Mikester

Shep, I tried doing a search before I left work today to find where I'd read that but didn't succeed. I should also point out that nothing was promised. It was kind of one of those things that they wanted to do it after the game came out and there were no more details other than that. I don't recall seeing much else on this since then. Sorry that doesn't answer your question, but that's what I remember. Mike

Thanks for all the replys so far guys. Now that I'm here at home here are the results of my experiment. Op map size was 2000m long (attack direction) and 1040m wide. Battle sliding window was set to min. of 1200m (so there's no way the op could actually end after the first battle since the attacker cannot physically reach the far side of the op map). No-mans land was set to max of 400m (although in this part of the testing it really doesn't matter). Attacker started at 500m from his edge of the map which means he had to go 1500m to get to the far side of the op map. There were 6 day battles and no night battles. The attacker American had several tanks, HT's, etc., and 2 platoons of infantry. The Germans had 2 platoons of infantry. The Germans were always setup as far forward as possible and hidden during the entire battle. There were no engagements and no casualties on purpose to remove this aspect from the experiment. The american forces were then driven down the map in order to force the op to end at the end of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th battles (Cases 3 thru 7 below). Again note there was no way to have them exit at the end of the first battle as this was physically impossible. I also ran the case (case 1 below) where they sat at there start positions as setup before battle 1 and never moved forward at all as well as moving them appx. 700m (little over half way to far op map edge) to the end of the first battle map at end of battle 6 to simulate their only getting part way to the end before end of the op (case 2 below). The results were as follows: Case 1: Axis Total Victory Case 2: 1 draw, then ran again and got Allied Minor Victory (neither result makes sense to me considering the Germans held them from moving anywhere for 5 out of the 6 battles and they then only allowed them about half way to the far edge of the map in the final battle) Case 3: Allied Total Victory (op ended after 2nd battle) Case 4: Allied Major Victory Case 5: Allied Tactical Victory Case 6: Allied Minor Victory Case 7: Allied Minor Victory (op ended at end of battle 6 with American's reaching end of operations map). Mike

Hey Tom, Yes there seem to be some odd things with units exiting for victory points that were never designated to be eligible to do so in the first place. See my thread I started today on "tank and vehicle crews exiting for VP's??????). Seems to me like this behaviour is a little buggy. Hopefully BTS will address these issues. Mike [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-31-2000).]

Hey Mark, As I recall from quite some time ago Steve said they would be adding some vehicles to CM1 when they could get around to doing it after the game came out and most likely would just be a free patch type of thing. Mike [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-31-2000).]

Back to the top yet again. I'm going to cling to this like an old junk yard dog to his last bone until I get some answers from the powers that be. Mikester out.

No problem. Your in the Marines eh? My sister is a doc out in NC at a neurosurgery clinic somewhere near Winston-Salem. Can't remember exact name of the town. I think she did some of her intern stuff at one of the military bases there in NC when she was at the Med. school at Wake Forest. Anyways, have fun playing the game. Mike

OK. If you already have the files unzipped and dumped down into a local dir/folder just open Windows Explorer (Start-Programs-Windows Explorer). Find the dir/folder you unzipped it into and check and make sure it's in there by clicking on the yellow folder and looking at it's contents on the right side of the explorer window. Once you found it slide the explorer window on the left that shows the directory tree sturcture of your hard drive until you can see the CombatMission (or whatever the name of your main CM directory is) yellow folder. From there just drag the CM.exe from the window pane on the right and drop it into the CM folder on the right. Mike [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-31-2000).]

Hey, You on a mac or PC? What program are you using to unzip the download file? Mike

I have a lot of questions in regards to the various posts on the operations and crews being eligible for exiting for victory points and they don't seem to be around to answer these or any of our other questions. I don't blame them at all for taking a break though. Maybe they finally skipped the country with all their loot and disappeared to Bermuda? Mikester

Back to top. Still looking for answers. Thanks. Mike

This is a really good read. Thanks much fd ski. Mikester out.

