Seahawk-vfa201

Great great job. I'ts like time now for me to pre-order CM2. Use same credit card information please and send me CM2 production #1 CD. ASAP!!!!!!!!!

L4, sent you an email time ago. I hope then to hear from you soon. À tres bientôt

Codfather you scored!. Indeed the green tells you you are not going to lose time is retargeting: this is how you get a rolling barrage, BTW. The blue gives you better time than black: yes, you may target even if you do not have LOS. Shells will be dispersed on a larger area. Finally, indeed rlh has a point: arty should be allowed to pause and should allow to tell more about a new target without losing the current one. To solve it (and have a more realistic use of the arty) is to plot everything but the arty, save and do your checks, make your final choice and geneate the PBEM. Not gamey, arty should work that way.

There is an easy workaround. It is so easy it might have gone undetected I have mixed feelings in revealing it because it easily goes into those grognards' little secrets. Anyway, it allows me to do exaclty what you ask. It is enough to think of it a bit and you should reach it... it is just thre, under your nose...

Gamey tactics involve the use of no-ammo units as scouting, crews and no-ammo units garrisoning Flag Victory points and so on. Instead of discussing all about this and that why not having CM simply stop counting those units toward the score for Victory Flags (try holding a position with no ammo!) and having unarmed units surrender right away when encountering enemy (to stop using them for scouting). Already this would make using those units for active duties a nonsense.

I could not stand gameys in CM. I'd like to join but I see no rules against gamey tactics. Too bad,

Navy, Technical Corps, Lt., 1986-1988

Scipio: RUN is not a good command for doing those things, it is a good command to RUN toward a spot in the map. Period. When units run they are caring much less of enemy troops, covering under fire, doing whatever reasonable is under fire. They are told to RUN and they do run. That's all. Never expect a unit to behave coherently under fire when engaged into RUNning from spot A to spot B: you are telling your unit that that is the main priority: reaching spot B in the fastest way at all costs! Not a very effective way for doing otehr things. RUN ning is good from cover to cover WHEN you know you are not running into enemy position, otherwise you are getting easily killed. Again, the manual explains that as well. To assault a house, you might want to RUN toward the house (if you knwo you are not going to face heavy counter fire) but stopping short of the house, then SNEAK in. Running inside if enemy units are present equals to suicide. You should also have area fire by your attacking unit, pause before starting to move, then act as stated above. Much better: have the action covered with Area Fire by some other units to keep enemy - if present - on their toes. Not doing this practically equals to suicide. Again: think and act as if you weer there: If enemy is hiding inside the house would you run like a viking and enter the house hoping to freeze the enemy by your very act of presence? I doubt it.

Annalist, it is not a trick. It is part of the regular movements for units if toward a vahicle/armor with transport features. May I suggest to at least browse once the manual? It explains in many areas how to best use CM and avoid to be surprised by things that are explainde in detail in the manual. PS This is not a bashing, it is a friendly suggestiob. The manual IS a valuable tool in CM

It looks on all these threads that one crucial point is forgotten: each turn is one minute, anything that happens or is described in these topics would last easily 10 turns. Any of these commands would have a meaning for a much longer time for each turns. Nothing can really happen that cannot be taken care of with the order list at hand. Pause for example is used so not to put your forces in a situation that could rapidly change in the very first seconds of a turn. Doing this will put at useless risk any unit, armored or not. For example, you do not crest a hill with a tank at the beginning of a turn with a HUNT command. You give it a pause and make so that the hunt is executed in the last seconds so to counteract in the subsequent turn. Same thing for infantry. It is all Time management and Time for Execution Management. If you know you may assault a position reachable in 10 seconds you simply do NOT issue the command at the beginning of a turn, you give it a pause until it reads - say 45 secs - and THEN assault. This gives you plenty of time in the subsequent turn to counteract ANY incumbent new situation. Fellas, all your points and scenario are OK but lack the notion of managing the time to execute an order. You have to do that otherwise you will usually find yourself in the horrible position of watchiung your units die in those 50 seconds you cannot account for because your unit has completed your order in the first ten seconds. Many of these "BTS add this command" try to solve a problem - Time Management for Order Execution - asking BTS to have the AI do it in your place. It is tantamount to ask BTS to add a "Fight for x many turns" command and simply sit back and watch the movies.

