Redwolf

Both infantry guns are easier to spot than other comparable guns. That why the 75mm is so cheap and the 150mm is affordable. Tactics-wise comparing the 75mm howitzer and the 75mm infantry gun, I think that the infantry gun is the better choice for the inner defenses that open fire late at storming infantry directly in front. But that the howitzer is better for gun positions that guard areas by long-range fire (usually earlier in the game). Not that this matters when you can't see the map in advance [ 06-29-2001: Message edited by: redwolf ]

The fortifications only work when buying enough of them, especially barbed wire. About 1/3 of your points can be spent in fortifications, that will do good in more than few situations. Whether that is worth the points depends on taste and last but not least the opponent force. If he has Churchills and SMG troops he will be very vulnerable to AT mines covering the only routes free of trees and short-range infantry in bared wire 200 meter from rifle and MG infantry is unhealthy, too. Knowing neither map nor enemy troops, I would probably not buy more than 5-7x barbed wire and 2-3 AT mines.

Leapfrogging, either with the squads in a platoon or with several platoons. Try to approach the different units so that the resulting angle for the MG is biggest. In CMBO, MGs suffer from too conservative maximum ammo use within a turn and from not switiching targets too much. For one turn (not several subsequent turns) it should be possible to fire much more often and at many more different targets than it is in CMBO 1.12. Because this isn't modeled, rushing one MG with three squads from different angles will usually succeed. However, in CMBO, infantry units are much more robust against fire from front. Fire from the sides will break the attack in no time, no two MGs supporting each other require to find a path that avoids one. And move, not run your units. They will switch to high speed themself when appropriate, but they are too vulnerable in ordered run.

