Fuck that specific spot edition

Thread to discuss Graviteam tactics and Combat mission games and others like them.

I have a screenshot addiction with this game, looks so good zoomed in

got him good
he should not have played the italians

>>1954769
What were those 32 other vehicles?

>>1954854
all his trucks and a couple of cannons, many caught in the open and destroyed while on the move, completely destroying all his AT capabilities and allowing my Stuarts and M8 greyhound to kill dozens of men each
now we're playing another with me as the Volkssturm against his USA defending a city. Gotta hope he blunders his Sherman Jumbo flamethrower tanks, those things are terrifying, already burned a few old men.

>>1955155
update: he blundered
3 tanks killed in a single turn by panzerfaust ambushes
the germans don't get enough credit for the panzerfaust, I love those things

Here's a neat thing that happened, popped a T-34, it burst into flames, but kept rolling forward creating a fire trail that eventually spread throughout the whole field.

>>1956079
Does fire wound/kill men? I'm pretty sure it does given some shit that's happened but I've never been zoomed in on a unit to see it happen.
'

The war is lost....

I read online that one of the German African armies had their signal corps sunk on the way over from Germany. Is that why I don't have any fucking wiremen in Tunisia?

>flamethrower tank fires flamethrower at large building, passes through entire building, hits 3rd story of building behind, kills an entire squad of mine instantly
fucking combat mission jank
clearly they just made flamethrowers clip through buildings in order to represent their utility against troops inside, ignoring the obvious issue that flamethrowers don't actually penetrate anything
im mad

Lobbing shells at Britbongs with my stubby artilleryfu

>>1958298
Same here bro. I need to try the American side of these campaigns. They've had a fuck ton of field guns in this one.

I didn't realize bodies from previous battles showed in in deployment. I've seen destroyed vehicles, terrain damage, and trenches before. Never bodies though. They should have worn their helmets

>>1957475
Sound like a seething grav tranny to me

>>1958624
yeah its a neat feature for sure

Ok next time they CM games go on sale I got two left before I own all the ones I want to, and it's between Fortress Italy and Final Blitzkrieg... which do you recommend? I'm leaning towards Italy due to the crazy terrain, but FB probably has some nutty late war stuff

>>1959154
I would say Italy just because it's an underappreciated stage of the war. You can play as Italy and utterly fail to defend your home.

>Soviets breach 1st line
>Everyone runs but my flammenwerfer
>Barbecues half a dozen ruskies and then gets obliterated by an artillery shell
I was audibly chuckling, its fun to actually zoom in and watch them go at it sometimes

>>1959218
I am leaning towards FI... I'm also a huge fallschirmjager fag and they had some of their most prolific battles in Italy

>>1959993
>zoom in
>company commander dead within 5 seconds
I'm never zooming in again.

All you had to do was back out of the hole.

>>1960527
what ps1 game is this?

>>1960833
No bully the potato bro
Game looks really nice on a beefy system

>>1960897
nah, I'm just kidding
Graviteam on low graphics really looks like a ps1 game though

think we'll ever get a CM game set in early war (1939-1940)?
Battle of France would be kino yet it's barely ever represented in games

HOW THE FUCK DO I FIGHT THESE FUCKING T-34s IN SHILOVO WITH PZIII KURZ AAAAAAAAAAA red army bias.

In real life the 5 cm spgr round could penetrate a T-34 1000 meters away also superior optics and training I don't know man this feels like bullshit.
Also about 50% of those T-34 would literally fall apart on their way to the battlefield, this again not reflected ingame.

Gamedev said that german infantery was bad against tanks but there's plenty of accounts of wehrmacht soldiers sneaking up to them in Stalingrad with AT granades to blow up thos goddamn comunists.

I don't know where to start from, there is so much historical bias in this game.

Any campaigns where pre built defenses play a role? I started Mareth Line in Tunisia, but the fortifications seem like a bit of a trap. They are instantly shelled and I'm taking nearly as many losses as if they were in the open. I really like fortifications, but when I read about ones in WW-2 there's usually some line stating something like "it was overrun in 3 days"

Clockwise from top-left:
Soviet casualties on the salt dome near Romny; German soldiers assaulting Tyupchin; Soviet armored cars destroyed by Flak 88's; Soviet tankers repairing a damaged T-34 during the German assault on Tyupchin

>>1959993
Zooming in can lead to some pretty cool or funny moments
>guy throwing a grenade at a Soviet artillery crew hits one guy in the head and knocks him out
>German platoon commander killing a Soviet platoon commander in melee combat during an assault
>BT tank getting destroyed by a direct hit from off-map artillery

Can I move only infantry in an APC + Infantry recon company? Manual says either shift click or alt click will select the different groups. I can see only the infantry be selected with alt + click, but when I actually make an order the APCs start moving too. Enemy infantry is stuck in some rocks and it's going to fuck my APCs to actually dislodge them.

>>1959993
kino
But im no clue how to use flamethrower, my guys always dying pretty fast, and if they kill at least couple of comrades its would be nice but in general they do nothing

>>1962252
Yeah that's usually my experience too but not this one, this dude carried that heavy fucking thing around Russia, he was gonna use it

>>1954445 (OP)
Do these Graviteam Tactics games have full free campaigns or is it all scenario shit?

>>1962643
Both games have campaigns included in the base game. Might not seem like much at first but the campaigns can take a while to get through. Tunisia goes on sale in a bundle that includes all DLC for pretty cheap. I think I picked it up for 10 dollars. Mius Front DLC goes on sale pretty often too.

>>1962643
Full campaigns but you will get better bang for your buck trying Tunisia first
beware of rocks though, if you can see them they WILL knock your treads off

>>1962650
>>1962791
Okay, thanks guys.
Any idea why these guys named all of their games "Graviteam whatever?" I completely overlooked the games thinking they were sci-fi shit years ago.

>>1962800
They got their copyrights fucked over by a shitty publisher in the past, so now they have plaster that shit on all their new titles for copyright reasons

>>1962791
>beware of rocks though, if you can see them they WILL knock your treads off
It pisses me off to the point where it damages my enjoyment of certain operations quite a bit.
>road running through rocks
>set half tracks to march by road
>half trucks for some reason drive fine until the middle of the rocks, then go off the road in random directions
>3/4 half tracks knocked out
>unit useless for the rest of the battle, maybe the rest of the operation
Its to the point where I don't move tracked vehicles if there's a lot of rocks. They become static defenses. Don't have this problem in Mius unless I'm driving directly over trenches.

>>1963041
I'm actually seething

>Watch Hauptmann Krautstein silently disappear from the UI
Very sad. Does this actually matter? I didn't get the CO killed notification that I sometimes do and they still have a listed command level. Looks like it may be lower than it was.

>>1963066
These guys on halftracks die so easily, is there a way to tell them to stay buttoned?

>>1963070
act with caution but it doesn''t always help depending on where the enemy is

>>1963070
I just got reinforcement pz. grenadiers with half-tracks in Transcaucasian front operation, and this dudes doing their job pretty nice. Just one squad of 11 or 12 dudes attacked defended forest line in the night and manged to kill 36 soldiers and captured around 10 - 15, no clue how they done this. In my head plan was just to probe this forest line, also they lost only 3 men but then in the bush random flamethrower dude shredded almost all of them, sad ending for such stellar attack

>>1963059
I ended up fighting a battle here on the next turn and noticed that the road is in red squares on the deployment map. Does the pathing go by that grid system at all or when they (occasionally) try to avoid rocks are they going around the actual models? I had some tanks go up the road just fine.

I wish graviteam had actual detailed nato icons instead of every type of tank just being the tank icon

>>1963214
They feel much more useful in Mius than Tunisia. I know there's already been tons of bitching about the rocks, but there's so many terrain obstacles that it really limits where you can take them.

Patton bros.... not like this.

I have graviteam operation star are the newer ones much improved over it? is tank warfare tunisia the same gameplay as the graviteam tactics one? Are they working on a new game or has the war disrupted the development team?

Why don't they make a new game?

>>1964874
CM3 is coming at some point. In the Battlefront update this month they said that it would be a WW2 and modern game in quick succession.

>>1964874
>CM
Coming in two more weeks
>Graviteam
Currently stuck in the air raid bunker so it's hard to dev. Apparently they're releasing models of Jap equipment so may see some eastern Soviet/Jap battles soon. No idea if he's every talked about the idea of releasing a full new game. I imagine they're just going to keep releasing DLC for Mius.

