guachi
-
Posts
1,165 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by guachi
-
-
1. Get a camera
2. Load film
3. Check battery
4. Take lens cap off
5. Point at screen
6. Focus
7. Take picture
8. Develop film
9. buy scanner
10. scan picture
Easy!
Jason
-
Or you could have just e-mailed the poor guy the scenario, like I did.
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 02-28-2000).]
-
Oh my God!!
It's a linen-serker! Clad in a flowered bed sheet!!
I like Matt's over the top posting style. Brings a smile to my face.
Too much seriousness would make this board boring.Jason
-
double-post
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 02-25-2000).]
-
As someone who has played RPGs for sixteen years, I concur with Fionn.
The best way to repay a GM who puts in lots of hard work to make the playing milieu rich and immersive is to make the characters you play as rich and fleshed out as possible.
For instance, to make my Bakery Battalion as realistic as possible, I've gone out and bought a pastry cookbook and a breadmaker!!
Jason
-
HQs can only set ambushes to a maximum of 100m, I think.
Jason
-
Hey, I Frenched two men in my basement!! So there!
You know why the 'smilie' is sticking its tongue out. 
Err, uhh, that didn't come out right.
I had French's mustard with two men in my basement.
No, uhhh, I sent postcards to two men in Frenchtown, MT. (there really is such a place)
I need to take my medication....
Jason
-
CM's best single feature is the VCR capability.
The ability to watch a turn over and over again is totally cool. Even, dare I day it, hellicool!!
Jason
Yep, this thread is a lame attempt at letting all us slack-ass poster boys suck up to BTs by telling them how great there game is.
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 02-24-2000).]
-
The numbers in the game are just a reflection of the real capabilities of the weapon systems involved. They help quantify such nebulous terms as 'better' or 'faster'.
Using numbers is just a concrete way of looking at things you could have figured out intuitively. And CM is supposed to be realisitic so looking at the numbers should be a valid way of looking at things. How many games have we played where the numbers used don't reflect reality in any way?
If you want to play a game intuitively the player has to be confident that the underlying numbers represent reality.
Anyway, with all the weapon systems in the game, the numbers that you get when you hit ENTER give a great short hand overview of weapon systems you may have no clue as to their capabilities. In a sense, the numbers just reinforce a reality that may (or may not) already be aware of.
I don't sit with a spreadsheet when I play the game, but the stuff I've gathered from books, or this board, or my number crunching sit in the back of my head when I play.
Jason
-
You're right. Firing at long range is no way to decide a battle. In the end, all that will happen is that you run out of ammo.
Although I can think of a few circumstances where firing at longer ranges would be good for the Germans. You want to keep the Americans busy while you bring up your own troops or support weapons. The area between you and the enemy is not conducive to being crossed. Or perhaps delay is more important than victory.
You can even do stuff like split up squads that have one MG42 and have that section fire while the other sits to conserve ammo.
Since a 12 an American squad has 50% more men than a typical 8 man German squad, in order for the Germans to go toe to toe the would need to bring 50% more fire power to bear. This really only occurs at long range.
Unfortunately, long range combat doesn't have on thing close combat does, the psychological effect of rapid casualties. Even a slight advantage at close range can turn into a massive rout of the enemy if he breaks. So all the stuff I wrote a couple posts above mean nothing if you don't take the psychological factors of the computer-soliders and the possibly human opponent into account.
As I mentioned a few posts above, there are two situations where sitting back and plinking is a good idea for a particular squad (regardless of other tactical considerations) - the unit is low on men or low in experience (or both). A three man conscript squad has no business being in close combat, but at least the German commander can take comfort in knowing that his MG42 armed squad isn't completely worthless.
Jason
-
I posted a couple posts in the thread 'Firing Range Linearity'. It may be boring numerical analysis of squad FP, but it is at least on topic.
CoolColJ is doing a smashing job on his textures (Check 'em out!) Everyone should have read the GD article by now. Despite the frame-counter tiff, the POTDs at TGN of the smoke and especially the sunrise shot are incredible.
