Treeburst155

I see Steve's point. BFC has obviously given this waypoint delay a great deal of thought. If they think CMBB is better for it, then I'll adapt. What do I know anyway? I think it is just those who tend naturally toward micro-management that are a bit disturbed by the waypoint delays. I love to plot column movement, for example. I've pulled off some absolutely beautiful coordinated movement involving vehicles starting parked in a jumbled fasion with different experience levels, vehicle types, etc.. I have been know to spend an hour just on column movement. It's a beautiful sight to see when it works out, and it usually does for me now. As pointed out by Cameroon, the waypoint delay does have some benefits. It can be used in a gamey way to some degree, and also help with column movement. I will certainly master these waypoint delays, gamey micromanaging bastiche that I am. Treeburst155 out. [ October 27, 2002, 10:07 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

I would first define "simple orders" and "complex orders" by the number of waypoints plotted. Four or less would be simple orders, and more than that would be defined as complex. I would have no waypoint delays for the simple orders. The complex orders could have waypoint delays just like they do now, starting with the second waypoint. Beyond four waypoints I don't care what added delay there is because I seldom plot more than four waypoints. A complex order like you have described above I would rarely give. Four waypoints is enough to plot around objects/terrain that hinder movement speed. It is also enough waypoints to plot movement around enemy LOS/LOF to some degree. City fighting comes to mind here. One needs more waypoints in cities IMO. I like to plot movement between buildings sometimes. Also, it takes three waypoints just to tell a squad to move to the wall-sharing heavy building next door. If you plot straight the squad would likely run out the dangerous side of the building, not the safer "rear" side. Thanks to your posts on this subject, I understand your reasoning behind the waypoint delays. I would just like to see them relaxed a bit for simple orders. Four or less waypoints, no added delays. Five or more is complex and the the added delays could take affect on waypoint two as it is now. Gimme a couple freebie waypoints or somefink. Pleeeaasssee?? Treeburst155 out.

Fahrenheit is a temperature scale invented by some guy who wanted to know where the wind was coming from, rather than where it was going. He stuck his finger in some boiling water at sea level and said, "Ouch, this water must be exactly 212 degrees." People ask this guy where he is going, and he doesn't know. He just knows where he is coming from and that his finger is sure to get burned in 212 degree water. I think he had something to do with inches, feet, and yards too. Treeburst155 out. [ October 27, 2002, 01:40 AM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

I didn't learn that until I began messing around with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000. They must have taught that during one of my many 60 day truancy spells. Besides, it's a back-assward thing anyway. Wind should be blowing north, not "out of the south". I mean, so what if the wind is coming out of the south. Which way is it going? What if it comes out of the south and turns real quick? :eek: Treeburst155 out.

I have ten game results in so far, and even a couple AARs. The AARs are greatly appreciated. I hope to see more in my mailbox. Say "Thanks" to the designers by writing a little about the scenarios. Feedback helps them create better scenarios for YOU. Fight On!! Treeburst155 out.

Thanks, Steve! I really appreciate these explanations of why various things are the way they are in CM. Treeburst155 out.

BFC's already reponded to this: More waypopints = more delay. Realstic?</font>

I don't think the link works, at least not for me anyway. Treeburst155 out.

You have to admit, this is one busy forum. It's difficult to keep up. I'm sure I miss many threads that would interest me. Oh, and be nice to the newbies. You never know, they may be an UberFinn. You don't want to piss one of them off now, do you? Treeburst155 out.

Vanir said, "Oh yeah, and for something I'm certain wont happen, I'd like the new system of increasing command delay for every waypoint plotted stripped out and returned to the way it was in CMBO. This is the one new feature in CMBB that I think actually detracts from both playability and realism." This I wholeheartedly agree with. I almost always agree with Vanir. It's strange. Anyway, it can easily take three or four waypoints to get a unit to do a very simple thing. For example, "Move to the right of the woods, then head for that farmhouse through the gap in the wall. I would not consider this a complex set of instructions, but it will take several waypoints. The gap in the stone wall could very easily make an additional waypoint necessary. I think the waypoint delay should not kick in until more than four waypoints are plotted. Treeburst155 out.

Great thread!! So what's the bmp number? Hasn't Grog Dorosh provided us with a bmp map/guide yet?! Sheesh, he's had over a month to get it together for us. Treeburst155 out.

Yes, MickOZ is just about finished with his month long US vacation. He will be getting home just in time for his two week paid "holiday", followed by his normal six weeks off for the holiday season. After that he begins using his sick days, which accrue 2:1. IOW, each workday adds two sick days. This means Mick will be unavailable for PBEM sometime next July due to grueling 5 hour workdays which must be endured for a full week before his next scheduled vacation. Fight On!! Treeburst155 out.

