Joeri

After thinking this over for a while I have made the following assumption on how it works: Chance of bogging is dependent on: - ground condition (unknown how but probably just how deeper the mud/snow the more chance) - terrain type (open terrain gives highest chance, then wheat, then brush, then scattered trees and lowest chance on roads) Movement order has no influence because when ground conditions are bad, the driver automatically takes the slowest possible speed. Exception is reverse which removes the chance of getting bogged (this is probably a bug). Based on these assumption best tactics in bad conditions would be (if roads are not available): - use reverse whenever no contact is expected (and you don't mind taking advantage of a possible bug). - use rough terrain like scattered trees and avoid open terrain when advancing to contact. Totally different from how I used to do it. Joeri

I did some test with different movement speeds with very surprising/interesting results. The setup was approximately similar to test with different terrain. This time I used only open terrain. I did a test with deep mud and a test with mud. 32 tanks total 8 on fast move, 8 on move, 8 on hunt and 8 on reverse. two sets of 10 turns recording as previously explained. The results: First of all, the tanks which were driving in reverse never bogged down. So They are left out the data leaving 24 tanks. First the combined test results. These include three different movement orders (fast, move and hunt) and two ground conditions (Mud and deed mud): *** * DT * B * U * I * BC% * UC% * IC% * Total 309 * 67 * 34 * 28 * 22% * 51% * 42% * The difference between mud and deep mud: *** * DT * B * U * I * BC% * UC% * IC% * Deep 144 * 36 * 16 * 15 * 25% * 44% * 42% * Mud 165 * 31 * 18 * 13 * 19% * 58% * 41% * The difference between movement orders: *** * DT * B * U * I * BC% * UC% * IC% * Fast 90 * 21 * 11 * 7 * 23% * 52% * 33% * Move 95 * 23 * 11 * 12 * 24% * 48% * 52% * Hunt 124 * 23 * 12 * 9 * 19% * 52% * 39% * Discussion First of all, the total numbers confirm the high chance of bogging down found in the first test for open terrain. The chances are reduced somewhat because of the different ground conditions and movements orders but they are still above 20%. Difference between mud and deep mud is visible but not very dramatic. Difference between the different movement commands is not large. It is also not very significant considering the limited number of tests per movement order. It wouldn't surprise me if the type of movement doesn't effect the chance of bogging at all. As mentioned before, driving reverse removes the chance of bogging in. This must be a bug and it is also one that can be exploited quite easily in games. I would appreciate it if someone from BTS takes a look at this. There is one more thing I noticed during these tests. The speed at which the tanks drove was exactly the same for all tanks. So it was independent of the movement order. This surprised me very much. I did the same test for dry ground conditions and there the speeds were clearly different but also surprising. Fast move was fasted of course. Next came hunt and reverse which have the same speed. Slowest is the move command??? I would expect the move command to be faster than hunt ?) Anyway for mud and deed mud all speeds are equal. This might be a 'feature' of the TacAI. Something like the drivers knowing that they should always drive slow in muddy conditions. However it might also be a bug. I leave this up to BTS to decide. Enough test for me for a while. Joeri

Doug, The tanks were moving on level terrain. Inclination? Yet another parameter to consider. To be honest I don't think it's factored in. If it was, the height would probably play part as well. Maybe BTS could give us the answer? Joeri

And not to forget different weather conditions like damp, wet, mud, deed mud, snow, heavy snow and what's more. And not to forget all the different experience levels of the crew. You are a funny guy Tris Joeri

