Radar

I kinda wish there was a line between split squads. There's always been some frustration as I move em about and I tend to loose where their other halfs are to each other. It isn't going to happen by now I realize, however it might be a heplful suggestion for the future.

Well I'm not sure I follow but here is some stuff that may help. First, continuous waypoints can be set by right mouse clicking. Next, if your waypoint line has more than what I'll call 'node' you may give different move commands by either hot key commands or right clicking the unit box and selecting the order from the order window. Now if your waypoint line had 4 waypoints and you wanted the last leg to be from 'fast' to 'move-to-contact' you could either hit 'f' and Rt. click three times, then hit 'e' and finish with a left click. Or, you could hit 'f' and left click three times, then 'e' and left click. Also you can hit 'f' and right click the mouse three times and then left click to end the line. You can modify the nodes by left clicking on the waypoint also. This will outline the node with a yellow box and it will allow the change of the line following the node to just before the preceeding waypoint. I hope this helps.

I setup a small map and used various elevations to determine approximately how tall the tree were in cmbb. I constructed a wide trench with 0 height bottom and varied the top of slope equally. The ditch bottom was 100m wide and units on the top of slope over 20m from each edge. This is what I've concluded: </font>[*]Tall Pines reach up to around 15m +/-</font>[*]Woods and scattered trees are about 7 1/2m high</font>[*]LOS can be traced over trees (except pines) through the second floors of buildings. I've done a search for anything else concrete, and here are some interesting threads we may not have seen or have forgotten: How tall are the trees? Visualizing 3-D terrain? Holes in terrain on slopes Checking the view Not seeing the forest for the trees Scaling question Are hill crests cover?

Well I've had luck unbogging by giving a reverse order 10m to the rear of the AFV. Cancel your orders if you cant get the reverse line to the rear. This will take some playtesting to confirm, however.

Movement increases survival I've noticed. Along with smoke which blocks LOS, however temporarily.

If you would like to read an excellent book on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising I would recommend (if you can find it) reading The Bravest Battle by Dan Kurzman 1976 Pinnacle Books

How about ID/dist markers? There is nothing worse than picking out a contact from behind one or two others. There is really no need for them at least for the movie phase. I'd like to see them removed. For range during my plot is what I have my LOS tool for, I can get info about a contact if I click on it already. The info markers dont help much and really cut back on viewing enjoyment. I wish I knew how to turn 'em off.

I've seen this happen before CMBO if you are in/at the wall (if I remember correctly), The work around was to move inward, away from the wall some distance horizontally before moving down?

Right on that.

Would it be proper to include specific mod or overal mods sets, faverite groupings or even a list suggestions in the general brief? Should that be considered for a briefing? What do you think?

Isn't that acceptable given the extremely low spot quality? [ November 24, 2002, 06:50 AM: Message edited by: Radar ]

Thanks for the tip.

Ya, thanks BTS, for the excellent game. Now if only I had more time to sit and play it...

All right ya grogs, why don't you push for a reverse command for guns? We didn't have it for CMBO and now with CMBB out it still is neglected. So we're saying the only correct movement is forward?! In the game right now I can advance my gun to a forward position with no trouble but to get to a position 180 degrees behind the current position I must sit through the most ridiculous display while the crew traverses the tube around before they will move out. Then when it reaches is destination its facing is probably off by 180 degrees and must be reversed. WHY? Moving a gun is much like using a two wheeled wheel barrow (say that fast five times) in the garden, ya push and pull, turning isn't always mandatory.

That is so cool! I'd like a copy.

