SurlyBen

I really prefer the small (or even tiny) battles. It lets me concentrate on a few units, and the action always seems much more fierce. In a large battle I tend to lose sight of the nuances... Epic scope is nice, but I like the tension of having the entire battle focused on a single squad. Here's where I plug my own small scenario Knife Fight at Cannes. Available at the Scenario Depot under K. If anyone wanted to review it I wouldn't complain too much [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ] [ 12-01-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]</p>

Well, it seems that tactics discussions are a bad example. And my simile was full of gratuitous hyperbole. You may consider it retracted. I was hard pressed to find any tactics discussions at all that were started by newbies. (Not that I am particularly surprised. I know I'm still more than a little intimidated to try and start up a discussion about tactics on this forum, and I doubt I qualify as a newbie.) I did find a lot of discussions where the grogs were jumping down each others throats about tactics, though. (Pretty much any thread started by JasonC, tactical or otherwise...) There are a lot of threads where the grogs and oldtimers give the impression that they are slightly piqued that a basic question has been asked or half decent suggestion made. This thread is a pretty good example of that. I'm not saying that anyone should tone down anything, or be all nice and wonderful and apologetic all the time. The Roast-the-newbie game has a long and honorable tradition on web based forums, Usenet, and in real life. What I am saying that a newbie forum or thread where people were nice and toned down and apologetic all the time might be a good idea. As an aside, I don't really see what someone being an idiot has to do with it. The idiots are still going to make their "BTS!!! pls buy me new computer so I can run CM!!!11" posts in every forum, and newbies don't have a monopoly on idiotic posts. Maybe I'm just surly because I never got assimilated by the CM borg. Surlyben

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Galatine: Is there a club I can go to discuss this game with everyday people who aren't experts in WWII, Solviet tank doctrine or some such and just want to talk, not debate? [ 11-24-2001: Message edited by: Galatine ]<hr></blockquote> Actually there is. Check out the Band of Brothers website. There's a fairly active forum and everyone is pretty laid back and more interested in playing CM than having groggy discusions. As for it being intimidating to post to this board, Galatine has a point. It often seems like tactics discussions (for example) involve some newbie making a claim like "I've had some luck throwing half-assed waves of ill-coordinated infantry at dug in defenders..." followed by the inevitable grognard "How could you possibly even try that?!? The half-assed infantry attack was pretty much conclusively proved worthless by Buller at the famous battle of Colenso in 1899 during the second Boer War. Anyone who doesn't know that obvious bit of information has no business playing CM, much less posting to the board." Now, between grognards this is just fine (as it is just fine when academics are challenged by other academics to support their theories). But I think that a grog having this sort of discussion with a non grog is like a math teacher trying to teach a bunch of 4th graders differential equations. At best it goes over their heads and at worst it puts them off math forever. The math geek 4th graders will, of course, think it is all very cool. Anyway, I think that a newbie area is not a bad idea. Didn't a bunch of Pengers try and start a newbie Q&A thread a while back? Surlyben

A few things: At least in the US, Copyright attaches from the moment of creation. It used to be that the copyright notice was required, but since 1978(? I think) no such notice is required. Like it or not, authors have control over their work, and they may be able to compel webmasters to take it down. On the other hand, depending on the license it was published under, the webmaster may be free to leave it up (I'm not 100% clear on how easy it is to change a license post publication...) My view is that if someone requests to have their mods removed, the webmaster should probably remove them. It isn't likely to lead to a flood of such requests, other people will make more mods, and it just seems like the right thing to do. As far as licenses and so on, a GPL like license would be excellent. I poked around for something like that for art when I released my skies, but didn't come across anything. My intention was to have them spread far and wide as long as no one charges for them. (I was delighted to see them on that Polish language CM site...) Re: scenarios and maps. This issue has come up for scenarios a few times. If I recall correctly, one of the reasons the scenario depot exists is to provide a way for people to get scenarios that is more respectful of people's copyrights than just having them all in a big zipfile. On the flip side, there was that ASL site that got taken down... Surlyben

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: [...] The Japanese never signed the convention and look how they acted. There was no way to MAKE them do so during the war, just as there is nothing from stopping me taking any of Scipio's, or any other mod, running a colour filter on it, changing a couple of details, and then calling it my own. Just as there was no stopping the Bataan Death March with lawyers. Granted, I would quickly earn the wrath of the modding community, and perhaps the entire CM community at large if I did something like that - and people noticed - but from a legal standpoint you would have failed. If, on the other hand, you have some way of effectively prohibiting others from doing this, go for it, but with the availability of artistic software and cheap/free web space for hosting mods, I don't see how that can be done. [...] <hr></blockquote> It's actually pretty legally clear that if someone copies your work and then publishes it without your express written consent, a copyright violation has occurred (assuming that the copying doesn't fall under 'fair use'). This is as true in Canada as it is in the US. In the USA it is also true that going after someone can be difficult and probably more expensive than it is worth if you haven't registered the copyright before hand. Especially in a case like free mods for a game, where there aren't any damages or loss of profits caused by the copyright violation. On the other hand, if you register the copyright, you can get statutory damages, and you may be able to force the person who violated your copyright to pay your legal fees (depending on when the violation occured and when you registered the copyright). Also registration counts as evidence of the validity of your copyright claim. My guess is that similar laws apply in other countries. Registration costs $30 in the US, and you can register multiple works if they are part of a series (for example, the series of 2001 Combat mission Mods by Scipio). Registration adds some extra oomph to a cease and desist letter, and it makes it a lot easier to really ruin someone's day if they don't cease and desist.

