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PatAWilson

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  1. MadMatt said it in his example: a campaign . I would like to start with a core unit and command that unit through the war (or whatever segment of the war is being modeled) in different randomly generated scenarios. Basically I want the kind of campaign that was done with a spreadsheet to be automated.
  2. Somebody has to intern those wayward fliers and escapees .
  3. How about this scenario: In early 1941 Germany forces a peace treaty on France for the return of Alsace and Lorraine. Germany then unilaterally declares peace, claiming that the humiliation of Versailles has been erased. Germany does not declare war on the U.S. with Japan and does not attack Russia. Now Germany has annexed Alsace and Lorraine from France, western Poland, and Czecheslovakia. Germany withdraws troops from all other areas. Would Russia initiate hostilities? Would England continue to fight? Would the U.S. enter the war?
  4. The fact that it burned easily. The Allies didn't appreciate this but the Germans sure did. Thus the nickname "Tommy cooker".
  5. I should have been a bit more specific: it's the cement bunkers with cannons that are causing me pain and suffering. In the last game I did get in tight and kill them with infantry. My problem was that they effectively eliminated my tanks as useful contributors. The problem with a tank gun firing at the slit is that the slit fires back . OK, sounds like I'll have to make sure that I bring along some small calibre cannons for future games. In the meantime I'll try to keep my tanks out of view and move in with the infantry. Onward for the Motherland!
  6. Apologies if this has been goneover before, I did do a search but came up empty handed. Anyway ... How does one take these suckers out? They are certainly vulnerable to infantry, especially engineers if you can get them close enough, but is there a reasonable way to take them out at range? I had one positive experience with a 20mm gun. Any other tips are appreciated.
  7. I have had this feature ruin several games. I say ruin because it seemed to me that my troops were in good shape and on the verge of winning. The worst case happening last night. It was turn 20 out of 45+. It was a very difficult attack, approaching over largely open ground with no armor. I used all of my artillery in a preliminary bombardment and it did a great job. I then performed what was probably my best ever coordinated attack. Using what cover was available I eliminated several Russian squads. I lost 3 depleted squads of my own (out of about 20) but morale was still high. My troops had broken through the Russian perimeter and were over the dangerous open ground and in the town. Resistence seemed light and, with 20 turns left and plenty of ammo at the squad level, it looked like I had a good chance of winning. Game over. I was not happy. The only thing that I can think of is the lack of ammo in support units. My squads had plenty, casualties were not heavy at this point and morale was fine. However, I had pretty much exhausted the ammo supply of all support units (arty spotters, mortars, and heavy MGs) trying to get my troops across the open area. Can somebody confirm the exact reasons for auto ceasefire? Can auto ceasefire be turned off? Thanks.
  8. I think you got the decimal point wrong somewhere in the calculation. I think it works out at 12 from the data above. </font>
  9. Grisha: I am editing this post because I have lost the ability to do basic math. To see the original in all of it's glory see Doodlebugs reply - and then ignore it . [ August 10, 2003, 03:54 PM: Message edited by: PatAWilson ]
  10. For all of its flaws, I got alot of mileage off of that and, before it, Kampfgruppe. I would dearly love to see BattleFront do something on that sort of platoon scale. Ah well, just thinking out loud ...
  11. I just had to post this here. Please note that this is a joke. On the 1st of January, 1998, Bjarne Stroustrup: gave an interview to the IEEE's 'Computer' magazine. Naturally, the editors thought he would be giving a retrospective view of seven years of object-oriented design, using the language he created. By the end of the interview, the interviewer got more than he had bargained for and, subsequently, the editor decided to suppress its contents, 'for the good of the industry' but, as with many of these things, there was a leak. Here is a complete transcript of what was was said, unedited, and unrehearsed, so it isn't as neat as planned interviews. You will find it interesting... __________________________________________________________________ Interviewer: Well, it's been a few years since you changed the world of software design, how does it feel, looking back? Stroustrup: Actually, I was thinking about those days, just before you arrived. Do you remember? Everyone was writing 'C' and, the trouble was, they were pretty damn good at it. Universities got pretty good at teaching it, too. They were turning out competent - I stress the word 'competent' - graduates at a phenomenal rate. That's what caused the problem. Interviewer: Problem? Stroustrup: Yes, problem. Remember when everyone wrote Cobol? Interviewer: Of course, I did too Stroustrup: Well, in the beginning, these guys were like demi-gods. Their salaries were high, and they were treated like royalty. Interviewer: Those were the days, eh? Stroustrup: Right. So what happened? IBM got sick of it, and invested millions in training programmers, till they were a dime a dozen. Interviewer: That's why I got out. Salaries dropped within a year, to the point