jonPhillips
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Posts posted by jonPhillips
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On 7/8/2021 at 3:09 AM, Erwin said:
This method works well. However, if in a hurry, try adding an immediate FAST move back out the way the blaster unit entered. Have found that the enemy often will not react fast enuff to cause casualties. (Possibly cos of all the smoke, it takes some seconds for an unsuppressed enemy unit to even see the blaster unit.)
This +1
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On 12/16/2018 at 8:08 PM, Ts4EVER said:
This is how I did it.
I absolutely love this video. Some really funny dry-sense-of-humour remarks in the commentary too. Great work chap.
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This little gem of a scenario represents all that’s best about playing vs the AI, a great example of a deeply frustrating tactical puzzle – but only if you play as the underdog Free French. I’ve played this three times now, a Tactical Defeat, a Minor Defeat and finally a Minor Victory... and I felt I’d really earned the latter...
I haven’t tried going after the high ground yet, maybe I’ll give that a go next time out. I’ve tried various ways to attack the town and yeah, it’s a bit 'gamey' but try pushing a couple of infantry-loaded Deuces (don’t forget to acquire the Bazookas and ammo!) with a couple of Stuarts *really fast* to grab yourself a foothold early on and then it’s a slow grind.
You have plenty of time, ammo to burn and whilst you don’t have the auto weapons that the Germans do, the Stuarts can run rings around the Marders - just manoeuvre for the flank shots whilst keeping out of PF range of the infantry.
And don’t forget how deadly the Canister is. Get a couple of Stuarts into the town, covered by some infantry and this will shred the Germans, more than counterbalancing their MGs.
On 12/7/2019 at 12:37 AM, Sgt.Squarehead said:Not looked at this one yet, but if you have any artillery, a well placed linear barrage may help to stop the Germans reaching the critical hill-top before you.
This is great tip – but I’ve used this to slow the Germans heading for the buildings, rather than worry about the high ground. The high ground in this scenario hasn’t been key in any of my games, it’s always been a slugfest for the main VPs of the town.
I think this is a great scenario for solo play – a real challenge like you only usually get vs a human opponent. In addition to it being a proper challenge as the FF, there are so many different approaches to a possible win.
I wouldn’t consider it as a HtH scenario, because the SS are a bit overpowered, but if you want a multi-replayable solo game, with lots of tactical options – on what is a also a great map – this is a total winner. Playable in less than 4 hours too, so if you have an evening home when the SO is out and you’ve finished with P**nH*b, give this baby a go.
Thank me later
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I just finished reading a thread in the CMFB forum asking for tactical advice when attacking a town and lots of excellent hints and tips were posted - which prompted me to ask for similar advice, only this time defending against an overwhelming AI attack.
The scenario in question is about 8 missions into 'The Scottish Corridor' campaign and given the two previous AI attack missions in this excellent campaign, I’m in for a rough ride. I have a couple of companies of British infantry (one weakened), one 17pdr AT and a few Churchills to face down a whole horde of German infantry, supported by artillery and several Panthers.
We all know the attacking AI is no match for a human attacker, but the scenario designer (tip of the hat to Paper Tiger) has a great talent for getting the best from the AI when attacking and so far I’ve lost both missions in this campaign when defending.
So please post your best advice, which I suppose will be good advice for defending in any situation - but facing an AI swarm has it’s own challenges. Show me what you got...
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On 1/20/2020 at 4:37 PM, IanL said:
Great thread everyone - I have nothing to add - lots of good advice already. I am glad I am not your opponent in this one.
This. I just love these tac advice threads, especially when everyone chips in.
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Interesting, but it’s slightly difficult to take the article seriously – given this howling error:
"The Allies worked together–the Sherman’s underpowered 70mm could be upgraded with a British gun because of interoperability of parts."
I have to confess that I lost interest at this point and couldn’t be bothered to check the accuracy (or otherwise) of the many other statistics quoted by the author.
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14 hours ago, Schrullenhaft said:
I can't upgrade to OS X Mojave myself, so I'm not sure what you're running into (my references here will be on OS X 10.13 - so they may not exactly match). Do you hear sound for everything else ? If you go to your Sound control panel (Apple menu > System Preferences > Sound) what is listed for your 'Play sound effects through' ? Typically I would expect 'Internal Speakers' for most users. If you select 'Output' along the top, with 'Internal Speakers' selected is your 'Output volume' at the bottom at a sufficient level and does NOT have the 'Mute' checkbox selected ?
Within the CM games themselves I assume that the Options > Sound is set to 'On', correct ? I couldn't imagine all of them being off at the same time. Possibly cycle through this setting and exit the game after each change (i.e. - turn off > OK > exit game and then relaunch game and change and exit again).
If you're not getting any sound at all on the Mac and the above settings haven't changed anything you can possibly reset the audio system with the following command run from the 'Terminal':
sudo killall coreaudiod
This should prompt for the system password, which is likely the password you use at boot time.
