Slapdragon

You can love Elvis, would much prefer to see him and Lars incarcerated for mopery wih a very large wallpaper hanger named Bruce.

You can love Elvis, would much prefer to see him and Lars incarcerated for mopery wih a very large wallpaper hanger named Bruce.

[serious] Seanachai. When I was 21 I was an uneducated television director with zero ambition. In that year two things moved me to get a college education which I could neither afford nor really had the smarts nor gumption to complete (at 16 my High School counsellor told me I was only good for robbing banks and living in a trailor, and he was serious -- I quit High School the next year and completed it by going to the local corrections institute as a day student.) Both involved death and my first experiences with it, as I was a really niave and indestructable man. The first event was that I had the opportunity to be within shouting distance of a major plane crash only hours after it happened. A few days later, I was informed my father, 39, had terminal leukemia and would sucumb to the disease in short order. His form was environmental, and he likely got it in the service, but could have easily picked it up anywhere. So I decided to change my life. I tried to sneak into the Marine Corps, who would not accept me because of my own minor illness. I tried to get into the Antartcic expedition to McMurdo. Finally I took my accumulated savings and found a college that would accept a person with a 1.8 GPA but a 1500 SAT, that had a job in my field. One day, I met a person who had been in the plane crash. I expressed remorse at what had happened to her and she told me that I was crazy -- half of the passengers died on the plane, but half, she pointed out, had survived, and she showed me an article where a dozen pilots had tried to land the plane on a simulator with the same damage, and all had crash landed at several hundred knots killing everyone aboard. In other words, a miracle. A week later, I learned that my father's cancer, in the final stage, had gone suddenly and without reason into remission. I had been praying for him for a couple of nights because I thought that any day I would get a call to return and be with him in Florida for his last days. My father is 53 now and still has the disease, in remission. His doctor says it will be his cause of death, when it returns again. Each day I pray for him, and each day he survives, so now I am a little like a Vegas gambler who won a hand while rubbing a rabbit's foot. I do not pray for anyone else, figuring that I might jinx the thing. Now however, I will pray for two. Your sister is not a victim of cancer, but a survivor of a disease that usually gives few second chances. She will be a survivor a fifth time. And if I can provide any other service, please let me know. My own father's condition in the end made me change my life, and changed his. In the end, both he and I credit it with making our lives better. [/serious] However, I will still make a "vein" attempt to whip your tail in the game.

[serious] Seanachai. When I was 21 I was an uneducated television director with zero ambition. In that year two things moved me to get a college education which I could neither afford nor really had the smarts nor gumption to complete (at 16 my High School counsellor told me I was only good for robbing banks and living in a trailor, and he was serious -- I quit High School the next year and completed it by going to the local corrections institute as a day student.) Both involved death and my first experiences with it, as I was a really niave and indestructable man. The first event was that I had the opportunity to be within shouting distance of a major plane crash only hours after it happened. A few days later, I was informed my father, 39, had terminal leukemia and would sucumb to the disease in short order. His form was environmental, and he likely got it in the service, but could have easily picked it up anywhere. So I decided to change my life. I tried to sneak into the Marine Corps, who would not accept me because of my own minor illness. I tried to get into the Antartcic expedition to McMurdo. Finally I took my accumulated savings and found a college that would accept a person with a 1.8 GPA but a 1500 SAT, that had a job in my field. One day, I met a person who had been in the plane crash. I expressed remorse at what had happened to her and she told me that I was crazy -- half of the passengers died on the plane, but half, she pointed out, had survived, and she showed me an article where a dozen pilots had tried to land the plane on a simulator with the same damage, and all had crash landed at several hundred knots killing everyone aboard. In other words, a miracle. A week later, I learned that my father's cancer, in the final stage, had gone suddenly and without reason into remission. I had been praying for him for a couple of nights because I thought that any day I would get a call to return and be with him in Florida for his last days. My father is 53 now and still has the disease, in remission. His doctor says it will be his cause of death, when it returns again. Each day I pray for him, and each day he survives, so now I am a little like a Vegas gambler who won a hand while rubbing a rabbit's foot. I do not pray for anyone else, figuring that I might jinx the thing. Now however, I will pray for two. Your sister is not a victim of cancer, but a survivor of a disease that usually gives few second chances. She will be a survivor a fifth time. And if I can provide any other service, please let me know. My own father's condition in the end made me change my life, and changed his. In the end, both he and I credit it with making our lives better. [/serious] However, I will still make a "vein" attempt to whip your tail in the game.

