Seahawk-vfa201

It is there. First panel of general AAR results. Mortars are counted for Favor computation. Not directly possible now. The default setup is Regula player exp and fixed Battle Group. Currently the only workaround is to start with a Custom campaign where you may change all that. Beeing answered previously Well, from your AAR it looks you are not truly finding easy and piece of cake (ie boring) battles with BCR as you feared before starting. I am not talking from experience but BCR players have experienced difficult to digest heavy losses so be prepared [ May 14, 2003, 07:44 AM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

Player skill: win 6 battles in a row and you get *promoted*, ie things get more difficult as it affects the die-rolls. 200 points Inf, 200 points armor: how could you have 300 points left? It is NOT the total left. It is per category. So you spent - say - 160 pts on Inf and 180 on Armor (to but what the temp generated QB has provided as units to buy). You have 40 points left on Inf and 20 points left on Armor. Those are the points you can spend freely although most of the time those points are not enough to buy anything in those categories. So it happens frequently they are lost. Rare stuff: I believe it is for the battle. Let's say it is Berlin that has decided the next battle is crucial so you get better support (or priority): "Send that new tank there NOW!" Micro-management: refrain to impose specific target. Let the unit do that. Same for tanks.You won't regret it. Use smoke to cover advance, use suppression fire. Play more realistically and you will achieve better results. Patience? yes 1800 Artillery: CRUSH them ALL! [ May 13, 2003, 05:20 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

those are bad news Lou

Unit Upgrades I have yet to upgrade although my player experience have been raised (promotion) 3 times. I have high favor. Not lost a single battle. of 16 battles (fighting #17) I have 2 marginal Victories, 2 Major and 12 Total. I would have had enough meat on the grill to upgrade. Why I did not? Because I deemed that so early in the war it would have been unrealistic. Germany is pushing hard, war effort is high, no time to please a little KampfGruppe Commander by sending him a new PzIII to replace its PzII. I am happy they keep with sending the spare parts in time But that is me :cool: , another might have decided differently :eek:

Those casualties are respectable. Only try not to have all in one squad With time (killing) those numbers won't degrade a squad anymore (it will be high in the scale for a same exp level. Sometimes I had relatively few losses for a squad (say 2) but no score from killing. Rules reflect that as a if the squad did not engage much in the battlefield its experience is affected. If it had instead - say - some 20 casualties inflicted its experience would have increased even with the loss of 2 men. All is relative. There is a general feeling that indeed infantry unit experience raises too slow. I have 3 Veterans now and I am only fighting battle #17. I also have a couple of greens, the rest is regular. To me this is rather acceptable if I see it in the time span those 17 battles happened (I am in Kiev, Spetember). After all my men are fighting since a couple of months only. Some squad have been unlucky, suffering casualties after casualties , some quite good at killing (lucky battles), some very lucky (few casualties AND lots of killing. So far I am pleased.

You need high favor to upgrade ? And i use bilt-aid too, most times i have more cash left then i spend on my core/taskforce. Can i use the remaining cash to buy stuff to my likin? Can i use the cash to upgrade? ps; just started a new campaing (ps=regular). Managed to make a tactical victory at night against a +25% ally. My core tanks survived, losses were 30 cas and 8 kia. Are these acceptable ? (aldo 4 units are green and 1 conscript) </font>

BiltAid now is rules v2.2 so the answer is B. Point are counted per # of soldiers (either squad or officer) German Prisoner lost go in the friendly (Axis) Prisoner lost Russian Prisoners lost into the enemy (Allied) Prisoner lost To clarify: consider Prisoners as Damage inflicted. When you destroy Russian tanks where do you input that value?! On the Enemy list of damages or on the Axis list of damages? If you capture 30 Ruskies that is equivalent to a damage inflicted to enemy forces. To re-answer the question: "Why not prisoner taken instead of prisoners lost? Because that would have created an exception: when you destroy tanks, guns, bunkers, pillnbox you would easily input those numbers of the Russian panel but when you capture soldiers your would instead input that value on teh Axis side? Hence Prisoners Lost and not Taken This way all final results stick together on the same panel. As I said: consider Prisoners as damage: all damage for one side goes together in the same panel. [ May 13, 2003, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

