Nabla

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by fytinghellfish: Uh.. I'm of Swedish, Norweigan and Prussian descent. Does that count? Is Chicago far enough north to count as Nordic?<hr></blockquote> We seem to have a number of these borderline cases. Under pressure a surprising number of people seem to crack and admit some Nordic connections or sympathy for the Nordic people. We'll count you in by default. If we get more than 24 participants then we'll see what we'll do. Ok?

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Topi: Count me in if the time schedule is not too tight? (Any estimates about how long participants have for completing the first set of matches, btw?) <hr></blockquote> No, not yet. I think the implicit deadline is is the increasing interest in CM2 once it appears. On the other hand, nothing stops us from playing the second round in CM2 But seriously, Treeburst155 has a lot of experience on realistic play deadlines, so we'll listen to what he has to say once he's online.

I'm posting a placeholder for A.S. who is waiting to be registered on the board. So A.S., you're in

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Joseph Porta: Hmmm... Green but interested. Are we talking PBEM or TCP/whatever here ? Oh, and that makes two Norwegians :cool: <hr></blockquote> Treeburst155 will fill in the details, but we will most probably use similar rules to those in Wild Bill's Rumblings of War: "The games can be played PBEM or TCP/IP but no player is required to agree to a TCP/IP game. You must be willing to PBEM if your opponent wishes."

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by vskalex: Ok, what the hell. Totally unexperienced, just started fy first PBEM's. I just hope someone else do the scoring bit Oh, and Sweden for me.<hr></blockquote> This is not team game, just individuals. Well, of course the winner will wave his flag for a full round around the arena You've still got plenty of time to practise.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by ciks: Can guys from across the Baltics participate too?<hr></blockquote> We'll count you in. If we happen to get more than 24 participants we'll have to prefer people from the Nordic countries. Does that sound fair? If we get more than 24 people we'll arrange Baltic Championships next

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Heibis: BTW, should it not be a Nordic Championship (Scandinavia is just Norway, Sweden and Denmark, IIRC)? <hr></blockquote> Heck yes, that name did cross my mind but I discarded it since people from Alaska and other northern places immediately popped into my mind. But Nordic it should be, and I'll edit into the opening post.

The Nordic Championships organizing team - Treeburst155, Wild Bill Wilder, and yours truly - proudly presents: The first official CM Nordic Championships Yes, it is here! Get your umlauts together and sharpen your skis. Will the über-Finns reign or will they just drink too much and shoot their own leg with Suomi SMGs? Have the Swedes perfected their tactics during the quieter centuries or have they just gotten sloppy? Are the Danes masters of the flatland or is the smörgåsbord just too tempting? What about the Norwegians or the Icelanders? Will the Rockefellers manage others out, or could the Geysirssons give a cold shower to the whole lot? The Championships feature 1. A level of evil gameplay never seen before - unbalanced scenarios scored by the new scoring system described here. The scoring system is currently being used in Wild Bill's Rumblings of War, but the Nordic Championships is the first tournament with specifically designed, truly unbalanced scenarios. 2. Five brand new, (possibly) unbalanced scenarios in the first round, two by Wild Bill Wilder, master of disaster, and three by yours truly. Suspense like you've never seen before. Think you know how much firepower the enemy has? Think again, a surprise might be just around the corner. Or then again, it might not be. In this tournament, you never know. You just have to be on your toes, like a real commander would be. 3. A second playoff round to determine the final winner from the top performers of the first round. The details of this second round will be given later. 4. Top quality, reliable, professional tournament management by Treeburst155. This guy has the ability to keep the show on the road. Secured scenarios (no hope of cheating), opponent pairing, keeping track of scores etc. It all starts on the 11th of November. We have room for a maximum of 24 players, who will be divided into groups of six players for the first round. Players - which, ahem, have to be people from the Nordic countries - will be accepted into the tournament in the order in which they post into this thread. So post now, if you desire to be called The CM Nordic Master. This tournament will be remembered. At least for as long as the Eurovision song contest. On behalf of the CM Nordic Championships organizing team, Nabla [ 10-31-2001: Message edited by: Nabla ]</p>

Periodic bump.

Ok guys, thanks for confirming that it can be done. Back to the scenario.

Had to shamelessly bump a thread I started myself since no-one has answered. To clarify the question I'd like to point out that I'm not trying to get AFVs to cross a river in CM. This is just background work for a scenario. I'm creating a situation in which German AFVs have been able to "sneak" across a river during the night. Now I just want to know if that was really possible at all.

