Grendel

Woo, Myth. First multiplayer capable game I really played, and boy did I play it. I would _highly_ recommend it to anyone on these boards. It has alot of the same tactical strategies you see in CM, just on a different level. As you can certainly imagine, having melee combat and fantastical units does change the balance. But online play is far and away the best of any game I have ever played. The varied net-game types are fabulous. The community is as good as this one, just more splintered. Regarding the World War II conversion... It sucks. It is by no stretch of the imagination at all like CM combat, or even world war II combat. There is one type of tank, and one type of soldier. It plays much more like I imagine Vietnam was. Lost of guerilla tactics, lots of duck and fade tactics, it is VERY dependant on recon. Units die much faster than in CM, Tanks are much more deadly. Anyway, I still love Myth more than CM, but only because of all the people I've met through it, and the tournaments I still play in. That and the lower time commitment; I can rarely find time to get through a game of CM. I go by Carbon on b.net. ------------------ Cross over the cell bars, find a new maze, make the maze from its path, find the cell bars, cross over the bars, find a maze, make the maze from its path, eat the food, eat the path.

You're missing his point. First, there are always more allies because historically, that's the way it was. The reason for that was simple: the allies planned it that way. The Sherman line of tanks was cheaper, lighter, faster, and disposible. If 3 shermans were knocked out to take down a tiger, so be it, that's how it was planned. You can't "turn the tables" and have a valid battle; the German tanks are _always_ better than the allied tanks, 1v1. They are slow, deadly, behemouths. If it there were EVER equal numbers of tanks in a battle, the allies would have lost, tank for tank, the Germans were just better equipped. I don't see your operation ever balancing well, there aren't really any "in-between" German tanks, only really weak ones that aren't really useful in combat, and their standard top of the line, Sherman munching, big ones. D:

Agreed. My first instinct was to place them with as wide a FOV as possible, but that quickly proves diasterous; AT guns lack the mobility of tanks, and so can't pop a shot and run. So what everyone else is saying is exactly right, place your AT weapons with tightly defined FOVs. It's possible that nothing will cross the path of your AT guns, but if it does, your chances of a kill and further survival are much higher.

No, I think you miss his point, Ice. The Myth is by no means a static game either, but as any programmer can tell you, "random" events are not all that random. Every method of random number generation starts with a seed value. Yes, a CM turn will turn out differently each time you run it, but only because the seed value is different. BTS would need to weigh in on this, but I'm 90% sure if you had the same seed value, the turn would always compute to the same result. Fuzzy logic might play with this assumption, but I doubt it. AFAIK, given the same inputs, fuzzy logic will give you the same output, it just weighs all the inputs logically. And if there IS a random component, that's a product of the seed value as well. That said, all you need to do is included the game seed value, or the turn seed value, in the replay file. The CM engine could be modified to take orders from a file instead of a human, and replay the turns. The downside to this is that you would have to recalculate each turn as you viewed it. This isn't a huge problem for anyone with a decently powered machine; I find I wait more for the AI than the turn generation on larger scenarios, but it's still a problem. So how about this for an option: Have two replay types, a small, tradeable, "orders" file, that works like a Myth film. You can trade this with friends, upload, whatever. You have to run this file through a convertor that processes all the turns at once and makes it into a viewable CM movie file. This would keep the file size of shared files low, increase the overhead on viewing the film, but still get all the features, as opposed to what Ice originally put forth as an idea. And regarding the top down view, I don't think that's useful at all... This game is entirely 3D, and losing the ability to see terrain changes takes so much away from the game. And honestly, have you ever watched a turn from the max overhead zoom out? It's really quite boring, and alot of battles are won not on overall strategy, but infantry tactics, or tank tactics, which may transfer well in flight sims, but I don't think it would make a favorable transfer in CM. - Grendel

Your problem is probably your method of unzipping the file. Stuffit Expander has an option to "convert files to macintosh format." You don't want this to happen, it screws with creater IDs, and makes your life hell when dealing with Zips. Try turning this off, it's in preferences. If you're using ZipIt, I can't help you, you should get Stuffit Expander anyway, it's far better. You can find it at www.aladdinsys.com.

Micromanagement is what makes this game so elegent. You're free to think at the platoon level, and say "Two platoons on the right flank, one on the middle, hold back one in halftracks for quick redeploy," but you're also free move individual squads to make the most of your platoon placement, taking advantage of minor terrain dips, enemy concentrations, and the like. The units "take care of themselves" only when it's in their personal best intrests too. As a commander, you're expected to give everyone orders, and as a soldier, they're all expected to follow orders. You don't give a grunt orders like "Head that direction, and make a decision from there," you tell them to "Head to Building A, clear the area, and advanced to building B." Ambiguities like "clear the area" do work in CM, I rarely use targetting with infantry units, unless I'm trying to clear out a certain machine gun nest, or supress enemy units while I'm rushing. The individuals generally make good choices about what stuff is worth firing at, and what isn't. And if you think about it, do you really want platoon level stuff to be totally out of your control? I hate games where I feel like my control didn't change the outcome at all, which is what it would be like if the AI controlled squad level tactics. ------------------ Cross over the cell bars, find a new maze, make the maze from its path, find the cell bars, cross over the bars, find a maze, make the maze from its path, eat the food, eat the path.

There's a bigger problem here, one which makes tank combat initially really frustrating: lack of understanding of the vehicle info page. When I was a newbie, those numbers scared me, and I sort of ignored them. The trick here is to match the "penetration" values at the bottom, with "Armor Thickness" values at the top. The key to notice here is how the armor thicknesses change as you move around the tank. Almost without fail, the top front of a tank is the most protected, with the rear back being the least, and everything else somewhere in between. As a result, you can penetrate from much further distances (if you're using AP shells, C shells don't lose penetration over distance), or you can penetrate much deeper if you're close. For the record, those angles are, I believe, angle from perpandicular to a given side. So if it says 60 degrees, it means that you're at a 60 degree angle with a line perpandicular to the tanks side. Sorta complicated, but it boils down to this: you want to be perpandicular to a tank's armor to get the best penetration. There are occasions when some tanks are just useless against others, which is probably what you're seeing. If the penetration values are lower than the thickness, no matter where you hit the tank, the shell is going to ricochet, or break up, or something like that. With a couple of exceptions, no amount of luck will change this. Solution? Don't engage head on. While ducking forward and back is nice, it assumes that you can actually penetrate the armor, and it's just a matter of getting a hit in, or keeping your tanks alive. If you can't penetrate, work a tank in on the side, it'll make your life MUCH easier. In the case of Paris, your life is rather hard. The German tanks have a rather commanding view of that main avenue, and the Sherman's frontal armor just can't stand up to what the German's have to throw at it. I recommend working your tanks on the far (north? I forget...) side, up as fast as possible. I also recommend getting a couple of tanks into the middle area, you might be able to get better LOS on tanks on either of the side avenues from there, as well as great LOS on the buildings on the side of that main avenue. Good Luck! ------------------ Cross over the cell bars, find a new maze, make the maze from its path, find the cell bars, cross over the bars, find a maze, make the maze from its path, eat the food, eat the path. [This message has been edited by Grendel (edited 08-27-2000).]