CarlWAW
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Posts
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Posts posted by CarlWAW
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Good sportsmanship would mean he would proffer a ceasefire in return.
c3k,
I strongly disagree, yes I even protest against this attitude. Just play a huge battle against an attacker with lots of artillery and men. Make it to survive very well. Stop the attack with your artillery and when you are about to start the counter attack and have best chances to wipe him off the map, he offers a ceasefire! Good sportsmanship to accept? BS!
This attitude to offer ceasefires and if they are not accepted to surrender and stop the game should be outlawed. There is lots to learn in all phases of the game. And one has not the right to go away, if things look bad. A game has a finite duration and it should be played until it ends.
If you are talking about sportsmanship: IMO a ceasefire should only be offered by the winning side, never by the losing one.
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Congrats Baneman!
Big Kitty was hit only once, wasn't it? So even without it, you would have fared well.
And last but not least a praise to the programmers. No crash although it's beta only.
I must say, that I am extremely impressed how solid CM is. So far I had not a single crash. No matter how big the maps are or how many units, or how much action or how the camera is moved or how big PBEM-fiules are. This thing is incredibly solid. In a time where more and more products are released unfinsished and buggy I think this deserves a big praise. -
The indicated team are rushing to the VL. When they arrive, should be the next turn, the CF will be accepted.
Baneman,
why do you plan to accept a ceasefire? I understand ceasefire as a solution where both sides see no chance to win anymore or change the result significantly. But this game is totally fluid and seems to turn in your favor. IMO a ceasefire should not be used by players to escape from a game that did not go as expected... Honestly I hate opponents that lose interest as soon as things do not go as they expected.
Or what are you afraid of since the tide of tank combat seems to have turned in your favor that you want allow an escape and give away a possible victory?
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I don't know how it worked in CM1 but I would prefer if the guessed contacts would not always be almost precisely where the units really appear later. If the contact is a sound contact and further away, then the area where the unit could be should be much larger.
I would also prefer if the gun's calibre and length could not be IDed so easily. And also less info about infantry and inflicted casualties would be good.
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Is the gun damaged?
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@AstroCat
you have a PM.
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Not trying to make a fuss but I felt my claims were baited so my response about being ok with 5-10fps was based off of CarlWAW below post:
So, yeah running that computer I see 5-10fps, maybe 10-20 "play at highest settings big maps with several batallions without any performance problems." I know that claim is not true unless he is ok with super low fps. Also, this part... "No need for an energy wasting desktop-monster from the stone age of computing." I think that set the tone... I should have probably just ignored because it was bait.. but still no way that computer is rocking 60fps "highest settings big maps with several batallions without any performance problems."
@AstroCat I think to make it fit to your rant you are making things up I did not say.
But a picture says more than thousand words.
I searched for the biggest savegames on my HD. I wont say from which the screenshots are to prevent spoilers, but they are from CMRT (game engine 3). That's the position, where I achieved the absolutely lowest framerate according to FRAPS on that map. I could not get into the single digits and usually the game runs around 30 fps.
Movie lighting with customized shaders enabled:
As I said: Big map. Several battalions. Best settings. Even very long shadows. Full HD resolution.
Sorry, but I am very satisfied that this great game/sim runs so well and can look so good on an already very affordable mid-class gaming notebook.
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I think a dedicated page displaying performance results from different systems would be very helpful for existing and future customers.
How could CM performance be measured objectively? Maybe with FRAPS and a dedicated scenario in replay mode for each game family? -
But I don't understand, you say we should use this thing behind our monitors when playing?
Exactly. Two 1 Watt-lasers, one left, one right, directly into the eyes of the player.
I mean the principle of Ambilight to overcome the abrupt map edges, not Ambilight itself.
Extension of the map beyond it's edges by cleverly "projecting" dominating map colors further. -
So I guessed correctly. You don't know it, you don't know the effect, but you are already against it. :D
Oh and a movie theatre usually doesn't suffer from a too small screen... ;) -
@Hister
You can set it with Nvidia Inspector. -
I guess no one of you have ever watched a movie with the famous Ambilight effect? It's not what Ambilight shows. It's about what it makes vanish. It's fascinating how the effect works on the subconsciousness. The screen edges vanish and the atmosphere of the picture is expanded on a much bigger area.
