Robert Olesen

Beta version 1.01e is out. It corrects the problems in 1.01d with wrong colours on favor cells in the control sheet as well as some rank promotion stuff - all cosmetic. There's also the addition of national ranks along with a toggle that allows you to switch them off, and the ability to always fight with your own division instead of a random nationality and division type (as another toggle - I just couldn't resist that change once I learned how to add them toggles ) Have fun. As before, I'll appreciate a notice if you decide to use it.

You're the second one to ask me that. I have plans to ask for help with that in another thread - pronanly this weekend - in the CMAK forum. I haven't got the game yet (ordered yesterday) and I could certainly use some help. I hope so. At least until I get CMAK. Been busy with work lately too.

Nut at all Why do half solutions? Besides, the infrastructure was already programmed, it was only a matter of looking up the data. And you can, as I said, turn them off.

Thanks, HawkerT, a bit of praise never hurts Ranks (working properly, I hope) coming up tomorrow if things go well. I have German (Army and SS), Soviet, Finnish and the standard (US) set, and you can turn the national ranks off if they confuse you (e.g. what's a Everstiluutnantti or a Ryadovoj :confused: ). I just hope I got the titles right. Now, if only I could find time to play this thing myself

That's not the only one. I'll clean it up. And there's another cosmetic error: The demotion/promotion comment in the Favor sheet uses the old rank table. You can correct that one yourself in the Tables1 sheet from M51 and down. So, expect a cosmetic cleanup 1.01e as soon as I get the time. It may not be there before tomorrow. It's cosmetic changes anyway.

Point value changes due to Weakened / Unfit units are handled automatically in the setup sheet. The values in the control sheet are from the core force file, not the cme file for the current battle. Fitness status is not edited into the core force file itself, it is edited into the file for the current battle, and the point values corrected for fitness thus do not show up in the control sheet. Thanks for that point explanation, 88mm, I couldn't have said it better myself. And Vampyre, it's the point cost that goes down in your case, not the point value (or the point value that goes up), as most of your units are better than Regular. Sorry. There's only one sure way to avoid those 4:1 odds: Get a smaller core force. Well, you could also drop in difficulty, but that wouldn't be fun.

Vampyre: No, they are not identical. The values on the core force sheet correspond to Regular units. This is because the upgrade price should be independent of the quality of the unit. However, feel free to bend that if it's too much work for you. 88mm: Can you give me a list of the corresponding German ranks, also for SS units? Can someone gove me one for Finnish forces and Soviets as well? I'll try to work them in if I can get them. No promises, though - it could be tricky.

OK, Beta version 1.01d is ready for your pleasure. There's a minor bug fix and the promised changes to difficulty handling and rank. Here's the rule text on those issues: Pick the level that suits you best. This level will stay with you for a complete campaign. You can change it during a campaign if you find that you picked the wrong level, but that should be a rare exception. Picking a too low difficulty will, essentially, cause you to gain a lot of Favor and win most of the battles. It will also promote you fairly quickly. 3.2 Player Rank The rank of you, the player, is used as an extra difficulty modifier and as a role playing element in ROQC. The available ranks are shown here: </font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">Rank Abbreviation General Gen Brigadier General Brig Gen Colonel Col Lieutenant Colonel Lt Col Major Maj Captain Cpt 1st Lieutenant 1st Lt 2nd Lieutenant 2nd Lt Corporal Cpl Private Pvt</pre>

Vampyre's core force is an amazing 5926 points. I think. The problem is that he's probably making the same mistake as everyone else. I thought I spelled this out clearly in the rules - but I can't have done that. Or perhaps people don't read the rules. It wouldn't surprise me. Not much I can do about that except add some control stuff to the spreadsheet. The core force point value in his sheet (the sum of D25:D29 in the control sheet) is the same as the core force point cost (H8 in the core force sheet). They should be different as most of his core force is Vet or better. Except that the core force is in a weakened condition, which reduces the point value (not the cost) so they could conceivably end up with the same value. Not likely, though. Vampyre, how do you do this? You're supposed to read off the point values (D25:D29) from the editor using the core force file before each battle, and you're also supposed to edit the weakened condition into each eligible unit when it applies (before you read off the point values). Do you do that? It's a lot of work to edit ca. 100 units. As for that Kubelwagen, you'll just have to add it yourselves. I'm not going to make it mandatory And 88mm, that change from 2000 points to 3000 is in the changelog: I increased the support force size for large core forces. But remember, you may get 1000 points more, but so does the AI, and it probably has a sizeable force size bonus on top of that.

