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| | You are here: Home : PC : Close Combat | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | F.A.Q. | Updated 02 Jul | 1 Game Philosophy (why we don't make you micromanage)
2 Why there is no editor, DYO
3 Game Scale
4 Monitor Information
5 The Orders
6 Keyboard shortcuts
7 LOS line
8 How/why the game ends
9 Why there's no pause
10 Second stories and Elevations
11 Command Radius/Troops not obeying
12 Heroes, Bravery, and Cowardice
13 Effectiveness of MGs
14 Soldier Deployment
15 Soldier Visibility
16 Bazookas and Schrecks vs Infantry
17 AI Cheating
18 Enemy Knowledge
19 Moving a Vehicle in Reverse
20 Mortar Indirect Fire
21 What's different in the retail version
1 Game Philosophy (why we don't make you micromanage)
We wanted this game to be more of a simulation than a board game. As such, we did not want to burden the player with having to command each and every soldier and tell that soldier what ammo to use, what to shoot at, and where to take cover. Playing the game that way would take hours and completely ruin the experience of the game. While that may be exactly what some players want in a game, it is not the game that we wanted to create.
2 Why there is no editor, DYO
A map editor would be impracticle. We have to preprocess the map for LOS and even running on a 9500, this takes special code and 40 or more minutes. And then we have to see how the map data turned out and tweak it for the correct behavior.
DYO is a definite possibility for CC2. Being able to select teams to put in play, victory locations and values, setup areas, etc is certainly do-able and adds a lot to the life of the game (posting your favorite battles). We could not do it easily in CC due to precalculated setup locations. If we can make the setup locations dynamic in CC2, we can handle DYO.
3 Game Scale
Scale is dependant on screen resolution, thus, it is about 15 meters per inch at 800 x 600 assuming 13 horizontal inches of viewing area. The official scale is 8 meters per 40 pixels.
Soldiers are represented at 2x scale and vehicles are at 1.5x scale so that these are more visible.
4 Monitor Information
Team Monitor:
Scroll list on the far left bottom. Sorted by the team type with the exception that the Company/Platoon Commander Teams are always at the top.
Left side: Contains Team Icon (pict of soldiers/vehicle), and Team Quality (a set of bars ranging from none (Conscript) to 4 (Elite).
Top Center: Contains the Team Type Name (general description). Background color represents the team's cohesion, or ability to fight. As the color drops from Green to Red or Black, it represents that the team is taking losses.
Bottom Center: Contains the Team's Strategic Order. If this order is Green, it is an order you gave. If it is white, the team is doing it's own thing. If it is Red, the team is disobeying you.
Right side: Enemy Threat Compass. It represents the direction that team sees the enemy. If the center dot is red, then that team is alse being shot at.
Soldier Monitor:
Top Left: Same as the Team Monitor Left Side.
Top Center: Team Name (more detailed than the Team Type Name) and the Team Orders. Both of these are similar to the Top Center and Bottom Center of the Team Monitor respectively.
Top Far Right: Smoke Availability. If not crossed out, this team can place smoke.
Top Right: Firepower Graphs. These are graphed at 10s of meters at the number listed, thus the column with an 8 represents firepower at 80 meters. Green, good firepower, grey line, no firepower. This color will also show up on the Fire Line as you drag it across the screen.
Vehicle Info:
For vehicles, a status panel showing the vehicle condition is displayed. Green indicates functioning; Red, destroyed; and blank, that vehicle does not have that weapon or is immoble.
Soldier List:
This has the soldier name, action, status and weapon info. Most of this is pretty obvious, the key here is to see if the soldier action is Green, Red, or White (see Team Strategic Order above).
Ammo Type consists of the following:
AP - Armor Piercing, includes all solid shots such as bullets.
HE - High Explosive
HT - High Explosive Anti-Tank (HEAT)
SM - Smoke
SP - Special. This can be anything from Canister (check the M5 at close range) to HVAP used in the M4A3 76.
Ammo Count is the number of rounds available of that ammo for that weapon. Note that the rounds are still divided into clips or belts internally, and that the time to reload a clip or belt is taken into account. Watch a soldier with a Garand fire and you will see him fire off 8 rounds, then sit a reload for a while.
Physical State:
Dead and Incap means this soldier will no longer obey orders and will just lay there. Hurt means the soldier was hit but can keep on going.
