M Hofbauer

thanks BTS...I was about to report about an abnormal amount of bogging lately, when voilá you already present the remedy....that's what I call true customer satisfaction...react to complaints even before they are filed...thumbs up! ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

it is Rosie O'Donnell - in an abstracted sort of way...

oh yes, of course it was meant for fun, didn't mean to sound harsh but wanted to point out... besides, like I said SnakeEyes beat me to it, and hey, Rifle Squad was only one of my entries, and I probably made almost as many entries as there are unaccounted votes in the US elections :-p ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

don't want to look like a bad loser, just wanted to note that this answer to your question had been given before. SnakeEyes beat me to it while I typed the answer...that was 1 page and 28 posts before you gave the answer yourself... and besides, like I wrote earlier, it doesn't seem an especially noteworthy occurence to me to have an american rifle squad blasted by an artillery round...?!? If it is a special occurence to you then you're a lucky guy. Things (inf squads) explode here on my computer everday, both own and enemy.... ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

BTS, One other thing to keep in mind is that a tanker is going to be hard pressed to identify the specific model.(...)I doubt they would spend the time to figure out which is which. Instead, it was "Sherman 3 o'clock!" or perhaps even more common "enemy tank 3 o'clock!" but NOT "Sherman M4A3E8 with no suplimental armor at 3 o'clock!" that's what I had been lamenting about all along! - to no avail! because in CM the specific Sherman make is identified by the enemy down to the screw, well, almost, but surely down to the wet ammo storage, when most people would be hard pressed to identify the concrete make in question using a reference book and all the time in the world doing a walkaround in a museum. Enemy soldiers in CM seem to have no problem readily discerning between PzIV Ausf. H and J or identifying the exact Cromwell model etc. Now you seem to have the same view - ? ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ) [edited to add emphasis tags] [This message has been edited by M Hofbauer (edited 12-19-2000).]

an american 12-man squad (visualized with a three-man marker) reduced to a single dead prone figure by means of a single high-caliber arty round? too obvious.... that was my last guess...

MT, you need to get a grasp on reality. Back then the poor souls which had to man those tanks on both sides didn't enjoy that 20/20 hindsight we armchair warriors and wannabe-grogs of today have. Even the much-lauded and very good HBoGMF of the US Army even in it's 1945 post-war edition still contains a number of flaws, and it wasn't something that was circulated in the trenches. IOW, a regular US Tanker would not have exact armor thickness charts for every other german cat and odd welded-together modvehicle around. Jeff H, ROTFLMAO...! ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

it can NOT be a FighterBomber pilot since I've downed a couple dozen by now OVER huge battlefield (you can see the shadow disappear when it's hit) and there never was a crashing aircraft or parachuting pilot. My guess it's some big-caliber FO or high-brass Btln cmmndr or somefink.

now I got it...it's a BIRD...NO it's a MAN...NO it's a reinforced position (wooden bunker)...No it's....

it's an assault boat modded to look like an H-39 that turns into an american soldier when destroyed.

deanco, there IS a way to check for a relative hull-down position during setup / even w/o enemy vehicles. during setup, place your tank slightly behind the crest of the hill you want to use for your hulldwon positioning of your tank. now select the tank and draw a LOS line (type "L") from your tank. now check your LOS line over the crest, to the base of the hill and to the far horizon. If it is black/red (blocked due to crest) for both locations then you are too far behind the crest. If it is blue for both check locations then you are totally exposed. Reposition repeatedly until the far LOS is blue and the close LOS is blocked: your LOS should be blue to the far horizon but sometime while tracing the LOS to the base of your hill should suddenly become blocked. Then you are basically hull-down. You can refine it so that you can place your vehicle hulldown with respect to a certain location, usually a road or something where the enemy will appear into your field of view. Then, that location should be the closest distance where your LOS is still blue, and should become immediately blocked just short of that location. (I'ld do it with pictures but I hope I was able to convey the concept using words? if not just tell me so) yours sincerely, M.Hofbauer

Apparently, you are both unaware of what the sneak concept really is. RTFM p.156 or, do a SEARCH in essence, squads that are executing a "sneak" command will keep advancing in the least audible manner as possible to avoid detection and only fire if they are engaged. Since the individual squads in your examples were not fired upon, they continued with their SNEAK command. Your fault. You should've used move instead, for example. ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

Great. And here I was thinking that CM calculates true LOS/LOF. It's like someone telling me there is no Santa. ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