This article discusses problems with audio and previous OS X versions, but should still be applicable to Mojave:
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/sound-advice-fixing-common-mac-audio-problems-os-x/
Thank you for this detailed and comprehensive reply.
Sound is working for all other apps and sound is set to 'on' for all of the CM games. I’ll try the audio reset you suggest and see if that solves the problem. If not, I’ll check the article you provided the link for.
14 hours ago, Ultradave said:Sorry, haven't seen this in any beta testing either for SF2 or the patches. I upgraded to Mojave in the middle of beta testing SF2 and haven't seen any issues.
That’s also good to know - thanks for the reply.
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I just upgraded my OS X to Mojave 10.14.1 and the sound has stopped working across all of my CM titles RT, FI, BN and RT.
Does anyone have any ideas why this might be?
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On 22/01/2018 at 6:14 PM, Ridaz said:
I can't find Battle for Rome by Casrlo D'Este but there is one by Robert Katz.
Try here:
Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0060576499/ref=cm_sw_r_sms_c_api_298AAbR62AFYX
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On 1/15/2018 at 3:09 AM, grunt_GI said:
Day of Battle by Rick Atkinson is a very good one volume history.
I have to disagree – written with a completely pro-US bias, any volume that hero-worships Mark Clark has to be questioned.
For a balanced, well written book of one the key campaigns in the battle for Italy, try 'Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome' by Carlo D’Este. Despite the fact that it focuses a little too much on the political in-fighting between the senior Allied commanders, it remains an excellent and well-researched account.
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Great thread
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Thanks for all the replies fellas, too many good responses to quote them all, so I’ll merely say my overall take out from this thread is summed up below:
21 hours ago, Erwin said:...it's more fun to learn thru experience.
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With traditional hex-based board wargames, a unit will typically be given a number of movement points usable per turn. The various terrain types will be given a number of movement points required to enter. Thus it’s relatively easy to visualise where each unit will be at the end of any given turn.
Within CM, how can movement rates be calculated/estimated? For example, assuming no enemy interference, how far can a unit travel when using Slow, Hunt, Move, Quick and Fast? And how does this change for the various terrain types? This isn’t stated anywhere in the manual and a forum search hasn’t returned anything on this topic.
I’d really like to know that, for example, a unit that is 'Ready' could travel 'Quick' through woods for around 60m in a one minute turn. Then I could decide whether to move them that full amount, or whether to have them move for just 40m and rest for the remaining 20 seconds.
Does anyone have any useful info along these lines?
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On 10/17/2017 at 6:06 PM, SLIM said:
All 4 parts combined is the full 1 hour 20 minutes (minus edits) ramble about "How to move down a street".
Great series of videos – both entertaining and informative. Many thanks for making and sharing them.
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On 11/10/2017 at 7:16 PM, JoMc67 said:
Yeah, in contrast...There was a Schrek 100 yards in front of my AC and it shot 3x w/o being spotted...AC didn't even fall back after the 1st or 2nd Schrek rounds (2nd shot exploded right in front of AC), but instead got hit on third.
I would have expected the AC (in Good Order) to at least have backed away after the 1st or 2nd Round.
This has happened to me – too many times
On the flip side, I’ve lost count of the number of PsK teams annihilated after they’ve only just started to sight their weapon...
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I was going great guns in the KG von Schroif campaign, with minimal casualties, until I hit the mission where you have to take a large area of woods (split into four objective areas).
--------------- Possible Spoilers -----------------
Crossing the large areas of open ground made recon on foot impractical and the overall geography meant recon by fire wasn’t really a viable option either.
Cue recon by burning halftrack.
This was one nasty, nasty scenario. The mission features an excellently laid out defence, centred around a couple of very cunningly positioned AT guns backed up by some very hard to shift infantry. The objectives are difficult to reach and the defenders seem to be able to shoot with impunity from areas that seem almost impossible to return fire at.
Although I only lost two halftracks, I lost a lot of infantry in this mission which doesn’t bode well for further operations.
--------------- End Spoilers -----------------
This is an excellent campaign and features the best CM maps I’ve seen – very evocative of actual Polish terrain. If you haven’t downloaded and played it, do so now.
Great work and a big, big thanks to George.
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1 hour ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:
I'm doing similar with my ten year old nephew.....While claims FarCry Blood Dragon is his favourite PC game (it really is an absolute scream), it's almost always his on-going CM:BN campaign that he asks to play when he comes to stay overnight (he's reading the Osprey titles covering the Normandy landings at the same time).
Good work fella.
Maybe my son will still have some opponents when I'm gone...
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5 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
Issues like the scalable screen thing highlight the major difference between Battlefront and mass market game making models. For the most part the mass market game companies remake their game engine with each release they put out. The stiff competition and ever higher technical expectations pretty much require this sort of disposable game engine behavior. And if they don't get sufficient sales to pay them back for such huge expenses, they abandon the game franchise (and often the studio that made it) and move onto something/somebody else. Wargames simply can't afford this sort of disposable engineering approach.
