As someone who has literal hundreds of hours in various CM titles I was still able to pull some new information out of this that'll come in handy in the future. This was a great video, well done!
One thing I would like to find out is how effective the "Armor" fire mission is against infantry garrisoned in buildings. "Armor" fire missions is supposedly HE with delayed fuze and in theory should be more effective at causing casualties to garrisoned infantry if a direct hit is achieved. I've also heard that "Armor" missions are more effective at demolishing structures, but since I haven't compared it with "General" it might just be placebo.
Thanks! I had thought that this type of video would be less work than an AAR - it turned out to be quite a lot more 😁. So it's nice to hear it's appreciated ☺️.
Solid data gathering, good modeling, and solid conclusions. The ammount of testing done was sufficient for a simulated environment. Great production value for the video, both entertaining and informative. Thank you for your work!
This was a "short introduction"...? Hee hee... You are certainly tenacious...! Thank you for your wonderful work. Your videos evoke "Usually Hapless" levels of expertise.
Outstanding! Both for game play purposes, and comparison to real life. Thank you for taking the time to conduct the experiments, produce the video, and of course, sharing your evident expert knowledge. Very well done.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for taking the huge amount of time to make this video. As a relative newbie it's answered so many questions for me. Now I just need to work out when I'll ever use the 'delay' command in CMBN as I always need off-board arty about 10 minutes ago.
Delay other than at the start of the battle is a bit wobbly. Using it at the start of a battle makes it very precise (it will start at T+15 minutes, for example) while using it mid-game and without a TRP makes it less precise - when it starts also depends on when the spotting phase is done. Generally - other than at the start of a battle, I don't bother with delay.
Great video and very detailed in a way I haven't really seen before as far as combat mission guides. Please keep making these type of videos along with your other battle videos. Your content is worth the watch every time. Also it would be good if you could time stamp the video timeline when the different sections of the begin.
I remember someone asked what's the difference between normal smoke and WP on the discord and everyone simply assumed it was same as smoke with a small chance to inflict casualties. Well done!
Please please please do some shockforce 2 videos on the Dutch expansion, would be great getting a squaddies view on the scenarios and stuff. You're knocking each video out of the park too.
Not a bad idea at all, it's an idea I've been milling around in my head for a while. Could add some context as to which developer thought that dutch recon squads don't have binoculars and such 😁. I'll probably get around to that. But at least my next video will be set in the Netherlands 🙂
Using white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon against an enemy force is not a war crime. The treaty regulating incendiary weapons is Protocol III to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which only forbids the use of incendiary weapons under some circumstances, mainly to protect civilians.
Thanks! If by the moral thing you mean your pixel truppen aren't afraid of what might happen a few moments from now; I can't really think of a game where that mechanic is present actually. So not too much of a loss I think.
Idk if it's modeled in CM but when dropping WP in med/deep snow the affected area is to be treated like a minefield. The snow smothers and extinguishes the WP, refreezes, and when some poor GI kicks it to the surface it gets oxygen and starts burning again.
I'm certainly going to start making much greater use of the personnel fuse. Although I wonder how much of a difference the era will make? I believe modern air burst fuses are somewhat more reliable than WW2 air burst fuses. Although I suppose if a WW2 air burst fuse fails to go off while the round is still in the air, that just converts that shell into a general shell, meaning that the personnel setting should still be as good or better most of the time (except against buildings).
Good to hear you got something out of it! WW2 era, the personel fuses are timer based and so they sometimes explode on the ground, like you say. It'll still do damage but not more like you mentioned. If the game regards a shell that explodes on the ground as any other shell with the "general" fuse, it should do less damage against infantry. Didn't test this as I didn't focus too much on era- or titel specific details. Shouldn't matter too much I'd think, a couple of % difference probably.
