Mikester

Hey Doug, Good to see another "old timer" back here on the board. Mike

Hey Doug B, Most interesting to find a WWII tank w/ an Al block engine. One of the major reasons you see it today in car engines is for weight savings (about 1/3 lighter than steel) which directly equates to better fuel mileage. I'd be interested in hearing more about this and other tanks that may have had Al blocks and what reasons the designers had for using them. Mikester out.

One more item that needs to be added to the FAQ. Mikester out.

I have a great interest in all theatres of WWII. I will very much welcome the release of CM2 just as I have CM1. Mikester out.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by AR: I also believe that it is too easy to spot enemy troops in general. For example yesterday a buttoned Sherman spotted (and killed) a schreck that was crawling deep in the woods from 200m. The schreck was not even close to the edge of the woods. The Sherman can not have heard my crawling schreck so I guess my guys were wearing orange camouflage. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> AR, What were the exact conditions of this sighting of your team in the woods? Were they sparse woods, woods, tall pines, etc.? For one thing, if it is a winter time setting and there are no leaves on the trees (sparse woods/woods) your units can be spotted quite easily way into the woods from the edge. Next, did you have full FOW on? Reason I ask is that I've recently "accused" my buddy of always running around with his tanks buttoned up. Come to find out last week when I brought this up to him that he in fact tells me that this is not the case. What I think is happening is FOW is showning me that he's buttoning up when the TAC AI takes over, but not that he has actually unbuttoned again unless I really have a good sighting of him. Can anyone "in the know" confirm this. My point is that you may think the tank is buttoned up when in fact it is not. Also, best way to tell if you can be spotted in the woods is to hit L for LOS tool to come up and swing the LOS band out to where you suspect an enemy unit outside the woods might be able to see into them. If you can see out and see that tank then it can sure as heck see in and see you. My guess is that if you'd checked this in the case you mention above you would have found this to be true. Mikester out.

The 1/3 number is rough and as I recall the number for a car engine. And yes, most of the heat goes right out with the exhaust. The main reason for the radiator is to take care of the heat absorbed by the cylinder walls from the combustion process (extremely hot, cannot remember the exact temperature range offhand) and prevent them and things like piston rings from melting down. Amount of heat pulled out by radiator cooling system also depends on whether the engine block is aluminum or steel (I'm certain all tanks back in WWII were steel by the way). Aluminum conducts heat way moreso than steel. So aluminum engine blocks probably can attribute a somewhat greater percentage of overall engine cooling to the radiator system vs. just being dumped out the exhaust. Of course they also need to do so as the melting point of aluminum is lower than that of steel. Mike

I'm not a thermo expert, but I do have a Mech. Engr. degree. Is the Panthers cooling system liquid based or air based? I believe most tanks have the former if I'm not mistaken. If it's liquid based as I'm assuming I believe the fans (fan belt driven off pully attached to drive shaft) were actually mounted facing up and pulled (or perhaps pushed) air through the tanks rear deck (I believe these are the two circular features you see on the Panthers rear deck) down through the radiator (i.e. heat exchanger core) where the heat is pulled out of the water/anti-freeze liquid by the air passing over the exchanger surfaces thus cooling it. The fluid is then pumped by a water pump back through internal chambers around the engine hot spots such as the cylinders where they pick up heat from the engine combustion which is then carried out of the engine and back to the heat exchanger. IIRC, typically about 1/3 of the heat generated by the combustion process driving the engine is carried away by the cooling fluid system. Point here is that the fan blowing air across the exchanger is directly linked to the engine output shaft so it spins faster providing more air flow as the engine turns at higher rpm's. Also, the fact that the fan/exchanger combination is mounted vertically vs. horizontally (like in your car) means there is really no "ram air" effect of the vehicles forward movement/velocity contributing to increasing airflow across the heat exchanger. So whether or not the tank is sitting idly vs. moving is probably immaterial. Willys, The fact that your car runs hotter when idling is mostly due to the fact that you are not receiving the benefit of your cars velocity forcing airflow across the heat exchanger surfaces, not that the fan attached to the drive shaft is turning faster. This of course varies with speed, but at some point probably around 25-35 miles per hour the velocity of the vehicles contribution to the total air flow vs. that of the fans is probably starting to dominate the equation in terms of cooling. Also, everyone needs to keep in mind that revving the engine to spin the fan faster while no air is being forced across the heat exchanger due to vehicle movement (which as I said before is always the case for the tank whether its moving or not) really does not provide additional cooling. Granted, it increases the airflow (due to fan turning faster) across the heat exchanger which does in fact increase the convective heat transfer (cooling), but revving the engine means you are also increasing the number of explosions in each cylinder in direct proportion to the rpm's generating tons of heat. So you really are not cooling the engine off any better by revving the engine while you are sitting still and in fact if the cooling system is not designed to sit w/ vehicle not in motion and remove this additional heat you create by revving the engine at high rpm's you might very well be heating the engine up more by doing this. Mike D aka Mikester [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 08-21-2000).]

