Renaud

I've gotten a friend and his roomy to buy CMBB, who would not buy CMBO formerly. They are loving it. Working on a 3rd guy...

Go back to your desktop (reboot if necessary) and lower your screen resolution and/or refresh rate in display properties. Then, try again. Keep lowering the values if you continue to have probs. Ren

My guess would be (assuming that two face-hardened plates really are better than one) that it's more expensive to produce, face-harden and assemble two plates than to produce one thicker face-hardened plate. Ren

Chief Wiggum says, "whoa whoa, slow down egghead!" So let me get this straight...the tac AI on the Strat AI player side is getting a statistically significant higher kill ratio, when pitted against the tac AI on the Human player side. So can anyone translate this into my expected extra losses due to the AI advantage in, say, the "Whitmann in the East" kursk tank-brawl scenario? That would be my idea of 'significant' information. Ren

I would say being packed in a halftrack hit by ATR slugs is far more dangerous for the squad than being fired at while deployed on the ground. Think of the slug penetrating and bouncing around inside a cramped compartment packed with men. The ATR vs deployed infantry is going to be less effective than a sharpshooter with a regular bolt-action rifle I would think. And sharpshooters don't exactly mow them down. I'd like to be able to TARGET anything though. Ren edit: and the infantry inside the halftrack is not the target. The halftrack is. When it gets penetrated the passengers are often injured in addition to the crew. [ October 30, 2002, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: Renaud ]

It sounds a little like you are saying that the burden of proof is not on the creator of the new hypotheses, but on the rest of the world to disprove it. This means I can come up with any cockamamie idea and the world will assume it's true. I say santa claus is real, prove me wrong...I saw jesus in a tortilla, prove me wrong.... The burden of proof is on he who asserts the existence of a thing, not on the world to disprove his assertion. Few laymen here can understand the original argument, thus it can't get much mileage. Is the objective to impress us with knowledge of arcane statistics or to prove a claim that the 'AI Cheats'?. I am perhaps impressed by your knowledge of P-square whatchamacallit, but since I don't know what you are talking about the argument is not convincing. Ren

Sounds like they just need to make a minor adjustment which will allow you to fire any ATR at any target. Course it might not have any effect depending on the target, but let the chips fall where they may. 'nuff said Ren

Hardly bears repeating, but KHARKOV ZOO SPOILER! * * * * I posted the following on a topic of whether or not the CMBB scenarios were better/worse than CMBO. Anyway, here's my AAR of kharkov zoo: I'm harping on the kharkov zoo scenario because I just played it last night. Man is that fun! I got tired of always playing as attacker in scenarios (usually the more challenging role) so I played soviets and increased german force by 100%. Truly a brutal struggle to the last gasp. Among the amazing events: The Aviary was finally over-run by a horde of fanatical fascists despite heavy losses. My defenders perished to the last man after brutal hand-to-hand combat...except for one surviving lieutenant, last man of a 4-man HQ, who hid (in a closet I suppose) as victorious SS streamed right past and over him. 5 minutes later he was still there when a German HQ tank pulled up 20 meters away. He threw his one remaining grenade in a graceful arc right into the hatch, single handedly destroying the tank! One grenade, one tank! It was amazing. There were several tanks parked there and they all looked the same to me but he identified the command tank. Boris, write up another posthumous 'Hero of the Soviet Union' citation... Ren oh yea I got a Draw (germans by a hair,52-48)

I've played 'Dergatschi(sp?) Roadblock' and 'Mobile Defense'. Based on those experiences I do think they have tweaked operations. I started avoiding Ops with CMBO due to bizarre situations that seemed to come up between battles frequently. Some of this may be bias due to the overall improvement in CMBB. One thing that appears to be worse than CMBO is the weird weather combinations. It's a stretch to envision a solid frozen river completely thawed in one day. Also the rain during frozen conditions seemed improbable. But when the trees sprouted leaves and turned a beautiful green by noon I really knew something was not right in rusky-ville. And the river was still frozen at that point. This was all in one day mind you. Ren