Mental State:
The soldier can go Berserk, Fanatic, Heroic, Panicked or Routed. This is adjusted as stress builds in relation to the soldier's morale and experience.
Fatigue:
As fatigue increases, the soldier can become winded or later, fatigued. The soldiers desire to follow orders drops with the increase in fatigue, as does the speed at which he moves. >
Message Monitor:
You can click on a message and it will center on the team that issued the message. You can also restrict which priority of message will appear by deselecting the color associated with that message priority.
5 The Orders
You can issue up to 6 orders: Move, Move Fast, Fire, Smoke, Defend, and Hide. Teams that cannot perform the order (e.g. has no smoke grenades) has that affected order dimmed.
Move tells the team to move to that location taking the safest route. The team will scatter to cover if fired at and will use overwatch.
Move Fast has the team take as fast a route as possible and to do so running. This will tire out a team quickly (Fatigue in the Soldier Monitor) as well as make them vulnerable to enemy fire.
Fire (See LOS Line below)
Smoke is the same as Fire, but you are placing a Smoke grenade or shell that will produce hindrance causing smoke that will decay in a minute or two.
Defend order tells the team to seek cover from enemy fire based on the angle of the defend arc you select. Selecting a narrow arc ensures that all the soldiers will take the best cover vs enemy fire from that direction but be vulnerable to fire from other directions. A wider arc will lessen the amount of cover that a team can get vs any one direction. Think of it as hiding behind a tree, and which side of the tree do you want the soldier to be behind. This is the default order for the Americans and Germans, only the Germans interpret Defend as an Ambush command in that they will not fire unless they see an exposed target, are being fired at, or the enemy is very close.
Hide command will keep your guys from firing unless the enemy is within 30 meters. It works best if your team has not been seen.
6 Keyboard shortcuts
The keys z, x, c, v, b, and n can be used in conjuction with a selected to team to issue Move, Move Fast, Fire, Smoke, Defend, and Hide orders respectively without having to click and hold the mouse on the team. This is very useful for placing mortar fire. Select the area on the overview where you want to fire, select a mortar team in the Team Monitor, hit c, then click on the map where to bring in the fire. No scrolling required.
7 LOS line
The LOS line drawn when issuing a Fire order represents whether or not the team has LOS to the target, and the firepower the team can put on that target.
If the LOS line is Red, you have Line of Sight to the target, if it turns Dark Red, you can still shoot there, but you cannot see that location due to visual hindrances along the Line of Sight. If it turns Black, then you cannot shoot there, nor see there. >
Note that LOS is traced from each soldier in a team to each soldier in the enemy team you have the fire line cursor over. Thus if one soldier in the looking team is standing, he can shoot over the wall while the rest of his prone team members cannot. This can also cause a successfully placed fire marker to not cause anyone to fire as everyone that can fire is no longer in LOS. Click and drag on the fire marker to recheck your team's LOS.
If you are not pointed over an enemy team, but over open ground, LOS is traced to the highest terrain object within the vicinity. Thus, you can trace over a wall to a building, but cannot trace over a wall to open ground.
The color of the dot at the end of the fire line represents the amount of firepower this team can deliver at that range. If the fire cursor is over open ground or an enemy soldier, it uses the Vs Infantry rating. If it is over a vehicle, it will use the Vs Armor rating to determine what color to display.
8 How/why the game ends
The game ends when an internal timer set for between 30 and 120 seconds goes off.
This timer is started when either both side's Force Morale is in the Yellow, or one side's Force Morale is in the Red. Once started, the Force Morale bars begin to flash. This represents that one or both sides will to fight has been lost and the troops will start to pull back. In the case of one side going into the Red, that side will then start to rout.
The winner is determined as follows:
If one side's Force Morale is Red, the other side won, regardless of score. This represents routing the enemy from field of battle. If the other side is still in the Green, it will be a Major Victory or better, else it will be a Minor Victory or better for the other side. If both side's Force Morale is Yellow or both are Red, then points are used to determine the victor. Victory location points vary from location to location. The bigger the font used in the victory location name, the more it is worth.
This method allows a player to develop a strategy of either defending
/ taking victory locations or killing the enemy. We do not force you to do both.
