Bullethead

Bru- Good points about ICQ vs. pure PBEM ICQ might have 1 advantage over pure PBEM, however, in terms of team games. As I understand it, only 2 players will be able to get into a TCP/IP game . However, you CAN do teams with PBEM. 1 guy gives orders to some of the units and saves the game as a .cmb file. He sends it to his partner, who gives the rest of the orders, hits the GO button, and sends the PBEM turn to the enemy. This is pretty cumbersome, both in multiple mailings of the replay and in having to wait longer to complete 1 turn due to more people in the email loop. However, if you were using ICQ, you could shoot the files to everybody much quicker. Plus the team members could chat and strategize interactively instead of having to correspond via email. And they could also chat with the enemy for taunting purposes at the same time. Still, it would be best if TCP/IP allowed more than 2 players to be in the game. -Bullethead

Fion said (in the Large Tank Battle thread): >>>>>>> At the moment I'm "testing" a scenario I made which is totally ahistorical, unrealistic and should destroy my reputation for being a stickler for realism but its just so much damn fun <<<<<<<<< As I sit here dreaming of getting my own twitchy, skeletal fingers on the editor, my musings occasionally go beyond mere possession and on to what I'll actually do with it. And here I hit a snag... There were only a finite number of actual fights. Only a small subset of these are documented in the detail required to make a truly accurate scenario. I have access to only a tiny fraction of this documentation. And those people with better access will certainly make and upload all the historical scenarios I could possibly want. So, what about realistic hypotheticals? Hmmm, not much luck there, either. There are only so many variations you can do with the standard types of battles and keep any kind of balance. And again, other folks will be doing this left and right. So then it hit me.. Throw all contextual realism out the window! Just make FUN schlachtfests. Steal ideas from multiplayer Myth, for example . I'm already envisioning making a CM version of the classic Myth map "For Carnage Apply Within" and designing a "Last Man on the Hill" scenario for it . Gawd, wouldn't that be great? . I know, I know, the realism fanatics will burn me at the stake for abusing such a god-given miracle as CM. "Blasphemy!" they'll scream. Well, here's my answer to that. The historical context of such scenarios is that they are taking place in Valhalla or Hell or that Purgatory described in "The Defense of Hill 782." It's not blasphemy because the Gods of War set it up that way . I hope others feel the same way. I look forward to playing some REALLY wild games in the future . -Bullethead

Steve: Thanks for the clarification on "Abandoned." I guess my problem is I've played way too much Steel Panthers for want of anything better....... (hope my friends at HPS don't see that ) -Bullethead

Fionn: thanks for hosting that. Steve: thanks MUCHOS for taking the time. Good news all around, expect a transcript shortly -Bullethead

OK, you all have made a strong case for an unspotted .50cal. However, there is some counter evidence, which I think this is probative but not conclusive, so I'll drop the "what happened" issue until I see this sort of thing happen a few more times. But in any case, IMHO there's still a problem with damage reporting here. If a .50cal WAS penetrated the track, I'd REALLY like to see a pop-up message to that effect. Bullet holes and the sparks created when they are made are pretty obvious, so saying "front hull penetrated" isn't giving anything away. It would then be just like a tank getting hit by an unseen schreck--you get the penetration message but no idea of what hit you or where precisely it came from, although you know the general direction. Also, Steve just said that crews won't bail unless the vehicle is actually damaged. In that case, IMHO the unit data should say "Knocked Out" instead of just "Abandoned." I already _know_ it's abandoned, I see the crew jumping out. I want to know why they did <G>. -Bullethead

Moon: thanks for the word. That sounds like exactly what was needed. -Bullethead

Beamup said: >>>>>>> the waypoint was FLOATING IN MIDAIR <<<<<<<< I something similar to that in Riesburg yesterday. I had the US 105mm FO move "fast" from the top floor of 1 building to the top floor of another building down the street. When I watched the replay, the FO's green base was sliding along the ground as normal but the FO himself was flying through the air above it at top floor level . Brings up an interesting question, however. In such cases, is the enemy's LOS figured to the flying unit's base on the ground or to the flying man above it, or both? I wasn't able to determine this because it happened in the mopping up stages and no Germans were in position to take a shot at the flying FO. -Bullethead

