SurlyBen

What you are missing is that all the small buildings are exploding at the same time. Even the ones way in the back...

I haven't ever seen any estimates on what exactly the double lighting bolt means, exactly, so I decided to try and figure it out. So far my results are far from conclusive, but I have enough info for a few ball park estimates (for regular troops, at least). (And, since that was really all I was hoping for, I may stop here, but I'd be happy to email my test map to anyone who asks) Anyway, without further ado, my very preliminary estimate of what a combat bonus does to regular troops is this: A plus 1 combat bonus gives a 10-15% increase in firepower, and a plus 2 gives somewhere between that and a 50%(!) increase. The test I used to arrive at these numbers was this: I took a single regular axis rifle 44 squad and had it shoot at a single low ammo regular british rifle squad at a range of 100 meters for one minute. The brit squad was in the open, the axis squad got a foxhole to minimize the effect of return fire from the brit. The british squad was under command of a plus 2 morale HQ. The axis squad was under command of an HQ with no combat bonus, plus 1 combat bonus, or plus 2 combat bonus. Other than the combat bonuses for axis and morale for british, the HQs were normal. I ran 50 tests for each combat bonus. I am assuming a linear relationship between firepower and ability to cause casualties (this may not actually be true. If anyone knows, by all means let me know) Unfortunately after I ran the test I noticed that for no combat bonus and plus one combat bonus, I was getting more zero kill results than I would have liked, which I'm afraid was skewing my results a bit (hence the (high in my opniion) 50% number for a plus 2 bonus...) Ideally the test should be run at a range where you don't get very many no kill results and you also don't get many kill the entire squad results. The reason I ran it at such a long range was to prevent the brits from panicking and running during the test (man, that sounds evil), but I figure I could get away with running it at 60-80 meters and get better results. Anyway, the numbers were: No combat bonus average # killed 1.38 +1 combat bonus average # killed 1.54 +2 combat bonus average # killed 2.1 Surlyben

Yeah, it is important to be at a higher elevation than your target whenever possible. Also avoid driving down the front side of hills, as that reduces your slope as well. One way I like to use the typical rounded hilltop of your average QB is to not come over right on top. I put my tanks on the back of the hill 2-5 meters lower than the hilltop, and never go higher than that. Instead I use the hilltop as a shield to limit my opponent's LOS to my tank. Prevents everything and the kitchen sink from shooting at the tank at once, and limits the ability of flanking units to get off a shot, since I can put the hilltop between me and them. Surlyben

Interesting posts here. For what it's worth, I see an analogy with chess as well, in that you can compare the openings of QB meeting engagements (and other types of battles too, I guess) to modern and not so modern chess openings. The not so modern openings tend to focus on occupying the center immediately, whereas the more modern ones delay occupying the center so that the occupation can be permanent. (Yes, I'm greatly simplifying. People write whole books on the subject ). I think this is similar to the flag rush or not flag rush tension. Both can work quite well, one seems subtler than the other. There are also similarities in the fact that there is a beginning where you make developing moves, a midgame where you try to decide the issue or at least set yourself up for the endgame, and an endgame where a lot of the pieces have been removed, and everything is simplified. The trouble with chess analogies is that they are only really useful to people who are ok at chess. And it is harder to learn how to be an adequate chess player than it is to learn to be an adequate CM player... Regarding the luck thing, I think that luck in the game ties into the psychological aspect. Over the course of your average CM game, you are going to get lucky, and your opponent is going to get lucky. The important thing is not to become demoralised when your opponent gets lucky first. This happens about half the time (it'll be less noticable when you get lucky against a player who's better than you, though ), and it is entirely possible win by sticking it out until you luck changes. The player who doesn't panic, keeps his men cohesive, and above all avoids mistakes will still be in a position to take advantage when the luck changes. Getting to the questions at hand, I agree with much of what has been said already. I think that a good player doesn't make mistakes as far as the basics are concerned (by basics I mean things like keeping units in command, noticing where the enemy is, tophat and lowski, general knowledge of CM units) which lets that player put most of his thought into the bigger picture. I also think that a good player is tenacious. For a good player, there is no such thing as an unbeatable battle. There are just constraints within which victory may be achieved. Not giving up may be the most important virtue. (There was a recent thread about a guy who walked when his Jumbo got killed. Regardless of his other failings, that guy was not a good player.) There is a quote by a grandmaster chess player "No one ever won a game of chess by conceeding." (might have been alekhine... I've loaned out the book that I saw it in, so this is probably a paraphrase too ): )The quote applies to CM as well. Surlyben [ 09-30-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

