Aquila-SmartWargames

I've not done much with the helicopter landings actually... although that's probably a good thing as I only recently came up with some practical ideas on how they could actually be implemented.
There is a concept [hotlz] tag as part of 0.96... but any full implementation will likely be a 1.0 thing.
Either way, here's the usual "tidbit"...
 

I prefer historical accuracy and rather lean towards how BF/CM is handling things. In alot of tactical wargames infantry is reduced to "nice to have them around but not really threatening or battle decisive" when tanks are present aswell. Drive them up to the inf and blast them into pieces. In CM on the other hand you need to excercise the combined arms approach and thus protect your tanks from infantry and locating infantry can be difficult depending on conditions and environment aswell.  
Having enemy infantry swarming your tank was one of the worst situations a tank crew could find itself in. Some tanks came with close defense system such as dedicated mgs or firing ports but AFAIK they never prove to be an effective deterrent and even less a proper replacement for infantry support. There is a reason why some German tanks installed sohisticated solutions like  the "Nahverteidigungswaffe" which tried to protect their heavy tanks from infantry attacks by launching explosives, its quiet interesting to see it in action in CM. If infantry swarming them wouldn´t be a threat to their Tigers/Kingtigers they wouldn´t bother with it.
In the beginning the effectiveness of grenades also wondered me but when someone on these forums came up with the explanation that it represents an abstraction of the various close infantry attack tactics that were used against tanks and that the generic grenade counter/throw also represents an abstraction of various dedicated or DIY AT ordnance such as dedicated/improvised mines, charges, liquids, throwables it started to make sense to me. If true putting an explanation into the manual could avoid alot of the confusion. 
Interesting are also the results. I had Medium Tanks such as the T-34 knocked out after 1-2 grenade/close infantry attacks and I had T-34 that survived 12 of them and kept me constantly on the run. Something gave me the impression that there might be some hidden values running under the "grenade count" hood but on the other hand I don´t want to know in order to keep the "magic" which makes every close infantry attack exciting about what might happen. 
What for me is left to debate is if effect on enemy tanks is achieved too fast, if despite mobility killing them they had the means to completely knock out heavier tanks that fast or at all, force the crew outside, and if so many infantrymen would have the knowledge, guts, and equipment to undertake such an endeavour. Pretty sure there are some of these that can be at least partially answered with "not really" but I guess some of this might be tied to 1) current engine limitations 2) limited development resources, and balancing 1) and 2) out with the other aspects of the game in order to still offer the best historical accuracy possible.
But nevertheless I still think CM has one  of the - if not the - most authentic Infantry vs tanks warfare representations.
There are even ideas to go farer as somebody mentioned the idea to allow infantry to use their explosive ordnance/close infantry attack ability from buildings which I think is not that bad of an idea but might end up absolutely over the top with infantry occupied build-up areas becoming apocalyptic for tanks to drive through and on the other hand would neglect the exposure of infantry as they wouldn´t have to leave the safety of the building for that. Perhaps thats was the decision-making reason why the ability is denied from interiors.

I believe this is a test using standard AP, but not sure:
http://www.tankarchives.ca/2013/07/soviet-57-mm-guns.html

+1  Interesting stuff. Below is my drill for close assaulting tanks.  IMO one of the deadliest things about close assaulting tanks is the crew of the knocked out tank.  They seem to bail out of the tank very angry and looking for revenge.  They often get said revenge. 
  
1. Use a fire team with a lot of hand grenades (typically an assault team). 
2. Give fire team a 360oTarget Arc1 of 24 meters.  
3. Exit building.  (teams must be outside to close assault vehicle) 
4. Fast fire team to within 2 A/S of the flank or rear of the tank.
5. On their own the team will throw grenades.
6. Prepare for the tank crew to dismount shooting.
Notes: 1) An Armor Target Arc will not allow the fire team to fire on the bailed out tank crew.    

