Mikeydz

*BTS* <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Schrullenhaft, if you target the tank you want to 'lock' onto, even if it's out of LOS, your unit will be more likely NOT to target other units, even while the 'intended' target remains out of LOS.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> So are you saying that if the TacAI targets a vehicle, the target pops smoke or otherwise causes a loss of LOS, then the AI will target other threats in LOS as normal. But if the player manually targets an enemy unit, then the TacAI will be less likely to retarget when LOS is temporarily lost?

Remember, just because you ordered it before it was announced that the supplies ran out, does not mean your order was filled before then. As far as I recall seeing, they had just finished filling all the preorders, and were getting out the first regular orders out the door when the well ran dry. Stay calm guys... You'll get your game. And when you do, you'll forget all about the pain of waiting.

The simplest solution to the problem is the one BTS took, make it worthwhile to not use them as scouts or front line troops, by... A. Having them very lightly armed (which is realistic)... B. Fragile morale... C. Having them be costly in terms of victory points if they die in battle... D. In Operations, allowing the possiblity that an abandoned or knocked out (but not brewed up) vehicle can be repaired in between battles, if the crew survives. So while you might be tempted to use them to gather recon, you will pay a very high price for that info.

Don't hold your breath on the Landing craft. This was pointed out before. Since technically, CM is "beyond" Overlord, they don't simulate any actions on the beachs. That's why there is no "sand" terrain, true landing craft, ect. Think the rational was that if you do a true simulation of the beach landings, it probably would not be very fun for the allied player watching wave after wave of his troops getting gunned down trying to make it onto the beach and achieve a beachhead.

I honestly must admit that User had me fooled for a moment thinking that he might be able participate in this forum without causing any more grief, from what I saw in the thread about smoothbore weapons. But alas, User has managed to do his little troll routine and turn a simple game request thread and turn it into a completely off topic pissing match. I now look forward to seeing him get added to the banned list. It's well earned.

Don't know for sure, but I wouldn't expect anything until late July at the earliest.

Posting a pssible cheat alert is a good thing to do. Posting how to go about doing the cheat is a bad thing. The way your edited message reads no looks good. It informs that the is a way out there to cheat, so everyone watch out. It doesn't inform lazy uninspired cheaters free info on how to get intel in the game. You should only document the step-by-step instructions to the programers so they can recreate the problem/cheat, and then program a fix. Only thing I hate worse than someone who figures out a cheat and exploits it is the cheaters that are to lazy and dumb to figure out thier own cheats.

Capt. Manieri doesn't reveal to his opponents that he has FOW off, and people wondered why he was asking for methods to cheat last week??? Hopefully Fionn, I'll find my game waiting for me when I get home, so if I do, I'll mail you a setup. I'm 1-0 against the members of the Alpha AAR Game, so might as well try and add to my perfect record.

Considering the Capt. Mani incident... Is FOW settings now forced in PBEM games? If I create a game, will it automatically force my opponent to use the same settings. BTW, did you ever replay the game with Mani using FOW on Fionn?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>I heard that there were a few pre-order specials - were there any?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The only pre-order special that I was ever aware of was that if you preordered the game before the original beta demo was released, then you got a free panther print. http://www.battlefront.com/products/worldwar/prints/prints_bfc.html The deadline for this was way back in late october, IIRC. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>How can you do line of sight from one point to another without any unit at the originating sight? (I assume the ai opponent can do this though since it knows exactly where to go).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The only way to get LOS from a spot you have no units at is to eyeball it, preferably from viewpoint 1(ground level). You can only use the LOS tool to draw a LOS line from a unit. How the AI evaluates terrain for placement or movement purposes, I don't know. I believe though that BTS has said that the AI does not have any programmed advantages that a human player does not get to use, so I would assume from this that the can not do LOS checks from a location that it does not have a unit. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Finally how can you do the following, assume there is a long column going through the woods, ideally you'd like to string out a company like 10 meters from the road the column is on and have it hidded and then open fire all at once with as much of the column exposed to your company as possible. This seems really really hard to do considering that infantry tend to open fire once they enter the effective kill zone regardless of where you set an ambush marker...(i.e. you could set the ambush marker behind you)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, only thing you can do is place your men the way you want set an ambush marker, hide your troops, then pray. Be careful in expecting miracles, though. From what you describe, I'm assuming you want something that looks like this. ____________________________________________ (A) / (A) ------- X X X X X (A) \ ____________________________________________ Y Y Y Y Y Where... (A) = ambush marker X = enemy moving down the road toward (A) Y = your troops targeting (A) The problem is that for your example, I think 10m is to close to expect hat your troops are going to not jump the gun and fire early, or get spotted before the ambush is tripped. Remember that your troops will override the ambush command based of thier experiance, and whether they think they are given up a better shot by waiting. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>likewise can you make bunkers hold their fire?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> with the 1.01 patch, IIRC you can now issue a hide command to bunkers, so doing that, tied with use of an ambush marker, should keep them from firing early. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>on ammo usage - if only at certain ranges certain weapons open up would it be hard to model this in terms of total ammo ussage (i.e. at 500 m if only the lmg is going, then you aren't probably using as much ammo (i guess the simplyfiying assumption is that all ammo can be used on any weapons (which isn't true but probably would be a pain in the butt to model)) - is the notion that green troops use more ammo in general modeled?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I don't believe that squad weapons are modeled down to each individual bullet, as far as ammo loads are concerned. I think that the ammo counter number displayed to you will drop just as fast if your constantly firing away at long range (where you are probably firing maybe the just the squad MG) as if you were firing at close range (where the MGs, SMGs, Rifles, and pistols) are all being used. Good question for BTS though. *Note, I still don't have the full version, so all of these answers are based on what I've read on the forum, and demo experience

