How do you get russian infantry squads to actually shoot?

[Bulletpoint]

7 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

down in the bottom left of the screen, in green print, is the status block where it shows what individual crew members are doing.  It shows the T-34 as aiming and then firing.  But it gets hit just before it would have presumably fired.

Nice catch. I must say in the examples I have seen, the unit does not show aiming/firing at all. So maybe Josey's example shows a different behaviour type.

In my examples, I believe they just show "spotting". I think will be able to confirm that when looking at my savegames.

Edited December 1, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Josey Wales]

Thanks @MOS:96B2P, you have eagle eyes! Yes, however the commander only changes from Spotting to Aiming once a second Panther comes into view to the left of the first one. It's this second Panther that he is aiming and preparing to fire at, not the first one which he can already supposedly see. It's hard to tell from the angle of the video, but the T34's turret never points towards the first Panther which is spotted from the start of the turn, but it does point towards the second Panther moving up the hill. 

[MOS:96B2P]

1 minute ago, Bulletpoint said:

Nice catch. I must say in the examples I have seen, the unit does not show aiming/firing at all. So maybe Josey's exaple shows a different behaviour type.

In my examples, I believe they just show "spotting". I think will be able to confirm that when looking at my savegames.

I'm still playing around with the first one you sent me.  And yes your saves only showed spotting.  After I gave a Target Briefly order to Otto's crew the 2nd Platoon HQ fired on its own.  After the 15 second Target Briefly ran out Otto's crew stopped firing for maybe 30 seconds and then on its own began to fire.  But when I don't give the Target Briefly they don't ever engage.  Going on four minutes now.   Not clear on what this means so far.......  

[MOS:96B2P]

10 minutes ago, Josey Wales said:

It's this second Panther that he is aiming and preparing to fire at, not the first one which he can already supposedly see.

That's interesting.  The T-34 ignored the stationary target but fired on the moving target.  In @Bulletpoint first save the PSW 222s did not engage (on their own) until the infantry started running.  Then, if they had a spot, they fired 7.92mm.  I have to look at the second save and keep experimenting around with it.  They prefer the challenge of a moving target??      

[Bulletpoint]

The plot thickens

[Josey Wales]

7 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

They prefer the challenge of a moving target??      

Perhaps, here's a vid showing the T34's turret and what it's tracking;

https://youtu.be/VZmwNS9bdY0

[MOS:96B2P]

4 minutes ago, Josey Wales said:

Perhaps, here's a vid showing the T34's turret and what it's tracking;

https://youtu.be/VZmwNS9bdY0

   I believed you the first time!!  I think you just like making videos!   This video does show very clearly the T-34 does not fire on the first spotted Panther but only reacts to the second Panther.  Thanks!   

[Josey Wales]

2 minutes ago, MOS:96B2P said:

   I believed you the first time!!  I think you just like making videos!  

Ha, I've been away for a while and I need the practice before I release another AAR 

[Bulletpoint]

3 minutes ago, Josey Wales said:

Ha, I've been away for a while and I need the practice before I release another AAR 

Looking forward to it. If you need an opponent for it, let me know.

[VendoViper]

https://imgur.com/a/YY5i4Ie

Here we have the exact opposite situation, and the behavior I had come to expect from playing on engine 3 for years. Fired up Fortress Italy to try out the new scenarios, and here the completely badass veteran american infantry have opened up fire with their rifles after spotting a prone German marksman at 250 meters through the trees. Of course there are no reverse slopes at play here, so its not at all related to the problems reported in this thread, just kind of funny after the frustrating morning I had.

[Freyberg]

2 hours ago, VendoViper said:

https://imgur.com/a/YY5i4Ie

Here we have the exact opposite situation, and the behavior I had come to expect from playing on engine 3 for years. Fired up Fortress Italy to try out the new scenarios, and here the completely badass veteran american infantry have opened up fire with their rifles...

In fairness - that squad have no casualties, they're under command and their morale is good. Also, that doesn't look like a reverse slope. Even so, less than half of them appear to have LOF.

I don't know what things are like under the hood and it may be my imagination, but Soviet infantry seem to be more reliant on being under command than other nations, which doesn't seem unreasonable, given the type of army it was.

Also, you noted that the Soviet team was receiving MG fire. Is the same true of the US squad...?

