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SimpleSimon

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Everything posted by SimpleSimon

  1. Depends on soft factors but in general, hand-thrown anti-tank weapons are a point blank weapon mainly for self defense. They can be used in a vehicle close assault, but the circumstances for that to be anything other than totally suicidal will be rare. In any case, dont bother with any of the "target" commands, just a movement command as close as possible to the enemy vehicle. Initiation of attack is based almost entirely on proximity.
  2. AI defenders are almost always reliably static and this has a knock-on effect down the entire game causing players to count on static defense for every scenario. So you can always deploy your forces optimally for a siege without needing to consider the risk of a spoiling attack. That the AI does not conduct very intricate attacks or very sophisticated attacks to me is no excuse for this. It's a major absence. If the AI force is strong enough and equipped well enough to push the player right off the board then its too strong for the context and the scenario's narrative needs revision or the designer needs to chop headcounts. I like to imagine situations where the enemy's line is breached and the main objective captured, only to discover that it's abandoned and a new uncomfortable question has arisen as to where exactly the enemy is. Blunting the Spear in Red Thunder point out that the enemy likely withdrew through their own designated Exit objectives and are being fed VPs for unit preservation. (One among many reasons why that is such an excellent campaign) In other situations, perhaps you should've set aside a Company to watch the Foret Jaques after all...
  3. Something i've noticed is that the British kept the Ordinance 3in Mortar in service until the 1960s, in spite of its relatively short range for an infantry mortar. Later variants extended the weapon's range to match peers but I think the British were honestly just pretty comfortable with the idea of pushing the infantry's mortars right up into the line with the rifles. Crews could get ridiculously good at dropping rounds right into enemy foxholes and such with a line of sight. If a Universal Carrier was around i'm sure they'd shoot-n-scoot fast enough to present a challenging target for return fire too.
  4. I lean a bit back to FI myself, if only because I preferred it being closest to the start of the war and like the challenges and context posed by Italy's terrain. Plus you have unique formations such as the Italians and Brazilians which I enjoyed a lot.
  5. I might venture creative use of Exit Zone mechanic. You're certainly going to have bloody battles in the biggest war in history don't get me wrong. Like i've been saying for years though, the games are far too predisposed to this, especially the campaigns, which rapidly become unplayable if you try to match all of their conditional requirements. The main thing I want just want to see is reform of the thinking behind scoring mechanics. If the enemy has a strong position maybe placing enough optional lesser captures on the map would create context by introducing reasonable measures for indirect strategy like fix and bypass. I almost can't imagine any scenario i'd design for the Germans for instance that would lack an exit zone.
  6. It's incredible to me that guys often agree to go into multi or QB battles over a 800x800m map with artillery on one or both sides at all. It's not "shooting fish in a barrel" as much as dropping hand grenades on fish in a bucket.
  7. It's amazing to me how profound the mythology of "Flanders" and "The Western Front" has been on the history. It's really exemplified in many of the game's scenarios I think. Gotta seize the enemy position by T+2:00 is never really a good objective to saddle the player with. Why that position? Why am I starting where I am? Why only two hours? Usually confronted with the context of a CM scenario I often quickly end up feeling like i'm going to need far more support or better circumstances or both to match the scenario in a single save without causing a huge bloodbath. That's why I like the idea of things like an overtime meter just being a modest VP penalty. Usually the highest value of them all should be the integrity of your own force, in 2nd place destruction of the enemy's, and dead last the circumstantial objectives such as the time limit, captures, exits, etc.
  8. That's what I'm seeing too akd. Machine Gun Battalion, Infantry Division, 1944 (niehorster.org) Updated ToE for 1944. The Battalion was now distinctly organic to the Division it was attached to (I think previously they were an independent formation?) and resembles something more like a reinforced Heavy Weapons Company. A number of the machine guns were traded in for 4.2in heavy mortars, while the usual rearmament trends in the British Army meant things like more Brens, PIATs, and Universal Carriers all around. The way the 1944 formation is organized seems distinctly like a support-group thing to be detached to Rifle Regiments as needed.
  9. It's hard to tell how those huge MG Battalions were used, and i've heard enough arguments both ways to say that there was no specific manner in which they used. Sometimes the guns and crews would be parceled out among infantry formations, sometimes they'd be used as you use them in "battery" all massed on a specific objective. Here's a TOE Infantry (Machine Gun) Battalion, 06.04.1938 (niehorster.org) Motorized too, trucks directly attached to the formation, also note large distribution of Boys Rifles for self-protection from armor. They seem to have been a holdover of the First World War Machine Gun Corp in which many Armies still used MG formations like artillery groups. The Red Army maintained Machine Gun Companies for the war too, but as I heard they were almost never used en masse but usually parceled out to locations not in the Russian's main path of maneuver in order to prevent or attrition movement as economy-of-force. ie: The Russians using the cheapest reasonable means for an objective such as flank screening. The Italian Army also had Machine Gun Companies but I don't have any specific on how they were used. I wouldn't be surprised to find out they were frequently withheld by Division HQ to protect Division HQ while the infantry could just screw off with their awful Breda MGs.
  10. You will have to work at night for safety. The Juvenile Centurion does not have IR capability. The adults on the other hand....
  11. You mean you haven't already covered the entire surface area of your house with Kontakt 5????
  12. It could be outside your window Erwin. Right now.
  13. Protect yourself How to Protect Your Computer from Getting Shot by an MBT - YouTube
  14. I think it's usually worth a disclaimer or a point in the briefing, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem to have sections of the deploy area exposed to fire. One must remember after all, that it can go both ways...