Originally posted by Napoleon1944: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> The side with the last tank standing is usually the winner in my experiences. In fact, players surrender now when they have lost their last tank, which usually turns out to be a German player. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> let's use *usually* more oftne in all these posts. I am ending a PBEM game (last turn), I am using CM vs 1.1, I am the Axis player, I am facing the last tank/armor around, a JUMBO Sherman, since some 10 turns at least and I am winning 60% to 40%, possibly even more. And no, my opponent is NOT a rookie. Surrender a PBEM game just because you are facing the last armor around is really considering CM a single factore WWII battle simulation, which is undeniably NOT so.

I do have now a Voodoo 5500 but I previously had an ATI 128. ATI does *beautifully* support fog and transparency without anu problem. Which ATI cards are you talking about: it might be so that you hd experience with low memory instead.

JH, I did read your post. Please, don't make assumptions. The reason I said "it is not reproducible" is because I did not see the AI rotate the hull systematically. Sometimes it does, some other it does not. The AI must decide on many variables and come out with some 'judgement' on the situation. I would have not liked to see a tank forget about a fatal threat in any situation but the AI does not do the same thing in the same situation all the time. It is already the 9th game with 1.1 and I did not see *nasty* behaviors up to now. I also seen turrets turning with no hull involved. It looks like the AI does most of the time the right thing and I am pretty confident that if we put the AI in the same situation over and over we would see a whole pletora of diferent behavior. Who fear about *gamey* tactics should start to feel reassured the more games with 1.1 they play. Something I must have missed in all the posts: what was the experience level of the TC? TCs do different things with different exp level. The greenier they are the dumbest things they do.

I noticed that the hull turn is not systematic. It does not happen 100% of times. I guess it must depends on the TC knowledge of what is around him (SA = Situation Awareness) The situation described by Jeff is also something that I believe it is not going to be reproducible and I would be surprised if the TacAI reasoning was as in Jeff's post. The TC has seen tank armors. He knows they are behind a smoke screen. He knows he is not going to get fired at for some (precious) seconds. In the meanwhile he spot nearby infantry that COULD have anti tank weaponry. The best accurate reaction is to engage and rotate hull to face the higher threat. Now if in the seconds following the hull turn he realizes they are only desperate infantry units firing small caliber at him hoping to scratch his tank insignia to get him confused THEN he should remember the - now - previous highest threat, i.e. the Shermans behind the smoke screen and face again toward that direction, maybe still killing infantry troops in the meanwhile with a rotated turret. Again what the TC knows and what the player knows have base on different planets. And it would be totally unrealistic to believe that since some enemy units have been spotted THEN all your units should know about their location. In WWII there were no brain implants yet. Jeff case though is a bit different. The AI should remember at for one turn the presence of the Sherman threat. Why only a turn? because on the following one the player could screw the situation even more and put him in even a more dangerous spot. Finally, I have observed - up to now - very reasonable acts for a AI. I hope to see a totally screwed one so that there will be some reason to complain but up to now - more or less - all reports of AI decisions are reasonable if we take into account that my knowledge as a player with respect to the TC situation awareness is in the same ratio & proportion to what most of posters in this forum have about Quantum Mechanics and Paul Dirac.

Finally! Peng thread is now readable!!!!

From what I have seen in betas and 1.1 the rotating hull has been very effective. The only problem I see is whether the AI could get confusede on equal threats on its left and right flanks and swivel around without engaging. I have NOT seen this yet but I guess it would be disconcerting to see. To a case like this I would like to see the AI engage one threat and trying to move out of the second threat if there is a near cover instead of swiveling back and forth. Again, I have not seen this yet although the original post implies it has happened. I guess a TC would decide to fully engage one threat and get out of the way from the second ASAP. Is that reasonable and a reasonable AI behavior?

9.1 update dowload is fast now. I averagewd 60k/sec on 4 d/l at the time. There is not yet a single d/l file. It is split in 15 parts. It took 10 minutes in total (cable modem here). CM 1.1 is fine with 9.1 (on my puter of course)

Bruno: yep, that would be terrible The AI should be able to decide not to turn the hull on occasions but I bet it is going to be not so straightforward to program that behavior. It should compute a probability of threat compared to a current lack of LOS in order to act against a possible ambush. The reasoning would be: I have what seems to a lesser threat on my right, a euql less threat on my left, an unknown situation (no LOS, short LOS. obstacles) in front. I do take my time, engage first, getting out of way of second, and keep hull toward what could be a higher threat in front. If BTS can generate that kind of AI than it would be sort of miracle.

