Hamsters
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Posts posted by Hamsters
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Originally posted by Simon Fox:
I think there is some merit in what you have to say. I certainly agree that you have an unrealistic control over your troops. However, I disagree that the command process in CM simulates commands "from above" alone. The TacAI is not intelligent enough to simulate the actions of section or platoon leaders on its own. You as the player represent all levels of command which unfortunately gives you a degree of coordination not present in real life. If you really want to simulate the relaying of orders from the Btn or Co HQ down you should have a command delay of 5-10 minutes while the HQ runner finds the platoon/team/squad.
Since you seem to have misconceived the rationale BTS used to design the orders/delay structure in CM, I suggest you might like to get your collective rodent paws and click on that search button. It may be hard to find but BTS have stated their views in the past. Personally I think relative spotting will be the panacea for many of these problems and tinkering with the current system might open a can of worms. Then maybe Hamsters like worms in their lettuce?
Simon, I have read BTS's rationale for the command delays and know that the player represents a nebulous 'command presence', I just think that if this command presence is made more universal (eg the targeting/hiding/et cetera) it would be rendered more realistic. BTS has publicly stated that absolute spotting is a problem, I am merely suggesting a simple solution to ameliorate it. We all agree that command delays are a good thing, why is there friction when related to the targeting and hiding commands?
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Originally posted by Brer Pinkey:
Just a few problems I can see with this proposal.
If a command delay is added for targeting commands from the player as opposed to the AI then the following case can occur; Multiple targets move into LOS/LOF of a hiding unit late in a turn, next turn the hiding unit is ordered to unhide and fire on one of the ID'd units, command target delay allows all spotted units to safely crossing the open area into cover.
Also. The problem of absolute spotting is increased by adding a 'Spotting Delay'. Every instance of spotting would need to be buffered and timed out before displaying to the user/TacAI. I can only wonder what kind of problems that would add... Maybe squads running accross small open areas between cover unopposed cause nobody 'spotted' them in the 10 seconds they're visible.
Editied cause I'm a typing fool.
[This message has been edited by Brer Pinkey (edited 03-27-2001).]
Editied?
I agree with point two and but consideration must be made for more realistic gameplay. Ordering a unit to unhide is like any other command, it has to make its way down the command structure just like any other, otherwise units end up being selectively telepathic.
A simple and realistic way to avoid mistakes caused by slow commands is to update the Ambush command (Making it longer distance and perhaps more selective) thereby allowing you to give realistic preparatory orders to the unit in question.
I will not argue any resource issues involving a delay for spotting, as this is outside the realm of our knowledge and can only be commented on by someone with an in-depth knowledge of Combat Mission's code. I will say that it is a realistic aspect of Fog of War and, to ease the learning curve, could be added as a fourth FoW option in CM2 or CMII.
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Plus he's confused by any battle that claims to be balanced yet has a Pershing and elite troops.
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Originally posted by jshandorf:
So then would Oswald's 3 shots only count as one ammo unit for a sharpshooter?
Now you're seeing it, Jefe.
And Panzer Leader, you schmuck, the reason this hasn't been locked up isn't because The Bald One or Kwazy looked in and said, "Hmmm, well it's about the Kennedy Assassination but they seem to be polite", it's because they haven't seen it yet. Therefor, your disgusting statement does nothing but put you on the Secret Service watch list and maek other people think you're a rube.
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Oswald wasn't a sniper, Croda, he was a semi-autonomous, former regular infantry, crappy italian rifle armed nut.
And as for unbelievable, how about the woman who was hit by a meteorite? Or the fact that Reagan wasn't killed?
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No no no, the marksmen couldn't do it but the sharpshooters could. My point is that the shot was not 'impossible' as some are wont to claim.
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Kennedy was obsessed with the idea that one man could trade his life to kill another man. What's so hard to believe? Why is it so difficult for people? Why is this even interesting? They had Marine sharpshooters try the shots and three out of the five could do it. There's no 'magic bullet' because the governer was turned and looking when it hit him. Occam's Razor, me laddy.
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Oh puleaze, Jefe, you need to go see a doctor. Acoustic analysis of 60s era police radios? One nut grabs a gun and kills the president, Kennedy knew it, so do most people.
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I brought this up before but rather than bump the old topic, I'll sum up. Ordering your troops to fire on a target does not suffer from a command delay, unlike ordering your troops to move.
The argument against this delay was that a squad or section leader would quickly give fire commands. I don't think this applies, however, as the squad and section leaders (And TCs, et cetera) are handled by the TacAI. Specific targeting orders are considered to have come from 'Up top', just like movement orders.
