Dschugaschwili

Usually the base price of the unit. The only exception that I know of are artillery spotters whose value is independant of the gun type. Dschugaschwili

The orders for the AI could theoretically be calculated in the background. The movies can only be calculated when all orders for both sides are final, which is certainly not before you press "go". Dschugaschwili

I once played a CMBO scenario with exactly this setup ("Dutch Gambit" I think). Even though the game itself seemed pretty one-sided (I don't think any enemy unit ever entered my half of the map) I only got a very marginal victory. You just have to leave too many units on the map to prevent the enemy from rushing through with everything that is left, and units that don't exit cost you an insane number of victory points, so this kind of scenario is incredibly drawish. Example: Player A loses 50% of his troops, exits 20% and has the remaining 30% on map at the end of the game. Player B loses 80% of his troops, exits nothing and has 20% on map at the end. This leads to a score of about 60:40 in spite of the apparent fact that player B got seriously trashed in this game and probably never really had a chance. Dschugaschwili

If I can see the mortar/gun I have knocked out, I don't think there's anything wrong with how it works now. But being able to get a "knocked out" message without seeing the knocked out unit is just wrong. Dschugaschwili

Still hoping to get a reaction... Dschugaschwili

I think the main reason for traffic jams is that vehicles take evasive actions too often. A condition like "If you're bumping into another vehicle and the other vehicle is moving in roughly the same direction as you, don't plot new waypoints to get around it, just slow down/stop for a moment and continue with the current movement path." could probably improve the current situation. Dschugaschwili

IIRC one of the CMBO patches increased the hit chance of bunkers because they are supposed to be boresighted. The increase wasn't as large as a TRP though. Dschugaschwili

Because they can see nothing that they may have knocked out and they haven't identified the infantry unit as "crew?" either. The "new" unit taking cover right now is identified as "infantry?", so all in all my men know nothing about something they just knocked out, and I should not know either. Dschugaschwili

First, let me say that I don't expect BFC to release a 1.04 patch because of this issue, but it would be nice if it could be fixed for CMAK. The situation: I'm playing a scenario where I'm defending. I order a gun to fire at a distant "infantry?" unit. The gun fires a shell that lands close to the enemy unit and it goes to ground. So far nothing unusual. But now I decided to take a closer look at the enemy unit, so I watched the last few seconds again with the enemy unit selected. As soon as the shell hit the ground the selected unit disappeared, the status bar showed "knocked out", and a new "infantry?" unit appeared close by. Judging by my knowledge about how CM works, I conclude that I just killed a mortar or a gun, although I don't see the knocked out object. This means that I also cannot select it again once I have selected another unit, but because of what I have seen before, I know that there must be something there. This is from a PBEM game, so I still have the movie file ready if it's needed. Dschugaschwili

I find that hard to believe given that BFC said coax MG and gun always go down together. Is this tank of yours still capable of using the "target" command? </font>

Works for me too. If I really need it, I can still manually run the autostart program. Dschugaschwili

It's an abstraction in the CM engine. Gun/MG or track hits never penetrate any further, so they don't cause any other damage to the vehicle except maybe a gun damage/immobilization. And for the coax MG: I have had gun-damaged tanks of mine still fire the coax MG, so not all gun damages take it out as well. Dschugaschwili

This test was done in deep mud. I don't think moving in scattered trees is an advantage in any other ground condition. Dschugaschwili

I second this. Dschugaschwili

Most likely, using the same method as putting everything else into a house (map editor only). 1. Delete the house. 2. Put a wire piece in the desired place. 3. Place the house again. Dschugaschwili

This can work really well. In a PBEM game I'm currently playing, I bought a platoon of a German 75mm equipped vehicle (don't know the exact type right now). Although there are enemy SP guns, AT guns and ATRs around, all vehicles are still alive (by turn 21) and happily shooting up enemy infantry. As long as you have some real tanks to keep the enemy armor at bay and you're careful where you drive them, you're fine. Dschugaschwili

You just have to remember to make the last movement leg long enough. Anything over 20m is usually sufficient. Dschugaschwili