There is also a game end due to inaction. If no shot has been fired or no order issued by the player for the past 2 minutes of game time, the battle will be declared ended due to inaction. If you are playing as the Germans and are attempting to set up an ambush in the rear, and the Americans are advancing very slowly, you can just re-issue a Defend or Hide order every minute to keep the game from ending. But believe me, in the campaign game, you want the game to end as soon as possible if playing the Germans.
9 Why there's no pause
Pausing the game and issuing orders would ruin it. We actually did useability tests on live subjects, with a pause feature in the game. We saw the players issue a lot of orders, let the game run for maybe 10 seconds, pause, issue more orders, etc. This destroyed the whole feel of the game. Its also totally unworkable for 2-player network games. If you feel the game is moving too quickly, try slowing it down from the options menu.
10 Second stories and Elevations
Elevations / Hills were things we would have liked to put in the game but the extra graphics needed to represent them were not possible for us to put in. They will be in for CC2. Multi-story buildings will possibly never be put in due to the problems with the interface (Move Upstairs, Move Downstairs) and viewing multiple levels (View First Floor, View Basement, View Roof, etc) causes. Also, imagine trying to tell where enemy fire came from, directing fire vs different levels, determining which buildings have how many levels, etc.
11 Command Radius/Troops not obeying
There is no command radius but the distance from a leader will affect how well the team obeys its orders. Given everything else is the same, a poor quality team moving with your company commander's team is more likely to carry out it's order than it would if the only leader was on the other side of the map.
If that team you ordered to move got shot at, its possible that they decided against moving. Or they started to move, got shot at, and decided to run back to cover. A lot depends on their experience level and their surrounding terrain. In either case, the team will constantly re-evaluate their ability to make that move. If they decide its safe, or they decide to obey the order, they'll try again.
12 Heroes, Bravery, and Cowardice
Heroic soldiers don't become Audie Murphy, and they are likely to "recover" from it. Unlike ASL, when a soldier goes heroic, he does not gain special abilities. He's just more likely to stay functional in the heat of battle.
Bravery points are awarded for when a soldier goes heroic, fanatic, or berserk. The soldier also gets bravery points for taking a victory location.
Cowardice points are awarded when a soldier routs or becomes panicked.
Leaders get bravery and cowardice points for winning or losing the battle (the bigger the win/loss, the more the points) as they are responsible for the outcome. Note that you are represented on the battlefield as the 2nd Lt. that commands the first team listed in the Team Monitor. In the campaign game, you get to name that soldier.
13 Effectiveness of MGs
An M4 cannot be killed by an MG but can be killed by the Panzerfaust that the loader in the MG team carries. Rule #1 of survival with American armor: Never move closer than 60 meters to a potential german location. Even 120 meters is too close if there is a Panzerscreck team near.
As for the MG killing halftracks, this is why the M3 HT series was known as "Purple Heart Boxes". With only 6mm at a 20o slope of frontal chasis armor (10mm effective) and 12mm at 20o slope frontal upper structure (17mm effective), the German MG42 could easily penetrate it at close range (less than 200m or so). While the MG won't necessarily destroy the M3 HT at this range, it can injure or kill the occupants resulting in a soft kill.
Also watch out for the MG42 when you are in a wooden building at very close range (50 meters or so). That gun (as well as the US 50cal) can rip right through the walls making it much safer to be outside the building in some nice big shellhole or foxhole.
One of the strategies a tester came up with is to deploy a couple of MG42 teams in the interior of a large stone building so they could not be shot at by the Americans until they entered the building, at which time the MG42s opened up, shredding the interior wooden walls between them and the Americans as well as the Americans themselves.
14 Soldier Deployment
The amount the team bunches up depends on their experience and the amount of cover in the area they are trying to deploy in. Inexperienced teams will tend to bunch up more and even experienced teams will bunch up if the cover within their "deploy zone" is limited to a small location. The deploy zone consists of a rectangle about 8 meters wide and 24 meters long, perpendicular to the axis of advance.
15 Soldier Visibility
If you are having trouble seeing your soldiers, try using the Team Monitor to select the team. Double clicking on a team in the Team Monitor will center the map on that team and highlight it.
Enemy soldiers may be hard to see just because they are shadowed. If a team has just been spotted but no one got a good look at the team, they will initially be displayed as shadows to let you know something is there even if you don't know what it is. As more information comes available, they will change into visible soldiers.
16 Bazookas and Schrecks vs Infantry
Bazookas and Panzerschrecks were used quite often vs infantry in buildings / behind walls. The Germans even referred to the Bazooka as a shoulder 75. The game will limit usage of these weapons in this fashion if there are tank assets that have yet to be dealt with.