I've got a cool trick that can be used for finding hull down or taking unoccupied LOS checks: Movement waypoint lines are offset from ground elevation but will stretch directly over terrain if the terrain between waypoints is higher than between the waypoints and next highpoint. They can be used to help you with the LOS tool to gain your orientation anytime when you get in overhead view, are zoomed in or perhaps offset to the firing unit. These waypoint lines I'll call construction lines. They are especially useful on those large maps to reduce the number of times you'll have to zoom out fully to go point to point with the LOS tool. Additional construction movement orders can be overlayed atop the construction line to point out positions like the top of slopes or perhaps a tight keyhole between buildings. Whatever the case, picking the correct path at certain views, is now simpler. To begin, take one of your foot units as they have the least terrain restrictions. Picking one that has no movement orders is best and give it a random movement command [m,f,s,or c]. Take its first waypoint marker to the target unit that you want to be hull down to and either center the waypoint box or have it placed so that the following WP line will be centered on the targets base and stretch another move command to go past the firing unit through the center of its base or in the direction you want to take to approach the target. This can be your construction line for building movement and orientation orders. Finding the top of slope at the point you want to go hull down is going to show you where the firing unit will be completely exposed to the target and past the point of hull down, but its a critical part we want to know. Here, the triangle waypoint shape is a better tool to work with than the square in most cases. The leading WP is always a square and the second and on is turned into triangles as you add more WP's. After you have the construction line in place, trace the LOS tool from the firing unit to the target along the construction line, you don't have to go all the way to the target with the LOS tool, just enough to find the LOS breakpoint. Where the red turns black is where you'll want to put a different waypoint movement rate [m,f,s,or c] WP than on your construction line. You'll need to measure the distance from the firing unit to the breakpoint. To help do this, you can use the LOS tool and put your finger on the screen at the black and red intersection . Note that the LOS tool is only scaled to the nearest meter, but you'll want to get at least to the nearest half meter by stretching the LOS tool to the next hightest and lowest distances to scale the correct distance so it will give you the best results. This is your top of slope mark on the line to your target point. Flip flop between the foot unit to show the waypoint triangle and LOS checks from the firing unit to get the waypoint triangle placement correct. When distance gets very close, with the waypoint markers being annoyingly opaque and don't scale down as you zoom in, you can't see what your doing. So then you can turn off the vehicle silhouette [shift-v] and select your foot unit to put two WP along the ridge where the last bend is on the construction line. Making them into another line perpendicular to the target construction line where it last bends is the top of slope intersection . Overlaying your movement orders based on the intersection is now easy. Now here comes the part where I go thin (not bald). I'm not sure how the vehicle height and/or size effects where the hull down grade point for the firing unit will be accounted for at the hillcrest by looking only at the waypoint marker and its elevation in relation to the crest. It seems to, but I haven't been able to tie that part down yet, i,e...how much room to play with? Is the vehicle model identical in all cases (an abstraction) or more specific? Somewhere behind the top of slope will will be a perfect hull down to the target according to the firing unit, though finding only a close rough placement seems to work just fine most of the time. I'll usually give the firing unit movement orders in normal rate to get up to the elevation break point hull down, as just using the hunt order seems to make the AFV to more likely to overshoot, but a small Hunt order the last couple of meters can be usually be given to good effect. You can also use another unused foot unit to tentatively check LOS by taking the movement waypoint and putting one point on the hull down point the centering it on any point or unit on the map. Where it breaks or passes through objects can be easily seen. Using the view one helps to see elevation breaks and overhead views along with magnification adjustments helps to see if LOS crosses objects. You can also use construction lines to determine coordinates for any point on the mapboard: Have one of your foot units to center itself on a grid or tile intersection (ya dont have too, but it looks pretty). This will be known as coordinate (0,0) or (1000,1000) or whatever. Now extending construction lines from a target point Northerly and Easterly and then measuring from the foot unit with its LOS tool you'll get (0,north) and (east,0) from the foot unit. With this data you can determine the distance between any two points on the map (+/-) using the distance formula: d=sqrt(sqr(X"-X')+sqr(Y"-Y')) or ask any Jr. High student. Remember: Cancel out the movement lines [backspace] and restart the vehicle silhouette[shift-v] that was used in the construction before hitting GO !!! :cool: [ May 13, 2002, 03:55 PM: Message edited by: Radar ]

AT weapons are only half as deadly IMHO in CMBO because they don't have the ability to reverse out of danger. A gun will have to turn around (at increadibly slow rates for this action) before they can go backwards, and repeat to go forwards. This means you can get your nose out but once your gun is discovered (the bigger guns especially) there is no defensive action the guns can realistically take.

Ya, M113's can swim. They sit perty low on the water too, BTW.

Did you knock out a machinegun, perhaps?

We're all trying to be extra good cause Chrismas (CMBB) is nearly here and Santa (BTS) is comming with big bags of toys for good boys and girls.

I got about the same results as Marco and Splinty. Another point about the animation..the words flash by so fast I can't read what it says. The buttons came up rather fast but the page as a whole was held up by the animation.

Hey, thank you Ozzy for pointing that out! I had overlooked that. It does appear to show the difference of a Meeting or Attack/Defense type fights.

Well, one short coming I come across is when I'm in the setup phase and I don't know if my troops will have the benefit of a foxhole on the first turn. Often, I'm playing a scenario blind and the time I spent working out unit placement turns into a waste as there was no allowed entrenchments by the designer, but the briefing had led me to such conclusions. I would like to see a message to be displayed in the setup phase informing the player if entrenchments are available. This could quickly tell me what kind of setup to prepare for. :cool:

Oh, contraire! Map quality can vary widely and especially for higher scale topo maps, accurately plotting bridges and roads is impossible and unnecesary. What ya can get from these maps is mostly general purpose elevation datum (good enough to get in the ballpark, usually): Called in horizontal coordinates are plotted and range is determined. Battery A elevation is at X meters and Target D elevation is scaled at Y meters on a topo map and also the highest intervening terrain is H elevation determined at Z meters from Battery A. All of this data is fairly rough, but this isn't a rocket trip to the moon. Woods, bridges, whatever it is you'ld still need a visual link to get adjustments down on target, large adjustments might be nessesary (especially considering firing batteries with 4 guns).

That is no suprise considering A] Infantry on the 1st floor survive B] Pilloboxes survive direct 14" hits</font>