Steve quoted Charles:If a tank is hull down, it's "size" rating is reduced by a constant factor. Does that mean that CM's hull down does not account for how much a tank is hull down, rather that hull down is a fixed I/O value? ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

just DLed the new 1.1beta patch. reading through the list of fixes I felt the urge to say THANK YOU BTS! thank you for your continued patch support of CMBO, your prolonged interest to refine your fabulous product. ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

just to please the "target tank needs ammo" and "KT vs M18 is a wrong choice" - crowd: I made the same scenario using ten Pz IVJ vs ten M5 Stuarts. everyone has normal ammo loadout, half ofthe PzIV are hull down. since PzIVJ has armor of turret 50, hull 80 and the Stuart's penetration capability at 500m is exactly between those two values, the predicted result is that the hull-down PzIV should be more likely to be killed than the ones in the open. try it for yourself: http://www.geocities.com/pizzatest/pzivjvsstuarttrial.zip (again you need to RENAME the file into pzivjvsstuarttrial.cmb) after 30 (thirty) runs, my final result for this setup is: 40 PzIVJ killed in the open vs. 52 PzVIJ killed hull down. since in this result hulldown has a 30 % higher chance of being killed, I think it is a noteworthy tendency. and for those people out of the "we-are-too-lazy-to-run-the-test-by-ourselves-but-we-won't-believe-this-until-we-see-the-whole-data" - corner here are the results of the individual battles PzVJ killed in each battle (needless to say all Stuarts were killed except those who killed their respective PzIV-opponent in their firing lane) PzIVJ killed in_open_: 0=3=3=1=0=1=1=1=1=0=3=1=1=2=2=1=2=2=1=1=1=1=1=1=2=1=4=1=0=1 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PzIVJ killed hulldown: 1=2=3=1=2=1=1=2=1=1=0=3=2=2=3=2=3=1=0=2=2=3=2=2=2=1=2=2=1=2 [modified to rectify the display of the results] [This message has been edited by M Hofbauer (edited 12-16-2000).]

People, the KT ammo was removed totally intentionally. Because, the question I was researching was NOT whether the KT or the M18 are the better tank. The question I am looking at with this test is: who has a higher survival rate, the hull-down KT or the out-in-the-open KT. It is so plain obvious to me that I find it hard to coin it into words: since hull down does not affect the aiming/accuracy of the firing tank, there is no point in whether the KT has ammo or not. Since obviously all M18s are in the open, the chances for a KT to hit it are not influenced by the KT being hulldown or not. The M18 firing at the KT is the research object, not the killing power of the KT. It seems that at least Jarmo understands the irrelevance of the KT having ammo or not. I made this test so that everybody can easily see for himself (this is why I don't give you my numbers...run it a dozen or so times and bet your money on rouge ...erm...not hull-down...you will see that very very often the hull-downs will be gone first) that in this concrete situation indeed hulldown is unpreferrable. The results speak for themselves: hulldown dies, out in open survives. No arguing or whatever can remove that fact. The soldier/foxhole example: I get your point about the infantry man. But the situation should be modified to be comparable to our situation with tanks: If the soldier wore body armor that would make him invulnerable to any .22 cal rounds hitting him below the head, then do you think it is still better for him to stay in the foxhole and only expose his head? No, because then the enemy will only aim at his head, which is the only vulnerable part of him. If he stood erect in the open, the enemy will target the whole person, making most of the hits going to the center, where the hits are absorbed. That is what I think several people have been trying to point out. And this is why I am not saying CM is at fault. All I am saying is that under certain circumstances (Just like in the soldier with body armor example above) it is unfavorable to be hulldown. And that is realistic or at least not totally off...I think. And that is also why, sorry Steve, I will stand by my opinion that your (Steve's) statement "And that is, even when all other factors are ignored, it is still better to be hull down than to be in an open field." is wrong, because IF all other factors ARE ignored (as in my test) then indeed there ARE situations where it IS unfavorable to be hull down. yours sincerely, M.Hofbauer ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

