Peterk
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Posts posted by Peterk
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And Kitty will make a hamster mod for it to make it even more cute.
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It's basically going to put all of you guys out of "jobs" is what it's going to do.I think too is going help us a lot.
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Dear Elvis,
You won't be the first. I playtested the first CMBO version about 5 years ago. Did he fix the problem with tanks rolling up the front line too easily on the right? Game killer.
Love,
Peterk
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I'm pretty sure Hunter did that at the beginning too. He would have had to have shown BF a pretty impressive demo to actually get the job.No screenscraping or funky java mouseclicks required. -
OK, I've got my Sherlock Holmes hat on tonight.
I've been trying to get a campaign thingie going for quite a while now. My last effort, an attempt, to do a huge battle of Stalingrad, with a Java app not too much unlike CMC ended with me ripping all my hair out in frustration trying to get CMBB to build the OOB's for a generated battle (by simulating mouseclicks all over the damn place).
So I decided to check into who actually did manage to get his grubby little fingers onto CMBB's innards where all the rets of us failed.
He's from Melbourne of all places (great town...go Blues!) so proximity can't have anything to do with it.
Early on he couldn't even figure out operations!
posted August 13, 2000 09:06 AM
"I made a map and an Operation but I can't really make it work the way I think it should."
Huge gap between 2002 and 2004 which is where me may presume CMC was being done????
Then in June 15, 2005 12:21 AM in the When will the Operational Art of War meet Combat Mission thread...
"Who would be foolish enough to build such a campaign system anyway? Must have rocks in their heads :)"
The b*stards at BF knew about this thing all along! This thread is actually quite interesting to read now, lots of hints/teases about this game given out.
Anyways congrats Hunter. Still can't figure out how you managed to do it. Must have been incredibly frustrating. Tip of the hat from one programmer to another. Get a move on though...my brain is starting to hurt from playing ASL and I can't wait to ditch it for your game.
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Will there be an option for me to purchase aircraft for my opponent to force him to play with some on his side? I'm assuming they will as "useful" as they were in CMBB.
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Well one of the earliest tidbits (years ago?) was that the position of the stars in the sky were accurate, so one would have to assume that the stars were worked on for some reason involving night battles. (shrug)
...or maybe Steve just likes to do weird stuff.
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For those of us who enjoy getting into bigger/longer battles has any thought given in the new engine to making it easier for those of us who are so inclined to set up monster multi-day battles?
I had a go at doing ASL's Red Barricades with CMBB at it worked (sort of). But the manual between day fiddling in the scenario editor really took the joy out of it. And there was no way to automate setting up the next scenario other than building some nightmare of an add-on that simulates mouse-clicks in the scenario editor. Very clunky and error-prone and not worth it. I'm a programmer and would have no trouble building a front end if I didn't have to fight the main program so much....I imiagine Eichenbaum also abandonned his promising Operation Storfang partly because of this. Bit of a shame.
Operations were a laudable attempt at this in CMBO/CMBB but they were just too heavily scripted. Between battle "purchases" should be left somewhat up to the player and not the scenario. Picking next day reinforcements to bring/rush up is 50% of the fun and strategy.
THIS (as well as e-mail support) will probably be the killer for me. Small scenarios and quick battles don't really do it for me any more, regardless of how pretty the graphics will end up being and how much fun the movies are to watch. I like to sink my teeth in a bit more than that and prefer playing something more immersive for a few months.
But I realize I'm probably in the minority here.
Looking forward to seeing the 1st official sneak peek at CMX2.
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They tend to be the more expensive ones. There's one that adds one damage point to your plane. There's another that gives you an extra card at start. There's a couple good ones for the wingmen like Check My 6 or Take The Lead.
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The experience point level of the pilot is what determines the value of the kill if you shoot him down. Doesn't matter if those points have been spent to buy anything yet or not.
Because of the 100 exp point cap on the demo, You should use your available experience point options to buy talents which are "permanent" as opposed to just a single card which you will probably use in the next mission and lose right away. Look through all of them and you'll see what I mean.
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Hi Guys,
I have to admit I was thinking much the same thing as Panzer76. The game is addictive and I enjoy playing it. It's nice and quick and lets me get off a quick battle before heading off to work in the morning which I love. But I was asking myself if I would play it fairly regularly, say 2 months from the time I purchased it.