Hi, There have been several threads dealing with techniques how to minimize your chances of bogging down. Types of terrain (of course roads are best in wet conditions) and type of movement all seem to have an effect on this chance. I even read some speculations that the height of the terrain has influence. Curious about this all I decided to do some test. I will discuss the first part of this test here which covers some of the different terrain types. I might also do something similar on the different movement orders later. What I want to test is how the terrain type influences the chance of bogging. Further I want to see if height has any influence. I have approached this as follows. Have made a scenario with 4 bands of terrain. half of this bands width is high (15 in the editor) and half is low (1 in the editor). The result is 8 bands of terrain half of them high half of them low with 4 types of terrain. The types are: Sc: Scattered trees Wh: Wheat Br: Brush Gr: Grass Weather conditions are deep mud / coverage. Then I have placed 4 tanks (M4 Sherman) on each band making a total of 32 tanks. And gave them straight fast move orders along their band. Each turn I recorded which tanks bogged down which became unbogged again and which got immobilized. This I did for 10 turns and then repeated for another 10 turns. In total 32 tanks where involved for 20 turns making a total of 640 tank-turns (made that up myself ). This gives quite a good basis for statistics but if anybody feels this is not enough to make a judgement feel free to do more elaborate test yourself. The results First some terms I'm going to use: DT: Driving turns. When a tank is bogged or immobilized, it has no chance of getting immobilized again so I need to consider only the turns the tanks are actually driving. So if 4 tanks are driving 1 turn, this number would be 4. If one got bogged, the next turn only 3 driving turns are recorded. B: The number of times a tank gets bogged. U: The number of times a bogged tank gets unbogged. I: The number of times a bogged tank gets immobilized BC%: The chance a tank gets bogged per turn (B/DT)*100% UC%: The chance a bogged tank gets unbogged (U/B)*100% IC%: The chance a bogged tank gets immobilized. Note: IC% and BC% does not have to total 100% because sometimes tanks are bogged at the end of the tests. Ok, now the results. First the total results of all terrain type: ****** TD * B * U * I * BC% * UC% * IC% * Total 531 * 68 * 42 * 20 * 13% * 62% * 29% * Now a distinction between High ground (15) and low ground (1): ****** TD * B * U * I * BC% * UC% * IC% * High 269 * 35 * 22 * 9 * 13% * 62% * 25% * Low 262 * 33 * 20 * 11 * 13% * 60% * 33% * Now I will make a distinction between terrain types. Note that High and low is combined again per terrain type. ****** TD * B * U * I * BC% * UC% * IC% * Sc 153 * 7 * 5 * 2 * 5% * 71% * 29% * Wh 145 * 22 * 18 * 2 * 15% * 81% * 9% * Br 130 * 10 * 3 * 4 * 8% * 30% * 40% * Gr 103 * 29 * 16 * 12 * 28% * 55% * 41% * Discussion Overall the results give quite a nice impression of the chances of getting bogged and unbogged again. An overall chance of 13% per turn of getting bogged in deed mud is not too high in my opinion. It seems to happen more often in the games I play . You also have approx. 60% chance of getting unbogged again which is more than I expected, again based on my experience in games . Comparing the total group to the high and low results I think the conclusion can be drawn that height is not factored in the chances of getting bogged. So no need to avoid low country in wed conditions. Looking at the terrain types the numbers totally surprised me (Please keep in mind that the statistics are less reliable because of the lower number of tank-turns per terrain type). Scattered trees only give a 5% chance of bogging against 28% on open terrain. I would have expected it the other way around. This also explains why my tanks get bogged so often in games because I try to go for the open terrain (if no roads are available of course). These numbers seem to imply that it's better to move your tanks through scattered trees and brush. Since I have no knowledge of tanks in any way I leave this to the experts. The chances of getting unbogged or immobilized for different terrain types varies a lot. I think this is due to the small number of occurrences. So I don't dare to put any conclusions on that one. Actually I think the chance is not related to terrain but is something like 65% for unbogging and 35% for immobilizing for each terrain. As I said before I plan to do something similar for the different movement commands which will be posted later. In the mean time any comments/suggestions/criticism is welcome. I also would appreciate a comment from Steve or Charles whether it looks anything like it is programmed. Joeri

Ah, word from the creators this is getting interesting. Let me see if I understand this correctly. If you are bogged, you should do noting and let the vehicle do his own stuff. Giving a reverse order or any other order reduces the chance of getting unbogged? Also you say: Terrain has an effect. That roads are good is obvious but does elevation have any influence? I have read in other posts that the type of movement influences the chance of getting bogged. Most chance when moving fast then move and then hunt. Is this correct? and how about reverse? and what kind of chances are we talking about is move half the chance of bogging compared to fast move or 95% of fast move? Maybe I do some test tonight to check out the chances of bogging down. Something like a circuit with tanks racing rounds until the get bogged Joeri

I agree with Topi and wwb_99 that retreating can be a valid tactic. Especially in games where the point score counts. I'm thinking of the Rugged Defense tournament here. In this tournament you play two games and based on the total amount of points you either continue or are out. If you surrender in one game this very seriously affects your chances. A well conducted retreat is much better. In other games it can be annoying (depending on taste) if your opponent prolongs the game when you have clearly won. Personally I wouldn't have a problem with it. I think it's quite difficult to move off your forces from a lost position (speaking from experience). I see it as a new goal in the game. Like, no chance off holding the village but I have to get the remaining troops out unharmed. For the opponent the new goal is to destroy the others forces completely before they are out of reach. Just my opinion, Joeri