How to get into CM?
I got all of them but I'm kinda overwhelmed with the options. Scenarios seem kinda large to the point I have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I just open a scenario, look at the pretty models and close it down.

>>1965388
start with the really small missions and work your way up

>have tanks backing out of tank trench
>one flips
>abandoned with only minor damage (lights) because it's upside down
>somehow flips right-side up again
>retards just sit there instead of getting in and being useful
They make me mad. Not sure what determines whether or not crews reman abandoned equipment. Hopefully it's in the manual.

Almost 400 hours in and I just found out how to sight in arty during deployment.

Has anyone played Gates of Hell ostfront? How does it measure realism wise to GTM/CM?

how
how THE FUCK
do I actually fight in cities/villages in Graviteam?
My infantry, whether in trenches, in other cover, or in buildings seems to eat continuous shit, even guys like pioneers or SMG platoons who ought to do well always die in droves to the enemy

>>1967181
Like how do I even go about defending this?

>>1967206
Not every tactical battle is going to be winnable, sometimes it's best to withdraw to try to preserve/redploy your forces
Playing mid/late war Germany in any game is going to be all about delaying the enemy, causing damage and then counter attacking when they overextend themselves

>>1964924
>CM3
>Unity engine
Fuck. Guess they wanted to keep that sweet, sweet CMx2 performance

>>1967025
It's just Men of War ie. on the realistic side but with some gamey shit on top

>>1967480
With a bit of finangling you can actually make the game use your GPU.
I can't imagine unity being worse, it isn't a fucking grognard engine after all.
What i'm more worried about is what happens when CM3 comes. Will the games get a paid (with price reduction) remake or will they just forget about them.
Shock Force 2 worked out well so I imagine it's what they'll do again. They mentioned the last piece of anything being done is the BAOR module for Cold War. That game might get permanently hamstrung with not having German units

Anyone know what that box on the left-hand side and the rail on the right-hand side are for? Found some vaguely similar boxes on Panzer III diagrams labeled as tool storage but no rails. Maybe just a rack to tie shit to? There's a shovel underneath it but that's slotted into a special holder.

>>1967707
maybe the rail on the right is somehow connected with the fact that if, for example, gears without a track need to move a little, although as i wrote this, option does not sound very good

>>1967751
Not too sure what you mean by that, but I think I found the answer. I think it's a guide rail for the radio antenna. All the models and modern museum pics I've found have the antenna seemingly folded down into it. Pic related

>>1967770
Here's another modern pic of a museum piece. Pic I posted before is a model.

What's the best sound mod for Graviteam?

>>1967707
>Anyone know what that box on the left-hand side and the rail on the right-hand side are for?

The Box is just tools an some spare parts,
the rail is protective storage for the antenna.
>Back when the History Channel good is now turning into myth and legend.

>>1968529
You remember what show that was? Seems like there's a lot of tank variants I'd like to watch anything going into that much detail.

>>1954447
It really does. I have to stop myself from turning of the UI and just watching shit unfold. Time to try Peleshi again. I bungled it bad the first time I played.

Any idea what might be happening here? 3 tanks turned their turrets around and are now targeting a spot about 1km behind friendly lines. No enemies behind me on the operational map and pretty much no way for them to get there. I've had a lot of weird shit with this. Last time I tried it I had units considered as under heavy fire but they weren't taking any artillery fire, weren't taking casualties, and most weren't really under direct small arms fire. Could have been some combination of factors I wasn't recognizing, but it felt odd as I've never had units panic so quickly with so little resistance (like 3/4rds of a company going into panic 5 seconds into a light firefight with an infantry platoon who didn't inflict any casualties on them)

Noob question. I have a bunch of arty spotters who are attached to arty companies. Some of those have actual guns in those. Is that spotter spotting for those guns? Like if I have him in spotting and calling missions will that deplete the ammo of those arty units, which I could otherwise put in a BG? Also do spotters always have their own guns? Will two different spotters always have two different pools of ammo or will they draw from the same one if they're in the same regiment with the same gun type?

>>1970236
arty spotters who are in the same platoon as a gun and firing crew = will spot for those guns
arty spotters who are in the squadron/company's command platoon = will spot for off-map arty
if you have a little box in the right top hand of you UI that mentions "Scheduled Support" with a bunch of options for different ammo and timings, and a little green flag on the tactical map for designating artillery then you have the latter.
Spotters for off map artillery in the same regiment spotting for the same gun group (evidenced by number and calibre of guns) share ammo but this isn't frequently the case most of the time

>>1969185
I'm so glad this game has a screenshot without UI button, I just take shit that looks cool and then go through it later when done playing, and post the funny/kino ones here

>>1970416
>arty spotters who are in the same platoon as a gun and firing crew
So in the case of pic related, this FO is spotting for those 105mm guns even when they're in reserve? Ammo will pull from them and if I put them in a BG this spotter will lose his guns?
>Spotters for off map artillery in the same regiment spotting for the same gun group (evidenced by number and calibre of guns) share ammo but this isn't frequently the case most of the time
This is mainly what I was looking for. I'm guessing there's not a great way to tell. I swapped out two spotter squads who were in the same regiment and had the same caliber/number but the new one was full ammo-wise. I have a whole lot of spotters and wanted to make sure I wasn't screwing myself down the line by not being more reserved with my spotting.

>>1970544
It's kino to watch, especially things like a forest assault where you can't really see anything from above. CQC fighting gets funny too.
>single rifleman about 200m out from his platoon for some reason
>runs up to lone Soviet CO
>punches him in his brain, stunning him
>lays down next to him then shoots him in the face as he's getting up

My troops are too tired to move effectively in battle. A single movement to an adjacent node makes them exhausted. Playing Furtive Spring as soviets in 3rd campaign (Nepokrytaya/Peschanoe) and I don't know how to approach this, I am supposed to take ground but my forces are combat ineffective as soon as they leave their initial positions. 4 turns are not enough to slowly advance. Should I just abuse those few tanks I get and regimental artillery and pretend the infantry doesn't exist?

>>1970653
I've only played some of Furtive Spring, but it seems like It's going to be suffering no matter what. You may be able to put them into reserve then pull them back in when they're rested a bit. You can prob smash through them with just the tanks. I'm not sure how the German AT is in that one, but it's not great in the ones I've played.

>>1970653
There are some reserves for the soviets. You can run the current guys into the dirt then switch them out, or put the inf into reserves, move, then put them back in before you attack. How risky this is depends on your settings. If you're playing direct control there's zero risk, but with the indirect control you can run into the enemy understrength. I think units put into reserves don't get ammo replenished but they seem to replenish stamina very quickly.

How hard is it to get into this game? The most "realistic" games I played are Steel Division 2 and MoW.
It looks very interesting to me, but I'm scared that I will get overwhelmed.

>>1971650
Operation map is turn based and the tactical battles can be paused, so there's no pressure to do things quickly. There's a lot of info and other shit you can basically ignore until you learn more about the game. The units can do certain things themselves and I started playing right after I did the tutorials. People say they're shit, but they give an intro to the most basic shit you'll be doing. Also keep the manual open and read sections when you come to them in game. There are a lot of complexities but I haven't come to a problem I wasn't able to quickly solve by checking the manual or steam discussions. There's also general overview videos by a youtuber called warsimgammer or warsimmer (something like that).

So in Combat Mission, is it possible to tell a unit "move forward, retreat if fired upon"?

Anyone else play Graviteams old tank sim Steel Fury? I found a good download of their sekrit club ITM mod and holy shit it's so fucking good

is there mechanical difference in combat mission black sea and cold war or it's just content?
looking to get into this series

Will preplanned artillery maintain accuracy even if I move away from where they were originally deployed? AFAIK I can't tell what the current accuracy of an ongoing fire mission is. It can be hard to tell if I'm accidentally dropping arty on myself or if the enemy is doing it.

>>1972369
Yes but it might have received the update. Basically Cold War has the tanks able to fire out to 1200m without any real delay in aim. That's it. If you're buying them off steam or matrix these days they should all be on the latest engine also.

>>1972589
thanks, I guess I'll try black sea first because they say cold war only has USA and Soviet side which is lame imo

>>1961610
More screenshots. Clockwise from top-left:
Soviet I-15's about to bomb German positions; German soldiers during an assault; Soldier facing Soviet KV-1 with a pistol (he survived, don't ask me how); Soldier posing in front of destroyed T-34; Machinegunner engaging Soviet troops on the slope of the salt dome; BT tank taking a bath.

>see explosion
>zoom in
>see this hero rubbing his head in the center of a scorch mark
Wew he took a direct hit from a anti-tank gun and got back up.