OK, if BTS says something had to have whacked the track for the crew to have bailed, I'll believe them . But that still leaves the question of what happened to it. I watched the replay about 20 times from all different angles trying to figure this one out because it was so totally unexpected. All I could see was that this crew bailed at EXACTLY the same instant as another track about 50m away brewed up from a mortar hit. There were no incoming tracer or black dots at, or explosions near, the bailed track. OK, that could be Fog of War fire from unspotted weapons, as Ben mentioned. However, there was no message at all popping up on the bailed track saying it had been penetrated or even hit, like there was with the simultaneous destruction of the other track. Furthermore, the vehicle info after the crew bailed just said "Abandoned," NOT "Knocked Out." IOW, there was never any indication at all that the vehicle had been damaged in any way. This is why I thought it was just a morale failure. So, IMHO there really is some sort of problem here. Seems to me there are 2 possibilities: an interface problem and a code problem. By interface problem, I mean the correct visual cues weren't displayed. If there was supposed to be a pop-up penetration message, it didn't appear. If the unit info should have said "Knocked Out," it didn't. If there was supposed to have been an explosion, there wasn't. The code problem idea I have is somewhat strange. What made me think it up is the fact that I lost both tracks at EXACTLY the same instant. So I'm thinking that maybe somehow the game got confused as to which crew was in which track. IOW, when Track A blew up from a legit hit, the game for some reason thought the crew of Track B was in Track A and had them react accordingly. The only other thing I can think of is maybe a large fragment from Track A took out Track B. Is this modeled? -Bullethead

BTS: bummer about the polygons John and Thomm: Hell, LOS is just the tip of that iceberg, now that I think about it. What about the effect on the graphical representation of units under Fog of War? For instance, you see a grunt unit shown as "infantry?" with only 1 man--you can't tell yet whether it's a squad or team. But you also see its tracks from close enough to get a fairly good idea of the number of guys in the enemy unit. Again, bummer -Bullethead

Moon said: >>>>>>>>> You'll be happy to know that this has already been fixed. <<<<<<<<<<< Thanks for the word, Moon. Can you please elaborate a bit as to how the fix changes things? -Bullethead

Good points, Los. Los said: >>>>>>>>> That being said, it is much easier to move a 60 or under around to hit moving targets than a larger mortar. And it's most often doen without free tubing. With a direct lay site attached, one guy kneels in front of the mortar and lifts the legs <<<<<<<<< Right. But this makes for more punctuated bursts of fire, setting up a series of beaten zones for the target to move through, instead of the continuous stream of bursts on target we see now. And like you say, this is something possible for 60mm but doesn't work as well with the bigger tubes. >>>>>>>>>> RE: "Freetubing" Actually this is very far from common ...... WHile it can be used in an emergency situation it is not as accurate, nor will it support a high rate of fire or indirect fire. <<<<<<<<<<<< I think free-tubing was much more common in **some** countries in WW2 than it is today. For instance, neither the Japanese "knee" mortar nor the Brit 2" mortar had bipods at all; free-tubing was the only way to shoot them. So troops used to this type of mortar would be better at free-tubing 60s than say US or German troops and even regulars would do it because they were trained that way. But this is why I titled this thread "60mm+," because these light mortars had to be free-tubed anyway. However, this still assumes the mortarman is really school-trained. In prolonged wars, the trained mortarmen are usually long dead and the infantry company's weapons platoon's mortars are mostly crewed by guys pulled from the rifle squads. Generally guys the company topkick was mad at, too . So even in the Brit army, I'd expect a good free-tuber to have been a rather rare and valuable commodity. Just like how in Viet Nam a good M79 gunner (very analogous to free-tubing a light WW2 mortar) was a prized asset. That all said, in the Gulf War I actually saw an Iraqi mortar being free-tubed against a Hummer that was haulin' ass. Looked just like it does in CM, a continuous stream of bursts following the vehicle. And they got a direct hit on the Hummer, too, with their 4th or 5th shot. Very impressive. But with all the thousands of mortar rounds I saw fired over there, that was the only example of free-tubing I could really identify. >>>>>>>>>>>> There's a lot that goes into prepping the rounds for firing at a particular target you can't just pull them out of the container and drop them. I think ore a concern _may_ be the speed with which a mortar goes into action after they have been moving <<<<<<<<<<<< Quite so, at least for 60mm+ tubes where you had to jack with the additional charges on the fins and such. Most lighter mortars didn't have this complexity. -Bullethead

