David Aitken

Jarhead wrote: > Well... after watching the little movie of "Plumville" getting blasted she wanted to see it again, then from another angle. i was loving it. Then she said it. "Wow, that is really amazing." Where's the Borg when you need him? =)

Phoenix wrote: > But bogged down? Again, graphical representations. Your Stuart has not actually sunk into the road. In reality it might just have got a track stuck in a rut. If you're worried about the Shermans specifically, consider that a Stuart's tracks are smaller, and more at risk of going into ruts. I'm not saying that's what's happened here, but you can't rule anything out. There are two stages to bogging. First is "Bogged" - your vehicle is stuck, and will try to free itself. If it fails, or throws a track in the process, it will become "Immobile". Some people have suggested that you can ram a bogged vehicle to free it, but I haven't tried this personally. However, I am aware that knocked-out vehicles can be pushed out of the way, so you never know. David

The CM Borg wrote: > He has been assimilated I was about to herald your coming, but by the time I clicked on "Post Reply" you'd already been! Your ranks are swelling fast these days... =) David

Colin wrote: > I'm not CCJ!!! Look fellas, there he is! String the sonofabitch up from the nearest lamppost! =)

It's the same old rule with CM - what you see is only a representation. Any terrain has an abstracted bogginess factor, and in respect to a road, this represents ruts and suchlike. The road isn't necessarily even and flat like it looks. David

Mark IV wrote: > It would no longer consider the rubbled building as a potential target, is all, (in Teach's scheme). This is the point of contention. When you target a building, you're targeting scenery. As far as your AFV is concerned, it's no different from woods or open ground - it just puts the shells in. So happens there's a building there, which eventually collapses, but that makes no difference to the AFV. To program AFVs to treat buildings as units is a whole different kettle of fish, and while in concept it makes some sense, in programming terms it's illogical. If this change were made (assuming it's actually feasible), it would mean that you can ONLY target a building as though it were a unit. You could no longer simply put area fire down regardless of the building, and that would be a far greater problem than what is being discussed here. You say it's a waste of ammo. What I've said is, there are quite likely still units in the rubble (you might not be able to see them), so it makes perfect sense to continue shelling. It is not a waste of ammo. In your average battle, how many shells or bullets actually claim a target? Sure, under particular circumstances, a few HE rounds might go on the rubble, which wouldn't be your first choice of target. But it's still a target, and most of the time you'll probably inflict further damage on the enemy. This is only a problem from certain perspectives - and it's not something you could simply 'fix' - you'd have to change the AI's behaviour, and that change would probably cause problems in other ways. Remember, there are many 'problems' in this game which have been deliberately programmed, such as command delay. This isn't an action game - split-second timing is not critical, and you're going to lose things - be it men or ammunition. A few men or a few rounds are not critical to the outcome of the battle, and in real war, many awful tragedies occur which have no purpose at all. Little things like a few HE rounds are quite irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. David [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 08-01-2000).]

Don't know any Drews personally... that's not another name for a gully, is it? =) Aitken is a pretty common name in Scotland, actually. And the bloody English can never spell it (Aitkin? Atkin? Aikman?). =)

Foxholes are already in the game - they are dug automatically by defending units. These are not necessarily just holes in the ground - you can assume them to have sandbags and the like. A lot of things in CM are abstracted - what you see is a simplified graphical representation of what the computer 'sees'. There will indeed be more Combat Missions in the future. I believe CM2 will be on the Russian front (Operation Barbarossa). David

Mark IV wrote: > After that happens, I am done with that building. Area fire mission accomplished. So why, pray tell, were you targetting the building in the first place? If you were trying to kill units inside, simply levelling the building won't kill them. Cause casualties, yes, but there will often still be men there in fighting condition. What we're talking about here is the remaining part of ONE MINUTE, and I don't think it's a bad idea at all to let the firing continue for that short time, to finish off any survivors. If you simply wanted to level the building, why? So the enemy couldn't hide in it? Well, the enemy can still hide in it, because as I've said, rubble is good cover (imagine what it would be like in reality - piles of masonry, great to hide in). Even if you've wasted whoever was already inside, new units can still move into the rubble. > If the building falls down and enemy units are visible, the AFV should retarget on the more attractive target- the units themselves. Which units? The ones in the building? The AFV will continue to fire at them, because they will be in the rubble. If you mean OTHER units, how is the AFV supposed to know you want him to switch? Okay, when the building is levelled? But what if you DON'T want him to switch? The computer can't read your mind - maybe under certain circumstances you'd want it to do what you're saying - but under other circumstances, you'd want it to act the way it already does. And the way it already does is the most sensible. This is all for the sake of maybe 30 seconds, people - and what's happening in those 30 seconds isn't as bad as you're making it out to be. David

Howling Cow??