Let's see, you know, there really ISN'T much left to discuss, but I have enjoyed reading all the posts from all of you (on topic or not) over the past seven months.
Jason
-
Those of us who have the beta demo only have seven squad types to look at so I can only comment on those.
I've got my FP graphs and charts up in Excel right now. I have to say that, unless the Americans are facing SMG squads, that the American tactics should be exactly opposite of what Fionn is suggesting. I assume that he is suggesting that the Americans should fight at longer ranges and the Germans at shorter ranges.
That the American squads are better at longer ranges is simply untrue (excepting the SMG squad which is obviously inferior at long range)
The two SS squads get getter, comparatively, the longer the range gets. The motorized squad has 21% more FP than a Rifle 44 squad at 40m and 135% at 500m. The advantage is lessened, but still considerable, against the Rifle 45 squad , which has two BARs - 10% at 40m and 74% at 500m. The PanzerGrenadier's numbers are similar but slightly lower because it has two less men in the squad.
The VG squad performs similarly well against the Rifle 44 squad. At 40m it has 15% less FP but steadily improves with range until it has 29% greater FP at 500m. The squad even holds its own against the Rifle 45 squad, having 80% of the 45's FP at the first three ranges (40m, 100m, and 250m) and being almost equal at 500m.
The Hvy SMG squad doesn't fare quite as well. While clearly having more FP than either of the two American squads, the advantage decreases as the range increases to 250m. At the extreme range of 500m the advantage shoots back up as the Hvy SMG squad has far superior long range FP in its two MG42s.
The Germans increasing advantage at longer ranges can`be attributed to one weapon, the MG42. Shorter ranges favor those units with a higher preponderence of automatic weapons. But three of the German squads suffer from having the bolt-action K98, mitigating the availability of MP40s and MP44s.
The Americans benefit at close range from the semi-automatic Garands and because the BAR doesn't suck as much compared to the MG42 at close range (70% of the MG42's FP at 40m and 40% at 500m). Also the Thompson SMG has a higher FP rating than either of the German MPs (better stopping power of the .45in bullet?)
The MG42s impact disproportionate impact on German squad FP means that even a shattered squad can still function as long as it still possesses its MG42. For example, a VG squad has two men left (25% strength) and its weapons consist of an MG42 and a K98. The squad has 30% of its original FP at 40m, 50% at 100m, 70% at 250m, and 85% at 500m. Pull the squad back off the front lines and it can still function effectively as a fire support weapon - an MG42 LMG has about one-third the FP of its tripod mounted bigger cousin.
Compare this to a Rifle 44 squad at 25% strength (3 men). I'll assume that its weaponry is two M1s and a BAR. This squad has 30% of original FP at 40m, 40% at 100m, 45% at 250m, and 50% at 500m - not nearly as good as the Germans.
Looking at these numbers it becomes apparent why the German squad revolved around its MG42, it was the lifeblood of the squad. It provides a massive proportion of the squads FP at longer ranges or for depleted squads (or both).
For German squads that have low manpower or low experience (conscripts in CE) sitting back and plinking away with the MG42 is the way to go. That conscript VG platoon isn't useless. Keep the Americans from firing at it (by providing better things for the Americans to shoot at) and its conscript status isn't as much of a liability. And the squad has definite advantages over the MG42 HMG as a support weapon. Sure the MG42 LMG's FP is one third of the HMG, but it's way faster and it doesn't lose ammo points if it takes casualties and subsequently moves.
Jason
Just wanted to tack on an addendum. While I have just looked at raw numbers in my above analysis, I am in no way saying that this is the only thing to look at. It's just that looking at numbers is something I'm good at doing. I'll leave the other types of analyses to the better qualified...
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 02-23-2000).]
-
Just do what Steve suggested in the GD preview - hit shift-c a couple times until you have Attack of the 50ft GIs. You should have no problem spotting any of your units.
And Madmatt is right, unit bases are your friends. An added bonus of keeping unit bases on is that knocked out vehicles don't have unit bases so it's easy to spot them, especially if the vehicle's status changed during a turn. That happened jsut a few minutes ago in a PBEM game. I was watching the chaos of the rest of the battle and glanced over to check on the status of the Tiger and NO UNIT BASE. I couldn't believe it. I was so happy. So I rewound the to see the beautiful death of the big pussycat.
