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Moon

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Everything posted by Moon

  1. Before playing Flight Commander 2 and Over The Reich I also had my doubts about the AI in CM based on previous "experiences" However, these two games from BTS make the computer a though opponent - hey, they even have a menu option "weaker computer opponent" (or something like that) Of course it is much more difficult to program an AI into a tactical ground warfare game like CM. I am not a programmer or anything (at least not beyond programming a database), but the task of making the computer coordinate his forces in a realistic and challenging manner seems an incredible task to me. So incredible, in fact, that I have always wondered why not make a 1-on-1 multiplayer wargame ONLY and skip the AI completely - I prefer playing against human opponents anyway... But I am just thinking loud here, no real suggestion or something...
  2. Hi Fionn! Haven't seen you around for a while...
  3. What Ludemann says is he wants to play with collegues at work, right? Ok, I'd do the same...
  4. Excellent solution in my eyes, and seems also much more realistic than anything I have seen sofar! Way above and beyond West Front also: in WF teams suffer from a penalty in their attack and defense values when out of command - as if their rifles suddenly can only shoot half as far.
  5. One somment on victory flags: I found it always annoying in SP that a flag would stay in the color of the side that moved through the spot last... I encountered several scenarios where I had annihilated the whole enemy force which was holding the location but didnt have enough time to move one of my own units to the hex because the turn limit was reached. This leads to two questions: - would it make sense to switch a flag to NEUTRAL when there is no units of either side close to it? Alternatively, the victory location could be assigned to the force which is closest to the location without the need to actually MOVE through it. - Will the flags have an area assigned to it which represents the victory location (i.e. you take the flag by moving within X yards to it)? And how big will this area be (e.g. fixed size for any flag or variable size)?
  6. Wow, Steve, I kept scrolling and scrolling and scrolling... >Units do not "gain" experience like so many other games do. If you have a Green unit, it will remain that way throughout a battle. It will also remain that way throughout a campaign. Our classifications are broad enough that one day of combat does not warrant a change in status. This makes me think: WHEN actually would a squad move up to a higher status? After 10 days of combat, 15, 30? Or after finishing a battle during refitting periods with enough time to think over what happened? I think all these classifications are so "fuzzy" that CM will do the best by not allowing to raise teams experience during game play out of thin air, even during campaigns... didn't I see something like this in CC1 or 2? > There has been a long fought war over "how many soldiers actually shot during WWII" ever since the Marshall report. This is most likely where the "15%" figure on that TV show came from. Over time this part of the report has largely fallen into discredit. I have some figures that seem more acurate around here someplace, but can't find them right now. As one historian pointed out, if the US Army was able to beat a tenacious defender, over a period of one year, with only 15% of its combat troops (a minority of soldiers themselves), imagine what they could have done if they shot more than once and a while Hmm, I must say that I can indeed imagine that only 15% of soldiers fired their weapons in a fight. Not necessarily because 85% were only cowering or playing cards in the trenches , but just because you don't see the enemy very often. Unlike in movies or some games, soldiers tend to stay out of view of the enemy if they only can, and - with the exception of maybe certain close fighting situations - only a relatively small amount of "lucky" opportunities occurs to actually aim and fire. But this is just a thought, I have nothing to prove it - and in fact any number between 15% and 50% sounds reasonable to me...
  7. The issue of mobility (or lack of it) in "green" troops" seems to be implented very well in CM by the longer reaction time of squads to the order issued by the player (so these BTS guys DO know one thing or two ) - what about the better orientation that veteran troops have over the situation? It would be cool to see the green team move over that open field (no incoming fire - yet while the veterans would actually refuse to do so... or, more generally speaking, to see green teams follow the players orders no matter how dumb they are - as long as they dont break (like bunching up), while the veterans would chose a slightly different path or action with better chances to survive... is this possible from a programming point of view and, of course, would it make any sense?
  8. After skimming through the FAQs once more - well, you gotta work with what you got, right? - I have noticed one paragraph dealing with morale and the statement "green units might panic at the first pistol shot" (when crossing an open field). This seems to be the approach of most wargames. However, when reading about the behaviour of some green troops first time under fire I ran frequently into something like "they were green so they took greater risks because they were not aware of the consequences"... Just two of the more recent examples I found in books I have read lately: - "Band of Brothers" from Ambrose describes the storm of Easy Company, 101st Airborne against entrenched German artillery. Pvt. Lipton climbes a tree, fully visible by the Germans, and fires his Thompson down at the gun crews... he later said that he would have never done that had he been a veteran... - "The View from the Turret" - In an interview gunner Lattimer describes the landing on Omaha beach. Every round they shot was drawing anti-tank fire on them. Finally, they were shot immobile. However, his commander kept ordering fire and finally their tank was blasted to pieces. "Lattimer later reflected that he then understood why green tankers had been thrown at the German defenses on Omaha. Veteran tankers would have stopped firing after the first hit." Two examples that paint a completely different picture than what I see in most wargames where green squads are mainly cannon fodder... I do not intend to say that "green" troops were better than veterans, but just want to indicate that "green" does not HAVE to mean "useless"... I wonder what BTS and anybody here thinks about that?