From what I've seen in the demo, the main reasons for a player to keep going are
1. To get to the top or near the top of the leader boards. For most casual players though who only do 3-4 dogfights a night, they won't play enough for this to be a realistic goal against the guys who do 15-20 missions nightly, so some other reason has to be there as well.
2. To purchase new skills and get new planes for their personnel. This is well implemented, but I feel that over time the excitement of the new talents will wear off. This happened in Tiger Woods golf for me...good idea, worked for a few months but after that I just didn't care any more. The game became too repetitive to continue.
Campaigns are a great idea to extend the play time of a single session and make it more satisfying but because you can't fly your regular pilots I have a feeling more people will tend to do the single missions so they can move their usual pilots up. I would consider allowing the regular pilots to participate in campaigns even if there's a balance issue. I would consider linked/branching campaigns to extend matchups even further.
On the single-mission dogfight front, how about implementing a system where the server sets up elimination tournaments for 8, 16, 32 players who come in with 2 pilot/wingman pairs each? Instead of players playing in a handful of quick matchups they set up themseleves, they would enter a sort of tournament where the server sets up the matchups? I imagine a 16 player elimination would take about an hour or a little longer to play out which is a nice length of time for a play session. And the best pilots of the slab are forced to face off against one another at the end of the tourny which should lead to some nice tension (and will kill some of the top pilots keeping the leader board in constant flux). Allowing spectators to watch games might also work.
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Cool.
But I think we all agree that Tomb and Duke, at least, should start over again from 0, right?
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Was just thinking about some patterns of play I've settled into since I've started playing the game.
Thought I'd toss them out for debate, additions and to help people starting out.
Some basic strategy musings for the demo game...
1. Having more cards than the opponent is good. Very good.
2. You don't have to counter everything. The only hits that really count are the ones that make you smoke and the ones that shoot you out of the sky.
Letting some small hits and maneuvering advantages go by is one of the few ways to get more cards than the opponent early on.
Save the Barrel Rolls, Tight Turns and especially Ace Pilot for stuff that hurts.
3. To take advantage of Scissors at the beginning of your next turn you might have to let yourself be disadvantaged in the current turn.
4.When situation is neutral, try to have 4 maneuvering type cards and 2 damage type cards. When you're on the other guy's tail, try to have
5 maneuver cards and 1 kill/to-smoke damage card at the end of your turn.
5. Using wingmen get free hits on enemy leader and especially drain his cards is good. It's dicey though. Distribution of wingmen attack cards on first 2 turns often decide who gets the advantage in game.
6. Diving is a better way to escape from trouble than climbing.
Climbing is usually only good when you are at Very Low and have nowehere left to dive
7. If your opponent is aggressive try to stay 2 levels above him. He will climb one and fail to reach you and then you can dive onto him with a better and bigger deck.
8. Main advantage of diving is that it gets you away from the enemy wingman attack essentially cutting opponent's offense in half. If you're trying to stay alive late in a drawn game dive constantly.
Use Vertical Roll - Dive at the end of your attack to avoid wingman attack on next enemy's move.
9. When deciding whether to follow in an altitude change, only follow if you currently have a hand which can kill or make opponent smoke, if he is not, on the next turn.
Don't follow for a meaningless 1:1 shot which accomplishes nothing. Even if you are on his tail.
10. Consider starting at High altitude. Most people are at medium at beginning. You may be able to pounce on an already damaged enemy while staying immune yourself in turn 1 in 2v2.
11. Consider starting at Very Low to get a huge hand advantage. Most people are at Medium, by the time you climb to there you can arrange to have a hand that is almost guaranteed to get on your target's tail.
12. Don't start at Low. If you don't get to move first and opponent is at Medium he will dive onto you.
13. When discarding, get rid of small hit cards rather than maneuver cards unless that small hit card is enough to kill or make your opponent go to smoking on next turn.
[ August 02, 2005, 07:21 PM: Message edited by: Peterk ]
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Phew, good to know. Are you going to clear all the pilots when the final comes out? We shouldn't get too attached to these guys right?
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Just wondering if anyone else is getting this.
