Harold Jones

Scott, Sorry my post was so unclear, I attempted to make it during a break in a meeting, and I should have just deleted it. Make no mistake I agree that the Hellcats arriving as stationary vehicles in a location where they can see and engage targets is the root of the problem. Since this is at least in part a scenario design problem, most designers will be able to avoid it by having reinforcements arrive in a location that is likely to not have LOS to enemy units. The other part of this problem is something that cannot be solved as easily. Due to the difficulty of coding a usable user interface and AI routines that would restrict a unit’s ability to shoot at or react to an enemy that it personally has not spotted, BTS are forced to allow all friendly units to have perfect knowledge of all spotted enemy units. This perfect intelligence is what allows the Hellcats to target the German armor as soon as they arrive. The German's are forced to wait until the Hellcats fire or move and thus become spotted before responding. My example of the unspotted Tiger was meant to illustrate this. [This message has been edited by Harold Jones (edited 11-12-99).] [This message has been edited by Harold Jones (edited 11-12-99).]

Scott said:

Putting the pieces together is only part of making a mortar ready to fire. The long and involved part is in getting everything lined up so that you can fire indirectly with accuracy. If you are firing by direct lay then you can skip this part. Direct lay means that you have LOS to the target. It is possible to set a mortar below the crest of a hill and have the squad leader call fire commands and corrections back to the crew. However this is a slow and ammo intensive process.

I vaguely remember hearing the same thing about the Sherman. I believe some later models had a transmission that allowed the tracks to move in opposite directions.

I agree that finding accurate and complete descriptions of battles at CM's scale is very difficult. Also, the stuff that is available is usually about the more famous battles. I can forsee many Bulge scenarios just because there is so much source material out there. One resource that should be availabe in the Military History section of most state university librarys is back issues of Calvary Journal/Armor Magazine and The Infantry Journal. Iowa State University has a collection of these magazines dating back to the '30s. I remember that the wartime and immediate post war issues had a lot of articles and school problems dealing with combat at the bn/co level in the ETO.

Since my play PC is currently located in a different state than I am all I can do is read the postings here and whish I was playing. So, I got to thinking about scenarios and I wondered how many people are planning on building scenarios and that sort of lead me to wonder whether people will be designing historical scenarios or whether they find it more fun to design and play scenarios that while plausible are not strictly historical.

LOS said: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Just scored the following films from belleand blade...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Could you please post their URL? ------------------ If something cannot be fixed by hitting it or by swearing at it, it wasn't worth saving anyway.

Thomm, I just think those "blood" spots are the cheesiest thing I've ever seen. Can you imagine how a map where over 500 men became casualties would look. Pretty much like it had a bad case of the measles I think. Also, no cartoon depiction of dead bodies will ever come close to showing how violent and wasteful combat is. Ask your self this, if the units were 2d counters with standard nato markings would you be wanting little casualty markers everywhere they took damage? PS: I will not be able to access the Internet for the next three days, so I will be unable to respond to any questions or rebuttals until Monday at 8 am CST. Also, I will not be able to play CM until Nov. 13th. Moving really sucks. [This message has been edited by Harold Jones (edited 11-05-99).] [This message has been edited by Harold Jones (edited 11-05-99).]

I think the above is the best argument against casualty markers I've seen so far.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I can think of three 'insane" reasons off the top of my head-feedback, continuity, and reality. Of course, this issue has been discussed to death."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> 1. Feedback, you already get feedback about the state of your troops. So littering the field with markers representing casualties just clutters everything up. Knowing that a squad is at 2/3 strength is way more important than knowing where the guys died. 2. Continuity, please explain what is meant by this. 3. Realism, it would also be realistic to display chewed up ground where tanks have driven, dead animals and dead or fleeing civilians, but none of that would add much to the game. BTS is engaged in a delicate balancing act and they have to weigh every graphical change against how it affects both the look of the game and the way it plays. I'm pretty sure that if BTS felt that casualty markers (corpses, crosses or whatever) added enough to be worth the time it took to code them, they would be in the game.

I have yet to hear a convincing reason to have dead bodies.

KT the timer I am speaking of has nothing to do with the movie time. The program times the amount of time the animation is being played. A refinement I thought about for pause is that when the pause button is hit then the current unit is de-selected. As I said initially, the idea is reletively simple in concept but will be a bear to code. I'm pretty sure that someone who really wants to, can find a way around almost anything we propose here. Ultimately it comes down to trusting the guy on the other side to play an honest game.

KT, I think I worded the pause function badly. The timer (and or the movie) would start to run as soon as a unit was clicked on. This would allow you to pause the action while you answered the door or something, but would not allow you to use the pause key to get around the time limit.

Simple fix (idea not programming) for the faster system thing KT. Allow a set amount of movie playback time. Say 5 minutes, this means you can watch the movie through 5 times or you can watch it once but keep hitting the forward and back buttons until the movie has been viewed for for 5 minutes. Time would also count off if a unit was clicked on after the pause button was hit(probably best to just have the playback start agin when that happens). Second component is turn time. Say 10 minutes, any movie time not used could be added to turn time. This would run in real time once the movie viewing stopped.

