FEBA

Thanks to everyone who posted. Some good ideas I will have to try!

I am playing a PBEM QB as the russian and have gotten behind my opponent's 88mm pillbox. I have tried to attack it for several turns and knock it out, but no luck. The first problem I have is I have a T34 M43 about twelve meters behind it. For orders I tell the T34 to fire at the pillbox, the information when I target reads "Hit: 99%, Kill:Fair" so I target it and finish my turn. However, twice in a row, the first thing that happens on the video replay is the T34 drops the pillbox as a target, does not select a new target (there are none in sight) and sits there for the rest of the turn doing nothing: it never fires a shot. I noticed as the T34 approached from the side several turns before that if I targeted the pillbox, I got a hit chance, but no kill chance indicated in the targetting info, so I assumed that now that the T34 is behind it is firing at an entrance or such. The second problem is I don't seem to know what the right command is to get my infantry to successfully attack. I use "assault" and select the pillbox and get "follow vehicle" on the target. OK, I guess its a kind of vehicle, but even that infantry attacking for two turns from behind have not been able to do anything. They shoot, but nothing seems to happen. This will all be moot soon when my flamethrower team gets into position, but they move slow, and I was hoping to "resolve" the pillbox before the team hauled their slow ass over to the action. Any insight is appreciated.

Thanks for the input redwolf. Back to the beginning. It seems to me that this is a simulation problem trying to balance a macro reality (historical TOE vehicles can mount full platoon) with a micro reality (no more than X or so men can fit in a 1/2 track vehicle). The issue may come down to what is a better simulation: </font> 1) Let a panzer infantry platoon load into the actual vehicle count used by the wehrmacht and incorrectly increase the number of men allowed to mount in some vehicle(s). </font>2) Prevent too many men from loading into a single vehicle and incorrectly prevent a panzer infantry platoon from operating in the way it was actually used by the wehrmacht. </font>To me, choice 1 seems to have less impact on "degrading" reality and is thus a better simulation choice.

That sounds like the solution. I posted in the "patch" thread a request that BFC take a look at changing the 251/10. Do you have any source that indicates the carrying capacity of the 251/10 ?

Any chance the 251/10 will be changed to allow a squad to ride in it rather than just a team ? This would allow a panzer infantry platoon to fit in their provided organic vehicles. Here's a link to a thread discussing it: Insufficient organic transport to mount units

I agree, with the proviso that the personnel strength was even more likely to be less than TO&E. What needs to be done, IMO, is that instead of limiting ridership to a fixed number of units, the program needs to make an actual count of bodies present, with heavy weapons counting as a person. You could make the "body count" a little larger than the official number, as in practice one more person or a little more equipment would often be squeezed in. Michael</font>

Well, in reality, I think an armored platoon would all fit into the halftracks assigned toe. Seems unlikly the germans would design a mobile force and fail to give them enough equipment to fulfill their role. The current situation makes it impossible for me to have the unit transported in the manner it was historically. Sure, an extra 1/2 track could be bought (or assigned in a scenario design), but then the unit would have more stuff than it had historically. I ran into this problem trying to design a scenario with the intent it have historical forces. My design idea is to create a blitzkrieg post-break thru in '41 where a german armored force is pushing fast past soviet rear echelon elements. The german player is fighting the clock by speeding by to cross a long map and subduing only those forces necessary to get by. To accomplish this mobility is necessary. I wanted the german force to be historically correct in terms of equipment. I am worried this is not possible.

Right. The panzer rifle sqd can't load into the 251/10 and only one can load into a 251/1. Neither the hq or mortar can load into a 251/1 that already has a sqd in it. The hq and mortar won't both fit in the 251/10. At least one unit is let "hoofing it".

