Howler

I just opened up the scenario and it is indeed a 2" mortar. The briefing says no artillery available and this one can't be used for indirect fire.

And it also wouldn't prevent them firing HE at (and/or suppressing) friendlies which tends to be my problem rather than incoming fire from an unknown position outside a TA.
I also consider being spotted prematurely to the very worst thing that can happen. I don't need the team LMG to fire off at 500m when everyone can do so at 300m. The former reveals your position and rarely scores a knock-out while the latter will do both.
I'm not against free fire. I simply prefer defined overlapping zones of fire. It's the those darn vehicles with their total disregard of dismounts that I blame!
I hear you. I play it looser in the WWII titles. In the modern titles - too many things kill you.
 

Hello all and welcome to my first public AAR of CM games. As such, it won't feature complex analyses and orders, like we've all come to expect reading the AAR's on these forums. Firstly, I have personally vowed, after demobilization, that I will never write another standard order (applied for and served as part of ROTC for the Serbian Army in 2017, Infantry 2nd Lt) and, secondly, the idea for the AAR came late in the game, after heroics of certain units.
As far as the scenarios goes, I made some modifications. Namely, instead of company of T 62 MV's, there were 6 T 72 M1's ( it is my personal preference, as it is closest to M 84A tank in service in Serbian Army). Soft factors for militia company were increased. Skill level was increased for anti tank platoon. BRDM's with ATGM's were eliminated fully. TRP's were added (still a 9 minute calling time for D30 howitzers). MANPADS were added . Nothing was changed for the US Army. I would like to give thanks and credit to the original creator of the scenario and to whomever edited it for Shock Force 2.
Now for the main part.
I was given the objective to hold at all cost the aforementioned factory outlet. For this task, I was given a militia company, two platoons of Special Forces, antitank platoon consisting of 2 AT 4 C's and 2 SPG 9's and 6 T 72 M1's. In support, I had a battery of D30 howitzers. Opposing me was a Stryker company (two platoons of infantry in ICV's, platoon of MGS and platoon of ATGM Stryker), reinforced by 3 M1 Abrams tanks and a platoon of engineers in Bradleys. They also had a lot of off map support, including two Apache helicopters.
As you can see, the question was how badly was I gonna lose. 😄
So here it is:

Now, you may ask: Aurelius, why are you posting an AAR about your defeat?!? Why isn't SlySniper posting about his hard won battle?!?
My answer is: because of these guys



I knew I had no chance to win. I knew my AT platoon couldn't do anything to Sly's tanks. So I devised a plan, a scheme of slowing down his advance and making him think twice about approaching the factory proper. Firstly, I had to destroy the Bradleys, cause they could wipe out all my fighting positions and easily interdict movement of my units through buildings with their 25 mm auto cannons. That would also mean that his engineers have to walk everywhere (the map is very elongated and there is a lot of ground to cover). Secondly, to take out any specialized Stryker (an FO vehicle, command vehicle). If any Stryker loaded with troops presented itself- to burn it and everyone inside.
 I managed to destroy all of the Bradleys, destroy an FO vehicle and burn two Strykers which I suspect were carrying troops.






I achieved this by utilising mobility of my troops (only the SPG 9 was left in place, because it is too slow to pack up and decision was made to sacrifice it). I would crawl them to the roof, wait a turn, give an order to fire and retreat them by use of the pause command.
As for my T 72's, this is how they ended up:

The only excuse I can offer: I wasn't thinking how their placement in editor was exposed to the possible avenue of approach of my opponent. 😄
But, there is a bright spot. This guy destroyed a vehicle, killed a guy with a Javelin and was a general nuisance to Sly's plan:

During the course of the battle, Sly tried to approach/probe my positions. This was the aftermath of any such excursion:

To my surprise, I even managed to surprise him with a howitzer barrage. Waited 13 minutes for the call up time and additional 2 minutes for spotting and got this:


There were more casualties, but it is a tedious process to document all of those.
Both Apache's were shut down immediately on the first turn, giving me some breathing space. 
I hope you will enjoy this quick recap of what happened and I would like to give thanks to @slysniper for a fun and challenging battle.

I wasn't able to find detailed information that you reference but, yes - it's been known for a long time. Not the first time I've discovered something 'new' that might not be...
Anyhow, the closest my search got was a response from @IanL postulating that this setting governs how many textures past two actually get loaded.
I was surprised by the load times in BN as SF2 is always snappy with BS not being far behind on 'Best'.
I'd appreciate your sharing of any details that you may have.
 
EDIT: In retrospect, perhaps I was too hasty to disregard threads relating to Nvidia performance tweaks.

Textures are not a gauge of how hard a building is, size is. Small buildings are porous to incoming fire, medium buildings less so, big buildings, especially cathedrals, are very tough indeed. Its not that difficult.

