Nabla

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Elvis: I was around for virtually all of the board discussion for CM1. Throughout the entire developement of CM1 Steve, Charles and all the beta testers would post items on this board about what is new with the game. This usually led to long discussions about historical aspects of the items and playability of the items. Many ideas that BTS had for certain aspects of the game were (and still are) affected by discussions held on this board. No doubt the lions share of debate took place between Steve, Charles and the betas but if someone voiced a sound well reasoned debate it was heard. The point of this history lesson you ask?: "BTS, what do you want from us now?" When the time comes and information begins to come in from beta testers and BTS if we have an opinion, especially a conflicting idea, be prepared to defend your position in a clear and reasonable way. Also, be prepared to back up your ideas with historical evidense that the people being asked to make the changes have (or can have)access to. And making sure no discussion ever turns personal or into a flame war.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This sounds like a reasonable way of working together, especially if it worked with CM1 (I'm fairly new around here and therefore do not know everything that happened with CM1, but I'd sure like to donate a part of my brain to CM2 ). However, to avoid the frustration of users that now have long and interesting discussions with no response I'd be very pleased to hear BTS's opinion on this. Also, I'd like to know if BTS already has a full supply of Beta testers. If some seats are available, you can count me in. Although I do understand that I might be at the end of a very long, communism style line

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Goofy: I'm also willing to show my support and belief in the product by pre-ordering as I did with CMBO! Any idea when that will start? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Absolutely, add me up to the pre-ordering list as well. Perhaps I should have named the topic "BTS, you know we'll give you our money, what else do you want from us now"

We know that CM1 is pretty much finished now, and BTS is starting to work with CM2. While the development of CM1 was still on its way, from the development point of view the role of this bulletin board and the ideas, test reports, bug reports and other forms of input from the enthusiastic user groups were to improve CM1. While following discussions I've become convinced that users of this (words fail me) game are extremely willing to contribute to the development of the game. I also think that the ideas, tests etc. are a valuable asset for BTS. Based on my experience I would say that users will keep developing the ideas as long as they know that their contribution are being considered and can make a difference. In practical terms this means that there has to be an active feedback system, which for CM1 was implemented by both discussion threads and new release versions. However, for CM2 the situation is not that simple, and I think that lately I have been seeing a lot of threads with good ideas, and faily little feedback from BTS. So two questions come up naturally: 1) How does BTS see the role of these this bulleting board in the development of CM2? 2) Have you thought about the problem of giving feedback on the ideas about CM2?

I was reading Beevor's Stalingrad the other day (it is excellent, by the way), and I couldn't help but start thinking about CM2. As BTS has frequently mentioned, they already have too many ideas to implement in CM2, so I don't know if they want to discuss new ones. Well, this message can be ignored freely Anyway, my first question is about the poor physical condition of men in the eastern front. There was hunger, sickness, fatigue etc., and I really don't think that one can get a realistic feeling of what is was like there without having worn out men that are too tired to run, and may collapse at any moment (some men died there while just standing, with no obvious reason, and Germans had to send top physicians to find out what was happening). So do you think that the current set of physical / mental conditions in CM can be used to model such behaviour, or do you have plans to include new states or different dynamics? Second, the condition of equipment was also pretty lousy. I don't think that one should have to model the mice that ate the insulation from wires , but I think that lack of fuel and spare parts (increased probability of breakdowns and jams) are an issue. Do you have any plans for these? Third, for those who might be interested, there was a review article in last weeks Nature of a book concerning psychiatric breakdown in war. There's probably a lot of clinical / psychiatric stuff included, at least when describing how different disorders were analysed, but also a lot of stuff that might be both useful and illuminating. For example, the review states that psychiatric casualties made up about 30% of US casualties when they encountered Wehrmacht in Tunisia, since the US was not very well prepared for these disorders. The book was praised for its historical accuracy. The book is written by Ben Shephard and is called A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists 1914-1994.