Transferred to CM it could mean that the map edges, which IMO are not really helping immersion, could become much less consciously visible and maybe after a few minutes could even vanish completely for the consciousness.
Contrary to Ambilight it could work in both directions: not only from the map away, but also blending the background BMPs on the horizon with the surface. -
The title says it. To overcome the abrupt map edges, maybe Philips' Ambilight could inspire a solution?
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How it is possible that someone with a modern desktop computer can have performance problems with CM engine 3?
I have a medium range gaming notebook only (Acer VN7-791G; GTX 960M) and I can play at highest settings big maps with several batallions without any performance problems.
I am very pleased with CM's performance which I find very well suited for mobile computing. No need for an energy wasting desktop-monster from the stone age of computing. -
Since I am considering buying a new TV I was researching motion display a bit for the last few months. I want to add a few thoughts about the FPS problem.
It's true that movies are filmed in 24p. This fact has lead to the popular believe that 24 frames was enough for a movie like display.
But what is less known is the fact, that cinemas do not display only 24 frames. Each displayed frame is shut off three times which effectively triples the framerate.
During the time of CRTs the low framerate was no problem, because the picture of CRT TVs is built by scanlines and therefore never display a static picture.
This changed with LCD technology which is a sample and hold display. LCD (and also OLED) can display a completely static picture until the next frame can be displayed and the pixels are changed. For our eyes/brain this results in very unnaturally perceived movement, because our eyes expect a continuous movement (which in cinemas or CRTs is simulated by a display which only very shortly displays a picture, while during the rest nothing is displayed), but the LCD displays a completely static picture of movement until the next frame is displayed which also shows a frozen movement on a slightly different location.
So there is a big difference in motion display between 20 or 30 frames and 50, 60, 100 fps on S&H displays like LCDs or OLEDs.
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Oh, and do your two tanks have defensive smoke?
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I forgot to add: if infantry has smoke, the Stummel could blind other parts of the map during the attack.
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Wow, now I feel honored, that I wasn't on a completely wrong path. I sense that engine 4 will become a tremendous leap forward in tactics and gameplay, too!
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Cheers - certainly Bil does not feel constrained to sit still on the defense
If there's anyone who's not reading both threads ( do people do that ? ), feel free to offer advice
<looks for someone to blame>I can't help, but I'm always on the side of the weaker one. I am reading both threads but my opinion is not influenced by Bil's current situation. You could try to follow Guderian's words: you do not hit someone with spread out fingers of your hand, but with the fist. Therefore I would put big Kitty and the remaining Panther together ASAP and prepare for an early decision. I think it does make no sense to delay and avoid it because you can't move anymore and the infantry would have to pay the price later. And in case it doesn't work, you can put the blame on Guderian, too: if the tank succeeds, victory will follow. At least then you tried the right thing.
Do the Grenadiers have smoke? Then they could screen problematic parts of the ridge during the attack. And they also could aim at Bil's tanks and make his crews keep their heads down. This could give you the decisive seconds of advantage.
At first I would break LOS with the big cat, so that it attracts all the fire first. Five or ten seconds later the Panther. Important: do NOT expose his lower hull...
And I would go for the most dangerous enemy tank first, then the second one, and so on.Or you could move the cats into LOS and hulldown even behind a smokescreen and wait until it clears. In that case the wind could help you, since you don't need to wait two or three minutes until you get LOS. Especially if you can make Bil's crews close the hatches in the minute before, this should give you a big advantage, because IME moving VS stationary is by far the biggest factor to decide spotting duels.
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Yes, but it's not a straight forward concept as one might think. We thought it would be fairly straight forward too when we coded Operations and quickly found that the "corner cases" (i.e. minor issues that come up infrequently) turned out to be major issues too frequently.
