Vacillator

And this thread opened by @Combatintman a while ago provides an excellent in-depth look at assessing the battlefield and planning what you intend to do: It may be a little too detailed for the introductory scenarios but well worth a look. You're doing the right thing by the way, start small and learn the basics and ask as many questions as you need to. And welcome to the game and the forum.

Thanks Steve, I know it's a fairly minor detail in the grand scheme but I appreciate your confirmation. Looking forward to F&R and whatever's next .

Yes that's what our 'conjecture' was coming up with. If it's in the patch that's great. I can certainly live with what you describe. Dare I say it's not the end of the world in any case . As for currently being able to only fire smoke on-board, it seems a bit odd to me, but if the patch opens up the other on-board fire options it won't be any more.

Targeting with the vehicle, the smoke option is there but greyed out and there are no other fire options. With the mounted mortar team I can fire smoke, but nothing else (which seems a bit odd). It also says the mortar is not deployed and I can dismount the team, so it looks like they passengers, apart from being able to fire smoke. One of the 251/2s also has an HQ team on board... This is just in RT, not the other WW2 titles.

Hmmm, I thought I had mortars firing from within the 251/2s in RT the other day, but today not - except oddly for smoke, which they can fire from within? So perhaps I was mistaken. They do fire okay in FI, BN and FB, so is it the (so far) missing patch for RT that is the difference? Will try again...

Interesting comment! I thought both Stummels had survived Stavelot, and on starting Stoumont I had three Stummels (two up front which could be re-located further forward during setup onto a selection of what look like three small purpose-made zones, and one further back with the Panthers which could not). Curious, I thought I'd check who was the new guy, only to find that I'd lost one in Stavelot and not even noticed as it was near the end - presumably I was looking the other way or charging my glass at the time!

Sounds great, thanks in advance for your hard work .

Indeed it is, confirmed the other day after earlier discussion in this same thread.

Are we talking about this gun? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7.5_cm_leichtes_Infanteriegeschütz_18 Elevation is given as -10° to 73° and max range as 3550m (which agrees with that in the game). No minimum is quoted, perhaps unsurprising with -10° depression? In a quick in-game test I found you can aim 1m in front of the gun, which does seems a little bit too 'depressed'. Thankfully the crews seemed sensible enough not to fire, or perhaps they were not feeling 'depressed enough' ) Anyway, I had a similar experience with two of these in BN 'Cats chasing dogs' and ended up with my sturdy crews pushing them into LOS/LOF for direct fire. They survived but very risky...

I agree, nice write-ups and good screenshots. Makes me think that instead of just jumping in I should have researched stuff like this, oh well .

You mean like flak towers? Only joking...

Agreed. On the subject of infantry using a tank's 50 cal, unless an Audie Murphy / John Wayne / Telly Savalas / 'insert other name here' type turns up it's probably best that it's not allowed.

He seems to like the game (going by this video only) so perhaps when he does use the expression it is meant as a backhanded term of endearment? Or not?

Wait, let me just check my copy... give me a few weeks .

Here's an in-game picture: "What, you don't like my driving? Well someone has drained the river!" A splash screen (from the FB splash screen mod) of course, but sort of in-game .

On the off-chance that anyone might be following this (yes I know, unlikely), I thought I'd just add a few words. Mild spoiler alert - look away now if you care about that. After most of my vehicles wasting many, many minutes at Stavelot bridge, and the infantry ahead of them paying the price, I did eventually get all the vehicles that were still able to move over the bridge. Always the optimist, I had decided to capture the Square and hopefully open up the way to getting my hands on all of that lovely fuel waiting for me up the Francorchamps road. Sadly, with dwindling infantry I felt obliged to halt that push once I had a few halftracks and a couple of Panzer IVs dominating in the middle of the square. And sad it turned out to be, as the presence of hidden 'Klingons' within the green zone was to deprive me of that objective and the fuel option. Final result, SS total victory, but no option for fuel. Oh well, on to the next battle. Supposedly I won't see what's left of the Spitze again, but I'm not sure that applies to my badly depleted infantry as well or just the Panzer IVs (of which two were now sitting in rather large holes, but I won't go into detail). One rather odd positive, as has been discussed in another thread, I was previously labouring under the misconception that Sdkfz 251/2s had to dismount their mortars before they could use them (based on an old superceded 'feature' I'd read about for the orginal Fortress Italy). Thanks to @akd I now know better, and will hopefully be able to make much better use of them in future .

As you say, some mods have optional files within their folders - @Mord's excellent portrait mods come to mind - which require that you only put the options you want for each troop type into the Z folder, but still inside a 'Mord's portraits' folder or whatever you would like to call it. They do however come with quite explicit instructions on what to do. I imagine you could also just put the individual portraits straight into the Z folder but if you did that with everything it would soon become cluttered and difficult to manage. I think I must have opted not to use the options with @Juju's UI mods, or at least I can't remember doing so, but I use them for all titles that I have and they're also excellent. I used to use JSGME some time ago (for things like Silent Hunter 3 as @37mm said, before it was totally transformed by the The Grey Wolves mod and needed nothing else) but I haven't felt the need for CM titles. Whatever works though .

Yes, and I was of course discussing it with @Sgt.Squarehead . I think overall we're all in general agreement, and at the same time accept that some odd happenings occur every now and then (like for example only one of my two Panther crews being able to re-mount their original tanks). On your 50 cal point, in RL did infantry jump up on a tank and do that? Probably not as a rule, but I'm sure it happened.

I agree, just use the 'CMFI_Win_Fortress_Italy_v112_Patch.exe'.

As said elsewhere I have dismounted Sdkfz 251 drivers and gunners and successfully bunged them in other dismounted 251s. Embarking passengers will also take on both the driver and gunner roles without the original crew being present. I think the clue may be the 'dismount' (if available) instead of only the 'bail out' that you get for tank crews?

Excellent work. It was this ^. Once on-map was selected I then had a choice of halftrack-mounted at the bottom left of the page. And they fire from within the halftrack so we can ignore my question about game engine numbers. With many thanks! EDIT : They are also in the same place in BN in case anyone is following the ins and outs of this sub-thread (off-topic).

I would agree, and now I've heard of Chick-fil-a. I must get out more, but not just at the moment.

I have just searched again in FI within those Battalions in late 1944 and in 1945, but the closest I found was a medium mortar with no vehicle? I have all add-ons. A question about your comment on the engine upgrades - my FI is Engine 4, the same as FB, RT and BN. Would that not make the 251/2 (if I could find it) operate in the same way across all of these titles? EDIT: And for those wondering what happened to the F&R pre-order thread, my apologies, this just kind of came up. I will shut up soon and normal service will be resumed .

Not today, but possibly when the confusion first arose . So is the 251/2 actually in FI, and if so where can I find it, other than in the manual? And I'm assuming it's not in BN as it's not even in the manual(s)?

Quoting myself, oh dear. Anyway, finally worked out the source of my confusion. From Fortess Italy manual: Note: firing the mortar from within the halftrack is currently not allowed in CM:FI. You will have to dismount the mortar team before they can fire their mortar. Oddly I have not yet located a Sdkfz251/2 in the editor or quick battle setup, so can't confirm this. Anyone know where I can find it? Anyway, this is unlike in RT and FB where you can fire from onboard. Not sure if the vehicle is in BN or its add-ons, I haven't found it if it is.