where being a journalist actually paid better. Stroustrup: Exactly. Well, the same happened with 'C' programmers. Interviewer: I see, but what's the point? Stroustrup: Well, one day, when I was sitting in my office, I thought of this little scheme, which would redress the balance a little. I thought 'I wonder what would happen, if there were a language so complicated, so difficult to learn, that nobody would ever be able to swamp the market with programmers? Actually, I got some of the ideas from X10, you know, X windows. That was such a bitch of a graphics system, that it only just ran on those Sun 3/60 things. They had all the ingredients for what I wanted. A really ridiculously complex syntax, obscure functions, and pseudo-OO structure. Even now, nobody writes raw X-windows code. Motif is the only way to go if you want to retain your sanity. Interviewer: You're kidding...? Stroustrup: Not a bit of it. In fact, there was another problem. Unix was written in 'C', which meant that any 'C' programmer could very easily become a systems programmer. Remember what a mainframe systems programmer used to earn? Interviewer: You bet I do, that's what I used to do. Stroustrup: OK, so this new language had to divorce itself from Unix, by hiding all the system calls that bound the two together so nicely. This would enable guys who only knew about DOS to earn a decent living too. Interviewer: I don't believe you said that... Stroustrup: Well, it's been long enough, now, and I believe most people have figured out for themselves that C++ is a waste of time but, I must say, it's taken them a lot longer than I thought it would. Interviewer: So how exactly did you do it? Stroustrup: It was only supposed to be a joke, I never thought people would take the book seriously. Anyone with half a brain can see that object-oriented programming is counter-intuitive, illogical and inefficient. Interviewer: What? Stroustrup: And as for 're-useable code' - when did you ever hear of a company re-using its code? Interviewer: Well, never, actually, but... Stroustrup: There you are then. Mind you, a few tried, in the early days. There was this Oregon company - Mentor Graphics, I think they were called - really caught a cold trying to rewrite everything in C++ in about '90 or '91. I felt sorry for them really, but I thought people would learn from their mistakes. Interviewer: Obviously, they didn't? Stroustrup: Not in the slightest. Trouble is, most companies hush-up all their major blunders, and explaining a $30 million loss to the shareholders would have been difficult. Give them their due, though, they made it work in the end. Interviewer: They did? Well, there you are then, it proves O-O works. Stroustrup: Well, almost. The executable was so huge, it took five minutes to load, on an HP workstation, with 128MB of RAM. Then it ran like treacle. Actually, I thought this would be a major stumbling-block, and I'd get found out within a week, but nobody cared. Sun and HP were only too glad to sell enormously powerful boxes, with huge resources just to run trivial programs. You know, when we had our first C++ compiler, at AT&T, I compiled 'Hello World', and couldn't believe the size of the executable. 2.1MB Interviewer: What? Well, compilers have come a long way, since then. Stroustrup: They have? Try it on the latest version of g++ - you won't get much change out of half a megabyte. Also, there are several quite recent examples for you, from all over the world. British Telecom had a major disaster on their hands but, luckily, managed to scrap the whole thing and start again. They were luckier than Australian Telecom. Now I hear that Siemens is building a dinosaur, and getting more and more worried as the size of the hardware gets bigger, to accommodate the executables. Isn't multiple inheritance a joy? Interviewer: Yes, but C++ is basically a sound language. Stroustrup: You really believe that, don't you? Have you ever sat down and worked on a C++ project? Here's what happens: First, I've put in enough pitfalls to make sure that only the most trivial projects will work first time. Take operator overloading. At the end of the project, almost every module has it, usually, because guys feel they really should do it, as it was in their training course. The same operator then means something totally different in every module. Try pulling that lot together, when you have a hundred or so modules. And as for data hiding. God, I sometimes can't help laughing when I hear about the problems companies have making their modules talk to each other. I think the word 'synergistic' was specially invented to twist the knife in a project manager's ribs. Interviewer: I have to say, I'm beginning to be quite appalled at all this. You say you did it to raise programmers' salaries? That's obscene. Stroustrup: Not really. Everyone has a choice. I didn't expect the thing to get so much out of hand. Anyway, I basically succeeded. C++ is dying off now, but programmers still get high salaries - especially those poor devils who have to maintain all this crap. You do realise, it's impossible to maintain a large C++ software module if you didn't actually write it? Interviewer: How come? Stroustrup: You are out of touch, aren't you? Remember the typedef? Interviewer: Yes, of course. Stroustrup: Remember how long it took to grope through the header files only to find that 'RoofRaised' was a double precision number? Well, imagine how long it takes to find all the implicit typedefs in all the Classes in a major project. Interviewer: So how do you reckon you've succeeded? Stroustrup: Remember the length of the average-sized 'C' project? About 6 months. Not nearly long enough for a guy with a wife and kids to earn enough to have a decent standard of living. Take the same project, design it in C++ and what do you get? I'll tell you. One to two years. Isn't that great? All that job security, just through one mistake of judgement. And another thing. The universities haven't been teaching 'C' for such a long time, there's now a shortage of decent 'C' programmers. Especially those who know anything about Unix systems programming. How many guys would know what to do with 'malloc', when they've used 'new' all these years - and never bothered to check the return code. In fact, most C++ programmers throw away their return codes. Whatever happened to good ol' '-1'? At least you knew you had an error, without bogging the thing down in all that 'throw' 'catch' 'try' stuff. Interviewer: But, surely, inheritance does save a lot of time? Stroustrup: Does it? Have you ever noticed the difference between a 'C' project plan, and a C++ project plan? The planning stage for a C++ project is three times as long. Precisely to make sure that everything which should be inherited is, and what shouldn't isn't. Then, they still get it wrong. Whoever heard of memory leaks in a 'C' program? Now finding them is a major industry. Most companies give up, and send the product out, knowing it leaks like a sieve, simply to avoid the expense of tracking them all down. Interviewer: There are tools... Stroustrup: Most of which were written in C++. Interviewer: If we publish this, you'll probably get lynched, you do realise that? Stroustrup: I doubt it. As I said, C++ is way past its peak now, and no company in its right mind would start a C++ project without a pilot trial. That should convince them that it's the road to disaster. If not, they deserve all they get. You know, I tried to convince Dennis Ritchie to rewrite Unix in C++. Interviewer: Oh my God. What did he say? Stroustrup: Well, luckily, he has a good sense of humor. I think both he and Brian figured out what I was doing, in the early days, but never let on. He said he'd help me write a C++ version of DOS, if I was interested. Interviewer: Were you? Stroustrup: Actually, I did write DOS in C++, I'll give you a demo when we're through. I have it running on a Sparc 20 in the computer room. Goes like a rocket on 4 CPU's, and only takes up 70 megs of disk. Interviewer: What's it like on a PC? Stroustrup: Now you're kidding. Haven't you ever seen Windows '95? I think of that as my biggest success. Nearly blew the game before I was ready, though. Interviewer: You know, that idea of a Unix++ has really got me thinking. Somewhere out there, there's a guy going to try it. Stroustrup: Not after they read this interview. Interviewer: I'm sorry, but I don't see us being able to publish any of this. Stroustrup: But it's the story of the century. I only want to be remembered by my fellow programmers, for what I've done for them. You know how much a C++ guy can get these days? Interviewer: Last I heard, a really top guy is worth $70 - $80 an hour. Stroustrup: See? And I bet he earns it. Keeping track of all the gotchas I put into C++ is no easy job. And, as I said before, every C++ programmer feels bound by some mystic promise to use every damn element of the language on every project. Actually, that really annoys me sometimes, even though it serves my original purpose. I almost like the language after all this time. Interviewer: You mean you didn't before? Stroustrup: Hated it. It even looks clumsy, don't you agree? But when the book royalties started to come in... well, you get the picture. Interviewer: Just a minute. What about references? You must admit, you improved on 'C' pointers. Stroustrup: Hmm. I've always wondered about that. Originally, I thought I had. Then, one day I was discussing this with a guy who'd written C++ from the beginning. He said he could never remember whether his variables were referenced or dereferenced, so he always used pointers. He said the little asterisk always reminded him. Interviewer: Well, at this point, I usually say 'thank you very much' but it hardly seems adequate. Stroustrup: Promise me you'll publish this. My conscience is getting the better of me these days. Interviewer: I'll let you know, but I think I know what my editor will say. Stroustrup: Who'd believe it anyway? Although, can you send me a copy of that tape? Interviewer: I can do that.
  12. Old or new doesn't matter. Choose the right tool for the right job. C and C++ compile to executable - that means that they run fast. Java compiles to interpreted byte code - it runs slow but is machine independent. Writing a server, use C or C++. Writing a web app, java is probably better. Also, C++ compilers compile ANSI C just fine. IMHO you should learn the basics of C and then go to C++. First, learning all of that OO B.S. isn't going to do squat for you if you don't know how to use a pointer. Second, ANSI C is a subset of C++ so almost everything that you learn will still apply. Knowing C++ without knowing C is like knowing how to use a toilet without knowing how to unzip your pants. My personal opinion about C vs C++: I like C for lower level routines and very simple libraries. I like C++ for higher level code that is more naturally expressed as an object. Contrary to what people say both C "functional style" programming and C++ object oriented are still very useful.
  13. You could shoot at a sound contact by ordering area fire in the direction of the contact. It would probably be a waste of ammo but in this regard it's probably a pretty accurate simulation of shooting at noise.
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