I tried Volkssturm as defender against: - 3x Churchill VIII - 5x (or so) M8 HMC - 2x Priest - 2x Wasp - 2x M3A1 - 2x Jackson - British VT Arty - 240mm U.S. Arty - biggest British arty - 2x British airborne company (10-man squads) == about 3000 points, all regular I tried various 1000 point Volkssturm setups, most successful was one 1 Company, 1 Platoon (that includes 16 Schrecks), 2 HMGs, no Sharpshooters and about 300 points in mines and barbed wire. All green forces. After an initial failure, I now got two minor victorys (after autosurrender). The key for the Volkssturm without Guns, Vehicles and Arty is to keep your infantry in places where they cannot be hit from direct fire by the tanks AT ALL and where approaching infantry is very near when coming into LOS. I arranged the force on reverese slopes so that in front LOS is limited by the slope and so that the opposite sides have a friendly unit covering the place against tanks. That is very difficult, it turned out that you will always forget to cover one place and/or that the attackers frees a place and then can place his tanks there. Otherwise, I placed fortifications so that bared wire is directly on the slopes in LOS of my infantry, AP mine cover approach areas out of LOS and AT mines are placed in front of everything and on spots that a tank might use to shoot into my infantry. It was interesting to see that the danger from the various vehicles was revered when compared to a normal defense with guns and tanks. The Churchills, the nightmare of 50 and 75mm AT gun defenses, always drive on the mines as the AI leads with them. Or they get eaten by the Panzerschrecks, as they are too slow. The Priests, which in the usual attack have few changes to reach battle, were devastating as the AI kept them well back until trouble was resolved. The Jacksons are bad as well, as they have a 90mm gun in a fast turret. The M8 HMC, usually the only cheap HE-intensive vehicle to survive the gunfest *due to numbers), are only so-so. While some of them survived, there were so few canals for shots on my troops that every shot should be the highest blast value you can get. "Only" a 75mm gun in one of these few spots is a waste. Compared to what the Priests and Jacksons did, the M8 HMC fire was rather amusing and you were glad that no real tank took the position. The barbed wire in front of my tropps worked very well when the distance was right, but one time I placed it in front of houses and the attacker just shot from the houses :-/ Don't do that. Overall, a training opportunity on its own, more so than mines. Trying to move Green Volkssturm while any enemy unit is in LOS is futile. I have not been able to use any reserve, as they would have to cross fields of fire from tanks far away, which would usually fall to guns, but dominated the free places in their absense. HMGs didn't work out too well. I had to avoid any LOS of more than 80 meters, so the infantry would be better anyway. I chose two HMGs to look from the extreme right and left side into my own setup area, to shoot when enemy infantry broke through. That got a lot of attackers on the run and it saved my Panzerschrecks in the victory flag area, which got a few AFV that pushed towards the flags, usually Wasps or Halftracks. Overall, this kind of defense places the highest demands on setup. In every game, I had one platoon useless and idle (but unable to move), one platoon shot to pieces by tanks coming into LOS from some obscure place and one platoon facing units in expected approach paths and distances, but too many from several directions so that it got reduced in crossfire. As the player, you don't to do much after setup. You don't need to unhide, as the green troops get spotted or open fire sonner than you wish anyway. You have no arty or vehicles. As for reserves, I just had the choice when I have them shot in the terrain I defended, strengthening the forward lines was better in that terrain. The AI did some thing bad, like using not enough infantry cover for the tanks, driving into minefields and it usually uses just one of their artillery modules. But overall I was surprised that the AI was not that bad. The AI is very good in finding those few terrain spots that offer LOS to my troops, maybe more so that a human attacker would be. It also concentrated infantry in its usual habit, but since I had no artillery or mortars it was a pure advantage. The defenders at the point of impact would be under heavy fire from many directions from the start of a firefight, especially since the tanks from the other side would support them at the right time. [ 06-27-2001: Message edited by: redwolf ]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Juardis: Oh, you do know that the victory point conditions are different for A/D scenarios than they are for ME don't you? You can lose several flags and still win a A/D scenario. The scoring system accounts for the initial point discrepancy. I'm not sure what is needed to win though. My last defending game I had pretty much all my forces wiped out, but I managed to keep one flag gray and killed a lot of his stuff. He won a tactical victory. I was very surprised given that my global morale was around 25% by games end. So it's a different scoring system to account for the fact that you're already starting out unbalanced.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is incorrect. Victory point calculation in attack games is the same as in any other game (except exit point games). You can win while loosing all flags in most CMBO games. However, in A/D the attacker has 150% the points in units and is expected to loose as many more units. In a 1000 points A/D game the attacker has 1500 points and if both players loose half of their original force, the defender earned much more points. In a game with high losses, the flags usually play no big role anymore. From the example above, you have 500 to 750 damage points in the 1000 points QB, which usually has 300 points in flags. If players continue to trade 1:1.5, the flags won't matter much soon. A proper understanding of the relationship between damage points and flag points is vital for defense. Don't risk units to defend an indefendable flag. In a typical CMBO defense it is much more important to meet the 1:1.5 kill point ratio expectation than the expectation to defend all flags. For more info see the victory level dicusiion threat we had 10 days ago or so.

I posted more complete information on exit point calculation in the recent thread out vicotry point calculation, 10 days ago or so. Let me know if you can't get the thread. Basically, the value of to-exit units is 2.6 or 2.3, depending on the unit type. If it exits, the owner gets the points, if not the opponent. If the opponent kills them, he gets the points the unit is worth extra, plus the 2.3 or 2.6.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Freak: Wasn't there a fix this situation of the 76mm ap shell? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The combat mission penetration model has less penetration for the us 76mm than you would get by the plain formular applied to speed, weigth etc of the projectile. Charles introduced that to model the scatter problems.

