stoex

Thanks for those pics, Fuser - Sturmmörser Tiger for the win every time! I remember in CMBO I used to make test scenarios in the editor just to see it fire, and the devastation a single round caused. It took a minute or more to reload but it simply didn't matter...one shot was all you really needed.

You can get 'em to dance if you play it just right...in a recent game one of my Stugs came across a Jeep close to a treeline. As the Stug maneuvered to train its gun on the Jeep, they saw the AFV and hightailed it through the trees, getting out of sight just in time. However, when the Jeep popped out of the trees on the other side, it was spotted by one of my MG teams and peppered with rounds. So it backed up into the trees and out the other side again, in front of my Stug. This entire rigmarole repeated once more before the Stug nailed the Jeep on their third encounter. Really comical to watch the Jeep covering the same 20 yards back and forth twice in their panic

Doesn't the radio icon in the appropriate C2 status box go away when the unit's radio currently isn't working? I know it does that for infantry, like when they are moving.

~Viajero, that would be this review in wargamer.fr, as posted in the announcements section of this board.

Don't you mean that the other way 'round, BD? I am firmly in the CMx2 camp myself. To me it is clearly the better game in many ways. More options, finer control, better graphics, and HECK I CAN PLAY IT IN REAL TIME!!! Plus it's still growing and being improved, while CMx1 is...well...history, like the catapult or the sword. It was good then, but has been superseded and made redundant by newer developments.

It probably wasn't the worlds greatest ever design decision in the first place... Having ambushed an enemy armoured car and put two AP rounds through it, forcing the crew to bail... ...my Cromwell lines up its third shot,... ...which disperses roasted bits of the unfortunate driver all over Aris' beautiful paint job, as it goes right through him before destroying the Spähwagen. By the way, I find it interesting that while this causes the victim's hat to become airborne, his headphones stay on (BFC plz fix or do sumfink, obviously a gamebreaking bug!!!). And that, children, is why you don't jump out of a dying AFV in the direction of incoming fire, but away from it.

Well, really, Juju...considering there are nearly 16.8 million colors in the RGB space (without the alpha channel which you seem to have lackadaisically neglected as well), 10 variations is a little narrow-minded, don't you think? Seriously, thanks for this! Will be trying them out.

Nothing like a nice, hot enema after a hard day's fighting...just what the doctor ordered. (Also showing off Aris' excellent dirtied Sherman)

Just took the time to run akd's test scenarios as well, and I got different results from anyone else so far...definitely something funky going on here. My specs in brief: Intel Quad-core Q6600 4GB RAM Win 7 64-bit (!) NVidia GeForce 8800GTS with newest drivers CMBN 1.10 with CW module First off, I think testing this issue in scenario author test (SAT) mode is useless, at least it was for me. In SAT, all units and fortifications are always visible to the human player, and the only way (for me) to tell what any of my units can truly see is to click on them and see which enemy icons light up. Since fortifications do not ever show icons after the setup phase, I cannot tell whether my FO can actually see the fortifications, or when he spots them. Visual information on them available to me as the player is always the same. Now for my results (all tested at elite level with one exception, see below): Testing in RT: Regardless of difficulty level, no fortifications were ever spotted in any visibility conditions. That was easy. Testing in TB: Here's where things start getting strange. In the high vis setting, nothing was ever spotted. However... Low and zero visibility settings gave identical results, and a quick test at basic training difficulty for both of these conditions came out the same. In all cases my FO began spotting the trenches after 1-1.5 minutes. He spotted them one by one at intervals of 5-10 seconds. At no later than 2 minutes, they were all spotted. Then he started spotting the foxholes - always in the exact same order: he would spot the closest foxhole to his position (the forward left individual hole in the leftmost set of four holes, seen from his position), then spot the rest of the holes in that set in a counterclockwise fashion (right forward, right rear, left forward) at intervals of 5-10 secs. This went on for each set of holes from left to right, always in the exact same fashion. All holes were spotted between 4.5 and 5 minutes in. After the holes came the sandbags. In each case, the spotter would spot the rear half of one sandbag wall first, then the front half, then the next rear half, etc. Unlike the spotting order of the foxholes, the order in which he spotted the sandbag walls seemed random, but it was always the rear half first, then the front. Again, intervals between each spotted part of a wall were about 5-10 secs. After 5.5-6 minutes (and no later), all fortifications were spotted, always. I forewent the screenies, but I think you get the drift. Spotting was not immediate for me, but followed an unchanging, almost mechanical rhythm that changed only marginally through several runs of the test. So very weird...