A few observations: 1) You will NEVER need to use artillery to suppress a linear target while vulnerable vehicles drive down a road in Combat Mission. The correct response in the scenario presented is to dismount your infantry and attack the enemy position. Once they are eliminated, your vehicles can now drive down the road in compete safety. Same with the scenario of advancing against a tree line. All of that machine gun fire is to let your infantry advance, once they have arrived at the enemy position, you have already won the scenario and there's no need to use any artillery to do it. 2) If an artillery battery has 100 rounds of ammunition, you will have 10 smoke rounds available. You should not use smoke to make a smoke screen unless you carefully account for how much ammunition you have available, how much you will need to make and maintain the screen, and determine to use it. The more effective use of smoke in Combat Mission is to drop it directly in front of the enemy position, so they are blinded in every direction. You will never need to move a large column across an open area under enemy observation using smoke to obscure your movement, because any seasoned player is going to know exactly what you are doing, and prepare for it. 3) Speak for yourself about how someone would use their pixeltruppen. I'll have you know I write very few letters home while still securing my objectives. ;) Other than that, the use of artillery as area denial works very well and you explain it perfectly. Even just having one gun use a harassing mission is enough to deter enemies from moving into or through an area. At the very least, you will slow them down enough to render their movement useless. 4) The danger of artillery in built up areas is whether or not it collapses an occupied building, in which case you can expect the unit inside to take 100% casualties. Other than that, your results in testing are exactly as expected. I once spent an entire month doing testing like this where i repeated all my tests a hundred times against various test objects, structures, and positions. I then classified the results _TOP SECRET_ because I never wanted any of my opponents to know what I knew. These sorts of things are discussed in the training fields, because you want to educate your officers about the things artillery is capable of, what it is not capable of, and how to tell the difference. On the Combat Mission battlefield you will rarely use any of these things given the lack of space and time that characterize most scenarios. By far the most effective use of artillery is to just dump some on any identified or suspected enemy position, or any area you suspect the enemy will attempt to move through. Also be damned sure to call cease fire at least one solid minute (meaning two minutes) before sending any friendly infantry through the effected area, unless they are mounted in artillery proof vehicles like Bradleys.
Quite a list op observations! I agree on some points, but not fully on all points (there's not always time to 'prepare for what the enemy is doing' when you see his smoke screen come down, for example) but you make fair arguments to support them all.
So much information, thank you for the work you've put in this video! What I find strange is that artillery has such low effect on units in foxholes comparing to trenches. Foxhole is a fast ad-hoc protection, how can it be 50% better protection from anti-personnel rounds than a proper trench system?
Actually, that's not accurate. The trench is the superior entrenchment over foxholes. So long as the shell misses the trench, there's only a 16% chance of infantry getting hit, vs a 32% (or so) chance for foxholes. The trouble starts when a shell hits the trench; then everyone inside is a lot more likely to get hit. Luckily, if you keep your trenches small, then that chance isn't too great.
@@OKOK-hm2is CM doesn't take zig-zagging of trenches into account. It just registers whether the trench was hit and then kills a couple of occupants by chance - no matter if they were around a corner or not.
Great video. Sad that the secure mission type isn’t effective against the AI, I could really use it in a scenario I’m doing. Only thing I was wondering about is how do precision fire missions factor into this?
Thanks! Well that's clearly intended to destroy something, or reduce as I call the effect in this video. So where I say "determine how many rounds you can spare for that target", make the number of rounds 1!
Is there any difference in effectiveness of 155mm shells vs 152mm? I recall an 'The Economist' article staying 155 was more lethal but other sources state that they are roughly comparable.
Very well done video, thanks. Did you also try using the "hide" command when testing trenches and foxholes? From my own testing, it seems hiding in foxholes provides much better protection against artillery. It looks like you're not using it in this video, as your pixeltroops are not prone.
Ugh, no I didn't, didn't know about that... Back to the drawing board 😁! Haha there are so many variables in CM that you can't test them all in a reasonable time I'm afraid. I may keep it in mind if I re-visit the topic, thanks for bringing it up!
Maybe not using the hide command is more realistic to show the effects of the artillery rounds. I'm not sure how often the AI will use it in missions that have planned static troop positions. Not saying your point is not valid as I would like to think most players will use it if they encounter enemy artillery.
Funny you should ask, most of the time a forward observer (so artillery) attached to the recce platoon of a tank battalion... So I got to see a bit of everything 😁
As someone who has literal hundreds of hours in various CM titles I was still able to pull some new information out of this that'll come in handy in the future. This was a great video, well done!
is this one also commissioned or is it pulled from the show
@@rice5668 straight from the show
@@Mx_Millien when is your AAR dropping
Great to hear! Found out quite a bit while making the video myself as well; some stuff you don't find out untill you start poking around and testing 🙂
its one of those games. you just cant feasably know everything.
One thing I would like to find out is how effective the "Armor" fire mission is against infantry garrisoned in buildings. "Armor" fire missions is supposedly HE with delayed fuze and in theory should be more effective at causing casualties to garrisoned infantry if a direct hit is achieved. I've also heard that "Armor" missions are more effective at demolishing structures, but since I haven't compared it with "General" it might just be placebo.
