Bullethead

MasterGoodale said: Yeah, CMBO and CMBB have nothing in common with WW2OL except both cover WW2. The CM games are simulation wargames, whereas WW2OL is/was an MMP deathmatch sorta thing. Probably. From my experience, the settings per se ain't what kills your performance, it's the size of the battle. For your typical battles with about a reinforced company, you would probably be fine. However, you'll probably have trouble with the huge battles. I have a P4 1.7GHz and it chokes when battalions square off unless I tone down some settings. But performance really isn't that big a deal anyway. Frame rate has zero tactical effect in the CM games because in the CM games, you have ZERO control over the unfolding action. Every minute, the game pauses for you and your opponent (human or AI) to give orders to your units, and then the game runs for 1 minute while the units try to carry them out, without you being able to influence anything. The action is displayed like a movie with VCR controls, so you can watch the minute of action as many times as you want from any perspective you want. So basically, low FPS won't get you killed, it just makes the "movies" of the action jerky. It's an aesthetic thing, not a life-and-death thing. Yeah, no problem at all finding PBEM or TCP/IP opponents. And note that because of the "we-go" combat resolution system outlined above, connection speed has zero effect on tactical success. All broadband gives you in CM is the ability to swap files faster, not the ability to shoot faster. No such thing as a "low ping bastard" in MP CM.

Actually, pioneers CAN remove barbed wire and minefields during the game. The removal of mines has been around since CMBO and maybe wire, too. But I think the wire thing is an undocumented feature. The key to removing wire is to realize that craters on the map, whether created before or during play, override wire units in the same place. So if a wire unit has 1 huge crater under it that sticks out beyond it on both sides, or has a solid row of overlapping smaller craters totally spanning its width, troops moving through these craters ignore the barbed wire. Even though the wire unit is still there on the map unchanged. You can get partical credit for this as well. Assume a wire unit has 1 crater under it that is smaller than the width of the wire. Troops will go very slowly through the intact wire until they reach the crater, then move at normal speed across the crater, then go back to being very slow for the rest of the wire. This all means that you can "destroy" barbed wire with anything capable of creating a crater on the map. This includes pioneers' sackcharges, but also includes direct fire HE and arty. And scenario designers can create breaches in lines of wire by carefully positioning craters in key places. IIRC, the CMBB manual mentions that minefields can also be destroyed by craters. Something about the more craters in a minefield, the less likely anybody is to step on a mine. NOTE: this all refers to true craters, not the little splat marks that remain "open ground".

Sure, go ahead.

Another vote for HIGH DEMAND Personally, I prefer getting my mods in small packages, being stuck with a 28.8 dialup for the foreseeable future. I'd rather get each uniform separately rather than huge 15-meg packs of all uniforms at once. So it's fine with me if you release these things as you complete each one, rather than all at once

Mercury said: There was quite a bit of discussion about this. Those who have done it said that mouseholing is not a trivial operation. It requires a lot of special equipment and has a significant set-up time (for explosives) or work time (for picks). Plus it would be dangerous to friendly units in the same building. So the general concensus was that it really wouldn't be something you could do in a typical CM battle. Hence there wasn't really a good enough reason to make the (apparently significant) engine changes necessary to include this feature in the game.

That would explain it, I thought the casualties included only individual men and not entire vehicles (a bit pointless to let you buy the vehicles if you don't actually get use them).</font>

Bingo! If as you implied in your 1st post, your tank was on a hilltop with an LOS over the battlefield, then it would have been visible to the AI at the start of turn 1's orders phase. So the AI sees your tank, orders an FO to put smoke on it, and because this is turn 1, it happens immediately as a barrage. No bug, no cheating. I suggest in the future that you NOT set up your units where they can be spotted immediately. This goes for grunts as well as tanks. If your opponent can see your stuff during the Turn 1 orders phase, you can bet a barrage will hit it. This is a big problem with barrages. I really wanted them to fire during the set-up phase, before anything could be visible to the other side. Oh well