Just finished my first scenario. It's a tiny fight in a dense city center. It's been playtested and is up at theScenario Depot It's intended for two player tcp/ip or PBEM.. This is my first scenario for public consumption, so any comments or constructive criticism would be appreciated If nothing else the map is pretty cool. [

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by tss: However, photographs are a special case, at least in several legislation. Berne Convention states that (Article 7, paragraph 4 In many countries (quick Googling results a list of Finland, Australia, and Canada) the limit is set to 50 years since making of the picture, so basically all WWII photos are public domain in these countries. - Tommi<hr></blockquote> Hmm. Learn something new every day. I wonder how they tell the difference between a photograph and, say, an illustration? Not always as easy as you might think, especially these days. I know people who's job is to draw on photos to make them look more realistic... And there are art photographers who's work looks quite painterly (because they paint on it ) Surlyben

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: The question is raised - where is the line drawn? If you run a photo through a slight colour filter - does that satisfy as being sufficiently "original" for you to bypass copyright? It's a very interesting question.<hr></blockquote> Well, producing a derivative work will bypass copyright only if it falls under "fair use". What constitutes fair use is deliberately vague, but has to do with how much of the original is used, what it is used for, what the original was used for, and whether the copy will have an effect on the value of the original. I think the point being made is that the new (color filter applied or whatever) work is copyrighted as well as the original, and whoever modified it holds the copyright to at least the modifications (Some vague thought at the back of my head is saying the modifications need to be "substantial" (another legal rubber word), but please do not trust me on that. ) As far as who (if anyone) owns the copyright on the pictures available on the website under discussion, I have no idea.

Copyright law applies to anything fixed in tangible form. Photographs, even ones that are scanned or digital, count. And the copyright to an image (or whatever) doesn't go away just because somebody publishes it on a website (legitmately or not) For works created after 1978, copyright lasts for the life of the author plus 70 years. For works created before 1978 (such as those pictures) things can be a bit more complicated, and stuff might or might not still have copyright attached to it (I get confused here. Stuff about renewing copyrights and so on. A good rule of thumb if you are concerned about copyright violations is to assume something is copyrighted unless you can prove otherwise) Works created for the federal government are not copyrighted. (So pictures of tanks shot by and for the Army are probably ok to copy.) There's more info to be found here (for US copyright law): http://www.loc.gov/copyright/ or here (The Berne Convention, if you happen to be interested in international copyright issues): http://www.law.cornell.edu/treaties/berne/overview.html Surlyben [edit: Cool site, by the way... ] [ 11-06-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]</p>

Each side starts with zero points. Points come from inflicting casualties on the enemy. (On a flagless map, if one side can manage to inflict a single casualty without taking one in return, that side will get a 100-0 total victory) To answer your questions: As far as I know walking crews off the map won't lower your score. It'll lower global morale, though. Arty spotters are worth 30 points. When spotters shoot their ammo, no points are lost. Surlyben

Cool looking map. I'd love to give it a shot. benhard@speakeasy.org Ben

I'm all over that. The file is on it's way. Good luck and all that. Edit: this post deserved a smiley. I didn't mean to sound so sarcastic. [ 10-22-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

Self serving bump. Anyone else? Anyone? It's a pretty cool map, if I do say so myself. Ben

No problem. Also I forgot to plug my sky mods... You can find 'em at Tom's or CMHQ.

Well, if you are on a windows machine, all you need to do is copy or move the files from whatever folder they unzipped in to the Bmp folder in your CMBO directory. It will ask you if you want to overwrite some files, and the answer is yes. You can always get the old skies off the cmbo disk. Or install a diferent sky mod (there are at least four out there.) The filenames of the files you should be copying are 1400.bmp to 1414.bmp (for high res skies) and 1430.bmp to 1444.bmp (for low res skies (which you only need for older video cards)) Surlyben

That was me with the hetzer comment, by the way. About this test: Um. If you got rid of the hetzers entirely, you should still be able to roll right over the americans with that set up. Especially against the AI. In my experience, the hetzer has enough HE to take out one strong point (by which I mean a gun or squad). After that, all it's going to do is irritate the opponent with it's unkillability (and keep the enemy armor down.) Also, it's not just the lack of a second machine gun that hurts, it's the low ammo on the machine gun it has. The low rof on the main gun doesn't help either, if what you are looking for is to suppress. Ok, so maybe not entirely worthless, but in my opinion an afv that doesn't have armor or AT stuff threatening it should be able to destroy at least its point value in enemy infantry, and it should be able to do this in typical combat conditions against a competent opponent. The sherman can, the StuH's and StuGs can, all german turreted tanks can, the hetzer can't.