You must be a "consultant", i.e. you must have to pay for "overhead" things like self-employment taxes and full medical insurance premiums out of that hourly rate (so it's not all salary). 'Cause if it's all salary, then shouldn't you be working only half-time or else retiring early, so you should have plenty of time to write custom software for people you'll probably never meet except on this forum. </font>

Indeed this is the case. Fact is BCR went under so many questions/answers that it needs maybe a FAQ. Your questions and others arised so many times one cannot count them anymore. If all the necessary explanation were to be put *literally* in BCR the rules would be a book 100 pages long. For beginners it is TOUGH though: there are explanations which are available in the threads archives such as the tank upgrade above which are not written (now?!) in the rules. Rules are the result of hundreds of contributions like yours. The BCR community should have a secretary to build up a FAQ ! [ May 13, 2003, 02:33 AM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

Nope, those are truly prisoners lost and taken. BCR computes different points for whether you capture enemy troop and/or the enemy captures your unit. On the Main AAR of CMBB the game mentions whether you have lost units because the enemy captured them rather then killed/disabled them. I know, there is a high threshold before getting into comfortable zone. Anyway, if there is no immediate battle following the one just fought then your KampfGruppe by default receives replacement and spare parts. That is left to players taste. Attached units (once you get 5) can be upgraded with remaining attached points. Regular units (KampfGruppe) as well but it is left to common sense: say you have fought few months battles and your favor is high. BCR leaves you the freedom to upgrade: say you get the PZII upgraded to a second PZIII. The warning in BCR is not to upgrade to all King Tigers 88mm, the rules have been updated and modified constantly for a long time in order to achieve (via die-rolls) as results what happened duting the actual war in the 40s. If you note there are lots of modifiers according to the date of the year. Of course, the die-roll is used so that the results for a battle set-up are not *that* predictable, but still provides for some *unlucky* event to happen. To tell you the truth: trying to understand at first read why certain rules are the way they are is a daunting task: they got modified along a long period of time in order to provide most of the time results in line with the historical events. Don't ask me though: I was not there during this process of fine-tuning. BiltAid is there to avoid as much as possible the *understandable* frustration of dealing with all the rules, especially at the beginning. BUT, there are some players who will never renounce to their pencils You mean in the rules sheet? Good point. I guess the answer in buried in the mist of time PS I personally use BiltAid: It allows me to fight the next battle in ~5 minutes

Nope, actually prisoners taken are the one which go on the enemy sheet. You see, when YOU capture enemy then it is Prisoners taken The correct expressions would be "Prisoners lost to enemy" IF there was a way it could then be inputed automatically into BiltAid. [ May 12, 2003, 04:46 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

88mm I agree with most you say: it would be a great program. I'll expand on your other questions later: running to a meeting now.

Quick answer to let you advance in the campaign. input those numbers in the enemy section. Prisoners lost. Indeed wording is confusing. Means how many of your men the enemy has captured. Put this number in your (friendly) section. Squad and HQ stands for # of regular soldiers captured (squad) and # of officers captured (HQ)

My pleasure K, I have not looke dat it myself: just read the description. Thought might appeal you. You have never used the CMBB Editor with BCR, right? This is exactly what it is used for. Especially for Tanks This is actually the best way to play CMBB and get great results: restarin from micro-management. Issue general orders, advance, move to contact, go there cautiously and hide, follow vehicle and let them choose the path (they try the best to be most of the time under cover: you can't beat them, and let them fight (ie choose target) most of the time themselves. Use the cover arc, set ambushes and let the troops do the fight. Works the best. You know you may double click a CO unit and issue the same command to all units under his command, do you? Works best when issue long distant movement commands then you see, for example, how each units decides to get from point A to B and fight in between. Then you may modify - if you deemed needed - each waypoint and modify action there. Looks like a combination of Strategic Commander and CMBB ?! As I said, this is indeed possible in CMBB. I do this all the time. It would be nice if it fired up a CMBB battle instead of boum boums [ May 12, 2003, 07:59 AM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