There's no need to explain why you're loosing, just try to cut down on it and have a go at tightening once in a while. </font>

My original number was 1000 or so before the great crash that took down the whole shebang. Now I cannot even find my old login. But no, I am not an Olde One, being a former squire of Berli. I only have one former squire, Noba, who has exceeded his master. I often like to think of myself as someone who could have been an Olde One, but whose lobotomy did not take. Anyway, all that is crap. I need some form of CM working so that I can start gracefully loosing and explaining why the game was not fair in the first place. BTW -- I almost moved to your pitiful land because of my wife being deported. Turned out the job I was interviewing for was handled out of NZ, but actually was in this place called Fiji. Which I guess is OK, because I saw all the choice lots of land you have in the Lord of the Rings. I understand the rest is shacks without running water, so I am not sure I wanted to come anyway. (If you think I am hard on you, you should hear what I say about my wife and her unique heritage. Being descended from two sets of cannibals is way better than one.)

There goes another american projecting the us approach to government and life in general onto an unsuspecting helpless country. Next thing we know, our dragonboats will be anihalated by the us Pacific Fleet, our infrastructure bombed the crap out of and our sheep confiscated all on the pretense that NZ is hoarding weapons of grass destruction. All this inevitably followed by announcments in the style of "Despite heavy opposition by NZ militia, us troops have captured Whangarei. This is the 6th Whangarei the us forces have captured this week" and the like. We are a monarchy, thank you very much! None of that "let's see who can strike the best pose, buy more media and get the best lawyers so he can be dictator for the next four years and get first dibs at the interns" crap. It's times like these I wish the poms had won that pathetic excuse for a war you had with them. P.S. Whata makes you think I'm a Pakeha, bro? You keep goin the way you're goin and me and the whanau are gonna come down there and show you where to put your whakapapa, followed by a nice hangi, with your dead carcass as the centre piece. BTW, got a spare dollar? </font>

Unlike Belgium, most of New Zealand is quite a way above sea level, but of course being an american, you probably think both these countries are somewhere in Asia, twit. </font>

Halfwits! Dalem not having been close to a woman! I know this is not true. My last arrest of him was when I discovered his glory hole into the women's restroom of the Pikeville Center for Feminine Reorientation and he had to have been within at least a meter of a woman when I put the first cuff on. (S)he was quite a looker too, even at that stage, as I discovered during my investigation of Dalem's perversions.

Blimey it is. Who let a person from that soon to be sunken land (wonder why us Amis want global warming so much, it will do in Belgium and New Zealand once and for all). In any case, your grand liege is the honored, respectable, sadly loopy and with a bit of drool on his cheek, but still manly I am told, Berli the oldest marine in the universe.

That's not a pun, you sodding foreigner. That is, at worst, a play on words. What is it with this 'stikkypixie' creature? It's been here a great deal. Is it a serf, yet? A Squire? Justicar, we need a ruling on this...small dying creature. Does anyone here claim it? </font>

I owed you a game! I thought I stiffed Meeks on one. Must be getting old to confuse you and him. In any case, I now have the fastest computer on the planet. I also have an ancient crochety computer with a brand new video card. Unfortunately, my lightning fast mamba with 6 gigabytes of RAM and 10k RPM SATAs cannot play CM, and my new fecking ATI video card for my old computer makes my screen go all sorts of unusual colors when CM is launched. In addition, I had a Dell for exactly six weeks before it dies a horrible death. In other words, I now have nothing that can play CM!!! Since you challenge me so nicely, and since I skanked you, Meeks, Mace or everyone, I accept your challenge. Give me a week or so to figure out how to rearrange video cards and I challenge you to a QB at midnight in the fog, or to something equally terrible. Maybe in Italy.

