David Aitken
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Posts posted by David Aitken
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>PawBroon wrote:
Yeah and you should do the same thing in OUR game.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I can't remember what I'm doing in our game, it's been so long since I last got a file, let alone since we started.
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Oh great, I get Shermans anyway. Green Poles with Shermans at night. I think I'll just exit the map now and be done with it.
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The last I heard of Jonah and chums was when they had their angelic little heads handed to them by the French or some other such noncombatant nation last year.
But what's this? Random time, weather and experience? Computer selected forces? Poles? Hmm, Poles... yeah allright. I would refuse point-blank if I'd got the bloody Yanks and their capitalist mass-produced tin can they call a tank, the Sherman. Panty Liner is currently relieving me of most of my Shermans in my only current game as the US, because their HE apparently adheres to Health & Safety guidelines stipulating that it should not cause harm to the enemy. Who says BTS doesn't model duds? No, I mean the ammo, not the Shermans themselves.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Stalin Orgasmed:
time to crack another beer & watch the All Blacks thrash the Argies......<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Sounds fun, but I'll keep my probiscis and my cesspit if it's all the same to you.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>PawBroon wrote:
In here Team Rumble II Tauntings I said I was given the command of a TRP.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Hang on, is that the one which fires high-explosive or hollow-charge? I swear BTS have undermodelled its destructive power. I like how you can secrete it underground though, and then it lashes out and zaps nearby enemy units with big explosions.
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Recovered our eyesight, have we Dale? But not learned any lessons, apparently.
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Does anyone else get the impression that Colonel_Braindead has been playing a different game than the rest of us for the past year and a half? Living (arguably) proof, if we needed it, that being a long-standing member is not by definition exclusive from being a witless newbie.
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Chambers 21st Century Dictionary says:
pillbox 1 a small round container for pills. 2 military a small, usually circular, concrete shelter for use as a lookout post and gun emplacement. 3 a small round flat-topped hat.
bunker 1 an obstacle on a golf course consisting of a hollow area containing sand. 2 (also coal bunker) a large container or cupboard for storing coal. 3 a compartment for storing fuel on board ship. 4 an underground bombproof shelter. 18c in sense 2; 16c Scots as bonker, meaning 'box', 'chest', or 'seat'.
So your answer is, a pillbox is where the Germans keep their tablets, and a bunker is their cunning plan to disrupt your pre-battle game of golf.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Rollstoy wrote:
Give the soldiers an additional level of detail that adds some distinct facial features like the nose or chin.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Ah, if I hadn't misread this first time, I would have pointed out that soldiers in CM already have noses. These are triangular and also slightly lighter, regardless of the texture map.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Sorry, David, but the screenshots on your CM page prove the opposite to me, although they display mostly 'uncritical' frontal views. The sphere-like faces just do not cut it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It is obviously a matter of prefence. I noticed the same things that you are talking about during the beta demo, but improving the texture maps really made all the difference for me. I just see no point at all in increasing the detail for a game of this scale.
As Schrullenhaft says, if BTS were to increase the detail of one part, it would make the rest of the model look incongruous. You have to increase detail in overall stages, not localised increments. For example, what I noticed more than that the soldiers didn't have chins, was that the British helmets look like bowls instead of having the characteristic rim. I might also point out that the kidney pouches should ideally have a polygon to themselves, as they are rather large – not to mention the backpacks. And the boots are silly and pointy. And the side-loading magazine on the Sten guns isn't modelled.
You see? I could go on and on. To pick chins out of all the possible improvements seems a bit strange. If you increase the detail level of one thing, you have to do the rest as well, or the lack of detail will be even more noticeable.
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If it were currently practical for BTS to smooth out rounded objects like wheels, I'm quite sure he'd do it. We can probably expect such things in the engine rewrite after CM2.
As for soldier faces, about the only modified textures I use are soldier faces, because I really don't like the originals. A good texture map makes all the difference. I wouldn't say there's much point in modelling chins or whatever.
Sure, people like close-up views, but people don't play with extremely close-up views, and more often that not they will view their soldiers from behind anyway. At the moment it's not practical to expect the level of figure realism you would find in first-person-perspective games. BTS would probably have saved themselves a lot of trouble by not allowing us to zoom in so far and criticise what we see in minute magnification.
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I think the only difference is between 'abandoned' and 'knocked out'. Thereafter the chance of recovering the vehicle is up to the game.
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Scenario designers wishing to simulate dragon's teeth use 'rough' terrain instead. This is impassible to vehicles.
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As far as I know, if a tank is 'abandoned' (as opposed to 'knocked out') during an Operation, there is a chance that you will get it back in the next battle. The crew must survive and remain on the map for this to happen.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Marlow wrote:
So was it pantie's leg humping "OT - I'm so excited" thing or the "Wouldn't it be fun to make Volksturm look like Viet Cong" crap that you are referring to?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I think Panty Liner now accounts for half of all the traffic on the forum. Quick, someone get a Churchill Petard or a Sturmtiger, load a shell up with Ritalin and let's see if we can punch through the incredible density of his cranial glacis.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Panzer Leader wrote:
Ok, so since my monitor is Flatscreen, can I expect to have better LOS in hilly battles?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This actually makes it less resilient to AP rounds. You should angle the monitor towards the ground 45° to increase the chance of ricochets. Better still, turn the monitor away from you while you play, to protect the fragile parts from enemy fire. Placing a sheet of metal over the screen will also help.
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Hmm, I got Robert Lee. I was interested to note that I had a clear preference in each of the questions, I wasn't just picking what I thought sounded better.