ok, I've done a litle scenario everyone can DL and run a thousand times to see for himself. Ten M18 Hellcats having a full load of tungsten, in seperate firing lanes, firing at ten KingTigers. KTs have no ammo. distance 500odd meters for everyone of the ten firing lanes. now - five of the KTs are hull down, and five are in the open. This gives you instant results without having to note how many shots etc. it takes one way or the other. All you do is run the test and see who lives longest. My results are that after 3 to 4 volleys usually the last KT is gone. However, to a statistically significant degree, the last surviving KT is from the non - hulldown group (!). (my results (which clearly indicate that hulldown is unfavorable in this scenario) are from using 1.05 since I am still waiting for the 1.1 patch - I'ld be interested to hear about your results using this scenario in 1.1) Anyone not believing this can just DL the scenario and see for himself by running it a couple of times (20 or so) (it's really user - and research-friendly, just starte the game, all padlocked and all, just hit the GO button). http://www.geocities.com/pizzatest/kingtigerm18trial.zip (you need to RENAME (not unpack) it to kingtigerm18trial.cmb) This might or might not be explained by the fact that in a hulldown situation the gunner is forced to aim more careful at the more vulnerable turret, which is a reasonable and maybe realistic behavior. However, it clearly contradicts Steve's opinion that "And that is, even when all other factors are ignored, it is still better to be hull down than to be in an open field." Not saying this is totally unreaistic, but the fact of the result is clearly there. [This message has been edited by M Hofbauer (edited 12-15-2000).]

bump and I agree wit M/T's and Pvt.R's reasoning. If the bunker is safe behind own lines when the enemy side is surrendering then indeed the bunker who has simply run out of ammo clearly should not be counted as a kill for the enemy. just my truckload of turkish lira. ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

uhm, Rob, just curious here, how's your cmc1 going? We haven't heard from it for a while now... I was wondering how feasible the idea worked out to be - how many turns could you complete by now?

KD: Ive been playing a LARGE Op on TCPIP now for over a week. wow. true dedication. must be a HUGE scenario. sorry, couldn't resist ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

Steve/BTS: Note that people can play CM with Fog of War off, which "ruins" much of what we carefully designed Combat Mission to be. I should know But I don't see ANYBODY stating that CM is worse off for including this feature even though it has a far more profound impact on what CM is "supposed" to be than TCP/IP ever could. hey, now wait with that big hammer, I am not turning against TCP here, I was just wondering: have any of you ever used or heard of somebody use that "FoW off" - option? I can't imagine doing that. No fun. It's like robbing a bank by telling them to deposit the booty onto your account. Or something like that. Kingfish: I like that sig. ) ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ)

"Yup, actaully you are wrong there I dont know the detils, but I do know that the file size is indeed smaller due to certain tricks Charles did, thus is it considerable faster to transfer." ok, I concede then that under this premise indeed TCVP/IP has an advantage. everybody, I might try TCP/IP some day, I am not AGAINST it, I was just worried/annoyed that a lot of effort was made to cater to the TCP crowd while most basic game issues, like the score, had not been worked out (which would probably require much less effort). Lindan: ack I know, hadn't thought of it, soince I never played the PBEMs that way. you see, for ICQ you need the other person to stay online (=a la TCP/IP) while I prefer sending back and forth the PBEM on daily / bi-daily basis or so. So icq would not work, but email arrives even if the other person is not online (you see?). Elvis: While you are waiting to receive the file back what are you doing? Checking out the board? Walking the plants, watering the dog ect.. depends on how you play. I admit I see this / wrote this from the perspective of a person that doesn't do such CM online sessions; from my perspective, if you play, say, one turn per day, well, in the meantime you ARE walking the plants, watering the dog - going to work, going shopping, entertaining the Ms etc - basically living your life. You see, you are not dependant on the PBEM file return; when you get home, it's there. It may have arrived 23 hrs ago or just 10 minutes ago - IT DOES NOT MATTER. however, if your shtick is to play a quick game, in one piece all the way through, in a dedicated 1 or 2 hour session, then you are probably right, TCP/IP is probably just the right thing for you, even a tad bit beter than the icq workaround. again, don't wanna spoil your TCP-hype, I might give it a try some day, too. ut I won't DL a beta patch if I have to DL it again later just so I can have TCP in the meantime. I am looking for other things which fortunately will be in the patch ------------------ "Im off to NZ police collage" (GAZ_NZ) [This message has been edited by GAZ_NZ (edited 11-29-2000).] [This message has been edited by M Hofbauer (edited 11-29-2000).]

one is a dirt road (brown), the other is a paved road (asphalt/concrete)(grey). Moving on the asphalt road is of course faster, and vehicles will be even less likely to bog down (there have been instances of vehicles bogging down on dirt roads, but I never heard of that happening on paved roads). hope that was what you were asking for...?

ok KD you're right I'll withdraw my frown if you say that it's just a beta thing... you're right in that this is not the final version of the patch. however, I'm also right (from my PoV) that for a beta the TCP thingie was considered but the scoring eror was not.