I'd like vehicles (and even grunts) to leave tracks, also. {dons his fireman bunker suit and SCBA} There's this game called Myth II that has a lot in common with CM (3D, same type of view-point controls, to name a few). In this game, units leave tracks (and blood trails, and body parts <G>). Really adds a lot to it. From what I can tell, the tracks in Myth (and the blood, and the body parts) are 2D sprites glued flat on the terrain, no polygons at all. They get around the directional problems of sprites as compared to polygonal models by using lots of small, symmetrical sprites to build up bigger shapes. That is, a big footprint with a definite directional orientation is made up several round dots arranged in an overlapping pattern on the ground. So while the individual sprites always have the same orientation as the viewpoint rotates around them, the PATTERN they form stays pointed in the same direction. And you have to zoom in closer than game allows to be able to see the fixed-aspect sprites anyway. For smaller tracks, they just use 1 small round sprite. In huge battles, there can be a LOT of tracks. Too keep this from bogging things down, Myth tracks fade out fairly quickly. This is rationalized because in deserts, the wind blows them away and in snow, more snow falls. Anyway, this is all just to show that adding tracks don't have to mean adding polygons. -Bullethead

The US 60mm mortar, and as far as I know all mortars from other countries of the same or greater size, is designed to be fired from a bipod. This is because they were originally intended to give advancing grunts portable arty for use on stationary, fairly hard rifle targets such as dug-in machineguns. When attached to the bipod, the mortar tube has very limited traverse, but that's OK because the target isn't expected to be moving and you need a sturdy mount to give consistent accuracy on a point target. However, this makes 60mm and bigger mortars less effective against rapidly moving targets, such as vehicles. To get around this problem, real experts with mortars free-tube it. This means they disconnect the bipod and hold the tube in their hands (with a thick rag for heat protection), pivoting the tube on the baseplate ball joint to track the moving target. This ain't something you get much training on at mortar school, especially in times of major wars and massive draftee armies like in WW2. Free-tubing is an art form. The mortarman has to not only be a good judge of lead with his looping trajectory shot, but also has to simultaneously hold the tube at the correct elevation for the amount of charges attached to the fins of the big stack of unpackaged mortar rounds he has lying beside him. He needs a pile beside him because he can't let go of the tube to reach for more, and he doesn't have time to jack with adjusting the charges. All this means that effective free-tubing is beyond the abilities of the bulk of mortermen and even the experts have to do some preparation first. And all this is has to be learned OJT, especially in situations like WW2. In other words, it's for sure not something you see every day. Which brings us to the infamous effectiveness of mortars vs. moving vehicles in Combat Mission. I quite often see vehicles being tracked by mortar bursts where either the vehicles' movement exceeds the traverse limits of the mortar bipod, OR the vehicles' bearing rate exceeds the tube traverse rate supplied by the traverse crank on the bipod. IOW, the only way these shots could be happening is if the mortars were being free-tubed. I have a problem with this. In demo scenarios, all the mortarmen are regular or even green. From the docs, these troop qualities mean very little or no combat experience--IOW, they very likely never got much if any free-tube training in school and ain't had the chance to learn it in combat. Yet they're free-tubing like expert old salts. And that's just the 60mm mortars. These are small enough for free-tubing not to be too big a PHYSICAL problem in terms of strength required. 81mm mortars are different beasts entirely. IMHO, this needs to be addressed. Regardless of the question of whether a regular or green mortarman could hit a small, STATIONARY vehicle at 400m with the frequency shown in CM, having them be able to track "fast" moving vehicles is a pretty serious accuracy problem. Hell, even "fast" moving grunts can out-run most mortars in real life. -Bullethead

I was recently playing LD as the Germans. At the instant I lost my 2nd track in 2 turns to mortar fire (that's another subject...), the crew of track #3, about 50m away, freaked out and abandoned its vehicle. This particular track had taken no incoming fire for the entire scenario so far and was not damaged in any way. It was just a human failure on the part of the untermenschen crew. OK, I thought, when they clean out their skivvies they'll get back in the track. But no such luck. The crew had rallied by the next turn but they wouldn't go back to their vehicle by themselves and I couldn't order them to do so, either. The cherry but abandoned track was simply a terrain feature, not a vehicle any more. I think this is somewhat strange. If the crew is so panicked they don't want to do their jobs any more, then why have them rally, why give the player the ability to give them orders after they bail out? OTOH, if they re-acquire the testicle fortitude to go play infantry with their pistols, why can't they re-board their pristine chariot and continue with the mission they're actually trained for? -Bullethead

