Bullethead

To avoid spoilage, I'm being vague in the details of the scenario here: I'm playing a night scenario PBEM. Viz range is about 50m max. I'm defending. The troops on both sides are from very high quality units. My opponent's troops seem to have a very high incidence of fanaticism. This is the only way to explain their behavior that I and my opponent can think of. In any case, whatever it is, it's having a pretty significant impact on the game and is being extremely detrimental to my opponent, instead of helpful to him. Here's what's happening: 1. Opponent advances toward my position with a platoon that is sneaking or moving. 2. One of his squads comes into view at 50m range or so. 3. 1 or more of my units shoots at this squad. 4. Target squad goes berserk and rushes blindly into the heart of my position, getting mowed down en route, last man falling dead on my parapet. 5. Meanwhile, remainder of opponent's platoon has slowly advanced and another squad has become visible. 6. Repeat the above procedure for remaining units in opponent's platoon. Net Result: piecemeal destruction of opponent's grunts by combined fire of my whole line, for little loss on my side. All this without my opponent able to do anything about it. The trigger seems to be his unit taking fire, at which point it goes totally out of control. I think fanaticism needs to be examined and probably tweaked. Some situational modifier for reduced visibility seems in order to me. As it is now, fanaticism is a big handicap in this sort of situation. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 06-25-2000).]

I've got a scenario in testing now that's based on the online MP game called Myth. It has no historical context at all, it's just a fun schlachtfest ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

I drink my homebrew: IPA in the afternoon, porter at night. Sometimes instead of porter I'll have a 120/- wee heavy, also homebrewed. That's my usual. But beer isn't all I drink with CM. If I call in a particularly good fire mission, I mark the occasion with a glass of port, the standard drink of gunners. And sometimes an entire battle is worth 4 fingers of Jack Daniels for some memento mori. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Max is a sick, sick man... ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Ol' Pathy said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>OK, I got a suggestion but not on maps. Be very careful on what you chose for artillery spotting. I chose 14 spotter for grins; well lets just say that it is a bit overpowering. I'd recommend that one only be used if there are some VERY tough and/or large defenses to get through and then only one.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Remember that each arty (as opposed to mortar) FO unit controls 1 battery of 4 guns. This is because arty never shoots less than 1 full battery at a target and most WW2 batteries, no matter who owned them, had 4 guns. So if your research indicates the unit in question had the support of X # of batteries, then it should have X # of FO units. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

I'd like a survey of opinion on the use of Ambush Markers in night scenarios. I'm of 2 minds about them. When I use them, my troops, even veterans, sometimes give away their positions by shooting at the ambush markers when nothing is there. OTOH, at least they're not shooting at other troops of mine. So which is better, using them or not? ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

I'm a GM so I'll clarify some of this. The short answer is, CMMC will not start for several months, maybe even longer. There are a number of reasons why: 1. At least all the GMs, many of whom are across 1 or more oceans, need to get the game and become proficient with the editor. 2. All players need to get the game and gain experience using the types of units they will have in CMMC. 3. The GMs have to use the editor to set up a bunch of typical bombardment type things to develop CRTs for use in CMMC when units not on the front line get nuked. 4. The whole CMMC rules and admin system needs to be tested, so the GMs are going to have at least 1 CPX, probably 2, maybe even 3. This depends on how much rules tweaking needs to be done after each CPX. A CPX will be just moving units around and totally abstracting combat, so each should happen fairly quickly. 5. Once the CPX phase is over, we may very well have to do a very small CMMC with actual PBEM involved to test that part of the system. Only after we're sure the whole thing will work will be start the real CMMC. It would do nobody any good to get started and all worked up about it, only to have to pull the plug on the whole show because of fatal rules errors. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

You might want to post this in the CM Tech Support Forum, or look for previous answers to this question there. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Rereading this thread, I came away awed by the amount of ambiguity in my reply. Must have something to do with this excellent homebrew I'm currently consuming... Anyway, the answer appears to be NO, the other guy does NOT need to have the scenario. Just shoot him a PBEM turn and that includes all the scenario data. Quite an amazing job by BTS in getting the file size so small. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Yeah, the whole scenario, including map and units, is in that little bitty .cmb file and the email files apparently. In any case, I've made scenarios, started them PBEM, and sent them to people to play them with me without ever sending them the .cmb file. And this works. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Charlse said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I'll check into it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Rune said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Are you also using flags? If so, remove them and let the AI just try to exit, if you aren't forward the scenario [what you have so far] and I will ake a look.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I have tried it with and without flags. When I had a flag, it was on a road right next to the exit map edge. In this case, the AI parked around the flag. When I did not have the flag, the AI went to the nearest map corner at an end of the exit edge. In neither case did it exit any good order units off the map. I'd love to send this to you but I tried emailing you a couple days ago about in relation to you testing scenarios, and I just now got the bounce back. The address I used was rune@ameritech.net, which I got from your info in this forum. Said it had a bunch of temporary STMP failures. Do you have another address? ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 06-24-2000).]

