Josey Wales

I was interested in this until I saw the 'GPS' maps used in game. I realise the developers want to maximise their customer base but games like this are the reason kids ask WW2 vets questions like 'how did you charge your mobile?'

It might be me, but this just looks like a rehash of other FPS games, e.g. Verdun, Tannenburg. They look great, but they are totally unrealistic in regards to the battles that they are trying to recreate.

Two completely different game systems, difficult to compare them at all as sburke mentions. These new games have the graphics but they certainly don't have the historical TOE/tactics/FOW etc.  I expect that a grog mod will be required before I get serious with it ( I mean, the AFV system uses health points at the moment for example).  They are a hoot to play though (eg Red Orchestra)

Another terribly busy week... just barely managed to watch @General Jack Ripper excellent video. It's a shame we can't work out the name of single privates. When I saw him being mowed down I remember jumping on my chair.
 
Thanks for that @Bil Hardenberger! Tthat's perhaps the highest praise I could expect. All those battle drills that you painstakingly curated in your Battle Drill blog are being put into (good) use
 
Over the weekend I will come along and post some pictures and video capsules to illustrate the overall (both at the macro and micro level) attack plan. Which was inspired by the following passages of a famous book:
The advice one finds on books (or booklets, or other doctrinal pamphlets) rarely can be applied verbatim. Rather than a method to do something, like drills are, they  actually are heuristics. That is advice compiled by trial and error by those who came before, which is expected to facilitate the work of others. They're the basic ingredients to guide the formulation of a plan, but not a template (necessarily). Figuring out when they are applicable, and how to get a handle on how their advice can be used with the resources at hand and negotiating the constraints the environment imposes is a hard problem. That is, you will rarely solve it entirely to your satisfaction, and very often, things will go very wrong because you drew the wrong conclusions, formulated the wrong plan and implemented it wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
 
I have almost always learnt something from the games I have played... and this one was no difference. If I manage to get 50% not wrong, I consider myself a happy man 

I finally had a chance to watch these videos last night.. very interesting, and I love the presentation @General Jack Ripper and I'm very impressed with @BletchleyGeek's tactics.  In fact I would say that the assault on that objective is the best example of infiltration tactics that I have seen in a CM game.  Well done Miguel.
I would say, as far as the scouting goes that you made two major errors:
 You left way too much distance between waypoints.  When I scout I move forward two, maybe three action spots, then pause for 10-15 seconds.   It is better to move in short segments more slowly, than to give your teams long movement paths.. that is very dangerous in the face of an unknown enemy.  You can assign long movement paths if you feel relatively safe, but as you start to get closer to probable contact you need to slow down and shorten your movement. Your lone scout team had no support.  You should always try to scout with at least two teams... I know I don't always follow my own advice.. but with at least two teams you can have one team moving while the other is stationary.  This is good stuff.

Or do a variable tile source, if your close but have no eyes the indicator will be within a couple of tiles of the actual source, the further the distance the larger the tile spread.  So at say 1km the ? Icon pings upfor an AT that fired but it is randomly placed within a (i dunno) 20 tile radius, so you can take a swag at it and pummel it with arty but you might be wrooong.  To me this would be the best solution.

I remember that in CM1, the game would fool you about the location of distant shooters. At very long range, you might get a "?" mystery contact that is several tiles away from their true location. Then after you've blasted that spot with area fire, you discover later on that their real location is 50m off to the right or whatever. That was a pretty cool way to handle the problem. Whatever happened to that? I've always felt that CM2 gives you way too much info about the enemy. Not just with the sound exploits, but with other things as well, like being able to tell who is an enemy HQ team and who isn't at 1000+ meters or whatever. Or the game telling you the exact moment that an enemy MG or AT gun position is destroyed or abandoned. Or always being able to tell the exact type of enemy tank. I liked how in CM1, your troops could mis-identify enemy tanks, thinking one is a Tiger when it really isn't or whatever.

