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hoolaman

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Posts posted by hoolaman

  1. There's a reason the heavy panzer battalions were used as fire brigades. They couldn't be everywhere but wherever they went they could make a decisive impact on the battle. Often in CM we come across just one Tiger which can be almost trivial to deal with. A proper formation of Tigers mutually supporting each other is a fearsome foe.

    That sounds like a pretty fun game. A hopeless case, but playing red in CMSF taught me that sometimes it's fun trying.

  2. I'm 31 and I mainly play WEGO, but will pick realtime if the situation is right.

    Pausable RT is a lot of fun in solo play and for very small scenarios, like a reinforced platoon at the very biggest. It keeps the pace moving and puts realistic constraints on what you can see and control at any one moment.

    The biggest problem with RT for me is the fact that you need to remain at high levels or miss blatantly obvious contacts with the enemy. CMx2 LODs are ugly as sin at the higher levels and the TacAI generally on responds with units that are directly fired upon, so cannot respond with realistic actions to a tank getting hit somewhere on the map.

    RT multiplayer OTOH is absolutely ridiculous. No pause makes it the epitome of clickfests.

    WEGO with 30 seconds or less timed orders phase like you used to be able to do in CMx1 would be perfect. I'd even like to see a timed orders phase in single player actually.

  3. Does anyone know what height is used for this check?

    I have seen this problem even without waypoints. I was moving a heavy machinegun across a wheatfield to fire on some buildings. While moving, I checked LOS -- it existed. So, not wanting to be any closer than necessary (in case the Germans were there), I stopped and deployed the unit, planning my area fire next turn. Except -- no LOS. My guess is that when moving, the unit's LOS was being checked from eye level -- 5-6 feet or so. Above the wheat. Once they stopped, eye level was kneeling -- 3 feet. Then the wheat blocked.

    I am not sure what can be done about this. I do think that perhaps adding another color code or two to the target line might help, and/or texts similar to the "hull down" ones we already get.

    For a tank, they might add a text "AA MG only", say. This would be displayed with the normal grey line.

    For infantry, there should be no blue line based on being standing, only on kneeling, unless the unit can fire standing. But certainly not for a heavy MG. A grey line, at most, for standing-only LOS (except mortars).

    Also: I've added LOS at the wiki. http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/Line_of_sight

    Yes your guess is correct, when you check LOS from a future waypoint it is based on the CURRENT height of your units. So a marching unit will check LOS from the standing height but then when they go prone at their destination their LOS is not clear.

    It is very easy to check this with walls, a team that is currently prone will show no LOS through a wall from a future waypoint, but a standing team will.

    This is one very important point that is not well understood.

  4. It seems reasonable that if AP is ineffective the crew might try a HE round. The experience crew gets the idea quicker according to the tests mentioned earlier in the thread.

    The problem, to my mind, is that the only place these hits should be bouncing from is the lower hull/transmission cover area. The "pulpit" on a priest should not bounce 75mm AP. The vehicle should not even really have anything tagged "upper hull" AFAICT, it should be like a Sherman in the lower hull and a very lightly armoured superstructure bolted on top.

  5. What i discovered is that the Priest is a bloody fortress at 1100 meters when it comes to AP hits, to penetrate it you need to hit the superstructure otherwise AP is useless, but it's really difficult to get a superstructure hit, i got one out of god knows how many rounds fired, all the AP rounds that made contact either hit the lower / upper front hull or the weapon mount which proved to be impervious to penetration and just caused ricochets with no damage to any of the sub systems, however once HE was used the sub systems took a battering and the vehicle tried to reverse out of LOS,

    Sounds more like a priest bug than a stug bug. The light armour should take up at least half of the visual area.

  6. I think CMSF is more fun, and certainly more unique. Those ATGMs can be awesomely fun, especially when you only have one roll of the dice to get a hit on a superior force.

    Part of the problem is that I (like BFC I suppose) had well burned out on CMx1 WWII by the time CMSF came out and fundamentally we have gotten a prettier, but less user friendly and less comprehensive remake of CMBO, so CMBN already seemed like it had been done before. I expect when the rest of the game arrives in module form there will be much more to hold my interest.

  7. Just hit the backspace key to cancel the movement order if you accidenttly double click on any HQ unit.....It took me a while to figure this out. After going through the same problems you experienced. I was starting to think my units had minds of thier own, LOL

    Yep one move order should just ADD one waypoint to all the units, which can be deleted in the same way it was placed.

  8. Do you really want an answer, or are you just going to line us all up and tell us why our personal opinion is wrong?

    I have no real problem with the status quo. If you see that the "string" from the ground to the balloon is the same length for all units you can easily tell from the perspective where the units are.

    I would prefer the icons a bit lower and to scale a bit better with distance, but I very rarely have any trouble with things the way they are.

  9. I agree with you guys. I've never read an account where soldiers said they couldn't get through a hedgerow. There seems to be a myth floating around these forums that hedgerows are impenetrable by infantry, probably perpetuated by the way CMBN is designed. From all the reading I've done it's the vehicles that had the problem getting through.

    There's no myth, there have been some looong discussions about this on the forums and there is some evidence pointing both ways. The best consensus I've seen is that in general the hedgerows were indeed difficult obstacles for both infantry and vehicles, but there were also thin spots and entry points used by farmers where it would be practical to send an infantry force through.

    The defenders knew about these gaps too of course, and it was partly the physical barrier and partly the well-laid defense that made them so formidable.