  15. I think the issue here is that the scoring isn't fair. This is a thing that's still sort of dawning on me, but it's occurring to me that there can be reasonable enough justification for challenging or rough scenarios but if they're not scored fairly than it all comes apart. If the designers want to make hard scenarios I get it, but they need to score reasonably against that. Asking the player to do things that go against intuition or experience can rapidly lead to a loss of trust between player and designer ie: structural failure of the meta-game, the result of this is cheesing, save-scumming, etc gaming the game. Safe to say that's not how CM is meant to be played, and if you feel compelled to play it that way the game has in some or another, failed you.
  16. I've been seeing this also for years. AP rounds striking turf or trees nowhere near my troops but somehow hamburgering 5 guys in 3 different platoons spread over a 300m area???
  17. If you feel frustrated by the scenario I suggest opening up the editor, assessing the situation, and determining what you consider necessary to adequately solve it. If you start to feel that it's become too easy, start withdrawing tools slowly and see what happens. You can practice this for the opposition too, and simply determine what they've got that gives them an inordinate advantage. Personally, I tend to think that tanks are too commonly encountered for defenders, and bunkers not nearly enough. I don't think that scenarios necessarily lend themselves to riddle or set-piece sieges based on their size, the issue is usually just the number of units between both sides against the size of the map. Too often, there's just way too many men between both sides on a map that's just not big enough for them.
  18. ^The above You are doing yourself a major favor, and extracting 1000x more value from the games if you learn to use the editor. It needs a tutorial, tooltips, etc better learning tools I agree but you're really just giving up a good 50% of the game's value by just leaving the Mission Editor out of your consideration. A lot of the really basic stuff like changing battle ToEs, are really easy, and the AI plans just take experience to learn, trial and error. For AI planning particularly you should "paint in broad strokes" by which Im not referring to the actual movement plans but your wider abstract thinking about what you want from it. It doesn't play the game like a player ie: like you but it can execute attacks and movements and that's 95% of what you need from the game. (I'm only miffed it will not conduct Target Fire on historic contacts.)
  19. Draftee Army fighting a war perceived by many in the ranks and at home to be either not their concern (Britain's colonies are Britain's problem) or maybe even a tad sympathetic to the enemy (better dead than red). What does one expect? The propaganda of the age was really that powerful that people today honestly think the Pearl Harbor enlistment drive meant that people were signing up for the infantry and not for...the Quartermaster Corp lol. The Nazis weren't poised to invade the East Coast anytime soon and that was plainly visible regardless of the exaggerated media hype toward that. Any way you cut the issue the Roosevelt administration was also going to be challenged by the fact that America's reasons for fighting the war were going to be abstract ones and not from any sort of immediate threat posed to it by the Axis Powers. Pearl Harbor was a godsend...for war against Japan and like I said it failed to provoke widespread enthusiasm for work as a prestigious rifle infantryman, a job which was seen as sort of lowly or treacherous among the society of the time (trauma from the First World War). A lot of people sure are interested in Signals and truck driving now though... Motivation and subordination would be consequently low but really this was expected and planned for, and was a major reason why the support branches such as Signals, Engineers, and the Quartermasters in the US Military were such huge organizations...and very good at their jobs too. The most enthusiastic recruits tended to get funneled into them. Gavin for his own part, was an Airborne General and quite invested in the All-Volunteer Airborne Divisions and their cadre of enthusiastic crack troops who possessed a unique Elan among US infantry formations being not only Airborne but by definition, shock-troops explicitly selected and preferred for high enthusiasm and motivation. On top of the support branches, US Junior Officers and NCOs also often managed to work wonders when it came to nudging skittish GI's forward "unto the breach"...but really as much as it sounds like i'm roasting US infantry i'm not, and their accomplishments were very impressive given how little tangible reason they had to be present in Europe and Asia fighting concepts (Fascism and militarism) rather than tangible threats to their homeland. Gavin's* statements are unfair. It was seriously incredible and totally unheard of in history to ask men to fight, literally, for a noble cause and no other reason. *I still have respect for the man because of his actions in ending the US military's segregation policies, staunch opposition to the Vietnam War and his personal bravery.
  20. Many of the scenarios are designed around puzzle solving and play out almost every time like a siege. There are many symptoms of these conditions, but one of the most prominent is of closely matched headcounts or map populations between defender and attacker and this invariably promotes high lethality within a given slice of map. Force-to-space ratios with a high density of units promote extremely meticulous play and are often excessively relied upon to make up for a perceived passivity of the AI on defense. As long as you're making reasonable decisions you have a right to expect reasonable results, and the game should score you fairly for that. Unfortunately, I think the way that we score the player's conduct in most of the scenarios is sort of poor and in a minority of cases, egregiously unfair or abusive.
  21. As far as soft units go, I feel pretty unprepared when I don't have a company of Combat Engineers around ready. Lots of scenarios may never call for them at all but it sucks when you roll up on the local hamlet/town and don't have them.
  22. I value the Stuart tank immensely whenever I have it, and greatly appreciate its ability to just shut down snipers, MGs, etc with total impunity. It's height means it's good at spotting and its light weight and small size make it handy for sticking close to the infantry. It laughs off mortar fire and the cannister shot is a sight to behold. In a pinch, if the planets align, it can even kill a Panzer. I fear no man, but that thing...it scares me.
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