Persistent map damage + fixed reinforcements in the form of Supply Trucks would largely mimic CMx1 Operations, then leaving it in the hands of the player to actively resupply units, that would work pretty well IMHO. But Operations offered a lot more:
1. Automatic frontline "straightening"
2. Automatic rest/refit/reequip of units based on various factors
3. Selecting what portion of the map to play on based on success/failure of the previous battle (this was a rolling front sort of thing)
4. Dynamic reinforcements based on progress or lack there of
That's indeed a lot more. I think I understand.
Probably some other things that I'm forgetting, but I think you get the picture that to fully support an Operations concept there's a lot more we would have to do than persistent damage.
That takes us down the rabbit hole we don't want to revisit.
Sorry, this conclusion I do not understand. Why do you have to fully support that Operations concept to use snapshot data? I see no connection between the two.
Let me portray a kind of different "operation" system not from the bottom-up, single battles building up a campagin, but from the top-down: one (big) task given. With a signle ormal map, available VLs, predetermined supply/reinforcements. The supply of units is up to the player.
The gameplay difference: instead of everything that could happen is cramped into 2:00 hours, with "snapshots" of units the time for an "operation" could be 10 battles 30 minutes each for this one task ("operation"?).
30 minutes timeframe now? If a battle within the current campaign-system or as single battle makes no difference: the tactical possibilities are very much known prior, because the battle can only last a certain amount of time and not several days longer because of unforseen surprises. With a snapshot-possibility within campaigns you could eliminate this problem.
You probably know better than me how important the "new" effect is. Because of CMs complexity and tactical depth IMO it offers a very good long-time motivation because it stays "new" for a long time. But nevertheless IMO at some point the time restriction and the knowledge that everything that theoretically could happen, must happen within the already started battle with it's given timeframe, takes reduces long time motivation. The game would be capable to model much more, but the predictability because of the fixed timeframe, does not allow to use and to show it.
Imagine: the time pressure for the attacker, now by a ticking clock, could be transformed into a good supply/reinforcement stream for the defender.
Or: defensive positions that alone could take one hour of artillery to weaken and then several attacks to finally break (wouldn't Stalingrad, Kursk, Normandy campaigns become much more attractive, if you could model that?).
I see no necessity to go the CM1 Operation route to achieve "operations". From what I have learned by now, the old Operations probably wouldn''t even be that well suited for a more powerful model anyway.
You already have the core unit concept and their status can be transferred into the next battle. Where is the problem, if the unit's location and orientation on the map was saved, too? This cannot eat much memory because also between turns the unit locations must be preserved. But just in case if a snapshot was needed for the next battle: if the Campaign does not branch away since certain triggers were not activated and the battle continues on the same map. Then you have persistant map damage, you have core units and then you could place them where they have been. Why not?
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You are describing the CMx1 Operations system and that's what we're not going to touch with a 10' pole again. It was a nightmare on our end.
Thanks for your response Steve. Very cool to discuss with a developer directly. Even more so, if he is the developer of the best game I know.
Honestly I can't follow your argumentation now. You stated, that the frontlines in the CM1 system were the main problem. I raised the idea, since CM2 already has supply vehicles, to use these and leave it up to the tactical abilities of the player to get the supply to his units and forget the problem with the frontlne thing completely. Now you responded that persistent damage and units on the map would be like CM1 ops? Why if there are no frontlines creating headaches anymore?
If you even are able to code persistent map damage and at the end of a battle all units and their status is there, why not using their position and status too to get a snapshot as new basis to expand the power and potential variety of campaigns substantially? Besides the small scale campaigns I mentioned, new campaign-experiences would become possible.
I am thinking of an example of a campaign with short 30 minutes battles each. The time for each battle could be set unrealistically short for the player to reach the goals. But it would be up to the player to recognize it. Currently I always know before the first shot how strong the enemy will be and the time even tells me exactly, how well I am progressing. IMO this sometimes can give away too much information.
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The devil is in the details.
I am currently in probably the last scenario of Blunting the spear-campaign. Although I really like big battles, because of their tactical choices, sometimes I didn't want to continue, because of it's size and despite the fun it is.