*bump*

If you play a quick battle and select some armored infantry forces the organic transport provided is not sufficient to load all the foot elements. For example, in June 1941, select a Wehrmacht armored rifle platoon. The toe is: 1 x platoon hq 3 x panzer rifle squads 1 x 50mm mortar team 3 x SPW 251/1 halftrack 1 x SPW 251/10 halftrack There is no combination of mounting the foot units in the vehicles that lets them all be mounted. Very odd. Is this accurate or have I missed something? Maybe an organic truck was historically used to move the 50mm and trucks are not included, just as they are not for 'motorized' units. (Don't think this is the case, because I've never seen this in any other published wargame.) Any ideas? I don't know if this is a bug, but it seems so. (I can't believe no one has noted this before, but I did a search and was unable to find any reference.)

Even bullets flying horizontal go subsonic from air resistance after flying a while. I too doubt they are supersonic when just falling. But a fist is subsonic and can still hurt you. Excerpt from website where the author seems to know what's what: Scroll to section on -COMMENTS ON LONG RANGE SHOOTING- http://www.gunnerynetwork.com

Heard the doorbell ring, went downstairs to find the mailman there. (Heart pumping faster!) He has a package which is obviously not CMBB, but I notice a 'priority mail' large envelope in his other hand. He hands me the package and says: "Got a package for you and here is the rest of your mail." Very polite, but really! He should have said: "Here's CMBB and some other worthless trash including this non-CMBB package." WooHoo ! I see a late night a comin' ! No more work today ! For you other Texans, my town is, as the Marx brothers say: "Dollars, Taxes" (aka "Big D").

Great game! Some units had a zero combat value and were removed from play when attacked. The russian player always dreaded seeing his line crack wide open when a portion that looked solid was in fact a paper tiger. Also, once adjacent to the enemy, it was hard to disengage. Both of those features combined to encourage a defense in depth and maintenance of a reserve to plug holes. On the other hand, every once in a while a super division would be revealed and the german panzers would take a beating.

Don't worry, I can already do that without computer aid. Thanks guys for clearing this up for me. Sounds like EFOW is the way to go.

I don't understand the labeling of the 'fog of war' settings in CMBB. Full implies just that, full fog of war. To me then, 'extreme' implies beyond 'full' or into an unrealistic level. Is extreme intended for those who want more fog of war than is realistic because they like a challenge or is it closer to reality ? I want to play my games as close to reality as possible and am wondering which setting is appropriate. I tried a forum search, but was unable to find a topic discussing this. Also, this question may be answered in the CMBB manual, which, if I am lucky, arrives today.

I think that since the manual is in pdf already on the distributed CD that any pirates/warez types are going to get the manual when (and hopefully never) they get the executable anyway. That said, as others have pointed out, BFC owns the copyright and should do what they think best serves their interest. As someone who has pre-ordered I sure would like to peruse the manual now, but I guess, tomorrow or tuesday will have to do.

Perhaps the Bulletin board software was correct in expunging my post...

I think redwolf said it well: Video comes into play when playing back the turn and affects how fast you can change your point of view for the turn action. Disk speed only affects the loading of the scenario when you start the game and the saving of games. Hard drive speed could affect game speed if paging occurs. But if that was happening, you would be REALLY waiting for each turn Once you are beyond about 256MB memory (no hard data on mem size for CMBB, but 256MB is a common rule of thumb in the game community), then to increase turn calculation speed you need a faster processor and/or a faster memory subsystem (memory speed and a motherboard that can handle it). Preferably both. Hard disk speed, video speed, and video memory size won't have any effect. If your memory subsystem is too slow, then the speed of the processor becomes less important, because the processor can't get work from memory fast enough to run at full speed. Bottom line: Go for a faster processor and faster memory. Beware that most complete system vendors do not talk about memory speed.

I agree. Based on things that have been said on the forums in the far past I think they do their primary development on a Mac and cross-compile/port to Intel. I do not know this for a fact. I did not mean to suggest (and honestly don't think my post indicated) that they would deliberatly do things to make their code run slower on a PC in order to promote Apple. If anyone got that impression I renounce any intent to make it. But, developing on a Mac, BFC might give more attention to speed problems when experienced during development, which, if primarily developed on a Mac, might make CMBB relatively faster on a Mac, though not intentionally slower on a PC. Thanks for providing this excellent info. If the code must be tailored to achieve high levels of optimization for a given processor, then it means it would be even more costly for BFC to optimize the code for each processor type. My point that I would rather they spend resources on more features is even more valid. Again, I did not mean to imply that BFC had cheated us of features or PC performance by spending time on optimiziing for any particular processor. I suspect they spent their time on features. I still would like to see Mac times. I'm still curious. I have no hidden agenda to get BFC in trouble or to promote Macs over PCs. (I do like Macs, and if they had equal market share to windoze, I would buy one in a heartbeat. Even given those feelings, it is still fun to taunt Mac owners.)