VampyreBK, I think you'll be pleased with the changes I'm making. They will allow you to progress all the way up the ranks without getting into excessively difficult battles. Do you think I should use a more tight set of ranks, so that I'll end up lower, that is insert the different grades of Lieutenant, Captain etc? The point is to increase the roleplaying aspect. It's funny how such a thing as the roleplaying aspect can pass through testing without being mentioned. I have been shying away from making rules for the reorganisation of infantry units. I'm not sure they can be written in a meaningful way, and I want ROQC to be a simple as possible. But there's no reason why you can't keep your history for the battles, though you'll have to delete the unit history (or at least most of it) when you reorganise.

Hi VampyreBK Sounds like you're accumulating (and spending) a lot of Favor. I tried make a self-balancing system through the promotion / demotion system that would eventually limit the amount of Favor you get. How did that work in your case? What's your rank now and what was it at start? I'd be interested in seeing the latest spreadsheet if you have a complete history sheet.

Sure. Let me quote from the rules: If that isn't clear, please let me know so I can update it. I decided to have a go at the difficulty suggestion by 88mm, so fairly soon you can set yourself a personal rank as goal.

There is now a beta version available at the ROQC site I need some help to test it. Please post here or send me an email if you download it, as I'd like to have some feeling with the amount of attendance it gets. I do not count downloads. The main changes are the addition of mortars when counting unit experience (so HawkerT, I'm expecting you to volunteer voluntarily for testing ), a support force adjustment for large core forces and a change in the handling of difficulty that should allow you to progress to a higher rank more easily (88mm, count yourself in too ) I'm mainly looking for errors in the spreadsheet and in the rules. There is no pdf file yet, nor gif tables - please tell me if you need any of those. Oh, and be sure to check section 2.3.7 in the rules before moving data from the old sheet to the new one. Here's the list of changes: Error corrections: · Citation for core force as a whole computed incorrectly: Core force citations were never awarded in 1.00 Modifications: · InText macro removed from spreadsheet. · The probability of skipping June 1944 in the Finnish region decreased. · Experience of core force additions added to Control Sheet to help you when upgrading the core force (the value is a copy of the replacement experience value from the previous battle) · Support force points increased for core forces with point value at least 1200 to allow for more variety in battle size. · Demotion limit changed to -20% of Favor limit · Enemy Force Handicap roll changed to decrease the spread of handicaps you get for different battles at the same difficulty level. · Unit experience update after battle changed so that you now get points for mortars, and tanks with 75mm guns or larger gets less for killing vehicles. [ November 29, 2003, 02:04 PM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

Interesting read, 88mm. I have received an interesting request from 88mm, which I'd like opinions on if anyone is listening. It appears that 88mm is using the player ranks as a roleplaying element, and gets into problems because the promotion/demoton mechanism is intended solely to balance the game difficulty. You're not supposed to strive for a higher rank - in a way I guess I should have used generic names for the difficulty levels. The roleplaying aspect is interesting, however. His suggestion is to have some generic difficulty levels (novice/beginner/etc) that are the main factors in determining difficulty. The ranks would provide smaller difficulty adjustments on top of that. The promotion and demotion mechanism would remain much the same (perhaps changed a bit) so that gaining ranks doesn't come entirely free. This would mean that it is up to the player to adjust the overall difficulty level to his own level of play. What do you think? Would that be a good addition to the campaign? Please note that the player rank has nothing to do with the rank of the CO of your core force. It would be somewhat ridiculous to have a General command a platoon of tanks.

Looks like you're having fun with your Panzer CO, 88mm. I'd be interested in seeing the spreadsheets for your battle 8 and 9 if you dont mind. And perhaps a save or two, though it'll probably take me ages to load them on my ageing PC. A tip on upgrading your IIIs to Panthers (though Panthers aren't available until 7/43): Read the rule section on obsolete units: 7.2.2.3 It may be an idea to check when the PzIII's go obsolete. Mike8G's charts are quite useful for this. I have them if they are hard to get these days - I don't know if they're available on CMMods after the site came back up.

It looks like you accidentally specified an axis attack in battle setup. The numbers fit: 1500*1.5 = 2250 while 1500*1.7 = 2550 You get 50% extra in attacks and 70% in assaults.

