Tero

Originally posted by Krautman: a "Motti" is thé finnish equivalent of a german "Kesselschlacht"/cauldron/pocket, right? For all intents and purposes, yes.

Originally posted by Glider: So, Jason, if I interpret you correctly, you are saying this: Before the war, under ideal peacetime conditions, favourable weather, months of preparations, no enemy, all tanks checked and rechecked before the event - the Russians were capable of conducting a large-scale armoured exercise. But only barely and with probable occasional embarrassing failures. When conditions started stretching their command&control capabilities beyond that point (far beyond, in fact), under Luftwaffe attacks, with higher HQs in total confusion, rear areas sliced to ribbons by German motorized columns and with orders to make that attack yesterday things started to fall apart, and so badly that in many cases corps commanders lost 90% of their 1,000 tanks in 48 hours, most of them to non-combat causes. Some comparative figures on operational tank losses the Red Army sustained during Winter War (105 days of combat) http://www.winterwar.com/Tactics/FINatTactics.htm

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: I recall the same thing. However, the vastness of the Soviet Union, and the... uhm... problems within its government, did mean that information was incomplete and/or inaccurate even for the Soviets. The difference is that the Soviets could suplement the missing/inaccurate data with other information that the Germans lacked. For instance, the units operating along the 1940 boundaries knew the major routes and basic population centers since they were physically there for months if not years. Also, each country kinda has its own way of organizing itself, so a native force is more likely to be able to guess and anticipate when information is lacking as opposed to an outside force. In stark contrast they had all the major Mannerheim line installations and the road net and bridges in the Finnish side accurately mapped and photographed prior to their invasion in 1939. EDIT: as the war progressed the Red Army got very adebt in accurately locating and mapping enemy positions in preparation of their operations. [ March 08, 2005, 09:00 PM: Message edited by: Tero ]

Originally posted by JonS: Yes, quite right. What were those Germans thinking, trying to take over the world with crappy maps. I still find it totally incredible that they spent what, four years in France and never got around to making proper maps of it. I expect they used in 1944 the same Michelin maps they had used in 1940.

Originally posted by Andreas: Yes, but if you are thinking of the same army I am, I would argue that is a rather special case. Special case or not a full on historically and techically accurate simulation can not disregard the undisputable, quantifiable fact that the-we-both-know-which-army did it does not make it irrelevant or an outlier. No idea. Whatever it was, I would be surprised if it looked much like what was written in the field manuals. In squaddie training we were instructed to name key terrain locations and distances (known or guestimated) to them when assigning firing sectors. The platoon leader (with the 1:20/25k map ) had determined the approximate line or there were prepared defences as the case may be and we squaddies were shown the relevant key terrain locations (patch of forest, field, farm house, shed, large rock, dike/ditch etc) on the map. At the same time the fire plan was made known to us and we got the TRP names (much easier to remember than proper coordinates) in case we had to call in fire. AFAIK this had been the SOP during the war. If you have seen the movie Winter War the squaddie work in it is historically accurate.

Originally posted by Andreas: Not sure if platoon commanders in all armies would get have gotten 1:50k maps as a matter of course. Strikes me as unlikely, except when we are talking very specific operations (e.g. Overlord or Market Garden). In contrast there were armies which could give the platoon commanders 1:20/25k maps as a matter of course. They may of course have rough sketch drawings, and may have walked the ground (if defending). What was the SOP when dishing out details to the squads ? Quickly written notes giving key terrain locations and approximate distances from current location and each other ?

Preferably with a Red Herring. Whatever you do do NOT use canned salmon.

Kytösavun aukeilla mailla on kansa mi aina on vaalinut vapauttansa. Vannoivat näin pojat urheat siellä: Orjuus pois, taikka menköön henki, niinkuin mennyt on isienkin, kunnia kuolla on vapauden tiellä. Tää vala on murtumaton. Se vala on koetettu puhtaana pitää: painettu on päin inhaa itää, kaikki, mi jaksoi kalpaa käyttää, ja pidetään vasta, nyt sekä aina, orjuuden ies meitä koskaan ei paina. Taistossa kuollen sen tahdomme näyttää. Tää vala on murtumaton. Ken ompi se kansa, en mainita huoli, Utsjoki, Häme, koko Karjalan puoli, tuntevat mikä on Ilkan suku, Laurilan työ, sekä Vilppulan vaihe, lasten lapsille laulujen aihe, kunnian miehistä kaunein luku. Sankarit vaan, niin käy kuolemaan