I would agree that swinging left and right toward possible targets is not a good idea. I have seen the behavior against SINGLE targets and it looks very realistic. Maybe (MAYBE) the AI does not have a weight factor for equal danger threats. A simple one could be FIFO policy: First IN, First OUT (hopefully off the game) and always putting the thicker armor toward the biggest threat. It looks like the AI had not the possibility to ignore the second equal threat and engage for good the first one. In case of different threats (infantry vs armor) I would cry BUG if the tank kept swinging: in one (only ONE) case it happened the AI did the right thing: a Sherman wnet under fire from my Puma AND my infantry (firing to force it buttoend right before the Puma was getting into LOS). It was a pleasure (from the accuracy point of view) to see the Sherman forget about the infantry and rotate the turret and turn the hull at same time to get to fire back at my Puma. It got brewed the same but, oh BOY, it did way faster than before engage the Puma. So the question is: does the AI have a policy to resolve equal threats? PS if CM was not providing you with the info on some unidentified unit (Crew?, Anti-Tank?, Infantry?) would you be right away in the position to decide where to point your hull without gambling your life? PPS But then again, the Panther swaying to and fro on the bridge is odd looking

This is not a BUMP! I just instaleld the new uniforms. I cannot but join my voice to praise DD's outstanding work. Thanks

Hi Predator: I hear you! Same here pal, only diffeence is that I fly Falcon 4

Hi there, first of all: whoever thought this was complaining about winning or not being able to got it all wrong. Shatter: no prob man, I did not get offended, really. Steve: RIGHT IN THE MONEY!, it is about seeking for a closer-to-real-world meeting engagement. Actually, fact is that it is often easier to win against a rushing-like-mad opponent than against a careful approacher (so if complain was, it was about winning too easily. The complain - for so to say - is against finding yourself playing a ME against an opponent that makes the approach a bit "ahistorical", hence disappointing in a game such as CM which spend so much in trying to realisitcally reproducing WWII battles. Steve, for what concerns me your last reply satisfies me and nails the argument: the thread is then dead (I started it, I declare it now dead ). I play for the fun of reproducing battles, yes, I do play ladders from time to time (10% of my games) and when I encouter a *runner* I simply tell myself: oh well, another gamer, time to use my 4 to 6 arty spotters for a while. I usually do not encounter a strong resistance after that kind of rain from the sky but it certainly takes a bit of the pleasure out. He certainly does not spot (able to fire at) my units on the first turns. Seahawk out

Now I do fell like the Energizer Bunny! Steve, of course I do see things from your point of view but I also do see things from the same perspective as Lacky: especially in ME QB. I do perceive that as a problem not from the CM point of view - which is fine - but from the opponent perception deriving from how the setup zones are constructed suggesting to 99% of times doing a 100mt sprint to the best spot. Maybe - I know I am unrealistic - disallowing run and fast move for the first two turns?

Shatter and Lacky: i agree with both of you. I do play scenario and I like them best because the setup zones are not so predictable as in QB. I think QB setup zones would profit from having variable setup zones as in many scenarios. Shatter: it looks like you took my posts as a flame to BTS. I tried instead to cast an idea for a possible improvement to the game in the treating of QBs as with the oh so many ideas from all users that have contributed to make CM what it is today (a small percentage but CM has profitde from having users discussing possible changes to the game and BTS filtering out the best ones). As Lacky said: in QBs it is VERY easy to figure out where muy opponents units could possibly be and where I could run/dash without fear of being spotted for the first couple of turns: I'd like a solution to avoid that in QBs (which are the standard if you play CM ladder groups) and tried to suggest one.

Mr. Clark: you got it right. With a broken line for the no man's land I could never be sure that in any location my opponent could not get the LOS on any rusher. Not necessarily Victory location though as that again would give me the certitude that in other location I am *safe* for a turn or two. The 'randomly generated' broken line could allow my opponent to get within LOS on certain areas from certain locations. Maybe he can reach that hill on the right, or be able to get to those buildings, etc: I would never know so I could not be reasonably sure to be able to rush on the open because in the next ~30 seconds he could actualy get a LOS. He might never be able to do it before two or more turns (as the broken line could be not favorable to reach a LOS location) but he might if the broken line - for that particular random generation - allows my oponent to have units *there* in a short time. I know I am being prolix now but with respect to the actual straight setup zone where all locations are at equal distance from the closest setup zone line, the broken line would make some spot in the map reachable in one turn, some others in two, others in more: map locations being at *different* - this time - distances from the closest setup zone line.