Valiant Noba I have returned to this inferiocracy (what else could it be with Mace at the helm?) to see you have grown and blossomed into a true night of astounding proportion. Where I was once the Ronin to your sidekick in Kurosawean proportion, now I am merely the Yoda to your Luke. As for creative spelling, in the internet and without the boon of spell checkers, a fast touch typer like me who could give a feck about what other's think merely chooses the closest letter to the least occupied finger which will serve to further the sentence along. Z, S, heck, sometimes I write a B instead of ss. It is all good. In fact, creative spelling is like genetic expansion since sometimes the result is an unintended new allele that adds to the vitality of the message. I am thinking on this subject because I just discovered my wife was a mud person and that my relations with her were tainting my superior gene pool (I thought it was the other way around.) Speaking of tainted pools, I am always reading this one, even if I do not always post.

Heavy metal tone poem? How dare you use "Thick as a Brick" in the same sentence as heavy metal. I would saw open your skull and tweezer out your brain if I had tweezers that small. Noba my friend, please chastize this bastage until his braille reader makes his fingers of his left hand bleed. For good measure, accuse Seanachai of a putred perversion.

Sounds fascinating.....zzzzzzz....</font>

By the way, in a way a challenge for the challenge thread, but a new Role Playing Game, written by yours truly, is now available for down loading and playing. Anyone who has ever played The Morrow Project or Aftermath will long for a return to the simplicity of RPGs, on the Internet now. If interested, please e-mail me so I can set you onto the discussion group page which hosts the game.

One big nob as opposed to a bunch of small nobs. It is called, in scientific grog lingo, conservation of nobism, which says that having one big nob is far better than being covered with little nobs like a putz such as Seanachi or having a head that looks like a nob has been stuck in it once to often, such as Joe Shaw. It is all a measure of your affective state and its relation to your supernob, which is somehow connected to the superego, and if you pull it often enough, you will go blind.</font>

Oh, I still owe MrSpkr a beer. We need you back in the war Steve by the way.

One big nob as opposed to a bunch of small nobs. It is called, in scientific grog lingo, conservation of nobism, which says that having one big nob is far better than being covered with little nobs like a putz such as Seanachi or having a head that looks like a nob has been stuck in it once to often, such as Joe Shaw. It is all a measure of your affective state and its relation to your supernob, which is somehow connected to the superego, and if you pull it often enough, you will go blind.

Just wanted a chance to stop by and say you all are a bunch of nobs. Except Berli of course.

Adding a "small turret front" variable to the game may work, but here is what would have to be done: 1) Define what this actually is. Adding an APBC round to a gun that lacks it, or increasing the filler of a round, is something that we can find emprical evidence of and add to the established model. A small front tank modifyer would need some research to define, 1) what constituted a small front, 2) did this really result in a useful change, 3) if yes to 2, then how much change to the physics model, 4) such a change would then have to be put into place across the board with each tank having the frontage of its turret given a variable based on some criteria of small, medium or large, or something to that effect. 2) Check the variable to see if the change to the physics model works as expected across all tanks. This is not just a single modifyer to a single tank, but a change to the model. Changes to the model have happened in patches before to fix unexpected behavior (usually when someone does something unrealistic, like charging jeeps at the enemy at high speeds) but often a lot of though must be placed into them. 3) Create the math for the patch. My suggestion is that narrow turret is an idea, a theory, that may need some more research to make it work and be codable. Sort of like presenting evidence in a trial. The game is innocent until proven guilty, and you need to prove it guilty. You have a little probable cause, now you need to get the search warrant and dive into the data.