Well, the intent of a spoiling attack is twofold:  One:  Take the initiative away from the attacker and Two:  Force him to react and divert combat power from the main attack..  Whether I will be successful in either has yet to be seen.  I do think he is too committed to Axis Red at this point to be able to provide much help to his Support by Fire troops... so number two is a forlorn hope, but still a possibility.
I could have stayed where I was, soaked up the fire from the SBF position and had another platoon to throw in the way of what is coming up Axis Red, but that isn't how I roll usually.. if I see a potential weakness I will try to do something about it, hopefully weakening his ultimate available combat power in the main attack.  That is my main goal here.
I don't want to get into what I would have done in his shoes at this point.. maybe towards the end we can have a discussion about those what-ifs.

Fix Bayonets, Boys.  It's the swinging gate, just like Gettysburg.  Any part of your troops in the Irish Brigade, Bil?  
I, too, like the move.  Risky, but something I'll bet your opposition didn't see coming.  Looking forward to this developing.
Heinrich505

SPOILING ATTACK
AXIS ORANGE:
I have enough information now to know for certain that the enemy units on Axis Orange are a support by fire position.  My philosophy is to attack weakness, so I am going to concentrate at least a third of my available force against this formation in a spoiling attack. 
This will be led by 3rd Platoon and will also contain some of the 1st Platoon elements that have been, up to now, manning OPs and LPs forward of my main line.   

To prepare for this action my mortars and MGs are stepping up their fire to pin or attrit any enemy teams he has on the line.  For example in the following image my mortars converged fire to eliminate this (MG) team (not fully identified) on his extreme right flank.

Wow, if I'm a newb then I have seriously wasted a decade of CM play.    Challenge me sir.

Have you tried a broom? 

One must master the art of subterfuge in order to free the cats. One mustn't look too much like a cat in order to interact with the cat's slave holders unnoticed. 

Have you tried a broom? 

Have you tried a broom? 

Also, I am aware of Rinaldi's video, I have been subscribed to him for some time:

^ See?
Now, enough of that nonsense.

I am not exactly sure why I was tagged or plugged in this, and hope @BletchleyGeek and @General Jack Ripper will carry on with their AAR and discussion - which I've been enjoying quietly. Let's move past this banal distraction.

Care to ellaborate why is this video relevant to the discussion? 
Thanks.

I have not. It's right here: https://youtu.be/6TQ6fRLaGec
 @IICptMillerII. Please keep ancillary discussion to a minimum. This is an AAR thread, not a general discussion thread.
I openly admit in my video I completely screwed up my attempt at scouting, yet was still able to generate some accurate intelligence.
If you're expecting an error-free battle, then you'll have to find some thread over in fantasy land, because as anyone around here can attest, even the best among us make mistakes.
The next video will be posted on Saturday, perhaps @BletchleyGeek can fill the time with some writing?

For the accuracy test I did multiple runs with first a rifle squad and then a sniper team firing at an infantry targets at various test ranges. Each test condition was repeated 5 times. The tests were broken up as follows;
Fatigued vs Rested at 100m ,200m, 300m
+2 Leadership vs -2 Leadership at 100m ,200m, 300m
+2 Motivation vs -2 Motivation at 100m ,200m, 300m
+2 Fitness vs -2 Fitness at 100m ,200m, 300m
Elite vs Conscript at 100m ,200m, 300m
 
The only soft factor which consistently affects accuracy is experience.
Similar results were found when testing for spotting.

I would rather reask this quistion this way: is it possible to target different action spots in the same turn?
Yes, it is possible, at least for infantry(not support weapons). Do next: 
1. Give move order to the tile where you want to shoot from initally
2. then give target order from this waypoint to the aimed area 
3. then set the pause, to let your unit shoot during this pause
4. then plot another move order to anywhere else.
5 DRAG and DROP the second waypoint on the same tile where 1st waypoint located. The 1st waypoint will look like pyramide, the 2nd one will look like a ball.
6. Choose the 2nd waypoint(the ball) and give target (or target light) order to another direction.