You know what? THERE is this kind of campaign organized which let me thinks would appeal need as 88mm ones. I do not remember in which thread but they were looking for Axis and Allied commanders. Essentially the idea is to combine strategic issues with tactical battle outcomes. I do not know how well it is organized but it has lots of potential. The main idea is that of managing wa effort between all others commanders (in a sort of RPG) and then when appropriate solve tactical issues with a QB in CMBB. The outcome would affect the general strategic situation. From personal recollection: It requires quasi-permanent contact with other commanders (various level thereof, down to single kampfgruppe as in BCR). Movements and objectives are taken care at a main (Game Master level) which would then tell each side whether the bridge they are attempting to cross is indeed protected by opponent forces and provide the relevant (or missing) Intel, then a battle is generated. The problem I see in it it is that it would easily be screwed up (people living, lack of commitment, whatever). Paraoic? No, personal experience. Years ago (CMBO) I was arranging and organizing team battles in CMBO. I had two teams of 4 people each. We were building the situation , the Intel, setup the Companies and then each player had in command one company. Intermediate orders were done via Saved games then the team leaders were exchanging files and distribute among team members. Although was great fun, you could not control what the other company commander was doing (just agreeing on common deployments and concerted maneuvers) which added to the uncertainty and fog of war. Know what? NEVER have finished one of those bloody battles :-{{{{{

It surely will happen: just kill and avoid to be killed Your suggestion concerning player experience might well get into next update (when? No idea ;-} ) PS Concerning your approach with the Custom Campaign. Think of it: after all you got a nice experience with BiltAid interface. I might consider forcing everyone to enter manually the battle group (sadistic expression on my face ) [ May 11, 2003, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

US veterans were mostly at training camps where recruits were sent to war after few weeks of training. Sure there were elite units and veteran units. But how many? The majority. Strongly doubt so. What's more how many had real battlefield experience. Maybe some veteran from Spain campaign but not SO many. BCR addresses the most common case: regular units. Anyway, nothing in BCR rules prevents you to start with experienced squad if that suits you. Depends where the regular unit is: if it has only 10 points of exp then as soon as it looses 1 gets to 9: BINGO, Green! If it has (Veteran-1) regular level then nope, it won't turn into green after loosing a couple of men. What is more, if it causes lots of casualties the loss of men is counterbalanced so most of the time a unit (even with losses) simply does not change status (or advance just a little). You have just confirmed my point Have you looked at Strategic Commander? There is a demo available to download. Must be the kind of war simulation you are looking for. Just go to Battlefront home page. [ May 11, 2003, 05:27 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

Sure but BCR intent is not that of *playing* Adolf or equivalent Big Brass. For that Battlefront developed Strategic Commander. That is the same mistake Germans COmmanders did. Their first weeks of battle were just that: cutting through Ivan lines like hot knives in butter bars. And Ivan was just able to put that on the field. Infantry and tankettes. Things changed in the following months. Things changes in BCR following months. At the beginning, first weeks till late summer/early autumn that is what you get: mostly infantry because that is what happened. If Ivan had T-34 on the first day of Barbarossa BCR would have T-34s in the very first battle. Your complains should be addressed to history. BTW: Nazis lost the war in Russia. After a while Ivan started to kick back. That is also what BCR players experience. If you wanted instant gratification (lots of veteran units after 2 hrs of battles) from BCR then nope, you won't get it. BCR is toward simulating what happened (or could have happened) to a Kampfgruppe during WWII. No veterans ever showed up after first battles in real life. BCR takes time to develop and evolve. If you count battles with one hand then BCR definitely won;t satisfy you. Yes, and my point is that it has nothing to do with BCR. That is MY point As I said: you look at BCR as the tool for turning CMBB to Strategic Commander. BCR scope is 30min battles, hence tactical level, squad level, platoon level. Winning the war is the scope of strategy not tactics. The choice for a platoon commander to stay alive is tactical because he wants to be able to fight - hopefully - the day after. From a strategical point of view the big brass does not care much if Company A is decimated for as long as the long haul objectives are met. From BCR point of you if your company is decimated you are done: War's over. You are dead. [ May 11, 2003, 05:17 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