  10. I'm not understanding, I'm talking about something in the code, something that controls an action that the game routinely takes. Not necessarily a visual item.

    Lets, for example, take the problem with PBEM files intermittantly not being found in the outgoing mail folder, requiring a turn replay. If that is not fixed by the release of the next module it could also appear when playing scenarios from that module?

    The modules are basically content expansion packs so there is not any inherent change to the game or any of its bugs simply by making a module.

    What tends to happen though is a patch is released simultaneously with the content module. This process is a separate development stream and you don't even have to buy the module to get a patch to the base game.

    Making a beta build with installer, copy protection and actually distributing the thing is a non trivial process so I guess there are advantages to doing it all together.

    What you really want to watch out for is NEW bugs that go into a new patch :D.

  11. I welcome any scrutiny on my previous posts or opinions. Plse hit my handle and dig into my responses. You will find them (I hope) balanced and fair in my assessment of BFC's products and opinions.

    Having re-read this thread, I see your posts actually are quite polite until your response to Redwolf. A bit unneccesary imo. You should be nicer, if only BFC would do the right thing and give him the source code to all their games, everything would be fine.

  12. OOoo and just when you thought this was going to get boring...

    Ok Sunshine, let's dance (as I look longingly at my sixguns). Clark and Coy are lightweights by definition but I see Gamersquad has let loose what they consider heavy hitters!!

    :rolleyes:

    Is it any wonder that beta testers get a reputation for shouting people down.

  13. Good post. I think people here get blinded to just how much of a barrier the interface and graphics can be to new players. Graphics we can forgive and aren't too bad, but many indi games can manage a much higher bar for graphics and SFX.

    The interface still suffers from the same complaints that were a chorus after CMSF came out. Specifically the multi tab hotkeys rate a mention.

    I agree the review was very fair, there are plenty of good comments and a sense of the potential of the game, along with an explanation that it will be a very hard slog to get into it.

  14. I guess the analogy is that if so many (the majority?) of soccer goals were only being scored from penalty spot kicks people would feel similarly unhappy. This is just something I regret in our Aussie market because I love the game and it gets dissed here because 'potential' fans look at the game and just see an unending stream of technical penalities, many of which are open to interpretation. I think at this point in the game of rugby the balance is out of whack between 3 and 5 pointers. Perhaps that's a legacy of the uber-kicker trend that England started with Wilkinson.

    The last time this sort of imbalance crept in was around 1990/91 when we saw a load of games that were being decided 9-6 or 3-0 and then just completely shut down. They upped a try to 5 points then. I'm not sure that's necessarily the answer again but the dearth of tries is something that needs to be looked at.

    This isn't a refelction on last night. The Wallabies were outplayed on every level and didn't deserve to progress.

    That's basically my impression as a casual watcher of the games who doesn't really know all the rules.

    Grubbing around on the ground messily, then a penalty that I don't really understand, then points from a penalty kick. I've seen some more enjoyable open flowing games in previous years, but a scrappy game of rugby can be incredibly boring to watch.

    Maybe solid defense at the highest levels lends itself to brawls in the mud.

  15. Did some testing with the following setup:

    U.S. off-map light mortars (60mm) at each target with area 50m diameter, 3 tubes, medium fire, medium duration

    Germans one Fusilier squad each, split into two teams 20m away from each other - 10 simulations.

    1. in the open standing - losses between 80-100%
    2. in the open hiding - losses between 80-100%
    3. foxholes standing losses 10%-30% causalties when round exploding within 5-10 m outside the foxhole and soldier is observing else only direct hits / hiding losses only with direct hits. close hits <10m have no effect
    4. trench standing 10%-20% as in foxholes / hiding basically the same as foxholes.
    5. wooden bunker - occasionally one casualty but gets nervous etc pretty quickly with direct hits
    6. concrete bunker - no causalties, no effect observed.

    So i really can't see the issue with the 60mm mortar being an uber-weapon. Loss rate for troops in the open are no surprise to me when looking at the fire density you get. For troops in foxhole/trench direct hits are deadly - which isn't a surprise either, but when the troops are hiding, they are well protected.

    Thanks for doing this work winkelried. The 1.01 patch did attempt to address earlier problems with cover AND concealment in foxholes, I did quite a bit of testing to make sure it was so.

    Of course I'm not saying its perfect now, the point about cowering more often is a good one, but I still think many people were so scared off from foxholes in the original release that their original impressions have stuck.

  16. The light mortar is basically the same flimsy tube firing dumb bombs now as it was back then. Wikipedia even tells me the modern US 60mm mortar can still fire WW2 model bombs.

    I don't think it is right to be too dismissive of 1940s technology and methods as being orders of magnitude less effective than modern.

    There are analogue versions of most modern technology that an experienced user can get good performance out of. Where now there are computers and lasers, before there would be paper tables, optical rangefinders and good old fashioned gut feel.

    I work in the oil industry where a lot of the standard processes are exactly the same as they were in the fifties. Now there are computerized centralized systems, but functionally it is the same as going out and looking at an analogue gauge, checking a guide table and turning a valve by hand.

  17. I think the key word hear is "appear". The status of enemy assets is subject to FoW, and it's entirely possible your GroPos were simply unaware (or unconvinced) of the vehicle's inoperability, only being satisfied of its destruction when a bigger gun made it go "boom".

    FoW shouldn't really apply when you see the crew bail though.

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