The cease fire order is useful for tournaments that have to end at a certain time. I have also accepted cease-fire requests that were caused by real life concerns (illness or long vacations...) Also, I once fought a night battle where we each ended up in control of a flag. Neither of us had the units to take the other flag, or even to move without fear of an ambush that could cost the game, so we called a cease-fire instead of ten turns hitting go and watching movies where nothing happened. As far as accepting offered cease fires go. A win is a win as far as I'm concerned and I know what a drag it can be to keep playing a game where you are being stomped, so I always accept a cease-fire offer if ending it then would give me the win.

The trouble with doing night skies is that I need to find a decent set of non-copyrighted starfield pictures to work from. Or at least a crappy set of non-copyrighted starfield pictures to work from (the daytime skies weren't exactly based on high quality images... they had the advantage of being royalty free ) I've been going through picture archives over at Nasa recently, and I have found a few shots, but mostly what they have deep space stuff. (they do have a couple of cool aurora shots). Long story short, I've been thinking that it is time to finish them off too. If anyone wants to help by pointing me to any useful picture archives (generally US government stuff is copyright free, btw) I'd be done that much sooner.

I knew I'd been through this discussion before... heck, I've even asked all the same questions and had them answered before... Thanks for the link. Surlyben

1400-1414 for high res, and 1430-1444 for low res. Also, as long as I'm here, may I suggest my skies? They only replace the daytime and dawn skies, and to be honest they aren't all that and a bag of chips, but I like them anyway. You can get 'em at Tom's CMHQ in the mods section, or at CMHQ in the third party mods section under special effects backgrounds and miscellaneous. Surlyben

Tanaka: here are my formulas. As far as algebraic conventions go, you should note that when two letters appear side by side (for example "pa" ) the intention is that they be read as a single variable (as opposed to multiplying variable "p" and variable "a"). (I wrote this late at night last winter, and I am too lazy to change it now ) "score" is used to describe your score (what you see on the aar screen) "point(s)" is used to descibe how much an item is worth as a casualty. Generally an item is worth its purchase cost. Points are related to score as shown below. pa = total points of allied casualties (allies captured count double their casualty value) pg = total points of german casualties (germans captured count double their casualty value) f = total value of flags fa = point value of flags controlled by allies fg = point value of flags controlled by germans a = allied score g = german score Flags are worth 300 points for the big ones, and 100 for the small ones. All units are worth their cost in points(that is, if you only kill a regular sherman, pa will be 115 ), with the exception of arty spotters, which are worth 30 points, and possibly infantry casualties, which I haven't tested for exact values. That is, infantry may have a standard per casualty value (probably around 2 or 3 points) or it may vary by unit type. Captured units are worth double points. For a less mathy version see this thread(link stolen from the FAQ) The way I figured this out was by setting up a shooting range style scenario. One side killed a bunch of ammoless tanks the other side held a flag (which is worth a known amount of points) This gave me a score and told me approximately how much a tank plus any crew that got killed was worth. Invariably that value was always a bit more than the purchase value of the tank. How much more depended on the number of crew that escaped... I also did some similar tests with infantry. I came up with a number that was around 3 points per soldier (the number was approximate because the final score is rounded off by the game. You never see a score of) Somewhere ( I really wish I knew where, probably in one of those discussions about reducing the gamey use of crews that used to go on before the last couple of patches) I read that killed crews are worth twice the points. This matched my tests well enough that I figured I knew how scoring worked well enough to make long rambling posts about it here at the BTS board. I assume that others who have come to the same conclusions have a similar experience The above formulas should be good enough to give you fairly accurate ballpark estimates about your score. Since that's all I wanted I never bothered to figure out if zooks, MGs, and Flamethrowers, and sharpshooters were worth their cost or a standard infantry cost (and for that matter, I never figured out if there was a standard infantry cost or if a single inf casualty was worth a fraction of the cost of a squad...but in the case of pretty much all inf squads, three points a man is close enough for a ballpark estimate) If you want to test it, all you have to do is count up the points for casualties and flags controlled for both sides at the end of your next game, and plug em in. The answer should be close to the final score. Surlyben [ 09-24-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

