Wolfe

Corrected Romanian (Axis) ZB-30 LMG ammo loadout (100) and men (6) for LMG available from Jun41-Mar42. And added Romanian (Axis) ZB-30 LMG with 4 men and 60 ammo (available Apr42-Aug44) in both Infantry chart and Tanks chart. - Chris

Hmmm. Hadn't noticed that before, but you're right. From Jun41-Mar42 the Romanian LMG is a 6-man team carrying 100 ammo. From Apr42-Aug44 it's a 4-man team carrying 60 ammo. - Chris

A few more. * Have two different color Direct fire and Area fire lines each for both main gun and MG. Sometimes it's nice to have a combination of both; I'd like to know which tanks are using their main guns vs. MG only. * Show AFV main gun and MG ammo as a colored bar like squad ammo is shown in the interface panel. It's nice to be able to glance at this colored indicator rather than have to hunt down a number on the interface. * Different cost levels in QBs for armored combat. In Armored and Pure Armor QBs instead of setting tank prices as their overall effectiveness, use only a tank vs. tank rating instead. This would make good anti-inf tanks cheaper in these types of battles. For other QB types, use existing overall cost formula. - Chris

One of the things I'd like to see for the engine re-write is to have two cost ratings for AFV combat effectiveness. One as it is now: overall effectiveness vs. both tanks and infantry. The second would be for vs. tanks only; this one would be used in Armored and Pure Armor QBs. Just a thought. - Chris

Fixed availability date of Soviet squad-based RPG AT in infantry chart (from Jun41 to Jun43). - Chris

Well, BTS has said a number of times they don't have any interest in the Pacific theater (Steve has stated they don't think it would be as interesting to cover and they don't have as much knowledge of the subject as they do the European theater, and so are much less inclined to tackle it). And if they do the Med that would involve not only North Africa but also Sicily/Italy as well as possibly Greece and Crete. So they would need to be combined into one category in your poll. Personally I'd like the Med to be the first theater to see the new engine, then Early war (which may also include Finnish Winter War). - Chris

Corrected calibre-length typo for Soviet 76mm M1942 ZiS-3 gun (went from 76/L52 to 76/L42) in tanks chart. - Chris

All the tanks carry the F-34 gun. The F-22 USV and ZiS-3 are AT guns in the game. Though I do see an error with the ZiS-3 gun: it should be L/42 not L/52 in the tanks chart; I'll have to fix that. The 20/L65 Breda is the 2cm Breda gun. Don't know about the Hungarian 20mm gun. - Chris

Just adding a few more wacky ideas. * Allow strategic bombers to bomb any hex (whether it can see an enemy unit in it or not) to allow for 'carpet bombing'. Spotted enemy units would take a hit to their readiness (no loss in strength, though) and any unspotted enemy units would endure half the normal readiness drop when attacked. Bombers (and their escorts) still lose both readiness and strength when attacked by any defending enemy aircraft, however, along with a drop in readiness (and maybe strength too from any AA) from the bombing itself. But the land unit only loses readiness. * A unit that is entrenched loses 1 readiness point for every level of entrenchment when it begins moving. So you get a hit for disorganization on units that have been sitting comfortably on their butts for too long. * Lose a whole supply point if enemy air units have range to your land unit and you have no corresponding air cover (gives planes the ability to interdict supply). If you have a corresponding number of friendly air units that is equal to or greater than the number of enemy air units covering that hex, don't impart a supply hit; the interdiction is counter-acted. * As a unit moves over land where an enemy air unit has range, it loses 1 readiness point for each hex travelled. Again, interdiction effects. And as above, if you have enough friendly air units with range to the hexes being travelled over, the interdiction is cancelled out. This interdiction role is automatic (and effectively free) and does not impart any strength hit or loss of readiness on the air units themselves. * Allow player to order aircraft to stand down so they do not participate in interdiction, auto-defense, escorting, or coordinated attacks with grounds units (described in previous posts). It's probably a better solution than requiring the player to move the unit out of the fray, reinforce, and then move them back. Also, FOW described before still applies; wherever opposing air units have overlapping LOS, average the two so they can't see into each other's territory, enhancing FOW. - Chris [ March 08, 2003, 04:18 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

