Lt. Kije

Well, other, wiser, heads, have reported on more than one previous occasion that entire pillboxes/bunkers are able to hide after firing (and being spotted/identified). I've seen this as well, and not all that rarely. I bet most of us have seen it. I'm surprised nobody has brought it up here by now. It is, of course, absurd. Please don't try to justify it. "It fired repeatedly until you noticed it and targeted it and fired at it, but then it just got real quiet and closed its eyes and suddenly you could not see it anymore." Instead, please join me in enjoying this magnificent absurdity. It is as though a great hulking Zeppelin is above us but for some reason we cannot "see" it. Human psychology is full of such things. Don't fight it. Ever tried to see you own eyes move by looking in a mirror? Try it. -- Lt. Kije Life is a tragedy to those who feel, a comedy to those who think.

This [AI targeting with supernatural knowledge of unit quality/value] is, I believe, an ongoing problem with CM. Even way back in CMBO days, it seemed to me you could put five units in five halftracks, button them up, then drive them into danger and the enemy would target the one halftrack holding the multiply augmented company commander, or whichever unit was of highest value. I could be wrong about this, and if so I look forward to someone correcting me based on empirical test. I hope I am wrong. But I have a fuzzy memory, moth-eaten and indistinct, of trying the experiment described above and finding these results. It is also possible, memory being heavily biased by the availability heuristic, that the easily recalled outrages of losing only the most valued unit in a group of five are the only memories that come to mind. Memory is weird and I'm thus not asserting the point about supernatural targeting as boldly as I feel it within my tortured soul. And I'm not sufficiently exercised about this to actually carry out a multi trial experiment. The point: this clairvoyant targeting is [may not be] specific to air attacks. -- Lt. Kije Fuzzy. Moth-eaten. Indistinct.

Yes, KNac, I think I get what you are saying and I think you are correct. You have an especially good point when you note that there were different types of FOs, who led different lives. Good points! -- Lt. Kije A man, a cow, a 105mm incoming shell. Pure poetry.

Well, the wargamer in me is glumly content with the new order of things. "I suppose I'd go to ground too, were I to hear the zip of lead passing by me. It's clearly up to me to learn how to deal with this." [bTW, has anyone been watching the re-release of the Civil War by Ken Burns on PBS the past few nights? Again and again, stories are told of vast seas of men grimly marching forward across an open field toward prepared positions, the air "alive with lead". And march they did. Even if they had done this before and knew full well what the likely outcome was.] The gamer in me, however, wants to know how to deal with distant light guns and rifles breaking my veteran Panzergrenadiers crossing open ground. To be able to see where the fire is coming from, I need to get closer. Even Conscript opposing forces are often invisible from any significant distance. In many cases my men seem to go to ground or break with no indication where the fire is coming from. Even if I know it must be coming from somewhere 'over there', I rapidly run out of ammo sending prep and suppressive fire out to all the various woods, trees, and grassy knolls 'over there'. And even then I discover that not all the Conscript guys lay down or ran away. Some just sit hidden in their foxhole, sharpening the ends of their bullets, waiting for my prep fire to let up. I hope to learn, learn, and learn. But at the moment, I agree with the above folks who have asked for twice the ammo, twice the units on attack, or twice the number of turns in which to crawl to the objective. It's a death march, lads. A death march. -- Lt. Kije Moving toward enlightenment, just as a monkey climbing higher in the tree is moving closer to the moon. [ September 26, 2002, 06:41 PM: Message edited by: Lt. Kije ]

KNac, I grew up with a Dad who went through the WWII forward observer experience. He did not describe a life of being in a safe place, well concealed, calling in fire from a position of peace and quiet. He was not a man given to drama, neither in his day to day life nor in his telling of stories. And he never presented himself as particularly brave or exceptional. Yet the stories he told painted a picture of a forward observer being on the move, finding himself under sometimes withering fire, and seeing the kind of amazing events you only see when you are in the thick of things. Sounded to me as though a forward observer moved with the infantry, by and large. Just reporting one man's memories. (Two of my favorites involved 105 or 155mm incoming shells that happened to not explode. The first story featured a cow standing in a field and what appeared to be a 105mm shell. This was viewed from far enough away to be in the role of a spectator, not a participant. The second involved a 155mm shell incoming on a low trajectory which came to rest, spinning in flat circles, a few yards away.) -- Lt. Kije

All right. I give. The wire is attached at one end. When you start with that detail the rest of the picture pretty much paints itself. -- Lt. Kije Dim But Educable

