Brian Rock

The visual toning down adds to the sense of arty being impactful to me. I believe the impact is still there in a game sense, but arty battles don't have the same visceral sense of overwhelm CMBO battles. I accept that the new visuals are more realistic than the big shock waves, but I really loved those things.

I agree with Leland. If you want to simulate the large belts of minefields you buy squillions of them and mark them. I personally prefer wire, but that's just a personal taste thing.

Michael, I think 1) and 2) on your list would be sufficient. Calculating point 3) would be troublesome. Firstly trying to determine exposure to fire is actually quite complex. * One location in the woods 20m away might be locations/data points does the engine have to calculate on? * What about the route the unit takes - do you need to calculate the amount of fire the unit might take along the whole path? More CPU cycles. * Also, to do it properly you should only take into account the units the panicking unit is aware of, but then what about units that that are in the area but temporarily out of position? It's starting to chew up a lot of cycles just to determine what should be calculated. Secondly the game engine doesn't seem to consider the risk of being fired on when moving to terrain now, why complicate things? :cool: [ November 01, 2002, 05:47 AM: Message edited by: Brian Rock ]

And then what? Are the units magic moved out of sight? If so, to where? Or do they fail to come on because simply because someone can see them? I belong to the "it's a scenario design problem" school of thought. The onus is on the designer to minimise the chance of this happening. Appearing at a map edge is common sense in the vast majority of cases, although I can think of exceptions (eg reinforcements who have been woken up in a barracks). There will always be a chance of weird things happening, but they can be minimised.

I don't find surrender unsporting at all. Not submitting a PBEM turn is, but surrendering makes perfect sense when the cause is lost. Happens in the real world all the time. The question about feeling involved with the action is an interesting one. I wonder if it's camera angles, bigger maps, or both. As for the going to ground thing, I think this is an area CMBB has right. Pretty much everything I've read indicates troops after WWI pretty well got the idea that hundreds of pieces of flying lead are faintly hazardous. Equally with the fatigue thing - apart from the physical exhaustion of running from point A to B factor in sleep deprivation, weeks of marching, poor food and the rest. Stress is very tiring, and adrenaline only takes you so far. The downside of this, as many posters have noted, is that the pace of combat is much slower. I think its true that some scenarios are perhaps better geared to CMBB pacing, and that it's now too easy for a player to rush an attack. I also accept the slower pace isn't to everybody's taste, esp when playing a PBEM. Hell, when I want a quick fun game I get the tanks out, not the infantry, whereas in CMBO I'd mix them up a bit more, and I like the inf changes!

I would think the difference between Green Maxims and Elite Maxims would be moot to the poor sod on the receiving end.

I haven't noticed any toning down of arty. Indeed one of the minor surprises for me in CMBB is the 50mm mortar - I just love those guys. Awesome rate of fire, and if it doesn't kill it does a great job of suppressing. I suspect one of the differences may be that in CMBO it was much easier to track the effects of arty - the lower level of FOW meant you had a handy kill-counter for monitoring how well the arty was doing. With EFOW you see a unit, and apart from whether it's advancing, dug-in or running away you often have no idea how it's being affected unless it's wiped out. Of course the obvious argument against this theory is that you say you've tracked the enemy casualties at one or two per minute. It could still be a contributing factor... of course we could set up more-or-less equivalent scenarios in CMBO and CMBB and test it, but like all true veterens I'm not keen to volunteer.

Coolest thing I can recall is a small QB I set up last night. Due to the pre-game random casualties most of my infantry disappeared, while I got both of my arty spotters. So... Dropping 76mm howitzer and 82mm mortar fire on the German approach route, then watching the depleted squads push through, re-group in the woods, and proceed to assault across a 50m gap into the nearest part of the town - right where my minefields and ambushing infantry were set up. One squad and HQ (all that was left of that platoon) managed to rout the better part of the company.

......SPOILER...... I just finished it with a 62:38, two tanks surviving and all Ruskies out of action bar two who were bogged down in the back. I screwed up a bit at first by leaving my screen in place one turn too long. I do that every frickin' game it seems - when will I learn? IMO the key to using tanks in this scenario is shoot and scoot. Ping 'em and bugger off. That's the theory. One of my tanks got bogged and tied down 3 T-34s for about four minutes, no kills either side. Then my flanking tanks showed up and popped two T-34s before scooting. Infantry killed two T-34s that kept pushing on after their infantry were routed. Speaking of inf, keeping them hiding until the enemy is at point blank range makes a mess of the Russians as well. I also got lucky when the last mobile T-34 decided to advance along the river. One of my two remaining tanks with nothing but HE fired away and got a gun hit, two track hits, then an immobilised. At which point the scenario ended. Lots of fun, and plenty of nail-biting. [ October 30, 2002, 07:02 AM: Message edited by: Brian Rock ]

Another possibility is to make reinforcements that appear next to an enemy cost twice as many MPPs. I have no idea whether this would be better, worse, or make no difference whatsover, but I'm interested in other players' thoughts.

