Juardis

I agree that 5 minutes would probably be ideal. But I guess it depends. And yes, the pucker factor would increase greatly . Would be a good way to simulate a 4 hour fire fight in a reasonable amount of time too.

I've posted my suggestions on different threads, but here's some that I can think of off the top of my head. The ability to model missiles. Mainly SAMs. I'm thinking CMX2 can be used for Korea and beyond, and SAMs (especially shoulder mounted missiles) are somewhat important. Along the lines of looking forward, the ability to model helicopters can be very important depending on how far beyond WWII we go. Would still like to see cliffs for rangers to climb. A dynamic lighting system for star bursts, rising/setting sun, moonlight effects. Modular so that it can easily accommodate new vehicles/units on the fly. A hook into an operational level game so that we can have a true campaign, which also means troop quality must be tracked and allowed to increase/decrease depending on how long they survive. Variable movie times. Range from 1 minute to 10 minutes so as to simulate hour long battles in a reasonable amount of time (and for that hands off frustrating feel of commanding troops without God-like intervention). Borg spotting eliminated (biggie). Different levels of STRAT AI for single player games....ranging from defensive to all out attacking. Different victory conditions (like scouting, capturing prisoners, keeping a bridge whole, blowing a bridge, keeping some structure intact (fuel depot?))

Excuse me, MrSpkr sir, but did you not look at the freaking screenies. Those would be the pretty pictures kindly posted by BTS for your viewing pleasure. You will see dust plumes off vehicles. Now, unless I somehow missed that class during physics, the only way to throw up dust clouds like that would be if THE VEHICLES WERE MOVING. Thank you for your time. And by the way, did you see the M16? QUAD 50s!! Now you can have your cake and eat it 4 times. Rumor has it that BTS will NOT allow them to be elite though.

there's snow and marshes in Italy. Everything that's in france, except bocage, is in Italy.

heat shimmering off the sands of Africa Mountains Beaches Model the entire island of Crete on one map? The battle itself lasted some days and a whole slew of Brits escaped, so maybe a new victory condition. Escape all your troops off the edge of the map while preventing your opponent from getting his off the same edge.

Does this mean will get mountains as a terrain feature? Gotta have mountains to do Italy properly. Beaches? Gotta have beaches to do the amphibious landings (or I guess, will there be the amphibious tracked vehicles modeled? LCT, LCV, LCI?). So looking forward to sucking in CMAK too

night flares (to take advantage of the new lighting system) tunnels (to simulate the remagen bridge scenario) or the scene from Kelly's heroes. Victory conditions that depend on terrain features remaining standing (like a bridge or gas depot or train station). ability to have a pre-wired bridge for demolition somehow allow units to take fire from off the map sides to prevent the edge hugging phenomenon. Ability to allow platoon remnants to be folded into other platoons, maybe not during a battle, but definitely in between battles for operations. Allow different time lengths for the movie phase (e.g., 5 minute movies instead of 1 minute movies). This a good way to simulate a 4 hour battle perhaps.

Wow, this guy is a piece of work. First he bad mouths the BoB, then he dumps on the RD crowd as being too easy (or the system that allows him to be the top dog). Pretty soon, the only opponent he's going to find is the AI. Kilroy, good job in keeping him out of the club. The sponsor system was instituted to keep the gunny bunnies of the world out of the club. Note to BoB prospects: don't be assholes

Cool new gamey feature....use captured units as shields

beowolf - you a NCState fan and write for The Strutting Wolf? Just curious, not many beowolfs in cyberspace

1. Borg spotting eliminated 2. Arty FO's that work correctly 3. Multi-player that allows more than 2 players 4. Full play-back movie 5. Dust clouds/rooster tails kicked up by AFVs (requires a particle system?) 6. Dynamic lighting to model dusk/dawn properly (e.g., hour long battles will see the light get darker or brighter). 7. Tree tiles that deform/splinter during various shelling 8. Better representation of Rubbled buildings 9. Some ability to mod the game on the fly (e.g., like adding new vehicles) 10. Mountain climbing (e.g., rangers scaling the cliffs at point-du-hoc). 11. Different battle types (e.g., scouting mission where you record the number and types of enemy you find, without getting spotted, captured, killed or sending in a seal team to wire a bridge) 12. The ability to place the flag anywhere you want during a QB (at least within a certain zone) and not have the other side know about it. Nothing worse than KNOWING where the enemy has to end up eventually. In some cases, it's obvious, but in most cases, it's not. 13. Paratroopers in the sky, gliders. 14. Willy-pete (used extensively in hedgerow country). 15. A hook to an operational level game.

PanzerJeager I, yep, that's it. My non-grogginess has been revealed. My only problem is that I have NOTHING to kill it with unless I close assault with molotovs. That don't work too well. So I have to rely on the 50mm to get the job done. I'm going to do a test when I get home though. I swear that thing should be dead already.