  9. Does anybody know the book "The View from the Turret" from William B. Folkestad? It covers the action of the 743rd Tank Battalion throughout 1944-45 and is not only a great book (highly recommend it in case somebody doesn't know it), but also delivers a great deal of ideas for scenarios and campaigns in CM... As a tank battalion (in difference to an armored division) its main task was to act as an attachment to infantry divisions (especially the 30th) and therefore could provide the perfect mix of units for CM, I think! BTW, it also gives a lot of information about the M4 Sherman tank (including various field modifications which were discussed in a thread on the old forum) - so I thought you might be interested...
  10. I know EXACTLY why I would not want CM to be real-time, but I was wondering: what were the actual reasons why BTS has chosen the "mixed" approach of orders phase / action phase? In the existing 3D model, it appears to me that it would have been easy to have a completely real-time based simulation...
  11. Well, at least in the States you have a chance to own one. In Germany we can choose from a lot of nice looking models, but they're just that - models. No chance whatsoever for an automatic weapon and even pistols are a no-no unless you have a very good reason to own one (when you're a politician for example)... As to the MG42 - I fired the modern version of the MG42. It's called the MG3 and is still in use in todays German army with slight modifications to the original WWII model. Yes, it IS devastating - during shooting practice once when we had too much ammo because one company didnt show up, I've cut a whole stack of trees within a couple of minutes! But this thingie also has a lot of punch in it - lying prone without anything to put your feet against, I moved several inch backwards after ever burst...!
  12. I've heard something similar about the paratroopers of the 101st and 82nd, which exchanged their M1A1 carbines against the Thompson M1 on any available occasion. Looking at the pure numbers of both weapons I can hardly understand why, but on the other hand one should not underestimate the psychological effect that a full auto weapon can have on a soldier. I could imagine that the ability to muster a lot of firepower (in terms of rounds per minute) FEELS good from the subjective perspective of a single soldier, better than the one shot capability of the carbine or M1 Garand. I remember reading a very interesting article about this (I promise I will find out where it was, can't remember now), where pure statistics showed that a soldier equipped with an automatic weapon (I think the example was the BAR) would be MUCH more active on the battlefield in comparison to standard rifles. ------------------
  13. Could you maybe explain the armor penetration diagrams once more? I still dont seem to get the full picture here (and please bear with me if this has been a topic before, I couldnt find it anywhere): In the text different hit locations on a vehicle are mentioned ("...a Sherman 76mm can penetrate the lower hull out to approximately 550meters. Within 200 meters, the turret front can also be penetrated..."), but I can't find the corresponding information in the actual diagrams. Am I missing something, like color coding in the diagram that shows the percentages for the different hit locations? Or do you have different diagrams for different locations? In other words: how do I see which percentage belongs to which hit location? ------------------
  14. I speak English, German and Polish fluently... ------------------
  15. Airstrikes were mentioned in the "battles" thread. Did you guys solve the problem of how to depict airstrikes in the 3D environment? Of course it would be exciting to see a Stuka dive down on a couple of poor squads and strafe them... but I guess that's easy to wish and hard to put in code... ------------------
  16. One of the last threads on the old message board was about Close Combat 3. Well, I finally got it myself a week ago. Besides several flaws in the campaign structure, one of the biggest problems seems to be that "infantry is dying like flies"... IMO one of the main reasons for this seems to be the fact that they are bunching up A LOT! They tend to stay within one or two meters of each other! I guess anybody here knows how deadly bunching up can be. In the Army we'd sometimes spread as far as 20 yards from each other when crossing open ground or under mortar attack! Finally to what I wanted to say: since CM is not depicting single men like CC3 but rather the whole squad as a unit, how bunched up by default are CM squads going to be? In other words, what will be the physical space on the battlemap that a rifle team takes up? I remember posts about the possibility of one mortar shell to take out your squad... Also, will I be able to change something about the "formation" of my squad? I am asking because when looking at the movies it appears that the three men showing a squad sometimes change positions relative to each other... or is it just because they're rotating? ------------------
  17. I have stayed away from this whole "good board / bad board" discussion and do really not understand what this is all about??? The new forum looks great, is easy to handle (aah, new message here... click - the whole thread shows up) and offers much more in terms of searching for topics and customizing it. But whatever the board is, I REALLY do not understand people that say (or should I say threaten?): I hate your new board, I will go if you don't change it... Hey, I though we're talking about Combat Mission here and not the board??? Could we maybe move the "good board, bad board" discussion to the UBB website and give the BTS guys a break? I am so much more interested in the game that I would write my questions and posts in DOS if I had to... ------------------
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