Good point. Now that you describe it like that it would be interresting. I'll remember it for when I ever revisit the topic!
There's been a lot of speculation that "armour" fire missions are identical to "general" and is a hangover from CMx1.
I think you have wonderful content on this channel ad it's heart breaking to see you have not uploaded in a year, I hope to see more videos from you
Great work, well tested and excellent communication of the results.
Thanks! I had thought that this type of video would be less work than an AAR - it turned out to be quite a lot more 😁. So it's nice to hear it's appreciated ☺️.
this vid was amazing. the personnel tests definitely are going to change how i use artillery from here on out
Thanks! Funnily enough I came to the same conclusion while making the video - changed my perspective on some things as well 😁.
Fantastic video, I applaud the time and effort that went into this!
Solid data gathering, good modeling, and solid conclusions. The ammount of testing done was sufficient for a simulated environment.
Great production value for the video, both entertaining and informative. Thank you for your work!
Great stuff! Can't wait for the follow up!
Production value through the rood here, well done Mr. Free Whisky
Incredibly well produced and informative video. Great job!
Much appreciated!
Excellent video - as always! Looking forward to the next one.
Thanks - looking forward to making the next one 😉
What a really informative piece. Thanks for taking the time to put it together for us, Free Whisky
Thanks, and my pleasure! Was interresting finding out all this stuff as I tested it.
Wow, incredible format here! Nice work.
Much appreciated!
Have to say. Excellent detail .Must have taken some time to produce this. Thanks very useful
Great video. Your channel deserves a lot more subscribers! I wish you luck from Belgium.
The video was excellent. Highly informative and well produced.
Thanks, that's nice to hear 😊
This was a "short introduction"...? Hee hee... You are certainly tenacious...! Thank you for your wonderful work. Your videos evoke "Usually Hapless" levels of expertise.
Thanks! Well this is the one field where I feel I have some expertise; no idea where Hapless gets all his knowledge from 😊
Outstanding! Both for game play purposes, and comparison to real life. Thank you for taking the time to conduct the experiments, produce the video, and of course, sharing your evident expert knowledge. Very well done.
A bit late on my part, but thanks! Sharing is a pleasure when it's appreciated.
Excellent production and video quality, love your content!!!
Much appreciated!
Outstanding video ! Thank you for the time testing all this. :D
My pleasure! I was learning with the rest of you so it was interresting to do.
Great production values and interesting information. Well done.
Thanks! Always nice to hear it's appreciated.
This is amazingly well done.
Cheers!
thank you so much for this video. the way you explain things is really great and I hope you do more like these one day ! thank you again dear Sir !
Glad it was helpful!
Very useful information, thank you.
Glad it was helpful!
Really nice video, very interesting. Thanks for putting it together
Thanks, nice to hear you liked it 😊
I will need to rewatch this again before my future games. Good stuff.
Thanks, hope it'll benefit you 🙂
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you for taking the huge amount of time to make this video. As a relative newbie it's answered so many questions for me. Now I just need to work out when I'll ever use the 'delay' command in CMBN as I always need off-board arty about 10 minutes ago.
Delay other than at the start of the battle is a bit wobbly. Using it at the start of a battle makes it very precise (it will start at T+15 minutes, for example) while using it mid-game and without a TRP makes it less precise - when it starts also depends on when the spotting phase is done. Generally - other than at the start of a battle, I don't bother with delay.
thanks that was quit informative. it is excellent and impresive work
Glad you enjoyed it!
Can't wait until Im back home so I can watch another great video uploaded by you. Cheers your video will forever be entertaining and informative!
Hope you made it home safe and enjoyed it; or will enjoy it 😉
@@FreeWhisky I did enjoy it. Also I saw all these "women" throwing themselves at you. Save some for us bro 😳.
Nice work, as always! I`am your devoted viewer. Eager for more, especially AAR`s.
Thanks! No worries, before I do anything else I've got an AAR or two already planned ☺️
I truly like youre style.
Keep up this wonderful work 👍
Thank you! Will do!
Nicely done and super helpful.
Glad you think so!
Thank you. Excellent content. Subscribed !
Awesome, thank you!
Great video and very detailed in a way I haven't really seen before as far as combat mission guides. Please keep making these type of videos along with your other battle videos. Your content is worth the watch every time.
