeat the targets most interfering with the advance of the infantry."

Thanks for the thoughts everyone!

 

[Are AT guns too fragile?]

3 hours ago, SimpleSimon said:

Hammer's Flank. The entire campaign, especially the river crossing mission and the attack on the village on mission 3, feature massively overpacked defenders w/supporting fires and armor of their own that the player is supposed to negotiate....with a handful of SU-76s and 3 mortar teams that appear as reinforcements so you can't use them in the planning phase when they most certainly would've been available. More scenarios with these issues exist, the litmus test for them is easy. Any time you play as the defender and you possess enough assets to legitimately inflict more harm on the attacker by attacking him first, the defense is over packed and the scenario is badly designed. Bonus points for including cited works the designer didn't read or didn't understand. 

Similar concerns about Hammer's Flank have been raised, and I think convincingly answered (including by one of the designers), in an earlier thread:

 

[Which to Buy?]

8 minutes ago, DerKommissar said:

Even that annoying crazy infantry bug is peanuts compared to beautiful, accurate and most importantly colourful tracers that are in-game.

Except when those lovely tracers are coming out of Brens and BARs one at a time.  (Or from Bredas, but I barely notice the difference between the white tracers and the generic old yellow ones.) I agree on corners, it's really fun to have that in urban fights.

[Tank tactics: why the regression?]

1 hour ago, sburke said:

What I would like is the ability to designate smaller loadouts of small arms and unacquire jav launchers. 

A general option to put things back in vehicles/ammo dumps would be great--not just for heavy objects like Javelins but also for when you accidentally click the wrong place so the team with only carbines from a different platoon acquires your last 250 rounds of .30 cal MG ammo . . .

[Soviet Mortar Usage IRL]

I wonder if anyone knows how, IRL, the Soviets would use their mortars tactically on the attack? What I mean is this: my understanding is that the Soviets used guns and howitzers mostly for preplanned fire, but that they did use mortars for on-call support. I also know that CM abstracts field telephones, runners, flares, etc so that all HQs can call in indirect fire, even if they don't have radios.

But in reality, I wonder how the Soviets would have done it, since (according to the game) rifle formations didn't have radios below battalion level. On the defensive, I assume they could use field telephones to talk to the battalion mortars. I can also see having on-call targets, which would be TRPs in CM, and those would be straighforward (e.g. green flares mean fire on registered target #3, etc). But for on-the-fly targeting, it seems impossible to go through the spotting-rounds-and-correcting-fire procedure by sending back runners or shooting off flares. And field phones couldn't keep up with an attack. So what did they do on the attack? Did the Soviets send up forward observers to spot for battalion mortars? Did only battalion commanders serve this role with their radios? Or were company commanders temporarily given radios or field phones? Did they make extensive use of on-call preplotted targets, called in by runners or flares or homing pigeons or whatever? Or did the mortars have to get up front and fire "directly," observing their own fire?

This is, of course, largely irrelevant to the game except for extreme roleplaying, but every time I play I wonder how it would've really worked.

[The road to Nijmegen possible bug]

I think I had the same problem recently (but under v3). 

[Modern Day to WW2 worth it?]

2 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I think they added that to the WW2 titles recently. Could just be something I imagine, but I think I see many more lightly wounded in CMFB 4.0 than I did in CMBN 3.12. Or maybe it's just because they now made the squad icon flash when taking a "yellow wound", whereas it used to only flash when somebody went down.

I think it's just the flashing that's changed. Anecdotally I think I do see more light wounds in CMBS. I've always assumed (based on something someone said on the forum) this represents that body armor will stop bullets and shrapnel but soldiers who've been hit may still be dazed, bruised, concussed, or have broken bones.

[Night Vision Googles: Always wanted to know]

8 hours ago, Sequoia said:

But seriously, I'm guessing the wearer would be blinded for some time right?

