Bullethead

It's pretty easy to use some strange tiles to mark out grid square corners in the editor. I generally use bridges of various sorts at 500m intervals horizontally and vertically. This lets me know where I am in a given 500m square, and by using bridges of different types in series, I can tell how far from the map edge as well. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Louie the Toad said: A pre-made map is really a scenario or operation file with no units at all. To use it, somebody has to add units to both sides and do all the stuff needed to make a full scenario or operation EXCEPT make the map. I don't think it's possible to use a pre-made map in a QB. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Hmm, that would be a big change. Guess I'll have to go back and test the impact patterns again. OTOH, did your rocket FO have an LOS to the target point? If the FO has no LOS, not only does he take about twice as long as normal to get the fire falling, but there are a few stray shots well outside the normal pattern (which is ridiculous but that's beside the present point). So if you didn't have an LOS, then maybe you had the bad luck to be tagged by one of these stray rounds. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

aka_tom_w said: I don't agree. If the FOW is such that you can't tell where the shots came from, you often can't tell who exactly they were aimed at. Sure, it might have hit Fred standing next to you, and Joe might have seen bullet impacts near him, but how can you be sure it wasn't really meant for 3rd squad just up the slope from you and fell short? In my experience, you can't tell the intended target in real life as precisely as you all desire for the game. All you know is that the enemy is shooting in your general direction. And CM already lets you know this in many elegant, immersion-friendly ways. For instance, when a distant, unseen MG opens up on the flank of your advance, you here it fire. Stop the film, back it up 1 click, move over to that flank, and listen again. This time you might hear some grunts say something about it, or a squad might falter in its otherwise steady advance as the troops drop to their knees briefly. Plus the MG's sound is sourced to a spot on the map so you can get a pretty good idea of where weapon is just by listening to it the couple of times it takes to make this inspection of your troops. I guess what I'm trying to say is that "what unit is being shot at" IS an FOW issue IMHO. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria. [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 02-16-2001).]

Bruno Weiss said: From the 1.04 README file: From the 1.1 README file: IIRC, the 1st 2 notes primarily concerned the problem grunts had of reacting the same way to all incoming fire. So if they panicked while in foxholes under shelling, they'd get up an run like they'd taken a lot of smallarms fire, and end up dying in the bombardment. These changes seem to have mostly solved this problem and I'm no longer concerned with grunt behavior in and around barrages. The last quote seems directly applicable here, if open-topped vehicles are included in the "unarmored" category when confronted by bombardments. I don't know if that's how the game works, but it seems a reasonable assumption. Anyway, if that's the case, then this tweak doesn't seem to be working as advertised. Yup, the Tac AI is chosing new destinations for the vehicles, but it doesn't seem to be seeking shelter--quite the reverse . ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Last time I checked (haven't done my test for 1.12 but I haven't noticed any changes in games played), it worked like this: The regular "target" command makes an elliptical pattern typically 100m x 50m for arty and slightly bigger for mortars. The "target wide" command makes a circular pattern typically 150-170m in diameter for arty and closer to 200m for mortars. Rockets don't have a "target wide" option but always fire in a circular pattern about 700m in diameter. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Dirtweasle said: I disagree because I feel like I haven't gotten my money's worth for MGs yet. I paid for this capability when I bought the MG, that being an integral part of what MGs do, and I'm not seeing it. I want a refund Seriously, I still disagree. MGs were very common and all of them could do this. Besides, observe how BTS has recently lowered the points available to purchase offensive forces in attack and assault scenarios. This lowered the force ratio for such battle types well below what is realistic. The implicit reason for BTS doing this is that under current modeling, the defense is too weak, so the "Band-Aid" fix has been to reduce the number of attackers relative to defenders. In real life, you need more attackers per defender than you can now get in CM. The main reason for this, IMHO, is because CM severely penalizes the defense by not allowing it to use its MGs nearly as effectively as it should be able to. So if BTS fixes the MGs, the attackers can go back to having realistic force ratios and there'd be no need to increase the cost of MG units--the presence of defensive MGs is one of the main reasons why the realistic force ratio is so high. And we all profit because the game as a whole, as well as individual scenarios, will be much more realistic. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Jasper said: Not exactly. Some guns could indeed keep the trigger down indefinitely (the Vickers, for example) but mostly they fired bursts of several seconds duration with brief pauses of like 1 second between. This was not only to keep the gun on target (MGs tend to "walk" when firing, even with well-set tripods) but also to pace ammo expenditure and barrel heating. Still, even things like MG42s were capable of much more constant firing than they can presently do in CM. As for ammo, normally they wouldn't have to reload while doing this. One of the crewmen would be hooking new belts to the end of the one currently being fired, so the gun wouldn't run out of ammo until every bullet had been fired. This is why I said "nearly continuous". MG42s had a quick-change barrel so they'd shoot off a belt or 2, pause a few seconds to change barrels, then keep on shooting with a new barrel while letting the first one cool. This is another job of the guy hooking up new belts. And another reason for having a large crew for MGs was so they could carry a number of spare barrels for just such situations. BTW, another thing that bugs me about how CM currently models MG teams is that most of them dont' do anything during the battle except hump ammo. Only 1 of them is firing and 1, maybe 2 others are hooking up or passing ammo and barrels. The rest should be providing local security around the gun with their personal weapons, but instead they just sit there. Kinda, but don't confuse low visibility conditions with just being too far away to see an individual point target, especially if it's camouflaged. So, while one of the main purposes of such sustained fire is close-in defense in poor visibility, it is also used in broad daylight. Attacking MGs do this to lay continuous suppressing fire on enemy positions, for example, and defending MGs could do this from long range to support the foward outposts from the rear lines. In both cases, the vibration of the gun scatters the bullets out somewhat at long range so you get an area effect good for both suppression of strongpoints and interdiction of avenues of approach. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I use TwoSheds' mod manager. In fact, I've gone to the trouble of going through all my mods and recombining them with the mod manager to get exactly the combinations of textures I want in any given situation. For example, if several different people have made mods for the same vehicle, I use the mod manager to combine them all as options in the same big zip file. As to batch files, they were a good idea at first but once everybody started using them, they quickly got out of hand. I had so damn many batch file icons that I couldn't find the CM icon on the menu. Fortunately, the mod manager came along about then and eliminated that problem . To me, the ideal format for me to download a mod in is just simply all the textures, some of them with the names changed to show what option they represent, a text file listing all the textures and saying what all the options are, and a thumbnail-size picture. Given all this, I can use the mod manager to set up the new mod however I desire, incorporating markings choices and combining it with mods for the same vehicle I already have. Plus I have the picture to put in the preview section of the mod manager. I don't mind renaming files and making multiple copies myself as required to do all this. I find it much easier this way than having to break open a mod manager-ized file and recombine it with stuff I already have. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Yeah, and make trees subject to destruction by shellfire, sorta like rubbling buildings. And have all the intermediate stages of partial destruction of trees and buildings able to be placed on the map at the beginning of a scenario instead of them always starting the battle in cherry condition ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Dirtweasel said: I think you're missing a key point here. The types of fire described in this thread for MGs are basic, inherent capabilities of MGs. MGs have been doing these things since they first appeared on the battlefield 100 years ago and they continue to do so today. Having MGs unable to fire essentially continuously down pre-determined lanes, even while blind, is directly analogous to having anti-tank guns in the game but giving them no AP ammo. It is robbing the unit of an essential, intended capability that it was designed to have from the beginning and which its crew was trained to exploit, not in special situations, but as day-to-day routine. This type of fire is what MGs DO. For example, you have an HMG unit. Then by definition you have a tripod with a T&E device which was designed precisely to make accurate, blind fire down pre-determined lanes possible. And you have a large crew whose function is to hump all the ammo and spare barrels that you need to do this type of fire. Same with MMGs, for that matter. LMGs lack the ammo, large crew, and tripod, but can still fire down pre-set lanes (although not as accurately) by means of the sticks I mentioned in the edge of their hole. Look at the Allied MG units in the game. You have the Vickers, the M1917, the M1919, and the M2 (a 1918 design). All of these were WW1-era designs and the Vickers and M1917 actually saw extensive WW1 combat. Now recall what MGs did on the defensive in WW1--picture 1 July on the Somme. The same guns did the same thing in WW2 beside their more modern equivalents, and their descendants continue to do the same thing today. So we for sure don't need new MG units that have the grazing fire