chrisl
-
Posts
2,099 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
2
Posts posted by chrisl
-
-
Lately I have been dume to the AI when I'm launching assaults.
-
I just played foggy mountain-- very good. Full of surprises, and a very challenging assault. I played as amis against the grunto setup. I suffered about 50% casualties and won a german surrender around turn 16 or so. There was only one problem-- one of the AFVs (I won't name it, to avoid a spoiler) bogged and immobilized *on the road* early in the game. The commander of that vehicle was Sgt. Grunto!
-
CM is similar in concept and scope to SL (I played SL and all 3 gamettes, but never shelled out for ASL), but is orders of magnitude better in implementation. Because (A)SL was a board game with cardboard counters and IGOUGO (despite the intertwined turns), it was limited in how realistic it could be. CM eliminates or reduces many of the abstractions because computers are happy to remember lots of things and do repetitive tasks, and do it all really fast. And the sounds and graphics are just awesome, even on my laptop with limited graphics performance.
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Elvis:
I still haven't gotten it to work. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
The final does seem to consume more resources than the demo-- I had transparent buildings and smoke in the demo, but can't get them in the final. I'm guessing the textures are higher resolution. The sounds are also sampled at higher frequency in the final.
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by jackhammer:
richochets? i should be so lucky! i had a tiger destroyed-literally blown up-by a STUART! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Something I discovered very quickly in my first PBEM of VoT is that the invincible German armor isn't. I was getting thoroughly spanked as the Germans, and waiting for that Panther to come and shred the amis. It finally showed up and the first shot against it by a Sherman damaged the gun. Meanwhile my reinforcement platoon was getting thrashed by artillery. I surrendered a short time later.
When my opponent and I reversed, the Panther managed to kill an MMG crew that was mostly away from the action and providing harassing fire, then the Panther was destroyed once I managed to roll a Sherman up from behind.
-
IIRC, you also never get what the unit is doin g(hiding, crawling, brewing tea, picking nose) when FOW is on full. You may be using partial FOW (I've never used it).
-
This is a great update for the long weekend!
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by crossfire:
I see you like big explosions?
Maybe you should try 14 inch guns.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I tried that on a town-- a large building was obliterated in a a single 4 round salvo. Quite frightening.
-
In a somewhat gamey tactic, FTs are great for scouting, because they draw fire like nothing else. Even the most disciplined troops will come out of hiding to shoot at them.
(No, I don't do this with them-- I do the careful walk up and toast thing).
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by MantaRay:
I actually saw her jaw drop when the screen shook and she saw the ground fly around.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
If you want really cool, watch an arty barrage from the receiving end while sitting in an airplane being buffeted by turbulence!
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by poorfish:
Like the previous posts, cm now crashes on stratup, except it ran fine the fist time! Nothing was changed as far as extensions go. Crashes now alternate between Type 2 and Type 12.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I had the final running just fine, then I fixed some hard drive problems with Norton and now CM is a little weird, but works. I'm running a PB G3/300, OS 8.5. I had problems with the ATI driver update that put 1.4.8 on my machine, but 1.4.6 is ok. The weird thing is that sometimes CM crashes out when loading the 3D graphics, but then if I run it again immediately it works just fine. I don't quite understand it, but it's something weird with my machine. Both demos were fine, and 1.01 final never crashed until I fixed my HD (and yes I reinstalled).
Typing all that suggests that I ought to reinstall my video drivers...
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software:
Are you sure the LOS is clear? You are allowed to target units out of LOS Sometimes it can be off by a bit, though the picture shown is the most extreme example I've seen.
Charles<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
I found a more extreme example last night playing a quick battle with town terrain-- there was a courtyard created by 3 big buildings corner to corner in a checkerboard pattern. Their corners touched visually, but there was (still is is-it's not over yet) an AFV parked inside the courtyard shooting out through the blocked corner.
-
sometimes I notice slowdowns in the progress of the bar-- I wonder if those are correlated to heavy exhanges of armor fire (where trajectory and pentration calcs have to be done) as opposed to small arms, which are more abstracted.
There's certainly a correlation between movie file size and action, but I think a lot of smoke can increase the file size by itself.
-
My G3 works just fine with 1MB L2 cache. Sometimes it crashes in the final version if I don't set the res to 640x480 before I launch CM, but the odd thing is that sometimes it doesn't. I hate inconsistent errors.
-
Maybe BTS should start selling packages of CM plus various upgrades, given the number of people shelling out $$$ to get smoother movies.
-
Full FOW is part of what makes CM special, at least to someone who grew up on board wargames, where either you lived with partial or no FOW, or you had horrendous bookkeeping to do.
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TwoSheds:
I'm trying to figure out how to use the Ambush command to simulate HIP.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Isn't CM automatically HIP? Then it's up to the player to keep them hidden (by setting up ambushes very close by).
-
You should be fine on a Bronze, as I play using a Wallstreet. (300 MHz, 192 MB)
I managed to cause CM to hang up like that when I foolishly tried to update the video drivers. I installed the latest set off the Apple website (ATI drivers 1.4.8) and it broke. When I switched back to all the original video stuff (1.4.6) and it worked fine. I think I once tried 1.4.8 again and it worked, so I'm not sure exactly what it was, but the drivers can be suspect.
Also, as I just discovered last night, Norton Disklight will cause you to crash out of CM. Check for extensions that install things down in the driver layer like that--Disklight is low enough so that even after BTS takes over the full screen it shows through.
A guy at work has a Bronze that I think is pretty clean, so I think I might try installing on that some time next week to see if it works (and I want to see if the graphics are better--I'm stuck with 640x480).
[This message has been edited by chrisl (edited 06-24-2000).]
-
Norton Disklight (for the mac) seems to cause CM to exit when "Loading 3D Graphics" with a Type 2 error.
You may not even know that you have it, but it seems to have come as an undocumented feature of Norton Utilities. I installed NU yesterday to fix some hard drive errors, and CM stopped working reliable! I'd rather have the drive errors. Then I noticed the disklight icon blinking away next to the apple, even while CM has the whole screen, and I'd never seen that on this machine before. I discovered that NU had installed disklight, and that when I turn it off (Disklight) CM works fine.
-
You can also delay the barrage a few seconds by moving the target a small amount.
-
USPS isn't as bad as everyone is making them sound--I got my CM yesterday (the 22nd) and it was postmarked the 20th. I ordered something shipped via Airborne 2nd Day on Monday and I still don't have it (Friday am). The left a note on Wednesday, and then didn't come back on Thursday to pick up the signature/drop off the package. USPS just left CM in my mailbox!
-
<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by TP_Bomber:
I was playing VOT and had one of my Sherman 105s within 20 meters of the 75mm pillbox.
The Sherman gets a hit on the pillbox only to have the backblast come back and hit him damaging the main gun.
I should have known better, but really had not expected CM to take this into account.
The details in this game never cease to amaze me. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>
Are you sure the PB didn't fire just as the Sherman did and the explosion from it firing was mixed with the backblast? I've seen a Sherman and Stug about 100 m apart fire almost simultaneously and knock each other out.
-
Arty rules! Even if it doesn't eliminate troops, it will keep their heads down. The first game I played of the gold demo was CE as the Germans against the AI. The amis were headed to my right across the wheat field and a spotting round landed right in front of them. 3-4 units spun around and ran!
I also just played my first quick battle-- I had a company+some misc armor (2 priests, 2HTs, a T8 recon and a utility armored car) and an FO for some 81 mortars. The 81s have terrible firepower but great smoke. I started suppression fire on some germs that I was going to have to charge across a field to get, then turned it to smoke and charged. Worked great-- I managed to eliminate the platoon HQ for that sector and rout (then eliminate) the entire platoon. I also had an on-map 81 take out the lone Panzer IV with a shot through the deck.
Without the mortars I would have been chewed up running across the field.
-
Got it today (got home late after a very succesful day in the lab). Played a quick dusk battle and spanked the AI. After losing a Priest and a Halftrack I stopped rushing it and went in carefully with proper covering fire. Tac AI was great-- my 81 mm mortar dropped a shell right through the deck of the one german tank (a Panzer IV).
Awesome game. I just wish my laptop graphics could be upgraded.
Real World Defensive Plans vs. Defense in CM
in Combat Mission Archive #2 (2000)
Posted
I'm one more in favor of area fire into smoke, even though it will hurt me as much as help-- dropping a bunch of smoke and then running through it for an assault is great, but the defender should at least be able to suppress the charging troops with area fire (grazing if possible).