Wolfe

Check out the first couple of new pics on the first page of the Enhanced Smoke section at CMHQ. And the 4th pic on the second page sez: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>"Hold control and click on the map to jump to that spot"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This game gets better all the time P.S. Many thanks to Madmatt and Fionn for all their great work over at CMHQ as well. 'Tis appreciated! - Chris

If you have a Stug you want to target a juicy Sherman, then have the Stug move up and then rotate directly at the offending tank at the end of its move. This can help break off any ancillary targeting the turretless Stug did on its way up. Unfortunately, this doesn't always work too well with turreted tanks. And be aware that this doesn't always help when you choose 'Hunt' instead of 'Move' or 'Fast' since in Hunt mode the tank may stop in the middle of its move when it acquires a target; often oblivious to other dangers around it. - Chris

Good point. The sharpshooter might have gotten the driver, but I don't know that CM differentiates between crew members. And from this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/001653.html there doesn't seem to be any differentiation between crew. If one is killed, the tank is shocked for a bit, but can continue after the crew has 're-arranged itself'. Atleast that's my read. If true, then I have no idea why the tank became immobile since it was moving the previous turn and had pivoted in this turn. And the crew bailing out of the Immobilized tank shouldn't happen in the Demo unless something else happened to the tank (which it didn't). See Moon's post: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/001276.html Hmmm. Just found Lou's post near the end of this thread: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/002062.html So maybe it is in in the current Demo. *shrug* - Chris

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Somebody know if dud ammo exist in CM ?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, anything fired at a Tiger is considered 'dud' ammo. Actually, I believe when you get the "Shell broke up" message, that indicates a dud. - Chris

Playing Riesberg as Germans vs. computer. A Sherm approaching the village moves across open ground on the right side and stops to engage an enemy SMG squad. It is targeted by both a flak gun (309m away) and the sharpshooter (283m) near the end of this turn. The Flak gun is, I believe, still hidden from the Amis in scattered trees. I *know* that it hasn't fired yet in the game. The next turn, the Sherman begins shelling my squad ... unaware of the current danger to itself. The flak gun and sharpshooter sit and wait, still targeting the tank but neither firing (yes - both have clear LOS). 15 secs pass and nothing. At 16 secs the tank begins to rotate its hull more in the direction it is currently firing. At 19 secs, it stops. 25 secs and still nothing from the gun or sharpshooter. Both are still targeting. I'm starting to get irritated at the flak gun in particular for just sitting there not firing. At 30 seconds, the sharpshooter fires his shot and Bingo! a hit! The tank buttons up immediately and strangely shows that it is now 'immobile'. The 'immobile' message appeared instantly after taking the sharpshooter's bullet. 17 seconds later the tank crew abandons its vehicle for no apparent reason. It took no more shots from the sharpshooter, and the damn Flak gun never fired. And neither did any other unit. Also, there were no explosions around the tank at all from either mortars or artillery. Any guesses on why the crew abandoned the tank? Or why it became immobile after losing one of its crew members? BTW, will there be a way in the full game to save a playback turn? Would be handy. - Chris

A few tips on killing tanks (in no particular order): Not all of this works all of the time, of course, but it might be some food for thought. Try to maneuver so you can mass your firepower against lone or isolated targets. Don't slug out tank battles toe-to-toe. 'Luck' will play more of a part than skill in this type of battle. Target only one enemy tank at a time with most or all of your tanks. This will help eliminate enemy tanks the fastest. The faster you can whittle down his firepower, the safer your tanks are. Your tanks are going to miss some shots, but so are his. Use your tank's capabilities. Some tanks have better penetrating power at distance than others. Some have more difficulty turning their turrets than others. You can use movement to take advantage of this (though that one is mostly a tip for the US side vs. Tigers and Stugs). Shermans are nasty up close. Stugs have a bit better penetration at range; though with the hill in the middle of CE, this advantage isn't as useful for the German commander. :-( Take the easy kills first. In LD as US, I prefer to target the Stugs first instead of the Tiger. The Tiger can take a lot of punishment; and all the while you're on the receiving end of his fire. Taking your opponent down to only one working tank (the Tiger) reduces his firepower against you tremendously. As von Lucke said: Especially in CE, use (abuse) your Shreck teams to the fullest. Try hiding your tanks behind the patches of forest early on in the game and see how many Sherms you get get rid of by using Shrecks *alone*. It's a lot of fun and great practice. I like to pair my shreck teams; especially in CE where you have so many of them. Sneak (or crawl) each pair of teams into a position where they're going to hide in woods or scattered trees or behind buildings and wait for a tank. 150m is the furthest I like to try to engage tanks with Shrecks. Unhide both teams and have them both target one tank, increasing the liklihood of a kill. Just try to keep the enemy infantry away from your Shreck teams. Your Shrecks will likely get punished for their effort, but they should get off atleast 2 shots (maybe more) at the tank before taking any fire (hopefully . Be sure to button up enemy tanks with fire from squads or MGs before engaging with your Shrecks or tanks. Purposely give the enemy tanks something to shoot at (preferrably away from where your tanks or Shrecks are located). You can feel sorry for your squads *after* you've lit up a few Sherms. Engage tanks from multiple angles. His retargeting takes time and his first shots will be much less accurate. You also get shots at his thinner side armor. Try to get hull down. Yeah, I know. I have trouble with this one too. :-( Give your tanks orders to move up, and then move back into safety. Good timing is important, but hopefully they'll: acquire, fire, and retreat before the enemy can engage. Also pop up in different places; it makes you less predictable and forces your enemy to retarget. He may also think you have more tanks in that area than you really do. Isolate enemy tanks by using smoke to block the sight of as many of his tanks as possible except for the one you're trying to kill. Use your infantry to be sure of where *all* enemy tanks are. Unless you're the one springing them, surprises are no fun. That's all I can think of for now. Do a search on this board. There are a lot of good tactics in various threads. Good luck. Happy hunting. - Chris