I posted a topic about 20 minutes ago: Haiku for those who hoped CMBB would come today. It disappeared. If I do a search on the word 'Haiku' the search finds my topic, but if I click on the search result I am taken to the topic: A graphic issue that should be maybe fixed Anyone else see the same behavior. Just do a quick search on the word "haiku". Perhaps the Bulletin board software has sensitive aesthetic taste and has rejected my poetry. Not one to be deterred by automated critics here is what I originally posted, somewhat diminished becasue its austere simplicity is wounded by the length of this post: Haiku for those who hoped CMBB would come today. The light is fading The darkness is coming Still he waits

I bought the board game Panzerblitz when SPI first published it in the early 70s (or was it late 60s?). You want to talk wait, try playing it double blind with a human GM resolving combat and sighting, with optional pulse movement of course. Great game, led the way for tactical armor games. One of the leaders in the 'scenario' approach to games. Ahh, the Golden Age. [edit] Opps, it was AH that first published it. But Jim Dunningan designed it, so I always think it was SPI. Looking at the box, it was published in 1970.[/edit] [ September 21, 2002, 06:08 PM: Message edited by: FEBA ]

Don't have CMBB yet , but I already like the T34, lots and lots of T34s. Take your glam cat, take your 10 to 1 kill ratio, too bad, you lose. The factorys of the Rodina work day and night and production is expanding...

I still think a seperate forum for mods is a great idea!

BFC seems (slightly) biased towards Macs. We're lucky they put the game out for PCs at all. Can any game company make money in a Mac only environment? Any Mac owners got any G3 or G4 speeds to report ? FWIW, My system takes about 21 seconds average for 'Yelnia Stare': P4 1.6A, DDR333 (aka PC2700), Windows XP. Although I think video and i/o have no bearing on the compute times being discussed my video card is a GEForce3 Ti200 and my disk drive is a WD1200JB (8mb cache @ 7200 rpm.) The real question of interest for me is what is the difference in performance between systems based on different hardware families (Mac, Athlon, P4). My guess is the code is not optimized for P4s, and since the program is probably mostly a common multiplatform code base this is to be expected. Developers usually depend on the compiler to target optimize the code. If the same executable is used/shipped for both Athlon and P4, then the speed features of each processor can't both be optimized for and no special processor capabilities of either can be used. Based on the unscientific evidence presented in this thread, it seems Athlons run CMBB faster than P4s at the same processor speeds. Many 'big' market programs (read expensive) run/install specialized code determined by detecting the customer's processor type. Never coded for that, but I imagine it takes some engineering time. Remember that CD space was an issue with this release, so a seperately targetted executable for Athlon and P4 on the same CD was probably out. I don't know what the business implications might have been for creating a third CD (MAC, Athlon, & P4), or even if it was considered, but producing and tracking a third inventory item to save a few seconds on some customers systems has to be considered low priority. My own bias is I prefer BFC spend that time and money adding more game features and we all get to enjoy a better game. Some of us (read P4 owners) at a more leisurely pace than our friends (read Athlon owners). You win some, you lose some. But it seems only a 5 to 10 second difference. If anyone at BFC wants to confirm, deny, or correct my guessing, please do. Still interested to see any Mac numbers, if only to burn with envy...but, since there are so few out there insane enough to use a Mac we probably won't get much response. (MacOS was so bad, they are all busy falling back to Unix, aka OSX.)

I'm sure Michigan is, because I know Texas is in the Northeast too, right ? [ September 21, 2002, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: FEBA ]