I love this game, Need noob help tho

[fastjack]

I love this game, it is extremely excellent, i dont think i need to say anymore.

that said i have a number of questions and i thought it would be best to collect them all in one post, i just hope that you fine fellows can help me out.

1.are there any spanish civil war or invasion of france (blitzkrieg) mods? that is to say for any of the games, giving the ability to play scenarios with those to&es.

2.campaign: my one gripe being CMs lack thereof, is there any way to save the status of a force after a battle so that you can approximate any losses or whatever?

3.Multiplayer, where is a good directory of opponents?

4.tactics, looking through the faq i arrived at a huge ist of great looking tactics links, all but one were dead, is there a more modern repository?

5.more tactics, speciffically i cant seem to advance with infantry across 100m+ open terrain for the life of me, despite tons of covering/suppressing fire, those units without the ability to 'advance' or 'assault' fare the worst. Any tips on assaulting with infantry and/or closing with mg emplacements? (even from 300-500m very hard)

6.how the heck do i get to use polish troops in the game? whenever i try to create an august or september scenario in 1944 still no poles, what do i need to do to use them?

7.Mods, are there only graphics mods? are they worth it? they look like a chore to get as they all seem individual, are there any mod packs, or websites listing collections of reccomended mods? can someone give a list of all the mods i should get?

8.besides the new theater, what new features are in Cmak?

thanks in advance for any answers you can provide!

[General Bolt]

Originally posted by fastjack:

I love this game, it is extremely excellent, i dont think i need to say anymore.

that said i have a number of questions and i thought it would be best to collect them all in one post, i just hope that you fine fellows can help me out.

1.are there any spanish civil war or invasion of france (blitzkrieg) mods? that is to say for any of the games, giving the ability to play scenarios with those to&es.

There are many at The Scenario Depot

2.campaign: my one gripe being CMs lack thereof, is there any way to save the status of a force after a battle so that you can approximate any losses or whatever?.

Nope no campaign, however several folks have made elaborate manual campaign systems.

3.Multiplayer, where is a good directory of opponents?.

Scroll down on the Forums list to the opponemt finder section. Also The Blitz also The Proving Grounds

4.tactics, looking through the faq i arrived at a huge ist of great looking tactics links, all but one were dead, is there a more modern repository?.

In the tips and tricks section there is The Anthology of Useful Posts

5.more tactics, speciffically i cant seem to advance with infantry across 100m+ open terrain for the life of me, despite tons of covering/suppressing fire, those units without the ability to 'advance' or 'assault' fare the worst. Any tips on assaulting with infantry and/or closing with mg emplacements? (even from 300-500m very hard).

Smoke, use advance command in 30 to 40 m leaps, smoke, suppressing fire, smoke, cautious units should hide till they are happy again, smoke. Did I mention smoke?

6.how the heck do i get to use polish troops in the game? whenever i try to create an august or september scenario in 1944 still no poles, what do i need to do to use them?

Sorry no answer. I mostly play predeveloped scenarios

7.Mods, are there only graphics mods? are they worth it? they look like a chore to get as they all seem individual, are there any mod packs, or websites listing collections of reccomended mods? can someone give a list of all the mods i should get?.

Oh yeah the mods are worth it. They make the game look extra cool. Winter mods, terrain mods, all worth the time down load

8.besides the new theater, what new features are in Cmak?.

Dust is the biggest advance over CMBB.

thanks in advance for any answers you can provide!

You're welcome.

[teotwawki1]

There are TONS of mods for all the CM games. Most of the mod "packs" tend to be for CMBO, though. There are the SPR and SPI (Saving Pvt. Ryans and Ivan lol), and converted Ardennes packs for CMAK...probably some others as well. I haven't messed with any of them other than the Ardennes one. Believe it or not, there's even a mod to convert maps to look like Squad Leader maps, if you've ever played the seminal Avalon Hill board game. You will notice some folks have a certain idea of what the game "should" look like...and the whole idea of changing the look of the game will boil down to personal preference...what I like may make you nauseous hehe.

I've been on a quest to make CMAK look more Western Europe myself; about the best I've been able to do so far is make it look a lot like CMBB hehe. Still, that's close enough for the atmosphere of Western Europe, I guess. Mods can be a chore to d/l and look at, but many of them have at least a preview pic to give you some idea of what they'll look like.

Off the top of my head, to do what you want, you'll need the Ardennes pack, (which includes snow and non snow terrain),the ETO Fall and Summer trees,the CMBO grass mod, and some Normandy buildings. Use McMMM as your mod manager, as many of the CMAK mods are not CMMOS compliant. You can very easily install and uninstall mods this way. The grass makes a BIG difference...it's much darker and changes the look of the maps drastically. There are some wheat/other terrain mods that will help, but you just need to check the preview pix on those and see what you like.

I also recommend the tracer mod..it allows you to choose different color tracers for each nationality. Very cool to me, I'm sure it's blasphemy to others lol. There's also a sound mod for CMAK that works great.

If you look at the skickied "essential posts" thingy, there are some good tactics articles...I've looked at several of them recently, and I don't recall too many broken links. Also, poke around in the other CM forums (CMBO, CMBB), and check out the "tips and tricks" forum...lots of strategy in there.