This way your infantry will move to the 1st point, then shoot 1st aim during the pause you've set, then switch to another aim and shoot at it WITHIN one turn.

Agreed, the Combat Stress mechanic would be more reasonable if its propagation was governed by audio/visual proximity to the unit sustaining the casualties as opposed to organisational structure. 
The other end of the spectrum of the current system is that a conscript/-2/-2 unit from a different platoon as a unit which is being massacred 20m away in front of their eyes wouldn't suffer any impact on their morale. 
Combat Stress does eventually propagate between platoons, but the casualty rate in the engaged platoon needs to be high before this effect is seen. 

OK I finally loaded this up and figured out what is happening.
TLDR: The gun teams are *not* suffering any casualties. Therefore nothing wrong here regarding HE or ricochet effects. They are abandoning their guns due to the game feature /  limitation of casualties suffered in one team of a platoon effecting the morale state of the entire platoon. Even though the effect on other team is not large when you have teams in a very bad morale state, like these guns were, it can be enough to push them over the edge.
The full analysis:
First things first the guns do not suffer any casualties - they abandon their guns and the gun get a red base when that happens. So if you just quickly look you can mistake that for a casualty for sure. See images 5 and 6: notice the red base on the gun in the game screen but also notice all the members of the team are fine.
 
The ammo bearers reacted the same due to poor morale just like the gun crews. Also there is a 5s time span for the events in question.
There is a game feature / limitation whereby the combat stress, especially casualties, that happen to one team have morale effects on all other teams in the platoon. Someone did a nice post that showed this effect but I cold not find the post - I thought it was @MOS:96B2P, or @Bulletpoint or @Josey Wales - if anyone can find it please post the link. Basically casualties effect the morale of a squad but it turns out it also effects the morale of the rest of the platoon too. This happens regardless of if other teams can see the casualties happen of if C2 is maintained. Frequently we do not notice this for two reasons: 1) platoons are often located near each other so if a squad is taking casulties the sister squads can see those casualties too, so we don't really find it surprising that the suffer too. 2) frequently morale effects are not as drastic or cut and dry as abandoning a gun, so we are not surprised if squads in a bad way become shaken. In this case we have teams that are separated by a significant distance and we have a noticeable event, the abandoning of the guns, that is an important and significant change.
Here is the condition of the teams and sequence of events:
First we have the team that will take the casualties 4 Squad / Team B. They are shaken and will be under fire from a several enemy units during the turn.
01 Team that gets hit:

The two guns are in the same platoon as the above team (1 Battery). Both gun crews are broken.
02 One gun:

03 Second gun:

At 31:34 the Sherman shell explodes near 4 Squad / Team B and three men become casualties.
04 Team take the hit and three casualties:

At 31:31 the gun Squad / A Team are shaken and have had enough. They abandon their gun.
05 One gun abandoned:

At 31:29 the other gun (also called Squad / A Team) become shaken and abandon their gun.
06 Second gun abandoned:

So, the bottom line is this even is due to the way the game works and is not a problem that needs to be fixed. Although I suppose we could debate if the game should work that we or not. Frankly I am not sure that would be a worth while use of our time though

The factors are: 
Experience: 6 levels, Conscript to Elite
Motivation: 6 levels, Poor to Fanatic
Fitness: Fit, weakened, Unfit
Leadership: -2 to +2
Supply: 5 levels, Severe to Full
The possibilites exsist to create virtually any situation you can imagine.
In my opinion, whatever preconceived notions one has about the definition of the word "green" or "veteran" with regards to troop quality is meaningless. The game is based off of the definition found in the manual, and for CM purposes, this is the only definition that matters.

Just a guess, but could it be down to your position? 
Have you tried from a location further back from the hedgerow?