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: No, but anecdotal info all throught CMx1 development has shown that the CPU is critically important. I remember when I upgraded from a 604e Mac to a G4... I think the crunch time reduced from several minutes down to a few seconds. I remember having Charles on the phone, who had the same speed computer as I did, and he it "GO!" the same time I did (same file, of course) and we were just amazed at how much faster the crunching was. So... the good news is that we aren't too worried about the CPU handling the new load of data. It is, of course, possible that we might overwhelm it... but remember that when we released CMBO some people were playing it on a 486!! The demands on the CPU, excepting graphics, have remained largely the same since. So take the CMx1 design and imagine the new CMx2 features running on systems that are perhaps as much as 100 times faster than what CMx1 was programmed for. We've got some elbow room for sure Actually I meant to ask about how much variation could there be in the outcome when the same sets of orders are excuted independently in two different machines. I don't think there is value in offering that sort of a feature. Just trying to find ways to scale down the file size. PBEM is PBEM, so it is not a good idea to extend it to another way of transfering files. That get's things all confused rather quickly Better to call it something else, such as "asynch transfer" (PBAT?) or whatever. OK.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: This presumes, of course, that there is not much fun to be had in the single player experience. I can't say with absolute certainty how much better CMx2's will be than CMx1, but I know it will be clearly better. Oh, I have no doubts about that. If it were feasible to do this, we would. Inherently we are a game developer... not a PC game developer. We are only the latter out of necessity since game boxes, as neato as they might be, are not up to the task of a CM type game. Perhaps a "CM Light" family of games.... Sure we do. We understand that with the introduction of various features we are increasing the data processing by a huge amount. What we don't know, and can't know, at this point is what the practical implications might wind up being. Have you done any research about how much the different machines give different results in the orders resolution phase ? No. There would be no movie playback in that case, just the final state of the turn. Not an option. How about a slide show instead a movie ? Of course if some sort of FTP server arrangement worked, that would be fine by us. But then it isn't PBEM any more. How purist do you have to be ? I send a mail saying game file downloaded and my opponent informs me when he is done.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: Don't forget that some ISPs have hard limits on data transfers per email. Most? of the free email services have hard limits, but also some pay services also have such restrictions. I've been told that DirectWay has a ridiculously small allowance, and that is probably the most expensive service available. My point is that file size, if being sent by email, is not necessarily just a dialup and not a broadband concern. What is more, when it comes to TCP/IP gaming most DSL speeds are non-quarantteed maximum speeds. So even if you have a 8Mb both ways DSL connection (which most do not have globally) you may end up with a 56k connection. A 100Mb download will be a PITA. I would imagine a binary data stream of equal amount would be an equal PITA. I also wonder if people with better speed connection will be able to choke the slower speed players game simply by being able to issue more orders in a, say, 60sec orders phase CM TCP game so that the slow connection player gets to click a unit and then wait and see the clock tic away while the fast connection player is feeding data in so that the opposing CPU gets flooded with the order data coming in.....

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: I'm not imposing anything... I'm sitting here STUNNED (to use a Dorosh term) that people are actually suggesting that PBEM "is the game" and that there is no point in making something with out it. This has been stated directly, in plain language, several times now. I'm not inventing this perspective. I for one am not even trying to say that PBEM is the game. What I am saying is that PBEM is the sole feature that keeps me playing CMx1 games. I do not support the (supposed) argument that it is not worth your while to produce a product without PBEM capability. But since I do not play FPS or simulator games online I find it hard to imagine I would start playing CMx2 online just because it is so absolutely wonderful. IMO supposing I or others subscribed to your version of the PBEM fraction mission statement would mean I would not be equally surprised if you started converting CMx2 to PS2 and XBOX. It's not relevant because a) we don't know and we'll likely unofficially support PBEM (at the very least) provided it isn't ridiculous to do so. And we'll just cross that bridge when we come to it. But obviously you have some sort of signs and portents of things to come, otherwise you would not have brought this entire issue up. Not sure what this has to do with this discussion, but the answer is the save game feature is not a problem. It simply saves the last state the game was in. Piece of cake. So, in theory, you could make a save of a TCP/IP game and, again in theory, make that file transferable between systems ? Strawman because such an issue won't come up. We've already done x-platform networking so it is a known. IIRC CMx1 does not work in native OSX. Viable PBEM support is an unknown simply because it is dependent on quantity of data, not the type of data. Yep. And I as I have pointed out before SMTP/IMAP is not the only method of transfer available. But to carry your thinking through... if we knew ahead of time that some feature of our game design would quite possibly kill cross platform support we would consider chopping out that feature AFTER evaluating its importance to the game vs. the number of Mac sales we might lose if they couldn't play against a Windows machine. If the value of the feature was greater than the Mac sales we MIGHT lose, then we would go forward with the design at the risk of perhaps not supporting Mac to Windows network play. I work in a mixed platform environment and while there are no (major) problems doing file sharing between OSX and MS server platforms I have not seen a workstation-workstation filesharing between OSX and W2K/XP work without extensive preparations. (Granted, working in the printing industry does seem to render the Mac users to be mostly of the old-OLD school with a natural aversion to MS server products being involved in the mix instead of the more traditional Unix servers. ) Since OSX is essentially a Unix and NFS sharing being a sort of a biach to implement even in the MS Professional workstation version family I just wonder how the Home editions will be able to handle it. Hopefully you will see that our logic on this is solid and consistent. Apart from the you-know-what feature feasibility I see no reason to think that your train of thought is running in circles.