Also it would be good if you could time stamp the video timeline when the different sections of the begin.
Ah that's a good idea, I'll look into it right away. Thanks!
@@FreeWhisky Perfect! Thanks.
Thank you for this.
My pleasure!
amazing briefing!! :) Thx a lot! Really appreciate it. You got a new follower :)
Welcome aboard! Glad you found it useful!
your videos are great keep it up man
Glad you like them!
Very well presented, and informative!
Thank you kindly!
I remember someone asked what's the difference between normal smoke and WP on the discord and everyone simply assumed it was same as smoke with a small chance to inflict casualties. Well done!
Before making this video I would have thought the same 😁. Glad you liked it!
Thank you!
You're welcome; hope you found something useful in there!
Great video !!!!!!!
Thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it!
awesome video !!
Thanks!!
Interesting and informative. The
Please please please do some shockforce 2 videos on the Dutch expansion, would be great getting a squaddies view on the scenarios and stuff. You're knocking each video out of the park too.
Not a bad idea at all, it's an idea I've been milling around in my head for a while. Could add some context as to which developer thought that dutch recon squads don't have binoculars and such 😁. I'll probably get around to that. But at least my next video will be set in the Netherlands 🙂
Great video, now to use this info on my friends before they have a chance to watch it. Lol
The good part is that your friends play CM - a treasure we don't all share 😉.
Using white phosphorus as an incendiary weapon against an enemy force is not a war crime. The treaty regulating incendiary weapons is Protocol III to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, which only forbids the use of incendiary weapons under some circumstances, mainly to protect civilians.
A direct hit on a trench doesn't destroy it, it just makes it deeper
That... is actually pretty funny 😁.
They should fix the fear moral thing, it ruins the game when you figure out how to dispose of them as a means to victory.this is great stuff.
Thanks! If by the moral thing you mean your pixel truppen aren't afraid of what might happen a few moments from now; I can't really think of a game where that mechanic is present actually. So not too much of a loss I think.
Idk if it's modeled in CM but when dropping WP in med/deep snow the affected area is to be treated like a minefield. The snow smothers and extinguishes the WP, refreezes, and when some poor GI kicks it to the surface it gets oxygen and starts burning again.
I'm certainly going to start making much greater use of the personnel fuse. Although I wonder how much of a difference the era will make? I believe modern air burst fuses are somewhat more reliable than WW2 air burst fuses. Although I suppose if a WW2 air burst fuse fails to go off while the round is still in the air, that just converts that shell into a general shell, meaning that the personnel setting should still be as good or better most of the time (except against buildings).
Good to hear you got something out of it! WW2 era, the personel fuses are timer based and so they sometimes explode on the ground, like you say. It'll still do damage but not more like you mentioned. If the game regards a shell that explodes on the ground as any other shell with the "general" fuse, it should do less damage against infantry. Didn't test this as I didn't focus too much on era- or titel specific details. Shouldn't matter too much I'd think, a couple of % difference probably.
Eyyyyy a fellow redleg!
All hail St. Barbara 😉
@@FreeWhisky Bathed in her high explosive radiance!
A few observations:
1) You will NEVER need to use artillery to suppress a linear target while vulnerable vehicles drive down a road in Combat Mission. The correct response in the scenario presented is to dismount your infantry and attack the enemy position. Once they are eliminated, your vehicles can now drive down the road in compete safety. Same with the scenario of advancing against a tree line. All of that machine gun fire is to let your infantry advance, once they have arrived at the enemy position, you have already won the scenario and there's no need to use any artillery to do it.
2) If an artillery battery has 100 rounds of ammunition, you will have 10 smoke rounds available. You should not use smoke to make a smoke screen unless you carefully account for how much ammunition you have available, how much you will need to make and maintain the screen, and determine to use it. The more effective use of smoke in Combat Mission is to drop it directly in front of the enemy position, so they are blinded in every direction. You will never need to move a large column across an open area under enemy observation using smoke to obscure your movement, because any seasoned player is going to know exactly what you are doing, and prepare for it.
3) Speak for yourself about how someone would use their pixeltruppen. I'll have you know I write very few letters home while still securing my objectives. ;) Other than that, the use of artillery as area denial works very well and you explain it perfectly. Even just having one gun use a harassing mission is enough to deter enemies from moving into or through an area. At the very least, you will slow them down enough to render their movement useless.