Hi, Here are some tricks that I picked up from the board which might help. They only slightly reduce the chance of getting immobilised best thing is to stick to the roads like Chupacabra said. - Use the 'move' command instead of 'fast move'. I'm not sure this reduces the chance but I read it somewhere. In my experience moving vehicles still get bogged down quite often. - If you get bogged down try to reverse next turn. Sometimes this gets your vehicle out before it is immoblised. - If you get bogged down try to bump into it with another vehicle. Often this gets the verhicle out. Of course you need some other verhicle near. - You can move your armour in a column. This way if one vehicle gets bogged down, the next one bumps into the back and gets it out (sometimes). This is not always smart to do since a column is not a very good tactical formation to engage the enemy. Hope this helps, Joeri

Sten I have the turn..... somewhere. I will look for it and email it to you. Judging from the reactions it is already a known issue upstairs but a little more evidence can't hurt. Joeri

I saw something similar. I was playing a PBEM in which I was using a wasp. At the end of the turn (clock was at 60 s.) a arty shell hit near my wasp and the crew abandoned. When I replayed the movie, the guys didn't abandon the wasp and I could use it in the next turn. At first I thought I saw it wrong the first time, but my opponent commented next turn on the fact that the wasp was still alive. He also saw it getting abandoned. Guess there is a little bug there somewhere. Joeri

I'm not sure but I think anti-personal mines disappear after a certain number of explosions. So you can remove them by walking over them a number of times. Maybe that was not what you had in mind though. Maybe it also works by walking captured troops over them but I don't think that is ethically correct. I haven't tried this myself by the way. Joeri [This message has been edited by Joeri (edited 09-22-2000).]

I have a system with the already over a yaer old Matrox G400 (32MB DH). Although it cannot compete against the newer GeForce ect. cards in terms of 3D speed it is certainly sufficient for CM (At least I am very content with it). Since it is already an older card it shouldn't be that expensive (if that is a factor in your decision). Besides 3D performance which is adequate (comparable to at least TNT2) it has two very good features namely: - Dual head: which means you can connect a second monitor or TV to your computer. I use this quite regular to whatch DVD's on my TV and it works great. - Excelent 2D quality: This is especially an issue when you have a big monitor and use high resolutions (1600*1200 and the likes). Matrox have a tradition of being the best cards for 2D. I have this card for a year now and I am very content with it (including playing CM). If you like this card you can also consider the G450 which is a recent product with basically the same 3D performance but some extra things (not sure what). When you are only interested in raw 3D speed you are better of with a different card. Maybe GF2, Ati Radeon? Hope this helps, Joeri

I noticed the same behaviour. It can be very frustrating watching your gun rotate away from a whole field of juicy targets just to engage a (maybe more valuable but you're never gone get it anyway) target far away. When your in an ambush with your gun it's average lifespan is probably less then 90 sec. from the point that you start shooting. Often 40+ sec. of that time is needlessly spend rotating. I also agree with you Michael that it's probably hard to get this behaviour sorted out without introducing other strange behaviour. Frustrating it is. Joeri

Great work. Maybe the explanation is that the experience level of the troops is raised but that they are still clasified as the original experience level. Thus a regular would fight like vetran (at +1) but would still show as regualer (and cost as much as regular). This would be consistent with all observations. Joeri

You are right Jeff, we should let Charles sort it out. The reason I continued is that I want to know how to play my current PBEM's. In my opinion, walls have now gained a lot in tactical value. And going hull down in the terain can be a disadvantage now (depending what you're up against). Again, just for my current PBEM's. Maybe I should have kept my mouth shut and just take advantage of it Joeri

Hi Did some more testing this evening. I tried (really hard) to create a situation with non-reciprocal hull down using elevations. I could not do it. I also tried the wall as cueball suggested. That worked just fine. Only one hull down marker on the tank just behind the wall. Also the shooting went fine. The tank which wasn't hull down got a fair amount of lower hull hits (I think 4 in about 40-50 shots). The tank behind the wall got non and only a few upper hull hits. Joeri

Swamp, According to my interpretation of the manual it shows that both the Panther and the Jumbo are hull down. Joeri