A Finnish gaming magazine Pelit (it is actually quite good and has praised CM on many occastions) is arranging its annual on-line voting for game of the year. So if you are a Finn or understand Finnish , please cast your vote at www.pelit.fi

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: Combat Mission version 1.1, featuring live Internet play, is officially ready! <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Thank you guys. Excellent work! <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If you previously downloaded any of our public betas, you should delete them all. They will not be compatible with the real v1.1. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Could you specify what you mean by delete? Do you mean just the executable or some other files as well? The set of improvements and bug fixes is just great, but I'd like to report one "side effect". <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> * Also, infantry (sometimes) retreats from buildings being blasted by heavy weapons that are in danger of collapse. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I assume that this was already present in the last beta, because it caused a weird situation in one of my games. My infantry units were under heavy weapons fire in a building, and as specified above, decided to retreat when the building was severely damaged. However, there were two things that made this decision unrealistic: 1. The units had to retreat over an open field, and there were three Tigers at one end of this field just waiting for someone to blow up. 2. There were at least two friendly buildings next to the damaged building. So in reality no platoon leader in his right mind would have told his units to retreat to their death, but would have ordered them to move to the next building. Does my argumentation make sense? Is there anything that could be done to improve the situation? Finally, thank you once more for all the excellent work you've done

Ok, here's my current list 0) Finns and northern terrains 1) list of units. 2) ability to see which of my own units sees a spotted enemy unit 3) a map with some approximate topological information 4) full playback video with display of commands that have been given to units before each action phase, and ability to annotate the commands that you give - this would make a perfect tool for post-mortem analyses 5) ability to build up complicated command sequences such as target before seeing enemy - move - fire once - move back - hide . And - I know that this isn't the place for my final wet dream since this isn't going to happen in CM2, but... I'm fighting but I can't resist! A possibility to play the game as the commanding officer with layer one point of view and a map that is being updated based on what the officer knows.

Now this is interesting. I also noticed last week that my notebook seems to be very heated when running CM, and that when I run CM with the notebook running on battery it does not lock up that easily. I have to run more tests to confirm this, but this would make some sense since I think that my notebook runs 500MHz when on battery and 700MHz otherwise. There's obviously nothing you guys can do about poorly ventilated processors, but why do these problems turn up with just CM? I have not been able to get the notebook to lock under any other circumstances. Is the processor performing some heavy computations even when the battlescene is stationary? I mean, my laptop may freeze even if I just leave the CM running by itself for a while (with no input).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KwazyDog: What I would like to get from you guys though are complete system specs, right down to motherboard brands and drivers you guys are using. The only thing I can think of here that *may* be a CM problem is if CM is conflicting with a certain brand of motherboard (though unlikely) or a certain version of driver (possible). <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Could we start a CM lockup analysis thread, where you could post an opening message containing a template for lockup system reports. This way we could see the breadth of the problem, and also share ideas of how to pinpoint the problem and solve it. (I could of course start the thread myself, but oou probably know better what such a template should contain).

I've been following these lockup discussions with great interest, since I am having serious lockup problems myself. I'm running HP Omnibook 6000 with ATI Mobility graphics card. Since other people with ATI Mobility graphics card were having similar problems, I used to think that this was an ATI-specific problem. However, after following these discussions for a while I don't think this is the case. The thing that puzzles me is why are these lockups so common now with different hardware components. Since I'm not a heavy gamer, but mostly play only CM, I don't know whether such lockups are common among 3D-games. If they are, then maybe it is a general problem with the operating system (Windows) or hardware (Intel / motherboards / cooling). However, if lockups are not common among 3D-games, then maybe there is something that could be changed in CM to improve the situation. The problem is currently that we don't know the smallest common denominator, or even whether there is one. We users are somewhat helpless in the situation, since we are restricted to our own hardware specification and do not have access to source code. So this is a humble request towards BTS to clarify the situation.