Since you have a PII-450, your motherboard is atleast PCI 2.1 compliant. All chipsets since the Intel 430VX are PCI 2.1 or higher. I don't think there's a PCI variant of the V3-3500. But the V3-3000 can easily be found in PCI. There's supposedly a TNT2 (regular, not ultra) that comes in PCI made by Asus, but I have no idea where you might find one. :-( http://www.asus.com.tw/Products/Addon/Vga/pci-v3800/index.html Good luck. - Chris

Bullethead wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Well, maybe it IS working in 16x12 for me. It sure looks and sounds like it shifts gears on my monitor a couple times before the title screen comes up, though.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Assuming you have a PC, does hitting Print-Screen save an in-game image to the clipboard? Try it, then hit escape and open a paint program and paste the bitmap image. You'll then be able to tell what size the game has settled on. Tough this doesn't work with my setup; it always saves the text screen in the menu, and not the in-game pic (I have a Mill-2 for 2D and V2 for 3D; it's saving the Mill-2 image). I guess I could try Hypersnap. Dschugaschwili wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I've done some calculations for my 17" monitor and the result was that is can only display 1280x1024 physically.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yeah, 1024x768 and 1152x864 seem to be the best for 17" screens. Even on 19" screens, 16x12 is pushing it. 1152x864 and 1280x960 (if your vid card supports it) are probably the best fits for a 19"er. I think 1440x1080 would be a good fit for 21" screens too. Unfortunately, I've never heard of any driver supporting this res. CoolColJ wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>to use 1600x1200 you'll 32 megs and a 19 inch moniotr minimum, and if its a crap 19 inch it'll still be blutty, get a 21 inch for 1600x1200, hope your pc is fast though But at this res on my tnt2 and SOny FD Trinitron e200 17 inch monitor it looks good with anti-aliasing. Getting a 19inch Sony G400 soon, so I can play larger res, since 1024x768 is the most I go up to with this monitor.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I have a 21" Sony 500PS. Real nice screen. Haven't heard of the G400. Sounds like a video card. As Madmatt said, it's good to buy the best monitor you can afford. It's the biggest single expense in a system, but it'll last the longest. Long after your CPU has turned itself back into a pile of sand, a good monitor will still be going strong. Hopefully mine will last atleast as long as his. You can turn on anti-aliasing in CM?!? I've pretty much settled on the Matrox G400. Just not sure whether to spring for the Max version or not. Thanks much to all. - Chris

Ok, wait a minute. Is CM 16-bit or 32-bit? I'm soooo confoooooosed! http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/000029.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/000535.html - Chris

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Actually Steve just stated for the record (about 6 posts up in this same thread) that CM is in fact a 32bit game texture wise!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Drat. Thought I had caught that in time. :-P I haven't seen a specific review that mentioned bad 2D on the GeForce. It's mostly from folks over in csiph.video. Even NVidia supporters seem to acknowledge it could be better at very high res quality-wise. So I can't just discount it as purely partisan bickering. Thanks. - Chris

Thanks for the replies. After going through various reviews of vid cards which use other games as benchmarks, 1600x1200x32 seemed iffy. Since it's an inherently slower-paced game, I was hoping that CM would be able to run at this res acceptably even if many of the other 'twitch' games don't. Glad to hear, CoolColJ. I don't know if I would opt for the GeForce as more than just a few people have complained about its high-res 2D not being as good as other cards (I have a 21" screen running 16x12 on a Millennium-2 and don't wish to compromise). I was leaning towards either the Voodoo-3 3000 or G400 because of their 2D clarity. Though the G400 seems to be faster at higher res and has true 32-bit (er ... 24-bit). Is there a page that describes the 3D engine a bit? BTW, do the sprites (trees and flags) drain CPU power or video? Turning them off on my K6-2-450 w/ Voodoo2 seems to smooth scrolling some. And after I upgrade, who do I send the bill to? Steve or Charles? - Chris [This message has been edited by Wolfe (edited 01-13-2000).]

