Tarquelne

It's as if what we see during "abstracted" actions isn't an accurate, literal display of the game's reality.

I suspect you're reading too much into the game's lack of facial animations or movement graphics to reflect an individual pixeltruppen's feelings. What we can actually see - rate of fire, say - is ambiguous with regard to the unit's simulated mental status. It's all a big, fuzzy ball of probabilities created by a host of variables that are difficult to determine from our end. You may be looking at one data point of a trend showing that suppression isn't strong enough in the game. But the game's got too much going on under the hood to demonstrate that from the behavior of a single pixeltruppen ... at least one in the ambiguous situation you've outlined. But it's especially fruitless, I think, to ascribe a particular mental attitude to a pixeltruppen and then judge his behavior against that attitude. Of all the fuzzy, hard to determine factors, what any single virtual-trooper "feels" at a given instant is probably the fuzziest and most difficult to determine.

When things go wrong you can have a devil of a time determining whether it was due to skillful enemy action, you messing up, or simple bad luck. Ex: In my current PBEM my Bren gunners have been killed within moments of opening up just about every time, it seems. Most of the way through the scenario I'm still not sure if it was something about the buildings I was using for cover, better-than-I-thought weight of fire from my opponent, or bad luck. Heck, maybe Ive simply had *good* luck in the last few urban scenarios. Or maybe there's something about the game engine I don't understand. Or a misunderstanding with the terrain. Or the weapons. Or good ol' observer bias. And, yeah, there's always the small but confounding possibility of a bug. I think the only thing to do is keep plugging away at the game, remain open to experiment, ask questions occasionally, and vent in exasperation when necessary.

I've been playing a lot of infantry-heavy scenarios set in towns lately. Well ... "a lot" for me. I haven't thought the troops too visible. As for entering buildings: I've sworn off using Hunt: Sneak for buildings that might be occupied (or when I'm, like, sneaking), or Quick if I think the building suppressed. Sneak seems to work as an "assault" mode. IME, at least, 'truppen have been pretty quick with the grenades and guns. Back when I sometimes kept squads together I'd occasionally use Assault. I should try it again sometime.

I find the LOS tool invaluable in trying to suss out the way LOS works in the game, but I've started avoiding using it when attempting to determine LOS between arbitrary points. It's been misleading too often. In its place I'm working on being more aware of all the factors - tiny rises in terrain, long grass, trees, etc - that influence LOS, and just eyeball everything. I'm not sure if I'm actually more successful at judging LOS, but at least I've stopped committing to plans on the basis of the LOS tool and then getting a nasty surprise. I've often thought about how different hedge fighting might be if you didn't know exactly where every bush and break was. I'd love it if there were a mode that tied the camera down. "No further than X from a unit." for example. Or even pseudo-first person, but that might just get frustrating. But I find it far too much bother as self-enforced rule. Especially when it's so much fun to move the camera around during a turn and see everything that's happening.

I agree. I played a PBEM quite awhile ago with a lot of foliage and trees, and finally came to the conclusion that you just can't count on foliage blocking LOS. If you can't see through it the units in the game can't either ... except sometimes they do. That strikes me as more or less realistic. CMBN is mostly WYSIWYG. Figuring out the areas that aren't can get frustrating. Come to think of it, most of those problems seem to be with LOS. I try to take the LOS-tool results with a grain of salt. Foliage of any sort - both ground cover and tree leaves - is especially problematical. If you've got a blue LOS through leaves don't count on units actually spotting anything. But they might. If you've got no LOS to an area with tall-ish grass and the LOS otherwise seems clear ... you're probably out of luck spotting Slow infantry, and any infantry is going to disappear quickly. But don't count on an enemy tank sitting there being unable to hit you. IMO this is something you just have to pick up with experience, playing the game and, most likely, getting bitten in the ass over and over by LOS surprises. I believe a lot of player frustrations, btw, are rooted in trying to micro-manage the units more than the game actually allows. (90% of the rest of the frustration would be trying to figure out *why* your squad was just gunned down to the last man. Poor morale? Bad leadership? High-skill on the part of the enemy pixeltruppen? Does that building not give as much cover as you thought? Or was the order you just gave very, very stupid regardless of the exact circumstances?)

At some point BFC will want to shed some of its CM fanbase*. They'll ask us to vote for one of scenario replay, extra TCP/IP features including full replay for both WEGO and RT, and co-op. Then they'll sit back and watch the bloodletting. *Older machines, Peng-fatigue, and Soylent Green stock.

Not even ritual purging?

I was using 2.5.4 - never updated because other than the seldom-used chat, it was fine. (EDIT: Not sure if it was 2.5.4, but it was certainly not the latest.) I just updated to 2.11.0. I'm not seeing the temp chat files appear. Or if they are I don't know where. Chat still doesn't work. At least, in the 30 seconds since I sent a message, no one has replied. (See, this is why I just use e-mail.)

I don't use chat much... could very well be Dropbox. It's temp files, Windows... my assumption is sheer perversity on Microsoft's part. There are files in the directory older marked with last-modified times predating this PC, the hard drive, and the OS. Here's some actual data: When I open H2HH 2 new folders/files appear in the temp directory. FWIW, this happens even if the DB client isn't running. (Or, at least, I've exited and I don't see the DB icon anymore.) The last directory formed was named "tmpkklgzo" The file inside is named: "chat_36074243940227.h2hh" And the entire contents of the file is: {"messages":[],"local_timezone":-43200,"current_seq":0,"local_daylight":1,"local_altzone":-46800,"h2hh_version":"2.9.2","last_rendered":0}

In Users/#account name#/AppData/Local/Temp I found about 1600 folders with chat_#numbers#.h2hh files (one each) in them. The few I checked were blank outside some stuff like ""current_seq":0,"local_daylight":1," It totals up to about 6 megs. Chat wasn't working with my H2HH install last time I checked, btw. (GaJ: Read my mind and dosomefink.)

It sounds like there's nothing to interfere with a human player changing plans on the fly so long as the units involved have suffered very little damage. (Plus, I assume, changed-plans shouldn't involve arty.) But it's going to be tough to get scattered, rattled units into new positions. So... perhaps plan and prepare for one group to do the breakthrough, then another the exploitation, then have some reserves tasked with mop up? Hmm.

I'll almost certainly use it quite a bit. With CMx1 most of my multiplayer games were TCP/IP. No replays is unfortunate, but with smaller battles it shouldn't make a huge difference. I tended to play smaller battles over TCP/IP anyway. Just out of curiosity, what makes TCP/IP replays such a headache with CMx2? Sheer amount of data? A matter of not being built into the engine from the beginning? Illuminati intimidation? (If it's the last one, if you deny it or don't say anything it's OK: We'll get the message.)

That's what you think: I've successfully lured you into shooting all my Green troops. Unless you just happen to have more ammo than I have men, you're doomed. (Bwahaha: )

Brain-in-jar technology has matured enough to greatly reduce the cost of Battlefront's payroll expenses and health plan.