4) The danger of artillery in built up areas is whether or not it collapses an occupied building, in which case you can expect the unit inside to take 100% casualties. Other than that, your results in testing are exactly as expected. I once spent an entire month doing testing like this where i repeated all my tests a hundred times against various test objects, structures, and positions. I then classified the results _TOP SECRET_ because I never wanted any of my opponents to know what I knew.
These sorts of things are discussed in the training fields, because you want to educate your officers about the things artillery is capable of, what it is not capable of, and how to tell the difference. On the Combat Mission battlefield you will rarely use any of these things given the lack of space and time that characterize most scenarios. By far the most effective use of artillery is to just dump some on any identified or suspected enemy position, or any area you suspect the enemy will attempt to move through. Also be damned sure to call cease fire at least one solid minute (meaning two minutes) before sending any friendly infantry through the effected area, unless they are mounted in artillery proof vehicles like Bradleys.
Quite a list op observations! I agree on some points, but not fully on all points (there's not always time to 'prepare for what the enemy is doing' when you see his smoke screen come down, for example) but you make fair arguments to support them all.
So much information, thank you for the work you've put in this video!
What I find strange is that artillery has such low effect on units in foxholes comparing to trenches. Foxhole is a fast ad-hoc protection, how can it be 50% better protection from anti-personnel rounds than a proper trench system?
The foxhole is smaller than the trench, so maybe there's a smaller solid angle through which the shell fragments can fly and hit personnel ?
Actually, that's not accurate. The trench is the superior entrenchment over foxholes. So long as the shell misses the trench, there's only a 16% chance of infantry getting hit, vs a 32% (or so) chance for foxholes. The trouble starts when a shell hits the trench; then everyone inside is a lot more likely to get hit. Luckily, if you keep your trenches small, then that chance isn't too great.
@@FreeWhisky but proper trecnh should not go at straight line, it should zig-zag
@@OKOK-hm2is CM doesn't take zig-zagging of trenches into account. It just registers whether the trench was hit and then kills a couple of occupants by chance - no matter if they were around a corner or not.
11:50 You'll be glad to hear using WP isn't a war crime, you just can't use it against civilians, in built-up areas(?) or drop it from planes.
23:49 what about trenches built with the goal to reduce enfilading fire?
Whiskey, you're a fuckin national treasure for this. Nice music too. Great video keep em coming
Haha glad you found it interresting, more coming up 😁
Great video. Sad that the secure mission type isn’t effective against the AI, I could really use it in a scenario I’m doing.
Only thing I was wondering about is how do precision fire missions factor into this?
Thanks! Well that's clearly intended to destroy something, or reduce as I call the effect in this video. So where I say "determine how many rounds you can spare for that target", make the number of rounds 1!
@@FreeWhisky Thanks, though I think I'll use two rounds. I typically use precision rounds on vehicles and I want to absolutely make sure it's dead.
Is there any difference in effectiveness of 155mm shells vs 152mm? I recall an 'The Economist' article staying 155 was more lethal but other sources state that they are roughly comparable.
Very well done video, thanks. Did you also try using the "hide" command when testing trenches and foxholes? From my own testing, it seems hiding in foxholes provides much better protection against artillery. It looks like you're not using it in this video, as your pixeltroops are not prone.
Ugh, no I didn't, didn't know about that... Back to the drawing board 😁! Haha there are so many variables in CM that you can't test them all in a reasonable time I'm afraid. I may keep it in mind if I re-visit the topic, thanks for bringing it up!
Maybe not using the hide command is more realistic to show the effects of the artillery rounds. I'm not sure how often the AI will use it in missions that have planned static troop positions. Not saying your point is not valid as I would like to think most players will use it if they encounter enemy artillery.
@@jakf101 Yes, against the computer it doesn't matter, as it will never issue hide commands. But you can hide your own units if you expect enemy arty.
What movie is that at 14:58? Also love the videos!
Thanks! That movie is The thin red line. Not everyone's taste as it can be a bit 'poetic', but as a cinematic piece I think it's great.
goede zaak
zeer! 😉
44A?
If I had to guess what you mean, I'd say 13MB. In my days. These days they're 31LB.
@@FreeWhisky Ah kijk, mooi hoor! Dank voor je leerzame info!
Dutch?
4:40 disliked
Excellent video. I'm guessing you were in the Netherlands Army. Were you Artillery or Recce?
Funny you should ask, most of the time a forward observer (so artillery) attached to the recce platoon of a tank battalion... So I got to see a bit of everything 😁