Why would anyone want to buy armor that has the command restrictions? Are the AFVs cheaper when purchased that way? (I've never done a buy-your-own QB) Treeburst155 out.

Bumpity Bump Treeburst155 out.

I went back to 28.32 to prevent OS lockups in CMBB. No problems ever since, and nothing else was changed at all. I'm going to reinstall the latest drivers again just to see if the problem comes back. I'll bet it does. Oh, Ti4200 with Win ME. Treeburst155 out.

If I were doing ladder games I would avoid the StuG problem by insisting on a 1944 battle. StuGs will become a common talking point in QB negotiations, along with many other units, I'm sure. As for the Tiger/Sherman matchup in CMBO that was mentioned above, I'll take the Shermans anytime IN TYPICAL CMBO TERRAIN. Them Tigers is REAL dogs! Why just the other day I had one knocked out at 600+ meters by a vanilla Sherman (M4). It was a frontal shot too! Treeburst155 out. Treeburst155 out.

I think Berli is loosing it. He missed the point entirely. I'm sure my previous post is more boring than a Joe Shaw post anyway; but at least I know Berli can't spell now. He probably just has a screw lose. Treeburst155, Squire to Senior Knight More-Arty, Defender of Lost Causes

Somebody help or do somefink!! I'm loosing my mind! I think I have several screws lose now! I know I'm loosing my marbles (yarbles in place, thankfully) because I'm not in Kansas anymore! My house came lose from its foundation. Help me, please!! Ahem.....ja.....that's better. Now where was I? Oh yeah, Sod Off!! Treeburst155, Squire to Senior Knight More-Arty, Defender of Lost Causes