>>1972739
This campaign was brutal. An avalanche of Soviet tanks facing a hailstorm of German shells. I almost lost it because I forgot to reassign my AT to units after reorganising the front at turn 7 which meant I had to retreat from one battle the moment I spotted ANOTHER FUCKING GROUP OF TANKS.
The StuGs and armored cars were a blessing, I don't think I would've managed to push the Soviets back in time without them.

>>1972583
Preplanned artillery is offmap; so you can't move them away; only their observer-- until they have it dialed in, they have to at least be able to see the explosions to know that the arty is on point
if you are talking about on map artillery and observed fire, if you move a gun they'll have to take time to re-aim it, and the officer will have to observe the fire again for it to stay accurate

>>1972745
>anti tank gun
that's why I suppose
>>1972753
the gentle STuG has saved my ass so many times I've lost count-- I prefer towed guns for just defense, because they're a little smaller, but if you keep STuGs or Marders back to plug the gaps in your line and mop up enemy tanks which break through its a godsend
In the big operation you get with the base game, I had a single STuG with 9 tank kills by the end of the operation

I just love it when my retarded drivers go right into a 155 shell crater and flip their vehicles
adds a little spice to each mission

Soviets versus Imperial Japanese in Manchuria DLC when?

>>1972806
>so you can't move them away; only their observer
I did mean the observer. Also realized I didn't specify that I'm talking about graviteam here, not sure how it works in Combat Mission. I believe I answered my own question though given the results of this battle. If you have scheduled only artillery, it will keep the same accuracy that shows in the deployment map when you schedule it and keep firing basically no matter what. Doesn't matter if you pull the spotter back so he doesn't get killed. I was asking because I had played a battle where I set scheduled only arty with very poor accuracy and dropped it right on my MGs and anti-tank guns.

>see a single man with a pistol walking in a field 5km away
>CONTACT I NEED TO FIRE A VERY BRIGHT AND CONSPICIOUS FLARE
>2 minutes later mortar fire drops on their head
Did this happen IRL? If I have arty and I see a flare I call it. I've played too many campaigns already where I've let 100s of shells sit there unused.

>not pictured: MG recklessly firing tracer rounds through tall grass 20m away

Grim of Death DLC was pretty boring. It was way more infantry focused than the pictures lead you to believe.

>300 hours
>never once have seen a flamethrower actually throw flames
Which DLC are good for it, or have flame tanks? I'm assuming it's good for urban fighting, like IRL, but I don't know the conditions for it to be triggered.
>>1974987
>way more infantry focused than the pictures lead you to believe.
Most if the listings are like that. If there are vehicles in it, they will be focused on in the pics. Croatian legion has 3 pics of this epic "APC" where it looks like you sit on bench seating that lifts you over the armor

>>1975112
I actually looked it up right after making this post and it was apparently made to primarily tow artillery. Still looks funny.

>>1975120
The variant that mounted a 57mm is even cuter.

They did it again

I'm getting real tired of these fucking forests. Next turn I'm swapping in the real heavy arty and I'm going to turn this into a WW1 battlefield. I have like two turns until night and I don't want to be clearing woods in the dark.

>>1972240
>I found a good download of their sekrit club ITM mod
link nigga?

Gravitranners how many DLCs have you pirated?

>>1978587
I bought like half of them, generally will pay for niche games to support them. I just checked and it does seem to be on cs.rin.ru though.

shit

pak36 certainly cant be underestimated, even at 260m some volkssturm can lob that stick of pain straight into your dustbin launcher and nuke you

>>1979122
>drives over some pebbles
>every single tread link flies in different directions
At least they look imposing

>>1979374
the dieppe raid was too genius for this world
See now that would be a good combat mission scenario, trying to somehow not get completely raped on that lovely beach and actually push out and even survive for long enough to evacuate.
I do very much hope the next combat mission is set in those earlier days, I've had enough 43-45

So I've recently watched "Stalingrad" and now I'm kinda looking for something that incorporates that specific thing into my vidya.
So I checked out Graviteam's stuff as they seem to be into the whole ww2 milsim thing but they specifically skip the siege of Stalingrad (Graviteam Tactics: Dawn of Blau set before and Graviteam Tactics: Raid taking place after) so now I'm wondering, is this some sort of taboo subject thing? Or do devs just agree that the whole scenario sucks for gameplay?

>>1982956
IIRC the graviteam dev has said he intentionally looks for smaller unknown engagements as parts of larger battles. I'm not sure there are any campaigns taking place in a purely urban area, but I haven't played them all. The campaigns are also like 6-24 turns with turns being from 1-3 hours. Best you're going to get is a smaller engagement over some outskirts village. If you mean the German 1993 Stalingrad it's pretty good.

>don't worry comrade, the entire enemy force isn't waiting in that treeline over that small hill
>>1954447
For me it's the flares. They always add to it.

>>1982956
basically>>1983061
the lead dev is a true autist auteur and he prefers to highlight lesser known battles-- that plus the engine, which was originally developed for much shittier Eastern European machines, can't handle massive urban sprawl too well-- the AI and unit behaviours were programmed with that in mind so it was never made to handle house to house all that well

>>1959993
Yeah, sometimes some really funny shit happens
pic related; the this Iraqi commander got blown out of his tank by an ATGM; landed on fire in the tree next to it; it really reminded me of that webm of that one Russia T72 commander getting turret tossed and slamming through the roof of a nearby building

Trying to win Op. Nasr as the Iranians is absolute hell
Going in, I had no idea the Chieftains were so shitty; I played the Iraqi sides of the campaigns a while ago and I remember them regularly wrecking my T-55s-- I looked it up on the steam forums and sure enough there was a few long threads about it with Andrei shutting people down for complaining about 'balance'-- one suprise exception, most of my Chieftains only got enemy personnel carriers before exploding, but one crew managed to kill six Iraqi tanks before theirs got lit up by an ATGM--all four crew members managed to bail and survive the battle, so I guess they are going to be Heroes of the Revolution back home or something
I managed to scrape by in the first campaign thanks to a combination of Air Support, close range ambushes with RPG wielding infantry, and a column of enemy tanks getting bogged down after one of them throwing a track near a ford by the second campaign is really kicking my ass-- ATGM M113s, BMP-1 Malyuks have done nearly all the fighting; my helicopters seem to get turned away quite easily by machinegun fire compared to last campaign, and I don't have enough infantry or cover to adequately overwhelm them with RPGs-- I've had F4 Phantoms do a bombing run in one battle, but they chose extremely retarded targets, to the tune of only taking out a few enemy command vehicles and BRDMs

I played back in the days old Achtung Panzer Khakrov '43 and have some previous experience with Tunisia '43. Now I want to get back into some Ostfront kino. Is there any reason to play operation star over Mius front?

>>1983819
Not all of the campaigns from Op. Star have been translated over to Mius-Front; or if you really really really really like the old UI and want none of the newer QoL features

>>1983827
Well, Mius front it's then, thanks.

Would anyone be so kind as to recommend a decent infantry centric intermediate scenario? Just finished 1943 Bulakhi which is a pretty decent first fight but the waves of Soviet tanks was pretty demoralizing.

>>1983783
>Going in, I had no idea the Chieftains were so shitty
A statement uttered by many a 3rd world leader after starting a war with U.K. material backing.

>>1984105
1941 Bulakhi (edge of storm) as the Germans. The last op in it has some soviet tanks but it's like 2 BGs that consist of 3 light tanks total, so they will explode the second they're spotted.
>waves of soviet tanks
Generally it just gets worse from there.

>>1983061
>>1983747
Amazing, yeah I thought so, still I was curious about Graviteam so I tried the "Mius front" version and hoo boy this interface is really unintuitive.
I dig the flares used by basic infantry though, not sure if that was a tutorial specific thing but I can't believe there aren't more games that use this as an "enemy spotted" thing in stead of the canned voicelines.
I'm going to dabble some more later but any good tips as to how to get your feet wet in this game?

>>1983783
>Andrei shutting people down for complaining about 'balance'
He's a bit unnecessarily combative, but I don't know how people still don't get that the game isn't meant to be a competitive RTS with balance. Most of the campaigns I've played seem to give a distinct advantage to one side. If you play the fucked side it's about picking your battles, minimizing losses, and keeping the most important objectives for as long as possible.

