Talespin Jim

I played as the U.S. I'm still new to the game, but it was the most fun I've had yet on defense. Personally, I don't think the Germans have a fair shake.

Sergei's last point accentuates what I was going to say. Being a marketer by trade, getting a very public lashing about the game would only be a bonanza for BF, helping them attract new gamers through free publicity, that otherwise would never have heard about this wonderful game. On a moral level, it may seem odd, but I feel greater respect and admiration for those who fight in the wars these games are about, so I feel that playing such a game while the war in progress will actually help me to understand what is going on better and revere, appreciate and be more generous to those who have needs created by the conflicts. I would appreciate timely games for such a reason, even if I might feel a little weird about playing it.

You guys are too much. lol. I was wondering if anybody would even notice the cigar in the ear. But seriously, for those who don't know, the panzerfaust is a very short range weapon and it's my understanding that to help players out, on this one weapon, the designers put the approximate effective range, which is what the 30 is for--30 meter range. This is the stock user interface that the game comes with, so a lot of you guys probably don't even recognize the 30 because you have loaded up some mod or other that doesn't show it. Anyway, thanks for the explanations of why he has so many grenades. I've lost several night's sleep wondering about that. (snort) Womble's answer makes the most sense, as usual. The team may very well have been an assault team, in fact, I bet it was. So as he says, they would have had more grenades. Then he says the trooper probably picked up extra grenades off of his fallen comrades, as he can do that even without rendering buddy aid, as Womble said. But the idea that he might have gotten them from ammo sharing doesn't seem right (not said by Womble), because my understanding is that ammo sharing tends to average the ammo each party has, not concentrate it. I could be wrong there. If so, I'd like to know, because that means I don't understand ammo sharing correctly. I was also trying to figure out why all he had was a panzerfaust, but I realized the answer to that when I was posting the picture: Like others have said, if he is using his rifle, it will show up with every other soldier's weapon in the UI portion that shows all of the unit's 'weapons in use' together. If he is using the panzerfaust, obviously, since that is his weapon in use, it will show there instead. To expound on that a little, when the rifle is in use, the panzerfaust being a special weapon will still show in the special weapon's inventory section of the UI, but the rifle will not show when the panzerfaust is in use, because it is not a special weapon. (That's the part that had me stumped.) Therefore, the only way to see the rifle when the panzerfaust is in use is to see it on the silhouette. But when I looked at the soldier prior to this picture, he was laying on it or something and I couldn't see it, even though he had it. Ironically, he never switched to his rifle when I told him to attack an enemy nearby, he just hucked grenades at them. He's one grenade huckin fiend, which notably makes sense, because when ammo is plentiful troops use it more generously. The only mystery left to me really, is why he had selected his panzerfaust as an active weapon when I first took notice of him prior to this picture. He was in a large field without an enemy vehicle in sight. But I doubt it matters, it seems that when a trooper decides to change weapons it is done in an instant and doesn't seem to hurt his time firing at the target much if at all. I've watched them several times switch weapons during a firefight, it seems to take less than a second, if any time at all. Again, thanks for the help.

Several turns have passed and it was deleted on my home computer so it's probably now in the trash on that puter. But now I'm on vacation on my laptop, so I can't give you the exact pic from the turn I am talking about. But here's a pic of him several turns later. as you can see, he has used some of his grenades. He was inspecting a bunch of row houses and there were a lot of explosions there, but I didn't pay attention to what was going on. He must have been throwing grenades at something. Now you can see he has shouldered his panzerfaust and is bearing a rifle, but when I was looking at him earlier, he was bearing the panzerfaust and I couldn't see the rifle. It doesn't show up in the unit munitions roster, probably because it is a personal weapon. He still has 12 grenades left.

It's getting late in this scenario. One fire-team had lost all of its men but one, but I figured he would be useful to help lay down a little extra suppressing fire on an enemy team that was suppressed and being overrun. So I clicked on him. That's when I noticed his weapon was a panzerfaust and nothing else--nothing except 19 HAND GRENADES. I could just imagine this guy back at the weapons locker, "Maybe I should choose this rifle. No, all I need is the panzerfaust and a box of grenades." I should mention that this unit had not rendered any buddy aid. I had some tank crews that lost their tanks and I had them following right behind the front line and rendering aid so that they could pick up some good weapons to use. So I was being very careful to only have them doing buddy aid. As funny as I thought that was, it made me wonder, how this guy wound up with 19 grenades. His fire team started off with between two and four men. If he took everybody's grenades, he still wouldn't have had that many normally. Also I've noticed that once in a while a pixeltroop carrying a bazooka, panzerfaust or panzershreck will need to shoot at infantry and will switch from his anti-tank weapon to his secondary weapon. Usually it's a pistol, but I'm pretty sure I saw one pull out something other than that once, though I can't remember what. I'm thinking it was a grease gun of some kind, and I think it was an American. But these weapons don't show up on the weapons roster when you click on the unit. So I'm wondering how often a trooper has a secondary weapon and is there a way we can see what it is? Incidentally, my pixeltroopen with the 19 grenades successfully threw one the next turn and killed the enemy he was supposed to suppress. So he was right, that was all he needed in that entire battle.