88 mm I come to notice one of your previous comments: "After a week of fierce fighting [...] I would expect to see the first veterans" LOL Where did you get that one from? Some comic books? LOL Veteran after a week of fighting, maybe totalling what?! 2~3 hrs of actual fighting? And you call BCR rules silly .. LOL You made my day... I made the mistake to think the complains were based on some serious thinking Come back when you are fighting some February 42 battles.

Fine. No hard feelings. That is not the goal (have many cracks or vets). I had an lost them and had them again. In your posts you said it was too difficult: "no excitment (boring battles)"? Have you TRIED to win a battle when at SAME time keep your men alive? You are for the highest challenge in CMBB. Winning against the AI is piece of cake man! Doing it with no casualties is a different struggle. Also, when you start winning a lot but having your squad degraded to Green and Conscript because you care little for your losses: "Take that Hill at all costs" then even winning against the AI becomes a challenge. Looks like you are approaching the BCR rules at a different level. Your approach is of the brass in Berlin who says exactly that: "Get that Hill at all costs" BCR point of view is that of the Captain on the field that knows that if he takes that hill and looses all men then, if he is still alive he (as it happens) faces a court martial asking why he is still alive when all his men are not and if he instead he is dead then the war is over for him: no reward. To understand the *spirit* of BCR get down to the lower level, the officer who is responsible for his men: his vision of the war is not to make it so that his General will get one more medal, his vision is to make it through as best as he can and that means also "**** THE ORDERS, that bastard in Berlin will not make me and my men die for that ****ING HILL" if you know that that order will simply wipe out your men. You are not advancing till the last man (for that CMBB simulate Fanatic units). You do your best but your Campaign vision is restricetd to your KampfGruppe and the 4 officers of your platoons. In that respect many BCR player keep their CO unit well far from fight not to risk them, hence one more hint that in BCR you are role-playing the platoon Captains. Concerning loosing experience. If you look at the rules there is a range of values for each squad level. OF COURSE if you just made it to Veteran and loose 3~4 men then is very probable that the squad as a whole goes back to regular/green. If you are the the highest end of the Veteran range then your squad will probably stay Veteran even after loosing 30% 40% of his men (in that most of them were veterans already hence will keep the squad at high level even with those casualties) Finally: if you start treating your units more *realistically* then the losses are going to be very well in the 1~2 range per squad. Running on the plane toward a group of buildings might be fine in a casual CMBB battle, it is a suicide in BCR (for your squads) as it was in real life (and useless the same). That is why Biltong was describing: split units, scout the area, suppression fire, etc. A casual CMBB player does not do that as the goal is to win the battle. BCR goal is to go through 5 years of battles possibly with a core of men. Finally: BCR support units. Those are the units that cynically you expose to the risks of the battle. They are not part of your KampfGruppe, hence BCR allows you to play risky, just do that with the support units. It is a trade off to avoid - as you say - boring battles where you just try to stay alive (but in this case you won't get much experience so also that is not a solution toward the - supposed - race to get veteran/cracks units. BCR makes you weight the risks of loosing your men: it is no more - in BCR - just win or loose the flag issue. * what else is CMBB if not that without BCR rules???? * Personally if BCR rules were simply to check whether you had won - at whatever cost for your units - and then attribute you better units the more you win it would have no interest for me. But that is me as you is you For that you only need one of the BCR rules, the one which sets overall player level, then with single value adjust the average of units experience you buy in the CMBB QB and you are set. The QB will give you the right amount of regulars, veteran units required and off you go. You might want to try this *reduced set* of BCR. Sure, it is only ONE rule but looks like it answer your needs [ May 11, 2003, 08:43 AM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]