Edited December 2, 2019 by Freyberg

[SimpleSimon]

Ohhh boy time to beat this horse.

Your first mistake is to play Hammer's Flank unmodified which is a mistake we all made. It depicts an extremely difficult, effectively brain-dead attack on a prepared and unmolested German defense that's foolish to challenge without more support, in the given weather. For many Hammer's Flank was their first ever play with the Red Army...and it's a terrible introductory that's overly scripted, overpacked with units and features a misleading briefing. 

As for the Red Army, remember that the engine portrays "bad" visibility misleadingly good for the player and Red Army infantry squads often don't have binoculars. Everyone's shooting at what they can see with their plain eyes and that isn't much even in good weather. Remember that the squad will report it can "see" and "engage" an enemy if only one man in the squad can actually do that. Most of them probably can't see anything and the only sure solution to that is to close the range. They may even have line of fire but again the game will report an unobstructed line of fire from the one man who actually has it. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

On 12/1/2019 at 6:54 PM, VendoViper said:

I guess I am going to go learn how to use the scenario editor to explore this more,

That's the spirit! 

I'd add +1, but I blew 'em all in the CM:R2V thread! 

[Bulletpoint]

On 12/2/2019 at 4:46 AM, VendoViper said:

https://imgur.com/a/YY5i4Ie

Here we have the exact opposite situation, and the behavior I had come to expect from playing on engine 3 for years. Fired up Fortress Italy to try out the new scenarios, and here the completely badass veteran american infantry have opened up fire with their rifles after spotting a prone German marksman at 250 meters through the trees. Of course there are no reverse slopes at play here, so its not at all related to the problems reported in this thread, just kind of funny after the frustrating morning I had.

Yes, sometimes units just magically spot opponents through a whole jungle of trees..

[VendoViper]

I was able to largely defeat the mission, hopefully the briefing is not lying about casualties not being a major factor, I am used to campaigns where if you take very many losses at all it snowballs so rapidly that you cannot complete them. I actually found the left flank to be very engaging to attack, its much more heavily defended than the right which is a complete push over.

The biggest killer was actually the seemingly infinite German mortar ammo, which I think I was missing the spotting rounds since its such a huge scenario, and if you try to fight both sides at the same time its easy to miss what is going on. From watching youtube of other people playing, I have seen the error of my ways, and am trying to notice enemy artillery and get out of its way, instead of being surprised that a whole platoon is effectively gone.

The behavior I was noticing was just supremely frustrating, and is present throughout the title. In Normandy and Italy the maps tend to have units in defensive positions where you can effectively area fire against them, since units tend to be adjacent to hedgerows, low walls, or in buildings. In the undulating swamps of Russia the fact that you cannot order grazing fire against a reverse slope really makes the day difficult. I will try again paying more attention to C2, but I think part of the problem is simply that if the LMG gunner doesn't have LOS, these squads are not going to be shooting much past 100m, and that's just completely different from the American infantry I am used to.

[SimpleSimon]

It was outrageous to me that the Germans had so many tubes and so much ammo for them. That was really where I drew the line and realized the scenario was rigged. Since the briefing alludes to a huge rocket artillery bombardment that clearly didn't happen I felt tricked and this was the first mission of the campaign. I didn't continue the campaign for years until the campaign extractor became available so I could examine closely how ridiculous it was and it only got worse from there as I figured. The Russians, for a crossing a river in bad weather against a sector of front that has been static for months get....some SU-76s and the battalion mortars... Where's the Division artillery with its generous compliment of ZiS-3 or 120mm PM-38s that were standard issue for this kind of unit and the mission it was tasked with? Why do the Germans have so much support and so many men? You wouldn't think this was Operation Bagration. One would be forgiven for thinking the mission took place in 1941 on the Vyazma front...

Edited December 5, 2019 by SimpleSimon

[Freyberg]

I was reminded of this thread:

...which I found amusing at the time for its intemperately expressed opinions, and which BF Steve and some other contributors make an excellent case for the premises behind the scenario.

The weird thing is that I don't consider myself a top player (when I had time for PBEMs I lost more than I won), but I didn't find crossing the river especially difficult. You just take your time, accept the casualties and keep pushing forward. It was fun.