Either I'm doing something wrong or this is a bug..... I have set up a scenario where 1 side is supposed to exit a specific map edge for victory points. In the editor, I have set the map edge in the Parameters screen and have set the "Eligible For Points" flag for each applicable unit. In the game, the exit zone appears in the right place and the unit detail screen shows "Should Exit For Points" right below the INFO/KILLS button. I seen no place where I can enter specific points for individual vehicle exits, so I assume there's just some fixed assigned value. Anyway, despite this, the AI will not drive these units off the map if they are in good morale state. Instead, they go to the nearest map corner at an end of the specified map edge, and park there for the rest of the game. The only units that leave the map are routed. So, am I missing something in the editor to make the units exit, or is this a bug? ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Steve said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>While I agree with the problem when your FOs run low on ammo, I don't think it is a problem for timed assaults. First of all, how is the enemy supposed to know what turn you are going to stop the artillery from falling down? And who says that every bombardment is followed by an infantry assault, closely timed to the end of the bombardment? Even a human would be hard pressed to guess when these situations are to happen, but the AI is utterly incapable of it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I guess I should have explained myself a bit more clearly then. I realize the AI can't anticipate you so I was talking about playing a human. Also, I was talking about those times when the other guy knows you are about to assault. This is really not so hard to see coming. To make best use of the barrage, the attacking troops have to make the final charge the moment it lifts. To do that, they have to already be very close to the objective. They will almost always be spotted in some way getting in that close. When he sees them, the defender will try to break up the attack with his own arty. The attacker knows this so is pretty much committed to assaulting within 1-2 turns of reaching the last covered position short of the objective. The defender knows this so can move up any reserves he might have behind the objective without much risk of them getting caught in a continuing barrage. And he can time this because of the turn breaks. This is why I think having the shelling stop mid-turn, at a time known only to the attacker, would be useful. - ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Somebody posted the exact same question over in the main forum. Charlse answered with 2 things of interest. 1. While the US player successfully held the town of Noville and even pushed forwards from it about 500m, a large group of unseen Germans reached the map edge on his right flank (Road to Bastogne area I guess) and thus ended the game. 2. Charlse said this shouldn't have ended the game. Instead, the desired result should have been that battle #2 started with the US still having a toe-hold on the map. However, this fix won't be in 1.02 because that's already frozen. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

TomW and MikeOz: There is or was an article on CMHQ about air support showing the answers to both your questions. AS for my experiences with air power, beware 500# bombs more than rockets. The kill radius of the bomb vs. soft-skinned vehicles is at least 60m..... I had a column of SdkFz 7/1s and 7/2s spaced about 20m apart. A bomb landed about 20m off the road beside one vehicle and destroyed it and the 2 ahead and behind it, for a total of 5 kills with 1 bomb. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Whoops, never mind, my mistake [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 06-23-2000).]

Noticed a couple of vehicular model oddities while dinking with the editor. One has no effect on play at but the other affects FOW. In case BTS hasn't noticed them and wants to polish them out, I'm posting them here. The only one with any real game effect has to do with FOW. The problem is that when a vehicle is displayed as a general type with a ?, such as "SP Gun?" or "Tank?", the model displayed uses the same hull/turret orientation as the actual vehicle. If this is different from that of the displayed model, the player knows that the info shown in the unit info box is probably wrong. For example, I set up a scenario with a bunch of SdKfz 7/1 and 7/2 flak vehicles under air attack. When not shooting, these vehicles have the gun pointed aft. The US ground units on the map identified some of these things as "SP Gun?" and "Flak Vehicle?" For the former, the model displayed was a Wespe, but with the gun pointing aft--very strange-looking. For the latter, it displayed a Wirbelwind, again with the turret pointed aft. The other glitch has to do with towed guns. If both the towing vehicle and the towed gun are destroyed, the dead gun model is drawn under and centered on the dead vehicle instead of behind it. (Lack of limbered gun models isn't a glitch by my definition). ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>As I under stand the 4" tires were quite popular for a reason.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Never knew that. I just thought narrow tires were a holdover from wagon wheels that nobody'd thought of changing yet. BTW, you should create a signature file for this forum. Just use the line, "God is a batchelor." I'm still cracking up over that post. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Can't have a fully tracked APC if no one thought of it, so no one obviously thought of one at the time, hence there wasn't one.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Actually, the Brits had thought of it in WW1 and even built some. They were called the Mark IX Tank and looked a lot like the Brit MBTs of the period except without gun sponsons. Instead, they had 2 entry doors on each side and could carry about a full platoon. They failed as APCs, however. Basically, the WW1 tanks were HELL inside, what with no suspension, an unmuffled engine leaking all kinda fumes in the middle of the crew compartment, and no forced ventilation. Thus, grunts jammed inside shoulder-to-shoulder arrived at the objective in no shape to fight. So the Mark IXs ended up being used as cargo carriers instead. NOTE: the above conditions were nearly as bad for regular tank crewmen. Apparently Brit WW1 tankers could last for less than 1 hour, often much less, before having to park, go outside, and recuperate. If getting out into flying lead and poison gas was an improvement, that gives you an idea of the conditions inside . Even on motor marches, the minimum number of people drove the tank in shifts with the rest walking along outside, which was less tiring than riding inside. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Steve said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The calling down of individual rounds might be reaslistic, but it presents user interface problems. As it is you can cancel a bombardment every 60 seconds, which isn't too far removed from calling down x rounds.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There are basically 2 cases when the number of rounds becomes a real issue. One is when you want to synchronize a ground assault with the end of a bombardment. In this case, you have to time your move based on the end of a turn. This introduces a bit of gameyness and turn-based game flashbacks to the otherwise essentially seamless CM gameplay. Plus, the defender knows your bombardment will stop and your grunts will advance at the end of a turn, so has unrealistic knowledge of the timing of your attack. The other case is when your FO either starts with very limited ammo or starts running low. In this case, a full minute of fire will probably use up more than is needed for the target and/or leave you with too little remaining for an effective final shot. As to the interface issue, I was envisioning having a pop-up window asking for how many rounds per gun to fire when you give an FO a target or adjust order. Is that difficult to do? <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The other problem you mentioned, that of TacAI behavior, is a lot harder to deal with.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yeah, I can see how making the AI totally aware of what was causing the morale problem in all cases would be a complete bitch and maybe not even possible. I was thinking more along the lines of a tweak just for the particular case of morale failures under shellfire, leaving the existing system in place for everything else. If the game could look at whether the grunts were under a arty/mortar barrage (as opposed to direct HE from like a tank, or smallarms fire), and then look at whether or not they were already in cover, before deciding to run or not, I think this would fix it without introducing problems elsewhere. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>The question of rubble blocking LOS exists somewhere else on the forum- it does still block LOS to some degree<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> According to the CM manual, page 46: "RUBBLE: These are leftovers after a building has collapsed. Vehicles may not enter rubble. It provides excellent cover and concealment for infantry, though. LOS is heavily restricted across rubble, but only to a certain height (which is naturally much lower than the building previously was)." ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

