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pritzl

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Everything posted by pritzl

  1. Hello all, I wanted to set up a tiny probing egagement in rough terrain (single player, real time) - U.S. heavy inf. vs. Syrian Special Forces. I select to play as the blue team and can set up my forces (i.e. U.S.). As soon as the coutdown starts after hitting go, the sides immediately switch and I'm suddenly controlling the syrian troops. I set this battle up several times, and it happened every time -- playing under Windows XP.
  2. I must say that I'm looking forward to this new game. I know that in the past when CM I was being developed that there were very long discussions about showing casualties. I think that BFC found a really good solution. However, with shock force showing everying individual soldier, this may need to change somehow. I searched for some information, but didn't find anything too current. I'm sorry if I've missed something. I suppose the first question is what sort of conflict intensity is BFC planning for the backstory of the campaign. Are the stryker brigades the tip end of a very big spear, where all out war has been declared against syria (and possible neighbor countries or even nations outside the region) that will result in many casualties and much destruction on all sides, or is it more of a confined regional conflict that will remain relatively low intensity? I think this has a potentially significant impact on how casualties should be treated in the game. In a high intensity conflict, casualties are written off as the fortunes of war. For example, the complete decimation of an entire platoon in World War II probably wouldn't even be reported as significant information above regimental level. WWII was to say the least a high intensity conflict. Very bad things happended to very many people, and this was not really unexpected. In a low intensity conflict such as Iraq, the death of a single individual is often reported on the national news. The destruction of a platoon in a firefight or ambush would be reported in detail for weeks and depending on the circumstances involve relieving a number of high ranking individuals possibly up to divisional level of thier command due to poor planning, etc. It could even lead to congressional hearings and pentagon reports on tactical changes, pullout timetables, etc. In a low intensity fight like that, every single soldier needs to be accounted for. The death or especially the capture of a man can have far reaching consequences. For example, if a platoon in Irag were conducting a sweep and managed to get several guys killed and a number captured, that would be seen as a huge insurgent victory, especially for propaganda purposes. It really wouldn't matter if, in the sweep, 15 insurgents were killed and another 30 captured along with bomb making materials and weapons. It's very assymetrical in terms of mission goals and what constitutes a battlefield or propaganda victory. If shock force simulates a more low intensity conflict, the loss of a single squad should all but assure the syrian side a victory, and leaving a single casualty behind enemy lines should involve massive penalties to the American side. How will this be dealt with? In simulating modern combat, this is a very real consequence of fighting.
  3. I'm curious to see how the new game turns out, I'm pretty confident that It'll be fun. I'm looking forward to playing the demo. At this point in the development process, I'm curious about several things. First, just out of general curiousity, what level of development support are you hoping to get from the Arab world? I'm assuming that native speakers will provide voice samples, etc. Will they be Syrian? I ask only because, I recall a lengthy discussion about the WRONG birds singing in the background of CMBO when it was first released. No European swallows, that sort of thing. BFC, how could you be so negligent? In any case, I'm sure an arabic language grog will eventually be happy to point out that the arabic is in fact the wrong dialect and would be the equivalent of all the Germans in the CM series speaking with a strong Swiss German accent. With regards to Arab support, will there be any former/current members of an arabic military force (ideally Syrian) also providing input as to their TO&E, SOP, etc., or will that information be predominately gleened from U.S. intelligence and estimate reports? It would be nice to see and provide an element of objectivity and credibility. At the same time, and this is I'm sure my own American bias, but I do believe that the training standards, operational readiness, and even general levels of education/literacy in the resprecticve societies play a role in making the U.S. military significantly more capable than their Syrian counterparts. I believe that, in this regard, the Americans have more than just technological superiority. Do not read into this anything about moral superiorty, etc. I'm talking about tangible differnces in training, education, etc. which research has shown lead to more highly motivated and capable individuals who are often more willing to act independently and are, in fact, entrusted to do so. I also understand that this aspect can be seen as highly controversial, but I'm throwing it out there for discussion. Essentially, the Syrian military is thus likely more restricted in its operational and tactical abilities. Will some type of differences be modeled in the game? In CMx1 this was done on a limited scale by classing troops as green, regular, etc., but I wonder if that is going to be sufficient. In the case of CMx1, training standards, educational levels, etc. were approximately equal with some exception to the Russians. This for instance allowed for the human wave attacks in CMBB. Try that with a less indoctrinated, more highly educated combat force and see how many men you can convince that that is a useful tactic with acceptable levels of risk. Are there provisions to handle any of these differences? Are there differences? Lastly, how are you going to handle realism when running into problems of dealing with classfied data? Since the game is going to be so modern, aren't you going to have to use a lot of approximations and guessing when it comes to determining the capabilities of various offensive and defensive weapons systems. What happens when the newest soviet designed ATGM hits the frontal armor of an Abrams? Does anyone know the true penetration characteristics of these missles? I also thought that aspects of the make up of the armor on an Abrams were still classfied. Is this not true? Thanks for any answers [ October 11, 2005, 02:12 AM: Message edited by: pritzl ]
  4. In order to switch the graphics for the Canadians so that they have the proper SMG, which bmp files need to be replaced. Also, do the canadians share this bmp with the british so that it needs to be changed depending on nationality?
