Beamup

An update - I started trying some other things with this, and one of them worked. When I increased CM's RAM even more than I had, it processed the turn with no problems. So, this appears to be a memory problem, where occasionally it needs large quantities of RAM. Further testing showed that the turn would process with 20M more than the normal allocation (but 128M didn't work earlier for some reason - maybe it didn't have a free block that large?)

OS 8.6 OpenGL 1.1.2, but it doesn't seem to be graphics-related - I'll check, though 256M RAM installed, virtual memory off, increased CM's RAM to 128M without effect

A search indicates that this problem has come up before, but was never answered. Whenever I try to play "All or Nothing" on my G4/450 (stock) I can get somewhat into the scenario (sometimes 20 turns, sometimes right after setup) and, while the computer is thinking (apparently precisely when it finishes thinking), CM crashes to the desktop with no error messages. Reloading of saved games where the problem occurred has them recur. The problem persists after a full reinstall from CD (1.0, the second batch) and redownload/reapplication of v. 1.12, with extensions off. This bug affects, AFAIK, ONLY this scenario, but it manifests at some point during every attempt to play AoN. I have a saved game that exhibits this bug, if desired. ------------------ Beamup Questions, comments, arguments, refutations, criticisms, and/or sea stories?

IIRC, this is one of those capabilities that will be in the full version but is not in the beta demo. You will be able to order dismounted crews to reman abandoned (though not destroyed) vehicles.

I just had it happen in a PBEM game I am playing (Reisberg as Allies) that the reinforcements showed up. When I opened up the file, the message that "Reinforcements have arrived" popped up BEFORE I entered my password. This security flaw (irrelevant in the beta demo since everyone knows when the reinforcements arrive anyway) should be fixed.

Quote: Of course if the vehicle is moving slowly laterally kill rates go up but a vehicle moving quickly laterally is very difficult to miss. Ah, Fionn, you did mean difficult to _hit_, didn't you? If not, I'm getting really, really, confused here.

Current count (quickly done, might be off by 1) 6-27. At the moment the no's have it.

No. I'd much rather have a consistent, well-researched game than one where everybody could just change whatever they thought would be cool. Anyway, at this point it would require a HUGE code revision, I am sure, which would push back the release date - and nobody wants that.

Don't _ever_ post on topics like this when a physicist is around. Sorry, nobody's gotten it right yet. The correct metric mass/area (which is not a pressure) is 1.09 kg/square cm. A 0 was dropped, and this should be easy to fix. If you really want all the gory details, read on - If the W weighs 35 tons = 70000 lb, and has a ground pressure of 14.3 psi, its footprint is 4900 square inches - about 34 square feet, which is reasonable. Converting these to metric, one gets 1.0 kg/cm squared, which is what is noted (ccm is a somewhat archaic notation for square centimeters, NOT cubic... the c's are both "centi". It's like p. for a page and pp. for several pages) BTW, don't even get me started on the fact that this is not a pressure... pounds (a force) and kilograms (a mass) do not measure the same thing, a metric pressure would be kg/m/s^2. Doing the same for the W+, assuming the same footprint, one gets 15.1 psi - close enough given the precision of the data provided. This then becomes 1.09 kg/cm^2, NOT 1.9. Someone dropped a 0. I would expect, since this is so simple, it can be fixed easily. [This message has been edited by Beamup (edited 11-16-99).] [This message has been edited by Beamup (edited 11-16-99).]

I plan to be there (I hope) That's 8 PM my time, so I'll have to blow off helping with that observatory tour and let Stuartt handle all of it... too bad.

Crossfire, you're looking at a completely different scale here. To be realistic (which to many people here is almost synonymous with fun) the Germans must lose, since they did in the real war. BUT, this is almost totally invisible at CM's level. A company-level battle to capture a village is basically the same regardless of which side is winning the war. In any given engagement, the Germans have more or less the same chance of winning as the Allies. And to answer your Russian analogy, sure! A specific company refusing to fight would not alter the course of the war. The problem is not in CM, it is in all the other wargames that try to make out that victory/defeat in this one small battle will actually change the war somehow. It won't. And, IMNSHO, if you need for your actions to have an effect on the whole war to enjoy the game, it's your priorities that are warped.

