jeep

Adding my perspective on this subject (as a long time CM player and an Oculus Rift owner)... VR support would be HUGE for the Combat Mission series. Don't believe me, here is why 1. The best games on Oculus / Vive right now are 3rd person perspective floating camera (just like CM). They are easy to navigate, no motion sickness issues, great UI, and just plain amazing in terms of how much they add to the feeling of immersion. The ability to move the camera with your head is amazing and something you have to try to understand how much it adds to the game. CM would be AMAZING. 2. Porting CM to add VR enable should be relatively straightforward. It is already a 3D rendered game (OpenGL, right?). Updating for Rift/Vive is mostly A. Tieing the camera control to head movement api B. Mapping the mouse interface to the gamepad / touch control api C. Adding stereoscopic rendering and prewarp when using VR (this is part of the 3d engine, straightforward in opengl) The min computer specs for Oculus/Vive are really powerful, so you shouldn't need to worry about performance issues. 3. There isn't that much content right now for VR, so having a quality game like CM in the Oculus store would bring a lot of new customers to the series. Very similar to the first apps in the iPhone app store.. I would happily pay full price for a VR update to any of WW2 CM series. Really seems like low hanging fruit (for the dev team) to me!

If I put a blast radius on artillery (if this is even possible), it would attack every unit in that radius each attack, correct? How would it work for production/build/building damage. Would each also get attacked as well, or would it switch between units & one of the above each attack?

Great scenario! I came away with German minor victory on my first play. I was able to recapture 411C, but I will say the defenders were tenacious. I finally took it by sending up a two prong attack. The first platoon came up the left side of the map, but didn't have enough men left to dislodge all the defenders (who fought effectively to the last man) and the two tanks. I sent a second platoon up the road and hit them from behind, finally taking the objective. The tanks in the center had already been taken out (2) or displaced (1) by the Paks and Marders. I found they were very effective. I only lost the marders when I tried to drive through a low bocage (hoping it was brush). He turned around and exposed himself to MG fire The other one took a sherman shell. Only complaint on the anti armor is the pak on 411c was dead meat from the beginning. Both the other Paks survived. I like how you scripted the shermans, very effective. Usually the AI just drives right into my sights and burns. These ones were tough to crack I tried a brief counter attack up the road on the right side of the map, but it took fire from both sides plus arty so that ended quickly. After seeing the enemy forces in the bocage afterwards it never would have worked anyway. One complaint is the lack of openings in the bocage. It really limited the german retreat and counterattack. The center field is the worst, since there is no way to enter/exit on the left at all. I was going to send it some troops to retake the center bocage after 411c but there was no practical way to do it. The germans need to think about their lines of retreat when setting up the defense Not sure if the americans could have realistically taken the WN objectives. Were the tanks scripted to ever move forward to support the attack? Seems like they had a lot of troops left over on the right side bocage that didn't support further attacks.

I was going to increase jet speed by 50% to hopefully make them better at intercepting tac / reg bombers. Would doing this cause any issues since it would set the speed higher than the range? This also assumes that speed is one of the variables used in the interception calculation.

The issue where the different players games can get out of sync. It happens to me all the time if my stupid dell crashes right after processing the turn but before I hit the save button. The other players will get 2 sets of events for the turn, since when I reload the game it has to calculate the turn again. I think it can also happen when one of the other players (not the host) thinks it sent the event file but the host doesn't receive it (corrupt file on the server or some other issue). In that case it just seems like that player starts seeing weird behavior. All sorts of strange behavior follows that..... BTW, the crashes don't seem related to the game. It is some mysterious dell problem that happens every so often.

That sounds like it will be interesting to play around with I'm guessing you haven't had time to work on the PBEM sync thing, but I thought I'd ask anyway.....

Since EOS development is effectively done, how about releasing the game as open source? A lot of the topics for improvement that have been discussed here could be addressed that way.

Seems like a simple thing. Arty is coming in, the crew abandons the gun and runs for cover. After the smoke clears they come back and start plinking tanks again. Why can't we? Another thing.... Please fix the tank bail out command in WEGO. If you accidentally hit it there is no way to cancel the command. Lost a few tanks that way...

What is the difference between 7.62 AP and 7.62 ammo? My squads are running out of MG42 ammo and want to know which one to get out of the truck. Since it comes in clips, 50 round belts, and 250 round belts how is this handled? My guys seem to be reloading a lot, how can I give them the larger belts? Finally, is there a limit to how much ammo they can carry?

