guachi
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Posts posted by guachi
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>In any case, it is VERY dangerous to have men on a vehicle when it is taking fire, and therefore units automatically jump off when this happens. Unfortunately, mortars and HMGs are left behind in the rush!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Unfortunately I found this out the hard way playing Riesberg for the first time. I lost two 60mm mortars when my Shermans came under fire from some German MGs.
Jason
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Speaking of bizarre things happening in CM.
I'm playing a PBEM game in which the Fast Forward button doesn't function during replays. It works every other time I play CM, just not this one.
Jason
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If you are having problems with a slow moving PBEM game, do what I am doing. Just have a bunch of games going at once.
I've got three games going now and there is always something to do. And playing a fellow American, an Australian, and fellow in Monaco, I can expect a turn at any time of day.
Jason
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I was just watching a movie and a shell ricocheted of the front of a Sturmgeschutz. That in itself is not unusual. What was strange was the shell ricocheted off into orbit. It went 500 meters off the edge of the map and the shell was still gaining altitude.
It was kind of funny to see.
Jason
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This unusual occurence happened in Chance Encounter. (Skip reading if you don't want anything spoiled)
Playing as the Americans. I had a Sherman that was merrily firing away at some infantry when a StuG wandered into view. The Sherman fired one shot before the StuG went out of LOS. The Sherman then targeted a MG unit riding on the StuG and tracked it for the remainder of the turn.
I did not have LOS to either the StuG or the MG. The StuG left a little star when it went out of LOS.
The apparent ability of my Sherman to track units it couldn't see meant I could pinpoint the exact location of the StuG. This happened in a PBEM game I am playing so I ahve the saved movie.
Jason
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Fionn said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>E.g. There's a thread about Panzerfausts which was here within the last week in which a certain person went pretty much off the rails and started accusing me of lying and conspiracies etc (real off the wall stuff) just because I didn't understand his initial (poorly written) question.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
But at least there are enough mature intelligent people on this BBS that when the Panzerfaust topic was brought up again there was some good discussion about it. Not to mention the good thread about artillery from a few days ago.
Jason
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Note: when I read this online, there is a major section missing, but is is here in the edit mode. Is the greater than and lesser than signs assigned special code?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The greater and less than signs are used for HTML code.
<u><font size="12"face="Helvetica">To do stuff like this</u></font>
The code looks like this: (but without the spaces)
< b >< i >< u >< font size="12",face="Helvetica">To do stuff like this < /b >< /i >< /u >< /font >
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-26-99).]
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Dar said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I'm sure Jason mean's "they're insane" in the nicest way possible.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Well, yeah.
And I think we fans are a little strange, too. It's Thanksgiving here in America and I should be doing things with family. But what am I doing? Reading this board.
Jason
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Hawk said:
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Some Q for the good folks at BTS: How many copies do you need to sell to break even (or is that classified), how many copies do you hope to sell and how many pre-orders have you got?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
As a finance major I was curious about this too. Obviously BTS can't divulge inside numbers but I'm sure when they laid out their business plan they went over how many units they needed to sell.
A rough extimate I got was that each online sale generates as much money for BTS as 10 retail sales. If a wargame like Close Combat did well by selling over 100,000 copies you can probably guess how many Combat Mission needs to sell to do well.
Steve and charles have put something like 2.5 years each into Combat Mission. The experience that Steve and Charles obviously have doesn't come cheap. I would guess that something like 10,000 copies would be a realistic goal (I hope).
I've been reading this message board for a little over three months. In that time there have been a lot of features and graphics added and changed. Now, BTS must think that this extra time spent on the game is worth it when they otherwise, as Steve mentioned, would have already had the game out the door if they were being published by somebody else.
I can think of three reasons why BTS is spending all this time making CM better and better: They are perfectionists, they're insane, they think that the extra time will genereate incrementally more sales.
I personally think it is a little bit of all three. BTS has shown rabid attention to the smallest detail (fixing smoke trails on bazookas), anyone who would develop a wargame or own a Weasel is a little nutty, and BTS is obviously more aware of sales data than we are.
I want CM to sell tons and make lots of money. The better CM1 sells, the better CM2 will be.
Jason
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Mikeman, I'm glad you found the UBB codes.
Now you can <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>quote<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> with the best of them and provide links to all sorts of sites.
You can even put your email address, guachi@wtp.net so people can send you email about setting up a PBEM game.
Fionn, the UBB codes really are simple. Just click on the UBB code link at the bottom of the posting screen and it will explain them.
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-25-99).]
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What I find better than running is plotting long movement orders on the first turn.
If they don't turn out to be good orders they can always be cancelled. If they do work out you have saved time. You only have one time delay instead of several, which is especially useful with low quality/out of contact squads.
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-25-99).]
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Fionn, on this board you don't really need to us CAPITALS to emphasize your point.
With simple UBB codes you can bold and italic your way to more understandable messages.
Jason McGrody
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I was just thinking.
Since there is only one option to click on, shouldn't hitting the enter button also work?
Jason
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I think that the Sherman will be great against soft targets and buildings. Its 75mm shell has decent HE capability and the Sherman has a huge supply of them. In addition it has, like many tanks, a vast amount of MG ammo.