If command delays were implemented for targeting orders, it would solve the problem with absolute spotting, as your tanks, et cetera, would not be able to target unseen forces until receiving word from HQ about their existence.
Command delays should also be implemented in the act of spotting, itself, thus simulating the unit's ability to get on the horn and alert HQ about the presence of an enemy vehicle, unit, et cetera. Because CM turns are compiled and then displayed, it can allow for regressive display of enemy units that have been spotted and reported during the turn.
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Originally posted by Count Sessine:
That's totally unrealistic and very irritating, but, alas, also very old news.
/CS
And that is totally untrue. I've been on an airpower kick for, oh, the last two months, and can tell you that this result was entirely atypical. Rarely do aircraft strafe hidden troop positions and often they'll miss vehicles in scattered trees. What happened was simple bad luck for Michael (And good luck for his opponent). In the last dozen battles I've played with aircraft, I've seen a wide variety of actions from my aircraft, ranging from the most common (Bomb, strafe a couple vehicles, disappear) to less common (Bomb, disappear) to the rare (Don't appear or, the weirdest, bomb and then strafe the same scout car 5 times, scoring a wheel hit each time, which I assume means he was going after the spare on the last run).
So, to sum, aircraft don't have an inordinate ability to spot troops but sometimes, sometimes you get a flyboy with a good eye and he ruins your day. Just like, I'm sure, in real life.
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Originally posted by Wreck:
I have a question. I understand that the cheat for autopicks is a potential problem for email games. But I have not seen anyone clearly assert that it is also a problem in TCP games. Is it?
I would think that it would take a fair amount of time to check a particular battle to find out if it is advantageous. So if your TCP opponent takes less than a minute or two to generate the battle, you should have a pretty good notion that it is fair.
If this is so, then autopick should still be usable for TCP games. Email players might get together to start their game via TCP, then take it to the mail after the setup or first turn is done.
Anyone knowing more care to comment?
This is an excellent solution. Anyone who plays a ladder game should start computer pick QBs like this, as it guarantees no cheating.
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Originally posted by Croda:
Power!!
Please, oh kindest of Crodas. Please, oh keeper of Crodaburg. For you to allow us to fight for knighthood would be like dalem to get back his ears, like Goanna to get back his game, like Peng to get back his muse. Kindhearted Croda, must thee torment us so?
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Originally posted by Croda:
Pissboy, see my comments above. This is not for Kaniggetization because you are now worthy of the dog crap on the bottom of my boot. This is an exhibition match for NZer and I to gauge the craptacularasity of our ultra-slave serf-boys. I'll let you know where and when you fight. Until then, practice your boot-licking, because you are a sorry waste of good O2
Point of order, we're squires or pissboys, not serfs. Now, let's make this a joust for knighthood so we can get some real, rabid AARs going on. The previous jousts have been nothing but namby-pamby whining. Stevetherat and ourselves would have a jolly ol' time tearing each other to pieces and would happily post responsibly. Come on, if we lose, we promise to actually act like your squire.
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Originally posted by PeterNZer:
Hard to believe I can survive all by myself, isn't it?
You idiot, of course this is a joust for knighthood. Someone needs to find a good, weird map. Someone else needs to set the weather, landmarks, time of day, et cetera and then it needs to be passed to some other knight for the units. Make sure they're craptacular and all with lots of reinforcements. We want death in droves. Remember, the Knight's Challenge needs to have either hundreds of burning buildings or, barring that, 5 300mm FOs and 1 14" FO.
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Originally posted by OGSF:
Aye, ye'll likely win this one. Much as a fat boy wi' a baseball bat can manage tae kill a frog ain a bucket. Ye'll prolly get a medal an' all.
Based on this alone, we would like to file a motion with Lorak that OGSF gains the victory and Elvis the loss for this battle. If the Mutha Beautiful Thread means anything, this stupid blighter should be rewarded for such a fine piece of humor. Come, Lorak, look in your foul heart and realize that this is more important than any score. At the very least, the game should be marked as a draw between both parties and should serve as a lesson, that if any of us loses but loses as well as this, than the loss is a loss no longer. Unless that person be a serf or squire or someone of Japanese heritage.
And Roborat, welcome back! We were just testing that evil Lorak, we love you. You've always been our favorite squire! Send us a setup, laddie. Oh, and what did you do with those pictures, anyway?
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Originally posted by Goanna:
Let’s not have another of these knight-them-all-fests just so you can get your worthless acquisitions off your books.
And a bloody huge ditto on that! Lorak the Hippie's mass knighting of love was understandable last time but these worthless squires (One of which *kick* I hate to say *kick* is ours) don't deserve anything of the sort. Now let's get started on a new challenge and THIS TIME GET SOME LIVE BODIES!
