Battle of the Bulge mod for Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts

Early this morning, following heavy artillery bombardment, a large German force has penetrated US positions in the Ardennes Forest in Belgium and Luxemburg!! Allied High command is hastily rushing reinforcements to the area, to counter the surprise attack and prevent them from crossing Meuse river.

Can you stop the elite of the German panzer divisions, or vice-versa, lead them to victory? Find out.

The new version is delivered as installer version but wont change anything to your original CoH-Files.
Note: This Mod requires the orignal Company of Heroes (vanilla) and/or ToV and will not run on Opposing Fronts only.

Battle of the Bulge is a Mod focusing exclusively on the battles in Belgium and Luxemburg, December 44 - January 45.

It converts the Summer/Normandy Scenario of CoH into a winter scenario along with winter Maps, Skins and units.

Lots of emphasize has been laid on the look of the Mod. All skins are as accurate as possible, from uniform detail to unit marking.
EACH soldier in a squad has individual uniforms and equipment.
Occlusion effects, team colors, even territory borders and selection markers have been removed for visual authenticity.

Furthermore, the Mod's aim is to combine CoH game play with more realism and it tries to reflect the battle properly.
Therefore Panzerelite and Brits have been taken off the game ( Brits will show up as doctrine reinforcements, though ).
You can call in battlegroups which have originally taken part, like the 14th Cavalry Group or the infamous Kampfgruppe Peiper.
Tons of changes have also been done to unit stats, gameplay and doctrines. The units you can produce depend on the doctrine you choose.

The overall game changes are too many to mention, here are some extracts:

• More than 35 completely new winter maps, mostly historical battlegrounds, designed from photos and maps.
• some maps even have dynamical weather, which influences units sight range, battle performance and movement speed.
• Tons of new unit models ( Sturmtiger, Jagdpanzer IV, Panzerwerfer 42, M21 Mortar Halftrack, M36, Sherman Jumbo, Sherman E8, Stug III, FW 190, Me 109 , M5 AT Gun, Pak40, leFH18, M1a1 Pack Howitzer and many, many more)
• realistical penetration values of Guns and armour, historical movement and turret rotation speed and loading times
• smoke screens and HE ammo for almost all tanks.
• New veterancy system: All units gain veterancy by fighting, each vet step increases accuracy, sight range, shortens reload times, decreases inflicted suppression of a unit.
• special vet abilities
• dynamical sight range - moving units wont see as far as standing units, cause they have to pay attention to their movement
• new upgrade system, units can only upgrade when near to HQ or other special buildings.
• removed unrealistic features, like building bunkers in 30 seconds
• vehicles give cover for soldiers, tankwrecks cant be crushed and have to be demolished
• barb wire may damage tires and tracks of vehicles
• limits on almost every support/armored unit
• heavy Infantry squads already have a bar / lMG when built.
• smoke Grenades for Infantry Squads to conceal movement.
• line Engineer Squads cannot repair tanks or vehicles anymore.
• Special vehicle repair crews or repair stations have to be used to repair them.
• and so on and so on - but maybe test it out yourself.

The in-game doctrines have been changed to reflect historical units, read more below:

Airborne Division:
becomes the defensive tree. You have a lot of powerful infantry like airborne infantry, AT-teams and heavy mortars, but only little choice of heavy artillery or vehicles force you to really use airborn tactics - dig in and wait for the Cavalry.
Doctrines will even strenghten your infantries combat value, until you get full air support in the late game.
( note: during the real battle, both US Airborn Divisions were transferred to the battlefield by trucks -
so you wont be able to paradrop in this mod, either. )

Infantry Division:
still well rounded, with good defensive and artillery units, combat engineers and fair armor.
Doctrines give you more production bonuses and send armored combat groups to the battlefield.

Armoured Division:
Like in vCoH, this is the most powerful, but slowest to build Division... but mobile artillery like Priest, and many tanks like the Sherman Easy Eight, Jumbo Sherman and the M36 let you gain the initiative.You will even receive tank reinforcements by the British.

7th Army
Consist of Volksgrenadier and heavy Fallschirmjager Infantry, light artillery and heavy antitank equipment, Mobile units are mostly antitank...the doctrine gives you enhanced defensive options like trenches as well as some armored support.

5th Panzerarmy
The most rounded tree... good Infantry units like Panzergrenadiere, some early ATs, mobile Artillery and fair battle tanks as well as doctrinal refitting options and powerful offmap units like Jagdpanther and Sturmtiger

6th SS Panzerarmy
Focussing on heavy mobile Firepower... mobile artillery units like Hummel and Maultier and the heaviest tank in the game, the Kingtiger, give you full force in your advance.Fanatism boosts your troops fighting spirit and the hidden "Operation Griffon" Teams spread sabotage and confusion behind enemy lines.

One of the the biggest changes is a general elimination of the Point Capture system. Now we use ATC, by AGameAnx which is a script that checks the No. of units in territory, and the faction with most units inside captures the territory after some time. Observation posts have been eliminated, too.
for more info about ATC, -> go here <-

The Credits:

Coding: Halftrack, Panzer Jager, TornadoX
Coding Aid: (with many thanks) Copernicus, Xalibur, Dartbourne, cf_nz
ATC: AGameAnX
AI Coding Help: Sweeten 2142
Suurender Script: Wilco, Muad`Dib, Berse
Maps: Lord van Dalen, Tarlak501, Henry666, Nobody ,Empa,$-texas_$, Regis91, Halftrack, tskross
Skins: Halftack, tomarces, tskross, Mr.Scruff, Lord van Dalen
Skins used: Sig21Surgeon, Georider, GniGruH, Spaulick, Slayerknecht, Daniel_Pufi
UI GFX: Doombringer, Halftrack
SoundFX: LoranKorn,GameRisin, Xalibur
3D Models : Halftrack, Skyward, Inukshuk, Mr.Scruff,
Animation and OE work: Tankdestroyer, DarkbladeCR, BurtondrummerNY, serg_codmod
CoH Community models: DMz, Beefy^, BurroDiablo, Eliwood, Tiger 205, Hartkeks, Slayerknecht, Ellipirelli, LoranKorn, AGameAnx, Aidas2 , Gurdy, Inukshuk, Adiya.
Special Thanks to Eastern Front Mod.

"Box Art": Gareth Hector

Translators: Dartbourne, Ernestin1, Ursidey ,Hibana_Sister, Saukopf, Hunter_ITA, Bobby_Wan_Kenoby, Pitchy8, Mmaruda, tskross, Volskinator

Betatesters for 4.0:

Ashkabd, Bas, Blitzkriegrekrut,Celution,Hibana-sister, Justin Slater,Jovan, olecsandr, RAlexander,
Reich, SniperPro! ,Volskinator, Walderschmidt

and all hail goes to the many,many betatesters of the former versions, players, feedbackers,all the helpful people in the CoH modding forums, which are unfortunately too many to mention

*BotB will neither affect your ability to play regular CoH, CoH:OF or CoH:ToV, nor will it affect your ability to play other CoH mods.