I disagree with C.C. The behavior Fionn suggests does not seem contrived at all to me, IMHO it seems quite realistic. After all, you're supposed to be at the platoon/company leader scale - it's not really likely that a company commander would say "Hey Sarge, target that Tiger over there, and make sure you rotate the hull." More probable would be "Hey Joe Tank Commander, kill that Tiger!" and then the _tank commander_ decides how to go about it. So the angle should be under the control of the unit itself, i.e. the TacAI. So I think Fionn's suggested system is the way to go, since my knowledge (limited compared to some here, but reasonably accurate) suggests that German tankers, at least, did use this tactic.

Yes - this issue has been discussed in great detail elsewhere. To summarize, while you can certainly calculate the results as many times as you like, the other player will see them first - CM won't play the movie for you. So you don't know what the results were and hence cannot try for any specific result.

Realistic, yes - doable, I'd have to guess a resounding NO. From a programming standpoint, what you suggest would almost certainly be difficult and time-consuming. It may sound trivial, but I've tried to program similar things and it isn't at all.

While I was playing Last Defense today something weird happened. My Tiger is merrily driving around Hellcat Hill. I order him to drive to the road and start the turn. He doesn't move, and in the next orders phase the move marker is in a different place, which from my perspective appeared to be right by the tank, so I just grumbled and deleted it, then replotted the move. Started the turn, and next orders phase the same thing happened, so I looked a little bit closer - and from view 1 it was clear (looked at it from all directions) the waypoint was FLOATING IN MIDAIR about 50m off the ground(rough estimate). At one point I even moved the camera under it, and got a nice aqua line slanting up over my head. So let me make this perfectly clear - this was no trick of perspective, it was most definitely in midair. I saved, thinking to send it in, but when I reloaded the file, the waypoint had moved down to ground level, though it was in the same (wrong) position. I can still e-mail anybody the file, but I'm not sure it will be useful. Has anyone else ever seen this?

Wow, I'm posting a lot today. Contrary to what seems to be typical around here, I find Last Defense easier for Germans than Americans. Just push forward, with support, and overrun them with ease - even if the Hellcats wipe out my vehicles (only happened twice) my infantry is perfectly sufficient. But, I can't come up with good tactics for the Americans, though I still win with them. Whenever I try a forward defense (at the wheatfield wall and the forest on the US right flank) my troops can ambush some leading elements, but then the rest of the Krauts swarm over them, and there isn't enough cover to pull them back to the town. However, I feel sure that defending in the town from the start (which shreds the comp totally every time) would fail against a decent human player. What tactics do you people use that seem effective?

I'm getting a little worried about the quality of single player games. I have only twice gotten less than a "Major Victory" while playing the computer - my first game and one game where I was trying all sorts of off-the-wall crazy tactics (that usually failed), and both of those times I still got Minor Victory. Is the full version going to correct this somehow? A better version of the Strat/Ops AIs, or maybe just maps where you play a definite underdog? Please reassure me about this, b/c while 2-player games are great and I will do a lot of them, I still like to have a single-player challenge available.

Runs like an absolute dream on my G4/450. (you have my permission to turn green with envy) Everyone should buy one... then people would have enough computer power that BTS might actually be able to render 12 men/squad!

Or what would be really great... if I can dream... the map Fionn and Moon were playing on in the AARs. That would be WONDERFUL. But, knowing what I do about demos, I realize a lot of the code & data were taken out... so it might not be possible without a lot of extra work. But, any new scenario would be great, and given that they seem to be "drop-ins" I'd hope we could get _something_. Thoughts, Steve? Pretty please with sugar and a cherry on top?

Actually to comment on Ron's post... I'm not sure he knew this yet, but two ambushes he laid each wiped out a full platoon, while I didn't even get to shoot back. Tactical suggestion - if you ever want to give somebody a really nasty surprise, move some squads away from the front wall of a house and hide them... when somebody charges in to take the house, they get blown away. I can attest from sad experience that it works (though it took like 15 minutes to figure out what had happened to my platoon).