Hello everyone! I need a piece of advice for a scenario I'm making. Hypothetically, what kind of vehicles could the Germans transfer over a narrow river (width 20 meters) during one night (the possible constructions would also have to be built during the night)? I suppose that they would use a temporary bridge built of pontoons, or perhaps even a corduroy road if the river is very shallow. How quickly could they build such a construction? What kind of pressure could it handle?

Bump.

No word from the HQ yet, justing bumping to see if they'd respond.

Yes it would seem that there is no way to cheat with the model suggested here (well, except if you can hack the code, but that's a problem with the current system as well). It would be nice to hear BTS's response since they've given a lot of thought to this.

This is a great idea since it would also change the nature of PBEM gaming. You would have a new video with every email, that is, action all the time.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rifle1860: Dear Nabla Sorry, I have been hiding for a bit. Still want some input on this?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Sure. All kind of input is appreciated. Right now I'm leaned towards fallback orders. I also intend to randomize the occurrence of events which trigger the fallback conditions.

It seems that there is no way to redirect standard error under DOS. I changed the program so that debug information is printed to standard output instead. So now you can use either command-string |more or command-string > debug-file.txt In the first case the output is displayed in a pager screen by screen, in the second case output can be found in file debug-file.txt after running the program. Get the new version here.

Hello everyone! I've made the changes requested by Treeburst155 to the scoring program nabla-score-tournament. 1. The program now prints differences from medians and nabla scores for individual scenarios to standard error if the -d debug option has been given. 2. The final scores are sorted and printed with two decimals. The new version can be downloaded from the usual place.

Hmm, this idea about unbalanced battles may be a bit more complicated that I thought. Basically once the commander knows that he has a very poor chance he should contact his superiors. Unless, of course, he has "no matter what" -type of orders, or fallback orders. As an example, consider the case where axis is defending against allied attacker. Once axis commander notices that he will be unable to hold his positions he would contact his superiors for advice. This is of course impossible in CM. In a normal, balanced scenario contacting superiors is unnecessary since the defender knows he should have a chance. Well, actually this holds only at the beginning of the battle - once you screw up or Lady Luck screws you the situation may be such that the forces are out of balance. Then you can decide whether to retreat or try to hold your positions, thereby emulating the decisions of your superior and assuming that the result of this battle is the only thing that matters. Now consider the case where the axis commander has been told to hold the positions "no matter what". This simulates the situation in which the battle is extremely important from a larger point of view. But how can you implement this idea in CM? I mean, if you run all your units out of the battle ground your during the first turn the end score will be higher than if they all die during turn 15. (At least I think so.) So it seems that in such a case one must add some new point systems (such as +1000 points if the first enemy unit can not exit your side in 30 minutes). As an example of fallback orders, let us think of a situation where the axis defender has been told to hold the positions, but if it is impossible (force of attacker >= three times your force) then they should retreat. Ok, this might work. In such scenarios gathering information about the enemy as fast as possible would be crucial. The defender would prepare for enemy attack, but if he found out that the enemy is too powerful he would try to break off. If he would find this out too late all his forces might be destroyed. If he would guess that the forces are too large and run off, he might be right or wrong. If he's right his forces will be saved. If he is wrong he could have held his positions and scored more points. There is a danger here from the point of view of creating and scoring such unbalanced scenarios. I think that in the real world when someone attacks, on the average the defender will be outnumbered. Therefore, if unbalanced scenarios would be drawn from a historically correct distribution, you might have something like "the attacker crushes the enemy 9 times out of 10". Number 9 is just a guess here. So if the defender decided to run at the first round he would be correct 9 times out of 10. Whether such coward behaviour would be beneficial depends on the number of points you receive for each alternative. I think I'm a bit confused. I'll have to think about this further. Does this stuff make any sense? Opinions about what I've said above would be greatly appreciated.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Herr Oberst: Your mongo-EXE file size is probably related to using a Windows capable compiler to build your application. Adding in a command line interface does not exclude all the "accessory" code included by default. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I'm using the GNU C++ compiler so I don't think that's the case. I think the reason is the fact that I'm using many classes from the standard template library. But I did strip the binaries so that now they are a bit less than half the size they used to be. You can find the new binaries here. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Herr Oberst: You know, a GUI might be nice to have. If you'll ship the code to HerrOberst@cox.rr.com, I can take a look at making a Win-Friendly version. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I agree with that idea about a GUI version, but having the source code in several places gives me the creeps. So the first solution I would suggest is that you write a graphical wraparound program for the DOS-binary. Shouldn't be too hard. How about it? [ 10-13-2001: Message edited by: Nabla ]