I have the Mac version (U.S.) and my manual is complete. -- Lt. Kije

Hey, wait just a minute here. As was just pointed out by tabpub, non-radio spotters cannot be transported by halftrack. As it happens, I was just puzzling over this in a QB I'm currently engaged in. Please, someone, explain to me what kind of wire it is that a two man spotter team routinely runs around a battlefield that is not transportable by a halftrack that can carry an entire squad? Could this spotter team with wire be carried by a full truck? (I'll have to try that in the next QB, right after these 1000 suprisingly robust and resilient so-called 'conscripts' finish kicking my German company's heinie.) If not, I really must insist on a photo of the magic pouch used by the two man spotter team to carry all that wire that the truck cannot. Was it only the Germans who had the magic pouch? In which year was it released? Did it have, as an option, a tripod? Wait! Wait! I get it. Tell me if this is right -- it's a towering _ball_ of wire! That's it! That explains why it can be moved about the battlefield but not transported in a halftrack. The actual forward observer, being an officer, would not touch the thing. His job is to make decisions, not deploy wire. The second team member, the assistant, a rough man of low character, has been carefully selected. He is burly and agile. Through extensive training he has learned how to sort of herd the great hulking ball of wire across the battlefield, jabbing at it constantly with a pointed stick. At no time would the two man team even try to execute the Embark maneuver. Stories would have been passed around back at the Training Camp about the grim results of such attempts in the days between the wars, when "Volkswirenjugend Recreational Alpine Holiday" groups would assemble for a week at a time, engaging in "Grosse Ballenrollen" outdoor exercises. Any photos out there on the Web? -- Lt. Kije Baffled. Always baffled.

I'm surprised nobody has brought this up. Seems like a big change to me. Artillery spotters are now generally classified as "slow". The most important result of this is they tire very rapidly. They are often unable to sprint across an open gap from cover to cover, falling to the ground Tired half way across. I've seen them shift from Rested to Tiring in a matter of a few meters. Now, my Dad was a WWII forward observer. I have his field glasses on the table in front of me. They are not that heavy. Why the (new in CMBB, I believe) classification of my Dad as "slow"? He was actually pretty fit, even in his old age. I did note that a spotter team with radio is "medium" rather than "slow". Leads me to hypothesize that the non-radio guys are unspooling communication wire as they move. Was this all that tiring? (My Dad of course had a radioman, so I never heard stories about wire spools.) And were radios so rare in the German army that a spotter with radio costs substantially more than a plain spotter? Of course, I've only had CMBB for a couple of days. Maybe there are a lot of spotters who are "fast", as I recall all of them were in CMBO. Or not. I haven't got that far. Any thoughts about this? Any official pronouncements explaining it? Seems like a big change to me. I kinda like my forward observer units and hate seeing them Tired all the time. -- Lt. Kije Join Us For the Seattle Rain Festival! October 1 through July 30

Aieeeee! I fall on my sword in shame. I completely forgot there was a separate Forum for these kinds of Tech Support questions. Thanks very much for pointing my wooly head in the right direction. You are exactly right. This issue is addressed over there. Lt. Kije Village Idiot

Well, my Mac Voodoo 3 3000 handles every game other than CM very nicely indeed, but I've never been able to get CM to run properly with it. I seem stuck with low-res (800 X 600 or 640 X 480) and suspect I am not getting any hardware acceleration at all. Disappointing. So it was encouraging to read of hopes that the newly released Voodoo 5 drivers for the Mac (which seem to work just fine with the Voodoo 3 3000 card) might lead to some improvement in my CM experience. Sadly, I have not found this to be true, so far. I installed the new drivers and all other games now run as well or better than before, but I'm back to getting the dreaded black screen after "Loading 3-D Graphics" appears. I'm sure I can avoid this by deleting the RAVE extension so as to force software rendering, but I have to say I find that an unsatisfying fix. Anybody out there have any words of wisdom? Have you been able to succeed where I have not? Have you an insight that would lead me to abandon this quest of mine as vain and futile? Is CM simply never going to work properly with Mac Voodoo hardware prior to the Voodoo 4? (Please don't waste bandwidth with 'helpful' comments about abandoning the Mac or buying an ATI card. I'm only interested in getting this one last game to work with a system that serves me very well in all other respects.) Still love the game, but am disappointed in how this one aspect has worked out, Lt. Kije