Cueball, Ok, so walls work. It would be interesting if someone could find a situation wit non-reciprocating hull down by using elevations. If anyone has an example I would be very interesting in recieving a file or picture. Juardis, I also was a bit surprised at the percentages especially the small difference in total hit chance between hull down and not hull down (68%-60% for tiger and 87%-80% for Jumbo). I think this might be due to the following. In the hull down scenario, the tanks fired at each other for 3 turns. Then some guns got damaged and I repeated for another 3 turns. So most shots were repeated shots which have a higher chance of hitting. In the non-hull down scenario, the Jumbo's got waisted in the first turn (lower hull penetrations) so I repeated that 1 turn 3 times. In this case a significant portion of the shots were first shots so they have a reduced accuracy. Anyway since I'm not an expert on hit chances of various tanks to each other (hull down or not) I chose to restrict my post to the hull down matter. To answer your questions. I'm not sure of the quality of the crew. I just took the default exp. level in the scenario editor (so I guess they are the same). The tanks were stationary for 99% of the time. Charles, Thanks for looking into this matter and for this great game. Joeri

Some additional remarks on my post. I hope it is clear from the pictures and the discription that the tigers are not hull down. However when targeting them (or with them) the hull down marker appears on both the Tiger and the Jumbo. This is not correct (IMHO). I did the test to make sure that in the firing the hull down the Tigers where really treated as hull down (as the marker says). I think the testdata confirms this. Judging from the hit percentages on tuurent and hull, the Tiger is treated as hull down. Since I have seen similar occurences in actual games (Including the one we are playing by the way Jarmo ). The treatment off hull down in this way eliminates the direct advantage you have from being in a hull down position, namely a decreased chance of hit (especially to the hull) compared to your target. By the way, the Jumbo's and Tigers are chosen because they have a lot off armor so they live longer in the test. I have observed this effect for many other combinations in real games. I also tested with various degrees of hull down. As you can see in the figure the shermans are not all in the same place behind the elevation. I run this test two times with even more different positions. To Melloj: You get the hull down marker when you target a verhicle. The marker can be both on the target and/or on the attacker (according to the manual). In my observation the marker is always on both or on nobody. Joeri [This message has been edited by Joeri (edited 08-31-2000).]

Hi Guys, This is my first post so I would like to say hello to everyone first. I received CM a couple of weeks ago and I have been playing ever since. What a great game! Anyway while playing I noticed something I think was a little odd. It seemed that every time I was targeting something from a hull down position the target was also in hull down position. At least the hull down text appeared above the target. I thought at first this was a coincidence but after some more playing it seemed to me that always both the target as the attacker are hull down (or both not ofcourse) even if the target is clearly not hull down. So I decided to do some testing. I like to share the results of these test with you. What I did was make a scenario with a small elevation on one side and totally flat for the rest (see pictures). On one side I put three Sherman Jumbo's (with 75mm gun) in hull down position. On the other side I put 3 Tiger's (with the slow 88mm gun). I chose these tanks to maximize survivability. I let them shoot at each other for some turns and register the hits (including position of hit). Next I put the Jumbo's in front of the elevation as to be sure that there was no hull down and again let them shoot at each other. First off all let me mention that during the test with the Jumbo's in hull down. The target tool gave a hull down position for bot the target as the attacker. The attacker was indeed hull down behind the elevation but the target was not. In fact I had LOS at the area directly in front of the Tiger so it couldn't be hull down. This was the same effect that I noticed in the games why I did the test in the first place. Let me try to post a picture of the situation. (hope this works) Hope this clears up the situation. The results of the test were as follows: NS: -Number of shots fired LH: -%Lower Hull hits (or track) UH: -%Upper hull hits T: -%Turrent hits (or gun hits) H: -%Total Hit For the Jumbo's in hull down position (distance 550m to Tigers): ------------- NS -- LH -- UH --- T ---- H Tig. vs Jum.: 53 -- 0% -- 15% -- 45% -- 60% Jum. vs Tig.: 81 -- 1% -- 23% -- 56% -- 80% For the Jumbo's not hull down (distance 500m to Tigers): ------------- NS -- LH --- UH --- T ---- H Tig. vs Jum.: 45 -- 18% -- 38% -- 29% -- 68% Jum. vs Tig.: 40 -- 22% -- 35% -- 30% -- 87% I can think of only two possible explanations for these figures: 1 - I totally don't understand the concept of hull down 2 - CM can only model either both target and attacker hull down or both not. In the manual (p.40 and 66-67) it says that hull down is calculated seperatly for target and attacker. So there is something wrong. Any comments (please be gentle ) Joeri [This message has been edited by Joeri (edited 08-31-2000).]