>>1984363
There's beginner's guides on steam, a manual, and youtube tutorials. Also ingame tutorials, but they're very limited in what they teach you. I read one of the steam guides then just looked up any questions I had in the manual or on steam forums. Dev is very active there and replied to nearly every thread I've seen. Since you probably don't have any DLC, do the base game campaigns in order of year. I think the early year ones are shorter and less complex. Large campaigns take a very long time to complete and have a lot of moving parts.

>>1984308
fucking kek

>>1984363
Some people found youtube tutorials nice-- in reality, all you need to know is to understand what the symbols on the command wheel (right click after selecting a unit) unit behaviour (bottom of the screen when you've selected a unit) are, and how on and off map artillery works-- for the latter I would recommend watching a video, but its really not that hard
The former you can get by just by reading the tooltips
aside from that, understanding how the strategic map works (digging in, the two types of movement etc) and how to pull up reserve platoons and you'll have total mastery
As for getting your feet wet; I recommend a WWII campaign-- personally, I feel like the Germans campaigns work well because all their units are very clearly defined and work the way someone familiar with how western companies are organized, but that's probably just me.
I actually think Tank Warfare Tunisia 1943 is a better introduction to the Graviteam system, but the basic 21 turn campaign you get with Mius front works just fine and is a ton of fun, with varied terrain

>>1984364
Yeah, he is definitely too confrontational haha-- reminds me a lot of the sort of old timers you'd meet at military museums and such
As for people not getting that its not supposed to be an RTS; they're largely coming from things like CoH

>>1954445 (OP)
>Fuck that specific spot edition
Which spot is that pic? For me it's the ridge in the Southwest of El Guettar where the U.S. Rangers are

Steam sale means cheap DLC
Grabbed The Far Escape and Bird Grove

>>1986124
I did Far Escape too. What I really want is a DLC with Flame Tanks, I haven't played many campaigns but I've yet to see a flame tank and my engineer flamethrower never fires,

Played two Volkssturm battles with general fantastic
First was USA vs Volkssturm, in which I was able to win thanks to some poor usage of flame sherman jumbos and defense in depth (I failed the ground objectives because I didn't have anyone in them again, I do hate that defenders dont automatically "own" objectives). Overlapping machine gun positions and bunkers did well, while he still had many men left, a ceasefire was declared once he lost all his tanks, as he had lost faith that he could continue the attack. At least he didnt needlessly sacrifice his poor infantry more than he already had.
After that we decided on a mirror match, in which he would play the volkssturm on a city map and I would attack him, this time as the british. My paras did rather well as you can see, with a 4:1 casualty ration on the attack, which would have been better if I'd remembered TRPs are a good idea in urban terrain. A 95mm armed Cromwell did hit a mine, and a Churchill AVRE got ammo detonated by a Stielgranate 41, but otherwise I was able to keep the AFVs alive in the city, although they certainly lost some effectiveness due to my excessive timidity to push into good locations for fear of the panzerfausts that had been so effective in my hands.
Overall Volkssturm review: fun, extremely prone to mass surrenders, I wish there were any options aside from just one standardized battalion.
Next is to be a massive infantry meeting engagement in Fortress Italy. Reckon I'll go for the Fallschirmjager against his Brazillians, I do like some elite paras with wacky weapons.

>>1987639
How do you find people to play against?

>>1987652
I just play against my friend who is bad but at least he doesn't mind losing.
If I didn't have him to play against then id be asking the same thing

is it possible to pirate the DLCs for graviteam? just got the base game but im poorfag.

>>1987906
I checked csrin and you can get it on there. Prob can use creamapi if you bought the base game.

>>1988216
Thanks, Anon! Had a chance to try out that PLA dlc, was pretty fun but man did i fuck up royally, flame tanks hurt.

>>1989036
No problem, it's a pretty good site for all but the most obscure games. I think creamapi was specifically developed because Paradox are such massive kikes about their DLC.

I think I lose more vehicles to terrain than anything else

>>1989055
Play Mius front instead of Tank Warfare. You'll still occasionally get shit stuck in shell holes and trenches but it's absolutely nowhere near the fucked up destruction the mighty Tunisian rock causes.

>>1989107
Tunisian anti tank rocks

>>1987652
The real centerpoint of the scene is the Few Good Men forums, there's always people looking for games around there. They also host the main mod/scenario repository, if you ever need fresh content.

>>1989124
Which will knock out more Panzer IVs?
>10 gorillion anti-tank mines purpose built by Ivan to disable tanks
>a few rocks

Anyone interested in Combat Mission PBEM here?

>>1990061
I've been trying to convince my friend to get it with me so we can play. I have way too much shit to play as is though.

>>1989055
>>1989107
>>1989124
What I've learned from trying to herd 30 Shermans at a time in Sidi Bouzid.

1) Never use the Maneuver modifier around rocks, they automatically try to avoid rocks and the maneuver modifier interferes with that system.

2) Try to avoid "Arrived" status as much as possible. If your tank column spawns on a bunch of rocks in Arrived status your only real option is to manually path out every single tank on their own before starting the battle. If you try to use a column formation on each company they'll get badly messed up while trying to form the column. Haven't tried using the no formation 'formation' yet.

3) Avoid using formations around rocks, line formation especially is a no-go. The safest thing you can do for a group movement (assuming they can form up on open terrain) is have a column move with a waypoint where you want to enter the rocks, and an exit waypoint far enough outside the rock field that the tail of the column won't be within the rocks when the lead element reaches it. If the tail gets stuck in the rocks they will try to path directly to the next waypoint instead of following the leader's tracks out, almost certainly leading to disaster.

4) Never use the Fast movement modifier around rocks, they will slide into a rock or otherwise turn too late.

5) After all of the above, they're actually pretty good at avoiding individual rocks when acting individually at least, but will still get caught out by a series of rocks causing them to do the "rock avoidance maneuver" multiple times back to back, eventually avoiding into another rock. If the field is too dense or you can't safely maneuver into position for a short, well waypointed crossing you simply cannot pass.

Is direct or indirect better? Only played with direct so far.

>>1991213
Depends on what you need it for

>>1991350
I mean the movement setting that changes how the operational map plays.

I begin a new battle against General Fantastic in the ruins of Venafro, and he immediately experiences the pain of the flakvierling as my solitary Sd.Kfz. 7/1 shreds a number of Brazillians attempting to cross the open area of the railway tracks
>>1990061
yea

uma delicia

>>1992789
Nice, 4x 2cm is great for making salad of of people.

>>1992789
I had to send my opponent a copy of FM 3-90 early on in our time playing together. He's a good sport about it, though: as long as he can tell he's learning, he's having a good time. I'll make a proper infantry officer out of him yet.

the CMBS module being cancelled really sucks

In Mius Front is there any way to put trucks into the reserve pool that are already assigned to a platoon?

>>1994222
true but allegedly one of the two first CMx3 games will be modern, and given the fact that they make them for the professional market alongside us gamer plebs I think there's almost no chance the modern title is going to be in the sandbox, considering the events of the last few years. if it isn't explicitly Russia then it'll be something approximating near-peer warfare I have to imagine

>>1994225
I don't think so; you'll just have to have whatever unit you want hauled in trucks on the same battlefield

>>1994312
Was more lookin at the operation map. Want to minimize the fatigue because it looks like there's going to be a lot of walking without roads. My motorized infantry appears to be about 1/4 motorized.

Now this is a war machine

Graviteam Tactics - Fulda Gap when?

Fortress Italy is getting suck on "DONE" during the replay phase after a couple turns... none of my inputs work besides panning the camera. How the hell does Zelenskyge run better than this?

>dropped a barrage of 28cm nebelwerfer rockets on my own troops
I did hit the enemy too, but I feel bad for my pixeltruppen. I ordered the fire to be adjusted, but too late.

>>1996728
I thought he died from laughing too hard at his own joke. Unless there's another Chrysippus I don't know of. I think that bust is of the philosopher though.

>>1994312
Can I actually do that? I find it impossible to select the trucks of one unit and another unit. If I control click it will select the inf in the truck unit. If I draw a box around only the desired unit and the trucks it still selects the trucks. Thinking maybe I can try making a control group. Also going to try selecting both units, commanding them all to get in, then command the undesired inf to dismount/cancel before they go in.

>>1994222
If it makes you feel any better it was probably due to being stretched making their next meme engine.
CM Cold War was practically made by a skeleton crew, they've been glued to puffing up CM Pro Ed
Here's to hoping a legend manages to get their hands on it here and gives it over.