17 AI Cheating
The AI does not cheat. We put a lot of effort into making sure that the AI is playing with the same rules as the player. Move Out does NOT equate to AI control. The AI performs many other actions to try to coordinate attacks, provide suppression fire, etc. Move Out causes your troops to move forward to engage the enemy, and then they will keep on trying to advance.
18 Enemy Knowledge
Selecting an Enemy Team will display varios information about that enemy team. The amount is dependant on how well spotted the enemy team is. Knowledge accumulates about an enemy team as time progresses and the enemy is doing things in LOS of a friendly team. It is also affected by proximity to the enemy and the cover the enemy is in. Thus, a just spotted enemy team in a building will only give you what type of team it is and number of soldiers. Only if you get close, or spend a long time in LOS of this team will this knowledge increase. If this is not the case for you, make sure the enemy intelligence option is off in the Custom preferences.
19 Moving a Vehicle in Reverse
Vehicles will use reverse, but only if they are given a Move command, not a Move Fast command. The move also has to be of a short range. Using Move Fast will cause the tank to get there as fast as possible, not a safe as possible.
20 Mortar Indirect Fire
The indirect fire model for mortars was simplified so the player would not have to be concerned with spotting rounds, etc. They are handled abstractly. The rate of fire of a mortar is about 1 round / 6 seconds, but note that the delay could be much greater if the mortar team repositioned themselves due to incoming fire, the mortar firer was suppressed by enemy fire, or the mortar jammed (fired a dud round).
21 What's different in the retail version
The sounds file used in the demo is a subset of the sounds in the game. Two sounds, the Berserk scream, and the out of armor sounds were left out due to their size.
Also, the Save Replay, Campaign Game, and all the other Maneuvers are enabled in the retail version as well as the Help system which is really immense. | General Tips | Updated 02 Jul | Game Settings: Turn off trees, and if things get really messy, turn off KIA soldiers too. But KIA soldiers do offer important visual cues as to which of your squads are in serious trouble, as well as which enemy squads are no longer a threat. Unfortunately the game won’t save these settings, so you’ll need to do this before each battle.
Detail Screens: After each battle, carefully check the killed and wounded lists of both sides; you’ll learn a lot. Pay particular attention to what kind of enemy units scored kills in the battle: machine guns, mortars, tanks, riflemen. If too many men are getting killed by machine guns, for example, adjust your tactics accordingly.
Mortars: Target your mortars from the zoomed-out view. Keeping your mortars in action throughout the battle is critical for success, but targeting mortars from the normal battle view is far too slow. You should also pop back into the overhead view when things slow down; you may catch an enemy tank in your LOS on the big screen which you didn’t see in the zoomed-in view.
The Americans
You must attack, but cautiously. Identify enemy positions, and then pound them with mortar fire. Mask your advance with smoke grenades, and follow tanks into battle if you are sure there are no Panzerschrecks in the area. It’s a gamble, but to help yourself out, you can use the zoomed-out view to identify the enemy units in the hedgerow opposite you, looking for AT teams.
When positioning your men in the setup phase, also be planning which part of the map you’re going to attack. It usually pays to overload one flank, simply because you will take no fire from off the edges of the map. Sometimes you’ll take victory hexes well behind the first line of defense, earning additional honors for your leader. This flanking action helps take the central buildings, since you can now fire at them from two sides or even three, if you get around the enemy rear.
Position most of your bazooka teams in the center of the map, a bit to the rear, where they can quickly rush to wherever the enemy armor might be. Use your own armor with care, but don’t be too cautious. You have far more replacement armor available than the Germans, and a failure to use these powerful resources will make your struggle only that much more difficult. Tanks are particularly effective against enemies in pillboxes and stone buildings, as are bazookas. Don’t move tanks closer than sixty or seventy meters from German infantry positions, because within that range they’ll use their Panzerfausts on you. Stand twice as far from Panzerschrecks. According to Atomic, each inch on the screen is 15 meters, at 800x600 resolution. To get your tank to go in reverse, issue a Move command just a little behind the tank.
Use your mortars against Germans hidden behind hedges, firing just a little behind the lines. If all your mortars run out of ammunition, have them fire smoke to protect your advances. To make a mortar stop firing, issue a Hide command. Don’t waste ammo firing at positions the enemy has left.