The more advanced image-intensification systems have "auto-gating": 

"This maintains the optimum performance of the I² tube, continuously revealing mission critical details, safeguarding the I² tube from additional damage and protecting the user from temporary blindness. The benefits of ATG can easily be seen not only during day-night-day transitions, but also under dynamic lighting conditions when rapidly changing from low light to high light conditions (above 1 lx), such as sudden illumination of dark room. A typical advantage of ATG is best felt when using a weapon sight which experiences a flame burst during shooting (see figures below showing pictures taken at the impact zone of a dropped bomb). ATG would reduce the temporary blindness that a standard BSP tube would introduce, allowing them to continuously maintain “eyes on target”."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_vision_device#Auto-gating

Googling around, it looks like the US PVS-14 is auto-gated. 

[US Thompson SMG doesn't fire on "target light", but MP40 does..]

Soviet SMGs do, at (it seems to me) about the same rate of fire as they would on Target. 

[US Thompson SMG doesn't fire on "target light", but MP40 does..]

I've just checked this in CMBN under 3.0, at about 60m, and back in that version the Thompson also doesn't fire on Target Light. I like this behavior and wish other SMGs would behave the same way. 

[How come Nebelwerfers are so rare in the big German scenarios?]

It seems natural that those got the most attention in US accounts. My memory (just based on reading Cole recently) is that there are many other instances, early in the battle, of platoons and companies being overrun. Those who survived as stragglers or prisoners probably didn't get as much attention as intact units that survived assaults, like the 395th stand at Höfen or the defenders at Bastogne or Krinkelt-Rocherath. (As I recall, even Lt. Bouck's heroic stand with his I&R platoon at Lanzerath only got attention decades later, because he and all his men were captured. That action doesn't even show up in Cole's account, written in the early 1960s.)

[How come Nebelwerfers are so rare in the big German scenarios?]

What period are these numbers for? Those numbers on Wikipedia go up through Jan. 25, which would mean they include about a month when the US was back on the offensive and only 2 weeks when it was mostly the Germans attacking. Presumably Huertgen losses wouldn't be included since that battle was over by Dec. 16.

I would also imagine the Germans inflicted far more losses than they suffered in the opening days, mostly not by winning relatively equal head-on engagements but by cutting off and overwhelming smaller American units (or forcing them to surrender, like the whole 422nd and 423rd Infantry Regiments).

[How come Nebelwerfers are so rare in the big German scenarios?]

Yeah, reading about VG attacks in the Bulge it seems like the German infantry had forgotten how to use fire and movement and whole companies sometimes just charged.

[How come Nebelwerfers are so rare in the big German scenarios?]

I’ve just finished reading the official US army History of the Bulge (Cole) and one thing he emphasizes is that after the initial assaults on 16-17 December, the werfers and other artillery had trouble keeping up with the volksgrenadiers (not to mention the panzer divisions). So that might be part of it. 

The other factor might be that heavy and rocket artillery was usually used in preliminary bombardments, outside CM’s scope. 

I havent played “Day of Attrition” yet but I see it’s about Höfen and Monschau. Cole says that in that battle on Dec 16, the higher German command inexplicably forbade using artillery on Momschau itself. They did use werfers and guns north and south of the town, but 1) it lifted at least 15 minutes before the infantry assault, and 2) “Neither the [US] infantry nor cavalry (gone well to ground) suffered much from this fire, heavy though it was; but many buildings were set afire in Höfen and some were beaten to the ground.” Excluding the rockets from the CM scenario seems right to me (though it does show the absence of terrain fires!)

[Asst. leader doesn't take over after platoon leader dies?]

43 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Good spot, you're right. Also, the US teams that can take over are called XO.. but this one is called HQ Support Team. I wonder what its purpose is. I guess that in the game, it's basically just an extra team with binoculars for better spotting.

Good point. I don't think this is exactly a hard-and-fast rule though--the US Weapons Platoon XO is in a team called "1st Team-HQ Support" for example. I think HQ support teams are often just there to account for extra soldiers who are in the "headquarters" section of the real TO&E but would make the HQ team itself too unwieldy in game terms. Especially for the games designed before it became possible to make HQs splittable--if BFC were designing the Pz Aufk platoon again today, I wonder if the HQ would be a two-team splittable HQ squad like the Russian company HQs in CMBS.

[Asst. leader doesn't take over after platoon leader dies?]

18 minutes ago, Erwin said:

The 3rd reason is that those of us who started with CM1 learned that it was very important to keep HQ's with good attributes close to subordinates as that indeed make a big difference in performance.  Your findings are appreciated and it seems like this is one of those "myths" that need to be unlearned in CM2.

However, I would have sworn that many years ago (CMSF days) comparisons were made in combat between units in and out of C2 of their HQ's with different attributes that there was a statistical difference in performance.  However, the difference is so subtle in CM2 (vs very obvious in CM1) that in CM2 it's hardly worth worrying about - other than keeping units in C2 for "realism" purposes.

 

I find Regular and Green units, especially, much steadier when in C2. And while I kind of wish that platoon leaders' abilities affected their squads, they still do indirectly--a better-quality Platoon HQ will hold up better under fire, allowing it to keep its squads in C2 more effectively.

@Josey Wales, thank you for the great explanation!

2 hours ago, Josey Wales said:

A Bttn XO does not appear take over if the Bttn Commander goes down.

I just tried this by pulling up a scenario (CMBN MG Sacrifice for a New Religion) and killing a US Rifle Battalion CO. The XO did immediately take over.

I also tried killing a German SS Aufklarungs Platoon CO (in CMFB December Morning), and I found the same thing that @Bulletpoint did--the HQ Support Team's leader did not take over. However, I also noticed that the guy in charge of that team is labeled "Team Leader" rather than "Executive Officer" in the lower-left-hand green text that describes everyone's current activities. So I wonder if he's a different type of assistant. When I've seen "Assistants" take over, whether at platoon, company, or battalion level, they're always the "Executive Officer" type rather than "Team Leader." The difference is subtle because on the UI display down below they're both labeled "Asst," but they're different roles.

So it seems to me this behavior is intended, and the Aufklarungs Platoon HQ Support Team leader is NOT really considered an assistant platoon leader. He's just a team leader/assistant squad leader, so ineligible to take over a platoon. This would make sense, since the Aufklarungs platoons are already commanded by NCOs (Hauptscharführer) rather than officers. The HQ Support Team leaders are even more junior by two ranks (Scharführer). As I understand it that's more like a squad leader's rank than a platoon sergeant's. By contrast, SS PzGd platoons, which do have Executive Officers who can take over, are commanded by officers.

[Asst. leader doesn't take over after platoon leader dies?]

2 hours ago, MOS:96B2P said:

It would be cool if the assistant platoon leader took over from the actual platoon leader.  Especially in this case since the platoon leader is in his own HQ support team.  However this does not happen at the platoon level in the game (at least no examples I can think of).  Instead a company HQ can fill in for a platoon HQ.  It seems once the platoon leader is KIA he can't be replaced.       

I don’t have the game handy right now, but I’m sure I’ve seen this happen. Last night, for example, in CMBN the commander of a US Rifle Company’s Weapons Platoon was hit and the HQ Support Team, with the XO in it, became the new HQ. The icon of that unit changed and he became the center of C2 for the platoon. I’m sure I’ve seen it with others too. It gives formations with Platoon XOs (US, British) more resiliency than those without (most Soviets, some Germans).

Could it be this is a CMFB 4.0 bug? I have noticed some weirdness with Assistants in CMFB under 4.0. For example, German Volksgrenadier squads and some US Armored Infantry squads get an extra Assistant, in addition to the one they already have, but with an ordinary private’s rank. Seems like one soldier has just been mislabeled. This is obviously a different issue but it may suggest something weird happened with assistant leaders in general in the update. 

[Vehicle smoke]

It would be nice if the purple line that comes up when you select "Pop Smoke" extended out the distance the smoke would go. As it stands it extends (and says) 20m, which I guess is accurate for defensive smoke launchers but not for these. It could go out the full 150+m to show what'll really happen.

[Vehicle smoke]

It's supposed to work this way, to cover advancing infantry: