weasel

OK, just have to stick in my tale of luck (both bad & good) from last night. Due solely to my superior skills (and no luck at all) I have outmanuvered my opponent in an armor QB (no-holds-barred unrealistic slug-fest) and have three Hellcats and a Jackson against one PzIVG. Unfortunately, my forces are scattered, and I'm so confident at this point that instead of consolidating 'em, I engage him piecemeal. The results: three front turret penetrations, one side turret penetration, two ricochets, and the bloody thing is still going. Meanwhile, it has taken out all but one Hellcat. So I'm playing "ring around the slow-turreted German" and ping off two more ricochets before the dreaded order pause finds me just outside that cover I planned and the bloody Panzer manages to traverse around and get off one shot. Boom, dead Hellcat. Terrible run of luck, eh? I'm weeping and reaching for the whiskey. But then... lo and behold... a broken 'zook team, down to one man and one shell, 150 meters away, recovers, rises to it's feet and gets off one shot: rear turret penetration, dead Nazi. His cowardly attempts to assault the VL with his crews was then easily repulsed by my one remaining infantry squad. The game may have scored it as a minor victory, but I assure you, it was major in my basement. So luck does indeed flow both ways, though it does indeed seem rare for it to turn around like that. OK, back to yer PENG-ing.

Dumb (small) feature request: for those of us stuck behind large corporate firewalls, could you possibly make the TCP port used for communications configurable?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David Aitken: As I've said to Dr Dan, it would be impractical to prevent you from zooming around a map. This is a necessary compromise. Adding an LOS tool would be a new feature, and one which has no basis in reality. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It's by no means impractical; it would be entirely possible to restrict your viewpoints to the "locked over the shoulder" (TAB) view from your in-command units. This would mean that you couldn't order your units to move to a point out of LOS of all your units with the current orders interface, but I'm sure that an interface allowing orders of the form "move 100 yards NNE" could easily be devised. This would, IMHO, be much more realistic than the current God's-eye-view system. It would also be almost completely unplayable (at least for me), and I'm glad that BTS made the decision to allow me access to information which would not be available to a real commander in the field. But please note that it is a design decision, not a consequence of any other part of the game, nor a "necessary compromise". It was done purely to make the game more playable. So it would indeed be a new feature with no basis in reality. But we already have at least one huge feature with no basis in reality, which was included for no reason other than the player's convienience. Thus, why not add another?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by David Aitken: weasel wrote: > The disjunction between the on-screen world and the underlying model is an irritant to me. The "point LOS" tool would go a long way toward fixing that. A long way? The ability to trace exact LOS from point A to point B would go a long way towards compensating for the game's graphical inaccuracy? Obviously my definition of a 'long way' differs greatly from yours. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Apparently so. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> You can already get right down into the scenery, to any point you're about to send your troops, to see what they might be able to see when they get there. Why would an LOS tool make such a difference? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, you can indeed see what they might be able to see, but you certainly can't see what they will be able to see, for various well-known reasons (trees/smoke/buildings that aren't the size they appear/vehicles that don't affect LOS). Is a magic string realistic? Probably not, but then neither is the ability to zoom about the map at will. And that's fine by me. I would like, and use, a magic string anyway. It appears I'm in a minority here, and I have no expectation that BTS will either add a magic string or address any of the various other LOS issues (I've ranted about this before). And that's fine by me too; it certainly won't keep me from playing this fine game. Mostly, since the thread seemed to have a large component of "jump on Dr. Dan", I wanted to point out that he's not alone.

I don't expect it to happen, but I just want to mention that Dr. Dan isn't alone; I too would very much like this feature. The disjunction between the on-screen world and the underlying model is an irritant to me. The "point LOS" tool would go a long way toward fixing that. Of course, the best solution would be a complete photo-realistic on-screen world, but I don't think we're going to get that anytime soon...

On the beer front, I have to stick to the local treats. Believe it or not, we have several excellent brewers in Utah. Uinta Bristlecone brown ale or Rooster's Chocolate Stout... malt is good. Malt is very good. An occasional Dragon Stout doesn't hurt, either, though I'm not in Jamaica (alas). -- weasel (getting thirsty; must go home... new bottle of Oban waiting... must go home...)

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Joe Shaw: Weasel you weasel, click on the Smilies Legend link to the left of the message you want to send and it will show you how to post smilies properly. After all, if you're going to go the trouble of annoying Peng, learn to do it properly <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> By Jove, I think I've got it now Does this mean I have to follow the Peng thread now?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: Expected to be treated with some respect for what we have produced is just my little flaw. The $45 purchase price does in fact grant the user the right to abuse us without cause, whine like a 10 year old kicked in the teeth, and attack our credibility without anything more than a wrapped view of what customer <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ha! Two typos in the same paragraph ("expected" and "wrapped")! Clear evidence of the low standards at BTS (damn, I hope those smilies work, never having used 'em before...) [This message has been edited by weasel (edited 08-31-2000).]

1: CM is a remarkably stable and well supported bit of software, especially given the size of the development team. 2: They (BTS and the local community) are very good at taking certain forms of "criticism", usually of the form "after six months of well-documented research, I have determined that the UberPanzerIIIAus4G could rotate its turret much faster than is currently modelled". Or even "the TacAI makes my bazooka team run in crazed circles in the following well-defined circumstances". 3: They are very poor at taking criticism of underlying design decisions. Pointing out (for instance) that tanks are in fact not points, and thus cannot move half-way into houses without demolishing them is a sure path to rapid flaming. Quite possibly from BTS itself, which does seem just a tad unprofessional to me. 4: It's still damn good value for the money. And much, much better supported than most. Just stay away from those third rail (3) issues, and you'll be fine.

Crew quality seems to make a big difference in the tac-AI smarts. I was playing a QB last night with the unit quality set to random, which happened to translate to "Elite". The two Shermans I got were eventually overrun by the six regular PzIVs the AI drew, but I was amazed at the apparent brilliance of those elite tanks. They knew just when to disobey my orders, pop smoke, and run like hell. Much, much smarter than regular units. Still probably not worth the cost, though... (and then a sharpshooter dropped my bazooka team just as they got a bead on the last remaining PzIV... I was not pleased).

I don't think that pointing out that real-world tanks don't typically fire rounds through the corners of buildings is a demonstration that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. Nor do I think that asking that the on-screen representation of a building (effectively a cube) accurately represent the location of that building requires some "Star Trek" machine. I'm willing to grant the shot-tracking shortcuts as reasonable under the circumstances. But there are very real, and very fixable LOS issues with this game. And I should point out that an arrogant blanket claim that the game is "as realistic a simulation as today's hardware can make it", not to mention a gratitous assumption that someone doesn't know "much about anything", is no way to make friends.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Maximus: Try this, during the movie, select a tank that is targeting something moving and the target moves behind a house or something, that target line remains for a distance through the house. You see, within the game engine that house isn't exactly where you see it on screen. So it's the same with units. The units aren't exactly where you see them. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Which means I cannot know where that unit is in relation to that building, even with realistic unit sizes. And that is a bug, not something that should be trotted out as the universal explanation for all unusual occurrences.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Mikeydz: Remember, the graphics are and abstraction of what the true battle (fought with deadly 1's and 0's deep in the heart of your CPU) looks like. That's why the shell looks like it traveled thru the tank. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I should preface this by saying that I love this game, and (as a code-jockey) deeply respect the fine work that BTA has done. With that out of the way, I am getting very tired of this excuse. "The game is perfect in every way in it's underlying model. The graphics you see merely represent that model, and are sometimes inaccurate. Therefore, anything weird you see is simply an error in representation, but the result is infallibly right!". In a word, BS. As a human who does not have access to the underlying world of mathematical purity, the graphics are my only window into the game. Therefore, thay had bloody well better be accurate. Things like the fact that tanks can shoot through the corners of buildings (as well as driving half-way into buildings); that on several occasions, looking from the locked unit view at level one over a unit's shoulder, I can clearly see an enemy unit, yet it is officially "out of LOS"; the clearly demonstrated ability of artillery to ignore intermediate terrain; and so forth: these things are bugs, dammit. If you want, you can call them limitations. But they have the same effect: I, as a human, can very, very carefully try to ensure that my tank is hidden behind that building or that my PIAT team is safe from that gun by examining the only tool available to me, the graphics, and be wrong. Because the graphics are wrong. And that's a bug. Now, the game is so fundamentally right, and these problems occur relatively rarely enough that I am more than happy to play the game and accept the occasional loss to one of these situations as a "**** happens". But this excuse of "the underlying game is perfect, and the representational graphics really don't matter" drives me utterly bat****. PS: Mikeydz, sorry to dump this on you: you are by no means the only one with this idea, just the one who posted at the wrong moment. Please don't take it personally!

My father was a child in London during the Blitz; my grandfather hunted the Bismark (in HMS Rodney). While I have no particular dislike for the modern Germans (*), the mere thought of playing as the Axis... well, it's simply unthinkable. I generally play as US rather than British, though. My Yankee mother's fault, I suppose. (*) OK, the German tourists who flood Moab each summer are insufferable. But it's hardly fair to judge a nation by its tourists.

What, no Steve Jackson Games types here? GEV was the revelation for me (very simplistic game, but it saved me from becoming a chess geek ). The only remotely "grognardly" game I've ever been into was an AH, "Little Round Top", a small isolated portion of Gettysburg. For some reason, it was amazingly balanced and replayable. And it could be played in a few hours. Also spent a fair amount of time with Wooden Ships & Iron Men, but I'm far too much of an age of sail geek to consider that remotely realistic. BTS, wanna do a Napoleonic naval game next? I'd kiss you all...