As usual, we will start the new thread off with the tourney "manual". HOW IT WORKS Once the 72 players have been assigned to one of the three tourneys (24 in each) as described in the first post to this thread, they will be further divided into four sections of six players. This division into sections will be done in a completely random manner by drawing names out of a hat. Your section is where the "regular season" action is. You will play one game against each of the people in your section. You will also play each scenario one time. This means you will play five games in the "regular season". The sides you play, and your attack/defend duties could very well come out lopsided. You may play the Germans four times, or you may find yourself defending four times. The only guarantee regarding your matches is that you will play each scenario once, and each member of your section once. The scenarios will be provided by the "Boots & Tracks" design team headed up by SuperTed. They will be historical/semi-historical scenarios never before seen by the community. The guys at B & T are working on our scenarios right now. Without them the tourney would not have happened. The scenarios may or may not be balanced. Don't count on a fair fight! The scoring system will determine balance. It is possible to "lose" the battle, and still win if you perform better than the median established for that side of the scenario. I will explain how this works later. You do not need to understand the nitty-gritty of the scoring system, although some may be interested. You need only be aware of the following: 1) Points for contested VL's will be split. This means final game scores will always total to 100. There is a very good reason for this I'll not get into now. If you think "gamey" you can probably figure it out. 2) Voluntary surrender is ALWAYS bad. Your opponent gets too many points for all the people he captures. You should always withdraw your people from a hopeless situation. This way you deprive your opponent of capture points. The game will auto-surrender you once your global morale drops to a certain point. Every unit that you successfully withdraw off the map will lower this global morale. Try to have all your people step off the map together once you are near the auto-surrender point. This prevents capture of units who would have made it off, but didn't due to the auto-surrender. If you score very poorly in relation to the median for a scenario you will suffer a penalty (your score will be made even worse). This is to discourage surrender, and careless play just to get the game over with. If your score is that low compared to the median we assume you surrendered or got purposely stupid. WITHDRAW YOUR TROOPS IF POSSIBLE when faced with a bad situation!! I'm telling you all this because it is quite possible you will find yourself in a very bad situation due to deliberate scenario imbalance. Do not give up!! Withdraw!! The median score for your side of that scenario may only be 20 points. IOW, if you score 32 points you did very well. You can "lose" and still win if you get your people to safety so they can fight again another day. 3) Your goal with each scenario is not so much to beat your opponent (could be impossible), but to get the highest score of the 36 people (three tourneys) who play that side of the particular scenario. "Winning" the game may be virtually impossible due to imbalance. You never know what hand you may be dealt. LAUNCHING THE TOURNEY Each player will receive the schedule for his section only. Where your name is on the LEFT you will play the Allied side for that scenario. Along with the schedule of games you will receive a contact list with all the email addresses of your five opponents. When you receive these the tourney is officially underway. After this, over the course of the next several days, you will receive an email for each of the five scenarios. For games where you are the Allies you will find two briefing files attached, a general briefing and your Allied briefing. This email will also contain your password for that scenario. Your German opponent will start the game. To open the first file from him you will need to use the password I provide you. This will put you in the Allied setup phase. If you are playing the German side you will also receive a secured saved game file in addition to the two briefings and password. By 'secured' I mean that the briefings have been stripped out, the game begun, and the passwords entered. This is the file you will use to start the PBEM game. It will be a .cmb file, not a .txt file. Start the game just as you would any other new PBEM game. The only difference is that you will have to enter the password I provide you. You will find yourself in the Axis setup phase. DEADLINES AND GAME RESULTS REPORTING All games should be completed within 90 days of the date I send out the last scenario files. This means you will need to keep at it. Don't be the one to hold up the show. Don't get lazy. Take your turns. We want to at least get into the playoff stage before CMBB comes out. The tourney cannot be scored until ALL games have been completed. The LOSER reports game results. If you end up being on the weak side of a few unbalanced scenarios you will find yourself having to report most of your games. This is, as they say, tough luck. Game Report email needs to have the subject, "Game Report". The body of the email must contain the following information: Tourney Number (1-3), Scenario Title, Your username on this forum, the side you played, your score, your opponent's username and his score. The body of the email should then look like this if you are Fred: Tourney 1, The Ambush, Fred (Axis) 37, Joe 43 Reporting games in this manner will save me a great deal of time. With 72 people I NEED to have games reported this way. Do not send me final game files. Keep these in a safe place in case of disputes. FOG OF WAR No discussion of scenarios is allowed on the forum until ALL players in all three tourneys have completed a scenario. I will let you know when it is alright to talk about a scenario. It won't happen until near the end of the tourney. No game results are to be revealed on the forum. You won't know who beat who until all is revealed at the end. Think before you post, and remember, no game scores, no blow by blow descriptions of the last movie, no general discussion about the scenarios, etc.. THE NABLA SCORING SYSTEM Your game scores will be recorded on an input file for the Nabla Scoring Program, created by Jarmo Hurri (Nabla). The Nabla program will crunch the scores and spit out your Nabla Score, also called your "Tourney Score", for each scenario. Below is what the program does: 1) Checks for game scores that total less than 100. Adjusts to 100 if necessary (60-30 becomes 65-35) 2) Determines the median score for both sides of every scenario based on all 36 instances of that scenario. 3) Determines the distance, plus or minus, of your score from the median for each scenario. 4) Calculates a Nabla Score based on this distance from the median using a rather complex formula. 5) Averages all five of your Nabla Scores to give your final Tourney Score. By establishing a median for each side of a scenario we determine the balance of the scenario. Your score is then compared to this median. If you score 30 points and the median is only 20 for that side, then you have done very well inspite of your "loss". This is why you don't want to surrender. You never know what the median of a scenario might be. You won't know this until the end. Establishing scenario balance (the median) means we can measure relative performance within your section without the necessity of balanced scenarios. This is a major breakthrough for competitive CM IMO!! With this scoring system we can play virtually any scenario and not worry about unfairness due to the balance issue. AARs Bonus points will be added to your final Tourney Score if you submit AARs. Each full credit AAR will be worth 4% of the highest player's tourney score (before adding his AARs). If you write five full credit AARs you will receive additional tourney points equal to 20% of the highest player's tourney score. AARs will receive either full credit or half credit. You must write more than just a few short paragraphs for full credit. I will let you know if an AAR is too short soon after you send it to me. You don't have to write a book either. Just give us a fairly good description of how the game played out. You are not required to write AARs. You just get a few extra points if you do. This could put you ahead if you're in a tight race in your section. The primary purpose of the AARs is to provide the scenario designers with feedback on their work. If you've ever designed a scenario for the community, you know how rare it is to get this feedback. Writing AARs is one way to express your thanks to the designer. Even negative feedback is welcome as long as it's constructive and not mean spirited. Another thing AARs do is help people learn to improve their tactics. Every scenario is played twelve times in a tourney such as this. There are eleven other people who had to deal with the same tactical situations you did. It can be very instructive to learn how others handled things, especially if you did worse than most. (BTW, all the AARs will be sent to you upon request once you have completed your games.) Lastly, by writing an AAR (feedback) you are doing the community a small favor. This is because the designer can tweak the scenario based on feedback before releasing it to the community. Having a scenario played twelve times by twenty four different people is a great test of a scenario. I think it's safe to say that very few scenarios get that degree of testing before they are put out to the public. They may get played twelve times, but not by twenty four different people, and certainly not under blind conditions. Those of us who enjoy these tournaments need new scenarios (security). In return for these scenarios the designers get the feedback they like. IMPORTANT! Submitting AARs 1)AARs should never be sent in with game results. Send them in a separate email. 2)AARs can be .txt, .doc, or .pdf files. Do not write them in the body of an email. 3)AARs should not be more than 4 MB UNcompressed. Screenshots can cause you to go over this limit easily. I would recommend the .pdf format if you want to include several screenshots. 4)In the subject line of emails containing attached AARs, write your username and the scenario name. For example: Madmatt, The Ambush THE PLAYOFFS Everybody makes it to the playoffs! However, only the four section winners in each tourney are eligible for the prize. The four section winners will play a 3 scenario round robin. The second place finishers in each section will do the same, and so on. If you place last in your section, you will face the other three last place finishers in the playoffs. The playoffs will be scored exactly like the "regular season". Those of you who aren't eligible for the wine (not first in section) are still very important to the tourney. Your scores will determine the accurate median we need for the playoff scenarios. THE PRIZES The winner of the "First Place Playoff" in each tourney will win the prize. The winners of Tourney I and Tourney II will each receive six different bottles of WineCape's fine South African wines, postage paid to their doorstep. The winner of Tourney III will receive three almost new VCR movies. They are, "Stalingrad" (by the people who made "Das Boot"), "Cross Of Iron", and the somewhat obscure "A Midnight Clear". I purchased these a year ago from Amazon.com and watched them all twice. All three are very good war movies IMO, and the tapes are in mint condition. REPORTING MIAs In order to keep all games proceeding at an acceptable pace we need to identify any potential dropouts (MIAs) promptly so I can find out their intentions regarding the tourney, and replace them if necessary. Please email me if you have not heard from an opponent in 3 days unless that opponent has informed you beforehand of his inability to send turns for a specified period of time. This way I know what is going on. The tourney cannot be scored until every last game is completed. By informing me of possible problems (3 days and no turns) I can act promplty so matches don't get way behind. It's up to you guys to keep me informed. That should cover just about everything. Ask questions if you have them. I probably left something out, or explained something in an unclear manner. Treeburst155 out.