I've been wondering about this too. 1) It's not at night 2) The hill supposed to represent the water tower didn't seem to be there. Not like I've lost any sleep over it, though =) David

It was very common for stars on the sides of tanks to be painted out, or painted in a dull colour, so as not to be such good targets. I've seen plenty of pictures of both British and American tanks without any stars at all. The most common one was, as Michael says, on a vertical surface for the purposes of airborne recognition. The only standardised British symbol I've found is a flag-shape with white-red-white stripes, but I think this was only used much in the desert. Most later vehicles have symbols for their units, but not their nationality, unless they opt for a star. When I first saw the RAF roundels in Combat Mission (unit spotting markers) I thought it a bit strange, as these are essentially aircraft markings - but there aren't really any other symbols you could use, besides a Union Jack flag, which is a bit detailed for this purpose. David

Wolf wrote: > What if during the playback phase, you could still call up menus The playback phase is effectively a pre-recorded video. After you press the "Go" button, the AI (or your opponent) gives its orders for the turn, and then the battle is fought. That blue bar at the bottom of the screen before the playback phase represents the turn. The battle is finished before you actually see it - it's all pre-processed, and you can't change anything. David

I would like to second Bertram and Michael. Just because when a building is rubbled, it LOOKS 'flattened', doesn't mean it really is. Rubble is actually GOOD COVER. If you're firing at a building to suppress units inside (and why else would you be doing it?), and the building collapses, there is a STRONG possibility that there are STILL units inside. Just because you can't SEE units in the rubble doesn't mean they're not there. On occasion I have wished one of my tanks would stop firing at a rubbled building. However, on other occasions I have been unaware that a rubbled building still contained enemy units, and if I had been, I would have continued shooting at it. The bottom line: There is MUCH less difference between a building and a rubbled building than the _graphical_representation_ in the game would suggest. Nine times out of ten, if you have a reason to shell a building, you also have good reason to continue shelling it once it collapses. Units inside are not going to 'get away' - in CM, any unit that's just had a building fall on its head is going to be "Shaken" or "Pinned", and is not going anywhere fast. To treat buildings like pillboxes would create some major anomalies in the game's code. A pillbox is a self-containted unit - essentially no different from an immobile tank, as far as programming is concerned. A building, on the other hand, is a scenery element, handled completely differently from pillboxes. I can assure you that this minor perceived inconvenience is not nearly as screwy as the game would become, if Charles were to try to implement what you're talking about. It's not really a problem - it just seems that way, so live with it! David [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 08-01-2000).]

Hi Charles - Beige G3, OS 9.0.4, SoundSprocket 1.7.1 (comes with GameSprockets 1.7.4) =) David

Bullethead wrote: > I think it would be cool to have little piper dudes out there. Maybe give them a morale bonus to surrounding units like some times of leaders do And if anyone shoots him, he doubles in size and starts playing louder. Once he gets to 10x his original size he starts raining giant haggis and neeps onto the enemy. Then they are beset by the Curse of Scotland, and suddenly a massive hailstorm materialises over their heads, regardless of the time of year. This continues until their skin is cold and white and they are drenched to the bone, and thoroughly miserable they will lose any cohesion as a fighting force, and sit around moaning about the last time the sun actually shone. David

I wondered why BTS didn't do an Arnhem-type bridge. Are there technical constraints to this, eg. having vertical structures above the road level? David

I'm running CM on a Mac, and I know that the Mac version uses Apple's SoundSprocket, so I don't know whose fault this is. However: The sound volume balance in CM seems to be WAY off. In a scenario with rain, I can barely hear anything for the rain and thunder. Where there are vehicles, the engine sound is pervasive, and the biggest of explosions are nothing more than audible - not exactly earth-shattering. And burning vehicles are deafening, especially when I move the camera over them. Now, this is not at the point of being a bug. There is nothing specifically WRONG - I can still play and enjoy the game without worrying too much. However, I feel the impact would be much greater if the actual sounds of battle were a bit more prominent. Rather than ambient sounds being too loud, I think gunfire, explosions and such are too quiet. I would rather like it if, when there's a barrage falling, the ground really were shaking to the explosions - not thunder, or rumbling engine noises, or crackling fires. Is this something that could be tweaked, BTS? Thanks David