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I'm guessing that they're guessing.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Stacheldraht wrote:
For that matter, how about modeling the (purported) non-firing rates among combatants, as summarized in Dave Grossman's controversial book, On Killing.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
This has been discussed before, although I can't remember what the conclusion was. There are people, including (if I remember correctly) Michael Doubler, who refute the claim.
I might add, it is quite possible to have units on the map in CM who never fire. It depends whether you throw them into a firefight or not. The CM battlefield tends to be much more efficient than reality, so you rarely have any units sitting around doing nothing. I know that the claim refers to the men within individual squads, but this is just an example of how one can draw the wrong conclusions from a statistic.
[ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: David Aitken ]
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He's just copying me, I got mine last week. I started wasting him in our PBEM, so he needs to catch up in order to hold off my troops.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Juardis wrote:
I guess with bunkers the volume is so small that the blast radius doesn't have to be large, but with buildings, there's much more space to hide in?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I think the issue is that in order to clear a bunker you just need to penetrate its concrete skin, which is what a Petard does (and what hollow charges do, which is presumably why BTS modelled the round this way, whether or not it really was in reality). Other tanks have to try and get a shell through the firing slit. A building is much easier to destroy, but much more difficult to clear.
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>MikeyD wrote:
Hmmm... StrumTrg weapon had an 85 degree elevation? I sure hope CM models this, you fire the round straight up during one turn and it lands during the next!<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Here's an example from Terence Wise, D-Day To Berlin.
Notice the winch – I assume this is for just taking the rounds on board.
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There is nothing gamey about SMG squads. However, they are being tweaked in CM2 so that rifle squads have more ammunition, as they will typically do more firing at long ranges, while SMG squads can only fire effectively at short range. Rifle squads will therefore have more of a chance to pick off SMG squads at a distance.
I'm not sure what you mean about re-ordering barrages on the same spot. If anything, what you can do in CM is lacking compared to what you could do in reality. In CM you can fire at point A, then fire at point B, but if you want to retarget point A, you have to start from scratch. In reality you could ask the battery to save the coordinates for point A and immediately retarget it in a fraction of the time.
What you may be thinking of is the ability to adjust fire. Once the battery has opened up, you can adjust their target within a certain range, and not suffer the full delay. If you can anticipate where the enemy is going to appear, you can call in a barrage and hope that the delay end coincides with the appearance of enemy troops close to your target. This is a perfectly legitimate tactic, and again, in reality you could do much more.
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Great, now you just need a new graphics card to make the best use of the monitor, and a faster computer to make the best use of the graphics card, and high-res textures to make the best use of the computer, and a faster internet connection to download all those textures, and a high-end digital camera and scanner and laser printer and graphics tablet because of the marvellous things you could do with your powerful new machine, and Photoshop and Illustrator and Dreamweaver to make the best use of all this imaging hardware, and you're all set!
After you sell the wife and kids (and probably the house as well), that is.
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I've tried ordering vehicles to exit the map and then come straight back again, but it didn't work.
In reality, a vehicle wouldn't be safe from air attack just because it nipped off the map edge, so what happened is probably quite acceptable. A bit annoying, though, but you obviously need to beat the planes by a bigger margin.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Juardis wrote:
AVRE? I've never understood why it's shell was hollow casing. Why is that? Isn't it supposed to be a close support vehicle for busting up infantry or buildings?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
It's a bunker-buster. I imagine that an HE round, however big, would not be as effective against pillboxes in CM as a hollow charge, and therefore BTS were compelled to model it this way. I don't think it was ever intended as a front-line combat vehicle, especially when you consider how vulnerable the loader is. Like the other AVRE's (what we are discussing is the Petard mortar, but there were other Armoured Vehicle Royal Engineers), such as the mine flail and bridge layer, they were intended to do their work under combat conditions, but not necessarily when people are actually shooting at them.
What Is The Difference Between A Pillbox And A Bunker?
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
Okay Deadmarsh. There is no concrete definition of a 'pillbox' or a 'bunker'. There is no particular number of men you are likely to find in an average bunker, as though each nation has a mass-produced unit it calls the 'PzKpfw 290/1 Pillbox' or 'M75A Bunker', which they ship out to the front line and dig into the ground.
A pillbox or a bunker is simply what you get when someone decides that their current front line is likely to be semi-permanent, so they'd better make it as impregnable as possible. They would then elaborate on the existing trenches in that position, choosing appropriate positions where they reckon guns and strongpoints should go.
After choosing gun positions, they will construct pillboxes to house the guns. These pillboxes will be to no particular design, they will just be concrete fortifications bearing certain typical characteristics, such as one or more firing slits for whatever weapons are available, and access routes for the crew.
Locations such as command centres and crew billets will be reinforced, usually with wood, and become bunkers. The rooves of these installations are typically level with the ground, sometimes because they are simply an extension to a trench, and always because this makes them far less obvious and vulnerable to the enemy. These bunkers will not usually be distinct objects, but will blend in with, enhance and reinforce existing fortifications, which themselves are blending in with, enhancing and reinforcing natural defensive positions.
What appears to be confusing you is that BTS has modelled two very neat little fixed fortifications, one made of concrete and one made of wood, and called them a 'pillbox' and a 'bunker' respectively. They have little in common with the type of fortification you would be likely to encounter in reality, beyond having firing slits and guns inside. BTS should ideally, and hopefully soon will, allow us to create our own defensive fortifications from basic components such as trenches and sandbags, instead of providing us with unrealistic, self-contained 'fortifications' which are essentially static vehicles.