I find it rather surprising that so many players have issues with close assaulting tanks and end up getting mowed down by the target tank. 
The Wehrmacht once released some sort of field manual in this comic style known from the famous Tiger and Panther Fibel: http://pbc.gda.pl/Content/57971/Der Panzerknacker.pdf Just imagine that the mentioned AT explosive usage and close assault tactics are abstracted by generic grenade attacks.
Basically:
1) stay cool and don´t run away/around when tanks approach your positions, you might die (hide, hold fire target arc)
2) know what tank you´re engaging and keep this in mind for the approach plan (rear MG?, hull gunner?, turret traverse rate? close protection system?)
3) if possible make sure close-by infantry is surpressed or tank is otherwise isolated
4) find best concealed covered approach to come as close as possible before being threatened or let him come as close as possible to you
5) then for the final approach, be swift, aggressive, and dash towards the tank from the safest approach (usually flank, rear, and turret pointed away)
6) if possible coordinate your efforts with other tank hunter teams or elements in order to distract/overwhelm the tank or other enemy elements that might become a danger to the endeavour
7) just do it
I  think the content of this comic manual translate pretty well into the game and I basically apply these principles to my tank assaults and  it works well. As described in the manual the biggest threat is not the tank itself but usually the surroundings (other tanks and infantry covering it)
One thing for CM specifically to keep in mind that tank turrets are allowed to engage closer targets than historically the gun height & depression allowed to do so they can engage the infantry even when close and prone usually with the coax MG. However the tank will face a latency penalty in CM when attempting that below the historical depression range from a gut feeling of about 20 seconds and might depend on other factors. So might need to shift position. As 60 seconds are too much for turn-based players, they might need to incorporate this into the plan beforehand:
Also my Finnish campaign playthrough is full with close assaulting tanks.

I prefer historical accuracy and rather lean towards how BF/CM is handling things. In alot of tactical wargames infantry is reduced to "nice to have them around but not really threatening or battle decisive" when tanks are present aswell. Drive them up to the inf and blast them into pieces. In CM on the other hand you need to excercise the combined arms approach and thus protect your tanks from infantry and locating infantry can be difficult depending on conditions and environment aswell.  
Having enemy infantry swarming your tank was one of the worst situations a tank crew could find itself in. Some tanks came with close defense system such as dedicated mgs or firing ports but AFAIK they never prove to be an effective deterrent and even less a proper replacement for infantry support. There is a reason why some German tanks installed sohisticated solutions like  the "Nahverteidigungswaffe" which tried to protect their heavy tanks from infantry attacks by launching explosives, its quiet interesting to see it in action in CM. If infantry swarming them wouldn´t be a threat to their Tigers/Kingtigers they wouldn´t bother with it.
In the beginning the effectiveness of grenades also wondered me but when someone on these forums came up with the explanation that it represents an abstraction of the various close infantry attack tactics that were used against tanks and that the generic grenade counter/throw also represents an abstraction of various dedicated or DIY AT ordnance such as dedicated/improvised mines, charges, liquids, throwables it started to make sense to me. If true putting an explanation into the manual could avoid alot of the confusion. 
Interesting are also the results. I had Medium Tanks such as the T-34 knocked out after 1-2 grenade/close infantry attacks and I had T-34 that survived 12 of them and kept me constantly on the run. Something gave me the impression that there might be some hidden values running under the "grenade count" hood but on the other hand I don´t want to know in order to keep the "magic" which makes every close infantry attack exciting about what might happen. 
What for me is left to debate is if effect on enemy tanks is achieved too fast, if despite mobility killing them they had the means to completely knock out heavier tanks that fast or at all, force the crew outside, and if so many infantrymen would have the knowledge, guts, and equipment to undertake such an endeavour. Pretty sure there are some of these that can be at least partially answered with "not really" but I guess some of this might be tied to 1) current engine limitations 2) limited development resources, and balancing 1) and 2) out with the other aspects of the game in order to still offer the best historical accuracy possible.
But nevertheless I still think CM has one  of the - if not the - most authentic Infantry vs tanks warfare representations.
There are even ideas to go farer as somebody mentioned the idea to allow infantry to use their explosive ordnance/close infantry attack ability from buildings which I think is not that bad of an idea but might end up absolutely over the top with infantry occupied build-up areas becoming apocalyptic for tanks to drive through and on the other hand would neglect the exposure of infantry as they wouldn´t have to leave the safety of the building for that. Perhaps thats was the decision-making reason why the ability is denied from interiors.