 

[Bulletpoint]

14 hours ago, SimpleSimon said:

It was outrageous to me that the Germans had so many tubes and so much ammo for them. That was really where I drew the line and realized the scenario was rigged. Since the briefing alludes to a huge rocket artillery bombardment that clearly didn't happen I felt tricked and this was the first mission of the campaign. I didn't continue the campaign for years until the campaign extractor became available so I could examine closely how ridiculous it was and it only got worse from there as I figured. The Russians, for a crossing a river in bad weather against a sector of front that has been static for months get....some SU-76s and the battalion mortars... Where's the Division artillery with its generous compliment of ZiS-3 or 120mm PM-38s that were standard issue for this kind of unit and the mission it was tasked with? Why do the Germans have so much support and so many men? You wouldn't think this was Operation Bagration. One would be forgiven for thinking the mission took place in 1941 on the Vyazma front...

Scenario designers are often way too afraid that the scenario might get too easy. I think it might be an ego thing.

[A Canadian Cat]

4 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Scenario designers are often way too afraid that the scenario might get too easy. I think it might be an ego thing.

?? You want scenarios that are easy? Ego - nope. Who wants to design a cake walk? Who wants to play a cake walk?

[Bulletpoint]

29 minutes ago, IanL said:

5 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

Scenario designers are often way too afraid that the scenario might get too easy. I think it might be an ego thing.

?? You want scenarios that are easy? Ego - nope. Who wants to design a cake walk? Who wants to play a cake walk?

Nobody said anything about cake walks. Or easy scenarios. I'm saying that many scenario designers make extremely difficult scenarios, and I think the reason is they don't want to feel the player "beats" them. I know this from my own experience designing a couple of battles.

I kept telling my tester that I didn't want to do a cake walk, so he just had to try harder. Then later I tried to play it myself and found I couldn't beat my own scenario!

Next scenario I did, I started out making it really easy. A tester asked me "is this all? I already won after 15 minutes" and I got red in the face and added a lot of stuff that - once again - made the scenario too difficult. The reason for that was ego. I felt he had somehow beaten me. Also, the scenarios people talk about are usually the ones that are super difficult. Who doesn't want his battle to be the talk of the town?

So my philosophy is: Let the player have some fun.

If you design a big Soviet assault, give the player a battery of rocket artillery to use as he wants.

If you make a Peiper scenario where you know he had King Tigers in real life, don't tell the player that unfortunately they ran out of fuel just before the scenario starts.

Etc. You can still balance the mission in other ways.

Edited December 6, 2019 by Bulletpoint

[Sgt.Squarehead]

5 hours ago, IanL said:

?? You want scenarios that are easy? Ego - nope. Who wants to design a cake walk? Who wants to play a cake walk?

This.

However.....What is 'easy' & what is 'difficult'?

IMHO, this is where creative & thoughtful scenario design is critical.....It's OK for a scenario to be a blood bath (even in a campaign), if the objectives are set such that the player can win despite his losses (& in a campaign, the script shouldn't expect that unit to do anything in the next battle without full resupply).

[MikeyD]

I dipped my toe into CMRT again last night and I can't say that my Russian inf was laying down anything approaching a fusillade of fire. Russians didn't get special 'nation-specific' coding, it should be working the same as any other bolt action rifle armed forces. I'm going to have to investigate further. BTW, I do NOT have this issue with smg squads which go through ammo like crap through a goose.

[Freyberg]

1 hour ago, MikeyD said:

...BTW, I do NOT have this issue with smg squads which go through ammo like crap through a goose.

I love playing Soviets and I seldom have problems with running out of SMG ammunition - the leading squads always seem to obligingly leave behind those little round, red ammo dumps for the squads coming up behind.

[A Canadian Cat]

21 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

I know this from my own experience designing a couple of battles.

Ok fair enough. I see that your conclusion was based in something real - your experience. I have never felt like that over a scenario design. I certainly have messed up the balance and other times given up trying to get it balanced for both sides. I suppose sometimes I have felt hurt over feedback, at least initially. That's ego for sure but I shake that off before reacting to it. I hope that doesn't come off a snug because I don't intend it that way. Just to explain why I reacted with a "what are you talking about" post - because I don't feel designers make scenarios hard to fees thier ego based on my experience.

[Warts 'n' all]

Quick men, get over to Josey Wales's new video on yt, his Russians fire their rifles.