Neutral Party

Tarqulene said By "realistic" & examples I mean the types of force mixtures that were quoted earlier in this thread, primarily related to the mixture of current and obsolete/obsolescent models. I agree with you when you say it is possible to get but this still suffers from fact that the player is choosing his own forces and there is an unavoidable tendency to optimize the choice. Of course scenarios do not have the same problems with force selection. What we are discussing here is if anything can be done to improve the situation in the context of QBs. Joe

Drat! Wish I'd known that before I set up my forces in battle #2 of Blitzkreig. Joe

Interesting discussion and I think Steve hit the nail of the head when he said The problem is there is no way anyone in their right mind would purposely select a "realistic" (in terms of some of the examples quoted here) force mix - especially if rarity means one has to pay though the nose for some piece of old junk. I think one possible solution would be use a web-based approach. Here's the concept: Someone (no not me) sets up a web page with multiple "realistic" force mixes for each of the standard purchase levels. Each mix is assigned a number. When two individuals agree to play using the system one of them queries the web page. They input their own and their opponents email address together with the area, date and points totals. The web page selects two random numbers, one for Axis one for Allied and emails the players their corresponding "realistic" force compositions. They can then select these forces in the QB setup using no rarity and with more than enough points to buy them - any points left over to be unused. Opinions ? Joe

If he's a rocket FO there's no point transporting him anywhere anyway. The only rational use for rockets is for a pre-planned bombardment. Joe

On the more general problem of annoying pop-ups. I find this works pretty well. Joe

I saw the opposite effect. I had a number of units including field guns & artillery FOs with LOS to a likely enemy route of advance in v1.0. When I moved to v1.01 they no longer could see to that area and have been rendered fairly useless This occurred because previously there was no LOS penalty caused by wheatfields - a situation remedied by the patch. Hopefully I'll still get to use them for something. Joe

Steve did briefly comment on this issue. Joe

See comment in another thread by Steve about this issue (at bottom of page). My understanding is that green line adjusting should reset off-target artillery but this may not be working properly. Joe

Thanks Steve Glad that you're taking an interest in this. Of course there is a human tendency to remember (and possibly misinterpret) instances where something bad happens and forget all the times where things work out the way they're supposed to I will keep an eye out for the situation arising again and send a savegame if it occurs. Joe

I was wondering if there was any resolution to this issue about artillery accuracy. AFAIK there was no mention of any changes to artillery targeting in the 1.01 patch. In a few recent games with said patch I have experienced the "features" described earlier in this thread. In particular off-target (very) delivery not improved by green line adjusting. In fact the adjusted fire came down in almost exactly the same place as the original. Now this doesn't happen all the time of course. In most of my experience artillery lands on-target but when the original is widely off, re-adjusting doesn't seem to help. Joe

Thanks Zukkov that's good news.

OK I give up. Does anyone know how to guarantee dry ground conditions? I certainly haven't done any systematic study of this but I've tried warm weather, hot weather, clear skies and various wind states and have still at times ended up with damp ground. Is it supposed to be unpredictable ? Does it depend on month or region ? Am I wearing the wrong socks ? It can be pretty frustrating to have a bunch of immobilized heavy armor on a sunny day in the middle of summer.

Hey what's a millimeter between friends ? It was, of course, 82mm that I should have said. I guess I misspent my youth playing too much CMBO where all medium onboard mortars fit (i.e., German 81mm fits in a kubelwagen, US 81mm fits in a jeep, Brit 3" fits in a jeep). In CMBB the German 81mm also fits in the kubelwagen. I'll just have to keep reminding myself to stop buying this combo when playing Soviet

Some may think it difficult to get 7 men and a big fat mortar tube + ammo into a jeep but AFAIK in game terms it should be possible. A jeep is transport class 6 and the sov. 81mm mortar is transport class 3. As the astute observer may have guessed from the title of this thread they don't fit (no embark option). However the Maxim MG with it's 6 man team + ammo which is also transport class 3 can embark. I was a tad disappointed to find this out having bought several jeeps specifically to transport my 81mm mortars - though nowhere near as disappointed as the mortar crews themselves. Could this be a BUG? :eek:

Obviously the origins of the swastika are very ancient. Another remarkable aspect of this symbol is its ubiquity through diverse cultures from all around the world. I once heard an interesting discussion on the subject by the late lamented Carl Sagan. He was speculating as to whether some mass shared experience could have given rise to this symbol. It would have to be something that was very dramatic to have had such an impact that cultures were using it as a talisman for millenia and would also have had to be visible all round the world. What he suggested could have been responsible was a close encounter with a comet. If the cometary nucleus was rotating in a particular orientation with respect to the Earth and was emitting gas/vapor jets as a consequence of solar irradiation it would have the appearance of an irregular swastika. To primitive humans such a sign in the heavens would have been somewhat memorable. Joe

I just wish that some of the briefings would be a bit more realistic and say "you're going to run into a ****load of enemy troops who will have better tanks than you've got" instead of the ubiquitous "expect no/light resistance". Joe

Game crashed at turn 15 during the scenario "A Battle of Minors" vs. AI When I hit go the game freezes half-way through the turn calculation. Alt-tab still works and reveals the error message Unhandled exception: c0000005 At address: 004829be I have tried several times from the autosave and always get the same error message. System: AMD Athlon XP 2200+ (1.81GHz) Mainboard: MICRO-STAR INTERNATIONAL CO., LTD MS-6373 System Chipset : Nvidia Corp nForce AGP Controller System BIOS : Award Software International, Inc. 6.00 PG Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 134MHz (268MHz data rate) Installed Memory : 512MB DDR-SDRAM Memory Bus Speed : 2x 134MHz (268MHz data rate) NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti 4400 Windows XP Home Ver 5.01.2600 Service Pack 1 Autosave file sent to webmaster@battlefront.com Joe

1250 point QB PBEM on PC (Windows XP). My opponent set up first. On my set-up turn a weird thing happened. After I set up and hit go the game went into first orders phase. This was a surprise. Anyway I entered a few waypoints to one unit and the game totally hung up, no alt-TAB, no crtl-alt-del and I had to reboot the computer. When I got back to the setup autosave and hit go again it went straight to save file dialog (as expected) without going to orders. I've noticed on a couple of other occasions the game dying and crashing the computer. Seems like there's a few bugs around. Joe

In a June '41 QB I had a MkII panzer (independent veh) come under fire from a large number of Soviet light tanks. It took a lot of hits and there were several penetrations. Eventually it lost a crew member and became "shocked". Over the course of this encounter the morale state went to "routed". However while all of this was happening the tank continued to fire on the enemy afvs with no noticeable reduction in firing rate. It even delivered several penetrating hits on enemy units while it was shocked and routed. At the end of the action phase the tank was out of my control remaining so for the rest of the game and did not fire another shot. Strange eh? Joe

Be aware you will not be able to see any fog effects in CM:BB/CM:BO with an ATI video card-equipped laptop. Joe

I agree this would be very useful - if it's possible.

Ever have one of those days Move along nothing to see here.

For some reason that I don't understand I have lost all sound with CM:BO since I installed CM:BB. All the .wav files are still there and play ok with media player, real player etc., just not in the game. CM:BB sound is fine. Has anyone else had this experience ? Joe

Gordon and Sitzkreig thanks again. I did remove all background/taskbar processes and virus scanners and it still bombed. However I'm now pretty sure it's something to do with my setup. I've just had a very similar problem trying to install SiSoft SANDRA which is also from a zip archive so I think you're right that it's related to access of the TEMP directory. I have only recently changed OS to W2K (previously was 98SE) and am not yet familiar with its foibles. Once I get my new desktop in a couple of weeks I'm going to nuke the laptop, get rid of the split partition and clean install the OS - probably XP. Joe

Well I tried a clean reinstall to C:\Program Files\CMBO but had exactly the same problem with CMMOS. I also tried extracting the CMMOS file to a directory and running setup.exe - same problem. FYI I am running Windows 2000 Professional v 5.0.2195 Service Pack 2 Build 2195. Joe