Tris

This may be an old issue for all I know but I thought I'd post it here to see what the reaction might be. In a tourney game using v1.05 a Jackson ran up against a Tiger (Pz VIE) and over the course of two turns managed to completely miss twice from 78m, then had its next two shots hit only to see both shells break up on the Tiger turret's frontal armor. Now the Tiger's turret armor is estimated to be 100mm+ in the front with an 8^ slope, meanwhile the Jackson's 90mm canon is supposed to be able to penetrate 143mm at 0^ slope and 115mm given a 30^ slope. Are occurances of this kind with these vehicles normal to anyone's play experience? Re the misses: the crew is veteran but the Jackson was permantently buttoned due to the TC having taken a bullet or fragment of shrapnel along the way.

1) I had a mortar crew that used it ammo and then was not allowed to move (i.e., no "Move" option appeared on its menu). It was not tired, shaken or anything like that. 2) None of my American infantry crews (machine guns, mortars, bazookas) are listed as having small arms and it appears to be the case that they refuse to defend themselves. I've noticed that one had a red target line drawn to an enemy squad a few meters away but my men never fired. Anyway, these people need to be equipped with sidearms at the least, and really, I think the reality is they'd find a rifle somewhere and pick it up if not actually carry a carbine into battle to begin with. 3) I've had several drops to desktop for no apparent reason--the game is still loaded, but the screen's minimized. With the first beta there was an issue here with ICQ disconnecting TCP/IP sessions, etc., which I duly reported formally--and I do not have ICQ loaded now when I play the game. Except for these last couple of desktop deals after my install of v1.1b24 everything's been stable.

If you use IE as your browser click on TOOLS from the overhead menu then INTERNET OPTIONS then ADVANCED and be sure the "Show Pictures" box under MULTIMEDIA is checked. Windows has a way of changing things on the fly. Thank you very much, Bill Gates. Otherwise, it could just be that your connect is too slow at the moment (anywhere along the line, it doesn't need to be you) to show these images in a timely fashion. But you'll know if this is the case by making sure, first, that that box I mentioned above is properly checked. Good luck.

What you need to do is read the "How To Guide" stuck in your READ ME folder. That document gives directions as to how to file a bug report with BTS.

I'm 66 been playing games for quite some time now.... Well, I make it five (who admit to being) older than me . . . so far. So to all you wonderful wargaming gramps out there, thank you very much!

Better still, cultivate a coterie of fellow wargamers who you know to be of the sober variety, people you understand in terms of their playing points of view, then rely on their consensus review of the product in question. Hell, these nice people needn't even know you're doing this "to" them, little guinea pigs that they are.

Try these links, Ed. Unofficial home page: http://members.aol.com/dadswar/7ada.htm Not sure what this one's about. http://www.publinet.be/7armored/

Well, as of your last to me I guess I'm the Allied BHQ. Still don't know the details of all this, who else is playing the Allied side, for instance.

Stealth, if I were you I'd go slowly and add one mod at a time and then go into the game see how your system digests that and so on. The thing is, with just 16MB of video memory your upper limit won't be that high. If you can afford a new video card, preferably one with 64MB of RAM, then that's another story. But some of the larger hi-res mods (grass sets are the most demanding) place a significantly heavier pixel load on your video card over what comes on your CD. If you do buy a new card, I would suggest a GeForce2 GTS. These have no known conflicts and have lots of processing power. On the other hand, the new generation nVIDIA chip is just around the corner, so it might be wise to wait. With that I mind I can tell you I just popped for a GeForce2 GTS, but my plan is to wait and see how it shakes out with this new nVIDIA chip and game software that actually is optimized for it and DirectX v8.0. If the rule of thumb holds, no such software will appear until at least next fall, and it's anyone's guess if BTS will write CMBO 2 to take advantage of much what this new technology has to offer. My guess is we won't see that sort of change until the new engine arrives, call it a couple of years down the line.

Is it possible you could do a desert war version of the French tank? It is a decent substitute for the M13/40 and certainly the Germans used French tanks in the desert. I can't recall ever having read of captured French armor used by Germany in the desert. The Italians most certainly would have been better off with it, though.

Amen.

You can easily test this by turning your FSAA down to 2X and then completely off (if that's possible with the Voodoo--it ought to be). Also, try the game at lower screen resolutions. At one configuration or another you'll see the herky-jerky motion disappear. That's your threshold. Can you say nVIDIA? P.S. Just kidding.