Andreas, CMBB calls it partially-open. If you look at the back of the PZ-I in the game, you see the openness. I feel confident that CMBB is rendering it correctly OK, glad to know it's possible. Just means I've been very unlucky (typical of all my CMBB battles so far)

I have wasted 80 rounds of 50mm HE trying to KO a PZ-I. I watch the rounds explode BENEATH the tank, but nothing happens. No message indicating a hit of any kind let alone kill the bugger. I realize the blast radius is not huge and it's relatively difficult to put a round in the open top, but I should at least be hitting the dang thing. I mean, the rounds can't explode beneath it without hitting it afterall. Yes, I know, abstractions and what not. So, before I call it a bug similar to the bug where SdkFz 7/x's couldn't be killed by AP rounds, has anybody been able to KO a open top tank with 50mm mortar fire? edit: the tank was not moving during the entire time, my mortar team was direct firing half the time, indirect the other half with the target specified directly beneath the tank by toggling vehicles off. Either way, the result was the same. [ February 21, 2003, 11:53 AM: Message edited by: Juardis ]

I played about 4 scenarios without flags in CMBO. The winner is obviously the one who killed the most units. Since that is how you would win a flagless map, all 4 battles devolved into standoffs with each side hoping to kill the other side with stand off weapons. The results would be even worse in CMBB I think (with regards to lack of maneuver).

very interesting Jason. I will have to practice the art of advancing. I tested a HUGE QB map last night and sure enough, there is PLENTY of room to manuever. 30 turns, 1000 points, huge map. Should be much more fun. The only drawback to a 1000 point QB is there is a high probability of getting only one large flag. It would be better to have three small flags IMO. Anyway, thanks to all who responded. [ February 18, 2003, 11:43 AM: Message edited by: Juardis ]

Jason, I believe you're correct. HOWEVER.... Leaving a few MGs on the flanks for flank protection is sufficient to pin and moving infantry. Certainly long enough to bring reinforcements to bear if that is a necessity. And the bad thing about laying down cover fire to advance over open area is that it DOES pin the defending troops to some extent, which means they use LESS ammo. They have doubly accomplished their goal. Pinned the enemy and conserved ammo.

What you are describing is dynamic flags. Problem is, dynamic flags are not an option in a QB. And yes, if it was an option, then perhaps it would eliminate the flag rush. Here's my problem with MEs. You know you're going to meet the enemy and you know the approximate size of that enemy. The most logical place to find the enemy is near the flag(s). There is nothing that I can find that a ME is supposed to replicate. It has it's purposes I know, but I personally don't like them. Best idea I've heard yet is to play on a huge map. I'll have to test that. If that works, I think perhaps that could put the maneuver back into MEs and I can live with that. And MrSpkr sir, thank you for acknowledging us outerworldians (smiley squashed in deference to Peng).

I ran a test. All troops regular quality and fit. I put 3 Maxims, 2 squads, and an HQ unit in some cover. I put a company of Jeager 42's across some open space (about 300m away), in cover. I included 6 HMG 42's and 3 50mm mortars for the Germans. I wanted to see if the Germans could get one platoon across 100m of open ground to some cover in the middle of the open space. So on turn 1 I gave the order to one Jaegers plt to RUN to some cover in between the 2 setup zones. I also targetted every place the Russians were with my 50mm mortars and HMG42s. I left the other 2 platoons in cover, but gave them no orders so as they might provide cover fire once the enemy reveals themselves. They did have LOS to the area where I put the Russians. So after turn 1, one squad made it to cover, one squad was routed, and 2 squads/one HQ unit hit the ground about 1/4-1/3 of the way to their objective and were sneaking back to their starting position. While all kinds of Russian sound contacts were identified, my platoons in overwatch never drew a clear target and therefore never fired a shot. Watching the same thing from the Russian side I noticed that the suppressive fire the Germans laid down was somewhat effective and probably resulted in the one German squad making it to its objective. If I had not laid down the cover fire, then perhaps 3 of the 5 squads would have broke. Turn 2, I opened up with all my German platoons to provide cover fire with the objective of getting the 3 squads that were sneaking a chance to get across the open ground. As you might expect, it was a much better suppression fire and very impressive to see once I hit go . But nevertheless, the 3 squads that were sneaking only made it a little further before they once again hit the ground. Watching turn 2 from the Russian side, pretty much all the Russians were suppressed for most of the turn and I never did positively ID where all the cover fire was coming from. However, the maxims were able to get off a burst here and there in between bouts of suppression. One lone burst is sufficient to make the Germans hit the ground. I continued for 10 turns trying different things. I tried advancing across open ground (better than running but too tiring to do for more than 50m). I tried assaulting (same results as advancing). I never got another squad even half way across the open space and I consumed half of all my ammo. I never positively ID'd any of the Russians except for one squad that I managed to rout. Some things I learned. 50mm mortars are NOT good for this type of suppression (too inaccurate and slow). A single MG burst is sufficient to make running troops hit the ground, several bursts will make advancing troops hit the ground. Providing cover fire consumes a lot of valuable ammo, but is useful for a turn or two. What's this test prove? Nothing really except that manuever without AFVs, smoke and/or cover is pointless. With that in mind, guard all covered approaches and make sure you have your own AFVs. That way you too can turn a ME into a standoff. Smoke appears to be the only sure thing to bring to the fight (provided the damn arty lands where you tell your FO to put that is, but that's another discussion altogether )