I checked the files - I'm fairly sure that the problem comes from a macro called InText. It seems to confuse the calculation sequence sometimes. It seems to be connected to Excel97 versions in other languages than English. I have a ROQC version where this macro isn't used in the spreadsheet cells. I have already emailed it to Uwe - but if anyone else experiences this problem I can send it to them as well. I'll make a version update when I get the mortar issue sorted out.

OK, so ROQC is fine. Not quite bug free, but close Your problems seems to be with OKH, or Adolf, or whoever was in charge of reorganizing the German tank platoons in 1943. CMBB simply follows the proper TO&E for German tank platoons. But I don't understand why you need to have tank platoons with 5 tanks in 1941. I guess I don't need to know :eek:

Thanks The German part could well be the problem. I know it has been tested with Excel97, but I'm not sure what Windows version was used. That's why I made it On your problem: 1. Send me the offending spreadsheet file. You might have done something wrong, though I doubt it. The address is in my profile. And send me a screenshot of the error you get if you can. I have an updated version that might just work - though probably not. It has a few changes to the macros. I'll send that back if I can't reproduce the error. 2. You need to clear the "Before Battle" die rolls before you can try again. There's an icon on the Auto sheet for this. 3. You could try inputting your own core force instead of using a premade campaign. It shouldn't make any difference, but who knows? [ November 23, 2003, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

88mm, I don't see the problem. You could start out with three tank platoons (any size) and upgrade each of them to Panthers, and also start with a HQ tank (or section) and upgrad that one. In terms of ROQC it's only a matter of affording the Panthers (they are very expensive). Is this a restriction you are placing upon yourself?

88mm, there's no reason why you can't upgrade a 5 tank platoon to a 4 tank one - you'll probably lose some men in the process, but that's it. You could also go the other way, filling in with replacements. The thing is that you need to upgrade a full platoon as you need to buy a platoon to get the command structure to work. Infantry support units can be upgraded individually, as they can be commanded by any infantry HQ.

So, you're using a tank company. Interesting. ROQC hsn't been tested (to my knowledge) with that kind of core force. I wonder how often a tank company was used as a unit, or if it was habitually split up into platoons. I guess it was used as a unit, it just doesn't fit too well into the kind of battles I usually play using CM. You must have bought it in platoons with a single (or two) HQ vehicles, so you should be able to upgrade it in chunks. I'll be interested in hearing how it plays once you get it done according to the rules As to BCR, I have a lot of respect for the decision Biltong made to keep going with his own setup. It's a good deal of work to change direction, and developing BCR is a lot of work. He didn't ask for my help. But there's no point in beating that discussion to death here. ROQC didn't start out with the automated spreadsheet. It developed over time, and esp. took form as the rules began to solidify. Most of my time towards the final release was spent on the spreadsheet. My original goal was simply to create a set of rules that were easy to understand and use.

I'm glad it's sorted out, 88mm, but did you play 9 exploitation battles in a row :confused: - or very you just very :confused: yourself? Not Applicable means that it does not apply to the current battle. Or, to put in in other words, it can safely be ignored. And yes, the example you listed gave you 2364 points to use for support troops. Enough for two batallions of infantry I had problems with the BCR rules myself. I started out rewriting them in a - to me - simpler way and offered them to Biltong, but he wasn't interested. Which was just as well, as I then focused on ROQC. It made me focus on making the rules easy to use. But, as you demonstrate so well, there's always room for improvement [ November 22, 2003, 02:54 AM: Message edited by: Robert Olesen ]

But to be fair, 88mm, you hit on a weak point of ROQC: The point balance between armor and infantry. This is typically a problem when you have core force with mostly armor. But it's also fair to state that there aren't very many battles where your armor has very little infantry support. There is no simple solution AFAIK. You can choose to take it as a challenge, you can change the core force or you can increase the support you get e.g. by multiplying the value by 1.5 (it's a simple change in the auto sheet, cell I9).

Re naming: It's one of those features that you have to do yourself because the game wasn't made for campaigns like this. You also have to edit the HQ bonuses when upgrading a platoon. But at least it can be done. Re support: You ought to get enough support points for at least a platoon of infantry in most games. A mortar or two helps a lot suppressing those AT guns. You're right that a pure armor force can be difficult. It's also an advantage in many cases as you'll not face armor all that often. For a much easier campaign take a combined core force