Hmmm. Definitely a typo. I'll have to fix that. A list of fixes is in the Tips and Tricks Forum. Nice work, laxx. Sorry it isn't more readily convertible, but nobody ever said it would be easy. - Chris [ March 06, 2003, 05:24 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

Fixed Silhouette on Romanian (Axis and Allied) SPW 222 (went from 13 to 63). - Chris

Hi, Steve. After reading this thread I set up a small test, found some interesting results and sent my info to Matt. He hasn't responded (he's usually pretty good about that so I guess he's been real busy or out of town), so I'll post here what I wrote to him Monday. Most of this has been discovered by other folks in this thread, but I hope this helps provide some more insight. And this only happens in CMBB 1.02. It behaves "normally" in 1.01, getting a number of overs and a few near shots that will eventually take out the gun. Personally I feel the AT gun dies a bit *too* quickly in 1.01, but that's a discussion for another time. - Chris [ March 06, 2003, 01:02 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

Now that's a cool idea. As for amphib landings, I'd prefer to avoid a dedicated unit if possible and only use Corps. How about instead of researching specific Amphib Tech, research a broader "Operational Tech". Op Tech could affect beach landings, river crossings, and airborne units. Have any beach landings or airborne drops severely impact the unit's readiness value. With each increase in Op Tech, the readiness hit is lessened. And for naval units, its striking power (ability to reduce an enemy unit's readiness) is increased. I'd rather naval units not be able to affect a unit's overall strength as they can now; makes them too powerful, IMO. Beach landings would not be allowed at all until Op Tech level 1 is researched. Airborne units would only be able to be created once you've reached a certain Op Tech level. Maybe level 1 or even 2. Airborne units would only be allowed to land on hexes that your air units can attack because you would need lift capacity to get them there. And their readiness would be impaired as described above. Personally I'm still not sold on Airborne units for a game at this strategic level. I really think they might end up as either overly powerful, and people will whine and complain about them. Or overly useless and people will -you guessed it- whine and complain about them. Anyway, I like the idea that Shaka suggested the other day: only allowing Corps to land on beaches, not Tank or Army groups. This will make landings tougher, but full Tank Groups really shouldn't be doing amphib landings anyway. There are *very* real dangers to this type of Op. An amphib assault should be extremely vulnerable, IMO. It's success often depends more on secrecy and surprise than anything else. I've heard and read a number of times how if the Panzer units had been released in a timely manner, the Normandy invasions would have been pushed back into the sea. For river crossings, increase the inherent movement cost over a river. As Op Tech levels increase, this movement cost is lessened. - Chris

Corrected typo on IS-3's MGs. Was 1, now listed as 2 MGs. - Chris

I haven't seen anything that seemed really out of the ordinary WRT this problem, so I don't know if it's really a bug or not. But even if it is, you can often get better (and quicker supression) of an enemy gun by using your tank's MGs. As Xerxes mentioned, MGs are extremely powerful in CMBB. Your tanks often carry more than one (and their ammo usually lasts longer than the HE does). When I can I like to target enemy infantry units with only one or two tanks firing HE with the rest using MG-only for supression. Works like a charm for me. HE isn't the end-all and be-all of AFVs. A roving MG platform can be a helluva asset. Just a thought. - Chris [ March 03, 2003, 12:53 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

Instead of using experience, which stays the same over time and essentially imparts a 'national modifier' on certain country's troops, you might change the way Readiness works. Something like I suggested over in my SC2 thread may help. The relevant bits: Setting readiness at very low levels can even help simulate certain devastating attacks like Pearl Harbor. If the US fleet at Pearl enters the game after the Japanese DoW at extremely low readiness levels (-say- only 5~15%), this can help simulate how completely unprepared they were and could give reasonably historic losses without handicapping those units for much of the game WRT experience. For manpower limits, a couple of folks have recently mentioned counting up the number of hexes a country owns and using that to limit the number of units, which I think may be useful. While this isn't a resource hunting game, your units (and people producing MPPs) still need to be fed. Before the invasion of Poland, Germany owns 66 open hexes and collects 120 MPPs while supporting 21 units. If a hex supports 2 MPPs or 2 units, you could feed your military (which would naturally get priority), but would be short 9 MPPs because of the size of the military. This would encourage expansion (to get more open hexes) and could also encourage setting limits on the size of your military to maximize MPP production. Using something like this, expansion would be absolutely critical for a land-starved Japan. And the German invasion of western Russia wouldn't just be about collecting MPPs and destroying the Russian army, but also about stealing food production. But of course those ideas are probably more oriented for a significantly altered game, not retrofitting the current SC. FWIW. - Chris [ March 01, 2003, 07:07 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

