Phantom Rocker

Nice

Andreas, if people called whinners because they have an own opinion and tell them here, then I think this is poor. BFC is not a wellfare company. I find it funny that Steve remembers us that Scipio has started a SS/Waffengrenadier threat some time ago, but forgets that it was Scipio, too, who tried to bring light into the issue when he made interviews with Moon and someone from CDV about it. You don't like the 5-minutes idea - I wonder if you are in sales biz. It often just works this way. All what Scipio has said is : the scenarios are not an eye catcher for somebody who is new to CM. I agree, and the experience with my workmates shows the same.

First, please excuse my clear language. I really wonder why so many people feel the need to ram their heads into the arses of the BTS crew. Really, there is no need for it - we shouldn't forget that they do it FOR MONEY. This is their JOB. They SELL games to buy a second Lamborgini for each of them. Even if they care a little bit more about their curstomers then other companies: they PROFIT from our ideas and critics, they return a good game, but they surely don't do it for free. So any kind of justified, serious or even honest critic should be welcome here! Just wanted to say this once. And about the demo. I'm in a new job since some weeks. I played the demo with two of my workmates - after 15 turns (this means ~an half hour) they frequently ask thing like : well, this looks nice, but when happens something?). You know, the point is just, there are so many good games out there. If you don't catches somebodies eye within 5 minutes, you have already a problem. If you din't made it within 10 minutes, you have lost a customer. It is not that the demo scenarios are bad - if you are a CM fan. Or at least a wargamer. But for anyone else is the demo just to difficult. It takes to much to learn to understand what is happening and to much time UNTIL something is happening. In the CMBO demo, you just sit back and have fun, shells raining on your head tanks moving around and you think - wow.

Well, to make it simple, BTS believes that the German law says 'no' to Waffen-SS, so BTS say no, too. Period Steve says this is only an unimportant issue, it's just one damn word and one or two different BMPs. As far as I can see, the most people has agreed that it is absolutly unimportant if the thing is Waffen-SS or Waffengrenadier. But why do they make two different versions for the US market and the European market to make a needless difference? Just call them 'Waffengrenadier' in the US version, too. This would end all bla blah about the better 'original' US version, and no one can say they were cheated, no discussions about feared incompatibility etc etc. Of course I assume that the US costumers are as willing to buy the 'Grenadier' version as the EU costumers. So why make a difference at all? [ July 11, 2002, 08:13 AM: Message edited by: Phantom Rocker ]

BTS fears about the money? Most of my friends PURCHASED CM:BO (in the USA), just to support BTS. (I guess that's really unique for a game). Those who purchased in Germany felt a bit cheated because the embarrassing translation and CDVs well known 'service'. Several of my friends already stated that they will piss on every law & loality and illegaly download an US CM:BB. Not because of swastikas, runes or Waffen-SS. Because of CDV. I guess BTS made not the best decission to save his money. [ July 10, 2002, 01:57 PM: Message edited by: Phantom Rocker ]

Yes Sometimes it appears to me that CM:BO has started as a simple 'icon-moving' game with a 3d environment. A lot of things still work that way - like the well known MG that can hold down only one enemy unit. The engine of course is much more complex right now. However, from some point of view, it still works like a 2D icon moving game. It is a 3D tactictal game, and the best we have, for sure. But it is still an abstratction. I guess this is written somewhere in the manual, too. A barrage causes X damage. This is what the engine calculates. The chance to hit a tank is x. The chance to destroy with this hit is y. Period. There is nothing hidden in this calculation. It is - maybe a bit more complex and with more used datas - in princip the same way how damage is calculated in 'Steel Panthers', or example. Some people seem to believe CM is a 3D battle simulation, like a tank sim, only with a lot of different units. What is not right. Not yet . And that causes a lot of missunderstandings. BTW, Redwolf, I hope to see everything in future games what you have mentioned!!!