Lt. Kije said: ATRs were quite capable of perforating armor on the halftrack scale--that's what they were designed for, after all. Also, there shouldn't be any problem hitting a vehicle with an ATR at 500-600m. After all, any Jarhead can hit a person at that range. So no problem there. The Russians had zillions of ATRs, forming whole independent battalions of them besides the organic companies/platoons in line formations. Interestingly, instead of beginning the war with ATRs like other countries, the Russians introduced them during the war, around the end of '41. From that point, the number of ATRs in each rifle division was well over 200 for all of 1942 and was still over 100 by VE-Day. So no problem having ATRs all over the map in CMBB battles from January 42 on. So from the realism POV, having an ATR behind every bush that's quite capable of killing HTs from hundreds of meters away is quite correct. The purpose of CMBB is to be a realistic portrayal of combat on the Eastern Front. So the above situation is what it's got. Going against realism for the sake of somebody's subjective notion of "play balance" isn't what BTS is all about, so don't expect this to change. You'll just have to learn to deal with ubiquitous ATRs. Well, what else good are they? In fact, they're still good at it. You'll note that a number of nations, the US included, have recently re-introduced what are effectively ATRs, one of the missions of which is the destruction of light armor. In WW2, the Russian ATRs also were used to blind tanks they had no hope of penetrating--they shot up the vision blocks.

PeterX said: Don't you hear the troops yelling? That's got to have some game effect. Because they go FAST for some of the distance and get tired. The effect is magnified in hot and cold weather, muddy or snowy ground, and with troops in less than top condition. So when you finally get your troops up to where you need them, they may not have much juice left. IMHO, it's usually better to take slightly more time but have the troops arrive with full tanks. You need all their stamina to ADVANCE in the combat zone.

tracer said: Thanks for your efforts. You want some feedback so here you go. Just remember, I have no idea how to do any of this 1. The brown color of the camo pattern is rather glossy. I think it would look better and more realistic if you dulled it to match the dullness of the underlying texture. 2. The camo pattern blotches hide some of the seams and panel edges on the underlying tank. This keeps the blotches from looking like real paint in some places. 3. I like very dirty tanks. If you could add a lot of mud and dirt, fuel stains, soot stains, rust here and there, maybe a few impact scars, I'd like it better

PeterX said: A place for everything and everything in its place. There's more to the morale effects of movement orders than you think, for example. It seems that each movement order is assumed to be used only in certain situations, and those situations put the troops in certain mental states. I call it "attitude". This attitude isn't a morale bonus or penalty, but troops with a given attitude react to the same battlefield events differently from others with different attitudes. You'll see what I mean below. Also, not all the new moves are available to all troops. So sometimes you have to use MOVE when you'd rather use ADVANCE. MOVE: </font> What it Means: Troops route-marching, just diddybopping along.</font>Use: Moving troops not expected to be shot at this turn in a way that conserves energy and maintains noise discipline. Example: moving from LOD to the phaseline where you expect to start taking fire.</font>Advantages: Relatively fast (faster than ADVANCE, for instance) but still nonfatiguing and relatively quiet.</font>Disadvantages: Troops have a "we're safe right now" attitude, so incoming fire is something of a shock to them. They quickly run for cover even if they never show up as "panicked" or worse. But then again, you're not supposed to use this when troops will probably get shot at. </font>FAST</font> What it means: Troops running full speed, ignoring all other considerations.</font>Use: Quickly shifting troops you don't expect to get shot at this turn. Example: moving a reserve platoon to head-off a flanking move you spotted earlier than your opponent intended.</font>Advantages: Fastest infantry move available.</font>Disadvantages: Extremely vulnerable to fire due to total avoidance of cover (you can run fast if you go through all the bushes). Extremely reduced spotting ability. Rather fatiguing but less so than ASSAULT. Can cause loss of some ammo for heavy weapons teams. </font>ADVANCE</font> What it Means: Troops advancing by leapfrogging rushes of small sub-groups of the unit. For squads, it would be fireteam/section rushes, with one shooting while the other moves. Troops make use of available subtile-scale cover.</font>Uses: Closing with the enemy from the point of taking fire up to within about 20m or so. Also for crossing open areas further away that are under enemy observation and possible interdiction by MGs or HE.</font>Advantages: While there is no morale bonus per se, troops have a "here we go" attitude so incoming fire is not a shock to them, at least in reasonable doses. So instead of running for cover they keep on going up to a point. Troops take less casualties from the same fire than MOVING troops.</font>Disadvantages: Slower than MOVE and causes fatigue relatively early, about the same as using FAST. Can't be used by conscripts, heavy weapons, or green troops out of C&C. </font>ASSAULT</font> What it Means: Troops advancing by individual rushes, "I'm up, he sees me, I'm down" stuff, while the rest of the unit fires.</font>Use: Getting across those last 20m or so into bayonet range.</font>Advantages: Actual morale bonus instead of just attitude, more fire put out while moving than any other order, troops use subtile-scale cover very well.</font>Disadvantages: Extremely fatiguing (moreso than FAST) and very slow. Can't be used by conscripts, heavy weapons, green troops out of C&C, tired units, or units that have already freaked and rallied. Because of the last 2, it's hard to ADVANCE across long distances and then ASSAULT. </font>HUMAN WAVE</font> What it Means: Troops walk (MOVE) and then run (FAST) towards the objective, totally ignoring cover and not doing much shooting, but yelling loudly.</font>Use: Conscript version of ADVANCE and ASSAULT combined. Can be used by other troops but shouldn't be due to severe disadvantages.</font>Advantages: Only way to get conscripts to move under fire. Small morale bonus.</font>Disadvantages: Lack of significant suppressive fire on the move combined with all the vulnerabilities of MOVE and FAST, so troops die a lot and the morale bonus isn't enough to make up the difference. Often results in the complete disorganization of entire force committed to attack as squads freak at different points along the advance and run for cover in different directions, removing themselves from C&C. Because game engine converts player's single waypoint into 2 waypoints, the panicked troops that recover often have a FAST waypoint remaining, so utterly exhaust themselves trying to run several hundred meters. Can't be used by non-Russians, heavy weapons, units not in C&C, and exhausted units. </font>So why use MOVE? Well, if you don't need to move under fire, there's no need to accept the fatigue you get from ADVANCE. Plus you cover ground faster. Besides, how else do you get heavy weapons around the map? Why use HUMAN WAVE? If you have a choice, I have no idea. Units committed to HUMAN WAVES are almost always done for the game. Even if they don't get slaughtered, they will usually be so disorganized that it'll take you the rest of the game to sort them out again. [ November 02, 2002, 10:09 PM: Message edited by: Bullethead ]