Awrighty then, let's move to the new thread. I'd put a link here but I haven't started the new one yet. Just look for "RoW II: The Boots & Tracks Brawl (Part VI)". Fight On!! Treeburst155 out.

LOL! Fight On!! Treeburst155 out.

Mike8g, Send your TabPub files to me. I will forward them to him. __________________ On AARs for the Finals round, there will be no extra points awarded. This does not mean Boots & Tracks does not want AARs. It means that I would prefer the prize winners be determined by score alone, once in the Finals. AARs would be VERY much appreciated. In fact, I told B&T leader, Scott Boston, that I would start giving points for AARs in the Finals of future tourneys if we don't get much feedback on these three scenarios. So, give us an AAR or a scenario review, please. There is no such thing as too much feedback. It's a great way to say "thanks" to Boots & Tracks. Fight On! Treeburst155 out. [ October 16, 2002, 07:25 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Nabla System News: Nabla has requested the scoring program input files for all the scenarios ever scored with the Nabla scoring system. This amounts to 17 scenarios. He's going to come up with some statistics he thinks I will find useful for determining the shape/flatness of the scoring curve for the new program. IOW, I don't think he likes my first proposal. He never tells me what he thinks the curve should be because there is no right and wrong with it. He just points out things I should consider. He's great to work with. Have I mentioned he has a PhD in Computer Science & Engineering? Combine that with my 11th grade math, and we're quite a team. He couldn't do it without me. As the scenario database grows with each tourney, the curve may be tweaked from time to time. The more scenario fingerprints we have to look at, the better. The scoring system will just get better and better over time. Fight On!! Treeburst155 out. [ October 14, 2002, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

I'd REALLY like to see that movie Capt. Was it a PBEM game, I hope? I was always under the impression that no vehicle in the flight path of a round could block it. The "wrong" vehicle can only be hit if the round is actually calculated to hit right where the "wrong" vehicle happens to be. This I've seen occur when two vehicles are very close together. I'd sure like to see that movie. Treeburst155 out.

jjelinek's email gets a bit screwy from time to time. He had trouble with Lopaka too. If things don't start working in a couple more days I'll act as a go between. The only thing is, I'm going to be real busy next week, so I'll only be online once per day for a short time. Keep trying. Treeburst155 out.