Back to top. Still looking for explanation on this. I did do a search on terms "crew" and "exit" and read through the threads that came up. Unless I missed something none of them addressed this issue. Is / has anyone else seen this happen yet? Thanks, Mike D aka Mikester

David / everyone, Sorry, I'm going to ramble just a bit here. Please bear with me because I "think" I'm trying to make a fairly important point. Among other things one of the main points I'm trying to understand better is if the defender in an advance type of op can actually win the op. Especially against a human opponent vs. the "lame" (i.e. fairly non-agressive compared to most human players) attacking of the computer which in my view does not lend itself very well at all to this type of a scenario. I did a little experiment yesterday setting up a quick op and running through some different variations in terms of how quick (i.e. how many battles out of the total number of battles) the attacker reached the far side of the op map and what victory level that equated to. There were no casualties so that was factored out of the experiment. Surprisingly (to me anyways), even if the attacker didn't reach the end of the map until battle 6 of 6 in the test he still got a tactical victory. The range of results varied from attacker Total Victory for reaching the far edge at end of battle 2 of 6 (which is as fast as possible the way it was setup as the map was 2000m long and the individual battle map sliding window was only set to 1200m long), to something (can't remember exactly at the moment) like a minor victory for getting there after 4-5 battles out of 6, etc. Therefore it appears the only way that the defender can get some level of victory is to prevent him (attacker) from ever reaching the back of the map at all, or perhaps allowing him to only reach it say in battle 5 of 6 or 6 of 6 while inflicting massive casualties on the attacker. Guess what it boils down to is that I'm trying to determine if a human defender can play against a relatively competent human attacker and have any real hope of ever actually achieving a victory as the defender in the advance type of operations. From what I've read here so far and in other threads I'm getting the impression that people have achieved defensive victories in these types of op's but it has mostly been against the computer. However, I'm beginning to believe that the defender doesn't have much of a chance to attain, say a Total Victory, playing against a human opponent. Why do I say this. The only way I could get a total victory for the defender in my experiment was to have the attacker sit at the same point he started at in his setup in battle 1 and never move forward at all. I also looked at what happened if the attacker moved forward appx. 1/2 (actually a little more) of the distance from where he started to the far edge of the op map by the end of battle 6 of 6 and this resulted in a draw. So casualties not withstanding (and the manual says these are not counted as heavily in advance type ops) it appears the defender could battle on for 6 battles and only give up about half of the distance that the attacker needs to cross to reach the far side of the op map and achieve no victory at all. In my view this should probably be at least a marginal victory for the defender, but in the games view this apparently is not the case. Obviously the other factors here are the casualties and the force balance (and reinforcements) as controlled by the scenario designer. However, on the face of it right now it appears to me to be way too difficult for the defender in these types of ops to achieve any real level of victory. He can stop the attacker stone cold except for a minor advance in the last battle during the entire operation and only end up getting a draw? Somehow this doesn't seem right to me at all. Especially when you go read the manual and it states that the level of victory will be judged upon the speed with which the attacker reaches the far side of the map thus forcing the op to end. If I stop the attacker cold for 5 out of 6 battles of the op and then only give up say half the distance to the far edge to him in the battle 6 of 6, and the game is supposed to be judged on how fast the attacker advances, then in my view that really is probably more of a Major Victory for the defender. But again, in the game it's just a draw. What do the rest of you think??? Mike [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-31-2000).]

Hey Tanaka, There seem to be some issues with the operations that any number of us are, ahem, having problems with. I'd think it would be a good idea for you to go read the thread entitled "Operations - Your Thoughts?" and voice your opinions / concerns there with the rest of us. Mike D aka Mikester

Back to the top. As before, I'm still looking for information/ answers / explanations from BTS on these issues. And namely the issue of how the new start lines / setup zones are determined in between operaton battles and why. Because many of the results we as players are experiencing sure don't seem to be very realistic. Thanks. Mike D aka Mikester [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-31-2000).]