  5. Everyone here has raised some very good points about the amount of work that it would take. I hadn't even thought about the sky backgrounds for instance. I also looked into working on the buildings and realized very quickly, after "repairing" the side of just one of Tanks a Lot's buildings in order to make the undamaged set, that this is a HUGE job. Unfortunatley I find myself in the same situation as many of you. I have precious little free time at the moment und a limited amount of talent to begin with that makes the work rather time consuming. I still hope that this will someday be realized by an enterprising group. If that were the case, I would be very happy to contribute, but I just don't have the time to organize it. If one of the Mod Gods wanted to take on that role I would be happy to sign on though.
  6. I wanted to put together two folders of BMPs, say "NW Europe" and "Italy", that I could swap back and forth to change the overall look of CMAK to correspond to the region I want to fight in. So far, I have some Uniform mods from Andrew and a nice map icon showing Europe; however, I was wondering if anyone knows offhand which bmps to swap out in order to update the Luftwaffe units for NW Europe. Another mod that would be REALLY appreciated would be NW European builings. I also need to look around for an appropriate tree mod, but I think one that I have from CMBO will work just fine. It would be cool if we could put together some kind of semi-official European mod pack, something similar to the Tom's Bulge pack released for CMBO.
  7. These features would have been nice for all the current versions of CM as well. The first is the ability to assign negative modifiers to leaders. So many scenarios these days have crack and elite leaders with all +2 bonuses that it actually gets boring to see that my platoon leaders are once again John Wayne, Audy Murphy, and John Rambo. The bonuses to signify truly special leaders are, in my opinion way too common. In fact, I think most leaders should have no bonuses. But it would also be nice to occasionally have a unit under the command of guy that nobody likes, trusts, or respects. It happened! For example, the platoon leader that with a -1 moral that nobody wants to follow into combat for fear that he's going to get everyone killed, or the -1 combat for constantly giving contradictory or confusing orders, -1 command radius for the type of officer that insists on retaining such tight control of his maneuver elements that he actually keeps them on a too short leash and hinders their ability to fight, or -1 stealth for being relatively unsure of himself and thus prone to constant readjustments in positions, or the sort who couldn’t find his way on a marked trail through a park. These less than exceptional leaders would add a very interesting element to the game. Sure, a person could park them at the back of the map so that they were not affecting their subordinate units, but those units would then be out of the chain of command and suffer from all the associated command delays and lack of ability to quickly rally once broken. Also, say you have a bad platoon leader and thus send the Company CO to baby sit that platoon. It’s a solution, but it prevents the company headquarters from doing its real job. The second nice feature to have would be the ability to assign victory points to individual units. If a unit is eliminated the enemy receives the bonus points (possibly doubled if the unit gets captured). For the other side owning the unit, it could be set that they either receive the points if the unit survives or only prevent the other side from getting the points. The conditions for getting the points and the value of the unit could be set by the scenario designer and would depend on the scenario conditions. For example, you could assign 100 victory points to an American squad that is returning from a patrol with a prisoner or with valuable information. If the squad survives, the Americans earn 100 points. If the Germans eliminate the unit, neither side would receive any extra points. A player could thus earn substantial additional victory points for eliminating Michael Wittmann and the rest of his tank crew, or for “saving private Ryan”, etc. Both of these features would add a lot of new options for creating interesting scenarios that pose new types of tactical problems. It would be a nice change from the typical scenarios of, “take that hill, church, crossroad, etc”.
  8. You want your troops behind the wall. DO NOT put them on the wall. If in troop location it says located in "wall", then your men are about 95% exposed. That is nearly as bad as being caught in the open on a street or large paved area. being behind the wall offers excellent protection (reducing exposure to about 30%)and that cover extends to about 15 meters behind the wall. That means that your men do not have to be directly behind (i.e. up against) the wall in order to receive any benefit. They can be back away from it quite a bit and still be covered. Also, the wall is an either/or situation. That means that, if the wall is in open terrain and your men are about 15 meters away from the wall, they can go 1 meter forward and be 30% exposed or 1 meter back and be 75% exposed. Be careful though about putting your troops too close to the wall. If they get pinned, they often go prone and start crawling forward. As soon as they enter the wall, they completely expose themselves and get immediately butchered. Walls are great for armored vehicles because it gives them hull down status. They are also EXTREMELY useful places to locate AT guns. It seems most people like to hide AT guns in forests and such, but there they are vulnerable to artillery fire. Behind a wall, your AT gun is relatively safe from all but the largest explosions as long as they land on the opposite side of the wall and there is no concern about tree bursts, which are the real killer against AT guns
  9. I don't know if there will be another patch, but if so you can add this to the list of things to fix. rubble that is on pavement is not displayed properly from the direct overhead view (number 6 I think). It gets placed below the pavement so that it's not visible. From other views it works just though. BFC, fix or do somefink! As it is, the game is absolutely unplayable!
