CRourke

Interesting figures.. What exactly is DOW? Died of wounds? Those figures all seem to be based on medical cases. I think the sort of casualties that CM counts will include the whole spectrum of combat ineffective, thus you might see more stragglers and whatnot returning by the next battle. Chris

The sound of the mg42's in the cc series always bugged me.. it never was that "canvas ripping" sound I had heard of.. I think they even had the proper sound on the game cd with the backround info stuff, don't know why it never got used in the game. Chris

Yes, but will my infantry automatically form squares when charged by armor, or will I have to do that by hand? Chris

Drat, BTS is always one step ahead of me. Well, I guess terrain could still effect C&C outside of the LOS issue, but rather see other effects coded in, such as a reduction in command range due being under fire or taking casualties. Alternatively, there should probably be an increase in command range for units that have been static for awhile (since the start?) to simulate the advantage of being able to spend some time organizing an effective platoon defense and work out communications. I wouldn't be surprised if BTS has already done all that too. Thats why its nicer to suggest improvements in other company's games. Sure, they won't listen to you, but at least they haven't thought of everything already. Chris

I was away this weekend, or I woulda hopped into this one earlier: Why don't you just make command radius smaller if the hq doesn't have LOS to its subordinate? This shouldn't take up too many cpu cycles since I gather you do alot of LOS checks anyway.. Plus, I think its the most realistic solution. Standing in trees doesn't make the lt's job harder necessarily, its standing in trees and not being able to see the men he's supposed to be commanding. Chris

Was that the gun where they had to fire shells of increasing diameter as the caliber of the barrel grew after every shot? Chris

John: I don't think help any more than the tank's suspension does when it deflect a round upward.. plus, upside down turrets have a nasty habit of sending richocets into the top hull deck. Harold: The article you mentioned was great, not only informative, but it made all those materials classes really pay off. Rhet: I believe that is true that chobham armor's honeycomb structure means it has to be used in flat plates. The russians are still using the more primative sandwich style composite which can be rounded. Everyone: The article which Harold mentioned above taught a couple really neat things. First, HEAT rounds are best thought of as a cannon launched cannon. That is to say, what the heat round does when it detonated is deform the metal liner of the shaped charge into a small projectile. Its not melted, just deformed by the shockwave. This projectile isn't as heavy as an AP round, but it travels at about 4x the speed. Second, the ceramic portion of composite armor works by applying friction to the projectile as it passes through. This effectively breaks it up. The article also mentioned that if the ceramic is constrained, it applies greater friction.. the analogy used was that if you fill both a beaker and a test tube with rice, its easier to push a pencil through the beaker's rice and harder to push one through the test tube's rice due to the contrained motion. They didn't actually say that chobham armor uses the honeycomb to constrain the ceramic's motion, but thats the conclusion I drew. Whatever it does, it must be something good to be worth giving up rounded armor for. Chris

Have you guys considered making the operational and strategic AI occasionally do something crazy/odd? If an AI consistantly does the "smartest" thing" it becomes predictable and thus "dumb". Chris ps, MajorH, if you're reading this, I more or less stole that last line from you.

Maybe someone from BTS should put in a pre-order. It might be interesting to see how C&B deals with the people who pre-ordered a game they can't deliver. Hopefully they'll do the right thing and direct all those folks to battlefront. The worse option would be some terse "BTS refuses to distribute Combat Mission through us" email. Anyway, it would be interesting to see. Chris

second that, one of the best threads going as of late. Chris

Another factor that would limit the usefulness of the sandbags in that they are still just alot of individual bags, even if you do add concrete. Its like a wall built of sturdy bricks, but without any concrete, fairly easy to knock down.. especially when your hammer is an 88. The same I think would be true of a heat round.. They don't need to "burn" through the sand first, the explosive jet just knocks them out of the way. Mind you, if you told me I was gonna have to ride around in one of those deathtraps, I'd be piling everything I could find up for a bit more protection. Chris

It might also be good if there was a slight way of balancing human-vs-human games. Its nice to be able to play your non-obsessed-with-wargaming friends every now and then and not have to design a unbalanced scenario just to give him a fair chance. Maybe it would be possible to make global adjustments to a force's experience level, either in the editor, or better yet in the game? I realize that you could just go in a plop down a couple of king tigers instead, but I think such obvious handicapping can ruin the thrill of victory for the lesser player. Better to do something more subtle. Additionally, by improving the newbie's force quality, you can reduce what would likely be his greatest source of frustration, those darn command lagged, unpredictable green units. Chris