>just finished Operation Rumyatsev
>got a draw even though I control the vast majority of the key points
what the fuck
VERY fun camapign though; I though managing so many units would be a pain, and while it was at first, it was very rewarding when my plans came though
I learned alot about fighting in urban centers
I STILL have no idea how to make flamethrowers or flame tanks throw their fucking flames; even with a variety of modifiers on either of them, they never shot them or just used the coaxial MG

>>1997004
yeah, ctrl clicking two units (as long as the truck is just attached to the platoon, and not natively a part of the unit like an APC or halftrack) it works well

>>1996183
Inputs get lost during frame drops. Get as much of the map off-camera as you can and it should clear up. Be grateful that you haven't seen it happen on the PBEM password screen.

In mius front do cav units get a movement bonus / fatigue reduction? Is it modeled at all or is it assumed that they're dismounted the entire time?

>>1996747
Use your brain a little.

Is this game better than Gates of Hell? Somebody redpill me I need to know which game is best

>>1999337
Depends on what you want, Gates of Hell is more or a traditional RTS, Graviteam Tactics is about both tactics and strategy, its a lot less micro intensive than the average strategy game though, its optimal to give bunch of units an order like attack or recon and let them do it without micromanaging every single thing, you can still do it but there is also a system that limits the amount of orders you can give out.

>>1999337
Apples/Oranges. GoH is an evolution of the Company of Heroes/Men of War mold, stemming from the C&C school of RTS. Graviteam and CM bill themselves on realism first, which requires a whole different approach to both design and play. There is MUCH that gets said about which accomplishes that goal better, but they're the kind of game where you really need to walk in with a foundational understanding of "how shit works for real" unless you want a very rough first experience. In a sense, I'd almost call them stealth games, especially modern CM titles, because the chain from being spotted to being killed is very short if you're not doing it on your terms.

>>1997123
>I STILL have no idea how to make flamethrowers or flame tanks throw their fucking flames
Yeah I've never seen them use it. How close were they engaging the enemy? I always assumed I would need to be very close and I generally don't throw my engineers into close quarters combat. I'd assume that kind of urban setting is where they'd actually get used.

>>1999453
>>1999458
Ok thanks for the info, Gravtiteam Tactics seem more interesting to me so I will get this.

>>2000387
It's cool. I find it more immersive than Combat Mission and it runs better. My PC is pretty beefy but still chugs on CM occasionally. The two modern graviteam games are tank warfare 1943 (North Africa) and Mius Front (mainly WW2 Eastern front). Mius front has way more DLC for it and that DLC is varied. Tons of WW2 operations and then a few more modern ones like the Iran/Iraq war. Tank Warfare goes on sale incredibly cheap though and can be picked up with all the DLC for 10 bucks. Most operations will take a long time to complete so you'll get a decent amount out of the base game, but I think it really shines in the DLC operations.

>>1999337
>>2000387
The main drawback of GT is the lack of multiplayer, so you're stuck compstopming.

What are the spotting restrictions in the first few minutes? I've read "no spotting" but that's obviously not true. These fags sprinted at my line but weren't detected until they were on top of my screening unit. They were rekt but probably did more damage than they would have if they tried a few minutes later. The awful fog is also probably also reducing visibility by quite a bit.

>moments before disaster

I wanted to learn Graviteam but found the UI overwhelming and the whole game to be unintuitive. How is the manual or yt vids for learning the game?

>>2003239
I would say read the manual, but I prefer reading to videos. Either should be good. Tooltips are inconsistent in the game itself and there's a lot of shit you would never realize, like the effects of certain movement modifier combos. Manual also has pictures of every menu element / symbol and explains them.

>>2003239
The manual is horrid for in-depth explanation of how stuff actually works.

The meaning of some paragraphs is simply lost in translation (read half assed slavinglish) outdated and incomplete parts, terms that don't match with the game ui or text etc...
My advice is to read it anyway to get a feeling of the basics of tactical and operational mode without focusing too much on memorizing all the dubious icons.

When you can confidently understand deployment UI, most movement orders, command hierarchy/cost and tactical battle UI you're basically halfway done.
You also might want to set "direct control" and "regular operations only" in the game settings for the operational phase. First setting makes it so that you can move the battlegroups on the map in real time during your turn; second setting limits the campaign list to those where the new battlegroup system has been implemented ( basically your platoons are going to be grouped into task forces and their command hierarchy is adjusted accordingly so you don't have to control a hundred individual platoons on the map ).

The game is quite straightforward once you get the fundamentals. I'd suggest watching the most recent tutorials from TheWarSimmer or Tonci87 on youtube and visiting the Steam forums for specific explanation of the most obscure mechanics of this game.

Also remember that some fights are simply unwinnable and some campaigns are set up so that one side is just desperately trying to contain its losses.

>>1997123
Weird. This is how I ended it. But this was also super long ago so who knows what Graviteam changed in patches. You do get victory points for reserving units tho so maybe that tipped the edge in my favor.
Also I had no idea that there were flame tanks available. For pioneers you just have to get them close.

>>2003468
>You do get victory points for reserving units tho so maybe that tipped the edge in my favor.
That's certainely what happened; I'll have to be more careful inthe future
Yeah, a platoon of three PanzerIII flames
Never saw one f them fire flames-- maybe one DID at one point (an enemy APC caught fire) but I wasn't around to see it and the APC was getting hit by a few artillery batteries, so maybe they lit it up with a smoke shell or something

I'm playing the second Rumyantsev Op "Kommunar" atm and I have to say it's probably the best, or one of the best, DLCs. It has everything. Heavy tanks, assault guns, air support, a fuck ton of artillery both on and off map, urban combat, woodland, wide open fields, mine fields. It's awesome. Plus both sides feel fairly even in terms of strength.

>look away for 20 seconds
>look back
>everything's on fire
I'm guessing they dropped incendiary. Zero kills though.
>>2008214
Is that against the tide?

>>2008343
Yeah, it's Against The Tide.

>>2006929
Armored car bros..... Has our time (a couple years in the interwar period) passed?

>>2009305
Not in Codename: Panzers.

>andrei spends 10 gorillion hours modeling a map for a DLC
>I spend 12 turns battling in one of the most uninteresting spots
Every time.

How do I even win this?

Also armored brigade II is out on steam

>>2010967
Shilovo, home.

>>2012456
>Shilovo, home.
Correction: The empty fields a few km outside of Shilovo

>>2012456
>Shilovo, home
:'( It's not looking too good.

god I love the fallschirmjagers

>>2016692
That was the turn 1 flakening?

>>2017238
yea
unfortunately the flak half track then proceeded to continually fail to maneuver through the city and kept fucking up when told to reverse so it didn't do much more than the initial destruction, still managed 65 casualties for only one crewman casualty.
Overall, the sheer firepower of Fallschirmjager squads certainly helped up close, the Stummelwerfers are extremely based with the amount of 81mm shells I could drop everywhere and 28cm Nebelwerfers are certainly impressive, despite quite a bit of fratricide due to poor accuracy. His 60mm mortars never impressed, and indeed many were pinned and disrupted by my Stummelwerfers so I had fire superiority in the fights I chose, and if I had a bad situation I simply retreated and reengaged where I had overwhelming firepower. His troops were all crack skill, and they were dangerous, but the Brazillian rifle squads can't put anywhere near as much lead downrange as a Fallschirmjager squad can.
The city does now look like the moon however. Sorry Mussolini.

Fuck this nigger. 1 hour of tanks dumping rounds into him with no reaction. I was finally able to get some guys close up behind him to start firing into the back and he's still going. Stalin better give him a medal. I left my Panzer IVs elsewhere.

>>2017970
It's over...

>>2018063
>5cm
It was called door knocker for a reason.

>>2018063
imagine the headache

>>2017970
A realistic Barbarossa experience

>replaying the 10 turn Rumyantsev operation with the goal of preserving my reserves so I can actually win this time
>first battle goes very well and I take control of a lot of the area surrounding the town with very minimal losses inflicting fairly massive Soviet losses
>next battle is mopping up a few armoured companies which hid in a slough east of the city
>very minimal losses again outside of my AI controlled allies
>have a few light tanks to mop up which are flanking around the town
>Panzer Vs make short work of them
>suddenly a hidden T-34 darts out of the woods
>before anyone can get a shot off it zips two of my tanks in their gun mechanisms, disabling them and killing 4 out of the 10 crewmen
It got lit up and destroyed seconds later but its pretty bitter to lose those guys like that at the end of the very end of the battle
One of the tanks was category III'd but one of them is repairable; at least I have enough survivors between the two of them to man the repairable tank.
For some reason, my loaders seem to be the first guys to die whenever my Panzer Vs get hit

>>2019086
I legitimately thought that was because they used it on buildings as opposed to it sucking ass.