Originally posted by jim crowley: Yikes, do I have to have sex with a pig in order to play CMx2 :eek: In case you missed it, the other alternative is masturbation. And afterwards; is it permissable to convert said pig into bacon sarnies? Didn't your mom tell you not to play with food ?

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: Of course nobody is saying that directly, but that is in fact what they are saying means. And that is if there is a choice between a much better game and PBEM, the choice is to go with PBEM. Therefore, by definition, they are arguing that we must go with an inferior game design right now. You should not try to impose your POV on that of the others when going about reasoning both sides of the debate. You have NOT stated in any shape or form the parameters which would render asyncronous multiplayer game inoperable in the new game engine. The file size argument is completely mute since there are numerous file transfer methods around which accomodate larger than 5mb files. Server based save game housing is one option. There is no other way of looking at this. If we are going to ensure there is PBEM, come Hell or High Water, then a less sophisticated, advanced game is the only way for us to go. Would this mean also that in solo game there would not be a mid-game save game feature ? Especially when that "need" is an opinion and is clearly an opinion of a minority. What would happen if during the compillation of the code you discover that the game would work on MacOSX but not Windows or vice versa ? Or that LAN multiplayer games across the platforms is not doable ?

Originally posted by Becket: 5. Several people are demanding that BFC not make a revolutionary game, so that they can be assured of just playing the same thing they've been playing for years, just with prettier graphics. Okay, 5 may be harsh, but that's what I'm taking from some of these posts. I for one will be properly overjoyed and extatic when the new features and screenies are published. Yes, 95% of the game for me is asyncronous (AKA PBEM) multiplayer game or hot seating. But that goes to ALL the games I play. Playing solo is definitely strictly for learning the ropes on the new game. I think that calling the feature PBEM is detrimental to the debate on the feature, given the limitations the ISP's impose on the file size per transfer and the protocol as a method of transfer in general.

Originally posted by Andreas: Bovington definitely is a day trip - you are looking at 4-5 hours by car. One-way. yeovilton, home of the Fleet Air Arm museum is almost as bad. 3 hours. We stayd in Torguay the last time we were there (some two years ago) and even that was too far off. The only time we stayed near enough was on our honeymoon in 1999 the cottage was then in Broadwindsor. I went alone for a day trip and even with 2-3 hours roundtrip the entire visit was almost 8 hours. For some curious reason.

Thanks, guys. I knew I could depend on you. A weeks trip is only seven days but now I have enough to satisfy the needs of all six of us. BTW: I caught up some remarks about meaderies ? Are they any good for visits ?

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: In other words, it is either we pursue a vastly better game and simulation OR we sacrifice the vastly better game for a single feature that adds nothing to the game itself. The Game itself is nothing, no matter how absolutely brilliant it is, if there are no human players to play it. Unless of course you plan on making it an AI vs AI screen saver. To expand on your previous simile: the market is almost entirely comprised of males. How many males do you know who opt to masturbate instead of getting a real life partner just because masturbation is so absolutely brilliant and the sacrifices made in order to get the partner diminish the frequency and overall sensation of the entire experience ? And I am not saying we all do not enjoy the odd solo session from time to time but in the long run we all either change the venue to get new partners or we do not get hitched up with a nun who will not put out by default. What IMO is needed is asyncronous play in some form. What say the term PBEM is dropped in conjucntion of this from now on so as not to get hung up on the limitations of a single method of file transfer. Some have suggested that BFC set up servers and charge for the service. That works IMO only if the game itself is a free download a la Warbirds.

