billcarey

I am PBEMing someone, and on one of the turns, I saw to my shock and horror probably 25 or 30 sound contacts, flying around the map at what looks like 100 mi/h. They were all tank contacts, and in a turn they coalesced into one. Is this a bug or my units being scared and stupid and thinking they hear 20 tanks flying around? - Bill

Thanks for your reply. Is the low ammo for tanks modled in the demo? It dosen't seem to be as my tanks just keep shooting and shooting What I was really asking about the low ammo is can it get lower? If I have a rifle squad that is low and it shoots for 5 or 10 turns every turn will it eventually just run out (or have a really low firepower) to simulate the difference between your last 10 clips and your last 10 shots? Thanks - Bill

I really like the low ammo concept for infantry and think it adds a lot of realism. Does the firepower of units get lower the longer they shoot on low ammo? Also - will there ever be a way to tell a AFV to sit tight on a couple of rounds just in case... I would have liked 5 HE at the end of a Chance encounter game, but the tac ai shot them at (nonthreatining) stuff. Also - tried the CC2 demo - last released for mac. Wow. CM is incredible beyond belief. Thanks BTS. - Bill

Actually, using resources or loose files is not really a platform issue - it is a design philosophy issue. The *only* reason I called is a platform issue is that in the case of CM, the Mac version of the game and Windows version of the game implement the graphics differently. I would suspect that Berlichtingen is correct and this is because is is somehow harder to implement in Windows. I don't know myself, I didn't write the game. The reason I was throwing around such large numbers of BMPs is because of their naming. The beta demo tops out at image #5041 and I would think that even with a 1 in 10 utilization of numbers, there will be quite a few. Just look at all the different german tanks they have to do. Winter, rain, snow, night... This is going to be a *big* game. Berlichtingen, I learned the hard way with resources too. Modified the menus currently in use by my system. Set up a loop that created in infinite number of File menus... Not pretty and had to reinstall the system. - Bill

Berlichtingen, Oh, ok I did misunderstand that... my fault How resources are worse than 8000 BMPs: Lets say you want to move two textures (the sherman upper hull and turret) which you know are 4051 and 4052 because someone writes a guide to which are which. With seperate BMPs you just grab them and send them. With resources you open the graphics file in res edit, scroll down to the 4000s extract them, save them, and send the files. If you have res edit on your computer you qualify as atleast an novice code geek, so that process should not intimidate you. However, the *vast* majority of mac users do not have res edit because it is dangerous and they haven't learned enough to know how to use it without ruining their system. (I learned the hard way ) Resources, while much more powerful are daunting to first time users. Overall, I think the tradeoff favors resources... Thanks for the info about BMPs. I'll see if I can whip out something over winter break that converts BMP folders to resource files. - Bill

I would add one more "gamey" tactic that I am sometimes guilty of: spraying AP rounds at infantry. If *you* were the commander of a Hellcat and you fired all your AP at a submachinegun squad, and not 5 minutes later a StuG appeared and knocked you out how would you explain that to you CO? "Well - yeah I did lose the hellcat that was providing AT for the advance - but I sure got those 3 guys in the SMG squad!" Once you run out of HE, just use MGs or withdraw! - Bill

Yeah- If someone tells me how BMPs are structured (are they compressed? how long is the header information? and how do they end?) and BTS promises not to change the way images are handled in the final release I can put something together over christmas break. I've changed the tank textures some and I think texture mods will be common when the game ships. It would be nice to have pc-mac interoperability. Also, if such a utility does exist (by BTS) I don't want to spend christmas writing another one... And I can only write for the mac (sorry...) - Bill

Berlichtingen <quote> Not to start a platform war, but how is it worse? </quote> I am speaking primarily from a knowledge of the way the mac handles images and resources. If the PC does it very different somehow, then tell me and I will say nothing more. From a coding standpoint it is *much* easier on the mac to work with resources than with individual pucture files. i.e. instead of using the file manager to open 15k files you use it to open say, three. Also, loading resources to memory is easier than loding picture files on the mac. If the coding is different on the pc it may be better to use pics. Orgainization: You can give the pictures both a number and a name. This is useful for finding the "scattered trees" texture without knowing that it is pict number 74854. If you are in the mood you can group picts in resources by what they are so that there is a file for terrain, a file for tanks, etc. BTS did not do this, but it could be done. Also having 3 files clutters the filing system much less (and copies faster and is smaller) My graphics file is 5.5mb and the BMPs are 8.8mb. This will be significant when the whole game is released. Resources have problems to (corruption...) and you need to have res-edit to play with them. A dangerous but fun program... BTW: Does anyone know what BMPs look like (internally) I need to know thier file structure before I play with a shape shuttle for CM. Are they compressed? - Bill

Mike, If you place a movement waypoint outside the map the units will move off the map and vanish. Works at the back ends of the map. Don't know about the sides or enemy area. - Bill

CoolColJ, Unfortunately, Mac users do not see the same thing PC users see. The Mac version of CM stores the images for the game in three resource files. This is in many ways better than 15000 separate images, and in many ways worse. (No Platform War!) I suppose you could write a converter that extracts the picts from the resource to bmps and vice versa. I don't think it would be a significant coding task, but I'm not farmiliar enough with the file structures to pull it off... Do you remember which textures you changed by any chance? I can copy them 1 by 1 but there are so many... Bill [This message has been edited by billcarey (edited 12-09-99).]

Cool Textures I modified the shermans to have a firebolt on the side of the turret and I think it turned out ok. If someone has a place to put it I will post a picture of the tanks. (Kind of a platoon insignia thing...) - Bill

Ship it.