BiltAid printing problem on OS X I verified and there is a problem with USB printers. Have to try with printes accessed via CUPS and IP number. The code that implements the printing feature is a proved one from Peterk. I'll try to see why it fails on OS X. Some printing problems on OS X (manufacturers and or drivers) are solved by gimp-print (via Fink) I am not advocating this as solution though as I did not try it but I'll try to look into it. (These last weeks real life is taking me away from CMBB: I am still in September 1941 fighting Kiev historical battle pack) Concerning the BiltAid buttons for attached units. BiltAid is an evolving program which is supposed to - in the future - cover all options for all years. Its limit is that it expects the user to know about BCR rules hence it is an aid not a substitute to knowing the rules. On 41 you cannot get a tank as attached unit, on 45 it might well happen. Reminder: BiltAid is not industrial-strenght robust: if you want to make it crash you will succeed. BiltAid happily accept garbage from user input and - as happily - will spit out garbage: there is no check on user input. Finally, use BiltAid after you know about the rules: it is a tool that will do the calculations for you, look after die-rolls and modifiers, bookkeeping units experience and player favor. Question: Why does not BiltAid do all that and adapt panels, rules, etc to years and rules exception and all the rest???? Why is it missing input check and does not have bells and whistles? Answer: IF you have the time to do that I will happily send you the source code. IF I had the time to do that I would have to charge BCR community my $/hr rate which exceeds $80.

Realistic lvl ??? Compared to what, Second WW ? The germans lost around 1 milj. men in the first 2/3 months. That's 1 out of 3 men that were fighting on the front. There isn't a simple divider either, not every day was there fighting everywhere with every men availible. However, when there was a serious fight coming up, losses were expected and more common then not. Loosing 5 a 10% of your forces was not rare as this was a major push, not skirmishes. </font>

BiltAid does not get you into 1942 (yet). For the rest it covers everything (vs 1.0.4). Specifically on replacement: both normal and emergency replacement (ie reorganization) is taken care by BiltAid. Your Battle Group units are managed according replacement rules. In case of an emergency reorganization some attached units might disappear, some Battle Groups might be left with zero men which indicates you have to move them off the map at turn one to get the moral penalty. The readme notes explapins what BiltAid do. BiltAid covers 100% BCR 41 South rules: I use BiltAid on my laptop hence I do not even need to printout results. From BiltAid screens I input directly parameters on CMBB and off with next battle. Time to do that... a couple minutes at most. Same to input battle results into BiltAid and let it cover my experience/favor.units update. Using BiltAid on the laptop I have CMBB after battle Map, use "+" to cycle through units and report their AAR details on BiltAid. Time: a couple more minutes. With BiltAid you use the rules to understand what happens in a BCR campaign and then forget all the bookkeping, rules dependencies, pencil, modifiers and die rolls. To resume all that: if you like pencil and paper and actually enjoy doing that as part of the fun then use pencil and paper. If that is more a chore and prefer to jump into next battle as soon as possible then use BiltAid. Cheers

Concerning last question on the thread: "How to deal with Battle Group in BiltAid" BiltAid starts with a default campaign for BCR '41 South. This is pre-loaded with the Battle Group. To start with something different you have to use the Custom campaign option and input by hand your Battle Group. Readme notes explain how to do that. What is currently missing is the update feature for the Battle Group. That is, to do changes one has to use again the Custom campaign feature. Maybe in the future I will add a "Edit Battle Group" as I added the "Edit Date" command on the main panel. This would allow not to go via the Custom Campaign to do even smallest updates to Battle Group units (eg, updating a PzIIc to a PzIII) In the meanwhile, since some BiltAid computation rely on the results of previous battles (for cases like immediate attack/counter-attack) to keep things square use the Custom Campaign workaround when the next battle is scheduled days ahead (this would still affect the Large Battle computation but it is truly a minor side-effect). Cheers

They are no more there as they are now embedded in the built jar file (no more as physically separate files). ...and I let the bat go PS Out now fighting Kiev Urban Chaos [ April 26, 2003, 12:47 PM: Message edited by: Seahawk-vfa201 ]