BTS, at some point, could you *please* allow us to keep playing even after the scenario turn limit is over? Sometimes it's incredibly frustrating when the clock expires just before your stoke of genius... I'll take the loss for scorekeeping purposes, but I wanna see if the plan would have worked, dammit! On the other hand, this cuts both ways; the turn limit saved my ass last night. The AI must have been screaming with frustration when the clock went off. I was playing a scenario (whose name I have convieniently forgotten) which features an (undermanned) Allied defense of a location with two possible avenues of approach (two small canyons seperated by a high ridge line). Trying to be a good commander, I sent a few units to overlook either canyon to act as scouts and held the rest of my forces in reserve until I knew where the attack was coming. Armor began rolling down the southern approach in strength, so I comitted my (feeble) armor and AT reserves, but still held back most of my infantry. Once my armor was fully engaged, half-tracks began appearing in the northern approach. Since the armor clash seemed headed to a stalemate, I cheerfully congratulated myself on not comitting to the southern approach and threw my infantry reserve into position to cover the northern. They dug in and waited for the usual rag-tag AI attempt at an infantry rush. And they waited. And they waited. And then, on turn N-1, the infantry finally showed up. In the *southern* approach, en masse, where I had only two battered squads and a pair of bazookas following the mutual armor destruction! The AI drove several half-tracks full of troops down the northern approach, got me to commit, then had them abandon the half-tracks (which I gleefully peppered with lead) and hike over the intervening ridge-line to assult my weak flank. From looking at the map after the game (which I won only by virtue of the timer going off), the German troops were exhausted, but nontheless, I was about to have my ass handed to me. In a bad, bad way. Mental note: keep a unit or two hidden on the high ground to act as scouts. Also, don't underestimate the AI!

Lost a marginal victory to the AI. Was spitting mad, though, because I had after very careful manuvering lined up perfect flank shots on the two surviving German amror assets (trying to keep the spoilers to a minimum here) when it ended; I had forgotten to watch the turn counter! Dammit! I honestly think I could have routed 'em in another 5 turns. Of course, that's easy enough to say now...

I think timers are a good idea; they would add a new dimension to the game (quite seperately from TCP/IP support). Think blitz chess. Not chess, but it can be a hoot. Since, however, I fully expect to be exploring the first several dimensions of this game for months to come, I don't think BTS needs to be in any hurry to add this. btw, I'd second the earlier suggestion for a chess-style clock. In fact, why not use the ICS method: a timer is defined by an initial time limit and an increment which is added after each completed turn. So to model a standard chess clock with 30 minutes, you use an initial limit of 30 minutes and an increment of zero. To model a "no single turn may take more than 5 minutes" system, initial limit is 5 minutes and increment is 5 minutes. The combinations are endless.

BTS, I think you may owe Tim Chown (the Games Domain reviewer) a beer or two... He's been promoting this game shamelessly for some time: it's his previews that got me here in the first place plonking down my money, and if that review doesn't sell a few more copies, I'll eat my hat. Not that the game itself isn't a fine and wonderous thing (at least the demo is! Waiting patiently...). But it's nice to have a little help.

BTS, I think you may owe Tim Chown (the Games Domain reviewer) a beer or two... He's been promoting this game shamelessly for some time: it's his previews that got me here in the first place plonking down my money, and if that review doesn't sell a few more copies, I'll eat my hat. Not that the game itself isn't a fine and wonderous thing (at least the demo is! Waiting patiently...). But it's nice to have a little help.

BTS, I think you may owe Tim Chown (the Games Domain reviewer) a beer or two... He's been promoting this game shamelessly for some time: it's his previews that got me here in the first place plonking down my money, and if that review doesn't sell a few more copies, I'll eat my hat. Not that the game itself isn't a fine and wonderous thing (at least the demo is! Waiting patiently...). But it's nice to have a little help.

Since there are various Scotch newbies asking advice, I must speak up for Tullamore Dew. It's Irish, and it's a blend, so it has zero snob appeal. On the other hand, it's relatively cheap (~$30 here, in Utah, where the state liquor monopoly ensures that all liquors are twice their rational price) and remarkably drinkable. It's the standard house whiskey here. Black Bush is similarly Irish, blended, cheap, and remarkably decent. You may want to consider one of those before paying double that for a bottle of Laphroig that, frankly, is a *very* aquired taste.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by von Lucke: http://www.uwm.edu/~jpipes/pnzfwd.html <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Interesting! I seem to have re-learned rule 10: "When antitank weapons are encountered at close range, stopping is suicide. Only immediate attack at the highest speed with every weapon firing will have success and reduce losses."

As will shortly become apparent, I am not a grognard. I am perhaps the anti-grognard. Thus I have no idea what realistic WWII armor tactics are, and if CM is in some way lacking here. But playing as the Americans in the gold demo CA mission, I find the only tactic which allows my Shermans to survive even a few moments against the StuGs is the blind charge: ignore everything, run straight at them as fast as possible, firing all the way. Attempting to find a hull-down spot, dig in, and exchange fire is a death warrant. Only if I can get the Shermans to close range do they stand a chance, and the only way to get there is to charge blindly. Now, this might be a historically accurate result, but it sure seems weird to me. So first, am I just insane? Is there another tactic which works? Or is this really how it was? Second, as a WWII moron, is there some resource which will enable me to make reasonable guesses at proper armor tactics other than trial and error? In other words, if I know that I have a Sherman vs. a StuG, how do I determine the proper range to engage, what my changes of surviving a shot from various angles is, etc? Answers in the context of the game are fine: historical accuracy is of secondary interest to me.