When I checked the results of the ladder I was on, the brits were the best, germans a very close second, and the americans trailing behind. Since then the results may have changed (that was 5-600 games ago). As far as hetzers being overpriced, maybe so if you only use tanks. Against infantry they are nearly worthless. Of course, that is well out of the scope of this thread.

I'm looking for a few people to help me test a scenario I've been working on. The map size is only a few hundred meters on a side, and the point values are less than 500 per side. The setting is a southern france city center during operation anvil, and I've done my best to give it the chaotic, narrow street feel of a European city (on some hills, even). If you're interested in helping out, send me an email at benhard@speakeasy.org , or post here. Or carrier pigeon, whatever. Here's a screenshot

Well I'll be damned. Glad I didn't spend too long running my tests

I see. My results are at least close to yours, then. ROF was 5-6 shots per minute. Thats around 6-700 total FP, average of 4 kills...

Wreck: is that per minute? And against what kind of squad. My test had a mere 117 points of effective firepower, and over 90 runs (for the no bonus HQ) I was gettting an everage of 4 kills per minute (against an american squad). There were a lot of results between 2 and 6, very few outside of that range. For 90 tests, my results looked like this: Here's a graph of number of kills vs number of times that many kills were achieved (over 90 one minute runs...) (I suspect that the number of fives is a lucky result, and is a bit higher than expected. The reason I think this is because of the shape of the curve from the +1 and +2 combat results)

I think that the idea of the combat bonus being equivilent to raising the firepower to the next level comes from the fact that the command bonus appears to do just that. That is, a regular squad under the command of a +1 command bonus HQ has the same order delay as a veteran squad under the command of a regular ol' HQ. I think (but am not 100% sure) that command radius is affected in the same way. Somewhere there is a table that shows this, but you can easily test it too. One problem with determining what the combat bonus means is that we don't really know what firepower means in terms of killing power and suppression. (This didn't occur to me until after I ran my (failed) tests to try and figure out the combat bonus.) I mean, if a squad comes under fire from 100 points of firepower for a minute I have a gut feeling (backed up by experience in hundreds of games of CM) that it'll get suppressed and take some casualties, but I have no real idea exactly how many, or how likely it is to be suppressed. All I know for certain is that for a given amount of firepower you are likely to see a lot of variation in the number of kills. I have some idea that the curve that shows how likely you are to get a certain amount of kills will not have a sharp peak at a single number (hence the large standard deviation in my combat bonus results.) Surlyben

One thing that might produce clearer results would be trying the test with conscripts. The command bonus differences are the most pronounced on conscript HQs... Rof differences (if any) would be more pronounced there too. The difficulty would be in minimizing the results of return fire (what with them being conscripts and all)

Hmm. I may try that tomorrow. I just ran my test again. This time at 80 meters. Unfortunately I don't seem to be getting the kind of results I would call consistent. For axis rifle '44 against american rifle 44 for one minute at 80m (I tried 90 times) +2 combat bonus: Avg kills=4.26 StDev=2.0 +1 combat bonus: Avg kills=4.09 StDev=1.9 +0 combat bonus: Avg kills=4.16 StDev=1.9 As you can see from the standard deviation, there is a lot of variation in how much gets killed by any given squad. Over the 90 tests I did, the no combat bonus squads actually outperformed the +1 combat bonus squads. I also ran the test with no bonus vets and crack troops with similar results. (the vets did the worst of anyone) Now this could be a result of my having a test which isn't very focused. A few things I could do to tighten it up have already been suggested, and I can think of a few more. But I doubt that tightening up the parameters of the test would have that much of an impact on the results. My guess is that to get meaningful results the tests would have to be run a lot more times (on the order of 1000 at least) and that is really more effort than I am willing to put into it. If anyone else has a lot of spare time, I've got some maps all set up though... [edit: I suppose another possibility could be that my assumptions are just plain wrong... ] [ 10-08-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

Yeah, I have a bunch of rows separated by cliffs. The command bonus gives units delays and command radiuses that are the same as units of higher experience. So a plus one command bonus on a regular HQ gives a regular squad the same command delay as a vet unit. I'm hoping that something similar happens with combat bonuses, since then I'll be able to use higher experience squads to check my numbers. I should be able to run a similar test for the morale modifier, assuming I get everything worked out. One thing I noticed is that infantry ROF seems to be fairly constant regardless of command bonus (5-6 shots per minute).