Personally I've taken to playing CM with the 1812 Overture in the background - quite disconcerting occasionally, since I hear the cannons and flip out thinking "WTF FIRED AT ME... oh wait that was the music, ok."

Currently playing a PBEM game in Reisberg and my opponent made VERY effective use of one of his SMG platoons. Set up an ambush in an unexpected place, basically exterminated an entire platoon for no losses at all that I could see. More generally, in my experience, SMGs tend to shred rifles at close range, but the rifles win at long range.

I have noticed what seem to me to be two related flaws in the FOW system. First, once you ID a unit, it stays ID'd. Case in point - I ID an "Infantry Squad" as a "Rifle 45 Squad" with 5 men remaining. It goes behind a house, I lose LOS and it becomes a star. Comes out 5 turns later, well away from any of my units, and I can immediately tell it still has 5 men. In fact, I shouldn't even be sure it's even the same squad, which is related to my second point, which is that the star/cross markers convey WAY too much info. If I see a marker disappear, I can back up and select that marker, then play the movie again. If it disappears completely, leaving nothing selected, I know that unit moved off the map. But, if it does not, I have selected the unit that left the star in the first place, so I know which unit it is, and that it is not a new unit. (If this is not clear, you can e-mail me with questions or just post them below.) What I would LIKE to see happen is this: 1. Sighting reliabilities can degrade with time and distance. Not meaning it goes from a Rifle 45 Squad back to an Infantry Squad, but I shouldn't still know how many men are left and be able to track when they die. 2. Star/cross markers _remain where they are_ until one of my units gets close enough for a good look at the area. Then I can't track what's going on with units supposedly out of my sight by selecting the markers. Since I know a good bit of programming, I realize that this would probably be nontrivial to implement, but it would be very nice, for CM2 if nothing else.

I'd like to respond a little bit to this discussion. First of all, a couple days ago I was among those saying the AI needed tweaking on this issue, due to some experiences I'd had with the demo. Ever since, the problem has not recurred. (I still think a situation I had with the sharpshooter was a genuine glitch, but have thus far been unable to replicate it.) A few thoughts I have had since then: 1. Close-assault units absolutely MUST switch targets fast, due to the fluid nature of their situation. No problem here. 2. Support units, OTOH, should be under much closer control (this is also more accurate, I believe). But, if the support units are in proper support positions (i.e. in no imminent danger of being attacked), they do in fact keep with your orders - at least since I got better at the game. 3. Net result - the AI seems to work fine. If you pay attention to what you're doing, and your orders are appropriate, it appears to work. 4. On a less related topic, I have a problem with how to get my troops to do a certain thing. Specific example: Riesberg as Axis. Now, most of my infantry are SMGs, so are ineffective except at close range. So, what I want to happen is for them to hide and hold fire until the Americans get within 60-80m, then have everybody open up at once, hopefully cutting a platoon or more to shreds. "Hide" doesn't work, they open up at about 150m, which is really too far for an SMG. Disturbingly, it's also the range where my rifle squads in Last Defense open up from "Hide." "Ambush," OTOH, is the command that's closer to what I want. BUT, ambush has too small an area... I need this to happen on a wide front. When I tried using ambush to do this, the Americans waltzed right past the markers(about 50m away from them) into the houses before my guys fired, the one time I have cursed the discipline of Veterans. Any suggestions?

Actually you can find out the % chance to hit using the LOS or Target commands. Odds of a kill, too, though not as a % (Good, Excellent, Low, etc.). Note - this following is just my observation and could be wrong. Also, it seems that this does not really represent the chance for _that specific_ team... more a generic team. It seems that generally they'll either miss 5 or 6 in a row or brew up 3 vehicles in 4 shots (see "Great Moments" thread). Hmm, think I'll do some statistical analyses and see. P.S. Just shot an 88 at a Sherman in Riesberg. Target showed a "richochet" simulaneously with the Sherman right next to it showing "side penetration" and in flames! I couldn't figure out what was going on until, after replaying the turn several times, I caught the richochet in flight _between_ the tanks! It richocheted off one tank and killed its compatriot - I LOVE all the little details in this game. Three thousand cheers for BTS!!!