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Playing my first campaign/game ww2 and made mistake number one by starting as British at war start in 9/39.

have played all battles in France (first two I think) and rest in Nth Africa. Have endured 2 years of tanks made of tin with air pistol for main armament but now its mid 43 and have more recently acquired sherman III and firefly is just round the corner. Things are looking up except for the following game mechanic problems. Can anyone help? Have checked manual with no result.

1 How do you move the turret but not the tank?? I should know this.

2.How many mines does the AI lay? I have had flail matildas clearing mines in the same hex for twenty turns and there are still more at game end!!Are they being re-laid? Is the AI laying 50 per hex. what gives? Last assault I had 16 non core matilda flails working flat out all game when not suppressed each had its own churchil IVN playing nurse maid. NEVER made it through the Italian field however. Luckily they hadnt mined the edge square or I would have lost.Figure I cleared well over two hundred mines and had mines still three deep in front in some areas.

3. have just started first amphib assault and decided to buy some non core paratroops and dc3's as well. figured as it was an assault the beach would be mined so bought 8 flail tanks. Figured if I put them all in the same beach hex and cleared 20 mines a turn I might break through on a one hex front by turn fifteen or so. Bought lots of NGS and my first ever typhoons and prepared to paste the italians in Syracuse.
problem one - none of the non core force has been loaded into landing craft and no apparent way of doing so. what gives? tried buying extra LC as well but this didnt work. This leaves me on the beach facing dug in enemy with a few engineers and infantry prodding with bayonets being machine gunned. not a good look. tried computer and human setup made no difference.
tasked my dc 3's okay all zoomed into drop zone dropped nothing and peeled away. paratroops
hadnt been loaded and no apparent way of doing so?? help needed here please.

4. How can i get my planes to attack enemy troops rather than the same bunker ten times or even worse a sixty degree detour to attack my tanks.

that should do for starters. GOLD, JUNO and SWORD are going to be a bath if I dont sort these out.

Other than this my experience is positive but I will never forget ambushing a german mk3 at 100 metres in the rear with 3 british cruiser mk 4. over 2 turns I hit him about 12 times to no effect whilst he killed all 3 of mine. great gun that two pounder.

I hope I can help you on some things :

1. Use the 't' key or the 'Select Target' button. That way the hull will stay in it's direction and only the turret turns. For repeative fire use 'f' or the 'Fire' button. Or you can use the 'c' button to select one weapon only.

2. The AI to my experience lays a complete girdle from top to down (with upper/lower most hexes clear). Haven't counted but it 'feels' like it lays 10 most of the time with some 20 or 30 minefields. Try to focus on one square to make a breach for your units. On campaign your core units will gain experience thus be capable of clearing minefields faster.

3. In deploy mode you must load the units you wish to drop into the aircrafts. Use the 'l' key or 'load unit' button. It works the same as with transports. To load several units into one transport/aircraft first select the unit and then the transport.
Barges - to load units into barges I heard one MUST select barge first and then the unit.
4. Aircrafts select their targets by themselve - so they will shoot at a target they identify... so try to have their target area far away from your own troops. Try to experiment with the enter/exit directions for the planes to get good attack results..

For the MK 4 vs PzKw III - the tank probably returned fire - thus turned it's turret to your tanks. So you didn't hit it's rear side but front turret. Esp if it was entrenched/in cover it is very hard to hit the tanks hull. If you had one tank at both sides the chance to hit the weak, rear turret would be quit good.

Hope that helps
murx

tried the normal load "L" function but none of the non core units were visible on the water to load with the planes or lcraft. ie nothing there to click on.

When going up against mine fields, consider using artillery. A simple test to see the effectivness can be set up. Play both sides in a battle. Have one side lay the mines the other buy artillery, bombard the mine fields and watch the results. You can do it with different caliber guns to make it more interesting. The results I've seen leads me to believe you can't depend on artillery alone to cut through mines no matter how thin they are laid. Artillery when used with engineer tanks and engineers helps not only in softening up the mine field but also in creating smoke for good cover and supression of the covering troops. Of course the real problem always lays in finding the mine field safely and fully so you can use the artillery to advantage.

17pdr you have done far better than I have with the British. Congratulations.

For invasions the computer automaticly buys landing craft for all units and loads them.

The first thing I do during setup is unload all LCs (they will not drown) and seperate the core units from the non-core. LC are attached to the formations so the LC for the A0 is usually A60 or A61.

Once you have done this you can reload your troops in a much more efficent manner. The paratroops are loaded into the DC3s and put in a corner and assigned their drop zone and turn. Now this leaved you with extra LCs (or ducks)that you can use to spread out your troops. My first wave consist of all engineering units, then recon units then core infantry units, then tanks, with support units bringing up the rear.

Mine field vary in depth I have had engineers, a full company doubled up, sit on mine field and remove mines for the entire game and not clear a single path. Another times one engineer clear a path in a couple of turns. You can use large guns, 14"-16", to clear some mines before your engineers hit the beach.

Oh yea those RAF guys never listen the the 'Tommies' it's as bad as the AAF and GI's.

Hope this helps.

"What say we give those eyeties the old what for."