I prefer historical accuracy and rather lean towards how BF/CM is handling things. In alot of tactical wargames infantry is reduced to "nice to have them around but not really threatening or battle decisive" when tanks are present aswell. Drive them up to the inf and blast them into pieces. In CM on the other hand you need to excercise the combined arms approach and thus protect your tanks from infantry and locating infantry can be difficult depending on conditions and environment aswell.  
Having enemy infantry swarming your tank was one of the worst situations a tank crew could find itself in. Some tanks came with close defense system such as dedicated mgs or firing ports but AFAIK they never prove to be an effective deterrent and even less a proper replacement for infantry support. There is a reason why some German tanks installed sohisticated solutions like  the "Nahverteidigungswaffe" which tried to protect their heavy tanks from infantry attacks by launching explosives, its quiet interesting to see it in action in CM. If infantry swarming them wouldn´t be a threat to their Tigers/Kingtigers they wouldn´t bother with it.
In the beginning the effectiveness of grenades also wondered me but when someone on these forums came up with the explanation that it represents an abstraction of the various close infantry attack tactics that were used against tanks and that the generic grenade counter/throw also represents an abstraction of various dedicated or DIY AT ordnance such as dedicated/improvised mines, charges, liquids, throwables it started to make sense to me. If true putting an explanation into the manual could avoid alot of the confusion. 
Interesting are also the results. I had Medium Tanks such as the T-34 knocked out after 1-2 grenade/close infantry attacks and I had T-34 that survived 12 of them and kept me constantly on the run. Something gave me the impression that there might be some hidden values running under the "grenade count" hood but on the other hand I don´t want to know in order to keep the "magic" which makes every close infantry attack exciting about what might happen. 
What for me is left to debate is if effect on enemy tanks is achieved too fast, if despite mobility killing them they had the means to completely knock out heavier tanks that fast or at all, force the crew outside, and if so many infantrymen would have the knowledge, guts, and equipment to undertake such an endeavour. Pretty sure there are some of these that can be at least partially answered with "not really" but I guess some of this might be tied to 1) current engine limitations 2) limited development resources, and balancing 1) and 2) out with the other aspects of the game in order to still offer the best historical accuracy possible.
But nevertheless I still think CM has one  of the - if not the - most authentic Infantry vs tanks warfare representations.
There are even ideas to go farer as somebody mentioned the idea to allow infantry to use their explosive ordnance/close infantry attack ability from buildings which I think is not that bad of an idea but might end up absolutely over the top with infantry occupied build-up areas becoming apocalyptic for tanks to drive through and on the other hand would neglect the exposure of infantry as they wouldn´t have to leave the safety of the building for that. Perhaps thats was the decision-making reason why the ability is denied from interiors.

I almost never see Air Assets in CMRT scenarios which might be tied to this not unproblematic air support system CMRT uses.
I recently played a mission with JU-87 being EN ROUTE PREPARING right from the beginning. Even after an hour there was no sight of them. So the appearance is completely randomized over the complete mission time? They could basically show up with the mission timer having one minute left?
I always had the impression that mission designers set areas for them while designing but now understand that they completely independent roam the battlefield. How in detail is the friendly fire danger? Is it tied to how enemy target rich the environment is? In a testing scenario I just placed some Opel Blitz and several German air elements and the first aircraft element that appeared after a minute or so immediately attacked the friendly Opel trucks. There were no enemy units present on the map. When air support is scheduled is it perhaps a good idea to wait and let them handle a target-rich environment to prevent that the air force pilots arrive don´t find enemy units, and thus instead start attacking friendly forces?
As concealed units under foliage might be harder to identify correctly as friendly is concealing my units from my own airforce making it worse or better 😂? 
Besides this it would be definitely great if this system sees change or improvement in the upcoming expansion.