It is more demanding. In CMBO I could get by with a "close enough is good enough" approach. When I apply that in CMBB I get wiped out. The game is particularly quick to punish the attacker. It is much easier to blunder into a kill sack. When I remember little things like "don't advance everybody into range on the same turn" I do a lot better.... go figure. I don't find I have to micromanage much more, but I do have to slow things down and pick my timing better.

Not really feasible. First of all I can just imagine the arguments about what would be the "likely opponents". How do you decide how likely it is that a unit will face infantry or armor, and what kind of infantry and armor? What about are the likely numbers, or the likely terrain, or the likely weather? Even if you could do that for any given time/situation, bear in mind the "likely opponents" will vary year by year, and sometimes month to month. Then you would need to do this for each and every one of the hundreds of units in the game. And at the end of this process some Gamey Bastich will still dig through the database to find the unit that gives the most bang for the buck for that player's playing style. If we had half a dozen units limited to a single campaign, say as in CC2, sure. On the scale of CMBB I can't see it.

Which is precisely what I meant. The scenarios are generally designed to give either side an equal chance of winning (with exceptions). In the real world the attacker usually won't attack unless they expect to win. It'd be a poor CO who continually engineered battles that only gave him a 50% chance of victory.

Caramel latte? You sick freak. I'm going to put my $1.50 into a fund to buy you new tastebuds. (Caramel latte... go figure. If you didn't have the good sense to appreciate CMBB I'd just put you on /ignore.)

Proverbial warning #4: CMBB battles are meant to be fair. Real war isn't. If you want a sense of why the Germans hated T-34s fight three battles. The first two will be 1,000 point battles and the Russians will be attacking with understrength forces, possibly even outnumbered by the defenders. In the third one they'll spend 8,000 points and have a 10:1 superiority in tanks (and infantry and artillery and...) Oh, only the third battle counts for victory conditions.

WTF?!? You mean this bug STILL hasn't been dealt with?!?!?! :eek: BTS, FIX OR DO SOMEFINK!!! [ October 17, 2002, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: Brian Rock ]

This is all just too funny. Keep the wacky RTS quotes and Nippy-pics coming.

Time to play psych-grog (note following smiley): Your fundamental point that a great deal of communication is non-verbal is correct, but the "90% of communications is body language" figure has been quoted so often it's become part of popular culture. Firstly non-verbal is more than just "body language". Eg tone, inflection, pace of speaking, which are parts of the auditory communication. Secondly 90% is too high. Just to quote one of the more commonly quoted researchers, Birdwhistle, estimates perhaps 35% of a communication is verbal, 65% non-verbal. http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jwbates/computerfordiversities.htm I'm not sure whether my post is in any way personal ideology or political banter, but it certainly has nothing to do with Strategic Command (note second smiley).

I'd guess 95% of my games are against the AI. As posters say, the AI isn't as skilled as a human, but that's not to say it isn't as fun as playing against a human. It doesn't drop out of games or sulk when it's losing, gloat when it's winning, argue over whether your tactics are gamey, stop playing for two weeks while it goes on vacation... I win the bulk of my games against the AI, but certainly not all of them. The AI can punish you if you do something stupid. I got absolutely hammered two days ago in a Quickbattle when I got cocky and advanced on a flank that I thought was covered. It wasn't, so I ran my bunched up infantry into a killing zone. My attack was basically broken up in the first five minutes. Advice: If you like WWII tactical combat, buy it.

Thanks for the source, Paul. I've seen figures on the net for German armour in Reichsmarks (the Achtung Panzer figures), and figures for T-34s in roubles ( http://www.geocities.com/pentagon/quarters/4635/tanks/t3476/t3476.htm ). I haven't seen what these figures are based on, nor any information on how to convert them to US dollars (straight conversion or better still some form of purchase parity). I'll try to get hold of Harrison's book - it may have more detail on sources and methods. [ October 15, 2002, 11:22 PM: Message edited by: Brian Rock ]

Yeah, if you can't trust a paid propagandist from the Nazi war machine, who can you trust? (ducks)

I'm rather skeptical that the Panther was about 80% of the cost of a Sherman, which makes me wonder about all the other figures as well. What is your source for this?

Differently. I'd probably be a great deal more cautious. It'd certainly add another dimension of uncertainty, which would increase the sense of tension. I agree, it would be cool.

I've just realised that everybody who was at the Sydney beta test hasn't received their copy. Co-incidence, conspiracy, or supernatural phenomena?

Max, although this topic has come up on this board, the discussion would be more suited for the General Forum. If you do, could you post a notice here to flag it down? I'll restrain myself from commenting for now...