For your advances over open terrain, the more big HE (150mm or bigger) you can dump on your opponent, the better. Of course, you have to know where he's at, or make a pretty good guess. A minute or two of some big sh** dropped on the heads of the enemy, with smoke, can work wonders.

[ January 21, 2005, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: teotwawki1 ]

[teotwawki1]

Here, I posted this in another thread, but it might prove useful to you:

Small arms, at range (no close combat):

-900 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 30 seconds or less.

-350 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less.

-250 total “firepower” points of direct fire will pin a fresh squad solid in 1 turn or less.

-900 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less.

-450 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will pin a fresh squad solid in 2 turns or less.

High Explosives:

-50mm mortars will pin in 1 turn, will break/rout in 2 full turns (about 30 shots).

-81-82mm mortar will pin with 1-3 direct hits, pin solid with 3-6 direct hits, and rout anywhere from 3-12 direct hits

-blast value = 4, like the 20mmL55 gun, will pin in 20 seconds, rout in 1 turn (if HE fire is close enough to be accurate)

-blast value = 45-50 will pin with 1-3 direct hits, rout in 2-6 direct hits

-blast value= 50 + will pin and/or rout in 1-2 direct hits

Other:

-canister within 60 meters will rout in one shot

-flame will rout with one direct hit

-demo will break or rout with one direct hit

-grenade bundle will pin or break with one direct hit

What I can't seem to find is the table I've seen that has the blast damage for a bunch of different guns, all neatly collated so you could see and compare them.

[DEY]

.how the heck do i get to use polish troops in the game? whenever i try to create an august or september scenario in 1944 still no poles, what do i need to do to use them?

I believe you can't get Polish units until January, 1945.

[Dandelion]

Originally posted by teotwawki1:

Here, I posted this in another thread, but it might prove useful to you:

Small arms, at range (no close combat):

-900 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 30 seconds or less.

-350 total “firepower” points of direct fire will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less.

-250 total “firepower” points of direct fire will pin a fresh squad solid in 1 turn or less.

-900 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will rout a fresh squad in 2 turns or less.

-450 total “firepower” points of indirect fire (area target hidden unit) will pin a fresh squad solid in 2 turns or less.

High Explosives:

-50mm mortars will pin in 1 turn, will break/rout in 2 full turns (about 30 shots).

-81-82mm mortar will pin with 1-3 direct hits, pin solid with 3-6 direct hits, and rout anywhere from 3-12 direct hits

-blast value = 4, like the 20mmL55 gun, will pin in 20 seconds, rout in 1 turn (if HE fire is close enough to be accurate)

-blast value = 45-50 will pin with 1-3 direct hits, rout in 2-6 direct hits

-blast value= 50 + will pin and/or rout in 1-2 direct hits

Other:

-canister within 60 meters will rout in one shot

-flame will rout with one direct hit

-demo will break or rout with one direct hit

-grenade bundle will pin or break with one direct hit

What I can't seem to find is the table I've seen that has the blast damage for a bunch of different guns, all neatly collated so you could see and compare them.

Those values seem very strange to me.

Blast is the same as firepower, only with an area effect. Values correspond, 50FP is the same as 50BV. Indirect fire (on board or off board) use BV and can thus use the same scale. The 5cm mortar is the exact equivalent of one Lee Enfield rifle at 100m range, but with area effect.

The To-Hit roll is separate from the Effect-In-Target roll. It is handled separately and thus accuracy does not work as a general effect-reducing factor in the way cover does. Area fire or aimed fire affects chances to hit, not effects in target if actually hit.

In my and Mattias's tests 100 firepower points was quite enough to effectively put a Regular squad out of action, with grave casualties and probable rout. That's unmodified points, with cover deduction. Easiest performed in open terrain (75%) for test runs. In the runs me and Mattias did (about 50) we saw that a firepower of 25 (unmodified value) might well cause casualties too, and was enough to immediately force a squad to dive for cover, which at longer range is as effective as a PIN result. The scale of 25, give or take 10, is the one used by machineguns for suppressive long range fire. Works real well. As you point out, sustained fire will cumulate effect and cause greater morale loss.

Cover values makes it very difficult to amass FP at the scale of 900FP. The Manual says nowhere that all FP directed at a given target is actually added into one roll, rather than all attackers performing separate attacks. So we don't know, and if it is not amassed one cannot reach 900FP at all. To illustrate; against a squad in a Heavy Building (either size) you would need 65 German rifle squads to reach those values. At point blank range (40 meters or less, but excluding grenades). Even with the target squad sitting behind a flimsy wooden fence, it would require 13 such squads cumulated firepower to reach it. At point blank range.

To get a point of reference, a German Rifle squad firing at a squad in a ordinary forest (pines or no pines), with the enemy squad deployed at the edge of the forest - a fairly typical and common situation - has 34 FP at point blank range (less than 40 meters but exluding grenades). At 100 meters the same squad has 24FP. If the enemy is deployed ten meters into the forest (and if in such a case spotted at all), we are down to 19FP (100m range). To set the scale of the game I mean.

You can find all blast values at CMAKdb and CMBBdb. Not in a separate table but easily available.

Fastjack

In not so long (think March), me and Mattias will get our thumbs out of our X and finish and publish the tactical aid as we promised on this forum earlier, including tutorial scenarios. It is primarily Noob-adapted. But we're not finished with it yet. You know, the holidays and all.

Welcome aboard nonetheless

Cheerio

Dandelion