I believe to remember, that a long time ago one of our CM friends with practical experience said, that action in CM is in general about 4x faster than in RL.
Such acceleration would explain an increased effectiveness.

According to the Companion to the Red Army book (which is basically the same book as the Guide to the Red Army) it said that the ZiS-2 was not really adequate to deal with the Panthers and Tigers. 
They used ZiS-3 more often to fight tanks.
They did have their own version of HVAP (hyper-velocity armour-piercing) shell and maybe that's modeled as a little too powerful.

Yes, I prefer an infantry focus too. It's pretty obvious that GT was built on a tank simulation, with the infantry added mostly so that tanks have something to shoot HE at.

I find excessive waypoint plotting and multiple battles on a huge map that require the player to constantly shift attention and camera rather exhausting too while the multiple battles aspect comes down to preference. However directing vehicle convoys over a road network is one of the most exhausting tasks I can think of when playing CM. Bad ground conditions can make it worse. It can even become more extreme when designers put mud/ditches beside roads or junctions, which is realistic but may stress the handicapped driving AI and your patience to the absolute max.
In the time I´ve developed some work reducing methods:
1) I sometimes "abstract" the plotting and only set few waypoints. Vehicles may navigate to the target in an efficient manner but will veer of the road often. Only use this if the bogging chance offroad is low. Important is to make sure that there are waypoints for key areas that will prevent the vehicle AI from taking unexpected routes or terrible terrain. With time the player gets a "feeling" for how the AI will behave when plotting this abstracted routes.
 2) I often give orders to multi vehicles at once even for road travel. While this otherwise handy "waypoint spread by unit relation" feature is rather hindering when plotting road travel, Engine 4 allows you to drag the waypoints quickly into correct position. It isn´t perfect as every single unit needs to be selected but I think it can save time and work.
3) pause all vehicles when done and make sure to unpause them when there is absolute enough room between each vehicle. One of the worst thing that can happen is when vehicles bump together for too long, triggering into this bypass mode and then the vehicle babysitting is about to happen. Bogged vehicles can stop entire fleets of vehicle. Remove the waypoints from the bogged vehicle if you want them to bypass the bogged one. Not sure if pause leads to the same. 
Great to see that V2 uses ground conditions with less bogging which will makes things alot easier

I usually avoid to bring tanks into contact with AT guns at all but currently playing a campaign that might make it inevitable to do so for my Tigers.
While a quick 76mm ZIS-3 test produced the outcome that I´ve seen from various historical accounts (penetration frontal almost impossible, side penetration on short distances possible) the ZIS-2 57mm effectiveness gives me some thoughts.
In a recent test it was able to easily penetrate Tigers frontally at 500m and destroy them with 1-4 hits while most hits causes damage ranging from armor spalling (most times 1st hit) over partial penetrations (with internal damage & casualties) to full penetration. Angling the hull with about 15-20 degree towards incoming trajectory didn´t made it any better. In easy words most Tigers were taken out rather fast and often rendered combat ineffective/"stunned" after already the first hit.
The ZIS-2 was definitely was a powerful AT gun and could basically take out any <1943 German tank from any aspect and great ranges. I saw these Soviet penetration tables at WP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/57_mm_anti-tank_gun_M1943_(ZiS-2) which are somewhat consistent what the UI Penetration/Armor Mod is showing me for the ZIS-2 which indicate that it should penetrate Tigers at 500m, although there is a disclaimer on WP that the Soviet aquisition method makes this values for some reason not comparable to Western or similar tests.
While its hard to find quick information on the ZIS-2 vs Tiger situation online most statements I found rather point towards that the ZIS-2 had difficulties against Tigers.

 
I only did a superficial research on this and would be great if one with a greater insight into this matter could provide some info on if the ZIS-2 was indeed that deadly. 
Beside this: the above results were achieved with regular AP shells. Against a similar test against a King Tiger the ZIS-2 crew was also starting with AP shells and at some point decided to use the APCR after expending dozen of AP shells.
All tests:
 

In the meantime this was released which supplements the above guide
 

Soon enough.
'Al Amarah' is looking a bit different these days...



