Italians: First impressions

[ridethe415]

Quickly played Beyond the Belice. It's a 50 minute scenario and at 30 minutes I decided to cease fire.

I got a Draw, but I was pretty badly beat up. About 50% casualties...I probably rushed through it, but I was rather excited to try CMFI out.

The Italians are challenging to use.

• Big squads that can't be split, although scout teams come as separate units
  

• Regular units panic pretty easily
  

• Tankettes destroyed easily
  

• Recon vehicle is almost useless, it's a large convertable car with a 20mm gun. NO protection at all. Get any where within enemy range and you'll take losses quickly. But the sound of the 20mm firing is awesome.
  

• No radios. C2 is brutal.
  

• Squad fire power leaves a lot to be desired.
  

• NO anti armor capability! Nothing. Even the M3 halftrack becomes a thing to fear.
  

It's gonna take some time to get the hang of attacking with these guys...and to think there is a whole campaign from the Italian point of view.

This is one fun game. Seriously, this is amazingly fun. It will take months to get through everything here.

Very well done!

[Vergeltungswaffe]

Good thumbnail of the Italians.

In SF, it was a fun challenge playing the Brits after having had all the US firepower. FI Italians are that same fun challenge.

[sburke]

Try Bad day at Beach Red as the Italians. Tough and interesting. Playing as Allies is also really good on this one.

Hell they are all good, but that is one of my favorites.

[MikeyD]

My best advice for Italians - Learn to love the Brixia 45mm mortar. In action it more resembles a rudimentary auto grenade launcher than a classic tube mortar. My advise for Allies - if you've got multiple targets prioritize killing the Brixia team first! Otherwise you'll find little red-and-black mortar bombs landing right in your lap.

[Mord]

I am playing that scenario now, Beyond Belice, so I didn't read everything. It's been really fun thus far.

@Sburke? How the hell do you know that LOL. I thought you were on Vacay?

Mord.

[sburke]

I am playing that scenario now, Beyond Belice, so I didn't read everything. It's been really fun thus far.

@Sburke? How the hell do you know that LOL. I thought you were on Vacay?

Mord.

I had the opportunity to play it a bit earlier

[Mord]

One suggestion I'd like to make to BFC...they may need an icon to differentiate between all the HQ's the Italians have. They have so many it's confusing. They have twice as many per company as the other forces. Maybe the standard for Platoon on up and something different for the Squad HQs.

Mord.

[MikeyD]

They have so many it's confusing.

That's the pice they pay for not having noncoms. One help is if you click on a unit his officer will light up too, you click on an officer the units under his command light up too.

[Mord]

That's the pice they pay for not having noncoms. One help is if you click on a unit his officer will light up too, you click on an officer the units under his command light up too.

I'll keep that in mind. I spent about an hour and a half last night just sorting HQ's and placing stuff in a PBEM game...trying to keep formations intact. But another icon would be something to give thought to.

Mord.

[ridethe415]

One suggestion I'd like to make to BFC...they may need an icon to differentiate between all the HQ's the Italians have.

Mord.

I would like that for all armies. At least a distinction between company / battalion and platoon/squad. It takes too long to find the highest level HQ on the map. Just a different looking flag icon.

[Thomm]

Beyond the Belice is pretty hard for either side, but the Italians have an advantage if they stay in the houses (I learned that from watching the AI plan when I played the US ).

I had very good results with the tankettes when I placed them hull down behind low stone walls.

Best regards,

Thomm

[Battlefront.com]

Glad people are having fun with the Italians. One thing that always bothered me through wargaming history is how national forces are treated. Either they are stereotyped and given artificial "gamey" attributes, or the game doesn't have enough depth to have things feel different "naturally". CM has always been about making things natural and CMx2 has more ability to deliver on that than CMx1, which was (IMHO) the best out there before CMx2. But I'm a bit biased

Yeah, I'd like to get different floating icons in for the different levels of HQs. That should be possible to do at some point. We're leery of having too many icons because then players find themselves in the other extreme. There's only so many pixels to mess with and icons are, almost by definition, abstract representations.

Steve

[Lee_Vincent]

Loving the game so far, 2.0 Engine is excellent.

[Ranger33]

Trying out the Italian campaign first. It's such breath of fresh air to be fighting my way across hilly but cover strewn maps instead of hedgerow after hedgerow. Combining that with the Italians lack of heavy firepower really makes for different sort of experience than anything in CMBN. Absolutely loving everything so far, can't wait to revisit CMBN with the upgrade.

