General Liederkranz

In my experience this is usually (though not always) due to infantry posture--as I understand it, the Target tool will show you LOS from that unit *from its current height* as if it were at that position. But infantry heights change during play based on their posture. Often, especially early in the game, you'll be measuring from an infantry unit that is safely behind the lines and standing or kneeling. But if you crawl (Slow) them into that position, they'll be lower down, and possibly able to see. It can happen in reverse if your unit is currently down on their bellies but you expect them to be kneeling when they get there--e.g. if they're going to end up behind a wall. I agree about drawing multiple fake waypoints to check LOS. Getting down to camera level 1 and walking the battlefield before the game to see what you can see from various spots can also be helpful (keeping in mind that this doesn't get you as low down as infantry; I think it approximates an average vehicle height?) There are many threads on artillery targeting but it's worth mentioning, if you haven't seen it already @JPFisher55, you can target places out of view if you have a TRP there (or within 50m), or if you're doing it before the game starts. You can even target a spot out of sight, then put a 15-minute delay on it. If you find after the game starts that you don't want to hit that spot, you can cancel the fire mission.

Nope. And it declines gradually depending on how far away they are from the edge--from 64 (two teams' worth) to 56 to 48. That seems consistent with the game measuring distance to the individual members of an "off-map" mortar team to see if each of them (and the ammo they carry) is within sharing range.

I'm wondering if this is a bug or intended behavior I've just never noticed before. In the CMFI scenario "Fight at Vallebruca," the Americans start with one on-map 60mm mortar team. The team is carrying 32 rounds, but the mortar shows 64 available. No one else on the map is carrying those 32 rounds. I'm able to fire all of them. Then, a few minutes later, the Americans get reinforcements, including another 60mm mortar team. And the extra rounds that the first team previous used, are already deducted from the number of shells the second team is carrying. It seems that they were sharing their ammo, even though they were not on the map yet. Is this normal? (there are two set-up zones for the Americans on that map, and I found that the original mortar team gets the extra ammo only if they're deployed in one of them, where the second mortar team later comes it. So again it seems like the game is assuming the second team is hanging out just off the map, sharing its ammo)

Doesn't that icon in the equipment panel actually mean that they have *one* AT rifle grenade, and the other two are HE grenades? If they had 3 AT grenades there would be a "3" on the AT grenade picture.

I don’t think it’s the Pin but the casualty changing the radio status. It looks like the radio operator was killed in betweeen the two screenshots. In my experience when that happens, the radio disappears from the unit’s inventory, but as long as they don’t move they can still keep radio C2.

Or have I just not noticed them before? I'm playing the scenario "Eye of the Needle" in v4.0 and two things have happened that struck me as odd. 1) Su-76Ms that have a small amount of HE and a lot of AP remaining have repeatedly used AP against individual Germans manning heavy weapons. I thought this was great since it took out the enemy and didn't waste precious HE, but it's not something I recall seeing before. It seems like a very clever AI ammo choice. 2) A Soviet Rifle Platoon that has lost its commander (included in 1st Squad) is somehow maintaining C2 over its squads. I thought in the past I've specifically noticed that Soviet Rifle Platoons that have the commander in 1st Squad a) don't have XOs and b ) therefore lose C2 completely when the commander is killed. They don't have any higher HQs within voice/close visual range (50m) that could be keeping them in C2.

(spoiler alert for Hunting for the Bug) I played this scenario twice and found it a great lesson in dealing with AT guns without indirect fire. I agree with DMS that it’s helfpul to have the MGs suppress the 88s. The infantry are great for spotting the guns. The first time, i then had the infantry get in close and overrun the 88s , but that’s really slow and the tanks have to basically just hide, removing them as an advantage. The second time I found the tanks, with some help, can take care off he 88s themselves: After the infantry spot the guns, they can share the information with the tanks, which then get ? icons on the guns’ locations. I then had a whole tank company pull up into positions on the wooded knoll and area fire at the suspected gun positions. The 88s might kill a couple tanks before they die, but they’ll already be partly suppressed by the MGs, and then by the hail of 76mm HE, which will quickly knock them out. I’ve found that massed tank area fire onto AT gun positions that infantry have previously spottted is pretty effective in many scenarios Of course, this applies once you know the 88s are out there in the first place, which probably means finding out when they blow up a T-70.

Also, if you’re in v4.0 you’ll see that a “Deploy Weapon” command gets added automatically to every waypoint. I think the reason is that the Russian HMGs are wheeled, and to represent this abstractly their Pack Up time is 0 seconds. So there’s no reason for them ever NOT to Deploy, thus it happens automatically.

Another test, a US infantry squad in CMFI was able to Buddy Aid a radio from a fallen FO team and use it to establish radio-based C2 with their Platoon HQ. I don't know enough about radio frequencies, networks, or training to have any idea if this is realistic, or intended, but it's interesting. In any case it seems to me that regular riflemen picking up a radio is most often going to be a problem for players rather than an opportunity for unrealistic sleaze. When the Radio Operator goes down, I really want someone else in the Platoon HQ to pick it up. If I'm not watching carefully and a random rifleman Buddy Aids him, he can't transfer it back to the HQ. So that platoon is pretty much never going to re-establish radio C2 with the Company. This was pointed out here earlier:

I just tested and it does (in this case a Waffen SS PzGd squad in CMFB recovered their platoon commander's radio).