Broken! has described my central disagreement. That is, I think there should be many times when units go out of control, not only when they are broken, routed or panicked. I find it quite understandable when units under fire refuse my orders and even perform actions that, from my relatively godlike perspective, appear irrational and are likely to result in 100% casualties. After all they can't know whether the foxholes 10 meters away are safe, or whether it's a better bet to try and crawl 50 meters back where they came from. This assumes that the men in this situation are even capable of rational thought at that point. Currently I don't think I see 'too many' bad AI decisions, just 'a lot' of them. Which makes sense to me given the context. But trust me, I am right there with you screaming at my computer-grunts when they go the wrong way into certain death! One improvement that I think could be made with future AI models as new game engines allow, is a distinction between various experience levels of troops with regards to the choices they make. That is, a crack unit pinned down in the open would be much more likely to make the correct choice while a green unit would have roughly 50%/50% odds of doing the 'right thing' (as an arbitrary example). Of course the 'right thing' can be subjective in all but the most obvious cases, making this a tough call. Right now I can't detect any difference in path choice based on experience, only in how quickly their morale status degrades. Perhaps experienced troops could 'remember' farther back, using the memory model mentioned by steve on page 1, while conscripts would forget everything at the sound of a distant rifle shot. Ren

Yea Red I think in some specifics we agree. Read my edit to original post at top of page. Ren

Whoa tiger! Now I have to quote myself: "do agree that there are some improvements that could be made. For instance in units pushing each other out of foxholes and heavy weapons teams sneaking to utter exhaustion (perhaps). " I include falling off the edge of the world and other anomolies in the 'some improvements' category. Also, I attributed nothing to your personally. So if my comments do not characterize any positions which you have endorsed, why reply? Ren edit: comments on your last para. 1. ("unrealistically affect other troops") Here you refer to the foxhole push-and-shove contest. Not entirely unrealstic, but in the case of forcing heavy weapons out of their positions, yep needs fixing. 2. exhaustion put men out of action regularly in combat. I think you mean specifically the heavy weapon team 'crawl-to-exhaustion' thing. In reality I think they would abandon their heavy weapons, particularly if broken. Then they would not get exhausted while leaving the AO. As it is this can't be modeled, resulting in arguably unrealistic exhaustion. 3. vehicles can and do leave the area without orders, as part of vehicle morale/retreating. But I think you are referring specifically to the reported traffic jam map-edge problem. Never experienced it myself but yes it's a prob. So in short I mostly agree with you on these points. Ren [ October 28, 2002, 06:16 PM: Message edited by: Renaud ]

I get you. I mean, if you are peeved that a topic has been raised for the umpteenth time, why write an angry response? Just mosey on along to a topic that interests you. Ren

I am sure that many actual battlefield commanders wished that their flesh-and-blood troops would likewise do what they wanted and otherwise follow their orders faithfully. However they did not have an engine rewrite to look forward to or god-of-code to appeal to as do we. Can you imagine 'new and improved battlefield solder v2.01'? delivered to Patton on request? I have to say I'm a little leery of arguments which essentially say that "my troops do stupid things, I would never do this! My orders clearly redound to their benefit, if they would only have the brains to follow through with them." Sounds like the lament of every commander. I agree there is SOME crazy behavior going on which should and probably will be addressed with 'AI memory' or somesuch advance. For my part I really don't see a huge problem. I find that the troop morale AI, often unpredictable (a good thing I believe), is plausible given that you are ordering men forward into desperate life-and-death situations. I do agree that there are some improvements that could be made. For instance in units pushing each other out of foxholes and heavy weapons teams sneaking to utter exhaustion (perhaps). But I disagree that there is something generally wrong or missing from the infantry behavior modeling. I just accept that in this game, as in reality, men under fire will do some crazy ****, often resulting in unnecessary casualties. When I think of it this way, I understand why half my green force is reduced to confused running/sneaking/rerouting by that surprise mortar barrage. Having to issue orders repeatedly and have them repeatedly ignored/refused is exactly what we see happen in RL accounts, so this does not lead me to question the correctness of the game. I would be the crazy one if I expected anything approaching rational behavior or absolute devotion to my orders. Frankly I don't want a game that proposes this level of control over allegedly 'human' troops. Try playing with 50% fanatical elite troops and high leader bonuses. Then you get something approaching automatons. Such troops are not unknown to history, so I appreciate that BTS has made them available, but are certainly the exception rather than the norm. I'm writing this mainly to give the 'other side' (meaning 'my side') a hearing. I may be mistaken, but I believe there are a number of people out there who agree. I would be really bummed if BTS incorporated many of the changes that are being asked for here, apparently for the purpose of making infantry behavior more rational, predictable and reliable. In other words, the behavior of robots not men. Ren [ October 28, 2002, 05:41 PM: Message edited by: Renaud ]