Yeah, I think that is exactly what is needed. You could fix the security issue by having each player put a password on your game (sent back to the host as an event on turn 1). This would be sort of like a failsafe to correct any strange issues that crop up. If the game is messed up or crashing, the host can regenerate the files (which will delete all the events from the server) and email them to the other players. They would then delete all their event files and copy the new save game in. It would also be nice to be able to go back a few turns in the game (before the bad stuff happened). Maybe this would be as simple as the host keeping autosaved game files for the last 3 turns or so?

This has happened to me on a couple of PBEM games now... It seems like it your computer crashes during or right after turn processing (before it saves) the different players games can get out of sync. By "out of sync", what happens is each player sees different locations for some of their troops. If it happens enough, the game is unplayable. Is there any way to resynch these games? I'm thinking that if you could send all the data from the host to each player (instead of just event files) after this occurs you could get it back on track.

Thanks, that clears it up. Can I make non-nuke missiles area effect in the editor? If so, how?

When a missile strikes a group (cruise, medium range missle, etc), does it damage all units or just one at random? When it hits a city, does it do production damage + building damage + refugees + unit damage (all or random) or just a random one of the above?

When you upgrade a building, I had assumed it would replace the original. Is this correct? Do you get the bonuses for the original building + the upgraded version or just the upgraded version? If it is the later there is a bug in the editor that allows you to place both the original and upgraded versions in a city (and get both bonuses).

Just sent them over to your email

I'll send you some saved games that show it (aircraft one). I'll also see if the sub thing works right now.

A few versions back you could see the group designator if there was a group of subs that wouldn't normally be visible. I haven't checked to see it that was fixed already. BTW, do you have the planes running out of fuel issue on the bug list? I know this is still in the latest version. Happens occasionally when planes try to intercept other units near the edge of their movement range (on max patrol, but encounter something to chase/fight).

100% yes on the choppers and air transports I have the units in my rule set but don't have graphics for them. I also have sea mines (which you can drop from the helicopters or transports). Would be nice to have something for them as well. Originally I was thinking of sonar buoys as well, but decided it would be nice to have a defensive aspect in sea warfare. The sea mines kind of serve both purposes. What do you mean by a depth factor on subs?

emptyT, Any chance you are going to do a helicopter unit graphic

Just finished two games. The first was 2 elite AIs teamed against me, the second was 3. The first game was a really good fight, and I eventually won it. The second was also a lot of fun, but the AIs took it. Actually had the AI using a strong airforce for awhile. Even the second game was tactically fun, just too many enemies to win against

I guess that makes sense. That would explain why the AI doesn't research air techs are quickly (it doesn't usually have many air units). So how about what units it builds? This must also be dynamically calculated. Any insights into how that is done? Could I force the AI to build more planes by making them cheaper and stronger?

Not fixing your problem, but PBEM will probably work for you. My brother has the same problem with his setup. His is a funky sat service, so we figured it was because the address table in the NAT was getting flushed faster than EOS was sending data back (NAT considered the data communication done). Never got it to work, so I have no idea if that was the problem.

Brit, How does the AI decide what to research? Is it scripted, does it just research everything in sequence, or some other logic? I'm asking because I'm considering changing the tech tree significantly and wanted some idea if the AI can handle that? The reason I suspect there might be some scripting is the AI usually doesn't research AIR techs much (or a least doesn't upgrade the air units it builds?).

One other thing I have noticed is that the AI does not really avoid your warships with it's transports. The transports do seem to be "blind" to incoming warships until they are in visual range. I think once the transport "plots" it's orders it sticks to them, even if you vectored in ship to defend.

Rich, On #1, it isn't always consistent. The closer you are the greater the chance. I would say maybe 1/3 of the time this happens at around 2 turns away. #2 What I meant was that when you lose, it is almost always due to attrition. A single elite AI does seem to have a production bonus (and less resource restrictions). Not sure what it is (20% maybe). However, given the fact that the AI doesn't allocate it perfectly is probably evens out. I usually play against more than one AI on teams against me, hence the overwhelming odds.... #3 Just look at the replays of the games. Each AI seems to build to a different formula. Some will build more air, others none at all. For ships some use more subs than others. In general though, I would say the ratio sits at around if BBs are 100% CR at 200% Subs at 350% DDs at 500% TRs at 500% I think the formula is fine, just observing that you don't really need subs to fight this.