I just wish state of the art was better than it is. I mean, according to 2001 A Space Odyssey, we were supposed to achieve self aware AI 13 years ago. Where did we go wrong? Oh, I know, it was those stupid kids and their cursed rap music. They threw the whole culture out of kilter. I can hear the first self aware computer now, "Ptew, ptew ptew ptew... My name's Hal and I'm your pal, got a question? I'll show you how. Ptew ptew ptew Will I sleep? Will I bleep? Am I a creep? You're in deep..."

Thanks Mark Ezra. That is truly a big feat. I've been thinking about how redundant it must have been for someone to create all of those different maps, for each terrain type and map size and that's what got me to wondering if someone had to set up a strategy for each map and various force types for both sides and maybe varying force selections or different nation's armies. I think I would have had to kill myself before I finished. I'm sure there are a lot of those monumental tasks in this game that requires a novel strain of heroism to complete.

That brings up something I was wondering about. When I do a quick battle against the AI, is there some pre-programmed AI for the quick battle or is the AI left entirely to its own to figure out a battle plan?

I believe you, when you say the AI is far more advanced than HOI3--though admittedly, as you say, they are not comparable. I did not mean to insult this game by mentioning a feature of HOI. Sorry. I simply meant that if they did decide to allow players to give missions to commanders, the system HOI came up with where you designate theaters of action for leaders actually works, whereas a bunch of other things they tried did not, and some time and effort could be saved by looking at how they did that one thing and roughly modeling it--should they decide it's worthwhile, not that this would extend to any programming, just the general concept. I apologize for mentioning it and withdraw the thought.

It would be kinder if you did not besmirch me for stupid questions. Previously your comments have been enlightening and I thank you. I went to school for systems analysis before there were things like hard drives or color--I'm admittedly out of date with programming. At least I know enough to realize that I was comparing apples and oranges. But the actual programming is not what I was talking about. You see, Paradox tried all sorts of approaches to making this general idea work and they put up with years of embarrassing failures. Then they finally hit on an approach that shows some promise, though even last I knew they were bungling it--but at least the units were doing more than just sitting there, they would carry out their missions with seeming intelligence. I was simply pointing out that a company could look at the "approach" they are using to avoid trying all the ones that didn't work. And I know it would be hard.

I had mistakenly assumed that discipline would be better maintained if all the C2 lights were on. I think I also understand from the 3.0 manual that spotting stays pretty much within platoon level C2, or at most company level, because it says that spotting information is useless at battalion level and would not be communicated and it seems like it is saying the same for company level. And the third reason to maintain C2, indirect fire, is kind of out of the picture because Soviets don't usually have radios below battalion level unless it is with a designated spotter such as a forward observer, and for that reason, I think the indirect fire assets are generally attached to battalion, not company or platoon. So indirect fire is not an issue with C2 at lower levels. Lack of radios makes it rare or nearly impossible to maintain C2 between the Company Commander and more than one platoon commander. And even harder to maintain C2 between Battalion and more than one company command. It would seem from the above factors, that there is no reason to keep a platoon near to the rest of its company. Therefore, there is no reason not to run each platoon like its own independent fighting unit, not worrying about C2 upline from platoon, just using upline HQ's to fill in for lost leaders or babysit squads that are otherwise out of C2 with the platoon leader. This is assuming there are no attached indirect fire assets, because that would give a reason to maintain C2. It seems like the game would be more realistic if you give units missions with objectives and lines of effort (or whatever they're called) and should they wander out of C2 with battalion or they lose their radio, putting them out of C2, you lose control of them and they just go about autonomously performing their last mission. But I suppose since the AI can't be all that great, we would all scream about how harsh that is on the Soviets and forces with similar C2 challenges. On the other hand, having them act as a cohesive, intelligent fighting unit is hardly realistic either. And before anybody says, "Do you know how hard that would be to program?" Let me point out that last I knew, Hearts of Iron 3 does that on a strategic level, where you can assign groups of units missions and the programming carries them out fairly well (at least with ground units) so perhaps that could serve as a rough model and save a lot of time and effort, should Battlefront actually ever consider such an idea.