Many times, particularly in the bocage country, you will find yourself in a firefight with German teams in the opposite hedges. In these situations, you are often better off simply slugging it out from behind the hedges rather than trying to send some squads to crawl forward and get shot at. If you can, infiltrate recon and BAR teams through the adjacent field.
Use the edge of the map to your advantage. You will win more battles by overloading one side and flanking the enemy than with head-on assaults. The very first map is a case in point. By putting most of your infantry squads on the lower right side, you can take the large wooden building with a quick, well-screened rush from the woods to the building.
The Germans
Playing the Germans might seem less interesting at first, since you basically just sit back and wait for the computer to attack you. But there is a considerable tactical challenge here, and defeating overwhelming forces with only a handful of well-placed men is quite rewarding.
Positioning your men properly is the most important thing you can do as the defending commander. The default positions the computer gives you are not always the best; take the time to fine-tune your defenses, and you will be rewarded. Be sure the men actually get into the little foxholes, and are not standing just outside them. The more often you get to re-fight a battle, the better idea you’ll have of which direction the enemy is coming from. They’ll often come with the same forces from the same directions.
It is not necessary to place your soldiers on the very first line of defense. Often it is better to skip a hedgerow or two, forcing the Americans to come a longer distance to you. This means their units will come at you more piecemeal, and you won’t be hit by their overwhelming firepower the minute the battle begins. Snipers are not very useful in firefights, but are useful for stretching thin lines even further. They are not effective placed way in front of your troops; at best they may get one shot off before being killed.
Machine guns are the key to your defense; they can rack up kill totals of fifteen or twenty men in one battle. The enemy will try to suppress your troops with rifle and machine gun fire. Use your own rifle squads or a second machine gun to in turn suppress the Americans firing at you, then turn a machine gun on the men running forward. They’ll stop and dive for cover — then you call in the mortars. This is a pretty effective way of breaking up an attack. Also use your personal leader to man the machine gun in the most exposed position; even if he is knocked out, he’ll be available for the next battle, unlike your other veteran leaders.
As soon as the battle begins, switch to the zoomed-out view and prepare to target your mortars. Fire at the first American infantry that shows up in your view. You won’t normally kill a lot of enemies with mortar fire, but by breaking up that initial attack, you can create panic in the assault forces. Finally, when your mortar men run out of ammunition, you can run them up toward the front. Don’t get them into a firefight — you don’t want to lose a veteran mortar crew that way. But you can have them offer some covering fire for a rally point behind the lines.
Keep your armor well away from the front lines. Use it as a reserve, or position tanks where their cannons and machine guns can fire long distances with impunity. Good places include roads, where a tank’s armored machine gun can prevent any enemy from crossing the road or coming up it. Another good place is behind buildings or around bends; any enemy infantry suddenly rounding this corner will take a beating, and the American bazookas are not usually leading the advances into the key buildings.
Position your AT guns (if any) in a manner similar to tanks, where they have long commanding lanes of fire and are distant enough to avoid bazooka attacks. A well-placed bazooka can wreak even more havoc on an AT gun than it can on a tank, and infantry teams are adept at picking off AT gun crews.
Keep your Panzerschrecks in reserve — don’t let them get pinned down by enemy rifle fire. This means a few yards back of the hedgerows, or toward the backs of buildings. Depending on how many AT teams you have, spread them out all along your lines, and have them go after tanks as soon as they’re spotted. Rush in your own German tanks to fight the American armor as well, but hold off; often one American tank will come through one sector, only to two or three others break through somewhere else.
Don’t waste AT team ammunition on enemy infantry formations, except in absolute desperation (which happens quite often anyway), or when you’re sure there are no enemy tanks. If you run out of AT teams and enemy armor is attacking in force, it’s time to withdraw.
Which leads us to another key strategic element for the Germans: when to pull back. You may be able to hold off enemy attacks on the same screen two or three times, but by around the third or fourth battle, you may have to consider withdrawal. Cut your losses and pull back to where you can get reinforcements. This will do you more good in the long run, particularly in campaign mode. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | You are here: Home : PC : Close Combat |  | | dotCheats.com ©2004 Two Mad Mice - Email us with your feedback | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 44 platforms | | | 9,718 games | | | 43,845 cheats | | | Last update 31 Oct | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
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