I'll throw in my 2 cents here for whatever it's worth. In general, I'd have to say that I agree that allied tanks that have tungsten rounds don't seem to use them as often as one would expect. I base this on what I've seen happen in the game. I understand the firing the first shot or 2, especially at longer ranges, as AP rounds to bracket the target. But it seems a wee bit too often that you see a sherman go up say against a Panther and it is bouncing shells (ap) off the sucker to no avail. So the guy pretty much is "target-on" and should now be firing tungsten to take the sucker out and yet they still seem to fire only AP. I've seen at least one or two occasions thus far where the sherman then died with a number of tungsten rounds still sitting there. This doesn't seem to make much sense. **** Gold Demo VoT spoiler ***** I also had a sherman 105 in the gold demo VoT scenario come up against the Panther at quite close range (something like 150-200 m). The 105 shoots off an HE round and hits, but it does nothing. The Panther fires, but misses, probably in part because it had to rotate it's turret. I believe the 105 never got another shot off as the Panther crew did a better job in reloading and then turned the 105 into a flaming wreck. My point here is that the 105 at that close of a range has a pretty high probability of scoring a hit on the first shot without need for bracketing the target, so why not fire one of his hollow charge rounds???? I'm pretty certain the HC round would have had a much better chance to damage/destroy the Panther vs the HE round, no? With a pretty high probabliliy to hit on first shot against a far superior foe does it make sense to not use your best ammo to get a kill vs. getting clocked yourself? Something tells me that in real life the 105 commander would have called for HC round to be loaded ASAP in this situation. I know I sure as hell would have and then would have told the driver to slam that sucker in reverse and get the heck out of Dodge back into some cover somewhere. Mikester out. [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 08-18-2000).]

Thanks much for the update your MattMadNess. Mikester out.

Unfortunately the answer is no. Hopefully this will be changed in CM2. Mikester out.

JB, I'm pretty certain varioius regiments in the British Army had their own unit histories written. Don't know much about the details though, or where you can get a hold of them. There are quite a number of English chaps here on the board though so I'm certain someone can "enlighten" us. Mikester out.

The Sid Meier's Gettysburg approach sounds pretty darn reasonable to me. Perhaps even better than variable game turn ending. I like it. BTS? Also, I think as others have pointed out above that in designed scenarios the designer can do some things to prevent this "problem". However, in the much loved quick battles you are stuck with as many or few victory flags as are given relative to the size of the map generally. And in medium and smaller size QB maps that pretty much means only 1 or 2 flags. So having an SMG approach (or variable turn ending) built into the game is one of the only ways to "fix" this issue in the QB's (at least that's my opinion). Mikester out.