Jason
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'History of the Gun' is a way cool show.
You've got good taste, Steve.
I think I've seen at least a dozen episodes of it. I'll never get to see many of these weapons in person. And seeing vibrant full-color video of the many weapons of the show in use is better than grainy black and white war footage.
Jason
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Yes, listen to your fellow countrymen and don't bring up the topic. Or the one about dead bodies. And if you do I'll call up my sister in Christchurch and send her on over to straighten you out.
Apparently, units can very happily live directly underneath tanks. I had a .30 cal MG exit a tank and fire at the enemy while underneath the tank. It was pretty funny. I got the camera positioned so you could see his head popping through the floor of the tank. I even saved a picture of it.
Jason
[This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-23-99).]
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http://combathq.thegamers.net/pix/snow/northsnowy.jpg
http://combathq.thegamers.net/pix/snow/riesberg.jpg
http://combathq.thegamers.net/pix/snow/snowyforest.jpg
http://combathq.thegamers.net/pix/snow/topdown.jpg
http://combathq.thegamers.net/pix/snow/church.jpg
Just click on the links and you'll be sent right to the fine winter pictures.
Jason
It's mid November in Montana and there is STILL no snow here.
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After realizing how exposed units just a few meters behind a wall can be, I make sure to get my units so close to the wall it looks like they have been glued to it.
It's not hard to do. I jsut go into view 5 and zoom in a bit. I put the movement cursor on the wall and then move it slowly until the terrain under the cursor changs from 'wall' to something else.
Presto! You've now got units that look like they are making love to fine European stone.
Jason
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No, you've got it wrong. The scenario files are so small and the game so good that it should be, "Seconds of download, months of play."
Jason
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I tried a hotseat game against myself a few days ago to test some other things. I started up Last Defense and placed some Americans as close to the wall as I could possibly jam them. I moved the Germans into the woods in front of the wall.
While I was testing some other things I noticed that the Americans behind the wall had 0% exposure. It doesn't get much lower than that
.Now, the walls look to be only a few feet high and it was hard to tell what other factors might be contributing to the low exposure, but I was impressed. The units were in otherwise open ground and open ground seems to give an exposure of around 50+ %.
Because the walls look so low I want to check what happens to exposure when a unit is firing at a wall from higher elevation.
Jason
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>e.g. Did BOTH of your units fire at enemy units of the exact same size, at the exact same distance, in the exact same terrain and in the exact same postures for the exact same time?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Fired (targeted, actually) at same unit, same distance, same terrain, same postures.
I set up a couple hotseat games so I could get artificial conditions.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Were your firing units located in the exact same terrain and at the exact same distance from clear terrain (would have LOS impact)?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
My targeting squads were jammed right next to one another.
I should have been more specific when I talked about firepower. When you target a unit you get distance X meters, exposure Y%, and firepower Z units. The only thing I was measuring was Z.
The only difference between the two reference squads was experience. Ceteris paribus and all that. I only got six different measurements because getting the conditions right takes a bit of fine tuning of the squads. Plus I had to make sure that none of the squads fired and caused casualties. I also tried to make each measurement in differnt conditions. All told I spent about an hour getting my information.
I used 'roughly 10%' because without all of the squad and experience types available and with only a limited sample it was tough to do anything more than guess. None of the differences were any lower than 8% or higher than 12%, though.
I also didn't imply that the firepower differences were linear. Quite the contrary. A 10% difference would give a geometric progression to firepower/experience level.
There are, obviously, a multitude of factors that one could possibly attempt to measure. I just picked one that the interface gave me numbers on.
Jason
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SMG squads ROCK at close range. Nothing like watching a platoon charge across open space at a suppressed enemy and having each squad use almost 10 units of ammo each. That was all the ammo the squads had.
Steve wasn't kidding when he mentioned in another post that units shouldn't close assault without at least 5 ammo. After the one minute assault the entire platoon was at low ammo so I turned around and ran away before the Americans could counterattack.
Is there any way to stop or at least blunt an opponent that is trying to close assault you?
The only thing I can think of is laying down a good suppressive fire and having MGs and what not in good support positions.
Jason
Jason
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Well, how does 92 - 8 sound?
Played Riesberg as the Germans for the second time (against AI) and took your advice from the CM Tactics thread, Fionn. I went right after the Americans. I didn't even bother setting up any units in the town except the MGs and the sniper.
Certainly was more frenetic than the first time. There was so much going on and so much noise erupting all over the battlefield that it felt like the first ten turns were really 20.
Admittedly, I did get lucky because one 88 wiped out all four M4s. But, boy, was it fun. There was so much combat that one of my MG42s was down to less than 10 ammo. The most ammo any of my squads had was three.
Finally casualty totals were about 5:1 in my favor.
Jason
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After experimenting with command radius I decided to test the how unit experience impacts its firepower.
It's kind of tough because I had to get two units of identical type and manpower but differing experience firing on the same unit at the same range.
I only tested a few cases but here is what I found.
Each increase in experience gives a roughly 10% increase in the units firepower.
Jason
Looks Good (Scenarios)
in Combat Mission Archive #1 (1999)
Posted
Wild Bill, what is a 'Dirctor'??
Jason