guachi

guachi@wtp.net real name: Jason McGrody location - Montana Jason

We know you're joking because there is no way you could have collected all of the potions. It's only a beta demo, not the real thing. Sheesh, thinking you could pull a fast one on us. Jason

Ah, now I understand where your gamey comment came from, los (not LOS ) You're right, of course, that knowing what the enemy can see is a bit gamey. Maybe I'll just start up a scenario just to play around with LOS (not los) and jsut focus on why my units can/can't see something. Maybe if I make a crusade out of this, I can become as irritating as the OOB screen proponents. Or maybe not. If Steve reads this, I think an auto LOS would speed order giving up a bit. Although I think I've spent more time writing and thinking about this topic than the extra time it would take in the game to do it the way I have been doing it. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-03-99).]

This actually happened a couple of days ago but I'm jsut now getting around to posting about it. Scenario-Last Defense Side-Germans Bug-Game locks up halfway through turn resolution. (Or whatever the phase between hitting GO and seiing the replay is called) What I think happened- My 4 halftracks are moving down the road and get to the bend and stop. They provide fire support for the attacking infantry. The 60-mm mortars open up. I plot reverse movement so they don't get shot up like they did the first time. In turn two of the reverse I plotted movement that was really close together near the forest. The way I figured out it was the halftracks movement orders was after getting the lockuo over and over I figured it was something nmot related to combat. Sure enough, I changed the orders a lottle bit and the turn ran fine. If anyone cares I've got the game saved right before the lockup. You, too, can experience the lockup and laugh at my idiotic movement orders. Jason

It took me six games to ralize this was happening which should show you how minor this bug is. Floors of stone houses show through a units order screen. Pretty minor, huh? Jason

From what view level should I use to determine LOS? I find level one doesn't work too well when trying to spot from units in trees/buildings to units in trees/buildings. Things get obscured. If I take trees off then I have a hard time telling if a unit is being blocked from the now nonexistent trees. If I give orders from a top down view it reduces greatly the amount of panning I have to do. This really wasn't a problem in Last Defense. But in Riesberg it is a mess with all the trees. Can anybody who is succeding at making quick LOS judgements clue me in on to how to do it quickly? It's not really a big problem, it's just that it is not fun dragging an LOS line all over the screen. And it's also the one part of the game that wasn't super easy to pick up on. And the other reason I'm griping for no particular reason is that I know somebody out there who cares will read this and take the time to respond. Jason

Has anybody tried driving the German armor and 1/2-tracks like a maniac down the paved road and dirt road into town? I want to try and see if I make it all the way to the end of the map where the 60-mm mortars are setup. I think these small demo scenarios are the perfect opportunity to try off the wall tactics. I figure I'd load up five squads, two HQs, and two MGs and see what happened. Jason

Los, How is it 'gamey' for me to be able to tell what enemy units one of my units can see? I get automatic fire lines now, why not an automatic line to units in LOS. When an enemy unit appears, it's a real pain in the ass trying to find out which unit it is that can see it. Targeting units is the one part of the game I find really boring and tedious. It sucks when each side has 15 units in one area. Maybe 10 of them are potentially visible to one of my guys. I use the LOS tool to find out that really only five are visible to the highlighted unit. Then I have to go back over those five (if I can remember which five) and pick the best target based on firepower, exposure and my tactical plan. The reverse is also true. If I want all available units to fire at a particular enemy I have to click to find them all. In my first attempt at Riesberg as the Germans I decided to write up an AAR. These are the number of turns I gave no fire orders: 1,2,5,6,10,11,12,15 The game was pretty much over at this point so I didn't bother keeping track of things turn by turn. Why did I give no orders? Because it was a pain trying to target things. I only targeted when something was really important. A couple of times was when a unit was underfire and I wanted to relieve the pressure a bit, but I'm not sure how well the units carried out my orders. I know there is some talk about this and I wish I had been paying closer attention. I suppose if I hadn't been writing an AAR and taking screenshots I might have taken more time. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but fighting the interface shouldn't be something a player should have to do for more than a game or two. It's not that I don't have the time to do this, I just find it boring. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-03-99).]

