Binkie

Steve, Any chance of a toggleable grid overlay making it in? Speaking only for myself, this would really help the efficiency of my orders plotting phase, without forcing me to compromise the beauty and immersion of the movie phase. Thanks for your time

I believe you can set a target for some units without the units having LOS. That way if you move them into LOS, or their target does it for them, they will open fire (although I think AFVs simply drop this target if it's not immediately in their LOS). So he'll be all set if you crawl him out a window. Perhaps the best use of this is with FOs...if you know where you want him to target, you can set that target while he is still out of LOS, run him to the spotting location, and he will start his artillery countdown immediately upon reaching it, rather than wait until you give him a new order at the start of the next turn.

Unless I'm missing a subtle technique, it seems that you can't rotate your hull and then ambush in the same turn. The ambush order produces an immediate turret movement and then nothing...which is a good ambush technique, sure, but wouldn't it be safer (especially if you feel you have a few seconds to spare) to be able to rotate front armor towards the target first? I'd like to be able to give both orders. Currently, that results in the AI ignoring (though saving it for the future) the rotate order.

Hey, look at that! Clans have made their way into the CM world...we must have hit the big time!

...for making Combat Mission HQ worth visiting more than once a month! Hip hip hooray!

That would make some sense, Olle, if I were playing an operation or something. But with so much HE ammo on board, and just the one battle going on, I want that sucker to fire both at all targets!

Vanir, in all three of the cases I'm remembering, the 234/1 had not shot a single round of HE before it had made contact with the enemy infantry in question. They had well over 100 rounds in storage. Gyrene, here's a little targeting frustration story for ya. I once had a SPW halftrack with a forward MG keep trying to target a flamethrower in the woods 100 meters behind it, while it was moving on FAST away from it, toward an enemy .50 cal halftrack. For three turns I kept trying to get it to shoot at the HT, and for three turns it kept uselessly targeting the flamethrower, and not actually shooting at anything at all. Eventually the .50 cal got him.

Aw crap. I would have thought they would have a decoding method for debugging purposes.

I want to resume a game I had going a long while back, and forgot my password...is there any way to extract it from the PBEM file? Or override it? Thanks in advance!

I just noticed that the last three times that I've brought a PSW/1 to bear, it has only fired its MG at the infantry target, even though it has fully acquired it, with the red line and all. In all cases I had to manually target and confirm "USE MAIN GUN?" in order to see any 20mm action. Is this a possible bug or am I missing something? They all had scads of HE ammo...certainly worth the attempt, even if the targets were in some sort of cover.

It's on its way, although I'm losing, so I'm not sure why I brought it up in the first place :confused:

Speaking of things from long ago...We started a TCP/IP game on the afternoon of January 18th that we never finished, Shadow. Mind if I convert it to PBEM and send you my next move? I think we only have a handful of turns left.

It's very attractive, though. Hopefully he will apply his brush to other vehicles!

This is not just a hotseat bug. I have encountered this in a PBEM game, and I thought it was already on the BTS list. Maybe not though, eh?

I'd just like to add my voice to the throng...your scenarios are consistently of the highest quality, Wild Bill! I love 'em! I also marvel at your ability to balance sides while maintaining interesting, varied force mixes AND historical flavor. Plus the tension, my gosh, the tension is almost alive! My one complaint: My opponent captured Corporal Merli at Bruyeres!! I thought he was supposed to play dead and then pop up for some cheap kills?! (It's OK, though, I still secured a tactical victory) My one question: Approximately how many hours, and over how many sittings, does it take you to create a medium-sized scenario? Thanks again!

Kick ass, Foobar...you sexy bitch! Purty please do another one?

Indeed, this is what separates CM from my game addictions from previous years. They lasted a few months each, at most, and I continued to play other games during that time. But with CM...I tried to boot up some action games, just to break the cycle. It didn't work. Let's just say my stack of CDs hasn't moved in six months. And to answer the original question, I read the review in Computer Gaming World. Been looking for a game like this (realistic 3-D tactical combat) for a long time, ever since I first played X-Com. The fact that it was WWII didn't mean much at the time, I would have settled for a beefed-up Incubation. But now I have the wonderful bonus of almost total realism, and a much higher appreciation for one of the most significant periods in human history. And a lot of respect for our veterans. [This message has been edited by Binkie (edited 03-09-2001).]

Just a footnote to the TCP lockups discussion...I have had the red bar "freeze" at 100% on many occasions, and remain "frozen" for up to a minute...but it always continued after that. So whether this is related to the reports above, or whether it's a bug or not, the lesson here is don't go hitting buttons and ESCaping and Alt-Aing and Ctrl-Alt-Deling just because you've read this discussion and your bar freezes for a bit. Be patient for a bit, it may resolve itself.

This will be fun. I got my CM roughly six months ago. Times an average of 2 hours per day of playing since then equals about 360 hours. Divided by $53 comes to less than 15 cents per hour. Not bad for high quality entertainment these days, eh? But I bet some of you can do a lot lower than that...unless of course you factor in the cost of the lost human relationships...

ROFL! How about this classic... "Alright kids, lemme show ya somethin'!" -Firemarshall Bill

I'm guessing that many engagements from the CM time period were fought over known terrain, terrain that one or both sides had already seen, occupied for a while, or perhaps even done battle on. That's how I justify the full knowledge of the map, and it seems realistic most of the time. So I don't see a problem with firing at a house you cannot see "yet", if your HQ is telling you that it's there. Plus, there is built-in discouragement here...if you can't see the location, how would you know that there are troops there and you're not just wasting ammo? Even if the location is of extreme tactical importance and you want to hose it down for good measure, the accuracy penalty would make this a tough decision, in my opinion. But perhaps the choice should be ours. Has anyone heard or read of of this happening during the war? Orders to shoot beyond LOS for general suppression or morale effect?

Maybe this has been hashed over and I missed it, but I'm realizing that when I get my opponent's orders via email, his troops often look different than they did at the end of the last replay. Troops that were last seen moving, for example, may have stopped to take a knee. Or have hit the deck. Tanks that were buttoned are now unbuttoned. Etc. I haven't taken the time to test this, but how scary would it be to have hidden troops that you are now giving firing orders to, and your opponent suddenly sees them, BEFORE plotting his next move, because they have popped up out of their previous positions? Anyone else notice this issue? Is it on the tweak list for CM2?

Now that you mention it, this is something I'd like to see for all weather and lighting conditions. As long as you're not trying to to cheat an obstacle, I think you should be able to fire off into the gloom, at a substantial distance accuracy penalty, of course.

Here's my TCP buddy David, from Spain. He's on the right, his brother is on the left. Gun barrel shots might just be the ultimate in manly CM statements...although I think you need manly clothing to go along with it, more like Stefan up there! Just kidding, David [This message has been edited by Binkie (edited 03-03-2001).]

Yes, my complaint was definitely with an eye to future versions, not a demand for another patch. And I appreciate everyone's feedback here on source material and stories they have heard. Truth be known, perhaps some of those Germans were suppressed at the time my squads rotated away from them, but they didn't stay suppressed with a nice fat opportunity presented to them! It was a bit frustrating.