(attacker gun placement) <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Freak: But...wouldnt this be realistic to some degree for the attacker to be able to place a gun in LOS of a VF without being seen by the defender? Say in the woods or something that has pretty good concealment?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> No problem here, if you manage to move your gun so that the defender doesn't spot it, you earned it. I just want the spottability raised for a non-moving gun during turn 1. I cannot agree to the assumption that gun placement at night realistically leads to the gunfests we see in CMBO attacks and MEs now. After all, the defender has patrols and outposts at night. Guns make noise, especially big guns that need to be towed. I think that raising the getting spotted chance of a non-moving attacker gun to the chance that a moving gun would have (only during turn 1) is only fair and could even be said to reflect the risk of placing it at night. Alternativly, force the attacker to move his guns before he can use them. [ 06-20-2001: Message edited by: redwolf ]

Regarding Gyrostabilizers, some people in previous threads said that WW2 Gyros are not made to enable the tank to shoot on the move. They are said to equal out elevation of the gun between two stops. That means, if you have adjusted in place A where the tank is 89 degrees vertical and you move to spot B where it is 81 degrees, your gun elevantion is automatically the same as before (relative to terrain , not the tank).

Steve, one of the things that annoys me in current CM games is that the attacker can place guns in setup, often in LOS of the defenders lines or the victory flags. That means the attacker can get the guns into firing position without the problem of moving them into position and getting them spotted by the defender (who is usually in excellent observation of places that are in LOS of his lines). That is unrealistic (IMHO), and also a gameplay problem, as the attacker gets one of the benefits the defender should have exclusivly, placed and camouflaged guns. I would appreciate it if you could find a way that - either the attacker must move the guns into position - or attacker guns are subject to observation even when not moving Fixes could include that the guns must be embarked to a vehicle and that disembarking gets the same spottability as movement. Or attacker guns can only fire when they moved 20 meters or so from their original setup place. Or as a brutal fix, during the first turn, attackers guns are as spottable as if they were moving, even when they don't move. Maybe CM has a camouflage benefit for units that did not move since setup, and you could reduce that benefit drastically. Thanks for your consideration. Martin

Aehm, for my above post, I managed to misread the question that you are defending. Of course, my post makes sense if you read it to counter wht I said the defender might do Especially, if you are approaching a corner that an opponent tank may use to stick its nose out to hit you, you should have moved in with several tanks, all simultaneously into LOS. If you play allies and have howitzer or 75mm tanks, then try to get combat range belong 500m. I wonder why you are worrying about the defending tanks most. I usually have most problems with hidden guns.

First thing is you need to raise the hit chances as much as you can. If the opponent moves in with 5 tanks and you have two, then -given equal guns and vehicles size for a basic chance-, his overall hit chance is much higher. Get precise guns, 75mm L/48, U.S. 76mm, 17 pdr or even the 75mm L/70. Avoid the allied 75mm and HC-firing vehicles, as their hit chance is much lower. On small maps (1000 points battle and detault settings) the 88mm L/71 is overkill. Get veteran or better crews for the better hit chance. If you can have more than one tank, get identical tanks or at least tanks with identical guns and do not seperate them. When one of them moves into LOS of an enemy vehicle, the other must follow into LOS of the same target before the first shots fall. Always hide behind cover and only come out so that you sneak at one and onloy one enemy vehicle, but when you do, do it with as many guns/vehicles as you can. Always move out when the enemy vehicle is spotted and you could set a manual "target" order to it. Overall, the defensive strategy depends on your scheme what to do against light and heavy tanks. Many people buy many light towed guns and one big gun vehicle as an insurance against heavy tanks. That is usually best when you expect the opponent to roll in with lots of lighter HE-firing vehicles. Of course, that may not be the case and then the other way round may be better, lots of light vehicles and some decent AT guns. The most important point is the one about not seperating vehicles. Use concentration.

More important than for vehicles is such a command for guns and mortars. When the battle is over and you have a gun that will be overrun, you need to evacuate the crew. The crew is often more expensive than the gun itself, especilly when captured.

The British relied on flamethrowers quite much, more so than Amercians and Germans. Teams, Wasps and Crocodile. Which Cromwells do you mean for being short of ammo, 75mm or 95mm? I usually run out of HE in Churchill VIII, but not my Cromwells. I agree that the 2" mortar is not very useful, but occasionally it KOs a gun or helps breaking a squad. Remember than in CMBO, infantry is much more robust from front. Use the number of units you have, including the mortars, so envelop enemy units as much as you can. If you have a tank and run of of HE, give it a manual target command with "use main gun?" -> no! Late war offers the cheapest VT arty in the game. People will probably point out the Sexton for having around 100 25 pounder HE shells, which is more than enough ammunition for a typical game, including knocking down house just for fun. But for me, they always blow up early, so I don't buy them often.