My best pilot has 12 kills, but when I look at him while on-line, he's been frozen at 6 for a long time and the stats (and $ to buy stuff) never change so I can't improve him.
Not a big deal since I know this is beta, but it could be extremely annoying if people find they can't fly their best pilots because the rewards don't come in. I think this guy must have about 160-70 experience to spend on improvements, but in the client window it says only 3.
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It's the maximum number of cards in your hand at the beginning of a turn. Different planes will have different performance levels and allow different hand sizes. Not coming into play right now because it looks like all nationalities start with planes that have performance 6.
I think there's a few exceptions where it can go up or down a little but that's the rule of thumb.
As far as discarding. Don't....unless you would go over your maximum.
If you have 3 cards at the end of your turn and your horsepower is 3 and your performance is 6, you shouldn't discard anything because you will just be wasting cards.
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I've been fooling around with the demo for about an hour trying to get used to the "cards". Since I've never played the card game, I have to rely on the docs to get a feel for how things work.
Scissors is listed as both Action/Reaction in the docs. I just played a game where I was being tailed on the last turn. I was planning to start by playing scissors to flip the advantage and then follow up with 2 In My Sights to sink the wingman. Scissors wasn't one of the yellow cards highlighted when it came time to start the attack and I couldn't play any of the In My Sights because I was tailed and I had to let the last turn go by without doing anything.
Am I missing something? Should you be able to start an attack with Scissors?
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Mwahaha!!! Looking forward to this.
Someone's name is appearing way too often on that leader board.
Seriously, in spite of the quiet in here, I have a feeling a lot of people are anxiously awaiting this.
When should I get my refresh monkey ready for action?
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You can't really (I don't think). One option would have been to use Mapping Mission to do the map and that would have let you produce both versions.
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There's a book out right now called Final Citadel in which the author does just that...back and forth between the Germans and Russians. Pretty decent ...and he managed to stick a babe and a romance into the story too.
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http://webhome.idirect.com/~peterk/Stalingrad/
If you're interested in Stalingrad I've been playtesting a CMBB conversion of the Squad Leader Red Barricades module.
Starts small but gets really big and vicious very fast. Lots of room for strategy and maneuver - plus you get to buy your own forces and build your OOB.
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Yeah definitely...in one of earlier games, Germans were attacking in the fog at dawn. I didn't have enough troops to guard the entire factory area so I defended the most direct avenues of approach and left vast areas undefended figuring I'd get adequate visual warning of any movement there by my forward scouts/snipers.
On turns 6 and 7 out of 20 I started getting a few vague vehicle sound markers moving towards those areas. I checked the LOS of my forward areas and discovered there were huge gaps in LOS that he could move through undetected.
I had to pull a whole company out of the front lines, split them into half squads and start wandering through the abandonned back alleys of Stalingrad trying to figure out what he was up to.
The game's almost over and I didn't turn up too much. Looks like either a feint or just innacurate sound "sightings".
Stuff like that doesn't really happen on small maps.
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I don't know if I can agree with that even though lots of my favorite games are smallish.These are the best games that have come out in this hobby, by far,A few months ago I tried to convert the monster ASL - Red Barricades module to CMBB and worked up a set of paper rules for it. It generally leads to battles where each side gets 5000-8000 points. These are huge scenarios but I don't think I have ever had more fun with CM (I'm playing against the AI as well as PBEM with two excellent playtesters).
Most of the time there are smaller engagements of the size you mention going on in about 4-5 areas on the map. It's very busy and has a dynamic you'll never get in a smallish scenario.
I prefer the monsters!
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They are so slow and usually manned by really bad crews. Just gang up on it from all sides, the crew often ails without even any penetration hits.
I've yet to see one of these guys alone really prove to be a threat. A whole pltoon of themacting in concert might be another story.
Can we have an AAR from CMC ?
in Combat Mission Campaigns
Posted
Now here's a question.
Imagine a 2 player game.
Would CMC be able to produce multiple CM scenarios, so that the opponents would be able to play out ALL of the generated battles for a turn in paralell by PBEM? Or is it strictly sequential?
It will definitely speed things up and add a little bulk to the game. I rarely spend more than 10-15 minutes working on a PBEM turn and it would be great to be able to do 3-4 of them at once - both to move things along a little more quickly and also to fill out a nice evening of gaming.