Glad to hear I'm not the only one in the dark on this. Right, Michael, I was talking mostly about a Soviet platoon leader squad, where the commander (it sounds like you are saying) is actually the leader of one of the squads as well as the platoon leader, and there is one soldier designated as a "commander" and another soldier designated as a "leader" in the platoon leader's squad. Sorry, I should have said that. When I first started thinking about the fact that the platoon leader squads have a leader as well as a commander, I was thinking that maybe the commander was the commissar. However, I got to checking around and realized that some German units have both commanders and leaders as well. At that point I realized this whole leader concept is lot more murky to me than I had thought. So, Womble, if I understand what you (referring to you knowledgeable chaps) are telling us, the commander and not the leader, is actually the one that imbues the platoon with the leadership bonuses or deficits and it is his ratings we are looking at in the UI and that if he is killed, that is when the platoon suffers the leader loss morale penalty (or gain as it may be) and that someone will in fact step up to replace him if there is an executive officer, but it will actually be from a different fireteam in the platoon's leader squad, because the second in command is running another fireteam. Is that right? And if that is the case, your area of command and control will shift to another fireteam and that shift will probably leave one or more of the platoon's fireteams out of command and control since it is difficult to keep a whole platoon in command and control in most terrain you tend to have your troops taking cover in. Have I got that right? If there is no XO, then does the platoon just no longer have a leader? And if that is the case, I have command lines turned on, and if I remember right, I see command lines going to the original commander's fireteam, so in this case, those command lines are faulty and should not actually exist, because there is no longer a platoon leader right? (It also begs the question--If I'm quick moving a platoon leader's fireteam and the commander is running slower than the rest and has dropped behind the leader's fireteam by thirty meters, the command lines all go to the main body of the platoon commander's fireteam, but since the commander is way behind, is the actual command effects where he is or is it where the flag on his fireteam's floating icon is?) So if the commander is the one running the platoon, what is the soldier designated as the "leader" in charge of? Because the platoon leader squad has both a "commander" and a "leader." Is the soldier designated as the "leader" one of the sergeants Michael spoke of? See it confuses me that platoon leader squads, especially Soviet platoon leader squads have a "commander" and a "leader" when we know that the commander is in charge of both the squad and the platoon. So what's the "leader" designated soldier actually in charge of--what is he leading?

I know this has to be a stupid question, but I can't find the answer, so at the risk of being labeled the King of Stupid Questions, I'm just going to ask it... Some squads have both a leader and a commander and some squads have a leader and an asst. leader. What are each of their functions? The manuals talk about all the things the leaders do, and so do a thousand threads, but I can't find anything about what a commander does. Maybe it's something everybody knows, except me because I've never been in the military or something. Does it have something to do with commissioned officers verses enlisted men or leaders verses commissars? Also, I'm wondering about some leadership effects. I start out the first turn of a scenario. Immediately a shot rings out, and as usual, the first person to get shot is one of my platoon leaders. These of course, are Russian troops and the platoon's squads are all split up into fire teams, so now, even though they are all within command range of the dead platoon leader's fireteam, since the platoon leader is dead, all the troops now get a severe morale penalty for the remainder of the game, right? Or does the commander immediately take over? If not the commander, I notice the unit doesn't say anything about an assistant leader, but according to the manual all units have a hierarchy that gives someone an automatic leader status, so does this unidentified leader now control the platoon so that the platoon does not have the morale penalty of not being in command and control--or does his leadership status only apply to his squad? If another person does take over leading the platoon, would that person be from another fireteam in the platoon leader squad, such that the radius of command and control now shifts to another unit and now maybe some of my units are out of command and control? If so, how do I now know which fireteam is in control of the platoon? I'm sorry if this is a stupid or redundant question, but I can't find where it is discussed in the manuals or the forum.

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The first thing you should do is sit down and make a list of the top 100 best excuses you can think of for not coming to work today and plan to rotate through the list. Next, you should gag your wife, tie her up and put her in the closet. Get rid of any pets. Email all of your friends and tell them goodbye. Cash out your 401K to get some money to live on for a while. Hire a housekeeper who cooks, cleans, answers the phone, and doesn't mind bathing you. Make sure she is not so pretty as to cause a distraction and make sure she can cook something besides Mexican food--as much as I love it, it's making me fat. Email the courthouse and tell them you can't serve jury duty, so don't even bother calling you. Spray herbicide over your whole lawn--choose one with a one year guarantee. Set all of your bills up on auto-pay. Go to Walgreens.com and order a case of caffeine pills to be delivered every thirty days. Get a catheter with a one-year supply. If your doctor asks any questions, just tell him you are planning on becoming a "cathelete" and going to the Olympics. Buy 36 tubes of Preparation H. and one of those handles with a rubber grip on the end that fat people use to wipe their bottoms. Enough said. Start building a deep, loving, personal relationship with John at the Help Desk--pucker up and prepare to kiss his arse a lot. Never anger him. Finally, join TheFewGoodMen.com and the Blitz.com