Hey Leland, I'm curious as to how far the attacker got from where he started in battle 1 in relation to getting all the way to the far side of the operations map. Did he get nowhere (sounds like this is what happened). Half way to far side of the map by end of battle 6? Etc. Thanks. Mike

In my opinion this is either a bug, or a design oversight. This is all happening under ver1.03 of the game (although it was started under ver1.01). My friend and I are play testing a scenario right now where he as the attacker has to exit certain units from the map to gain victory points. We are about half way thru a test game and he is telling me that his crews that have bailed out of tanks that were to exit for victory points still say that they should exit for victory points when he selects one of them and goes to the unit details screen. More amazingly (at least in my view) he is telling me that crews of knocked out half-tracks, trucks, etc. that were NEVER designated as being eligible to exit for victory points in the first place now say that the crew that has bailed out of such a vehicle is now eligible to exit for victory points!!! I'm sorry but this all seems highly UN-realistic to me. First off, why are crews that have bailed out of vehicles that were never designated to exit for victory points all of a sudden eligible to exit for victory points once they've bailed out of their vehicle? More importantly, whether the vehicle / tank that a crew is in was eligible to exit for victory points in the first place, or not, why are bailed out crews eligible to exit for victory points at all??? This makes no common sense to me and quite frankly I find it very unrealistic. Tank and vehicle crews, in general, went to the rear when their vehicles were knocked out. In fairly rare and most likely dire circumstances they might have been ordered to get to the front lines and fight, but this was most often not the case based on my reading of WWII. But making any crew that has bailed out of a vehicle (I'm now wondering if crews of abandoned crew weapons such as AT guns exhibit this behavior too???) eligible to exit for victory points means that the attacker is now forced to take unrealistic action in order to exit his crews since the defender will get the equivalent victory points for the crew if he doesn't. This makes no sense whatsoever. And is most certainly, in my view, quite ahistorical. Am I missing something? Or is this something that does indeed need to be addressed? Thanks. Regards, Mike D aka Mikester [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-31-2000).]

Gentlemen (Ladies too?), I'm trying to gather some info to better understand a few things about operations and how they work. For all of you that have played an operation please answer the following for each op played: 1) What operation did you play. 2) Were you the attacker or defender. 3) Were you playing against a human opponent, or the computer. 4) What version of CM was it played under (v1.01, 1.02, 1.03, etc.) 5) After what battle out of how many total battles did the operation end (e.g. battle 2 of 6 total battles). 6) What was the result? Attacker win, Defender win, draw. For a win what was the level of victory, total victory, minor victory, tactical victory, etc. Thanks much to all that reply. Mike D aka Mikester

I see little change. The lines in between battles are still drawn as more or less straight lines. In certain instances the defender and in others the attacker is still forced to give up ground the held at the end of the previous battle as a result. Only thing that I seem to see that really changed was that the operations don't end quite as easily when the attacker reaches the end of the map. I.e. he has to get there in force vs. just 1 or 2 units. So the premature ending of the op's seems to have been addressed. Mikester out.

Pushing this back to the top of the list. Would also like to hear from BTS on this. Thanks. Mike D aka Mikester

I very much want to know what BTS thinks about all this and the suggestion(s) that have been brought up to improve the way the start lines/positions are treated in the ops in between battles. There seem to be many people that are none too happy about the way the game does it now and I would like to hear BTS's explanation / thoughts on this matter. And whether, or not, they are considering making changes to how the operations and in particular the start line determination between battles is handled Thanks much. Mike D aka Mikester

I started playing SL about 20 years ago now. Own it and most of the earlier (first 4) add on modules like Cross of Iron, etc. Havn't played any of them in eons though. Mikester out.

Thanks Charles and LT. Mike

DW, Trying using escape to exit, not alt-tab. I've had much better luck avoiding problems doing this. It also works great to use esc to exit and then come back in to clear up occasional graphics glitches that show up every now and again. I know this doesn't totally address your concern/question. And I'm not sure why the alt-tab seems to cause problems. Mikester out. [This message has been edited by Mikester (edited 07-26-2000).]

dalem, If I remember correctly when you go into the editor there are eight buttons to go to sub-menus/functions. One is for choosing the forces for both sides. It is totally separate from the one that sets the general game settings like number of turns, number of battles in an op., and the size of no-mans-land in the operations. So you shouldn't see any forces. The map is also in a separate function so you wouldn't see the map either. Warning, if you do go looking at the map using the map preview you do see the forces on the map! Mikester out. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by dalem: Talenn- I'd be 'afraid' to edit an Op because won't I see force dispostions? I'd rather wait for a fix of some kind than ruin an Op. for myself. Or am I worrying needlessly? -dale<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>