On the matter of HQ's, it is a bit confusing but if you played some of the British scenarios in CMSF it will come a bit easier, they have excess numbers of HQ's and section leaders in any given company as well.

[Ithikial_AU]

I hate the Brixia mortar... but I was on the receiving end.

Also one thing I noticed is the sound effects. Have the default sounds been changed or have I been playing with AKD's sound mod for to long?

[gunnergoz]

(snip)

• Tankettes destroyed easily

• Recon vehicle is almost useless, it's a large convertable car with a 20mm gun. NO protection at all. Get any where within enemy range and you'll take losses quickly. But the sound of the 20mm firing is awesome.(snip)

Yep, keep them tankettes well out of range of anything bigger than a pistol or carbine. .30 cal AP seems to go right through them, which means a rifleman theoretically can take one out...in practice it takes at least a BAR or LMG to do it from what I've seen so far.

The scout car is totally unarmored so needs to be hull down and if it is going against anything with a .30 or .50 cal MG, it better have the first shot! But it does a bang up job on infantry if the infantry does not have LMG's with them.

[Hawkmek]

I played thru the Beyond the Belice battle as the Americans and had a blast. Love the new changes and like everyone else, looking forward to the CMBN update.

As usual, my leaders died valiantly when the first rounds were fired and and anyone manning an MG in a halftrack wasn't going to be around long. It was interesting the way one of my Scout Team would man the gun - and die, then the next guy would man the gun - and die, etc. Gotta give them an A for effort though.

[womble]

I would like that for all armies. At least a distinction between company / battalion and platoon/squad. It takes too long to find the highest level HQ on the map. Just a different looking flag icon.

Finding your highest level HQ is easy: click on any unit, then click on their highest level HQ in the C2 stack, bottom left. Hit Tab and Robert's your auntie's live-in lover.

[Rokko]

I feel naked without bocage

playing the advanced training cam and I don't really know what to do with my guys.

[GerryCMBB]

That damn bocage is very double edged though. I am attacking into it in CMBN in a PBEM now and the number of times that a small force of defenders, maybe even one, can stop a bunch of attackers is really frustrating. My opponent's defenders always seem buried in the bocage. And you don't always have spare artillery, or time for it, to take them out.

Gerry

I feel naked without bocage

playing the advanced training cam and I don't really know what to do with my guys.

[ridethe415]

Finding your highest level HQ is easy: click on any unit, then click on their highest level HQ in the C2 stack, bottom left. Hit Tab and Robert's your auntie's live-in lover.

Yeah, I've used that, but I'd still like some visual distinction when looking at the map to see where senior HQ's are. And Robert wasn't who he said he was...more like Roberta.

[dokken1212]

The new game engine is superb and looking forward to the upgrade to engine2.0 for CMN etc ..... looks great, seems to play great too although I havent went deep into the game yet .... but so far looks brilliant :-) .... just need more campaigns designed by the MOD community :-)

[Chek]

The Italians have really come alive.The fire group Breda's can put down a fairly respectable amount of firepower and of course the Brixia's mentioned by Mikey D are indispensable.

Have played the Italians in CMAK,CMBB and with miniatures on numerous occasions.In FI they have engaged my imagination completely.The C2 is awesome.Just played Avanti!That was soo cool,gave the various units specific timetables to complete objectives before moving onto the main objective.Of course some took longer than others to clear their initial objectives and consequently arrived at the well planned main assault piecemeal.I steadfastly refused to adjust units schedules as they were out of communication with each other and the confusion was glorious.I really felt like the Italian Capitano screaming at his Platoon leaders who couldn't see or hear him.

This is what I love about this game the confusion,the chaos the pure unpredictable nature of warfare.

Truly great work.

[Amedeo]

It's just a first impression but I think that the Italians look reasonably well modelled in CMFI.

I'm overall pleased, although there are a couple things, IMHO, in need to be fixed. For example, I think that the 1st group of a rifle squad should be allowed to split into two fire groups, with one LMG each.

The Italian 1939 infantry tactics regulation can be found here:

http://www.regioesercito.it/regioesercito/redoc/manumil9.htm

There's an English translation here (PDF file):

http://comandosupremo.com/montecervino/files/infantry_squad.pdf

One can see (there are interesting diagrams at the end of the document) that the infantry squad was divided in two groups: gruppo fucilieri (riflemen) and gruppo mitragliatori (LMGs). Occasionally, the LMG group was split in two (e.g. to provide fire support from both endes of the skirmish line or to provide fire support while advancing in bounds).

[rocketman]

My first impression was cramming a full squad (since you can't split it) into a small house - the guys were literally hanging outside the walls :eek: