pawter

Well it doen't seem anyone has any solutions to offer. Instead of testing a solo QB as intended, I recovered some game files from my recycle bin where H2HH had moved them and closely watched the turn where the troops mounted the truck. There was no 'overstack' involved; exactly 20 were told to embark. As per experience with infantry the greyed-out drifting icons are caused by two individual troopers who took it into their heads to dash off randomly rather than sequentially climb on board. The resultant drifting icons are in consequence a form of weighted mean of the positions of all the troops in each particular squad. I've seen this bug before for footsloggers, it is just this time where transport is involved it destroys the useability of both the troops and the vehicle.

c3k OK I'll ask my opponent. It's the first time I've played him so we'll just have to see how trusting he is. I am very interested in the overload explanation. I normally just tell teams to get on transport and rely on the AI to tell me if it could accomodate the intended troops or not. I think I did overload the truck and in the next turn the number of green circles was significantly understated. I am going to test this with a hotseat setup.

I noted this abnormal behaviour a couple of times in the past but was only playing against the machine so it didn't bother me as I could abort the game if it really mattered. But now I'm stuck with it in a real game against a human opponent so I'd like to learn a solution, if there is one. I am US in a CMBN QB in which I bought a 2.5 ton truck. Soon after starting I told platoon of HMGs and their officer to get in. Next turn a couple of the floating icons were greyed out and starting to drift off from over the truck to nowhere in particular. This drifting greyed icon behaviour I've seen on other aberant occasions relating to mostly intact infantry squads, but doesn't interest me here. Problem is that in the next turn to try remediate the situation I told everybody to dismount but the two problem teams did not, then I told everyone (including the driver) to get back in; same problem but now the truck continues to be shown as unoccupied and is incapable of movement. After trying a few iterations of this with minor changes I've sent the 2 sound HMGs at a run forward to try catch up with the advance. Now I've tried telling the driver, left behind, to fire upon the action point occupied by the abandoned truck to try coerce the 2 teams whose greyed icons have drifted off to a stable 150meters away, but whose pictured troop bodies are shown sitting immovably in the back of the truck. My goal was to get them all off the truck so I can reman it with the driver and move it forward as it is my only ammo resupply. Eventually he threw a grenade which killed a couple of machine gunners but at least forced that team to disembark, but the officer team being unharmed have sat tight. Now, a couple of turns later, the HMG are not panicked, their (still greyed icon has returned) to float over them but there are no orders shown available for them to move, shoot or do anything including retreat. Any thoughts anybody?

"... Stuart tanks, with three .30 cal. machine guns and 37mm cannon with an anti-personnel buck-shot load, were more feared by the infantry than the Sherman's." http://www.3ad.com/history/wwll/memoirs.pages/pierro.htm

Arm505 your profile doesn't list an email address so I'll have to add to the congestion of the forum to reply directly to your question. No my Intel Integrated Graphics doesn't cause blocks over text in menus etc. However all my text is blurred and unclear but readable if you squint your left eye. The answers to my original questions 1 & 2 match my later experience however NOT question 3. When ordering a unit to target a building when it is not occupied by a spotted enemy getting the target line to attach is impossible 95% of the time. Instead the line attaches to the nearest "action spot" and the rounds visibly fall there, short of the building. The walls of buildings block LOS to the "action spot" within it. I hope this behaviour is due to my suboptimal graphics chip as it is as frustrating as hell and I'm sure there would already be a torrent of complaints from players. I am due to get another desktop soon so hopefully this won't continue to spoil the game.

When occupied by a forward observer or other spotter there is no reduction in time till fall of shells (at least when the fire is first requested). Is the improvement in accuracy?

I've just started to try the demo on my laptop which is a few years old and unfortunately also has an Intel Intergrated Graphics chip. I'm also unfamiliar with CMSF and have moved more or less straight from CMAK to CMBN. I'm trying to understand whether the behaviour of tanks I'm observing is due to the game system or to the incapacity of my machine (dual core 2.2Ghz, 2GB RAM). 1) it appears that when I issue movement orders they must 'snap' onto some underlying grid so that unlike CMAK where I can move vehicles (minimum space between them being allowed) to the exact position I wish, with CMBN they move approximately to half a dozen metres of it. 2) ditto for area targeting. Unless targeting an identified enemy unit it isn't possible to target an exact point of ground; when the target line is assigned it appears to 'snap' onto the nearest node of the underlying grid which is usually about 10 metres away. 3) it is often (95% ocurrence) imposible to order a tank to target a vertical surface eg. an unoccupied building or a hedge or wall. If these behaviours are an artifact of the system I'm sure they would've been discussed before, but as I've failed to find a thread I'm hopeful it is just my inadequate machine.

So it would appear BFC have continued their practice of poor quality control over the grammar/spelling and integrity of the briefings for missions and worse; the logical coherence of the scenarios released with the game. Lack of such rudimentary version control over the easily visible aspects of the released product is so disappointing that I am surprised Battlefront haven't improved it. I write this opinion because I have a very high regard for the creators of the CM series which belies the sloppy hidden-from-view code implied by these obvious failings. They are so responsive to the views expressed in this forum which they have co-operatively forged it into a powerful tool for harvesting feedback to assist game development and guide bug fixes, that I can only assume an insufficient number of complaints bemoaning this failing.

I've had a few goes at the Busting The Bockage scenario which promises a truck at D+20 minutes ... but it doesn't arrive. Can anyone tell me what I'm missing?

LJFHutch: no I've not played CMx2. If it resolves this issue I will be pleased (though I infer from the other posts to this thread, insofar as they occasionally address the issue, it doesn't). Your description of your experience of the "73 Easting" battle so closely matches the recorded results speaks directly to the query I pose. I am glad to read it: I may be wrong. I hope so. I assume/hope that the creators of CM did a lot of reading of real life AARs and battalion histories etc. A lot more than I have ever done. And are not merely clever computer dweebs who have sucked us all into their virtual simulation, no more representative of the actual event than a John Wayne movie.

OK OK I am maybe not the single best player I’ve ever met. Merely competent which point is what I tried to start from: I’ve learned how to use this system effectively. Consistently people are posting comments regarding the cause I posit ie: perfect advanced map knowledge (maybe this is not the cause; several posts have suggested others). Repeatedly they fail to address the ahistoric (sp?) way it manifests itself. THE OVERCONCENTRATION OF ATTACKING FORCE. This is not a discretionary judgment call as regards what maps, aerial recon (you must be joking?), trustworthy & brave local knowledge etc is realistic. It is a black and white assessment of: do the battles produced by this game system accord with recorded history? If not then we are all refining our aptitude for a computer game. As meaningful as Total Annihilation or Doom or whatever young people play on their Iphones or suchlike disintermediated post-post-modern devices theseadays.

After drawing a posting from BFC (see bottom of page 8) I'm content. Steve is at least aware of the problem I posit. I take the technical limitations as he represents them. There is no way to resolve this problem. Pity. It diminishes the realism of a game I still enjoy, yet recognise doesn't mirror reality in this aspect.

On second thoughts Mord, given your Join Date .... do you not harbour fond remembrances of what life was like back in the day; when wild winds whipped through our flowing locks. When CMBO was the antidote to the logical & social impasse that advanced squad leader represented? Do not turn renegade to the pure and worthy impulse of that time. Though I expect this thread is destined to be submerged beneath the hitcount of the usual 10 second tap and send celebrity “Hi I’m here where are you?” I’m wittereing away …. do you still hear me. hello? But now I read that Blackcat curses me the name of troll on the grounds of my former past postings. Well I honestly cannot remember them much from so many years ago. I was probably drunk at the time and usually quite frantically involved with arranging IP assignations when not frigging myself for want of same. Life seemed freer and fine back then, though I’m sure you hoi polloi would fail to understand.

Skcx**** **** a brik Mord: Your post has alerted me that I posted an email to this forum and vice versa. But bugger it; rather than expunge it and leave your post hanging without a start and any other poor benighted souls who've followed this post thusfar in mid-limbo I'll leave it as stands. The sentiments I express, though private at the time of writing, I'm happy to leave stand in public. In this forum or many other, more much more arduous.

WARNING: this will take a long while to read. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=95951 Apart from the purely aesthetic appreciation of those trolls who were unconvinced of my IQ, dog latin or size of my codpiece there were some valid points and opinions expressed I think. I am mulling them over. Though the initial frenzy seemed more related to the title of the thread and the desperate defensiveness of the advocates for CMSF ... surely as a professional advocate you must sense some tactical flaw belies their pleading? I hope this isn't a foretaste of what we can anticipate from CMBN and it's new acolytes. It seems to me it may be a manifestation of the doomsday dogmatism of some millennial cult on the verge of apotheosis rather than the vibrant collegiate contest of searching opinions I fondly remember from back in the days of CMBO yore. Jeez I've not had this much virtual fun since I spewed on my wife's grandmother!