We rented a cottage for a week in June near Lands End (Pendeen) and I have been looking high and low for places "of interest" around that area. So far I have drawn only gardens and family attraction parks, tin mines and beaches. Now I need some directions to sites which would make the whole trip worth my while. Bovington could be doable but is too far away even for a day trip by car. Are there any BoB air stations or other military museums or some such which would satisfy a grog ?

Originally posted by Andreas: A - they can have my firstborn too, should there ever be one. Careful there. You are now on record.

Originally posted by K_Tiger: Hi, isnt it possible to create a programm like a common messenger with abilitys to send and recive automaticaly files? Maybe as implementation for icq or other programms? Forget messenger. Using it is an open invitation to take over your machine. IIRC the latest version of Skype has a file transfer function added to it. Not that I would prefer it over a common FTP transfer for obvious safety reasons.

Originally posted by Michael Emrys: I do not find that the Allied soldier was greatly deficient in it compared to his German enemy, if at all. What does personal deficiency have to do with the issue at hand ? It would not be had that performance not been so hugely overblown for so long. Perhaps one of the reasons for the bloating is the fact that by overblowing the German performance the Allied historians could overblow the performance of their side ? So if Soviet military excellence is a little exaggerated at the present time, it has a lot of catching up to do to match the exaggerated reputation of the Germans. This is made abundantly clear every time one of these discussions breaks out in groups such as this one. Granted. Then again the Finnish take on the Red Army performance has been much more favourable (even more realistic) than the German or Western assesment. Hanging out in the fringes does have its advantages. Given the number of books I've read in the English language that do precisely that, it doesn't seem hard at all. There is a certain differences in the tone though if you read books by Ambrose for example as opposed to (whats his name who wrote Training in the British army).

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: Sure, but you're comparing apples to oranges. Perhaps. To us mere mortals a game is a game is a game. As long as we can figure out how to appeal to both the hardcore and general gamer you guys are all set. We still feel up to that challenge, so no worries OK. You have made several remarks which allude (directly or indirectly) no actual coding has been done yet. When can we expect roll out ?

Originally posted by Andreas: Yes the Germans did well. Part of the reason they did so well was that the others were not particularly impressive. So there is an inherent reason for the Germans doing so well (good operational leadership and planning, thorough implementation of combined arms warfare, willingness to take risks), and an external reason they did so well (the other side's leadership was not up to the job). The Poles were not bad, they were unprepared. Well, we'll never know for sure about that but who knows what could have happeded if they had been fully mobilized and deployed when the attack came. The French were fully prepared but indeed their leadership was poor or worse. They also had serious morale issues which made them vulnerable. If the Germans had just been great, they would still not have had these successes if the other side had been equally great. They needed bad opponents to carry out their plans in the way they did as much as they needed a good doctrine and good operational planning. What the Germans would have needed too was some effective counterespionage and security to prevent the plans from leaking to the opponents. The Allies knew most of the German plans in advance. This was in no way insignificant in helping them when they were planning their own operations.

Originally posted by Battlefront.com: PBEM is not the game. But without it the desired playability and customer product life is severely hampered for those who are diehard PBEM players. Separation axiety is catching. You hardcore Grogs are great... but at $45 you guys aren't large enough to keep the bills paid, not to mention expanding what we are capable of doing. I just hope we band of brothers have not become the fringe group weighing your down. What a dumb thing to say. How long have you been married and how many kids do you have ? With the added cost of upgrading the HW for the sole purpose of playing CMx2 the overall argumentation has to be VERY solid. you can't tell me that the price per hour of entertainment is still lower than any other form of entertainment out there (excluding masturbation, of course ) And you can not tell me that solo play (which is much like masturbation) is good enough when compared to going head to head (pun inteded) at your own leisure instead of both being in the mood for it despite global time zone and/or other limitations. Sorry, I get that at home often enough. Have you not been paying attention? We haven't a clue and won't have a clue until the game is coded. Anything I say now will be wrong. I have been paying attention. And you never admitted in so many words you did not know the size, you only said it MAY be possible that the file size might become an issue. You really should know us better than that to go blurting things like that in a growd as exitable as this one. What are you talking about? It's been $20 for a dog's age, and was $35 before that. If you purchase it as part of a multi-purchase bundle it is even cheaper. And you Europeans have the CDV Anthology available too. Having said that, we have avoided the bargain bin. But since the bargain bin is a tool for retail, at the detriment of the developer, everybody here should be happy we've avoided this. So you do agree that after all these (dog) years you still get more for a copy than the average gaming company around ?