OberGrupenStompenFeurer originally observed, "Three of my SS Hamster-men immediately become casualties, and the fourth falls down 'shaken'." But only three paragraphs later these "hamster-men" have transmogrified into... "Oh, I did wonder if being under command made a difference to the performance of the glorious SS gerbil pups." [sic] I have to say I am stunned by this conflation of two distinctly different German units! My copy of Schweinnerrumpen (1972) "Waffen-SS At War" spends over two paragraphs on the differences in armor slope alone. Gerbils have the advantage in almost all attributes! There seems little point in going on and on about the many distinctions -- silhouette for the Waffen SS gerbil is so much lower as to make the two immediately distinguishable even in deep sawdust -- but I cannot let this go without reminding OGSF about the one distinction that no true grognard should ever overlook. There is substantially more dark meat on a hamster and thus they cook up much moister. Lt. Kije

I'm reading the book (War of the Rats, by David Robbins) right now and have to say it is good. Not great. There's way too much Hollywood already in the book. The passion of the beautiful partisan (Tania Chernova) and how it burns even more fiercely in the presence of the great Russian sniper Zaitsev. "That's the way of the taiga," he whispered. He moved above her, sliding his knees between hers. "The animals mate." He lowered himself. "Then they hunt." Pretty cheesy writing. I shudder to think how the film is going to handle that theme. With regards to CM, a reading of the book is somewhat helpful. You'll be much more likely to include sharpshooters in your Quick Battle expenditures. One thing that may become an issue for BTS is whether CM sharpshooters are given sufficient vision ability. Remember, these guys were looking through scopes and looking for leaders. The question is going to be, "Should a sharpshooter unit be able to detect that an 'Infantry?' generic marker is really a Platoon HQ or Company HQ at 500 yards?" In the book, a good sniper can make a head shot reliably at 350 yards. The elite at 400 or even 500 meters. I'd say if you can make a head shot, you can tell that you are shooting at a Platoon HQ, not an Infantry Squad. But the book is clearly a broad stroke fictionalization and I'm not advocating using it as a reference. Anybody have good stats on real WWII 'average' snipers? Should they be able to see a Company commander at 400 yards, even if they can't take him out? 500 yards? Lt. Kije [This message has been edited by Lt. Kije (edited 07-13-2000).]

Churchill Crocodile? Pfui! Try the SPW 251/16 flammenwerfer. Short range (50m), but cheap. Best taken in groups of three or more. Their MGs effectively suppress the infantry as you approach and then it's squirt, squirt, squirt....big fun for everybody! Dr. Kije prescribes four to six of these, to be taken at the beginning of every Quick Battle. Lt. Kije

In one Quick Battle I had one of the German counterparts to this Wasp (the SdKfz 251/16 flammenwerfer) find himself in the middle of several US squads all pinned down by my several overwatch units. The little fellow was like a pig in **** (excuse me). He sort of spun around in circles giving everybody a little squirt. "OK, here's some for you. And for you over there. And a little for you in the scattered trees. Hold your horses, you guys in the foxhole, there's plenty for everyone." He ended up credited with 54 infantry casualties and ended the scenario unharmed. These have become my favorite vehicle. I buy three or more for every Quick Battle I play. Anybody had any luck lighting up main battle tanks up close? I dropped a whole bunch of smoke on an immobilized Churchill VIII, drove two SdKfz 251/16 flammenwerfers into the smoke. He nailed one early, but the other squirted him good. He didn't brew and when he returned fire, he put an end to my experiment. Anybody had better luck with the Wasp?

Also, from George Forty, 1995, "World War II Tanks" (p. 73 ff.): "Ausf L, the Luchs (Lynx) SdKfz 123 was produced from experience gained from the [PzKpfwg II] Ausf G & J. It looked like the VK901, but had a combat weight of just under 13 tons. Although 800 were initially ordered only 100 were built (between Sept 1943 and Jan 1944) before the project was cancelled. It had a crew of four and a top speed of 37.5 mph; it saw operational service with reconnaissance units."