Watching his video, I assumed he was the Axis player. I saw an Axis unit run forward and towards enemy firing position(s) (judging by the tracers) to a position in the open.
Please ignore if I got this wrong.

Sorry man those colours are not modifiable. Would be a worthy request through...

Yup, when a unit decides it needs to relocate, it's more common to have this (decamp/evade/withdraw) waypoint placed forward (away from the scenario designated friendly map edge) without consideration of cover (they will bypass intervening walls/ditches/buildings/etc.) to end movement in a more exposed position. Your screen shot captures this nicely. Some have postulated that variances in elevation may be an important factor.
In any event, having reached this waypoint and should it need to decamp again - it has invariably done so in  a more sensible manner. This being farther back from it's original position, towards the scenario designated friendly map edge  and away from last known enemy contacts.
What I've been doing is reloading the save, selecting the unit that will soon decamp 'badly' , and hitting the Evade to inspect the waypoint it generates. This waypoint is not the same as what will later be generated when the unit does take flight. This waypoint will rarely generate a location forward and towards know enemy positions (this is a good thing). I then Cancel the Evade and generate the turn. If the unit hasn't decamped, I keep generating turns until it does. Sometimes as many as 4 turns have been needed in order to see them decamp at which point they will follow the exact same 'flight' path. As long has they remain stationary - it seems this waypoint is always placed in the same location regardless of variances of known contacts or time (WEGO turn).

Don't necessarily seem to be always in Panic to do seeming daft things - In the example  I saw  (save file back on Page 2) it was an enemey German HQ unit that dashed out forward into the open bocage field which was indicated to be 'Nervous' - just moments after a colleague got shot) and as the turn ended. 

I'm only trying to help identify the cause. It may have been yourself who stated that this might be related to a move and or facing command being issued. I have the save game for this also which will show the team in question not being ordered at all.
Hopefully my posts on this subject are viewed as being helpful...

19:00 light fire is exchanged...

18:42 enemy position

18:41 team surrenders

18:02 bounding team combines

17:24 quickly recovering state

16:51 fully recovered

16:51 enemy position now vulnerable

16:00 detached to continue bounding flanking maneuver which Panic them

15:59 they recover to a Cautious state

15:02 the other team involved in the split will stay Rattled

Really enjoyed working this problem out and seeing it resolve as expected. I thank @Josey Wales post on soft factors and the many responses from others it solicited. This community has the benefit of excellent contributors.
The squad showcased above is Green and split into teams in order to flank the right in a series bounding moves with some element providing over watch. They were out of contact with their PL yet managed to complete their task. I moved an element so that both would recombine. Once recovered, I split them again and couldn't shake the rattled state (consistent with expectation) from one team while the other two teams were able to act as cautious).
 

No problem at all. Simply wanting to comfort those who may still be deciding to patch.
Yup, I also forgot and decided to post regardless.

I'm on a roll.. another blog post, this time: Using Alternate Firing Positions
Enjoy!
Bil

During a nailbiter of a scenario, German Panther tanks are getting around my main line in a forest. If they break through, they'll wreak havoc in my rear. All I have to stop them are a few GIs with bazookas rushed to the area. Manage to pull off this great shot:



Through the trees, at 75m, with the old M1A1 bazooka. Vaporized the tank. I don't get those kinds of shots in the modern titles, let alone CMFB. It was nice to see.

CMSF and CMBS have the AT4-CS.

I've not tested the amount of backblast effect you get from the weapon (or all weapons). It's definitely not the same for everything though, so you'd imagine that this would be significantly less than some.

Muh boys finally getting to go weapons-free after the none-too-soon death of "Fury Panther."

Actually extract it to an empty folder - there should not be any additional files around the install or you will be sad.
Then just make sure the path it wants to install to is the one where the existing game .exe is located. It does a good job guessing but doesn't always get it correct.

It isn't awful and can delay the micro when moving a company.  I tried this years ago hoping to avoid  this until contact was imminent. My findings at that time, pre-4.0, were:
pauses for spotting caused the whole squad to stop (doh!). I much preferred a rolling or cycling spotting pause that individual teams provided. Granted, this granularity is less an issue as larger formations are used given varying pauses (resulting in squads rather than teams providing overwatch). the order is more tiring. It seemed to me that a series of short quick/fast waypoints interspersed by pauses (10-15s) allowed the teams to arrive fresher. I was surprised to see (assault) squads more fatigued over the same distances. the squad reacts more unexpectedly to fire from an unseen quarter. Even when fired from the front, I would prefer them to stop rather then assault until more information was gathered. I found the teams swarming using hunt/quick/fast were more likely to suffer fewer casualties and provide more effective return fire. I realize this can be more a result of WEGO/luck/timing then anything else. The difference being the loss of a team caught between waypoints vice a squad caught assaulting between waypoints... Under 4.0, I haven't bothered given the issues regarding pathfinding and will wait for the corrective patch before trying it again. But, I absolutely love the hull down. That is a real time saver.
I can see using it more often in realtime play when a player can pause the action to react. As a WEGO player, I find the 1 minute turn can last hours when a unit is vulnerable...
Unfortunately, I don't use it from cover to advance short distances as some have recommended. I kind of micro at that point making it moot...