BTS, I think it would be a good idea to link to reviews when the full game comes out. If somebody reads a review on one website and then comes here to check the game out, it would be good if they could then link to other reviews (especially if they are positive). This is what I did when I bought my computer speakers. I read one glowing review and went to the website that had links to a dozen other glowing reviews. The website also had links to websites that sold the speakers (which is, of course, something you won't need) Jason

The short answer is go to the company's website. There should be someplace on the site that has drivers. I updated my drivers for my soundblaster and matrox cards right after the demo came out. I didn't even bother looking at the documentation for the addresses. They were (not surprisingly) www.soundblaster.com and www.matrox.com. Even if the site isn't this easy to find you can always do a search on Yahoo! by the company's name. Jason

I had my 88 taken out when the scattered trees it was hiding in burst into flame from 60mm mortar. I don't know how likely an occurence that is, but I wasn't happy. Jason

First time playing. I was Germans in Last Defense. My response (which I verbalized to my monitor) was "G** d**n mother f*****g bastards in those G** d**n mother f*****g buildings. How dare you fire at my troops. I'm going to target all my artillery on your a** and blow the s**t out of you." That startled my roommates because that was more swearing than I do in probably six months. It worked, too. (The artillery, not the swearing) So I guess I used the right strategy, but not for the right reasons. Jason Any game that can make you yell at the monitor is a good game.

Thanks, Fionn. I was also wondering about artiilery retargetting time delays. This is something that would obviously be in the manual, but it will certainly make replaying the demo a little easier. Jason

In response to Kyle's remark about the sharpshooter. He did next to nothing in my scenario, too. In fact, he was the only unit left with any ammo. All he did was fire at a Sherman and button it up. Everyone of my Germans are getting medals for heroically routing the Americans except that lazy bastard. Jason

I also more or less want the first feature that BDW proposed. Basically, I want to have some kind of feature that will only show what enemy units a particular friendly unit has LOS to. This would help immensely when making decisions on who to fire at. As it is, only the level one view gives any idea on who a unit can see and I don't find level one good for giving orders. I give orders from the top down view. I like to think of it as the map the company commander has. Having a tool that shows all the units a particular unit can see is like the Platoon HQ yelling out "How many Yanks do you see, Private?" And the reply coming back, "Four, sir. One on the ridge, one in a foxhole, and two in trees to my left." This keeps me from having to use the LOS tool to check every possible unit on the map. I find it hard in top down view to figure out if units can see the enemy or not because the topdown maps lack contour lines (which I think they should have) and keeping trees on sometimes obscures the units underneath that I have LOS to. Heck, trees sometimes obscure MY guys. I also want the reverse. That is, when I clic on an enemy unit I get a line to all of the friendly guys that can se it. This is especially useful if there is a specific target that I want to surpress. It's like the HQ saying, "I want everybody that can see that MG to fire at it and keep its head down!" I find it boring having to repeatedly check this stuff. We've already got a firing at/being fired at line by default. Why not add a enemies that can be seen/friendly units that can see enemy line? Maybe make it hot key switchable from one to the other. Not only would this feature be helpful, I think that it is (somewhat) realistic, too. The hypothetical orders from the HQ are how I imagine this works. If we can have firing lines we can have LOS lines. "Private, what unit are you firing at?" "That squad over there, sir." "Who's firing at the Heavy SMG squad?" "Looks like it's taking fire from four directions, sir" "Okay, let's see if we can't relieve the pressure and hope it can make a successful withdrawal" "How may guys we got shooting at that squad on the hill?" "I'm getting reports that five squads and a MG, sir" "Six! Well, that's too many. Give a couple of 'em orders to shoot at something else." And this is how I imagaine the conversation goes that is summed up in the yellow and red firing lines. One more feature that has been requested that I also want is for the game to show what terrain (and possibly elevation) is underneath the cursor without having to use the LOS tool. I figure that if the company or battalion HQ has a map of the battle area, he already has access to this info anyway. Notice that, while my suggestions are from a gameplay standpoint, I think they are things that a platoon/company/battalion HQ would have access to. Although I will admit that a unit not in command radius of any HQ might not be able to provide LOS info to his commander. And I don't wish for an OOB screen. I knew what type of game CM was supposed to be and took that design choice to heart. And this comes from a person who is proud to be a numbers junkie (There were actually several more paragraphs added to the above. But there has already been too much digital inked spilled on this topic) Jason