The CM AI: LOL!!! Good one. Is this what happens when one gets completely assimilated?

PeterX said: Why? MGs and squads kill trucks and kubels with ease. This at least is an improvement over CMBO, where soft vehicles were nearly impossible to kill at all. In CMBB, however, soft vehicles ain't safe w/in 400m of a mere rifle squad. So even if ATRs don't target them, you've got plenty of other things to take out the trucks and kubels. Well, it's like this... There's an incentive to buy vehicle platoons because those in C&C work better than those beyond C&C, just like grunts. Plus you get a quantity discount: 3 tanks in a platoon are cheaper in total than 3 identical tanks bought independently. But in your typical small battle, the players usually don't have enough points to buy a platoon each of both tanks and light vehicles. They need tanks for their firepower so they buy a tank platoon. This means if they want some light vehicle scouts, they have to buy them individually, which means they are always going to be out of C&C if sent out scouting.

Kinjari said: What others have said so far is usually the best idea, ie, keep the tanks back. It does, however, depend on the situation. Sometimes "back" means at the friendly map edge, while at other times it means maybe only 100m or less behind the point man. I think the key to deciding how best to deploy and employ your armor is realizing that all attacks have to be planned around the available fire support. Basically, the grunts can't advance without concentrated firepower clearing a path for them, and in CMBB this is best done by armor. So what you have to do is look at the map and plan a route to the objectives where your armor can best provide fire support. You also have to account for 2 basic features of almost all CM battles. The first is that your armor can't start blasting away at defending infantry and MGs until you've dealt with the enemy armor. So the "mid-game" of most CM battles is a struggle for "tank superiority". Whoever wins this will then use his armor to smash the other side's infantry. Thus, you've got to position your armor in anticipation of this phase of the battle, in addition to being able to support the main infantry advance. The other usual feature is that you WILL lose AFVs to ATG ambushes. ATGs are IMHO harder to dispose of than enemy armor because usually your first indication of them is when they hit one of your tanks. And spotted guns often have the advantage 1-on-1 with your other tanks, so unless you can get them with mortars or arty, you have to take them out with several tanks at once and expect to lose at least 1 of these as well. There often isn't a whole lot you can do to prevent an ATG ambush from happening. The best bet is careful map study during the set-up phase, to pick a route of advance that limits potential ambush sites. This has the added benefit of shielding your other units as well. Then use your arty to barrage as many of these possible ambush sites as possible. After that, all you can do is hope for the best and expose the minimum number of tanks at any one time. In CMBB, the old tactic of leading with a light vehicle to draw the fire of AT units isn't as effective as in CMBO. For starters, vehicles now have C&C like infantry. Second, there are scads of ATRs out there. So often the light vehicles get shot up by ATRs without revealing tank-killing ATGs.