A tank will fire during Move, Fast Move, and Reverse. It will stop to engage only during Hunt or Move To Contact. If its hull is rotating it will turn its turret to engage but will not fire until the rotation is complete. If you gave a Shoot-n-Scoot order and after firing your tank has to rotate the hull in order to escape the gun will not fire during the rotation, only once the reverse movement has begun. So for turreted tanks be sure to plot your Scoot move directly over top of the Shoot part so it can reverse only, and not have to rotate the hull. For tanks without a turret, plot the Scoot move directly away from the target so your tank doesn't have to rotate before beginning its reverse move. Hull rotation speed in CMBB is positively abysmal compared to that of CMBO. One other thing to remember is if you have a turretless vehicle that is not facing a threat and has been given a move order of any kind (even Hunt) it will attempt to point the gun barrel at the target but will not rotate the hull towards the threat to allow the tank to fire. It will wait to execute the movement order first. Even if you gave it a Hunt order pointed directly at the threat! - Chris

Finally added the Somua's gun (47f/L34) to the Guns chart. Whoops! - Chris

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the info, JJ! - Chris

All of the German Armies, Panzergruppe, and Luftflotte that were involved in Barbarossa are represented in the campaign. There's even an extra Corps (VIII) that would normally be a part of the 9th Army that was separated to guard a city. The Russians, however, are missing atleast 3 armies AFAICT (10th, 12th, and 13th). Axis Barbarossa OOB You could break them down into Corps, which would give the Axis ~35 infantry units. But you'd probably want to do the same to both sides. - Chris [ February 24, 2003, 07:03 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]

Thanks, JJ. Glad you like 'em. But that does raise an interesting question: does anyone know if there was any battleship (or even large cruiser) or carrier (even a hull conversion to escort carrier) built outside a "home" port by any nation during the war? Just curious. - Chris

And a few more ideas. I just can't help myself. * For supply and MPP output, any city that can't trace a line of land hexes back to the capital city (which includes the alternate capitals - e.g. Leningrad, Stalingrad, etc.) has its supply and MPP output cut to 70%. If the city cannot trace a line of hexes to any other friendly city, output is 30%. If a city is fully surrounded except for 1 hex, level is 10%. Totally surrounded, 0%. Gives a bit more variability to both sides. Defender's supply doesn't plummet to 50% just because he no longer has a land bridge to the capital. And he still has a bit of a gasp of supply if 5 of 6 hexes around a city are occupied. Attacker can get the defender down under 50% by trying a bit harder to isolate the city but doesn't have to capture every last hex around the city to do it. * Port MPPs could drop according to the number of adjacent enemy vessels or number of adjacent enemy-occupied sea hexes. * Restrict the building of battleships and carriers to home ports. The keels of the Graf Zeppelin and Bismarck probably shouldn't be able to be laid in French ports. Crusiers and subs could still be built in captured ports. * Plunder amounts for conquered Minors could be lessened by tying them to the number of resources the country has. A country with only 3 resources would yield only 30% of the normal plunder. - Chris

Thanks, guys. Actually I'm about as finished as I can be with this stuff (unless there's another patch). There really isn't anymore room on the main tanks page anyway and the crew size is rather ancillary. But thanks! - Chris

Tiny update. * Added {PzIIIN} chassis designation to Romanian T-3. * Added {38t} to Romanian T-38. * Changed parenthesis typo (PzIII) to braces {PzIII} on Romanian TA Assault. - Chris

Hi, Laxx. I added the {PzIII} designation solely to identify the chassis the AFV was built on for vehicles where it wasn't obvious what it was. It's not a part of the name. That's some real good info from Nightshade. John Milsom classifies the BT series as a medium tank along with the T-34 and T-44. The T-26, T-60, and T-70 are light tanks. Some good links for info on tanks can be found at: http://www.onwar.com/ http://www.battlefield.ru/ http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/ - Chris [ February 19, 2003, 06:41 PM: Message edited by: Wolfe ]