Steam sale on

>Pak-36r destroys 13 tanks, most of them T-34s
holy shit

>>2022782
I don't know if you seen any IRL pics of them but they're pretty intimidating.

>>2022922
I thought the 40s were bigger but I haven seen them roast tanks like this before

>>2023315
>I haven seen them roast tanks like this before
Yeah I don't think I've played any German campaigns with them. The original soviet versions never do jack shit to my tanks though. At most they get a lucky shot on a Panzer III with hatches open and kill someone.

>>2023315
>>2023789
The Pak-36r uses the exact same round as the Pak-40, they converted the captured F-22 guns to do so. The original F-22 gun was far less powerful, pretty impressive modification.

Tank Warfare: Tunisia 1943 Complete Edition is 84% off on Steam until the 19th.

>>2027686

Finally managed to see a flamethrower in action, during a night operation
he did really well; one of the assistants got shot, but the operator went on to roast six soviet mortarmen during a sneaky attempt bid to silence one of their batteries
Even though I could only focus really sporadic artillery cover my infantry did really well against this soviet command group during the night operation, with most infantry squads bagging five or more kills each during the fight with minimal losses

>>1965160
God I want a Imperial Japan graviteam game so fucking badly aaaaaaa

>>2027946
Some day never ever

While I won this one, how are you supposed to do this without taking heavy losses? This was multiplayer on an urban map.
>drones see very little because almost everything is inside buildings
>155mm works but does surprisingly little damage with direct hits (e.g. 3 Excalibur rounds to the roof of a 3 story building will not even cave in the roof)
>Syrians have shit optics but you're mostly fighting within 100m anyway
>5.56 does fuck-all against infantry in buildings
>their 7.62 on the other hand performs a lot better (especially 7.62x54R machineguns)
>Mk19s aren't all that effective against garrisoned infantry either
>Bradleys and Abrams do well but the latter don't have that many HEAT shells
>ATGMs and recoilless guns are gonna be everywhere and while most can't kill an Abrams frontally, Strykers and Bradleys are very vulnerable to hits above the ERA
>you don't get enough points to bring a meaningful airforce
>the enemy has so many squads it's hard to properly suppress anything to assault entrenched positions
Everyone online says how "easy" it is as the US vs Syrians, I assume they are either talking about playing vs the AI, or just winning regardless of casualities.

>>2027946
I want more North Africa shit but I think there's some kind of licensing issue with whoever the distributor for that was. Also wouldn't mind some more Africa bush shit.

Favorite DLC? I've been going through them chronologically but I'm wondering if there are any I should play right away. How are the more modern ones?

How do you guys feel about the Close Combat games
Specifically ABIBATOOT but also in general

>>2047065
Never played it. It looks cool from the pics I'm seeing though.

>>2039539
India-pakistan war(s) would be fun saaar

>>2048946
Could actually be good given the time periods. I don't know how intense the fighting was or how well it would mesh with the general type of battles we see in graviteam.

>>2048946
Would love some more obscure wars for either GT or CM.

>>2051652
I really want some more North Africa, especially with Italy, but sadly that's never going to happen.

Has anyone here ever managed to capture a vehicle and then use it ? I captured guns and mortars but never anything actually big

>>2051647
I think their war in the 60s featured the largest tank battle since Kursk. You have shitty mountain fighting in Kashmir but the rest of the border is pretty flat and open.
>>2051652
Same. Arab-Israeli wars would be cool. I'd also love if they re-did the Shield of the Prophet from Operation Star. I think if they did a Korean War game that'd go really well.
>>2052408
I think for this you need a mission killed vehicle with an intact crew, but I'm not 100% sure.

>>2052408
I've used enemy tanks before. You need to have one of your vehicles get disabled in a way that leaves a workable crew alive. If you have any captured vehicles of that class they'll use it. Way more common with AT guns, mortars, and heavy machineguns because those get popped/abandoned more frequently. Most recently I had a Panzer IV (I think) replaced with a KV-1. It's a cool system. Do infantry capture small arms and use them? I know some German units start with Russian guns in certain ops but I'm not sure what the conditions would be to replace a Kar with something else. Maybe ammo?

>>2053925
Nvm found it in the manual in five seconds.

>>2053925
In those 15+ turn campaigns it happens very often cause if you keep using the same units the'll run out of ammo and then start using the other sides weapons

>>2052408
I've had whole platoons replaced
The key is you need to capture enemy vehicles (can't be worse than Cat. II damage) and you need spare crews around
so if you kill a lot of enemy crews and a lot of yours survive it will happen eventually, easier to do in long campaigns

Manual says that units on the op map move in the sequence that they were ordered. If I order a unit to march then clear that by selecting and clicking on their current location, will that make them last in line if I give a new march order?

Finally managed to actually get a positive result as the Iranians in the second Operation Nasr campaign; I did sort of cheese it though by calling in mortars on this one bottleneck for and having that take care of a few platoons of mech infantry and a tank that fucked up their pathing; the mortars killed many of the dismounts, while ATGM M113s and helicopters (which I swapped in from my reserves) did the heavy lifting on a great many T-55s.
Honourable mention goes to one of my M40 recoilless gun Land Rovers, which actually managed to hard kill a T-62
I do not know if I will be able to carry this luck and mysterious precognition into future battles, but man it sure was something to actually see the Iraqi retreat from one of these battles
Chieftains will be here soon and I thoroughly expect them to eat ass again

>>2058385
I really want to try the more modern operations but I'm compelled to do everything in a somewhat chronological order. How does the engine hold up for post-ww2 weapons?

>>2059043
>How does the engine hold up for post-ww2 weapons?
MLRSes will turn the game into a slideshow
A lot of APCs, IFVs and tanks etc. can sometimes get a little jumbled onto eachother
Not so much the engine, but forget literally everything your know about how to use armour and infantry because what you learn in the WWII campaigns will get your killed quickly in the modern ones

>>2035243
Urban combat is a fuck on general principle, and stacking a defensive QB on top of it is probably the best position you could put the Syrians in. The capability gap is there, but it's not as pronounced as the Volksturm or Uncons. I'll spin up something like that with my buddy and see what we think.

>>2059214
>because what you learn in the WWII campaigns will get your killed quickly in the modern ones
I assume the assumption that infantry can't do shit to me as long as I'm out of mine/grenade range and facing towards them?

This soviet/chinese border incident op is weird. Incredibly low unit count. I tried as the soviets and my infantry were immediately raped to death. I have some kind of vehicle coming as reinforcements so I assume it's kind of a "hold off the enemy until the cavalry arrives" type of scenario.

>>2059266
Game is underway, our first mirror match. We probably went too small and short for the amount of urban terrain the attacker has to clear, but we'll see how it turns out.

>>2059266
One thing I found is that for some reason, Javelins, ATGMs, etc are 10x as effective as a HEAT shell from an Abrams.

So take those javelins off the Strykers and bring some ATGM Strykers too. Much better to delete floors.

>>2047065
A bridge too far is good
I don't care for the sequels
For some reason it feels like your units don't listen to your orders and just do whatever
The AI cheats like hell too
Your units shit themselves just crossing a field of grass
Enemy units will usain bolt across the map and one shot everything without suffering moral/suppression

>>2065010
>Javelins, ATGMs, etc are 10x as effective as a HEAT shell
Warhead size. A Javelin warhead is 19lbs, though that's going to include the copper liners. An M830 HEAT projectile is 25lbs, but a lot of that is made up of the casing, because it has to be sturdy enough to survive being thrown out the barrel. Trying to find a solid stat for the amount of HE is an exercise in madness, but it looks to be somewhere between 0.7 and 2 lbs of explosive. Some of that is just the square-cube law playing with that 7mm caliber difference, but I think most of it is that the Javelin is a tandem warhead, so it has to have a separate set of explosives for each liner.

>>2051962
There's literally Tank Warfare Tunisia 1943 by the same devs nigger

>>2065499
While it absolutely makes sense that it's more effective by nature of being a bit bigger and tandem, I've seen single floors take 3-4 HEATs before the wall even breaks, while a single Javelin will wipe the wall in one shot and kill just about everyone inside.

I think CM just lacks a bit in the explosives modelling. Try dropping a JDAM on a building or even just 3-4 Excalibur rounds dead on the roof. Effectiveness is way way off, troops entrenched in buildings are hard to dislodge but if you're on the top floor and 3 155mm rounds hit the roof, you're not going to be doing so well..

