Agua

How do they work with the CM text? I'd tried the betas and they made the text on various CM screens invisible so I rolled back. Had wierd effects on some other games as well.

he hehee... yeah, I remember marveling at the detail. Many months after I started playing it, there would still be an occasional "WOW!" from some little facet of the design that I hadn't noticed before.

Echo Michael's comments here. I hadn't read anywhere that the cover arc has any effect upon the movement to contact order with regard to the area within which the contact must occur in order to halt the units. That would be a pretty useful feature if it does / could be made to work that way, though.

TRL, It's been so long ago I don't remember. I don't recall seeing a penetration message, but I just don't have a clear enough memory to comment.

That's precisely what i'm wondering too. I've no doubt about the blast effect, it works, but what about hit, penetration etc. ? Anyone ?

There's another set of scenarios put together as a mini-campaign available at the depot by the same designer named "No rest for the weary". I recommend that set as training to anyone new to CMBO due to the varied units & terrain, the small engagement sizes, the excellent briefings and storyline. The designer, Patrick Ware, produced those two gems and no more.

The guy just isn't a wargamer and wasn't very interested in it. That's the crux of it.

That's all anyone can do. Thanks.

Dan's quicker with the keyboard, again. [ October 18, 2002, 01:03 AM: Message edited by: Agua ]

Well, what about a patch that includes whatever coding is necessary to direct the engine to utilize the new skins, then have the new skins available separately for download? Or, in a slight twist on Matrix's self updating feature on Uncommon Valor, have the patch direct the browser directly to the dl of the .bmp files and an auto installer for that? More complication, I'm sure, but to the extent the CD space is a problem, and further, to the extent elimination of the .bmp from the patch itself (and future iterations of the CMBB CD), would save space, is this something that would be feasible to do? Knowing nothing about the amount of space the coding itself would take up, it seems that the space saved by separate source installation of the textures might be worth a look. It would definitely satisfy the community's desire to have all the models. BFC's enthusiasm to put in the work to provide all these models though, which must be substantial, might be a limiting factor.

Great first patch. Thanks for getting that list out and listening to the community. Hope we get additional model textures in subsequent patches to accommodate more of the shared texture vehicles. Great job guys.

Yup. Played it as well as Germans and had the same result. If I were to play Russians, that's exactly what I'd do. Don't they have a single ATG? Maybe not, but seems like that do. If so, find a spot on your right, just inside that first choke point closest to town (it seems like there's an orchard or something there) and set your ATG up with a narrow cover armour arc so as to enable you to fire upon his vehicles one at a time as they cross into LOS on the road at the chokepoint.

Use shoot & scoot to fire from hull down positions, from behind buildings, woods. If you have a pretty good idea where the german afv is going to be located at the time your Russian beer cans execute the "shoot" portion of the maneuver, narrow cover armour arcs will help speed up their target acquisition. If you're stuck with a lot of crappy conscript crews, I don't believe cover armour is available. Also, try using any ATRs available to you to break up groups of german AFVs so as to enable your Ruskies to gang up on targets one at a time, rather than firing at an entire group of German tanks. Conscript crews are just going to plain suck for you though as they panic and break even when be fired upon by weapons that are unlikely to cause penetration.

Well, a really skilled scenario designer can make the ai do some surprising things on attack. I echo wwb in that it can hand you your head until you gain experience. With quick battles, after you gain experience, the attack can be improved by increasing the force and experience bonuses as well, though that does not improve quality of the a/i's decision making, but rather makes its mistakes less costly. On defense, however, the a/i is really not too bad at all, even in quick battles where the computer, rather than a designer, sets up the defense. With a designed scenario, any competent human can create an extremely challenging defense. There I'll put it this way. If all you want to do is play defense v. an a/i attack, then you can give enough bonuses to the a/i, in force size and experience level, to make it mighty challenging, even for an experienced player.

Start with small scenarios. I'd suggest to try working with infantry only quick battles as well in the 300 - 500 point range.

Good for you. That scenario does an outstanding job of demonstrating the new infantry commands.

Yeah, you ought to return it. SDRAM provides poor performance for a P4 as well.

There's a bit of a discussion on "Hill 321" in the "Tips and Tricks" section of the forum in the thread "How do I attack trenches" or something like that. I figured at first you were talking about Cemetary Hill and wanted to tell you to not get discouraged by that scenario. I've been playing CM for close to two years and after 5 attempts on that scenario, I scored no better than a minor victory. A very few folks have reported scoring a Major Victory on that scenario, but I've come to the conclusion that there's a good deal of luck involved in that as I've tried identical approaches and just get mauled. It's just plain hard. Hill 321 on the other hand can be beaten quite handily, and its quite a good training scenario for learning CMBB infantry trench assault tactics. Go read some of the posts in the thread I mentioned in the first paragraph of this post.

HILL 321 SPOILER ******************** [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ [ Afentitten. Get ALL your men up to the spot of woods near the end of the trench on the Russian right. Personally, I used advance to contact to get them up to the spot of woods (scattered trees? don't remember). As the Russians closest to you in the trench will begin to appear, adjust the cover arcs of the MG34's down in the little village to cover only the portion of the trench that is putting out fire on your troops. From that spot in the woods, use "advance" to move as many of your guys to a position from which they can fire upon the trench as you can. After a turn of this (maybe before), you should see the Russians ducking down every now and then. THEN assault with a squad or two into the trench. They should start beating a line out of that trench for elimination in the open. See if that doesn't work for ya.

As WWB stated, the Scenario Depot already provides a single source for nearly every scenario that has ever been published (probably less than 20 old scenarios out there Keith hasn't found). A one stop mod repository would be most appreciated. You're going to run into the same problem Keith did initially with the scenario depot, though: you'll need to get the artists' permission before hosting their mods. Very ambitious project. Best of luck to you.

Re: Fog w/ Wind I live along the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Thick fog and wind is not uncommon here at all. I haven't seen tropical storm force winds combined with fog, but definitely winds between 5-12 mph quite frequently.

Honestly, doesn't the manual state something about assault being useful for covering the last 20m or so? Assuming you've got more than a single squad, try "advance" while utilizing running or bounding overwatch among the squads within the platoon, then assault at the very last few meters, rather than a continuous single order "assault" covering that entire distance. Note that you can use the pause key during the "advance" portion to give your guys a little rest at the start of each turn while they still put out the firepower. I haven't observed any reduction in morale during the pause, only a momentary halt of the movement.

DOH! [ October 11, 2002, 02:38 PM: Message edited by: Agua ]

If you can get your guys into the trench with the enemy, you can concentrate the firepower on individual squads, rolling up the trench as you go, while getting the same cover benefit as the target. Very difficult though without MG/mortar suppression and a few trees to block LOS from the target's buddies in the trench with him. [edited to include the following:] Use the "assault" order when you get right up to, and inside, the trench. Give Hill 312 on the CD a try. It's pretty fun, short, small-sized, and requires some trench assaults. You have enough support units to provide suppression as well. [ October 11, 2002, 02:40 PM: Message edited by: Agua ]

Are you sure it's crashing? If it appears to just be freezing up, it could well be, and likely is simply the turn calculation. It takes a Loooonnnnnnnnnnnnnnggggggggggg time for the computer crunch all the #s on that op.