I know that the "hot jet of gas" analogy for a HEAT round is really correct, but why then is composite armor more effective for stopping HEAT? The only value I could see for ceramic would be that takes quite a lot of energy to melt it. Does anyone know how ceramics are used in modern armor? Alternating layers? Fibers? Honeycomb? Anyone wanna explain Chobham armor to me while your at it? I promise if you do I won't tell anyone else. Chris

I see no reason why sandbag armor wouldn't be effective as a sort of reactive armor, assuming the space was large enough. I can't imagine they'd offer anything signifigant against AP though. Where exactly did they put the sandbags? It seems like it would be difficult to get good coverage (percent wise) and good standoff over a signifigant portion of the tank. My guess is that placing sandbags on the tank was one of those "try anything, it might help" ideas.. sort of like mounting tracks links on the front armor. Chris

quoth Steve: "Seriously, don't worry about us staying in business. We can assure you that it won't happen. " Well, ya had me worried for a bit there, what with you producing a superior product and listening to the gamers and all. Chris

I think there's also a similiar myth about the .50 cal MG. Supposedly the geneva convention only allows it to be used against vehicles and equipment. Therefore, a friend of mine had a DI tell him to always aim at the enemy's flak vests. Chris

I always figure that the difficulty in destroying bridges with arty was more due to the low HE content of most arty shells compared to say, det charges or bombs. It seems most bridges could shrug off multiple direct hits if they were soundly built.

With regards to russian motorized infantry, I've heard that the BTR (APC) squads carry alot more dismounted fire power than the BMP (IFV) squads, which in fact makes them more effective in rough terrain, despite being moved around by a wheeled vehicle. For a country like russian, I think the BTR is still a pretty good solution (well, at least the later models). Chris

I always figured that the 60%-80% figure of casualties caused by artillery was due to the fact that artillery is rather good at causing slight wounds with shrapnel, but not as good as a charging tank followed up with infantry at finishing people off. Otherwise you get the impression that WW2 battles were decided primarily by the arty. Also, many of those casualties were probably inflicted outside of an actual battle, so they don't have the tactical value that a direct fire kill would have. Anyone wanna comfirm or deny all this? Chris

Oooh oooh, what about sewer movement? Aww, comon, it was in ASL! No, I'm not serious.. at least not until CM2. A serious question, do units in a multistory building occupy all the floors at once, or is it up to the player? Chris

Great story Los... Makes half of me wish I could be in your shoes, and the other half damn glad that I wasn't.. well, ok, probably more than half. Chris

Are there situations were a weapon/sqd might have to hold fire or shift target to avoid firing through a friendly unit? Chris

I may be wrong, but my sense of things is that units probably spent long period of time out of control of their superiors. Without radios and beyond shouting range, you are, at best relying on runners. This would result in quite a delay, not to mention some reduced squads due to lost runners (lost to fire that is). Obviously this wasn't how any side fought the war. What really happened is that the attack (or defense) was planned out in detail before hand.. a platoon knew what its role was going to be for the whole battle, and what it wasn't explicitly told, it figure out. This is where AI has problems. It doesn't have the brain to figure out just what CPT Miller meant by "Take Hill 452, then advance by bounding overwatch to the forest along with 2nd platoon." Having out of communication units just "sit there, fire, and retreat" isn't realistic. So, given the choice between two unrealistic solutions, I'll choose the one the lets me give orders and play the game. Chris

If CM tracks OB arty, does that mean that it creates an imaginary off map source of the fire? Chris

It was my experiences with the above mentioned Sid Meier's Gettysburg that led me to the conclusion that there has to be a better way. With SMG there was a dedicated gaming server of sorts on MPlayer. But it was slow to the point of being unusable and full of rather immature and annoying players. Most people kept a list of ICQ numbers of other potential players. This worked, slightly, but it was a major pain to maintain it, and if you let it slip for a month you'd find that it was out of date anyway. There has got to be a better way. PBM is nice and all, but in all honesty, I'm a very impatient person. And the weplan/wego nature of CM is really perfect for internet play. Chris