Just to show you can't make everybody happy, I have to say I really liked your original T34s better. That's what tanks that have been in the field more than an hour tend to look like. I wish you'd stuck with the original version of the KVs, too

Ah, good idea. This must be why I haven't seen this happen with AFVs. I haven't shot at them to finish them off. Makes more sense your way, with both guns and AFVs having the same problem, instead of my way where it's just guns.

I've had this problem myself, and there's a related FOW problem as well. Here are 2 examples: #1. A Grille and an on-board 81mm mortar are shooting at the same gun. Both are doing area fire because it's EFOW and the gun's position is marked by a star. RESULTS: I knew the gun died that turn because the Grille landed 2 shells right on the star, so I wanted to see if a kill showed up. I was surprised when it did, because I was using EFOW and the gun's info box just said "gun?". IOW, nothing on the map indicated the gun was dead, just the Grille's kill list. Being curious about this, I check the mortar and it too had 1 gun kill. So I surrendered to see if there were 2 guns there and I'd gotten one I didn't know about. But there was only 1 dead gun. #2. A lone Sturmtiger vs. a full battalion of infantry at the far end of a 1500m x 300m flat, totally open map. EFOW. RESULTS: I didn't check the Sturmtiger's kills during the slaughter, but when the Russians surrendered on turn 4, it showed 6 gun kills. Problem is, there were only 4 guns in the whole battalion (4x57mm ATGs). OK, forget the FOW issue for now. Where did the extra gun kills come from? I've only noticed this with guns, BTW, not grunts (not that I've counted enough of them to be conclusive), AFVs, or airplanes. Here's my theory.... Looking closely at the 4 dead guns in the Sturmtiger example, I noticed that with 2 of them, the crews were destroyed with the guns. That is, the dead guys were lying between the guns' trails and could not be clicked on separately from the gun--they were still part of the gun unit. OTOH, the other 2 crews were a few steps away from their guns and dead as separate entities. So I think the problem is that gun crews are treated as guns for kill purposes, instead of infantry casualties. Or maybe as both--I didn't coun't all the dead guys to make sure. So 4 guns + 2 crews = 6. This is definitely NOT the case with AFVs. I've blown up many a T70 with a Tiger, killing the whole crew, and only gotten 1 tank kill each time. Justs seems to be a gun problem.

Pascal DI FOLCO said: Yeah, I've been thinking of something along those lines, to keep from having to actually do LOS checks on shellbursts. My idea is as follows: Each HE shellburst would have a height number assigned to it. Smoke shellbursts already have this for the existing LOS system. Then, when the FO tries to target a point, the game assumes the actual height of the target point is whatever the gound elevation is plus the height of the shellburst. If the FO can trace an LOS to that point and that height, his fire would be as if he had an LOS. This could be a 2-step process. Say that the FO's HE bursts aren't tall enough, then the game checks the taller height of the smoke bursts. If the FO can see the top of the smoke, then it's still like he has an LOS for scatter purposes. However, the spotting rounds are fired as smoke instead of HE, and the time between spotting rounds has to be at least equal to the time it takes between shell impact and smoke plume growth.

JonS said: OK, OK, the Brits and CWers were an exception, too. Happy now? Anyway, when do you want to start discussion CMMC arty rules changes in like of CMMC #1 experience and CMBO?