Ok, I made the third needed program. This creates tournament schedules so that players are compared against other players as evenly as possible (see above). The program take two input files. Here is the contents of file scenarios.txt (the === is not part of the file) ========================================== The_Aftermath Humiliator Bumblebee Rabbit GoGo ========================================== and here is the contents of players.txt ========================================== A B C D E F ========================================== now run the program so that results are saved into file schedule.txt (this is run from Unix prompt but the distributed program works under DOS) ========================================== ./nabla-tournament-schedule scenarios.txt players.txt schedule.txt ========================================== Now the schedule has been saved in schedule.txt (this can be filled and given directly as input to the final scoring program). ========================================== # The_Aftermath A B C F D E # Humiliator C A B D F E # Bumblebee A D E C F B # Rabbit E A D F C B # GoGo A F B E C D ========================================== As you can see, A is compared twice against all players B-F. This is the optimal solution. Also, A plays both sides as evenly as possible. The program can be downloaded here. [ 10-12-2001: Message edited by: Nabla ]

Lots of good ideas here. Basically what is going to happen here is that we will have completely different types of games in tournaments than we have in regular games. As was noted above, I am currently designing the scenarios for the first tournament which will utilize the new rules to the fullest. If someone wants to join me and design a possibly unbalanced scenario with even some manually calculated points please contact me. Well, tss may be excluded since we are planning on making this the Finnish championship tournament. It has not been arranged yet and we thought that it would be nice to have some target group.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rifle1860: The one type of operation that may realistically give you the flexibility that you are looking for is a Guard. Guards are intended to gain info about the enemy and to cover units from direct enemy action while they do other things (prepare an attack, dig in, relieve another unit in the line, prep a demolition, or move). ... My thinking is that the guard commander would be given the freedom to fulfil the task as he sees fit.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This sounds very interesting. I'll have to think about which units would be parts of such a very mobile formation.

Ok, let me gather together what's been stated here. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wreck: A company commander would not be independently deciding to do very much. Certainly nothing like moving his entire company off to attack, say, even something close. ... Up at battalion level, much the same thing is true, though with somewhat more flexibility.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by JasonC: I think it is a reasonable idea only for a battalion level task force in a fluid situation. Down at the company level, they don't make such decisions. Battalion commanders usually receive orders from regiment or division about whether to attack or defend, but they might change on their own if the situation is uncertain enough. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Michael Dorosh: I would speculate that outside of urban settings (and rarely even then) and outside the scope of a deliberate attack, rarely would two opposing companies be situated within 500 metres of each other - ie on an average CM map. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Rifle1860: Companys generally were ordered : To Block - place or manoeuvre forces to contain the en; To Capture - take and maintain a terrain feature, person or object; To Contain - stop, hold or surround en forces; To Cover - Protect through offence or defence; To Defend - employ combat power to prevent or destroy an en attack and hold an assigned area; To Delay - Inflict a time delay to an advancing en; To Occupy - move to an area, secure it and prepare for the next task; To Screen - observe, identify and report on en movements; To Guard - basically a combination of Screen and Delay; To Clear - to ensure that a point, route or area is free of the effects of en direct fire weapons; to Destroy - obvious. Usually, a company will only be given one of these tasks to complete in any phase of an operation and the choise is rarely up to their discression. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> So taken together I would interpret these statements so that companies have specific orders and are assumed to contact for further orders if they are unable to fulfill the given mission. This of course assumes that company HQs were able to contact their superiors. I assume that if the situation is chaotic company HQs may have to make battalion level decisions. The list given by Rifle1860 is a very good guideline to follow when designing different types of missions. Most of these mission types are feasible within CM - however, missions of type Occupy, Screen, Guard and Clear may not be feasible. Occupy and Clear seem to assume absense of enemy (contact battalion if enemy found). The success of Screen should be measured with the amount of observed and identified enemies - no such metrics in CM. The same seems to apply to Guard. On the other hand, the situation seems to be a bit different on the level of a battalion if an element of surprise is included. But I do not yet understand what kind of "elements of surprise" would cause independent decision making on battalion level. A simple example: the battalion has been ordered to attack (assumedly) one enemy company, but faces (unexpectedly) heavy artillery fire during approach. Who decides (and under what kind of conditions) whether the attack should be continued or not? Rifle1860, is the corresponding mission type list any different for battalions? <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Treeburst155: Could not the commander of a reinforced company (for example)be ordered to probe the enemy to his front; and if sufficient weakness is found, conduct a general attack, with "sufficient weakness" being a judgment call of the company commander? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is an interesting question, especially from the point of view of what is meant by "sufficient weakness". Using a thumbrule of 3-1 attack ratio, could battalion HQ give command "probe, if only one platoon is found, attack, otherwise retreat"? [ 10-10-2001: Message edited by: Nabla ]