Wargaming doesn't support an environment where we can put 3 years into a game engine, release a single game (plus DLC), and then start over with a fairly clean slate for the next game. The economics simply don't work that way for niche games like ours, so a total (or near total) rewrite to take advantage of new hardware and what not is simply not possible. Which means once we make a game engine we're "stuck" with certain basic elements for the life of that game engine. That sucks, but it is what it is.
Steve
This is a great point, well made.
The fact that Battlefront can remain financially viable to what is, let’s face it, a fairly small niche group of players is in itself astonishing. My 11 year old son and I play CM2 together. Whilst I'm slowly teaching him the application of real world tactics and we have some good small-scale games, he still marginally prefers the 'instant gratification' and fast-paced action of the Call Of Duty series on his X-Box.
I’ve been able to get him into playing CM2 through 11 years of sharing my passion for WW2 history (OK– indoctrinating a future opponent!) via museum visits, films like Battle Of Britain and series like Band Of Brothers. I reckon if I take it slowly, in another couple of years, he’ll be a very good player – but I wouldn’t have a hope of teaching some of his mates the nuances of CM2, because they don’t have the background interest.
I don’t consider myself a Battlefront 'fanboy', but I do appreciate the hard work and dedication that goes into producing an extraordinary series of games. I sincerely hope BF continue to develop them for as long as I’m around to play them.
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On 26/10/2017 at 9:28 PM, IICptMillerII said:
Check out this thread from a while back covering mechanized infantry tactics in the WWII titles:
10 hours ago, SLIM said:Halftracks should be seen as nothing more than bulletproof trucks, asking for more out of them is asking for trouble...
<snip>
...I hope this helps, and welcome to the forums, btw.
Many thanks for the great replies fellas, plenty of material to try out.
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I’ve been playing the CMFB campaign Courage Conquers and was wondering how you guys make best use of armoured infantry? Doctrine says to transport troops ‘close’ to the fighting and then the dismounted infantry continue the fight on foot.
So far so good. However, the US armoured infantry platoon loses a lot of potential firepower keeping the halftracks out of enemy LOS.
I’ve tried keeping the halftracks to 250-300m away from any enemy infantry, but the instant they ‘Open Up’ to allow them (and their passengers) to start dishing out the good news, they become total bullet magnets.
Within a turn or two, they’re reversing quicker than you can say ‘Italian tankette’, usually with multiple casualties on board, including dead crew members. The exact same thing happens with the German Panzergrenadiers in their SdKfzs.
I often find situations where it’s absolutely necessary to have the extra MGs, but the halftracks regularly seem more vulnerable than their crew-served infantry equivalents.
So what’s the answer? How can you best use the additional firepower, especially when you don’t have enough other firepower to effectively suppress a range of mutually supporting defenders?
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22 hours ago, Xorg_Xalargsky said:
Oh, sorry, I didn't go into details because my findings were somewhat disappointing.
I setup 20 or so clear firing lanes, ~500 meters long and ~32 meters wide. On one end of each was an elite German sniper, on the other was the 1st squad from a Soviet SMG platoon lined against a wire fence (so they are all upright and visible, they each have a platoon leader and a squad leader).
I had the test running for a few turns and I counted the casualties by rank. I had my data on a whiteboard so now it's all erased, but I found that ranks became casualties at un-natural rate.
Now, this was a simple test and already I can see a few ways it could be improved. For example, maybe add a captain-level officier to the mix as they are more visually distinctive, maybe reduce the range, maybe use other snipers (even with Excellent equipment quality, some German snipers end up with the low-powered scope with the K98K)...
Good info, thanks for posting
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7 hours ago, Xorg_Xalargsky said:
Just performed a basic test and it seems a sniper's target is picked somewhat randomly.
Interesting - how did you setup and run the test?
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16 hours ago, Badger73 said:
+1 for the Sublime Irony award!
11 hours ago, IanL said:LOL I wasn't going to say anything...
Thanks fellas, you’re too kind
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Originally posted this in the CMRT forum, but it’s relevant to all CM titles.
I’ve been reading the memoirs of Sepp Allerberger (Sniper on the Eastern Front by Albrecht Wacker) and it’s frequently mentioned how leaders were targeted to break up attacks and disrupt defences. This seems to have been common practice amongst snipers of all nationalities and is perfectly logical behaviour.
Does anyone have any information (whether anecdotal, or otherwise...) about how Snipers function within the game? Specifically, do they actively target leaders when firing at units? If left to select their own targets, will they fire on HQ units before targeting subordinate units?
Any game tips for using them when attacking would be appreciated too - I always find them incredibly difficult to move into useful positions without them getting shot to bits, whilst if moved to target a heavily suppressed unit, enough damage has usually already been done.
CMFB Rollbahn D Full Campaign
in Combat Mission - General Discussion
Posted · Edited by jonPhillips
@danfrodo Please keep your superb progress reports coming...