Jason
-
In reply to Chris Pick's request for firepower graphs for squads. I made mine the day I got the demo.
I've got nice charts and graphs for squad firepower and individual weapon firepower. Graphs and charts for the blast firepower of anything that lists it (artillery, mortars, vehicles, bazookas). For instance, the SMG squad's FP is ranked second at 40m but dead last at 100m. Guess where I like to fight with my SMG squads?
There is a chart comparing each weapon to the most powerful one, the MG42 HMG. The MG42 FP is normalized to 1.00 for all ranges and then every other weapon's FP is a ratio of the MG42's. This is one way to test a weapons ability to keep its firepower up at long ranges.
With the squads, I took an average of the seven available and did the same comparison. Once I get enough samples with the full game, I could even make a chart standard deviation from the norm.
I also made a chart showing the percentage a German squad's FP of its inherent MG42 to see just how important it was to a squad.
Fionn, if you need some help with squad and weapons analysis, I'm your guy, I even have an Expert certification in Excel so I can make some really neat charts and graphs.
Jason
-
I believe there will be a utility available in the game to do this yourself. Pick the gun type from column 'A' and the target vehicle from column 'B' and, presto, instant penetration chart.
If you notice the chart is reallly a 90mm gun versus a King Tiger so the chart would would equally well simulating the Jackson TD which also mounted a 90mm gun, I think.
Jason
-
WARNING!
I just recently got an AGP Stealth 540 Extreme as a late Christmas gift. While it is certainly faster than my old Matrox G200 with 8MB, for some reason the textures (expecially the ground textures) look absolutely horrible in CM. I mean, absolutely miserable rotten awful kind of bad. All textures are extremely blocky.
After a week of of recovering from a hard drive crash while attempting to install the card in the first place, I finally got it working only to see these miserable textures.
I've tried everything I could - latest drivers, reference drivers, BIOS tweaking to preferred settings. Nothing has worked. My other programs look fine, just not CM.FOr my CM PBEM opponents, fiddling with my card, the hard drive crash, and a CD-ROM drive that is acting up (it refuses most of the time to be detected at boot up) are what have been consuming my time this week. I've given up on the CD-ROM drive - my solution is to leave the computer on as long as possible once the CD-ROM drive is actually detected. And I'm tempted to return the graphics card, although since it was mail-order it will be a pain to return. Maybe I'll spend $50 more and get a V770 TNT2.
Jason
-
The problem is, whatever functionality InControl Tools has I apparently can't find it. I went to the Diamnnd site and the InControl Tools there were no newer than my version. The only functions I can change are the three that I listed before.
The only relation this has the CM is that the only reason I got the card was so that CM would run faster and prettier.
Jason
-
I don't think I have the features that you are describing. I went to Display Properties - Settings - Advanced - Diamond3D. Under this are three buttons - Direct3D, Advanced, and OpenGL. The latte rtwo are always greyed out. The only options under Direct3D are 3D Turbo Gauge, Fog Table, and Sync to Vertical Refresh. I have no idea what these functions are supposed to do because I can't find an explanation anywhere.
Jason
-
I got a new graphics card as a late Christmas present last week. Due to a hard drive crash I had to replace it and my motherboard.
My old card was a Matrox G200 8MB card. My new card is a Diamond Stealth III 540 Xtreme 32MB card. On paper it looked like a good upgrade and at $100 it was a gift my parents could afford.
Unfortunately, its graphics quality (in CM, at least) is way below my old card. Faster, yes, but also crappier looking. The biggest problem is that the ground textures look atrocious - all blocky and stuff. My old card had smooth ground textures for objects close up and blockier ones for the more distant objects.
If any one has any idea why my new card looks so crappy and what I can do about it I'd appreciate it.
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 02-13-2000).]
-
Steve,
Did the show you watched happen to be 'History of the Gun' about Japanese weapons?