USERNAME: I could see the right click for PC users as an easier way around the barn for getting to units. Maybe there's a conflict somehow, and if so I don't see it but then again I've spent zero time analyzing this. It just sounds reasonable on the surface. Also, to implement this ought not to affect Mac users one way or the other, so I see no legitimate gripe there. IF there is one, Mac users, spell it out, please. That being said, USERNAME, you were less than charitable with your remark re Mac users in general and their system needs. If you have a problem with a certain person on the board who uses a Mac then you'd have be better advised to have limited your retort to just that person. No sense lumping everyone else who happens to prefer the Mac over the PC into that business. Right? Anyway, I think your request is a good one, beneficial to all PC users.

More reasonable would be to offer both the method we have now, where weight is placed on the "prediction" but the actual weather is a random event, and also a way to absolutely ensure that for any given battle fog or snow or rain or shine must prevail. This accomodation should also be provided for the scenario designer to select the weather for individual battles within an operation,

I believe this is directly related to video memory and processor speed. I had this problem until I upgraded my TNT2 Diamond Viper (32MB) to a GeForce2 GTS (64MB). Now I can adjust the position of my units in buildings to within a centimeter of where I want with no herky-jerky motion. You must remember that each hi-res mod you install over a low-res requires just that much more video processor power and memory. At some point you must push your system to the brink. [This message has been edited by Tris (edited 12-09-2000).]

Joeri: I mentioned deviation as a factor only because it would tend to more strongly present the case one way or the other, this with an eye to BTS taking notice on something which seems amiss. Mensch: that's a good idea, to run some troop travellers over mine and double mine tiles at different experience levels and see if that changes the issue. If fact I wish you'd go out and do that right now.

And the best of both worlds is the option of really really high frame rates that you get from a GeForce 2 GTS, combined with FSAA that is indistinguishable fom the 3dFx FSAA in CM. Every technical review I've read which tackles the different FSAA approaches of 3dfx and nVIDIA gives 3dfx much higher scores--indeed, Jason Cross at CG Online went so far as to typify the 3dfx 5500 the only card out there at present which does it "right." I think, Jeff, what you might have meant (don't want to put words in your mouth) to refer to is that with its greater processing power the GeForce2 cards are able to simply overpower the pixel workload and run at a much higher resolution than the 3dfx entries, rendering the discernible effects of FSAA less obvious with each step up in resolution. 3dfx gets caught in a kind of negative loop here insofar as the FSAA 4X option places an enormous load on its processor, leaving it even farther behind in the wake of comparable GeForce competition. In the end, it kind of boils down to taste, though I will say that 3dfx has never been as mainstream as I would like or even as responsible as they ought to have been over the years with respect to driver stability and updates. Fact is, the proprietary GLIDE which makes Voodoo what it is resides out on the far edge of the hobby's video mainstream, and unless there are some hot titles optimized for this API that you simply must have it is hard for me to imagine anyone wanting to buy into what otherwise strikes me as a dubious technological scheme. Let's face it, the standard games are written to has been OpenGL and is fast threatening to come round to DirectX--and for good reason, which I'm not gonna get into here. Also, nVIDIA has always been fast to update its drivers when necessary and, with a few exceptions, these drivers have proven to be as stable (and compatible) as it gets for Windows. All of which is a far cry from the 3dfx reality. For what it's worth, I recently upgraded from TNT2 (Diamond Viper V770 32MB) to a GeForce2 GTS 64MB card for the sole reason I've become hooked on the hi-res mods for CMBO and my poor little Diamond just couldn't cut it any longer in that demanding gaming environment. When my trees began to sparkle all around me as I scrolled the map the proverbial handwriting was on the wall. One other issue: money. I think at the moment the Voodoo 5500 might be the best buy around, bar none. I conversed with Garry about this a week or so back and he almost got me to pull the trigger on the Voodoo 5500, though I finally stuck with nVIDIA. Call me a creature of habit. [This message has been edited by Tris (edited 12-06-2000).]

I also stacked 2 minefields on top of each other and did the same test only with 56 tanks (8 times 8). Joeri, you presented the test criteria as it appears above; this is what I took issue with. What you actually did I had no further idea, but it was reasonable to assume your tank constant had not changed from the 8 tanks you used in the test immediately prior, so I assumed your error was one of math (you clearly gave the function "8 times 8" as equal to "56 tanks") and not a common typo. My confusion does not seem unwarranted. All I knew is that with 64 tanks versus the 56 you cited in the test the result would have been considerably altered, thus my feedback. Now, based on your test there does seem to be a correlation between stacking minefields and a greater to-detonate%, but the sample given is kind of small--a larger one giving a similar result would be more conclusive. I suggested that you might well derive a standard deviation based on the results of each test taken in aggregate (or at least note the specific deviation from one test to another) as a means for you to either better corroborate your data during presentation (i.e., given small deviation the results would look better, larger deviation would point to more randomization) or render something more substantial to chew on. That's all. [This message has been edited by Tris (edited 12-06-2000).]