Have you ever considered the following? If you make it possible to fight several battles on the same map and if it feels like the consecutive battle is a result of where the previous battle ended with all damage and units, that suddenly small campaigns, easier to produce, like platoon sized probes or company sized campaigns would become VERY interesting? If you make a well working supply/repair-system, you maybe even could create 7-, 10-, 15- battle campaigns with the minimum effort of only a single map. That seems to be a huge leverage revenue/cost wise.
The current system almost enforces to make campaigns on big maps and with many units, because a lonely platoon appearing on completely different maps and therefore different tasks, is tactically not really interesting. But if the battles are glued together and feel like a whole, also very small scale campaigns would become tactically interesting - besides the fun they probably are. I guess small scale campaigns would be much more interesting for realtime players, too.
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The practical problems associated with making CMx1's system doomed it.
I'll save you some time... don't bother
There is no way, no how, that we are going to undo the CMx2 campaign system and we will never make/support a parallel system. It's just not in the cards and therefore no point discussing something we won't ever do.IanL's suggestion to think about "tweaks" to the current system is fine, though we have no near-term plans to do major work on the campaign system.
Yeah, persistent map damage is IMHO the #1 thing to do. It's a little tricky to do with the code we have, but it is definitely doable.
I never played CM1 but from what I have taken from the discussions the CM1 system allowed battles being fought on the same map and map damage just like vehicles were persistent or even could be repaired between battles. Sounds very, very
and realistic.If I imagine a Stalingrad module, I think persistent map damage would be absolutely a must have. But without a battle continuing where the previous battle ended I see it's attractiveness dramtically lower than it could be.
Not that I believe I have better ideas, but maybe you have not thought about some possibilities because of your involvement every day?
Problem to determine a frontline? Would a frontline really be necessary?
Alternative to frontline:
- Supply vehicles. As long a the player does not lose his base, he could receive supply trucks at the base VLs. Then it's up to the player to get them to his units from the pervious battle. The player therefore has to plan ahead: where do I need to advance to keep supply routes open? Tactically a significant improvement IMO. If tanks could resupply (under certain situations) this feature could offer even more tactical depth for scenarios - pardon: CAMPAIGNS .
- Another possibility could be to determine a "supply path" on the map. Drawn by scenario designers like they create VLs. At the end of the battle it could be checked, if this path was free of enemy units or if enemy units have LOS to it. If they have LOS, the severity of the potential fire from each unit could be calculated. Depending on how severe the fire-threat to this supply-path is, the received supply to the units along the path could be determined.
My 2 ct.
- Supply vehicles. As long a the player does not lose his base, he could receive supply trucks at the base VLs. Then it's up to the player to get them to his units from the pervious battle. The player therefore has to plan ahead: where do I need to advance to keep supply routes open? Tactically a significant improvement IMO. If tanks could resupply (under certain situations) this feature could offer even more tactical depth for scenarios - pardon: CAMPAIGNS
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I'm afraid that I can't answer any of these yet. When the details are more solidly in place in the coming months, I'll be sure to let you guys know.
I am champing at the bit to get V4.0 going once Final Blitzkrieg is out the door.
That's great to hear. Where can I preorder?
I would pay for a campaign system alone, where consecutive and really connected battles can be fought on the same maps with map destruction - and H2H. And ofcourse I would need this feature in all CM families I own...
- An Elite Forces Pack that includes such things as Commandos and 1st Special Service Force. This would be a pretty small Pack, and may just get rolled into something else. Details are murky at this point.
Skorzeny's liberation of the Duce with landing gliders?!?
<looks for someone to blame
There is no way, no how, that we are going to undo the CMx2 campaign system and we will never make/support a parallel system. It's just not in the cards and therefore no point discussing something we won't ever do.
Team cannot aquire Panzerfaust?
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted
I have tried it with two different teams and I cannot aquire the Panzerfaust which is located in this Opel. No PzF listed. Any ideas why?
Blitz.bmp