Here's an interesting occurrence. Last night I was playing riesburg as the Germans and I had 2 two story buildings rubbled by tank fire. The odd thing is that the MG teams on the second story weren't killed. Instead, they just floated in the air happily machine gunning away. I had one move and he returned to the ground. I left the other one there until he was wiped out.

Two things I'd like to see. 1. Multiple starting unit packages for a scenario. For example, in Reisburg the Germans get a couple of companies of infantry and 2 88's every time. Instead a scenario designer could set up maybe 3 at start units and assign a probability for each one. That way the forces controlled by each side would be somewhat variable. 2. Allow something similar for reinforcements. Sort of an if/then thing. If the Shermans arrive on turn 5 then the 3 hellcats scheduled to arrive on turn 7 don't show up, or something like that. Granted these options would make scenario balancing a lot more difficult, but I think they would be worth it from a replayability standpoint. As it stands today, I know that the Hellcats won't show up for at least the first ten minutes and also once I kill all three of them the US only has bazookas for AT defense. ------------------ If something cannot be fixed by hitting it or by swearing at it, it wasn't worth saving anyway.

S refers to smoke ammo I believe.

Well, my ambush plan failed miserably. It appears that an officer can only set an ambush within a set range. When I targeted the hill top for the ambush the LOS bar said out of range. Instead I just left the Tiger parked where he could see the hill top and moved a STUG next to him. I had the STUG fire some rounds into a building while I waited for the M-18s to show up. When the M-18s arrived I targeted all 3 of them on the STUG as they couldn't see the Tiger. When the turn executed the STUG died and the Tiger took a shot at one of the M-18s and killed it. The other M-18s targeted the Tiger and blazed away. 10 or 12 hits later they managed to damage its main gun so I ended the test. One thing I noticed is that the Hellcats seem to fire much faster than the Tiger or the STUGs.

I doubt if it would work against another person, or even the AI. I just want to watch the fireworks. Actually I have two or three other things I want to do as well. I'll probably do a hotseat against myself and try them all out.

Just for fun I'm going to set up an ambush point on the road where the Hellcats apear and target it with my Tiger and both STUGs. Then I'll just wait and see what happens.

Johnnymo, Don't try to sit there and go head to head with the German armor. When the M-18s arrive have them target the Germans and then give them Fast movement orders off the top of that bald hill. There are some pretty nice positions close by. If you are lucky you kill one or two enemy with your opening shots and by the time the return fire comes you are well on your way to a safe spot. Last time I played I killed the STUGs and the Tiger for the loss of one M-18 (I wasn't as hull down as I thought)

The tracers are very well done. I do wish that they were different colors for different armies. I believe the Germans used green and the US at least used red. Also, in real life tracers ricochet all over the place, but I suppose that would be way too confusing for the player [This message has been edited by Harold Jones (edited 11-01-99).]

I too have found those little 60's great for popping halftracks. They do seem a little too likely to get hits, but then again for approximately 105 rounds of ammo the 2 or 3 kills I get don't seem excessive. The mortars are also useful for making the tank riders dismount and the crews button up. Once I used my mortars and a machinegun to force a STUG to button up, then my bazooka team stood up and got off two unmolested shots against the STUG. The second one hit and killed the STUG. Now if the darn things only had a few smoke rounds to go with the HE. ------------------ If something cannot be fixed by hitting it or by swearing at it, it wasn't worth saving anyway.

I'm going to throw my hat in to the no perfect knowledge camp. Although, a hot list of your units with no information other than the terrain they are in and the ability to click on the unit's name and zoom to it would be helpful in finding units. Any more information would be contrary to the spirit of the game. I have found that by watching the tracers during the replay that I get quite a lot of useful information. If I see 2 or 3 streams of tracers hitting a unit I know that it is an area of concern and will check it. If an area doesn't have a lot of contact then I don't much worry about the units in that area. I usually watch the movie once per area of interest and then I move on. Every once in a while I'll zoom in to watch something that looks cool or I'll review a few extra times to find out how something died, but for the most part I just use the "force". It seems to be working for me just fine against the AI, haven't lost yet. I'm almost comfortable enough with the game to begin PBEM. Finally, this is probably the first game that rewards my mostly non-anylitical style of play and I don't want that to change. ------------------ If something cannot be fixed by hitting it or by swearing at it, it wasn't worth saving anyway.

My reaction was mostly based on how gamey this sort of thing feels. To be honest I never even thought to use my crews after their vehicle was killed. I figured they would be mostly useless. Plus, I've been trouncing the AI with a great deal of regularity so I haven't been in a situation where I really needed the extra guys. I better explain that the first time through each scenario I found the AI challenging and it did some things that really surprised me, but now I am so familier with the scenarios that the AI really has no chance. ------------------ If something cannot be fixed by hitting it or by swearing at it, it wasn't worth saving anyway.