Mark's theoretical view is interesting, and I tend to agree with it broadly. But now, Mord, let's look to the practical side of it. Germany allied with Japan for one reason: the two shared one common enemy, Russia, with another worthy common protagonist just off stage in the wings, England and her redoubtable Commonwealth. Unfortunately for Germany, Japan was no match even for Russia in any manner, shape or form, was already hip deep in the mess spelled China, and then on top of that she went and declared war on the United States, with England, of course, thrown into that bargain. America's entrance into the war was all but guaranteed anyway, I believe, but this event coming as early as it did ensured that Germany would never be afforded the time necessary to right herself economically and really get geared for something approaching true global conflict. The only possible result of this Euro-Asian madness was cleary written for all sane men. I think Germany and Japan, assuming Axis victory, or stalemate, versus the Allies, and in the absence of any true commonality of cultures or political philosophy, would have certainly wandered astray from each other in world affairs following hostilities. Whether this would have led to an outright clash down the road is difficult, no impossible, to predict with any certainty. I imagine both would have had their hands more than full with pressing issues at home to worry about it much. [This message has been edited by Tris (edited 12-06-2000).]

...what seemed to be a force field of impenetrable luck sorrounded every single one of his actions, leaving my forces in shreds. I saw that movie. Don't worry, in the end the good guys triumph as these death machines crash into buildings and fields, all the operators dead from strange microbic attacks. Which reminds me, that's another good film for our list. The category will be Sci-fi War Flicks: War of the Worlds

I think there's something screwy there come to think of it, because I once started a scenario that did have a land bridge but quit after I reached the bridge as I considered the battle about over. But I did hang long enough order a couple of units to traverse the road underneath the bridge and noticed the following turn that their paths were confused--the same sort of way these jumble when a unit is ordered from one abutting building to the next. I mentioned this at the time but no one responded, now that I think back. Apparently the pathing isn't quite right with land bridges.

Joeri, in your above test you made a mistake with the number of Shermans rolling over double mine tiles. It was actaully 64 Shermans, not 56, so the to-detonate% would be more like 72, not 83. I think you should use a larger sample with another nine tests, also perhaps note the standard deviation.

Well, you're supposed to be able to move under land bridges--tall stone bridges over land tiles--according to the documentation. I haven't tried it yet, though, so maybe it doesn't actually work.

It seems to me the to-hit% for in-close shots is off, somehow. A couple of weeks ago I posed an AAR re this with a Sherman (which was stationary) missing a Hotchkiss (on the move in reverse at first, then it stopped and it, too, was stationary for the next shot) at 25m or whatever it was two times running. This morning, yet again in a QB versus the computer, one of my Firefly's hunted into a veritable nest of German HT's and proceeded to shoot off six or seven misses from ranges of 37m on down . . . before finally cleaning up the lot of them. These two examples are the most obvious I can recall, and it's not as if I'm keeping score or looking for this stuff--it's kind of obvious when you play the game a lot, which I do for the reason it's a helluva game, Steve. But like you just wrote, you haven't the opportunity to get much time in on it, as the rest of us do, so it's natural we will see anomalies which the development team misses. The to-hit% from in close strikes me as one of these anomalies.

Yup. Seen it dozens of times on this BBS. People NEVER come here to complain that they got some amazingly great shot that all odds were against. Never. But if the enemy does it you instantly get comments like "Bull ****" Not so, Steve. I posted to you a week or so ago re the German MG pillbox slit incident with my Greyhound's 37mm round rifling right on through more than one scattered-trees tile even as the M8 was on the move for the unlikely kill, and I've posted before re this same problem, from both sides, mind you, with regard to the VoT scenario--this, the mortality rate of pillboxes versus tank slit shots, sometimes from long distance, is an oft-recurring problem which I first noted in the form of a simple question a couple-three months ago, before my full version arrived. For whatever that's worth. So I'd say "NEVER" is a bit of hyperbole. [This message has been edited by Tris (edited 12-05-2000).]