capability. All MGs should have this because it's a basic feature of their design. Also, I'm sure the existing ammo loads accurately reflect the amount of ammo normally supplied to MG teams. Scenario designers can increase this to represent stockpiled ammo in long-established defensive positions or for long-prepared offensives. Thus, I'd leave the MG units alone except to give them their full functionality. What is needed on the ammo front, though, is something different in terms of how it's used. The "granular" fire system CM uses doesn't seem to lend itself well to the sort of wall of MG fire we're talking about here--too big a gap between individual bursts. IMHO, instead of having the whole ammo point expended instantaneously, the game should somehow stretch it out over a few seconds and allow these "stretched" shots to happen much more frequently than the "granular" shots MGs currently are limited to, so that the effect is a nearly continuous line of fire. The MGs would switch to this "stretched" fire when firing at their pre-designated TRP-analogs. BTW, we've been talking pretty much solely about defensive MG fire. But the same type of continuous fire on pre-selected targets is also used on the offensive to suppress enemy positions. So both offensive and defensive MGs should have the ability to place several TRP-analogs each in the set-up phase, which they can use as long as they don't move. I can imagine it would be quite a feat to make the AI able to use this sort of fire effectively. I mean, it never seems to buy arty TRPs already. But even if the AI can't do this right, at least humans should be able to use their MGs as Gawd Himself intended ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I'm reading this thread in a state of mild disbelief. I mean, BTS has gone to a great deal of trouble to implement the best, most realistic FOW system ever made. This whole thing about not knowing which specific units have taken fire from still-hidden enemy units is part of that FOW system. It's what the game is about. Enjoy the uncertainty of combat . Seriously, I agree with Tiger 100%. Play the game as it was meant to be played. Get down in the mud with your troops and try to figure it out from their perspective. If you "don't have time for that", then turn off FOW. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Michael emrys said: I respectfully disagree. A shell always has its center of mass in the same place and following the same trajectory both before and after it explodes. IWO, when the shell explodes, the expanding cloud of fragments has a net center of mass that is still moving forward with the velocity of the shell. In fact, the velocity of the center of mass along the trajectory of the original shell is usually higher than the outward velocity of the fragments. The result is that when viewed from the side, the fragments continue going forward in an expanding cone-shaped volume rather like a charge of birdshot instead of in a spherical pattern. Only if the shell was stationary when it exploded would you have a spherical fragment pattern. With a VT fuzed shell, the burst occurs when the shell is coming down toward the ground. As a result, the cone of fragments also points downwards and thus ends up filling an elliptical area of ground with fragments (it would be a circular area if the shell was falling straight down). The fuze is tweaked so that the burst occurs at a height where the fragments will still be close enough together inside this oval area to hit anybody caught inside it, usually several times . This is what makes airbursts (whether from VT, MT, or trees) so nasty. With an impact fuze, all fragments not immediately absorbed by the ground are going upwards at some angle. Thus, hiding behind a wall or lying prone is very effective protection. But with airbursts, the fragments will go down behind walls and into foxholes lacking overhead protection. Plus lying prone on the ground only increases the target area you offer the fragments. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Michael emrys said: CM already has grazing fire, after a fashion. It was introduced in the 1.05 patch IIRC. Basically, whenever an MG fires, any unit (friend or foe) along the line of fire between the gun and its specific target, and to some distance to either side of this line, is subject to the MG's fire and may take casualties. This isn't perfect by any means, however. First, CM "grazing fire" only happens when the MG fires a burst at its normal point in the turn. Thus you can't create the constant walls of MG fire like Jason mentioned--if other enemies cross the line of fire between MG shots, they get away clean. Second and IMHO more important, the MG will still only fire when it can see a target. Thus, you can't use this grazing fire effect through a smokescreen or along a pre-set PDF in the dark like is done in real life. I completely agree. What I would like to see (for various types of weapons but especially MGs) is the ability to give them a type of TRP-analog. For MGs, this would correspond to previously recorded T&E settings to hit specific points or lay grazing fire along certain paths. When firing at these TRP-analogs, the MGs would blast away nearly constantly instead of the occasional bursts they normally do. And, most importantly, they would be able to fire at their TRP-analogs even if they didn't have an LOS to them, thus being able to use them in the dark, in fog, or when their position is covered by smoke. Then we'd be able to create the type of realistic Final Defensive Fires Jason describes. In real life, setting up this sort of thing is SOP for all MGs. Upon arriving in a position, the gunners will be given a PDF by their boss and are also expected to record aiming data for various key areas of terrain around their position, so they will be able to shoot in those directions even in the dark. For tripod-mounted MGs, this process involves recording the T&E settings needed to hit the various targets. For LMGs (and even riflemen), the gunners drive small sticks into the edge of their foxholes. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I've seen this same thing happen in a recent 1.12 TCP/IP QB. I occupied a village in my center. My opponent had some light armor to my direct front and was moving infantry up on my left flank. I had a mortar track in the village which I moved up behind a large heavy building on the forward edge of town so it could shell the flanking infantry while hiding from the armor. But as it happened, my opponent decided that same turn to area fire the chosen building with 60mm mortars. So, during the movie, my track moved into position and fired a few rounds, but then the 60mm shells started hitting the building right beside it. My track didn't like this and decided on its on initiative to move. However, instead of falling back deeper into the village where it had just come from and where it would have been totally safe, it whipped around the corner of the building, turned 90^, and charged forward in the open right toward the enemy light armor and a quick, horrible death. Is this a common outcome? I don't know--I don't usually have halftracks of any type. But it made me mad enough that when the crew un-panicked, I ordered them out in the open to die in punishment ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I think this is a great idea. Unfortunately, I'm in the same boat as you, apparently. I like making accurate maps of specific areas but have trouble achieving the desired battle results when I add forces to them. Thus, I'd rather leave that to others and instead just make the maps. If you're interested, I'll send you some of my maps for your site. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

As I understand it, CM3 is going to be at least in part in Italy. Given my experience making this map so far, I would recommend to BTS that they suspend work on CM2 long enough to build the terrain system and editor for CM3, then go back to work on CM2. This way, the scenario design team can get to work on CM3 maps and might have a half dozen of them built by the time CM3 ships ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

I'm currently working on the huge project of creating an operation based on the Santa Maria Infante battle described in CMH Pub 100-14, Small Unit Actions. There's nothing "small" about this action, however, because it covered an area about 2500x3500m and involved the better part of 2 regiments on the attack alone. I started on the map about a week ago. It's typical rugged Italian terrain so it took me 3 days of tracing contour lines just to build all the hills and valleys. Since then I've been "painting" it with tiles for what's on all those hills. The bitch here is that there is hardly a tile on the whole map without something in it, and that something is almost always a hedge, which I'm using to simulate the terraces the local farmers built all over the hillsides in a dense crazy quilt pattern of tiny fields. My Gawd, I must have laid down 20 miles of hedge already and I'm only like 15% done with the job. It's not like making big forests because you have to carefully fit the hedge pieces together in rows based on constant study of the aerial photos in the books and making due allowance for the 20m limitation of CM tiles. And it's worse than Norman bocage maps because these Italian fields are MUCH smaller on average. So I'm sick of hedges. And when I get done with them, I still have all the troops to do, plus the extensive belts of German Gustav Line fortifications to emplace. I figure I might have this whole mess done by the summer sometime. The only thing that's keeping me going is the view I get of the beautiful Left and Right Tits standing proud in the center of the map But I'm taking the rest of the day off.. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Scott Adams said: They didn't fire because the platoon leader dind't have an LOS to the target. To make on-map mortars fire indirectly like this, you have to set up a chain like this: Target <--LOS--> HQ <--Command Radius--> Mortar Be sure the HQ unit with the LOS is the one actually commanding the mortars. Sometimes if you have another HQ unit nearby, it will take command and if it doesn't have an LOS to the target, the mortars won't shoot. Yeah, this can be misleading at times--you have the target line for the mortars but they won't shoot if their HQ doesn't have an LOS. I think the purpose of having the target line stick in such cases is to allow you to move your HQ unit up into an LOS position during the turn and still have the mortars fire that turn, without having to wait until the next turn. Sorta like how you can give a tank a target line to something currently out of its LOS but also order it to move so it will soon get an LOS. If the HQ or tank gets an LOS quick enough, the weapons will fire at the desired target that turn. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria. [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 02-14-2001).]