Simon Fox said: >>>>>>>> But to save you the trouble the answer is no- at least for the first iteration of CM <<<<<<<<< Bummer Guess we'll just have to assume the Germans are so good at boobytrapping them that nobody picks them up . -Bullethead

Will it be possible at all to use captured weapons? I'd like to see it. It probably isn't possible to have this happen DURING a scenario--althought that would be very nice --but what about between battles in the campaign? Say as the result of picking stuff up after the fight? I'm particularly interested in US squads being able to pick up panzerfausts. This is because of personal experience. In Desert Storm, my over-sized platoon of 88 guys was divided into 11 independent teams scattered the width of the divisional front. Our total organic anti-tank/bunker capability consisted of 1 box of 6 LAAWs, so naturally not all teams had even 1 of these inadequate weapons. My team was one of those shafted so I set our 1st objective as capturing RPGs. We ended up with several launchers and many rockets for them and they came in very handy a couple times. There's no such thing as an original idea, however. Seems to me my team was in the same boat as the typical US WW2 grunt squad--no credible anti-tank weapons of its own, faced by numerous enemy tanks and bunkers, and with good enemy anti-tank weapons there for the taking. So I'm sure it occurred to many of them to pick up panzerfausts. -Bullethead

Billcarey said: >>>>>>>>> They continued merrily firing at an unidentified squad some 200m away. They were not pinned or shaken, and they were firing, just not at the tank 30 feet away. I attempted to rectify this three straight times, targeting the Sherman, but they never fired either of their two panzerfausts. <<<<<<< Thanks, I was just about to start this thread myself . I've noticed the same thing several times: grunts will shoot at other grunts if they can see even a hint of them, totally ignoring much more threatening armor even when they had the means to deal with it. Seems to be built into the grunt's target selection routine. I'd like to see this changed. On that note, maybe they could change it to give grunt squad-sized units the ability to shoot at multiple targets with multiple weapons, at least in cases like this. That is, have 1 or 2 guys shoot the panzerfausts at the tank and the rest shoot at enemy grunts as normal. If I'm not mistaken, I've seen tanks shoot at 2 targets at once a few times (main gun and co-ax at target A, hull gun at target . Thus, I'd think they could make this work for squads as well. -Bullethead

Last time I played this scenario as the US, the Tiger was on the road by the stone building near the forward wheatfield wall, about 780m from the M18s at the top of the ridge. It was busy shelling the remnants of a platoon fleeing through the wheatfield, but the hull was pointed straight up the road at the M18s. 2 stationary M18s shot at the Tiger. Both hit the squared-on front armor, both shattered. The Tiger's only reaction was to pivot its hull parallel with its gun, presenting a corner of the hull to the M18s. It continued firing at the fleeing troops. The M18s hit the Tiger 4 more times that turn. All shots shattered. So, maybe the AI just aligns the hull with the gun anyway, regardless of which way the incoming is coming from? -Bullethead

Speaking of fires... Other day I had a zookdude apparently ignite his own building with backblast. The house erupted just as he fired and the only incoming rounds were rifle bullets, as far as I could tell, and none of it hit at the instant the fire started. Needless to say, the zookdude boogied out the door ASAP. I was a bit disappointed, however, that his clothes weren't on fire <G>. -Bullethead

I too have seen bazookas open fire at VERY long range, 150m or more. The zookmen seem to open fire whenever they see a target, regardless of range. I have yet to see a hit at any range other than point blank, however. In a recent run of Last Defense as the US, the 3 zookdudes survived long enough to 21 rockets. Of the 21 shots, 6 were at less than 50m and the other 15 were at 150m or more. The only reason any were fired at short range was due targets suddenly appearing around house corners or over crests. Of these 21 shots, only 1 hit. This was a zookdude's 2nd shot at 40m at at StuG. The other short-range shots were 4 misses in a row at a track at 30-35m. -Bullethead