First off, thanks to those who replied to my earlier inquiry. Most helpful. Now, here are a few things I have been able to learn on my own about the Lynx. 1. In all my reference books, I've been coming across the German word "Luchs" and wondering what it meant. Turns out it is the German word for Lynx. Now we're getting somewhere. Thank the gods of the Net for online German/English dictionaries. 2. Crow & Icks (1975) Encyclopedia of Tanks: PzKpfw II Ausf L (Luchs) = SdKfz123 =[?] PzSpWgII. An improved production model of the Research Model Vehicle VK1303. 4 man crew, front plate had 2 low narrow visors, rear of hull undercut, rotating turret, mg trigger on traverse hand wheel, overlapping disc type road wheels, star spoked sprocket and idler, first 100 [of VK1303?] w/2cm gun, next 31 w/5cm KwK L/60 later replaced w 2cm KwK 39 L/60. 15 feet 2.5 inch X 8 ft 1.5 inch X 7 feet 3 inch. [There was also a Berge Pz (recovery vehicle) version of the Luchs.] 3. Also, I found one useful post in an armor forum on the Heavy Metal website. It confirms that the Lynx was a PzKpfw II variant, and suggests that in CM you would choose a Lynx over a Puma if you were concerned about the bogginess of the terrain. (Tracks better than wheels in that case.) Re: PZ II Richard Lindquist 03/23/2000Ê8:31:07 AM Refers to Reply#62370. Ê Ê Murph said: The one Pz II that was IMHO the most important of the gun tanks (not conversions) was the PZ II D (Schnellpanzer) with a different suspension, and a 55 kmph road speed which was pretty good for those days. It would have made a good recon tank. The Pz II L (Lynx) was a good attempt at a recon tank, but armored cars were better by this time. I believe that in those Recon Abteilung in bad trafficability areas, there was a variation in the TOE (ask Claus where the armored car company was replaced by a Lynx company and the kubelwagen companies were replaced by Kettenkrad companies.

I've gone through a bunch of books on my bookshelves. I've searched the web, including sites such as Achtung Panzer (great site!), and I am working my way through the vast archives of previous posts on this forum, but I remain sadly ignorant and deeply troubled. Can you help poor puzzled Lt. Kije understand three things? He will thank you if you can. 1. What was a Lynx? Was it a variant of the PzKw III? Of the 39(t)? Was it a purely original design, not based on anything else? When was it produced? How was it used? (In CM, I find it useful as a recon vehicle.) Was it just an early light tank design that quickly became obsolete as guns and armor grew up? Was it designed for a specific role? 2. In CM, is there a vision bonus for vehicles designed to be recons, such as the Puma or T8? In other words, does the Puma see enemy vehicles better/earlier than a Lynx? (I assume here the Lynx was not designed as a recon vehicle.) Than a PzKw IV? Ability to see, if it varies substantially, would seem to be a vital dimension, but I do not find any data within CM that helps me understand where vehicle place on this dimension. Is this dimension modelled in CM? If so, how can I discover how vehicles rate on it? 3. What does KwK mean? I grasp that PAK, panzer abwehr kannon, means anti tank gun. I see KwK noted very frequently in specs of German guns and it seems to be in contrast to PAK, but I have never seen the acronym spelled out, nor have I seen an explanation of how a KwK is different from a PAK, if it is. -- Lt. Kije

I've searched all the old posts and have found nothing posted about anyone successfully running the full released version on a Mac, using a Voodoo 3 card, and getting hardware rendering. I just tried it for the first time and got some old, familiar results. If I enable Mac 3dfx RAVE extension, I get black screen after "3-D Graphics Loading" message. If I disable that extension, CM will display just fine, but it looks like the old chunky software-rendered graphics I've been seeing for months now on my PowerBook. Certainly no smoke transparancy. (Is Voodoo one of the cards that doesn't do transparancy?) Am I doing something wrong? Am I receiving the benefits of hardware rendering, but am mistaking it for software-rendering? How can I tell, if all I've ever seen is software-rendering? What should I be looking for, other than sheer frame rate? Mac Voodoo drivers are beta 12, which I believe to be the latest. I believe I have the latest sprockets from Apple -- v 1.7.4. Card is PCI Voodoo 3 3000. System is PowerMac 8500/120 with a G3 350mHz accelerator card. Sorry to bring this up again, but I had hoped the earlier problems with Macs and Voodoo 3 had been sufficiently fixed so that a simpleton such as myself could be so astounded by the new, improved graphics that my socks would fall down in delight and wonder. Socks, sad to say, are still up. Anybody out there doing better than I? If so, how? Lt. Kije