Leg mortars (not vehicle mortars) can already fire without an LOS. If they are within the command radius of an HQ unit that does have an LOS, then the mortars can fire. Also, if you have a TRP and the mortars have not moved, I believe you can shoot the TRP blind even without an HQ unit handy. Anyway, the HQ thing is a good use for company commanders. Put the mortars right behind some cover and move the HQ up so it can see through the cover. Then you're set. Only problem is, indirect on-map mortar fire doesn't track moving targets like direct fire does. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Gremlin said: I disagree. Exploiting something that shouldn't happen is cheating, at least to me. If you want to call it something else, fine. But a skunk by any other name still stinks, so shouldn't use these flak vehicles unless you're more interested in Playstation gaming than WW2 simulation. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Juardis said: No, my problem with the SdKfz 7/whatevers is that they are unrealistically hard to kill, or even hit, IMHO. At the very least, they should be taking crew casualties right and left. With crews of 8 and little or no protection for most of them, they should be as vulnerable to smallarms and HE near misses as similar-sized squads in light cover. But not only are crew casualties rare, the crew doesn't get suppressed like a squad under similar fire would be because the crews are part of a vehicle, which doesn't use infantry-type suppression. Hence, using these vehicles confers an unrealistic advantage to their owner. Being unrealistically tough, they tie up more of the enemy's resources than they should, making things unrealistically easy for the rest of the enemy force. If you are aware of these problems and use the flak wagons anyway, in my book you're cheating. I don't cheat, so I don't use them. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Actually, poison gas was used by the Japanese against the Allies in WW2, although this is generally not known. One method was called the "chibi-dan", which was an infantry anti-tank weapon. It consisted of a glass ball filled with liquid prussic acid. They threw it at tanks, it broke on the armor, and the ventilators sucked in the fumes, killing or incapacitating the crew. (BTW, this weapon was of German origin, plans and samples having arrived by U-boat). The Japanese used a few of these in the Kohima battles, it being about their only anti-tank weapon there. If I ever make a scenario of the later phases of Kohima, where Brit tanks were rooting them out of hiding, I'll give some squads a Panzerfaust-30 to represent this weapon. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Damn, sorry this took so long but I've been busy moving. Anyway, I have now finally revised the Kohima scenario based on Alex's comments on version 2. Namely, now most of the Gerpanese enter the game as reinforcements and there is only 1 large victory flag--Garrison Hill--the rest being small. If you're interested in trying this version, please let me know at jtweller@earthlink.net ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.

Another thing these SdKfz 7/things are pretty impervious to is bazookas. I've set up experiments with many zooks blasting away at a flak wagon and never once hitting it. And with a zook's low explosive force, near misses don't seem to do any good, either. It's as if the flak wagons don't exist for zook rockets. This might be the reason Pktaske's M36's couldn't hit them, either. Something screwy in how AP shots are counted against them. I've also noticed that the crews of these things seem to bear a charmed life. Smallarms fire sometimes seems to kill them at their jobs, but if something knocks out the vehicle (like even a 500# bomb landing 2 feet away and causing a catastrophic explosion) all crewmen emerge from the wreckage unharmed. All in all, I find these things nearly impossible to kill. Smallarms usually has no effect, AP rounds and rockets never seem to touch them, and they ignore being blanketed by 81mm mortars. In fact, it seems to require a near miss by 105mm or larger to knock them out. All very strange considering they are unarmored and have a large crew well exposed passing explosives ammo to the gun. For these reasons, I never purchase these vehicles. They seem bugged to the point of pure gamey-ness. ------------------ -Bullethead In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is strength, in water there is bacteria.