If you are immobilized, you may continue to fight. IIRC from the demo, your men will bail from the tank if it's knocked out, or they may abandon the tank if thier morale indicated that it's best to be anywhere other than in that tank. I don't know for sure, but probably crew experience, tank condition (main gun operating? immobilized?) and type and volume of incoming fire all modeled and considered when determining if your tank crew stays in the tank or jumps ship. Mikey

Well, since I still don't have my copy, I can verify it personally, but BTS stated in a previous thread that TCP/IP may be about 2 months down the road, hopefully. So technically, LAN play is not supported in the usual sense. You can play over a LAN via PBEM, transfering the files using the network, but your specific request is part of the TCP/IP patch down the road.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>One of the things not presently in CM that I'd really love to see is a detailed rundown of what the opposing side started with, the complete enemy order of battle, unless an operation is in progress. Ideally, this would be laid out in such a way that a single glance would show that,say,7 of 10 251s were lost by game's end, along with two out of five squads of infantry. As it is, I can only approximate it after the fact by painstakingly hunting around the battlefield for the markers of killed and damaged units, then adding them up. Time consuming and unsanitary! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I agree that this would be ok for an after action screen. I remember quite a while ago, there was a debate about having a "master list" of all the units on a summary screen. I know it was in reference to having it "in game" but don't recall if an after action summary screen was debated at the same time as well. I do remember the "in game" idea was soundly rejected. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Also, as the frequent recipient of deadly artillery fire I am keenly interested in the foe's available fire suppport at game start--by type, size, quantity, FO type and FO quality if known. There is no way to figure this out after the game other than by counting craters and noting their sizes. And I've learned to my sorrow how big a role fire support can play on success in battle.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Isn't this possible to figure out after the game by reviewing the corpses? After all, any artillery fire, onboard or offboard, has to be fired by an on screen unit, or called in by an FO. So at end game, if you have 1 corpse of an 81mm mortar team, 2 105 FO corpses, and a couple of 60mm mortar guys baking in the sun, you know what he had available for use.

Perhaps it has been corrected, but this is the closest comment I could find that matched the statement that was in error. It reads... <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> The only minor niggle I have here is that AFVs, if ordered to move through an obstacle, will drive very close to it, bumping it sometimes, rather than plotting their own smooth path around the impediment. So you have to give reasonably precise movement paths for tanks. However, the tank AI is much better than the woeful effort in Close Combat. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Checking order status probably depends alot on what info the shipping company can provide, and the manpower the company can provide to handle those inquiries. I've rarely ship a lot of packages, and I've never used USPS so I don't know how much tracking detail the Post Office could provide. I also don't know how many people actually "work" for BTS, but I'm pretty sure they don't have a person who works full time on handling order inquiries, so that Job more than likely falls back to Steve and Charles. I for one will wait until the requested date (23rd) before making an official inquiry of them concerning my copies. Everyone just take a breath and fire up the Gold demo, turn on the History Channel, go to a strip club, or whatever you need to do to relax. Mikey

Make that 2 Texans who will be without "the package" for at least 1 more day... Allan, can I come by and stare longingly at your copy?

There are several issues concerning why no direct downloads. First is how are you going to get the manual. They won't make an online text or adobe acrobat version, mainly because online manuals tend to be annoying, and piracy concerns. The second part is that broadband access is not in a majority of homes out there, so that would be of use to a comparatively small percentage of thier customers. And finally is piracy concerns of the game itself. Maybe in the future, but not at this time.

London, England??? Those should be some interesting highway miles.... How about Houston, Texas, Capt?

Boat load of threads concerning a Pacific CM. And they all currently end with "Nope, not in the plans" CM - Late West Front CM2 - Full East Front CM3 - North Africa/Mediterannian CM4 - Early War http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/000980.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/002050.html http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/002050.html to name a few of the threads...

