wadepm

First, I have read all (well most) of the posts about units in CM doing crazy things and I understand that stuff happens in war that can't be explained, etc, etc. However, in a couple of recent games I have had my armor do weird things that I think are more of a problem with the game engine, perhaps. Case 1: 2 Stuarts stalking a Hetzer. One Stuart comes upon the Hetzer in some scattered trees, and he is looking right at me. Next turn I order the Stuart to reverse out of harms way. As I look at the movie the Stuart reverses no problem, Hetzer out of sight, no problem. Then the Stuart spots an infantry squad of in the distance and starts to advance on it thus coming back into the Hetzer's LOS and gets whacked, needless to say. This was a Crack unit, BTW. It would seem that, without other units spotting the Hetzer the Stuart "forgot" about it. Units don't have any memory in CM, I guess. Case 2: My PzJg IV/70 comes upon an M10, open terrain. The IV/70 keeps to it's ordered movement path but also tries to slew the gun around to get a shot off. Of course, the 70 has a limited traverse so he can't quite get it lined up, but instead of stopping and rotating (only needed another 10 degrees or so) he keeps merrily along and gets whacked, on the M10's SECOND shot! This was a Veteran unit. The movement orders must have come from Hitler himself! Case 4: My Hetzer (maybe it's that German armor sucks) loses its commander to a sniper or something and buttons up but still moves forward to line up a beautiful rear shot on a Chaffee from about 40 yds. Or so I thought. After waiting about 10-15 seconds to shoot it decides that a second Chaffee 90 degrees right and about a 150 yds away is a BETTER target. It gets the kill but the first Chaffee escapes. This was a Crack unit. If they are buttoned up, without a commander, how do they even SEE the second Chaffee. Maybe it was perceived as a greater threat but they could still have easily taken the first shot and then turned. The second Chaffee was engaged with other units and wasn't in a position to fire on the Hetzer, at least not right away. Your comments are appreciated.

Now I am really confused. Can someone else step in and settle this...please.

I can't, as long as I know HE is still out there somewhere ... probably waiting for CM2 or something.

Fieldmarshall reminds me of Rob/1. Could they be one and the same?

Nobody, I mean nobody, can mix spelling errors and grammer mistakes the way Rob/1 can/could. There is no substitute!

Oh God, that was some bad typing!

After a couple of months you will be comletely immune! Now I can wipe a baby's butt with my bare hands and keep standing!! Hey, isn't it time for you to try PBEM? Let me know.

I like to over the field with TRP's, climb to thetop of the tallest church steeple and and do a steel rain dance!

Rob/1...man, I miss him. Sniff, sniff.

I keep my "spell checker" (i.e. dictionary) on the shelf next to my computer.

The hide conmand with vehicles just has them run their engines on low idle to make less noise. They don't actually "hide." What probably happened is you were under observation when you moved to the new position.

I finally received my copy of Computer GAmes with the preview article. Excellent. Relative spotting is going to force everyone to to totally rethink their tactics! And adding command organization for the armor is awesome. This will truly be a whole new game. Can't wait to play. One small point...I noticed in the picture on page 62 that you are modeling T-34s made at the Uralsky Vagonostroitelny Zavod, will you have a varient for the output from Uralsky Zavod Tyazhelogo Machinostroyeniya. As everyone knows the turrets produced at the two factories are quite different which could figure significantly in the game play!

That's the one I was thinking of. Until you told me what happened I was roundly cursing those poor bastards. BTW, where's your next move?

MGs don't confirm their kills very well. I had a battle where I had three MGs by themselves against a company advancing (at a run) in the open. The MGs all bought it after a couple of turns, but just before they blinked out I checked their kills and they didn't have any! However, in talking to my oppponent I later found out that they did considerable damage to the advancing infantry. Nobody believes the MG guys I guess.

On my way...

I'm not a BASIC programmer (I prefer Delphi) so I can't help you with your particular problem but I would like to see your source code. Could you send it to me?

Looks OK to me.

There is a little Civil War display in Chattanooga that has two bullets that hit each other in flight and are fused together. If it's fake it sure looked convincing!

What you need is the DEM for Manhattan and then convert it to a nice ASCII xyz file and then extract the area that you want and convert the z data to CM system. Then you need to enter the data in the map editor. A way to import digital topo into the editor would be cool but it doesn't exist (yet) so start clicking! You can get the topo from the GIS Data Depot: http://www.gisdatadepot.com/catalog/US/61061/sublist.html and aerial photos from the NY Public Library.

I'm guessing I must be near the end of the alphabetical period. Then there are probably about 900 of us "old hands" minus the guys who got accidentally whacked. I'm coming up on my second anniversary in a couple of days. Somebody congratulate me!

If you want to make a large map - 2 by 2.5 km you need to enter 12,500 elevation data points, unless you have large tracts of flat space. Maybe in CM2? I also wish they had another gradation of elevation difference. 2.5 m and 5 m are a bit "clunky", I would like a 1 meter setting as well. The really cool thing about CM is how it can model the effects on the battle of small differences in the terrain.

Is there a way to load an ASCII file of elevation data into the map editor? It's pretty easy to get elevation data for the US on a 30 meter grid. A quick conversion to a 20 meter grid and one can have all the realistic terrain they could want without all the clicking.

Is there a way to load an ASCII file of elevation data into the map editor? It's pretty easy to get elevation data for the US on a 30 meter grid. A quick conversion to a 20 meter grid and one can have all the realistic terrain they could want without all the clicking.

But that discussion was from before the last couple of updates to CM. Besides the no-Bog in reverse what did BTS change?

In Close Combat there were always birds chirping and dogs barking just before the battle. I always thought that was cool, kind of the calm before the storm. But I agree that once the battle starts the birds should be gone - but leave the dogs.