Peterk

The Blitzkrieg operation is quite fun to play.

Hi Everyone, I'm a big fan of operations and I think I already know the answer to this but thought I'd get it out into the open anyways. When the computer calculates front-lines between battles in an advance/assault is more weight given to the position of the attacker or the defender. For example - imagine that a mission takes place at night and a defender gets the bright idea to try and sneak a large force through the attackers line into the rear for the purposes of tricking the computer into pushing the front-line for the next battle back. Or..imagine that both attacker and defender advance a similar distance in a night battle. Do the 2 advances cancel one another and the front line will come out being more or less the same or is extra weight given to the attacker's advance with the defenders who dared advance being cut-off at the start of the next battle? Right now I get the impression that the attackers position at the end of a battle is what is most used for the front-line calculation and that there is really little to be gained by a defender avoiding contact to try and sneak troops deep. Anyone else have a similar feeling?

OK, this is a really wimpy request and I don't know if anyone else does this. I typically play with full trees on the screen and like latching on to a unit and dropping down to Level-1 or 2 whenever something really cool happens during a movie. Problem is, when that cool happening occurs in a forest, dropping down to 1 or 2 typically just gets you branches and tree-trunks in your face and you can't really see the squad or gun that you locked on to. So then I hit shift-T 3 or 4 times to zap the trees so I can see the unit, then after the cool happening is done I zoom out again and hit shift-T 3-4 times again to put the trees back to full. I've often wished there would just be a quick "Get Rid Of Trees" hot-key available to temporarily zap them for the purposes of getting close to something cool happening deep in the bowels of a forested region and then returning them back to the modelling preference afterwards. I'm sure if I was the programmer of the game and someone asked me for this I would decide that it doesn't really fit and it's kind of ackward having 2 commands dealing with trees and I wouldn't do it. But what the hell - can't hurt to ask.

They also did such a good job on the graphics that the modders are having a wimpy time of it as well by the looks of it. A toast to wimpy patch lists!

What is this LOS bug that I've heard some mumbling about??? I've seen it mentionned offhandedly in a few threads but have never been able to find a description of it anywhere.

Combat school through CM huh? Sounds like fun and I'd definitely take a look at whatever you do (and maybe even offer help out if you need a hand putting it together).

The AI isn't cheating if that's what anyone is thinking. In all of the games I've played so far, the AI pre-planned barrages have landed in obvious but unused tracts of cover. The AI is making good guesses and sometimes he's going to be right - and if you're letting him easily spot you on turn 1, well you're kind of asking for it.

Jamesroe, this early in the game I think your best bet is to hang out on the scenarios board and help people test new ones. Doesn't look like there are many operations out yet. On a related topic: I'd be curious to know if anyone is retrofitting "Wreck's Rules For A Solo QB Campaign" from BO to BB? This is on my to-do list, but if someone else (hint, hint...Wreck) is almost done already I may hold off.

> PeterK you really nailed it so thanks for a > great post, My pleasure. If you spend lots of time on set-ups, you'll really love the covered arcs in CMBB. Finally, units on defensive stance won't blow their cover shooting at some nothing unit a 1000 meters away. You can tell them where to look for targets, what area to cover and whn to start shooting. Placing MGs and tanks on defense becomes the art form it should be. Oh, and if you like longer operations, they appear to actually work way better in the new game. Units will be cut-off and stuck behind enemy lines without resupply. Front-line calculation between battles seems to be spot on. The AI seems to have more of a clue how to play operations properly now too.

It's hard to judge sometimes going by the discussions on here (reaction is a little more subdued than the raction to CMBO was) but after 4 days of extensive play I can say without hesitation that the game is remarkable. Totally fun, hard to stop once you start, one-mre-turn syndrome every night until it's 3-4 in the morning and you realize you'll be a wreck the next day if you don't get some sleep. Improvements across the board from CMBO - I wouldn't even know where to start (better graphics, better commands, MORE STUFF!, great battles on the CD). One little comment if you already play CMBO, you'll find that maybe gameplay is quite a bit slower, you'll end up spending a half-scenario just suppressing an enemy without moving very much, just so you can get the position to crack on the last few turns. No more B-movie runs accross half the map to take out a MG in 1 turn. Your troops will appear to break a lot more easily than in CMBO _if_ you played CMBO carelessly and got away with it all these 2 years. If you grew up on Squad Leader, you'll be _very_ pleased.

Did the Russians have any mortars or artillery at all? If not, it's not that surprising.