I think the Sturmtiger's blast power is perfectly in line with how CMBO handled weapons of a similar size..... The Sturmtiger should be compared to the 14" naval guns of CMBO: </font> 380mm is about 15", naval gun 14". Advantage Sturmtiger.</font>Sturmtiger shell weighed 345kg or about 760 pounds. Sturmtiger shell was low-velocity so could have a relatively high explosive content by weight. Say 20%, so about 150 pounds of HE. 14" HE naval shell weighed about 1500 pounds but only about 10% was HE, for about 150 pounds of HE. Push but might be in Sturmtiger's favor if its shell had higher explosive content.</font>Sturmtiger is low velocity so shell explodes on surface. 14" naval gun is high velocity so shell explodes underground. Advantage Sturmtiger.</font>So, as a rough guess, the Sturmtiger's shell should be at least as deadly as a 14" shell from CMBO, maybe even more nasty. Observed effects seem to bear this out, in terms of casualty radius and hundreds of troops mown down by a single shot.

Distraction for Infantry Advances Self-propelled Smokescreen Generator Penal Battalion Special Assault Vehicle Ukranian People's Front Crack Suicide Squad [ October 28, 2002, 02:30 AM: Message edited by: Bullethead ]

Goanna said: In real life, the FO would all for fire on the wheatfield directly and this would NOT be a blind shot for him. This is because the shellbursts stick up WAY higher than the grain, so he can see exactly where he's hitting in relation to where he wants to hit. It matters not that he can't see the dirt below the grain, or the soldiers crawling along down there. He can see the top of the grain, he can see the shellbursts above the grain tops. That is no different from seeing shellbursts above the short grass of open ground tiles. This is one of the most basic problems with the CM's arty system: units can't "see" shellbursts in the same way they can see other units. This might not seem like a big deal, but it is. The entire system of spotting rounds and all that is totally dependent on the FO seeing where the shell lands in relation to the desired target point. So if that visual process isn't modeled in the game at all, there's no way to make an accurate simulation of FO-controlled artillery. All you can do is come up with a set of abstractions which of course don't work in all situations. Unfortunately, by not modeling actually seeing shellbursts but basing all FO LOS and delay/scatter determinations on whether he can see the ground, the abstractions in CM cause a lot of unrealism. Like your example. Or say the enemy is in a patch of trees 2 tiles by 3, surrounded by 200m of open ground all around. You can't target on the patch of trees, you have to aim at the near edge and hope the spread of the pattern reaches back far enough, knowing you're going to waste at least 1/2 your ammo on the open ground in front. This problem also makes it impossible for the game to do things like coordinated illumination missions at night, or using smoke and/or airbursts for spotting rounds over large forests or behind hills. So yes, there are a whole bunch of inaccuracies in CM's handling of arty. The increased delay times for lack of LOS in places where that doesn't matter in real life is one such area. Unfortunately, there's no hope of fixing these things until the engine rewrite. I sure hope that does the trick--it might not, you know. In WW2, arty WAS mostly useful only for barrages. Most arty fire in WW2 was pre-planned, either barrages or on-call at preregistered points (what CM calls a TRP). The US was the major exception to this, but no US on the Eastern Front . So making arty mostly useful for barrages and TRPs, especially on the Eastern Front, is a big realism enhancement. It might not go about achieving this in a tidy, perfectly realistic way, but it does achieve it. So get used to it and change your tactics and unit purchase habits. Do what they did in real life. Don't get so many arty FOs and use the few you get for barrages. Use assault guns and IGs for suppressive fire on point targets that pop up during play. It's not fun if you keep using CMBO tactics and continue holding CMBO opinions on what you should buy and how you should deploy it. That will get your ass kicked muy pronto. OTOH, if you adapt to your new environment, you'll find CMBB at least as much fun as CMBO.

Good job, Mr. Noobie. But please don't listen to those who say your tanks are too dirty. Those folks obviously haven't seen tanks in the field

Col. DM said: Ah, you've discovered that MGs now are closer to having their real world effectiveness . In CMBB, MGs can switch targets many times per turn, especially if all the targets are close together. MGs now totally dominate the open ground, as they should. As they learned in WW1, you can't just waltz across open ground defended by MGs. Until you suppress or mask them, you can't move. That seems to be realistic. Apparently Russian tanks didn't carry smoke rounds. Gotta think of something else to take care of those pesky MGs now

StellarRat said: That's the whole key to success in CMBB. You MUST take the time to completely coordinate your forces to maximize your suppressive fire, or you won't get your troops past the LOD. IOW, you actually have to use all the proper real world tactics of fire and movement. We said that about CMBO, but it's really the case now But all this does, as you noted, take time. Therefore, in many cases, the old CMBO standard of 30 turns for a battle usually isn't enough. I recommend using 40+ turns these days.