When I say quality opponents, I mean relative to the AI. So if I want to play a human, most humans I know prefer a "balanced" fight, hence an ME. I'm not talking ladder sharks here that have optimized forces. Perhaps the time is my problem then. Because I have only played MEs that are 25 turns and less.

It's easy to turn a ME into a probe. Get to the flags first then wait. There's a reason probes give you more men to probe with. In CMBB, it's even more difficult to probe but you can prepare for that by buying smoke and lots of it. In MEs you may not have smoke. And yes, if I play more MEs I will definitely have to get the halftracks and small tanks. To me those are now the king of the ME battlefield. Lots of small AFVs plus some way to hurt a medium or large battle tank. But my point is unless you have AFVs, maneuver is dead. So if everyone knows this, then every ME will also have the same forces every time. No longer can you field a army of infantry and have a chance to win against combined arms. Maybe that's realistic, I don't know. But it sure was challenging, fun, and even satisfying to win in CMBO with mostly infantry against combined arms.

I'm talking about ME's mostly, but this could apply to other QB types as well. First off, I hate ME's. I don't understand the historical context of them and therefore have a hard time visualizing what exactly I'm supposed to accomplish. Kill more of them than I lose, yes, that's part of it, but there is also objectives to be had. No sir, I just don't get them. Having said that, I realize to play a "balanced" PBEM game you need to play ME's. So I've learned to choke down my distaste for them in pursuit of playing quality opponents. In CMBO, you could avoid the all too frequent flag rush by at least maneuvering all over the battlefield. The absence of AFVs, while a hindrance, certainly is NOT a game killer in CMBO. In fact, since I suck at armor, I rarely purchase it. Now however, in CMBB it seems that maneuver is dead. No longer can your infantry outflank the enemy if there is even so much as ONE MG unit defending it. If there are AFVs then you can forget about it. Even taking AFVs out of the picture, maneuvering your men around the battlefield is a certain recipe for a loss. It has been my experience that he who gets to the flags first wins is even MORE true now than before. Battles typically devolve into standoffs where both sides occupy their piece of the battlefield. To root them out requires way more ammo than you're supplied with, or way more men than you have at your disposal, or AFVs that can turn the tide. This means that to even have a chance, you have to bring armor to the field, no way around it that I can see. And then one lucky shot that takes your your Pz-IV will skew the battle in your opponents favor. So, in your experience, do MEs typically devolve into standoffs or are you able to maneuver around the battlefield? There are exceptions of course, but I'm asking about the majority of your ME battles.

Ok, not at home, so I cannot test. And even if I was at home, I don't have time to test this. So maybe someone already knows and can save me some time. Situation: I'm playing a scenario against a friend. He HAD control of a flag. I have since killed off all units that I know near the flag. When my T34 was on the flag, I controlled it. He has 2 or 3 strings of barbed wire in the roads surrounding the flags (say about 25m away). His wire is now closer to the flag except one tank is actually on one of the strings. The flag is now GREY. Questions: 1. If I have no knowledge of any enemy units nearby and my unit is close enough to control the flag, then I should control the flag right? 2. If he does have units nearby, but I don't know about them, the game should still tell me I control the flag right? If not, then CMBB is giving me intel I would not otherwise have. 3. If the flag is grey and I am close enough to control it, then that leads to the question is his barbed wire attempting to control the flag? An easy way to test this is to setup a flag with nothing but wire around it. Play hot seat to see who controls it. But as I said, I'm not in a position to do that. So....does anyone know? This is with 1.01 by the way.

You don't have to control the flags. All you have to do is kill the AI's tanks. One small cheap tank is the approximate equivalent of a small flag, one large expensive tank the approximate equivalent of a large flag. QB's only though since scenarios can cause certain flags to be worth much much more.

Yes Bertram, that is what I'm getting at. If it says turret penetration, I guess that could mean anything from a few fragments just entering the compartment at the end of it's energy curve to being the full calibre impact causing death and destruction everywhere. But I thought that there was a message saying "partial turret penetration" when something like that happened in which case I interpret turret penetration as being the full calibre entering and causing death and destruction