Bullethead said: [snip] "One thing I do still have a quibble about, however, is the morale as opposed to lethality effects of shelling in CM. And this I think results in higher arty casualties than should be the case. Basically, troops in foxholes under shelling start out pretty safe, maybe the odd casualty or 2 but for the most part intact. But as the fire continues, their morale plummets. This is OK, too, except that eventually run away. They then lose their protection and get slaughtered. In real life, almost nobody tries to run under shelling, even if they are totally panicked. But CM apparently uses the same panic routine for all situations, from small arms to arty. I'd like to see this changed someday but I can live with it for now. The point, however, is that there's nothing wrong with the arty here--exposed troops SHOULD be mowed down like that. The problem is that the troops shoulnd't have exposed themselves." :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: My Dad was one of those WWII FO's you see in CM, mostly controlling 105's, with occasional 155 fire missions. As you might expect, he was also on the receiving end of German artillery on many occasions. From listening to him, I have to say that Bullethead makes some terrific points. The two that matter the most are: 1. Even 105's are not that devastating if you are not under trees and you are able to get yourself below ground level. Something as simple as a shallow ditch provides a substantial increase in cover; a foxhole even more. Because of the pattern formed by the downward-pointing shrapnel cone o' death, tree bursts are vastly more effective than ground bursts. Ground burst, if you're below ground level you've got a good chance of living to tell the story. (Like the one where a German shell came shrieking in toward you, hit a cow standing in the field near you, taking the poor cow's jaw clean off without exploding, then came skidding to rest on the ground spinning wildly round and round in a circle. Whew.) 2. Veterans learn this and thus are likely to try to force their faces through the earth all the way to China if they panic. Seeing a veteran get up and run in the middle of an incoming barrage would be a rare oddity. Maybe this could be an interesting way in which CM models green troops differently from vets? Great work, BTS. And I continue to be impressed by how thougtful and informed the forum participants are. Thanks again, Bullethead. Lt. Kije

Charles, may your beard grow ever longer! I shall place my order for CM first thing tomorrow morning. Lt. Kije

Will the patch that is being released soon allow us Mac users with Voodoo 2 and 3 cards to have hardware rendering? If not, any idea when this item on The List might bubble up to the top? I trust it is on The List. No? Yes? No? ("You're a pretty nosy fellow, Kitty Cat. You know what happens to nosy fellows? No? Yes?...") Love the game, waiting for the Mac Voodoo fix. Lt. Kije

Last night I was talking on the phone with my Dad, a Normandy veteran, a lieutenant, forward observer. He was telling me about a time where he and the company he was attached to were on the other side of a hedgerow from a bunch of SS troops including at least one tank (unidentified). My Dad's impression was that these guys were veterans of the Eastern front and pretty savvy about the current situation. They were only in close proximity for one night, but my Dad said these guys had absolutely no interest in engaging in any unnecessary combat. His observation of them led him to believe that the average SS veteran suspected that the war was lost and wasn't very enthusiastic about risking his life in a pointless folly. Which is not to say there weren't fanatic SS troops and officers. My Dad told me another story about a company of elite paratroops who were ordered by such a fanatic to attack across open ground toward prepared positions with (known to the Germans) heavy US artillery support. Since the front around there was pretty quiet, my Dad's counterpart (relieved my Dad so he could get some sleep) had the luxury of calling in Division level fire support on the open field those guys had to cross. Not only 105's (many) but some 155's as well. Utter devastation of an elite unit due to the fanaticism of their leadership.

If you do a search of earlier messages using 'Voodoo' as search key, I think you will find other reports of problems with Macs and Voodoo cards. In response to one earlier post, BTS said (paraphrasing from memory here), when CM boots up it checks to see what kind of 3D hardware is available; if it detects Mac + Voodoo, it runs in software-rendering-only mode. On my Mac/Voodoo 3 3000 system, this does not give the black screen problem you are having, but it does result in clunky graphics and slow animations. Not bad enough for me to not play the demo, but bad enough that I'll wait for a fix before buying the full game. (Other than this, I love the game.) BTS has said they are looking into a fix. If memory serves, they attributed the problem to poorly written Voodoo drivers/APIs, hard to work with and thus not presently coded for by BTS. I realize this does not solve your problem, but it does suggest BTS might provide a fix for your problem and mine at some point. Lt. Kije

Some have speculated that the problem of low resolution display in the Gold Demo with Macintosh Voodoo cards may be restricted to Voodoo 1 or 2 only. I'd like to offer a data point to the contrary. Voodoo 3 3000 card here and the Gold Demo runs in low resolution (640 X 480?). The Beta Demo ran fine in high res, so this low res display is a surprise. Macintosh 8500 with G3 350Mhz upgrade and Voodoo 3 3000. -- Lt. Kije Hoping for a fix so I can place an order.