Not at all. But I WOULD object strongly to the engine not being able to compute my RT battles in RT any more because of the extra spotting checks! Steve has already mentioned more than once that the spotting checks are one of the main performance hogs in the engine, and that they didn't see a way to currently increase their fidelity without making the game unplayable on older (and even some newer) rigs. So don't hold your breath on this one.

Personally, I think I would go with the bases as opposed to the floorless buildings. But I guess if you can give us the option to choose between the two, that would be best as it would suit everyone's preferences. By the way, the buildings look fantastic. Can't wait to see them in the game. Thanks for the great work you are doing, Tanks a Lot!

It is in fact. Note that the "oe" is actually one of those nasty "Umlauts" that English speakers have a lot of trouble with as well. The actual letter is "ö" and it's pronounced...well..."ö" (as in Österreich, where I'm from). There just isn't anything with corresponding phonetics in English. You can get somewhat close by imagining the sound of the "u" in "murky", but its really only similar, not the same.

Give 'em a few days, Erwin. I'm near certain there will be some reaction yet.

Sergei and Shuter, I think you are both only half right. IME, enemy vehicles can never be destroyed, only knocked out. However, once knocked out, they cannot be targeted. Human player vehicles can definitely achieve either status, however I have no idea what difference is supposed to be stipulated by this. Comes out to the same thing in terms of the battle, or in terms of the campaign if you are playing one. In either case the affected vehicle is lost forever.

Loving this dialog, folks. I am sorry that it appears to be over, but as a native German speaker I will have you know that the closest you can get to the correct German pronunciation of "StuG" in English would have to be "shtoog". Even more interesting is the abbreviation "StuH" for Sturmhaubitze, though, which to the best of my knowledge should be pronounced "shtooha". If you like, you can also use the full name "StuH 42", which would then probably sound like "shtooha tsvaioondfeeuhtsig". And that's replacing the formal German pronunciation of the letter "r" (which English speakers can't do, that famous rolling rrrrr) with the in this case common pronunciation where it is nearly, but not entirely, soundless (the "uh"). This has been a gratuitous service by...well...me. You're most welcome. Pronunciation tips for other words including "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft" available on request.

I don't even know whether there is any way of modding the blasts from shells hitting ground, I don't think so. AFAIK Vein's (and anyone else's) explosion mod only alters the explosions of vehicles (the orange ones, where stuff actually BURNS). If it were possible to mod the groundbursts, my opinion is that while they could be better done engine wise just like everyone says (a little more irregular for instance), just making the pixels in the pixel shower darker would help a lot in terms of long range visibility (which I have a problem with sometimes) and realistic looks. In vids of RL groundbursts, the soil being dredged from several feet below the surface, mixed with the smoke and soot from the explosion itself generally looks pretty dark, even blackish depending on what the soil is composed of. In particular, this would also enhance the realistic effect of the blast appearing denser in the center and less so the further from the center you get.

Loving these icons, Juju! They are really a big help in recognizing units quickly, and less obtrusive than the stock ones. Have to get used to them a bit but really like them. Thanks!

Taking your advice, I reread your post and found this: Kinda answered one of your questions yourself there. When you take a screenie from a far-away perspective, the graphics look like that cause you ARE viewing from far away. Or did you mean they look different than they look in game? I have no idea why screenies taken with FRAPS would look "low-quality". Mine look exactly like the in-game quality, and I don't know what might change that.

necramonium, Don't know why your screenies are so dark with FRAPS. maybe your screen is just set to a low brightness? Dunno. But you might be able to brighten them up some with Photoshop or GIMP (which is free).

You do realize that you can configure the hotkeys file to do just that? It's the "absolute" hotkeys section of the file. Works like a charm - I never understood the merit of the "relative" hotkeys system. Makes things real confusing, as I guess some of you have noticed...

That's got to be the most...um...romantic CMBN screen shot I've seen yet!

Also interesting, Jyri. Was your barrage aimed at the Stuarts or did it just happen to come down at the right time? In my game, I have all my mortars firing at other targets at the moment, and I fear that if I interrupt them to lay down fire on the Stuarts, the tanks will be gone before I get FFE - I am playing on Elite level, so mortar time to FFE is 4-7 minutes... Thanks, Wodin. Do you mean the spotting thing between the PSW and the M8 near the bridge a few posts back? If so, yeah that was one or two levels above just being weird, and no, I didn't actually get a beta tester involved (yet). Thing is, after I had played the battle on to a later point, I went back and loaded a savegame shortly before this situation a number of times, and events transpired differently in every run-through. Mostly things went as I would expect, with the PSW spotting the M8 and knocking it out, once or twice the other way round. Once the PSW even spotted and KOed a nearby Jeep as well as the Greyhound. I should add that each time, like in the actual game version of the situation, I moved the PSW forward a tiny bit shortly before the M8 showed up (to get slightly better LOS to the area, as I knew there were units moving through it). I think the differences depend largely on the exact location of the PSW, as there is some tall grass and weeds on the ground between the two vehicles, and who knows exactly from where the PSW's LOS is drawn? In the game situation, the PSW showed full LOS or "reverse slope" LOS to the two action spots the M8 traversed, and "reverse slope" LOS to about the first half of the bridge, meaning it should really have been able to see a 7+ foot tall vehicle standing or driving there. So, it still might be a good idea to send the screenies and/or savegame to a beta tester, thanks for the reminder!