I would have to agree that the lack of depth vision when viewing the battle scene from above is one of the most challenging aspects of the game at the moment. At least for me it is quite an effort to try to keep in mind all the valleys and hills in the scene during setup or battle. And since depth elevations are a huge factor in battle, I am repeatedly finding myself in a position where I have lost a tank or two because I did not notice some bumps. Of course this may be just because of my Junior status Matts reply to Dellisny clearly states that the game does not see the topographic map at the moment. However, there are some alternatives which I would still like to explore. 1) By looking at the scenario editor I gather that the game does know the elevation of each square of the battleground. A display / plot of these elevation levels would already make a huge difference. 2) The elevation map does not change during battle, so one could add an offline topographic map generator to the scenario editor that would create the map when the scenario is saved. This created map would not have to be a formally exact map (I don't believe they had ones in 1944), just an approximation. Furthermore, the offline nature of such a feature would probably require minimal changes to existing code. 3) The scenario editor could be changed so that one could attach an image of some kind to the battleground. This way scenario editors could supply topographic maps when available. Opinions?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: The biggest factor in deciding a units Ambush skill is in its Experience level. What level was the HQ? If it was Green or even Regular you may have had a dumb LT sticking his head up and looking around while the platoon sargeant was shaking his head yelling for the moron butter bars to get his ass down. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I checked it yesterday, and HQs and original squads were all regular. When hiding, the platoon HQs of all platoon were trigger happier than ordinary squads. Even if determination of trigger happiness is probabilistic, this would be fairly improbable. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Madmatt: I have not seen any tendency in my HQ's to spring traps early and I can think of several times when I stummbled into a near perfect ambush at less than 20 meters. They are an artform to perfect, but when they are setup just right, (shiver) man are they mean. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ok, since I'm afraid there is room for confusion here let me refresh and illustrate the problem once again. SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! SPOILER ALERT!!! The battle I was playing was Ham and Jam. After finishing the troops between the bridges I placed three platoons on the bank of the river. Some squads were right in the waterfront, and others were on the small hill something like 10 meters from the river. HQs were a bit further back than any of the usual squads. All units were hiding, not ambushing, and all HQs had stealth +2. Now in this setup all HQs were constantly popping up and firing on enemy units that were on the other side of the river, while ordinary squads remained nice and quiet although they were closer to the enemy. I did win the battle, so I can survive with the situation , especially with the hint that Juju gave. However, so far CM has been the one and only game which is so goooooood (and has such a great discussion forum) that I am actually willing to spend some time to even make it better, and that is why I am sharing this non-intuitive game experience here.

Chupa, I'm having the same problem that you do. I'm running CM on HP Omnibook 6000, definitely same video card and probably the same sound card as well. I've tried to update all the drivers (except the newest DirectX). Nothing helps. The Alt-S key combination has become very familiar... If either of us finds a solution lets share it asap.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by KwazyDog: Nabla, I imagine what happened in your example is that the Tiger was either just targetting the half track as it passed behind the building, or your opponent just targeted the half track that another unit had spotted. I would seriously doubt that the Tiger would fire at the half track in this example but if it did please pass on the save file for review.... Dan<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Having seen the discussion about optics above my example just sort of hit the spot . No problems or critique here, both of your explanations are possible. I did not even consider the situation problematic enought to check whether the Tiger fired. The situation was just somewhat hilarious to the untrained eye of a Junior Member

The Germans DO have superior optics in CM. Below the German veteran Tiger of the computer is targeting my peace loving halftrack through one knocked out halftrack, three light buildings and two heavy buildings. Perhaps its just not the visible wavelength... All ended well, though. The tiger did not hit.

If others are having similar experiences, I still have to wonder *why* HQs would be acting differently One hypothesis for this would be that the stealth property (which was +2 for the HQs in my game) helps squads in hiding, but not the HQ itself. Since this would be a bug, and since CM is by far the best game I've ever played , this is not probable. But I'd like to rule out this possibility so that my troops can sleep better at nights.

I have a question about the hiding behaviour of headquarters. I tried to arrange an ambush by telling my men to hide on the bank of a river. I had not set an ambush marker, since I did not know where I was going to hit them, but the rifle squads were behaving quite nicely, waiting in the bushes for the Germans to make a lethal mistake... However, the headquarters were much more problematic. They could not keep their heads down, but opened fire on enemy units even though they were further from enemy and had better cover than rifle squads. So my question is: do HQs act differently when they have been ordered to hide? BTW, I just joined the forum and this is my first message, so hello to everyone and thanks for BTS for developing this great piece of software.