Apparently I have touched a nerve! I defer to Dorosh's professional status and remand myself to the ranks of the amatuers. I also point out that amatuers are quite capable of posting interesting topics. My point was that lack of specific professional knowledge shouldn't stop you 'shooting-the-bull' here. Ren

Deanco, you know very well that there are no knowledge qualifications to post here. If there were, only about a dozen people would be talking to each other! I think it's safe to say 95% of the posts are amateur if not downright silly. So join the crowd and happily post some nonsense! Ren

It seems to me that this whole thread highlights the conflict between two major philosophies of design. I'm going to TRY to be objective in my description of the two camps even though I am certainly on one side. Note that splitting people into two camps is an oversimplification and not literally true, yet I think it is a useful 'thought-experiment'. One philosophy stresses a high level of control over events, expressed in the various desires to have your men do more specifically what you want them to: lob an exact number of shells, cover an exact patch of ground, go where you tell them until they are all dead. This group could be called the 'chess-game' or 'micro' camp. Events such as squads panicking and bouncing around out of control under MG fire like pinballs in a pinball machine annoys these folks! The other philosophy advocates an abstracted level of control on the assumption that commanders of CM-size forces in actual engagements have at best limited control over events. CM of course allows us far more than that on the assumption that squad leaders have initiative and our commands as players model this initiative as well as directives from HQ units. This camp could be called the 'realism' or 'macro' camp. This group tends to be more forgiving of quirkly tacAI behavior on the assumption that you can reasonbly expect a lot of apparently crazy behavior from men under fire. What camp Steve and Charles fall into is not known to me. Due to apparent limitations of current code base, the game is currently more amenable to the 2nd, or 'macro' control, camp. That's why we mainly see folks from the 'micro' group posting concerns and lobbying for greater level of control and more predictable behavior. Note that here I am considering the thoughtful 'micro' people, not the larger crowd of 'shoot-from-the-hip' folks who immediately raise an outcry when they see something they MUST HAVE 'fixed' based on one odd event or lost game (ie 'control-freaks'). Anyway, food for thought I hope. Ren

Hell, the PZ-II model with the 80-50mm armor is in the game and there were only a dozen or so of those ever made. 'Course it's easy to include a vehicle which uses the same model as a standard one, so you only have to change the stats and voila: new vehicle. Another way to rationalize the PZ-II(80mm) is to assume that inventive crews lashed tracks, sandbags, roadwheels or tree-trunks all over the thing, as was done quite often with other vehicles. Ren

Actually I think it might be possible with current engine. If you look at bogged vehicles you will notice that they are sunk into the surface of the terrain a bit, hiding the bottom of the tracks. So they must have come up with some coding mechanism for this. Perhaps it could be turned 'on' all the time for deep snow maps? Yep it would look cool I think. They could do it for 'deep mud' weather too. Not so sure about the infantry models though...they might just end up looking like little legless men stumping along... Ren