First, I think it is useful to point out some things that make CM different from other games, which is where most people get their understandings of how armor works. CM uses a physics model to determine round penetration on tanks taken from the best known research on the subject. That is very different from most games. Each game creates what I call an abstraction layer, which is the point where data is abstracted to allow the engine to function. For the average wargame, the abstraction layer comes for penetration in tank hits comes from the use of a lookup table to determine penetration. A look up table is simply a table which the application checks when a round hits, and compares the penetration value of that round at that range compared to the armor of the target and declares the hit either a penetration or a failure to penetrate (or sometimes offers other results). This abstracts out the physics and uses known penetration data, often against test metal of varying hardness. CM is a much more complex beast. Rather than saying a 76mm penetrates x amount of armor at x range and leaving it at that, the designers of CM have created a very complex physics models based on a relatively large number of variables. Thus you feed CM the velocity and type of round being fired, the exact range to allow it to figure residual velocity, the angle of the target armor, the hardness of the armor (part of the armor quality figure) and other data and you get an formula that results in a penatration number. Then, as can be seen by any attempt to backwards engineer the game, it throws in a variable at some point (it seems to me that there are more than one variable, but that is Charles business and I don't really want to know, I just know it defies easy statistical analysis where a less complex variable would be easy to suss out) and you get a range of penetration results. Changing the system means one of two things: 1) The physics model is wrong. Then the question is how the model is wrong, realizing that you may be changing the penetration value of every other tank in the game, since they all use the same model) 2) The data on the tank of the shell is wrong. In the abstract, the game was tested to see if it resulted in results that were to be expected by the best data available. Some of the abstracts put forward are: A) The T-34 was feared by the Germans. In other games with less sophisticated modelling, they are nearly invulnerable to guns which in CM can occasionally take them out. C) There are accounts of T-34 taking many hits from 37mm guns and surviving. However, we also know that: A) Many T-34s were killed by all sorts of means in the first year of the war. ATR gunners shot vision blocks out, petrol bombs caught them on fire, grenades disabled them, mines wrecked them, and even the lowly 37mm was capable of killing them sometimes. The physics model mostly works. C) Some data is lost to us forever, but mostly we have the best data that can be found. In addition, there is the fact that the game does, like all games, have an abstraction layer. That layer is that the game does not truely model angle in all cases because the tanks position is a point rather than a shape in space. That is why you cannot hide behind a moving tank -- to provides no cover. So concievably we may not be accurately modelling the disadvantage small AT guns had when firing up at the front turrets of tanks at closer range -- namely high chance of richochets and more armor thickness to penetrate. So what has to be looked at is: Can the simulation, as is, handle the proposed variable. Is the variable worth handling or does it get swallowed in passing. Is the variable worth the effort adding Does the variable even exist, or is our "feeling" that something is wrong incorrect.

Another though just struck me, those transport elements for the extra men could be at a higher echelon. Although likely it is just a limitation of the game engine (in real life you can shoe horn in another guy even into a time Halftrack body) it could be that in practice the companies had transport help from higher echelon units and the only limitation is that we are seeing only the tactical transport. After all, how many time did German mechanized troops have to "Climb on ze tanken" to ride into battle?

Actually, the trouble is in part the engine, but I also bet it is realistic -- Germans never had the stuff they were suppose to have in their TOE. At the start, the guys got shoe horned in with the mortar and bombs -- somehow. But soon things seemed kinda roomy, course Fritz and Hans are one with yesterdays snows and only half of Karl was ever found, so the mortar crew fits right in... To give it some realistic side notes, US Tank battalions acquired extra half tracks because their TOE could not all fit in the basic vehicles. US armored divisions by the end of the war had in some cases twice their TOE, the only way to make the whole division mobile at once. US recon companies often also got ahold of extra tracks, and US medical units used hundreds of captured German halftracks through out the war.

One of the things I thing the next CM will be is something that all of us out front will not likely appreciate all that much, but which in the long run we should all clamor for and beg the god of gamers on our knees for while slathering Peng up with cookie batter and gibbering in tounges like Seanachi drunk on cheap wine is a modular CM engine. A modular engine would be one designed to act as a center peice for any era based on a set of rules and UI, with an easier to modify chasis around it. That would mean the new gimmicks coming up would be at the center of the CM design, the outer parts of which could be worked on by teams of designers. Thus, Charles would concentrate on a portable code, and other designers would merely work on the huge amount of research needed to tie this all together into games. In essence, the time between game releases could go from 2-3 years, to much more rapidly, and areas which BTS does not at this time have as much interest in could be opened up. The work on CM:BB was a huge labor, made more huge by the fact that the application does not seem to be designed to be plugged into, thus leaving Charles with lots of work to get the system turned into another arena. This does not mean that the environments would be moddable, namely that anyone could tinker with the stats and the models, but that research groups with less programming skill could work on the meat that surrounds the standard bones of the next CM system. Just an idea.