If your firing at a target outside of LOS, remember that only the target area command will work. If your trying to target a specific unit, then your mortar needs to have LOS to the unit, or be under the command radius of a HQ unit that has the target in LOS. So if the commanding HQ unit or the team itself can see the target, use the Target command. If you can't see the target, use the Target Area command. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is right. See also the Artillery Usage FAQ on the Combat Mission HQ Annex http://cmhq.tzo.com/ It's in the Golden BB's section.

Thanks guys for the compliments on my tests. Main point to consider about my numbers is that the sample size I used is on the small side. Had I sampled 1000 1st shots instead of 100, I'm sure the 53% hit rate would have edged up closer to the 60% indicated by CM. On that same note, take the 4th shot % with a grain of salt. I'm sure that it is possible that a 4th shot can miss. but considering that in the hour and a half it took me to run the numbers, I only got to a 4th shot attempt 5 times, I didn't have the time to generate enough of those to generate anything close to an accurate number. I'm pretty sure that no matter how many shot attempts you take on target X, you'll never get a 100% chance of a kill. BTS can correct me if I'm wrong, but more than likely a point of diminishing returns is coded in. In other words, (pulling numbers out of thin air here...) you may get a 15% increase in your base to hit chance from the 1st to the 2nd shot. If you miss with the 2nd, the 3rd shot may only pump up the base an additional 5%. And if that shot missed, all additional shot would be based on that 3rd shot hit percentage. In all practical matters, though this is all mostly academic. Chances are that if you havent killed your opponent tank by the third shot, you will either... A. lose LOS because your opponent moved or poped smoke, or otherwise got away. or B. be dead because you opponent killed you because of your poor luck in trying to kill him. BTW. I'm sure I could recreate the test with one of the veteran Sherman, if you want Tom... Mikey

Just to point in the right direction, the best place probably to post a bug report would probably be in the Tech forum.

Ok, to hopefully put some semi concrete numbers to this debate, I ran a "Real World" in game test to try and get some rough numbers as far as hit percentages, and to see if there is a noticeable increase in % in relation to number of shots on same target. Experiment settings Scenario: CE Test Firing Vehicle: Sherman (75) w/reg crew Target Vehicles: 3 Stugs Target Range: Approx 350 meters Setup: I arranged the 3 Stugs facing the german edge of the map. I moved the Sherman into a hull down position at the ridgeline overlooking the German stating area. I moved all other German units into hiding in the main wooded area. The Sherman gained LOS on the 1st Stug at the end of the turn. I then saved the game at this point. At an approx. range of 350 meters to all 3 Stugs, the Hit chance indicated for the Sherman was 60%. Using this saved game position, I reloaded and logged all fire from the Sherman until I had 100 1st Shot attempts. Here are the results. 100 1st Shots 53 1st Shot Hits 53% 1st Shot Hits From these 100 shots resulted in 49 2nd Shot attempts... 49 2nd Shots 33 2nd Shot Hits 67.3% 2nd Shot Hits From these 49 2nd Shots, resulted in 20 3rd Shots. 20 3rd Shots 17 3rd Shot Hits 85% 3rd Shot Hits And from these 20, 5 4th Shots resulted. 5 4th Shots 5 4th Shot Hits 100% 4th Shot Hits Note, that I was tracking hits, not kills. For example, if the 1st shot hit, but did not kill the stug (ricochet, not damaging penetration, track hit, ect), the AI would continue firing at the same target, so if the 2nd shot also hit, I would count the both hits respectively. The conclusions I draw from this is that A... There obviously IS an increase in hit chance when firing is continued on the same target. B... Having to fire more than 3 times on a target would be rare, and accountable to bad luck. Hopefully this will satisfy Tom that the 3rd and following shots, under ideal conditions, will have high hit chances. But remember that these numbers were generated with ideal conditions for the Sherman, which was not under any fire from the enemy, at tanks that were pretty much sitting ducks. DON'T expect that "firing range" numbers like these would or should apply in combat conditions. BTW, BTS.... would this test, plus my famous "Rate of Fire vs. Unit Experiance" test get me a better shot at the CM2 Beta...

Max. I know you don't have to, but why not edit that post and delete it. A. It's off topic for this thread B. We just got over the big brew haw ove CC vs CM, RT vs "Turn Based". C. Sabot not only posted a very civil message, he posted an *EXCELLENT* message dealing with the topics at hand. Please consider this out of courtesy. Mikey

When did you preorder Ghost? If you pre-ordered before the beta-demo was released back on Oct 28th or 29th, IIRC, then you get the poster. So if ya ordered before then, then mail BTS for info.