The episode was quite interesting considering how little Japanese weaponry (except for aircraft) gets covered. It was way cool to see live firing of the Japanese machine guns.
Jason
Good to be back on the board after a harddrive crash (grr!). Although I can't say I missed the discussion that led to all the closed threads....
-
In America, Trojan condoms are a national brand.
Jason
-
I figure I would get into the spirit of things playing Riesberg. The Germans have a chance to be fanatical so I decided to play like it. Totally gung ho.
I'm playing somebody in his first PBEM as well as Simon in Riesberg as the Germans. These are the only two times I have played as the Germans PBEM.
The first game is at turn 13 and is non-stop action. Against Simon, the game is at turn 18 after he went on a vacation hiatus for a month.
The game against Simon is lacking a little in excitement as Simon is taking the go slow approach - which is the same way I played as the Americans in my two PBEM games so I can't complain. I got two victories out of it.
The other game is really exciting. One platoon on the right supported by the 88 and mortar managed to rout an American platoon for no casualties. I'm not really sure how I did it. The units that are normally by the road ambush site I moved over to the right and caught some support units on the hill. My squad and platoon HQ dished out some damage before succumbing. The rest of the platoon was being commanded by the Company HQ which was hiding behind the first row of houses. As the Americans were moving toward the houses I charged and wiped out a squad but I couldn't get away before a Sherman took the house down (ouch!)
My two VG platoons are fanatically attacking a US platoon and a Sherman on my left. I've only managed to take out one Sherman with my (now dead) 88s so Iwas left to face three with jsut infantry. The Sherman the VGs are fighting took out one 88 while firing at a nearby MG42 (arrrgh!) The VGs are game, but don't have the firepower to wipe out the Americans at close range like the SMG platoons do.
The SMG platoon on my right waited until the bulk of Americans had entered town and made a mad dash at an unsupported Sherman which was shooting up a hapless Panzerschreck team. Knocking out the Sherman with a faust was worth the half dozen casualties.
The Company HQ and the remants of the two squads made a mad dash back to the stone building the MG42 mentioned above was stationed in. Thankfully, the HQ and one of the squads are Vets because I only had a command delay of 5 seconds. And I needed every second as the units made it into the building just as some Americans made it in.
I keep thinking that I'm doing really well, then I remember that I'm outnumbered almost two to one.
Has anyone actually managed to win Riesberg in a PBEM game as the Germans? I honestly don't think it's possible. At least not after the American player knows what the Germans have. As long as the Americans have some tanks left, they can pound the Germans into oblivion.
I'm surprised my VG platoons haven't been wiped off the map by the Sherman that is sitting 40 meters away. I figure that if I stay at point blank range, the Sherman is as likely to cause damage to his own troops as to mine.
But, gee, I have to inflict four casualties on every Americam squad just to get his squads even strength with mine.
Jason
-
I love how they give you the warning, DO NOT USE!!
Like I'd really use a fifty year old condom if I ran out of a Trojan.
Jason
-
Have you noticed the gun animation when the men fire? Cool recoil on the MGs and automatic weapons. At the end of the turn all the HQs stop and point in the direction they are moving. I also like the hatch opening sound and then seeing the men exit the bottom of a knocked out tank. If you look closely enough you can see artillery and mortar shells rain down from the sky.
If CM ever showed more than one man for a crew served weapon it would be neat to see men reloading, carrying ammo, etc.
Jason
------------------
Board member since 9/99 with 340 posts. I'm a member, dammit!!
Flame away
in Combat Mission Archive #2 (2000)
Posted
I'll start off by saying I'm glad the game wasn't released earlier.
If you go back and read old messages from Steve, the release date keeps getting pushed back more and more until now they don't really even have one.
A post from over a year ago (2-23-99) by Steve states that the game will be released "several months from now for sure."
Could you imagine what the game would have been like if BTS HAD released the game Summer '99? Think of all the incredible things that have been added since then! While I'm guessing that a certain amount of bug-stomping delayed the game, as far as I can tell a majority of the time has been spent adding or upgrading things.
If you had told Steve or Charles last year about all the things CM would have in it now, they would have probably thought you were crazy.
Jason