I'm with redwolf on this one. The FAQ has links to threads on how scoring is calculated... If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to post a couple of formulas you can use to calculate the score at the end of the game. You can use this to figure out how much things like crews are worth (and how much spotters are worth, etc...) I don't see the use of crews as gamey at all. They have horrible spotting ability, low firepower, often low morale and ammo, and each one killed is worth double the points of a regular rifleman. Plus they seem to surrender more often than other units (which doubles the points again.) Anyone who uses them as combat units is going to find that he pays a realistically high price. to answer the 81mm mortar question: loss of a regular 81mm mortar and capture of the entire crew gets you 99 points, or about the same as killing StuG, or wiping out an entire platoon of infantry. If you kill the crew instead of capture, it goes down to 63 points. Surlyben

Vehicles with thin armor can be taken out by nearby HE explosions. I just finished a game where I took out a halftrack that was just out of sight by ordering two StuHs to area fire near it. It's a good way to take out hetzers too. Simply hit shift-V to turn off the vehicles, and area fire on the spot where the hetzer is. For it to have a reasonable chance of success you will probably need multiple guns, and the blast rating has to be pretty decent (75mm HE and up) but your chance of a kill is better than bouncing shots off the front of the armor. 105mm howitzers work wonders.

Well, there's a bug in operations which lets the defending side see the all of the attackers foxholes. Line of site doesn't come into it. The defender just knows where all the foxholes are. Of course, this bug doesn't come into play until the second battle of an op (since the attacker doesn't get foxholes in the first battle...) Surlyben

A few days ago I decided to see just how much more often the axis won than the allies. So I took a pool of 769 battles fought in the Band of Brothers combat mission club, and I ran 'em through microsoft excel. I posted the stats to this thread over in the Band of Brothers forum, and wandered off. Anyway, along comes a post over here about how the Americans are completely favored by CM, which made me decide to post 'em here to. For the time being, we'll ignore that said post appears to have been a troll to stir up trouble. (I was a bit hesitant to post this for the same reason...) To start with a few caveats: My numbers may be wrong. I checked 'em, but I never took that statistics class in college, and I have already noticed (and fixed) at least one huge mistake. If you notice any mathematical errors, feel free to let me know... My numbers may mean nothing. They don't distinguish between human picked QBs, computer picked QBs, games played under various force type settings (armor, mechanized, infantry only, etc...) scenarios, games played for fun, games played to win, and games played under special rules for picking units (Fionn's short 75 rules for example). A lot of this data is available, if anyone is interested enough to get it. I have no idea what the margin for error is. If you know, feel free to let us all know Finally, these numbers clearly show that it is possible to win with any side at any skill level. I looked at overall allied, german, british, and american forces. For Polish, Canadian, and French there weren't enough battles to get a meaningful result (17, 9, and 13 fights respectively) The percentages and point values are all rounded off to the nearest tenth. On to the stats: The average axis score is 50.2 the average allied score is 44.7 The average american score is 42 The average british score is 50.7 Overall percent of games won by either side (including unranked players): Allies win: 38.9% Germans win: 49.5% Draws: 11.6% For the americans (out of 357 battles) Win: 31.9% Lose: 54.6% Draw: 13.5% For the brits (out of 211 battles) Win: 49.3% Lose: 40.3% Draw: 10.4% Then I decided to look at how the scores changed based on ranking on the ladder. Players ranked higher than 100 (there are 29 players) Allies(out of 292 games) Win: 55.1% Lose: 30.8% Draw: 14.0% Germans(out of 279 games) Win: 72.0% (!) Lose: 17.9% Draw: 10.0% Players ranked from 90 to less than 100 (26 players) Allies (out of 186 games) win: 37.6% lose: 50% draw: 12.4% Germans (out of 224 games) win 44.6% lose: 42.0% draw: 13.4% Players ranked below 90 (30 players) Allies (out of 239 games) win: 23.4% lose: 67.4% draw: 9.2% Germans (out of 210 games) win: 29.5% lose: 59.5% draw: 11.0% So there you go... My guess is that you already knew all of this The only surprising thing to me was the win percentage for the british. Surlyben [ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