seminara wrote: > I've got tons of memory allocated to CM but can't even get a game started. Try allocating LESS memory to the game. CM only really needs about 50 megs. The 3D graphics are handled by Quickdraw 3D, which is part of the Mac OS, and this needs memory too - so if all your memory is allocated to CM, there will be none for Quickdraw, and the game will crash. When you load CM, try to leave as much free RAM as possible. For example, I have about 140 megs free, 80 of which I have allocated to CM. Say you had 60 megs free, you'd want to give CM about 45, and leave 15 for Quickdraw. Måkjager, what you're doing sounds very strange. Are you saying you have two copies of CM open at once? If the BTS logo is twice the size, it would suggest you're playing at a lower screen resolution - something which can resolve a lot of problems, but changing the resolution is a simple matter. I should point out that whatever resolution your screen is set to when you launch CM, will be the resolution you play CM at. If you launch in 1024x768 and the game doesn't work, or it's too slow, quit and switch to 640x480 (through the Monitors control panel). David

LOL Kingfish wrote: > My solution would be to buy 5000 pts worth of AT mines.

He could attack it if it were unbuttoned (if the gunner were standing up). He's not likely to do this at point-blank range, however - snipers prefer to attack from a distance, for obvious reasons. They will not close-assault - they don't carry grenades, and a bolt-action rifle isn't the best assault weapon. David

Okay! [throws arms up] I'm talking rubbish! mumble mumble if it's a gully then bloody well call it a gully mumble mumble damned yanks mumble mumble can't speak the queen's english mumble mumble =) [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 07-31-2000).]

If the vehicle is given a 'pause' order, the infantry unit may actually disembark before the vehicle starts moving. With Crack or Elite infantry they might do this even if the vehicle hasn't been paused. You just have to keep in mind that infantry will embark or disembark when a vehicle is stationary, regardless of what orders either unit has been given. Also, infantry will not move towards a vehicle while it is moving. So if you tell a vehicle to drive over to a squad, and tell the squad to mount it - the squad might start moving before the vehicle does, then stop, then continue once the vehicle has reached its destination. In this situation it might be a good idea to pause the squad. What annoys me most is when you want to advance a vehicle, but first you need to get infantry off it. You can't just push them off and get moving - you have to wait for them to disembark. In this situation you need to pause the vehicle - going by my aforementioned rule, the infantry _will_ disembark if ordered, even though the vehicle is just about to move off. They don't assume the vehicle is supposed to be taking them with it. David

KiwiJoe wrote: > Just imposse a max # limit to all armour/vehicle/support. IE. no more than 3 of anything. So I can't have four machineguns? Fionn wrote: > So, if players decide to limit themselves to "short 75s" then this means that no German tank will be allowed to have a gun larger than 75 l/48 [...] This simple agreement has the effect of ensuring an even tank battle. Making sure each side has exactly the same weapons is not the only way to get an 'even' battle. The points system already ensures that you can either have a small, powerful force or a large, weak force. This is not THE tweak which needs to be made to unit selection. You could ask for all kinds of limiting factors - you could argue that it's unrealistic to be able to have British, Americans, French and Canadians all fighting together, for example. There are all sorts of things you can do, and it's not up to BTS to program ways to stop you. I might point out that having a small number of powerful units is very risky. It is extremely common in war to lose a proportion of your assets even before you start fighting, and this factor is not absent from CM. You can easily lose a tank through bad luck - and if it was the centrepiece of your force, you're screwed. Varied forces are inherently stronger. Again, I think we should stop running up to BTS and nagging them for this-and-that. Like many people have said here, if the person you're playing against is being silly, don't play them. It's not BTS's job to stop people being silly. David [This message has been edited by David Aitken (edited 07-31-2000).]

I may be completely wrong, but I think there is a specific issue which makes this tweak, and also the one concerning halftracks under mortar fire, impractical. The issue is that, from what I understand of the game's engine, it probably couldn't be programmed to allow units to recognise artillery impacts (or any kind of impact, for that matter). I think ordinance trajectory is information which the engine only uses in relation to the firing unit, and any units which suffer damage. This information is not available to other units when they're deciding what to do. In other words, you can see shells falling around your rifle squad, but at a programming level, the squad is effectively blind to this unless it is caught in the blast (suppressed or injured). What I think _could_ be done, is units could be programmed to avoid any point which has been targetted by enemy artillery. This is obviously both unrealistic and inadvisable. For example, the artillery might not have started firing, so how does your squad know to avoid the area? Even if shells are falling, how can your squad judge the epicentre of the barrage? And if it's a wide barrage, they'd have to run halfway across the map to get out of it, and they have a small chance of being hit anyway. I'm no programmer, so I may be talking rubbish, but I think this is essentially correct from a programming perspective. You may be able to see the shells falling, but your men can't, because they're computer-generated puppets. They can't be programmed to 'see' what's going on around them and interpret it intelligently as you can. That kind of AI is a few years away yet. David