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All this talk of Foobar and Roborat reminds us that it is time for a new joust for Kniggethood!
Gather round, yonder peoples, for like the great Mumakul of yore, we shall stomp about this place in search of the righteous! What knight among ye darest offer forth a squire? What fool squire has the courage to face a new Knight's Challenge so heinous, so blood-curdlingly evil, that it would turn your own mother against you were she to know you played it? Finally, what great and furious knights will manufacture the map, the storyline and the weather? I will take on my customary role to procure the virtual armies that will be commanded by these two doomed souls.
Ride forth! And return with two victims!
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Lorak, you ninny! We gave up Roborat, he is no longer our squire. Too bloody incompetant.
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Originally posted by Pak40:
A minor note:
The W, I think, is for the Wet ammo stowage which will reduce the chance of the tank brewing up. This probably wont help in a scenario because a knocked out tank is useless; but, in an operation it might come in usefull because a non-burning knocked out tank has a chance of being recovered in a later battle.
Do people even read threads before they post?
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Originally posted by Germanboy:
Doh!
How many times does this have to be explained?!?! This should go in the FAQ:
The art of misquoting someone so as to have them make disparaging remarks about themselves is only funny if the misquoter plays it straight. eg They respond to the misqouted poster's original statement and not the misquoted statement itself. The former being comedy and the latter being just dumb.
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Originally posted by Germanboy:
I'm a gamey tactics using ninny who's so overly concerned with numbers and books that I don't grasp why Japanese-Germans (Or is it German-Japanese?) are inherently ugly people.
Hi, we're the monkey Croda gets to write all his material. About three years back we got fed up with the benifits and pay at Infinite Monkeys Amalgamated Press & Typewriter Shop, so we took this gig. To whit, here is the Crodian response:
You silly sot, we've seen actual pictures of you. You look like you haven't had sun since ol' Marge Thatcher was in office. You get angry about people commenting (In the Pool, no less!!) about your tactical decisions in combat and you now thump your chest like, gah, Lawyer. What do you expect, some kind of approval? Sure, we tolerate you, but only in the same way we tolerate the mangy dog that wets itself. In other words, we'd get rid of you but you'd just come back and we'd smell like urine afterward.
It's not that you're pompous and righteous, most people here are, it's that you're so damned sensitive. People like you go on killing sprees for no good reason, which is ostensibly ok because you're in Britland, so you can whack that lackwit David Aitken for us. Come to think of it, that's a worthy goal, continue to build yourself into a Fuhrer (That should help) and go after that Sco'ish-Welsh-Canuck mutt with a 9-iron.
Hey, why hasn't Lorak updated his site to indicate that Croda's our sponsor? It was Croda, wasn't it?
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The W just has wet storage for the ammo, causing less fires. However, tank survivability only matters in operations, really, unless there's a significant victory point loss due to tanks lighting up rather than being KOed or abandoned. In an op, however, a flaming tank is unsalvagable, whereas an abandoned or KOed tank is not.
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If there is a utility that BTS can release that allows us to set up Scenarios/Quick Battles on the fly, than a campaign would be incredibly easy. All logistics would be handled by an outside utility (Like COCAT) and then parsed into a CM scenario (If a map of the terrain where the battle takes place is available) or a Quick Battle (If the map doesn't exist, just the terrain type). Well, theoretically, at least.
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SL was wrong, the round wouldn't fall out if depressed, as it was held in by some pin or somesuch.
Command Delays & Absolute Spotting
in Combat Mission Archive #3 (2001)
Posted
This was posted in June of '99, so things may have changed somewhat. In my own test,
http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/017490.html
units did not ignore known bazookas for '5-10' seconds but rather entirely if the TacAI didn't know about them. The TacAI seemed to take a while to catch wind of the enemy 'zook and then blow it to smithereens, which is entirely realistic. If you feel it is not realistic for a unit that has no idea about another unit to not react to that unit, than we should debate this, please let me know.
This is patently not the case, however, under very specific circumstances, which we are all familiar with. Those circumstances are when a zook pops out at the end of a turn. The player can then order a buttoned, entirely-unaware tank, to instantly target this new threat, even though had this happened 3 seconds into the turn, the tank would have not reacted for a significant amount of time.
The same goes for infantry squads targeting units of strategic importance and any other targeting command given by the player. Thus we have unrealistic reactions based entirely on a gamey contrivance (1 minute turns) that are not consistent because of this. Everyone who plays this game breaths a sigh of relief when something surprises them at 59 seconds and gasps when something surprises them at 2 seconds because of this.
[This message has been edited by Hamsters (edited 03-28-2001).]