>>2065667
I'll give you that. Textures matter for structural integrity, and the only two modular sets modern CM has in abundance are Wood and Commieblock, so it really doesn't capture the absolute state of Middle Eastern building codes so well.

>>2065529
No shit, but I've played all the campaigns they released. I meant there's never going to be additional north african DLC because there's publisher rights jewery going on with the game.

I HATE COVER I HATE COVER I HATE CONCEALMENT

I hope they add a winter war campaign, prefferably a long one so you can capture soviet equipment like the finns did irl

>>2068612
I think some new assets were posted and they were Japan, so it seems like we'll be getting some far east Japan vs. Soviets shit.

>>2035243
Me again, game complete. Small, 45 min, US Army attacking Syrians in urban terrain. My opponent's attack ended early due to him investing way too heavily in veteran vehicles, to the point where he had fewer squads than Bradleys to carry them. For my attack, I took a Bradley MOUT company, swapped them for Strykers, then a pair each of M1A1 SA and M3 Bradleys and a 155 battery.

I mostly stand by my original assessment that urban combat defensive QB is the best position you can put the Syrians in. We both took reserves, so we didn't really get to test the squad-level PKM's influence, but QB points balance means that even with the attacker's higher pool, the Syrians can easily upgrade to normal stats and still field a full level of organization over the US plus extras. Looking at historical examples of America clubbing Arabs, most of them involve defensive actions, numerical parity or even superiority, mind-bending levels of fire support and/or time to take it slow. QBs remove all of those advantages and force the US to fight on the sheer quality of its equipment and the player's ability to leverage it. In my case, that involved a thunder run straight into the center of the map, digging my heels in, and forcing him to counter-attack me. Looking at the scores, we faced similarly-sized forces and took close enough to 50% losses, but I also did it with half the men, and 1/3rd of those is my overwatch platoon getting caught in a mortar strike because I didn't think his observer would see the spotting rounds. I think the key lies in the surrender figure; when I hit him, I hit him so hard that his force just crumbled in about 5 minutes.

I'd say that's the core of playing seal clubber properly: your main effort mush crush both his morale and his plan. Soviet-style armies want to play the infantry grinder. Don't let them.

Anyway, have some vids of that thunder run, courtesy of my potato comp.
https://files.catbox.moe/0o5f2u.mp4
/rdaz79.mp4
/4e93uz.mp4

General Fantastic and I battled once again, Canadians vs USA meeting engagement, but we gave each other 0 intel about opposing forces. I brought an Airborne recon platoon, an Anti-Aircraft platoon (a bunch of .50 cals), 4 M8 Armored cars, an M16 MGMC, a few supply trucks, a few machine gun armed jeeps (always wanted to use them) and some 81mm mortar support. He appears to have brought the most basic possible force of massed Canadian infantry with 0 AT and only the integrated 51mm mortars for fire support.
Things went as expected. I lost one M8 to rifle fire and panicking crew, and one was immobilised by hand grenades, otherwise they racked up dozens of casualties each and the canadians were slaughtered by the brave American heroes. The airborne recon platoon was surprisingly effective too, they pulled their weight despite somewhat limited firepower on the assault (no LMGs, but 4 tripod mounted M1919s, strange for recon forces).
Now onto Cold War. I wanted to do Shock Force 2 and play the insurgents but its all fucked up when I install it, all the names are scrambled, anyone know how to fix that?

>>2073152
>4 tripod mounted M1919s, strange for recon forces)
We produced a lot of them. Need to use them somewhere

>>2074164
They certainly worked, good for covering advancing recon sections, but a BAR or two would have been nice rather than needing to wait for them to set up and pack up constantly. Can't complain with an 11:1 casualty ratio I suppose. I can only hope in our Cold War battle he performs more effectively, the extra infantry AT he has should at least allow him some chance against the glorious M60A2 Starships .

started playing this game because of this thread, never heard of it before. thoughts on black sea? I ""bought"" all of the main ones

>>2074926
DLC cycle got smothered in the cradle for obvious reasons, so it's stuck in a somewhat barebones state. No Russian or Ukrainian VDV nor non-US NATO members. SF2 is very much the preferred modern multiplayer title just for the variety of shit available. It also falls prey in many ways to being a 2015 game: its Ukraine is much more of a post-2014 army rather than pre- or early-2022, and its Russia is actually modernized to where they said they were going to be by 2017. And, of course, it completely missed the ball on just how impactful drones were going to end up being.

All that being said, it does have its charms. APS really shakes up the infantry-armor relationship relative to SF2, and its Russia is actually capable of playing a proper opponent to the US, instead of SF2's blue-on-blue standard method of doing multiplayer. Not quite a peer, but much closer than the Syrian army. I enjoy it, but you have to go in with an understanding that it's much closer to "Cold War gone hot, 30 years late edition" than Russo-Ukrainian War Simulator.

>>2074926
As someone else said, it was made before the Ukraine war, so don't expect it to be realistic. It still works off of the naive ideas of that time, such as Russia having all the expensive modernization bullshit (at least they didn't get the Armata) and big western MBTs being anything but drone fodder.

Honestly it's better off that Black Sea is like it is than being trench warfare drone hell.

If I start an operation with two units stacked on each other (in graviteam) is there anyway to move both of them in the same turn if I'm playing with indirect control? I like the idea behind indirect but this kind of pisses me off and makes me want to use direct.

>>2074955
>>2075036
Thanks, it's pretty funny how they just assume that NATO would deploy troops to Ukraine too.

>>2075036
>>big western MBTs being anything but drone fodder
Except they aren't. The only reason why Drones are so more effective in Ukraine is because neither side can gain air superiority over the other.

>>2075767
You should read the manual, the first section is basically a giant "well, shit, this is awkward" because Crimea went down in the last 10% of development. It also lays out the scenario, which has Ukraine beelining NATO and EU membership a lot faster, which is how they get dragged in off the drop.

>>2075036
You can get surprisingly close if you're willing to put in the effort. There's a couple scenarios on the FGM depot that re-create specific actions from 2022-3. There's also a QB map of the Siverski-Donetsk crossing, with optional scenario including gentleman's rules for how to deploy the pontoon. Personally, I've been wanting to adapt the ambush at Skybyn to the Black Sea narrative, especially since the site is within visual range of the jump-off point for the Shield of Kiev campaign.

For the post-Zaporizha slog, probably the most interesting thing from a CM perspective is how much the drone dominance has fucked with force:space ratios; you can get some very big maps with very small units moving across them in UAZs and shit. If you need FPVs in the scenario, strike drones or aircraft strafing runs can make a reasonable approximation, and if you've only got one IFV to work with because any more than that is a fires magnet, it could at the least be an interesting tactical challenge to see how these very small groups work in this kind of environment. I think I said somewhere upthread that modern CM plays almost like a stealth game, and leaning into that could be fun.

What's the best combat mission to play with? I play graviteam now but I don't really care about the time period I'm more so interested in the mechanical differences. Which one is the most fun overall?

>>2076283
Battle for Normandy is probably the most popular one... therefore more content and mods

>>2076283
https://youtu.be/h6KeApbO3BY

>>2075899
>For the post-Zaporizha slog, probably the most interesting thing from a CM perspective is how much the drone dominance has fucked with force:space ratios
how do you even simulate this as a developer? there's a lot of situations with drones that are fundamentally "unfair"

>>2076549
Scenarios don't have to be balanced, they just have to be interesting. The best demonstrator, though, would probably actually be a campaign, putting a Russian player through the meat wave process of slowly eroding out a single trenchline over the course of 4-5 30-minute battles.

>>2076520
>>2076482
Think I'll do the cold war one or one of the more modern ones like black sea or the syria one. I have tons of WW2 games already it'd be nice to get some variety.

>>2074926
>>2074955
>>2075899
Google the All in One mod for Black Sea.

I'm playing Black Sea at the moment as well, and there's some things I just don't get. I know the enemy positions in the first mission of Shield of Kiev. I set my scounts up on the main road, looking at the BMP from around 600 meters and they never spot it. This was on Elite. I've set it down to Veteran, still no spot. I drive up my HQ Tank down the road, it spots the BMP, BMP doesn't spot it. Back to the drawing board. I set my spotters in the middle of the road literally looking at the BMP from around 500 meters, no spot. I give them a fast commands to run accross the road, they get shredded by the BMP.

Usually spotting is fine and I can make out what's happening, but something is wrong here.

>>2066487
I'm sorry, I called you a nigger in an endearing, comrade-like sense.