They are a great hazard to most armored cars and all HT-type vehicles. In fact the risk posed by cheap and plentiful ATR's is enough to keep german HT and AC's far back. Consider them 'HT/AC repellent'. Note that I haven't experienced the reported problem with halftracks being identified as prime movers and thus avoiding AT fire. In one scenario I stopped the advance of a AI PZIV platoon with 2 flank ATR's. When the ATR's penetrated the sides of the PZIV's at 80 meters or so, the whole platoon stopped advancing, then later backed up and milled around in confusion for the remainder of the game. (The platoon HQ tank backed up into a infantry AT ambush and got grenade-killed) If you hide all your units you will get very poor spotting and vehicle-ID. I always keep at least one HQ unit with good FOV not hidden so they can spot and correctly ID things for me. Keep em far back or with restricted fire arc so they don't open fire. I agree that ATR's should be able to fire at softskinned vehicles. Haven't had occasion to need this yet. Ren [ October 27, 2002, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Renaud ]

Command range for a double-star is like 110m with LOS, 2/3rd that with without LOS depending on how much is in the way, I think. That's for a captain, may be less for a PLT ldr (don't remember if there is a diff). Well I guess you checked the command ranges since you obviously set up the scenario and played it. However if you have no terrain yes you're screwed there. But isn't that the tip of a hut I see there in the lower left corner of the first screeny? Now I am curious to take a look as well when I get home. Ren

Bone, The problem you are having is not one that affects me for one reason or another. Can't see if you specified covered arcs or not. Try specifying a tiny (or no) covered arc and hide the PLT leader unit. In my experience they won't open fire till someone steps on them, sometimes not even then. However if they are close enough to get supressed or panicked by area fire or fire on nearby troops, they may freak out and open fire. I do note that you could have placed your double-leadership-bonus PLT leader about 3 times as far back as you did and still be in command range. That would affect this particular test, but if you had a regular leader then you would have to place him close like you did. Good luck champ. Ren edit: ah, I see you mention no covered arcs. In that case, try a tiny covered arc pointed AWAY from the enemy. I've done that before. [ October 25, 2002, 05:23 PM: Message edited by: Renaud ]

This would be nice except for me it would hurt the realism feeling a little so I would not want to use it. Is it realistic to know what the line of site is from a choice hull-down position before any of your troops actually go over and scout the position? Not having a point-to-point LOS tool means you have to do what they did in reality: dismount a scout team to check the LOS before moving the tank up. (For the germans it was often the TC, but we can't do this in CM - yet). It's already bad enough that we can float around godlike and check LOS from spots where we have no actual troops... In other threads folks have went so far as to champion TERRAIN FOW! That's right, terrain elements are more-or-less hidden until your guys actually get LOS to that piece of ground. I'd have to see it to know whether I liked it or not...I enjoy looking at those beautiful maps all-at-once. Ren

This is probably because, during the round, the HQ has better spotting capability than the other units nearby and so sees and reacts to the enemy first (bino's affect this, maybe ratings and other experience too dunno). This is because, during the turn, there is a kind of psuedo-relative spotting going on in CMBB that keeps a spotted unit noticed only by those that actually spot it. I think this is new to CMBB. Not as good as true relative spotting, but a nice addition nonetheless. To insure this doesn't adversely affect you, put your HQ's out of sight, or hide them without covered arcs. If you do this, they will not open fire first (or at all, till you command them too). Personally I will never let HQ's fire except when I direct them to during orders phase: they are high value targets so should be protected as long as possible. I hope madmatt will correct me if i'm wrong in why hq's sometimes open fire first (I never experience the problem because I hide hq's without covered arcs and assign them targets during orders phase if at all). Ren

Achtung, The major problem with the ones you noted is that the scenario designer intended them to be played in a certain way (AI on one side specifically, human-vs-human only, etc.) but sometimes failed to note that in the description. Sometimes it's obvious how the scen is intended to be played, other times it would be helpful if the designer would supply some specific instructions in this regard. This IS a pretty severe oversight I think. You're not going to prove anything in particular or make people sign a 'I think the scenarios suxors!' petition, so i'm not sure what good further examples of supposedly crappy scenarios is going to accomplish. The best thing would be for you to take what you have learned and design some kick-*ss scenarios for us to play. Ren