Unless used purely for overwatch or sniping, I highly prefer to get AFV in groups of at least three. I would take three Pz IV over two Panthers, but I would take four Panthers over six Panzer IV. Then, there is the issue of buying a too big gun. If you are fighting enemy AFVs that are vulnerable to the 37mm, then the 37mm is actually better than a 75mm or 76mm, because you get more ammo, higher ROF, sometimes higher accuracy, often a faster turret with the small gun. If you are fighting enemy AFVs that need a certain gun to kill, then it is of course not senseful to buy more vehicles of a kind with a smaller gun.

I reproducable case with a savegame to go into the debugger is referenced in http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=017753

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by SurlyBen: It could be a fraction of the unit cost, or each infantry casualty could have a standard point value (2 or 3 points probably) (modifed by unit experience or whether or not it is a crew)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> (squad cost / squad members) * killed members. No difference between members of oine given squad, but difference between squads in price/member. If a U.S. rifle owner looses 4 man, he pays less than a panzergrenadier owner loosing 4 men. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I also don't know if you get full points for killing things like sharpshooters, or if taking out a mortar (or gun) and its crew gets you the points for the mortar PLUS the value of the crew. If it does, assaulting mortar formations would be a points bonanza. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It is. If you knock out a 81mm mortar and capture the whole crew, you get 26 + 6 * 6 * 2 points. You shouldn't underestimate that mortars crews are capable of fighting, though, they are not broken and without ammo like vehicle crews. For point reasons, the owner still should withdraw them, but a head-on assault may fail. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I suppose someone could test for all of this, but it won't be me All I wanted to have was a rough way of calculating the score during a game.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> If you use the procedure I have given above and save the scenario it isn't that much work.

Fuzzy logic comes out with the same results for the same input. However, what probably happens is that the values the logic operators have before they enter the engine are initialized or modified by random numbers that are gotten fresh for each game run.

The formular is correct and also applies to exit scenarios except that "kill points" will include point you or the other side gets from "should exit" units. See my post above for the value of crewmembers and squadmembers.