Any recommendations on a video card that can run CM well at 1600x1200? 800x600 on a Voodoo2 is getting kinda old. And does 32-bit vs. 16-bit make a big visual difference in CM? Thanks. - Chris

Doh! Finished reading section 6 and had forgotten everything I'd read before. :-P Ah well, it was a thought. - Chris

After reading through CMHQ's Air Attack pages, I was wondering if you could create a scenario that had units whose sole purpose was to sit there and die? I'm thinking about a scenario where you as the ground commander have to wipe out a heavy flak emplacement before your bombers (who are en route to drop their payload on a city further away) have to fly over this flak-infested hillside. If you can't get the AA guns quick enough, you're going to have planes falling out of the sky left and right; killing your score. But I don't want the planes (who have a different mission anyway) to be able to participate in destroying the AA emplacements. Can you create those sitting (er - flying) ducks in CM? If you give them a loadout of zero bombs and ammo, will they still show up at all? Or might they immediately bug out? Also, how does a unit that doesn't bother to show up in the scenario (such as the squadron that aborted in CMHQ's demo) affect your score? TIA. - Chris

True, you can't go all the way into the forest, but you can go partway. And when you emerge from the trees, you can then go around the forested line of trees near the road onto the extreme German left. Just be sure of where all the enemy tanks are or you may get a nasty surprise yourself! It makes for a nice surprise, but takes a good while to crawl through and you *do* come out exposed. I left a tank sitting there (against the computer) for only 2 turns. It shelled some infantry near the church. I had already killed two Stugs which crested the main hill earlier. Unfortunately, the computer had left the 3rd Stug back near the houses where the Germans begin their approach. It brewed my exposed Sherman and I didn't even see the darn thing until it started moving forward a few turns later. Distance FOW. :-( BTW, I don't think you can see anywhere near as far into those scattered trees as you would need to in order to be able to spot Sherms moving through there. - Chris

Bullethead wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Terrain Advantage #1: No worries about tanks on the German left flank due to that impassable wooded hill with the objective flag on it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Au contraire. If you're talking about the wooded area on the right (from the US point of view), you *can* sneak a tank through those scattered trees and even come out in a low area between the small wooded near the road and the scattered trees. Where you go from there is up to you , but it takes 9 turns using the slowest speed (Move). Just don't get stuck! Though you *do* emerge from the trees sitting pretty exposed on a hill, so you might want to high-tail it down into the low area. - Chris

Just had to respond to this thread. In one game of LD, I lost 2 half-tracks to enemy mortars. And after losing all my tanks and remaining HTs to those damn M-18's, I killed both remaining tanks with one arty spotter. And the tanks were separated too (one had moved down the hill), I had to re-target after brewing up the first. The second tank brewed too. It can't be luck. It's gotta be skill!!! - Chris

WRT flag possession, you'll only see the flags change if you can actually spot enemy near the flag. Otherwise, it will stay neutral (or friendly, depending on how close you are to it). FOW really does seem to work well in this game. Seeing how long it takes to ID tanks is always fun. If you watch the movies from the Chance Encounter AAR between William Thiel and Dan Brown, look at how the Americans ID the Germans that are in the heavy woods on the German side. Throughout much of the scenario, these troops are IDed as full infantry squads even though they're actually only HQ and spotter units. Many of them died before ever being properly identified {sniff}. Also, in my very first game, I played Riesberg as the Americans. A gun emplacement near the center of town took out one of my tanks early. I IDed it as a generic low-slung greenish/grey gun (sorry, I'm not sure what type). I destroyed the gun about half-way through, and it remained the same gun ID throughout. But after the scenario ended, the smallish grey gun turned into a huge beige monstrosity! Where did *that* come from?!? FOW is very cool. - Chris

Fionn wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>"I find that just giving a bogged vehicle a MOVE order works quite well. I don't think it matters what move order you give so long as you give one. Becoming unstuck is just based on probability so long as you give an order."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Sure about that, Fionn? The last couple of times I've gotten 'Bogged In', I shut off all movement and the tank unstuck itself within a turn or two (there also weren't any threats to the vehicle at the time, so I had the luxury). I haven't been stuck enough to say for sure, though. But the few times I've gotten 'Bogged In', if I let the tank keep moving, it always Immobilized itself. Or am I just drawing the wrong conclusions from a small sample? - Chris

The highly detailed Egypt level for Unreal running under S3TC is simply gorgeous: http://209.10.46.173/default.asp?menu=savage4&sub_menu=screen_shots I was wondering if CM supports DXTC? If not, might CM2? Steve posted a blurb, but didn't elaborate: http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/000756.html Any info? Also, would turning on texture compression allow you to run at a higher res more comfortably or does it just give a prettier picture? Thanks. - Chris

I have the Diamond Sonic Impact A3D sound card. The sound was very faint until I went into: Control Panel | Multimedia | Playback Advanced Properties | Performance and turned Hardware Acceleration down one notch. Hopefully yours has something similar. Good luck. - Chris