Hey, 1 min does feel short sometimes. Another way to decrease the control players have over their troops would be, insead of having them "pause" to wait for orders from their commanders for a while, sometimes hae units misinterpret orders. Move to the wrong house, shoot at the wrong unit, deviate from their waypoints some, stuff like that. This would simulate the difference between the orders, "Sgt. Millbrook, move your men in a tight formation up those scattered trees as fast as you can and lay down some fire on the machine gun that's wrecking up on our mortars." Which is fine if the commander is 2 feet from Sgt. Millbrook, but is probably not very realistic for combat situations. I would imagine the orders might be something more like, "Millbrook! Wax that machinegun! Now!" He may not know which one to hit or even where it is and that can lead to confusion. Having units misinterpret orders once in a while would make the game unpredictable and effective give the player less control. (Good things) Just an idea - Bill [This message has been edited by billcarey (edited 12-03-99).]

After beathing the Germans off in Last Defence suffering 17 casualties (4 KIA) I got to wondering... In campaigns will a small percentage of wounded soldiers become available to fight again (perhaps with reduced effectiveness) I suppose this depends on what the wounds are. If they are only really serious hits then probably not, but if things like grazing arm shots are counted, then in a couple of hours some soldiers might be able to re activate. Never having been shot at, I would think even a slight graze would drop you out of the fight for a while, but not for hours or days. If anyone knows what type of injuries the ones in CM are let me know. - Bill Carey

Dar That's exactly what I would like to see. It's silly to stick around in a kill zone if you don't have overwhelming firepower. Hunt/Reverse leaves the AFV out in the open until someone dies, which is not good (it's usually me.) If the pause could work that way it would make things much easier. - Bill

More often than not in Last Defence as the Germans I end up with two or three hellcats left after one turn and me with only tiger (who is hiding behind a house). It usually hangs out there gor a couple of turns and finally emerges to combat the Hellcats. Sometimes it is victorious, more often it is scrap. What I would like to be able to do is tell the Tiger, "Roll out, dump off a couple of shots, and get your butt behind the house." Currently I am ordering the Tiger to hunt forward while targeting the Hellcat. If I order it to reverse back to the house it either dosen't fire any shots and moves out and back or stays out firing for the whole turn. Is there a command: "Pause and Fire for x seconds"? If not, I think it would be useful for ambushes and whatnot. - Bill

I had a team with 2 fausts at a distance of *7* meters from a sherman, and they ignored it. What could be more important than a tank 30 feet away!? I wish they would have shot it. - Bill

I'll play you if you want. Send your turn (any scenario, any side) to billcarey@virginia.edu, and let's see what happens. It'll be my first time vs. a person not the ai - Bill Carey

Generally pressure is a force per unit area, so I would think that it would be M/A or Kg/scm. It is not readily apparrent to me what force per volume would be. As to the conversion, I was never any good with USCS units. Someone else will have to pick that one up. -Sorry - Bill Carey

I was defending Reiseberg, and doing a pretty good job of it. My 88 on the hill had smoked one Sherman and A Schreck toasted another one on the road to town, and managed to high tail it back to HQ and stay alive. Everyone else was hiding. The AI got overconfident and rushed a heavy attack up the middle, where I had 2 platoons of SMGs and some VGs waiting. Ahhh, sweet victory. The game ended in a total allied victory One of the shermans stopped *7m* from a regular smg squad and started firing at them with its 50 cal. They did not respond. They continued merrily firing at an unidentified squad some 200m away. They were not pinned or shaken, and they were firing, just not at the tank 30 feet away. I attempted to rectify this three straight times, targeting the Sherman, but they never fired either of their two panzerfausts. IMHO a tanks 30 feet away would probably take priority over just about anything (except a bigger tank...) and I was wondering if the panzerfaust had a minimum effective range or if the Tac AI and I just disagree about priorities. - Bill Carey

-- I get the feeling that the AI will always be at a disadvantage in any balanced scenario. What I mean to say is that, as a human playing this computer game, I know that BTS is going to provide me with a balanced scenario. That means that if I have tanks, then I KNOW the AI will have some, too. But the problem is that AI does not know it is playing a game. -- Will there be any scenarios that are unbalanced (either for or against the player)? For example, a platoon or two of defending Germans against a couple of tanks and four or five platoons of Americans. The victory conditions for the disadvanteged side would be something like "Don't die for a couple of minutes to let this truck run away" Throwing in almost unopposed scenarios would make a campaign interesting... - Bill Carey

Fionn - No, no one had opened up yet. I suppose the tiger just didn't realize any threat (realistic). I guess that explains it. However I would expect it not to turn back towards Germany, knowing that the Allies are generally to the west... If it's been fixed, that's fine. Only happened a couple of times. Bill Carey

Definitely O Fortuna for the intro... In Game, not sure yet - maybe depends on whether you are the kicker or the kickee in the current battle. - Bill Carey

Actually, I have noticed a bizzare AI potential glitch. I was playing last defense on about turn six, and ALL of my forces were hidden. The AI Tiger came to the bend in the road, and turned around backwards. It then reversed into the road, and drove into some scattered trees staying backwards. I understand caution, but it probably should know which general direction the enemy is in. There was a lot of traffic in the area (3 HT and a Stug) so that may have confused the Tac AI a bit. Needless to say, when the Cats showed up they torched the tiger pretty quickly. Is the backwards thing an AI glitch? (It's the only potential I've noticed) - Bill Carey

K_Tiger I've had the exact opposite experience with the 'Cats. The last time I played they fired *12* shots at the tiger and missed with every one. Needless to say, they weren't around next turn to try again... Luck seems really important in armor meetings at long range. I've seen it go both ways. My tiger has missed a bunch too. - Bill Carey