This is great to hear! In my experience the DP worked fine under v4, I assume because the magazine is bigger.

I hope the Italian LMGs (Breda 30) are fixed too! They've also been firing single shots only over 150m. This will be great to have.

I for one am delighted to hear this,and looking forward to the patch!

To make sure I wasn't remembering wrong, I just tested this in CMFI by running an HQ into MG fire. When the Radio Operator went down, the radio disappeared from the unit's equipment panel. But when the CO Buddy Aided him, the radio reappeared in the UI equipment panel and the unit went back into radio C2. However, the CO didn't change graphically--the radio backpack didn't appear on him.

But you can't recover crew-served weapons as far as I know. I think the principle is that anything shown in the special equipment panel can be recovered: binoculars, AT weapons, radios, and I assume demo charges. I don't know about the modern titles though---not sure if you can recover NVGs.

I've done it at least once (in CMRT).

And the Bren/BAR single shot problem I hope? :-) But looking forward to it in any case!

I assume this is for a modern 5.56mm rifle though, right? WW2 squads would cary a lot less per man (as the game's default settings show) because it's heavier 7.62/7.92/etc. ammo.

I imagine the reason the other three men are hidden is that when BFC was originally designing CMx2 they probably didn't anticipate any HQs with more than one Team. I believe that's a new feature with CMBS? And there just isn't space in the UI for 2 Teams and the HQ panel.

Thank you! So it sounds like I shouldn't be using these guys like an extra rifle squad or splitting some off as scouts.

I think the CMBS Russian Company HQs, which can be split into teams, are the largest HQ units in any CM game. I'm curious if anyone knows the real-life reasons why they are this way. Are the extra riflemen there as runners in case the radios go down? Are they scouts? Or replacements? Or is it a reserve for the company?

I see what you're talking about--it's the Russian AI forces, not the US forces that the player controls in the Campaign, right? I think this is, as @c3k says, a result of the way the UI works for the odd case of multi-Team HQs, combined with the limitations of the "Review Map" mode after the game is over: A few Russian HQs, like these, have multiple teams, and they can split like rifle squads. Since they're HQs, during play you can also click the blue "HQ" button in the lower right-hand corner of the team display to show the HQ display with the flag and the Units and Formations under their command. When you have this option toggled on, it covers up the second Team in the UI. The catch is that in the post-game "Review Map" mode, the HQ option is *always* selected, and you can't unselect it. You also can't see the status text (in the lower left-hand corner of the screen) that tells you what each soldier is doing, because in Review Map mode it's replaced by the "Combat Victories" scoreboard showing how many casualties they've infliected. So it covers up one of the teams and you don't know those men are there unless you actually go and look for them.

I think it's a goodfunscenario, though with some drawbacks. The first time I played I gave up because of the casualties and micromanagment, but I really enjoyed it the second time. It rewards (what I understand to be) Soviet-style tactics: I gave each company a line of advance, all supporting each other, and each company with its platoons in a column, holding back just one platoon and some engineers as a battalion reserve. I put the rockets on planned fire with a 15-minute delay (which I assumed to represent the tail end of a much larger bombardment). Not splitting the squads (except for a few scout teams) reduces micromanagement a lot and I think it's unnecessary anyway. The losses are murderous, especially to artillery, but with three echelons you can take a lot of casualties to your lead platoons and still push forward. The biggest thing I wish were different about the scenario is that it would provide a few pre-battle intelligence markers on hte map to help the player understand roughly where you might first come under fire and where you might want to target rockets. I assume the Soviets would've historically had this information from their recon before a set-piece attack like this.

Thanks, @MOS:96B2P, this is great information.

The first time I played this I stumbled into the right-flank approach and that worked pretty well; I avoided taking many casualties while crossing the field by moving fast. But it got a lot tougher when I tried to go through the woods and clear the central buildings--the tanks couldn't go through the woods so had to go around, limiting their ability to give me infantry support. When I brought the infantry and armor together against the central building cluster, the targeting limitations @Bulletpoint notes drove me crazy. One building in particular was full of SS infantry with automatic weapons and I simply couldn't area target it without bringing a tank within PF range. Part of this is the engine limitation about targeting buildings, but part of it is the fact that one particular building is set in a hillside facing one direction so the bottom floor is basically on a reverse slope. I finally won when the AI surrendered, but with far more casualties than I thought I should have taken. I tried again thinking I could do better going down the left flank along the road, and I found it's possible to avoid the mortars by watching very carefully for spotting rounds and risking rushing the fields too quickly to get out from under impending barrages. But it was so slow to clear the Germans out of one house after another that I couldn't clear all the objectives in time and ended up with a Draw. I didn't knock out the Tiger II either time, just avoided it.