You should think not of "Panthers", but the Panther, Panzer IV/70, Jagdpanther, King Tiger combination. Which is good when? - if you are going to do mostly "sniping" in the defensive, the turretless units are better for cost and silhuette - are you going to battle thick Churchills? If so, the 75mmL/70 only allows you to engage them at 500 meter or less. By buying the upgraded gun unit (King Tiger if you want the turret, Jagdpanther if not) you gain the freedom to engage them earlier. Whether that is important to you entirely depends on play style. - The 88 L/71 also offer the better blast value - On the other hand, four Panzer IV/70 are clearly better than three Jagdpanthers unless you need the gun. They are better for having more guns and smaller silhuette As for the Jagdtiger, i found it to be very vulnerable to gun damage and immobilization. Even in direct comparisions, the King Tiger was much more survivable. In fact, the King Tiger is the only CMBO vehicle I would move into fields of fire of 17 pounder guns, including Jagdtiger. In reality the 17 pounder gun is said to be significant less precise than comparable guns. That does not seem to be modeld in CMBO, probably due to a lack of hard data. If you are battling StuG and Panzer IV with 75mm Shermans or Cromwells, look at the hit probability. The 75mm is less precise, duels are biased.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Stefan Fredriksson: I think CombinedArms explains very good how fuzzy logic works. Like I saw Olle put it once: "If you are playing chess and move the pieces in a certain way, they will behave the same way every time. With fuzzy logic they do not." <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Actually I would be very surprised if that has got anything to do with fuzzy logic at all. What you observe here is the outcome of the random numbers that are used to resolve hit probabilities and penetration probabilities on hit and knockout propabilties on penetration. It is like in chess "a tower beats a horse if it is in straight line from him *and* you throw a dice and get a 6". The behaviour of units (TacAI) and the computer opponent is propably fed with simple random numbers as well to a certain extend, but fuzzy log makes more sense here. Not knowing details of CMBO's implementation of course, I guess that the use of fuzzy logic in unit's "decisions" will allow you to get a lot of useful behaviour details for very few programming time. Remember that none of these "AI" programming techniques enable any computation that you can't get with "classic" data structures and algoritms. The capabilities of the microprocessor remain the same. If you understand the AI techniques, you use them while thinking in the same microprocessor terms as with any other algorithm. However, the point about most AI techniques, especially neural networks and knowledge inference systems is that you have a mechanism where you "just throw in" data and the program gives you output that would be very hard to compute with simpler algorithms. They are just shotcuts to save programming time. Of course, the result is only "good enough" and a handcoded solution may still be better, but the programming effort is often out of proportions, and -that's worse- the hand-coded solution may be much harder to adapt to new situations later. In the same way I think that the use of fuzzy logic in CMBO's computed opponent (and maybe TacAI) is used to get rid of a large part of the special-coding a computed opponent controlling the TacAI units would require normally. Remember that CMBO is written essentially by one programmer. Just guessing for now, of course, but I imagine that fuzzy logic in the computed opponent can be used to make movement of the force coordinated without getting sunk in a nightmare of programming effort for checks and corrections between high-level plan and inidividual unit behaviour. You already have the TacAI, which is obviously a very detailed and tuned mechanism, you will probably reuse that for a major part of the computed opponent. So, you use the logic mechanisms for behaviour determination as usual, but instead of feeding yes/no classic logic into the computation, but you use from-to values that are "tuned" so that the outcome is biased towards an overall plan. That way you get a computed opponent with a very basic top-level planning mechanism (just approach routes and what units first), reuse of the already working TacAI and glueing them together with a mechanism that does the coordination good enough for a minimal programming effort. [ 06-07-2001: Message edited by: redwolf ]

It makes a big difference if you have bought AA guns or vehicles and have it near your valuable units. I don't know whether the 250/9 fires at airplanes, the 234/1 is reported to do so. Gen, did yours fire at the plane? Questions on planes: are the any differences between the various nations Allied planes, i.e. British use rockets, U.S. bombs or is it random? And why is the German one more expensive, how is it armed? [ 06-07-2001: Message edited by: redwolf ]

In the editor, you have a battle-wide parameter that the defender may dig in vehicles. If set, the defender's unit menu in setup will have an additional item. It is not set for qutomatically generated Quickbattles. [ 06-06-2001: Message edited by: redwolf ]

The M3A1 and M5A1 with two MGs and ammo 250 are great when entering the game late when most infantry units have ammo shortages. Both Kangaroos are great to transport one valuable unit somewhere (Flamethrower, Spotter, Company HQ for replacement of wiped out platoon HQ), because they are very fast and very thick, they can cross quite some fire. These units are worth the price, IMHO, but only because the .50cal on the M3A1 and M5A1 is underpriced, making the result nice.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Dr. Brian: From what I can tell, CM does not have an AI (as defined in academia or research circles). It's just a structured algorithm. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I don't think you can draw a line between these. As I said, if you use a classic AI mechanism, it is just another algorithm. Usually more difficult to use to full effect, but if you can and the application fits, it rocks. Kindof flamethrower teams in CMBO <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> There may be elements of an "expert system" coded in CM, but until BTS shares some proprietary information, we'll not know for sure if there is any heuristic reasoning. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Same here, I don't think you can draw a sharp line between a data set with a set of algorithms/routines and an expert system. An expert system (my view, of course) is a data structure which is much more flexbile than classic representations (especially relational databases), uses some of the "clever" AI search algorithms on them, including that the border between active code and passive data becomes blurred.