Back to Last Devense and the 88 setup. You can, if you try hard enough, get the 88 to set up with a LOS all the way up and down the road and a good portion of the German right side of the map. I took out two Shermans, one MG team, damaged another, and hit what I think was an infantry squad before being taken out by a third Sherman. That one died to the other 88 on the hill. Jason

I'm a bean counter by nature. I have been since I was four or five. I'm a finance major in school so numbers aren't a problem. But when it comes to Combat Mission, I don't really care. I can figure out how well I am doing just by listening to the game sounds. If I want to find out how or if a unit lost any men, I go back to the start of the turn and hit the fast forward button to get a rough idea of when it happened. Vehicle and crew served weapons are a bit different because they either are functioning or not. I'm especially lazy on defense. I just finished Reisberg for the first time and I played the Germans. I wouldn't even bother checking units or giving them orders for turns at a time. In fact, I could have won the scenario without moving any units except the reinforcements. I wouldn't have done as well, but I would have won. Honestly, I think the sound is the most important part of the game. I've actually replayed turns and not watched the screen, just listened to the sounds. Fionn was absolutely right when he said several months ago that Combat Mission is a game that can be played by instinct. jason

My second time through the scenario as the Germans I roasted the Americans. Mostly because I knew everything already having played from both sides. I knew how many mortars the Americans had, how many platoons, and how many bazookas. Finally casualty total: 19 German 166 Americans (22 of those were captured) It's a good thing their will likely be many scenarios because knowing everything certainly lessens the enjoyment. I think the intermediate FOW will be a good option for newer players to learn what's going on before diving into total FOW. Jason

I think what view level you use also depends on the unit scaling you have. I've played my four games with unit bases on and at realistic scaling. At this level it is hard to see much of anything besides vehicles, so I use an overhead view. It also helps when targeting units in houses or behind walls. Jason

I had a German machine gunner become captured and uncaptured in the same turn. I had a lone motionless Hellcat behind German lines firng at an MG42 unit. It was down to one man and surrendered. It started walking in front of my Hellcat and then became uncaptured. I rewarded him by killing next turn. I had to do it with AP ammo, though, because it was all I had left. Jason

I use the LOS tool as much to figure out if I can see a unit as to see how much fire I can place on it and with what accuracy. Unlike Fionn, I don't like using view level 1 or 2 for placing orders. But that's why there are eight levels. I play in levels 3-7 for 95% of the orders phase. Jason

I've also had problems disembarking units. I had to replay a turn several times to get it right. I think suicide squads are funny to watch. They run at you, you shoot back, they turn around and run away. Jason

I saw grenades used once. I was the Germans in 'Last Defense'. I was taking the houses lined up on the dirt road leading into town. A turn ended with some Americans approaching an empty house. Well, I wasn't about to let him have it. I charged with a squad from a neighboring house and made it before he did. He saw me, turned around, and promptly ran away. I saw a little black object emerge from the roof of the house, but I only got one guy. Jason

Playing "Last Defense" as the Germans, every unit was at low ammo wxcept the vehicles. As the Americans, every unit was at low ammo except the reinforcement platoon. The three Hellcats had run out of HE and MG ammo. So any ideas on conserving ammo would be appreciated. Jason

When the Hellcats appeared the German Tiger and StuG were idly shelling my MGs in the town. I saved all three by racing them down the hill at full speed. I even took out one of the StuG, too. The other was already killed by a heroic bazooka team. It took a while for them to get going, but their speed sure saved them. Actually, this is one reason why a reverse slope would be nice. I could have had them already moving full speed rather than having to wait 18 seconds for them to start moving. Jason P.S. Hellcats are awful close assault vehicles. Oh, I'm glad you added vehicle MG ammo tracking. All of my Hellcats ran out of ammo. Otherwise I could have shot up more infantry.