  10. Designing scenarios is fun although time consuming if done properly, so it's also nice to get some additional feedback once in awhile to help in future designs or provide ideas for additional battles that are in high demand. The Number one downloaded CMAK scenario for example has a scant, albeit very good, two reviews. It seems strange that the scenarios from the CDs tend to have the most reviews because everyone already has those battles. It's not like they need convincing to download them. I'm not saying that everyone has to feel obligated to always post a review for every downloaded battle, but it is helpful for authors and for people looking for new scenarios if, somewhat early on, there are a half dozen or so reviews in order to provide a fairly balanced comparison of a given scnario.
  11. I agree here, and that's the one thing I'm hoping to see improved with next product from BFC. I think everyone would agree that CM does a good job of accurately representing armored combat; however, the infantry aspect could definately use some refining. It is without a doubt fun and offers a good approximation of infantry combat but there is much room for improvement here. I prefer smaller engagements (I'm talking about 500 point battles) and at this scale, the individual units play a more significant role and approximations are thus more noticible. I often find myself checking idividual squads to see which one has more automatic weapons left for the final assualt of the two story house on the other side of village. Therefore, I would love to see a little more attention paid to the individual soldier. I realize that for others the fun comes from nearly battalion sized engagements where a whole platoon (nearly 50 men) can get killed and nobody notices. In this situation, dealing with the individual becomes laborious micromanagement, but I hope BFC can find a good compromise. [ December 12, 2003, 06:57 AM: Message edited by: pritzl ]
  12. Another aspect of this game's realism that has me concerned is the penetration and damage model for armor. The fact that it is an RTS means it's highly unlikely, especially if there is a lot going on, that the computer can actually crunch all the numbers involved. The Wego system of Combat Mission permits this. I think we would all be shocked to see the math that occurs when we see our little tank have a round ricochet off the front. I suspect this new game will have to compromise and simply tweak the results and fudge the math so that it gets penetration statistics that are a good approximation of reality. Of course this doesn't mean the game won't be any fun, but, in this respect, it will almost assuredly be less realistic than CM.
  13. I encountered the same issue today. The windows version of quicktime player is also able to play the files without a problem, so it looks like an issue with Windows Media Player. I did test it to make sure that the sounds play in the game and it appears to not be an issue. The test I ran was as follows. I found a "corrupted" WAV file (I used 00000700, vehicle bogging) that was easy to identify while in the game and the game itself had no problems with sound playback.
  14. nevermind...more testing required [ December 07, 2003, 11:44 AM: Message edited by: pritzl ]
  15. I would not mind if this rumor were true. The original poster mentioned that there are games that already exist that model the individual soldier. What are these games? GI Combat? I think we all agree it can be done better. What other titles? Medal of Honor or Call of Duty? They are pretty, but not very realistic. Also,I don't like games that put me on a forced path. I not much of a fan of a digital roller coaster ride. The only thing I can say is that I hope BFC makes the game that THEY want to play. That's exactly what they did the first time around and the passion that they put into it as a result was and is very evident. I also remember a whole bunch of posts (long before they had this fancy UBB bulletin board and while we were all still playing Flight Commander) from people complaining that a 3D wargame would never be successful let alone fun. It had to use counters and an overhead map. They vowed that it would NEVER be as good as the board game squad leader. In the end, I guess they were right. CM turned out to be better. I was even excited when I saw the original alpha screenshots. I wonder if those are still floating around anywhere out there. Somebody should post those for a fond memory. Anyway, lets just wait and see what BFC has in store for us.
  16. I have the same problem. I also have a DSL connection and am unable to host. My question is how do I change these options in my DSL router (a Sinus 130 from Deutsche Telekom) so that I can host games? Thanks.
  17. I noticed that the SPW 251/16 (Flamethrower Halftrack) has a strange grey box surrounding the Machinegun mounted on the vehicle. It's quite minor, but probably doesn't take long to fix before the final patch is released.
  18. I just ran a test where 5 PzIVD were given a hunt command running perpendicular to a single 57mm AT gun in some woods about 600 meters away (no other terrain on map). Because the tanks never stopped to engage the AT gun (they simply fired while moving) their accuracy was quite low and all vehicles were knocked out by the end of turn 2. All units were regular. It looks like something is definately wrong with the hunt command.
  19. I just tried the new drivers...no good. They still suffer from slow framerates.
  20. Schoerner, Vielen Dank! Deine Arbeit ist eine bestimmte und geschätzte Verbesserung.
  21. Agreed. This is a truly poor scenario to play as the Germans. I simply hid my units on turn one and won a total victory without ever firing a single shot. The AI controled Russains simply refused to advance.
  22. I was just wondering if the upcoming patch for CMBB was going to either incorporate or be compatible with the excellent Dienstgrad patch that is available at Tom's CMHQ? It fixes a number of minor translation errors with the German version.
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