Not surpisingly for someone who claims to be an intellectual property lawyer, tanq_tonic is right on the money. But dont take my word for it. Check out the US copyright office homepage. The section on copyright basics (right at the top of the page) provides lots of information in a fairly easy to read (ie non-legalese) format. It specifically mentions maps as being copyrightable, FYI. My understanding is that copyright law for european countries is generally even more favorable to the copyright holder. Not sure about other areas, but I'd bet that most countries in the world will have such info on the web. For registered copyrights, the situation for people who infringe is fairly unpleasant... Statutory damages and paying of legal fees. I have little doubt that the ASL scenarios owned by Hasbro are registered. Surlyben [ 08-19-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

Thanks. Someone else sent me the hamster faces, so I guess I'm good to go. Ben

Anyone know where I can get the hamster face mod for the 3D models (not the hamster unit portraits) www.fluffkitty.com seems to be down... I'm also looking for those excellent black and white WWII picture unit portrait replacements that were released a couple of months ago. I can't seem to find them anywhere... Surlyben [ 08-12-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

Thanks, but that isn't really what I'm talking about... I've been trying to set up a scenario where both sides start with foxholes. Since operations give both sides foxholes on the second and subsequent battles, I made a two battle operation where the first battle is at night and night fighting is turned off, so that they only get to fight the second battle. After carefully setting up the map so that the setup zones would be right for the second battle, I happened to notice that the defender gets to see where all of the attackers foxholes are, without spotting them, starting at the movement phase, turn one . In fact the defender can see them even if they are behind a hill and totally out of LOS, and it doesn't matter that the attacking units are in different positions than they were the day before... I was wondering if anyone else had noticed this, and if there was a way to make it stop. Surlyben

This has got to be an old one, but search isn't turning up anything for me. Is there any way to keep the defender from seeing all of the attacker's foxholes in the second and subsequent battles of operations? I figure the answer is no, but it can't hurt to ask...

Does the edge that the units exit off of matter? In the scenario editor, you can set certain map edges "friendly" to each side, and it always seemed to me that you should get different results for exiting off a friendly map edge than an unfriendly one. Then again that could be there to help the ai and have nothing to do with scoring. Surlyben [ 07-29-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

Hmm Looks different somehow...

Hey, I just looked at that white smoke from the top view... Very cool. Makes me want to call in a big ol' smoke mission... SurlyBen

I have a question: If player B decides not to make any changes, does player A still get to change sides? If so, what is the point of making him pick a side to start with? Why not just have player B bid and player A pick a side? SurlyBen

Thanks for the compliments. They are much appreciated Perhaps not as much as some grog coming on and telling me that skies in WWII were usually black and white and he has ten books with the pictures to prove it, but still quite a bit I expect I'll try and put together a night sky mod pretty soon. FYI, I sent 'em in to Madmatt, so in addition to Tom's site they should show up on CMHQ in the reasonably near future... Anyway, thanks again. SurlyBen [ 06-13-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]

As far as I know you can't force it to display one or the other without upgrading your graphics card. (If I'm wrong about this please let me know, I have a 16MB card and I'd love to be able to see the high res versions of skies...) Adding detail to the low res skies doesn't seem to help either, at least when I tested it on my computer... On the plus side, if you are running my skies, it will be harder to notice the mistakes I have cleverly included as a fun contest for overly critical people

I dunno, I kind of liked the shots I've seen of CM2. I cribbed at least one idea... I think that the stock CM skies are supposed to be pretty generic, so that they kind of fade into the background and you don't notice you are seeing the same one all the time. I know I got bored seeing the same clouds over and over in my original sky mod... SurlyBen [ 06-12-2001: Message edited by: SurlyBen ]