To elaborate further:
Some years ago, inspired by that C2 & Information sharing post, I did some tests in Battle for Normandy and it mainly concerns vehicle spotting . I made a small map in editor, put some German forces in a forest (Pak40 and some MG's and also one infantry squad), put an American scout team in another forest to observe the Germans. One Sherman tank was placed on the map and I made sure that there was no way for it to observe the Germans or the scout team. I also made sure that there was no radio contact between the tank and the scouts.
With that set up I tested the spotting times and it was pretty conclusive. When the scout spotted German positions, I ran him to the tank, waited until the info was passed (waited a full turn). Then I moved the tank forward so it can have LoS on the forest occupied by Germans. When they were unbuttoned/opened up, they spotted almost instantly (less than 2 seconds). When they were buttoned up, they spotted in less than 5 seconds.
I also did some tests with no info sharing, unbuttoned came to about 10 seconds for the spot and I was under the impression that the crew tac-ai prioritized spotting AT positions. Buttoned up was above 10 seconds and I didn't really test it that much, cause I felt like I was just asking for someone to come and burn my tank.
So this was my conclusion:
Unbuttoned with previous knowledge>buttoned with previous knowledge>unbuttoned with no previous knowledge>buttoned with no previous knowledge.
So guys, make sure your AFV's have the information, unless you want them to end up like 131st Separate Motor Rifle Brigade in Grozny.

The bookmark I have for @IanL is
 

The bookmark I have for @IanL is
 

Pretty smart.

The basic rule is that speed trades for security - the slower you are, the more likely you are to fire.

Slow - This is going to be a crawl. Being prone, there will be less that the pixeltruppen can see, and it's tiring, but they'll be harder to spot in return.

Hunt - This is tiring, but the pixeltruppen will stop if they receive contact. Ideal for moving in close terrain, worse if moving in the open.

Move - This is the only Move order that will recover fatigue - all others will worsen it. On being shot they will Quick move to the next action spot. If they spot the enemy, they're likely to fire back - Move orders have a decent chance of spotting the enemy, but not as good as being stationary.

Quick - This is a good default move for when contact is made. They'll usually try to complete the move before firing, but they will fire on a target sometimes.

Fast - This is the move to use if you need to prioritise movement. Dashing across a street, running away from indirect fire, etc. They will prioritise movement above shooting.

Assault - This automates bounding overwatch, in a way that's a little hard to anticipate or control. The squad splits as per the "Split Squads" command, one element Fast-moves and the other remains stationary, leap-frogging to the target. It's generally better to do this yourself, but I do make use of it.
 
In terms of automated "react to contact" - if they cannot spot the enemy, and have no contact markers, they won't know where the enemy fire is coming from. From their perspective, if they can't see the enemy, and just know they're being fired at, then what they do will depend on their move orders. Under Hunt orders, this will result in them stopping in place. Move orders will convert to Quick, and Quick and Fast orders will remain the same. If the incoming fire builds up too much, then they may remain pinned in place, or later retreat to nearby cover.

Where they retreat will depend on contact markers as well - the Tac AI is good at finding a spot out of LOS, but not in understanding context. This can lead to a squad suicidally running in the "wrong" direction, since it didn't know that the enemy were there, or that the route they chose to take in panic would take them through the line of fire of something worse.


So  a number of things will happen all at once, when in contact, and it can be difficult to parse precise behaviour. This is why it's important to split squads and provide adequate support - if you're fired on unexpectedly, the targeted element probably won't be able to defend itself effectively, so it'll be up to the other elements or squads to bring the situation under control, giving the first element the time and space to recover.

luckily it missed the whole vehicle

You need to close that barn door before and not afterwards!
Steam (not a fanboy) does a few things rather well. These being: cost, exposure, and DRM (not too damaging). Going back to a series of walled gardens with diverse costing, limited titles, and DRM that mangles systems (or incompatible with competing DRM!) is a pipe dream. There are a lot of indie games that would die of obscurity without it.
I understand the larger publishers wanting to claw more money back but, that isn't a business plan. Execution is the only thing that matters. Steam executes. EA/Blizzard/etc. can't. Too many decades of easy money are wired into their DNA.
Apologies for being off topic.
 

If I may - there's nothing wrong with loose ETAs as long as they are in the future. Push the ETA out further before you slip past it. The worst that happens is that you deliver "early" as in something intended for a month(s) down the road is out next week instead.
It's easier to be forgiven for delivering sooner. Sure, you'll have someone bitch that you said June but actually released it April 30th. But most will forgive.
The reverse isn't true as these, now, 23 pages of posts attest to.
All the best. Always.