... still a long way to go but at least I've finished 'clicking all the roofs' north of the river.

Try making an interlinked cluster.....On stilts:

It's the stuff of madness I tell you! 

This is not meant to be taken literally but rather it represents "Infantry Close Assault". Disregard the animations in this as the game was not designed to display the precise actions that take place in this sort of attack on a vehicle. 

I always wondered about the fatigue on the HUNT command and perceive it as exaggerated be it for WW2 or modern. 

Great mod, adds alot to the aliveness of towns. In the above screenshot I really like the colors, did you use a specific Reshade profile for that?

Mission to Maas V2.btt

Updated huge scenario Axis KG Peiper versus Allies.
Semi Historical based on the actions over 4 days around La Gleize and Stoumont, condensed into a 4 hour period.
4 hours, gives plenty of time. But need to balance force preservation with speed to secure objectives, avoiding enemy artillery and fighting off counter attacks.
Controlling 700 troops and over 50 vehicles is not for the feint hearted
Improvements over Version 1
Improved road layout near Coo and through La Gleize, so game engine doesn't re-route units behind buildings . Ground conditions now allow for more off-road manoeuvre with minimal risk of breakdown, although beware of mines. Some building layouts have been improved. Found Grilles! and added some German recon. German TRP setup is now at the front of the Spitze rather than inconveniently hidden in the woods! 5 action plans, with variable arrival time for USA reinforcements give more replay ability. Start time is 08:30am which provides darkness and poor visibility for the first 15-30 minutes.
Why go large? 
Operational type decisions on when and where to attack / defend with which company optional march routes route security, flank recon, patrols, early warning  creation of mobile reserve to respond to threats etc command challenges, do I move to counter that threat or temporarily withdraw to fight again? Deeper understanding of your own force strengths, weakness, mobility, firepower, combined arms Visual. Attack and counter attack over the same ground lets you fight past burnt out vehicles and damaged buildings, that are reset if occurring in a campaign Not many scenarios produced on this scale, probably for good reason Many thanks to the guys who commented on version 1,  much appreciated, hope you find this an improved experience.

Yes, you are right. I tried it myself.
 
But I took a copy of the original helmet-mdr into my Z-folder and renamend it to "smod_american_helmet-soldier  [night].mdr"
 
So the helmets are without googles when they have the NVGs mounted...

Exactly

Just to be clear you mean this subforum: CM2 Scenario and Mod Tips?
Okay so if no other opinions or objections will come up in the meantime I will create a thread there with copy/pasting useful stuff from here in a couple of days. 

@umlaut basically explained everything important. When using the Blackhawk or other bigger custom models you might want to keep this in mind:
 
This thread is indeed long and cluttered with alot. I was thinking about making a new thread "Custom 3D Models Infos & Tutorials" and at least extract the knowledge we´ve collected here. You can tell me if this is a good idea or if we want to better keep everything here. However if we go for the new thread I do not plan to rewrite or sort the information but just extract it to make it easier to access. I think it would also be a good idea to create this new thread in "Combat Mission General Discussion" rather than CMSF2 Mods

Lets say you want the Sherman and the burning Sherman wrecks in your scenario and are perfectly sure that you won´t - lets say - use a British Cromwell IV in your scenario/campaign. Then rename the Sherman wreck files to:
cromwell-iv [damage].mdr
cromwell-iv-lod-1,2,3,4 [damage].mdr
Then in the scenario  editor set the [damage] modtag and place some Cromwell-iv wrecks there and they will look like your Sherman wreck, provide cover, LOS/LOF blocking, and burn, etc. while you still can use the regular Shermans as "alive" tanks for the player/enemy side.
In this example the chromwell->sherman conversion will only become active when modtag [damage] is called. So users don´t need to worry about their modfolder and will keep their default Cromwells for any other scenarios. The Cromwell is just a example could be also every another vehicle of any faction like a kubelwagen but it makes sense to choose something similar in size/sturdiness in order to get most consistent LOS/LOF blocking and cover.