Why is Graviteam more popular here than Combat Mission? For all it's faults CM does offer more.

>>2078486
>Usually spotting is fine
If we're going to talk about spotting in CM in general.
IMHO, because the player is able to magically direct a tank or machine gun to area fire on an area that, from the units perspective has no enemies, but the player knows has enemies because another unit spotted it, spotting should be significantly changed.

there's a fundamental inconsistency between slowing down communication of enemy positions for "realism" but also having the player able to break realism and direct area fire with no CC link.

The fix either seems to be have all units in a platoon share information instantly no matter what,
OR only enable being able to direct area fire as the player if the unit is within a CC link

>>2078516
>only enable being able to direct area fire as the player if the unit is within a CC link
bad idea, often area fire is the tactically sound decision regardless of whether a unit actually knows if the enemy is there or not, say for instance using a machine gun to spray down a tactically important building during an advance, you don't know if there are enemies there, but you should fire at it anyway.
By trying to avoid people gaming the system, you simply make things less realistic and more frustrating. Reality is, if you are playing against someone who also cares about that realism, then you just need to have an honor system in place to avoid using exploit strategies such as area fire on unspotted targets or looking for enemy vehicle sounds to locate their vehicles and any other bad faith strategies.

>>2078516
>have all units in a platoon share information instantly no matter what,
there's a difficulty for that

>>2078491
>Why is Graviteam more popular here than Combat Mission?
Not sure. Personally I got graviteam because I was interested in the connection between tactical and operational map. I am going to get one of the CMs soon though.

>>2078491
Combat mission really shines in multiplayer
I personally enjoy graviteams dynamic campaign and singleplayer more

>>2078491
I know the engines are updated to be the same but do any of the CM games function better? As in the engine works with that time period better or it plain runs better? I was looking at cold war but I have heard that one is actually buggy and generally bad.

>Graviteam
>A game without AI has no multiplayer.

Makes me think really hard

>>2080613
Despite the first game on the engine being Shock Force, the game works better with the WW2 era games. Infantry units are invisible past 800m. You'll notice this painfully in one of the base Shock Force 2 missions where you've got a narrow map to charge through and ATGMs are sitting some 1km+ away. You even get given humvees with decent sights and they do literally nothing for it.
As far as I know Fortress Italy runs like shit relatively speaking. Cold War isn't bad but it's a lot different compared to either modern or WW2. 1979 scenarios have the deck stacked in the soviets favour and 1981 either flips it or equalises it.

>>2080735
The real enemy in Graviteam is the terrain

>>2047065
I LOVED CC3
I still have them, I had all of them at one point or another but for sure have the discs, boxes and guides for 3 to the newest ones, I even have that GI Combat game they tried to do that didn't catch on.

>>2080736
I think I'm going to grab Normandy then since graviteam will never ever do the western front. I've been interested in it since I've seen screenshots. Any of the DLC worthwhile? They all list a fuckton of vehicles.

>>2082232
The big ones are Market Garden and Commonwealth Forces, those massively flesh out what's on offer on both sides of the line from just US vs Heer in the base game. The Vehicle Pack has a lot of funny little gubbins, including the Niggerwhipper 9000, but it's mostly there to be interesting rather than expansive. Battle Pack 1 is mostly a pile of scenarios and quick battle maps for if you just need more, while BP2 is mostly focused on single-player campaigns around Carentan, as well as some large-scale master maps, which are used in the fan creation sphere to cut out chunks of terrain for their own campaigns, scenarios and/or QB maps.

>>2082402
>including the Niggerwhipper 9000
You mean this? Can you whip infantry or is it purely anti-mine?

>>2082402
I just went ahead with the Normandy pack because I know I'd want the extra factions. Just going through the tutorial shit now but it seems like something I'll put a lot of time into. Interface really isn't as clunky as I expected given the bitching I've seen.

Can your radio break in combat mission? I had a HQ unit relaying orders to mortar teams. Suddenly they started showing out of contact. No radio showing on the squad.

>>2087037
If that's an on-map mortar, then either
1: the radioman got shot
2: the mortar doesn't have an organic radio, so it was using somebody close by with one as a relay, and he walked away

>>2087082
I was using a HQ unit nearby. I brought another separate HQ once this started and they definitely had a radio. Still the same. Not sure why.

>>2087088
Which game, and if you can upload a save, I'd be glad to poke at it

>>2087092
It was the 2nd mission of the second tutorial campaign. I deleted the save so it's lost to time. Is there theoretically anything else that could have made them lose contact? I think the first HQ had a radioman down but the second one didn't. If the mortar leader dies can they no longer receive radio orders to fire?

>>2087144
>If the mortar leader dies can they no longer receive radio orders to fire?
I think this was the issue. Casualties persisted to the next mission and they were still out of contact for everyone but the HQ units next to them.

Teaching Soviet tankers why it's a bad idea to push a village without infantry support.
The tank somehow survived this and proceeded to blow my flamethrower crew to smithereens.

>>2088009
Sleep tight brave flamethrower. I still have yet to see a flamethrower fire in my hundreds of hours.

>>2083599
I'm afraid the niggerwhipper 9000 is not capable of whipping infantry
Combat mission lacks the technology

>>2092685
Tanks can run over infantry. I doubt there's a special modifier for it, but you can still pretend the way you do with all the other animations.

>>2093065
>I doubt there's a special modifier for it
I won't consider CM a success as a WW2 sim until the cracking of skulls by my big metal balls is modeled. It may not have happened IRL but it definitely could have.

>4 men crawling through the forest hit at once by a massively off target enemy mortar shell
>3 M113 gunners knocked out by enemy machine gun fire
>1 man killed by extremely unlucky friendly mortar shell fragment that flew about 50m
>1 unmanned jeep knocked out by machine gun fire
ok
general fantastic requires immediate training. I shall figure out how to share a save with him, and we shall do some dodgy co-op in order to train him in the art of war. Truly Congolese levels of incompetence here. 17 BMP-1s lost, and not to something advanced like a few Abrams or thermal equipped M60A3s, but instead mostly the older crappier equipment that I enjoy using.

>>2094508
>17 BMP-1s lost
It's just to flex Soviet plenty. Completely intentional. Like how Americans waste food.

Has he done tutorials and SP games?

>>2094508
>how to share a save with him
Make save during the orders phase, you can extract and transfer it from the Saved Games folder just like a manual PBEM.

>>2094656
Tutorials yes
SP I don't know, probably not given the performance
>>2094895
Yeah I figured it out. Would be nice if there was an actual co-op system but that's just another thing on the enormous pile of QOL issues that need fixing.
He has already selected his forces, we shall play the Syrian army attacking against uncons, he's using a mechanized reserve battalion, I'll be bringing the special forces as a support/advisory unit for max larp.

>>2094508
I just did the same thing.
>hmmm today I will drive my unarmored Jeeps down this forested road
>better hit open up on these scout cars so they can see better
>BANG

>>2096652
I'd say my vehicle commanders survival rate in combat mission is at most 25% given casualties from vehicles lost + most getting their heads blown off. I had 6 M8 armoured cars once survive a battle, but only one commander. The allure of better spotting + using that extra .50 cal was just too much

update on the co-op
oh god so many syrian reservists are dead
I keep telling him to get the troops out of the BTRs but he isnt and they're all dying
I've taken 0 casualties, and disrupted the enemy with mortars as I'm approaching methodically, he has charged BTRs over open ground and has lost at least an entire company already, 5 minutes in.

>>2097087
I just started playing Normandy after solely playing graviteam and the prevalence of decent squad AT really took me by surprise. I really became used to the expectation that my tanks wouldn't explode if I drove them by a hedgerow (as long as they didn't have an AT gun hidden).

>>1954445 (OP)
Where is this? Is it the beginning of that early war campaign where the Germans are advancing into the woods? IIRC there's a road right behind this pic and a small village to the right. I fucking carpet bombed those shitty woods and they were still infested.

>>2097197
>tac AI takes over and tries to retreat from the killing field
hmm I think I'll cancel that order

awful UI
also western front & late war scenarios when?

>>2097197
Did he buy every combat mission just to play with you? I think I remember seeing screens of one of the WW2 games.

>>1954445 (OP)
This game .. it's beautiful in many ways. Just after 300h on CTA gates of hell it's a biznach to "get to know" how shait works in this game. I tried Ringo! I tried the last time yesterday. I shan't give up bit it's hard Ringo !!

Hans we've got two mg42s and a Stummel working the target, your fire is appreciated but unnecessary