Thank you Nik B and welcome to the forums! I'm sure you will find many enjoyable discussions and nice folks here.

After the dispatching of another enemy scout car in the last installment, this post is full of more units showing up on both sides. Only seconds after the crew of the unlucky M8 hit the ground next to their destroyed vehicle, two platoons of infantry arrive to support my cause (39:41). Since they are once again 1st and 3rd platoons of a different company, and I hate going by descriptions such as 3/116 etc., I will henceforth refer to them as A Platoon and B Platoon. Sorry if the grogs don't like it. Anyhow, the GUI says that these men are "Rifle" as opposed to "Fusilier", but they are very similarly equipped with two exceptions: they lack the two MG42 teams per platoon that my Fusiliers have, but instead come with a Panzerschreck team attached to each platoon. This I like, as I really need AT if I am going to be facing tanks as per the briefing, and I already have four MG42 teams on the map which have trouble finding good positions due to the undulating terrain. See the screenies for the starting locations and orders of the new arrivals: A Platoon arrives on the little patch of land "cut off" by the river in the SE corner of the map. I decide to send A Platoon forward to back up my small scouting force on main ridge up ahead. There is nothing happening there right now, but in the case of more Amis showing up and attempting to flank the church from main ridge on the right, the firepower added by A Platoon will be able to hold them off better than just the LMG team and CO HQ alone... B Platoon arrives just west of the river. Note the 81mm spotting round falling on target in the background. B Platoon will move forward towards the church in support of the Fusiliers there. I will leave them mostly behind main ridge for now – they need to scout carefully over the rise, for they will be within LOS of a lot of locations at the apex, and I don't want to expose more men than necessary. If I find the approach too dangerous, I might consider a smoke screen, though I would rather let my mortars keep throwing HE at the US squishies. This caution turns out to be well-founded when at 39:21, as my reinforcements are moving up, the following appears near the bridge objective: Two Stuarts enter the battlefield in the NE corner of the map by the bridge. This is not so good as I have very little to counter these tanks with at the moment – just my two vehicles, which are not guaranteed a kill against any aspect of an M5, plus the Schreck near the church and a few Fausts. I need to get my two reinforcement Schrecks into positions ASAP, and hope my StuG shows up soon. Meanwhile, at least the carnage against the US platoon moving towrds the church is in full swing. My 120s are coming down very precisely (and the 81s are ranging in nicely on main ridge), and they have more or less pinned two of the squads of GIs (with the third not yet in sight), while the platoon HQ and XO team are dashing foward basically unsupported. The HQ makes it pretty far forward before finally yielding to the crossfire of the PSW, the MG 42 near the church and occasional bullets from my units in the building down the road. Two men go down and the other two crawl into cover in a rubbled section of low wall. I hope to exterminate them soon so they don't get a chance to call in those dastardly 60mm mortars that must be lurking near their friendly map edge... Bergmann's PSW zeroes in on the US platoon HQ and incapacitates one man (39:07). The Amis attacking on foot have taken probably 6 or 7 casualties at this point, a little hard to follow the kill count in RT. Their assault has the wind taken out of it for now, though, at no cost in manpower to me except for the driver of the PSW. The Stuarts seem to have a purpose, however: they start driving towards the road bridge quickly, but stop near the building, smartly covering B Platoon's approach to the church more or less completely. They are also not alone, as some infantry contacts including a CO HQ are spotted following them forward. A Jeep also appears and seems headed towards the shallow ford by the eastern map edge, right in front of my scouts on main ridge. Seems A Platoon may be just in time to help them out! More US infantry is seen in the vicinity of the bridge. So, everyone will continue doing what they are doing except for B Platoon, who will hunker down behind main ridge to wait for the Stuarts to move – or a smoke screen to be laid down if they don't. Surprising twists will follow in the next installment as the action heats up in a hitherto "quiet" area of the battlefield. Stay tuned!

I have a save from the end of battle 5 (the screen where you choose RT or TB), and one of my battle 6 setup as well, and I made it through battle 6 easily with my forces, so if you want it, let me know!