Couple of comments. 1) In my view, meeting type engagements should perhaps not even have victory flags. Why? Well, in this type of battle both sides are advancing and likely actually have orders to advance to and or take terrain that is at the far side opposite them on the battle map and/or not on the map at all. Yet the engagement type battle ends up with victory flags that are right in the middle of the battle map where the two forces "meet". But is it really likely that one, or both sides, really had these areas as objectives in their advance? Probably not. 2) More importantly, I think we are starting to see the use of somewhat gamey tactics (this could be argued either way, it's a big grey area) in terms of folks waiting till the last minute in such battles to make a run for all the flags regardless of the casualties that might be incurred, etc. This in turn leads us to questions of realism, etc. In the final analysis, I believe it quite strongly leads us to desire a random game ending turn so that players don't know when to make such mad dashes for flags. Mike D aka Mikester

I'm afraid based on Fionn's comment that Lee is correct. We likely won't see TCP/IP for a while unfortunately. Hopefully, though, v1.04 will have some (many?) of the fixes to issues with the game that have been discussed here on the board recently. My purpose in asking was find out which ones specifically. Fionn? BTS? Mikester out.

I've spent a small piece of my time trying to find such "historical" maps to no avail. For the most part they almost impossible to find and most certainly do not come for free. And only real maps like this I've found are being auctioned off at ebay.com. They are usually pretty pricey though and generally of insufficient scale to properly map a CM level game map. They are the real thing though. I've seen several German one's that were actual military maps produced and used during the war. They looked really cool, but too pricey for level of detail they could provide. Anyway, you might get lucky and find something over there over time that would be worthwhile to acquire. Mikester out. [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 08-15-2000).]

You'll have to wait for CM2. It will be soley dedicated to covering tactical combat for the entire war on the Eastern Front. Mikester out.

Hunter, Not a stupid question. And there's a very simple answer. You can't do this. Unfortunately it would sure be nice as Pak40 points out. I vaguely remember this coming up a long time ago and I believe there were some technical/programming issues that made it none to easy to do this. I hope BTS will consider making this possible in CM2 though. BTS, is it on the "list"? Mikester out.

You may want to go to your video cards manufacturer's web site and download the latest drivers. Drivers out of the box that come with the card are often times already out of date by time you purchase the card. Also, would probably be best to download and install DirectX 7.0 if you havn't already. Mikester.

BTS, What are the probable / actual game fixes and/or additions that are planned for CM ver. 1.04? Thanks in advance, Mike Dittmer

Charles, Will this same fix apply to vehicles stuck on edge of water? I have a scenario right now where there is a very narrow (just wide enough for tank to sit on) strip of "flat" land next to the water which then shoots upward quickly as you move away from the edge of the water. The game put a tank down on this narrow strip when it came in as a reinforcement, but I cannot now move it up away from the water because the adjoining land mass is too steep for the tank to go up. This is all occurring about 50-60m or better from where the reinforcement flag was actually placed which was on a road. Mike D aka Mikester

Dohhhhhhh!!!!!!!! [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 08-14-2000).]

I've found as fd ski points out above that if you avoiding moving tanks fast across non-road terrain that they tend to bog down a lot less, regardless of what the actual ground conditions are. Mikester out.

Blackwood, From what I recall I believe your latter comment is correct. Assumming casualties have occurred, then replacements and/or reorgranization by the AI between op battles of partial squad elements in a platoon whose squads have received casualties (which is what I think occurs) might account for what you have seen. I for one though, have yet to see a single squad end up w/ 4 lmg's however. Mikester out.

Gamey as gamey can be. Your crews will also die a needless death. If the defender has any kind of force in or around those buildings your crews will die. Case in point. My friend recently unwittingly moved a crew up to try and occupy / hide in a building. The single american squad in the building opened up on them at nearly point blank range (crews can't spot much anymore in ver1.03 as part of the "fixes" to prevent gamey play). 3 out of 5 of the crew died almost instantly. Remaining 2 went running back into nearby cover obviously broken / panicked. Point is that BTS has tried to make some changes to attempt to prevent players from gamey use of crews. Let us know how your experiment as using them as assualt troops turns out though. I for one would be interested in seeing how many of those pistol toting half blind crews survive the first turn or two of your assault. Mikester out.

fd ski, Being on the wrong end of a 50cal machine gun is NOT where you want to be. Like others have said above, they had very good penetrating power. Mikester out.