Nice to hear other people are doing pretty well with older computers. Comment about the Voodoos - I'm not an expert on graphic cards or anything - but I was originally using a Voodoo 2 when BO came out. The game ran fine with it and was definitely playable but the special effects - fog, smoke, transparencies just didn't look all that hot. Switched to a cheap TNT2 (which I had lying around ) and things immediately looked much better. Oh, I cranked up a fairly large operation (Blitzkrieg) yesterday to see if the game would choke on something bigger and its doing fine (wish I could say the same for my toy-soldiers).

(In case anyone a little below the system requirements is holding off.) OK, I did something kind of silly. I bought CMBB even though my computer is pretty much way under minimum spec and I don't have enough hard-drive space to install it. The idea was to keep it around and have it handy for when I get a new system in a few months or so. The game arrived last Wednesday (8 days after ordering - great job guys!) and I've been throwing sidelong glances at it all week long. On the way home from work today I stopped in at this great little store that sells recycled PC junk (basically corporate cast offs in great condition at ridiculous prices) and thought I'd try an experiment - bought a 2 Gig Hard Drive for 10$ got it installed tonight, stuck CMBB on it (and that's pretty much all that's _ever_ going to go on it) and cranked it up for a test drive. Did 10 turns of Jaegermeister - a medium sized battle used as a tutorial - and, surprise! It works great. I don't know how hard that scenario is pushing the game, but it had to handle an arillery strike, about 12 tanks, 2 companies worth of infantry and I've got a bit of smoke on the board right now and it's running very smoothly. My system: Pentium 2 - 300MHz Riva TNT 2 1200x1000 screen res in game 128 Meg RAM

Still better than being out in the open...plus, apparently, they also had good firewood there.

Luckily I have Enemy At The Gates here at work with me! On the left/north: 2nd Hungarian, 8th Italian, 3rd Rumanian On the right/south: 4th Rumanian ...and, they were posted quite a long distance from Stalingrad (italians were about 200 miles away), so now I have no problem beliving that no-one made it into the city.

...but, then again, wouldn't _some_ units have sought refuge in the city itself after the encirclement? Hard to believe that _all_ of the satelite nations cracked so badly that no-one made it to the city. Curious.

I don't think so. The Italians were between the Romanians and Hungarians on the left flank (in order to discourage the Romanians and Hungarians from attacking _each_ other). I have never heard of any intact Italian (or Hungarian or Romanian) units fighting within the city itself. (but of course, as always I could be wrong)

> Some things like trenches and barbed wire are > by their nature difficult for the AI to set up > properly. They require some 'human' forethought > to get right. I don't know about that...The AI is already doing tons of stuff much more complicated than finding good places for mines and laying barbed wire in front of victory locations.

If you are getting bored with the typical quick battle/scenario against the AI, may I suggest the Wreck's Solo Campaign game for CMBO for a real challenge??? http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2rb4w/qb-campaign.html

> It is true there was some discussion on the > Forum about Briefings containing Scouting > Reports. But this won't happen unless there is > a standardization of Briefings. I am not sure I > would trust them anyway. Every soldier scoffs > at the intel report of "Expect light > resistance" Briefings sometimes do a pretty good job of telling you _what_ you're up against but usually next to nothing about _where_ the targets are which is what all the opening-game scouting is about. I don't think location info in an author-written briefing is any good, because that ties players into using scenario default set-ups. The brifing info also becomes obsolete after the 1st time the scenario is played. How about the _game_ itself throwing out some intel tidbits to an attacker after the forces are placed but before the shooting starts to simulate the reconning? This would seem to me the best (and coolest!) way to reduce the amount of recon necessary by main force units.

Is anyone beating the AI??? :eek: Reading lots of messages of people getting totally tanked by the computer, and it's a bit surprising.

I thought Brits and Aussies had the weirdest senses of humours but lately I'm beginning to find that Finns seem to be uniformly twisted. That was beautiful. The photography was wonderful.

Would some good Samaritan be kind enough to post a pic of a typical Stalingrad street-corner on the front lines. I get warm-fuzzies on Stalingrad realted stuff! How is the AI coping with defending on a large battle like this?

Hey! Thanks for answering - I posted that message a few days ago. I like what I've heard enough to get the game even though my current PC can't handle it yet. Are the breaks between battles handled a little better than in CMBO. Is the AI better able to play an op this time around?

Hey Abbott, Thanks for posting that. The boys at Battlefront just sold another unit because of you!