I have also seen this, but only within the first few seconds after they have surrendered. CM simulates the time any kind of fire needs to get from the shooter to the target, so it's quite possible (and common) that there are still some shots on the way to the unit when it surrenders. Those can and will do damage when they hit. Ok, there's another case: night battles. When friendly fire is on, prisoners are of course also affected by it. Dschugaschwili

Can somebody show me a gamey CMBB tactic that actually has an advantage for the player using it? I currently can't think of one. And as long as I don't know of one, I don't see a problem. Dschugaschwili

A story from an ongoing PBEM game: Meeting engagement, few trees, small hills, dry ground. Excellent tank country. Turn 1: Two of my tanks are waiting in a corner of the map behind a small hill with view diagonally across the map. On turn one a couple of medium tanks are seen driving full speed towards a patch of woods in the center of the map with two victory flags, carrying what seems to be a platoon of infantry. My tanks open fire at 1200m, each one getting two shots off before the turn ends. No hits recorded. One enemy tank has already disappeared at the end of the turn, the other three are still visible. Turn 2: My opponent writes after seeing turn 1: "Nice shot." :confused: I couldn't see any hits. A few seconds into the movie the fourth enemy tank re-appears, marked as abandoned. What on earth is going on here??? Watching the first movie again shows the answer: There's a small explosion a short distance above the ground on the lost contact marker of the enemy tank that had disappeared a split second before the impact. Obviously I had indeed hit it, but because I did not see it at that time, I didn't get a hit message. I love EFOW. Dschugaschwili

You should usually place guns at the forward edge of LOS-restricting terrain. The more scattered trees/woods/tall pines are between the gun and the target, the darker the LOS line and the lower the hit chance. And a reduced to-hit probability hurts the gun more than the tank because the tank only needs near misses to knock out the gun, and I haven't noticed a decrease in accuracy when area targeting with tanks. Dschugaschwili

My view on this topic: 1. A gun in a reverse slope ("hull down") position should be hard to hit. I don't think anybody will question that. 2. If the barrel of the gun is located high enough to see and fire over the ridge, it should be hittable from the other side. (I'll ignore the trajectory of the shots here, but even if we take that into consideration, everything with a muzzle velocity not higher than that of the gun can definitely retaliate) 3. In CMBB only vehicles have a height. To see this, make a map with the western half of the map at height level 7 and the eastern half at 10. Place a couple of units on the map. You will notice that a LOS line to a non-vehicle unit can be drawn exactly if a LOS line can be drawn to the ground under the unit, but you can see vehicles farther back. 4. This suggests that non-vehicle units can not be hit directly by projectiles. Instead, the ground beneath/near the unit has to be hit. 5. Not being able to hit a part of a gun directly is a problem if the ground the gun stands on is behind a ridge because the projectile should hit the ground in front of the ridge if it was aimed at the base of the gun. 6. A tank gunner would realistically have to aim at a visible part of the "hull down" gun to destroy it. In CMBB the TacAI does not seem to do it, and even if it did, it wouldn't help because the gun can not be hit that way. 7. This seems to be a problem that goes back to CMBO. In CMBO, unarmored vehicles could not be hit directly either, causing the well-known Flak-truck problems. This particular case was changed for CMBB, but to get rid of this problem completely, every unit would have to be able to be hit directly. I hope this sums up this thread. Dschugaschwili

I think the whole problem described in this thread comes from the fact that non-vehicle units can not be hit directly in CMBB. Only the ground under/near the unit can be hit with gun/arty shells. Because of this, a gun in a "hull down" position can sometimes not be hit by a tank in any way. We would need the possibility of gun hits against guns to remedy this problem. A "hull down" gun would then still be very hard to kill because killing near misses are not possible, but there is still a small chance of hitting the gun itself. Dschugaschwili

Any two movement commands that require the vehicle to change direction within the same turn will disable the main gun until that rotation is complete. </font>

You can try the hail fire approach yourself. Just play "Iron Roadblock" as the Germans. Spoiler ahead: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I used all guns and tanks (except the reinforcements of course) to shell the KV from within the scattered trees in the German setup zone. It took me almost all AP ammo and 8 gun hits until the KV stopped firing, but it worked while only losing one tank (a Pz38t I think). Dschugaschwili