Steve said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>So in a vacuum not hard at all, but in the final push to finish just one too many things<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'd have done the same thing. Besides, I'm sure you know some folks are strange enough to consider things like this an Easter egg <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>We may or may not do a vehicle pack. We have to see how certain things go to decide if, when, and how this might happen. We will, of course, keep you guys well informed. When we have some options we might even poll you guys to find out which one would work best for y'all!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thanks for the info. In case there's a chance you'll retain this memory if and when the time comes, here's my opinion in advance: do it even if I have to pay for it. CM stuff is worth buying. In fact, I'd rather pay for it and get it on a CD than have to download more than a couple megs with my crappy redneck ISP. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman

This question is something I've never seen directly discussed in any of my books on armor evolution. However, piecing things together, I have come up with some theories of my own. From what I can tell, halftracks began in WW1 when various companies started making mod kits for standard wheeled 3-axle trucks that linked the rear axles with tracks. This helped a lot in muddy WW1 battlefields where intense bombardments had totally wrecked both roads and ground drainage systems and most truck tires were only about 4" wide. Between the wars, the idea was remembered and eventually led to a series of purpose-built, unarmored, cargo truck-type halftracks. This series continued in use into WW2 by both the Germans and the US. Then some German started thinking blitzkrieg thoughts and realized he needed an APC to allow the grunts a) to keep up with fast armored columns on the road and to arrive at the tactical objective more or less immune to MG and light arty fire. At this point in time, nobody had an APC and the tank-based experiments of WW1 had been failures. But this guy needed to start building APCs RIGHT NOW so couldn't wait on extended development. Thus, took something that was already designed to carry troops and had better cross-country performance than a regular truck (ie, the unarmored halftrack) and built an armored body for it. Voila, the WW2 armored halftrack was born. Once seen in action, the idea caught on in the US for similar reasons--we were doing a crash armored expansion ourselves. Thus, we took a proven halftrack chasis and added the body of a wheeled armored scout car. So it seems to me that the WW2 armored halftracks were hasty expedients committed to mass production at the last minute before the war. And the availability of the unarmored halftracks to start from was a holdover from WW1 and the lack of budget between the wars to make a fully tracked cargo carrier. During the war, the inadequacies of the halftrack were duly noted and they were replaced with fully tracked APCs of modern type shortly thereafter. ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman [This message has been edited by Bullethead (edited 06-22-2000).]

Steve said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wondering when someone might point this one out<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Woohoo, grog points score I'm in no rush as long as it works right in the game, which it seems to, but I'm just curious. How hard is it to fix something like this? Seems like you already have the hull and turret models lying around the shop. What I'm more interested in is if there are any plans to include the M15 and M16 flak halftracks. I recall hearing a rumor of a possible "vehicle pack" to be released in the future sometime. Is there any truth to this and would these vehicles be in it? ------------------ -Bullethead It was a common custom at that time, in the more romantic females, to see their soldier husbands and sweethearts as Greek heroes, instead of the whoremongering, drunken clowns most of them were. However, the Greek heroes were probably no better, so it was not so far off the mark--Flashman