LOL Michael, thanks for the lesson. Thanks god I'm not born with an English tongue .

Michael, it's unwritten law not to blame people because there English isn't perfect. This is an international forum, and not everyones mother tongue is English. Another wish: I WANT CM:BB RIGHT NOW!!!

Different levels of 'dig-in'. From fast improved foxholes to large and deep WWI-style trenchsystems.

Indirect fire from on-map guns and tanks.

Madmatt Before I forget : whatever I have said, the new ruins are for sure better then nothing . Kwazydog I don't expect less then this

If there is only one person that knows how it works, how can you know that he doesn't need help? To me it seems more like this person could use all help he can get. BTW, someone said that there were rumours about the possible and dangerous big company concurrenz that BTS must fear already two years ago. Well, you should keep in mind that BTS makes a very big secret about the number of CM copies they have sold. It must be at least enough that 4 people can live from it, and still don't need to worry after two years about the release date of CM:BB [ March 12, 2002, 04:12 PM: Message edited by: Phantom Rocker ]

As I said : not the best engine...

First, CM is for sure the best looking tactical wargame. Apart from that : it appears to me that the graphical engine is not so good as it could be. But we should have mercy - a four men company with only one programer must make downstrokes. And as long as CM has no serious competitor this won't be a problem. But how long will they stand alone when CM:BB will be so successfull as it can be expected? It is never a good idea to spare money at the wrong things. About the compatibility to old computers, seen from an biz point of view : I can't remember a single game that wasn't sold only because it's hardware requirements were to high. My personal opinion here is very 'Darwinian': tough luck, all pre-500Hz Athlon processors. Goodbye, less then 32MB graphic cards. Farewell pre-Geforce era.

I don't see the problem. They were still available when I checked the site this evening.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by M Hofbauer: wrong terminology. S.E.K. are today's german police SWAT - teams.<hr></blockquote> Yep, sorry, I meant of course the 'SS Einsatzgruppen'

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Zaraath: It was nicknamed "Goliath", iirc. They were used to reduce the Warsaw Ghetto.<hr></blockquote> I hope that no one will ask for Sondereinsatzkommandos...

Thanks for the answers, Steve. To all others who have build an opion about me in this threat: damned, have you never read my signature?

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Slapdragon: Yes, more of a silly flame war because it started with a rather silly troll post that would have been better ignored, but the subject was not really much to begin with. However, there is a good suggestion for Rocker of backwards engineering the game and testing the concepts against the various literature used to build the model.<hr></blockquote> You seem to know very much about getting things from backward. Can you tell me more about it?

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Slapdragon: Err, gee, do you have a copy of CM:BB already? Or are we talking about Iron Beasts or some other game.<hr></blockquote> He sounds like I had asked for a revision of CM:BO. I was speaking about CM2, 3, 4... Anyway, I guess I understand that it is not a good idea that the user influence the basics. But I still would like to know more about the calculations. That doesn't mean that BTS must publish everything detailed piece of information they have used. But things like: to calculate the chance of a hit we use: Vo, speed of target, own speed etcetera etcetera and put it together this way in a formula, using this and that bonus to reflect this and that side effect like ground condition or visibility. Yes, gunners in reality don't know much about the physics behind a shot, but they were practical trained - and once again, comparing reality and simulation is nonsense without knowledge of the simulation basics.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by aka_tom_w: BUT firing an AT weapon from an elevated position will negate slope effects. There was another thread here where someone documented that a hetzer could be more easily killed with an AT gun from an elevated position because the slope effect of the frontal armour was negated by the higher angle of fire. AND and this is the big part The game was designed with this very thing you are bitching about in mind. Mr Rocker if you play wargames with the intention of minimizing every mathimatical risk and maximizing every mathimatical advantage or opportunity, (the min maxer)try think of this game and the game mechanics as intentionally lying to you or deceiveing you with the intention of adding a sense of the FOG of WAR, the mechanism and math and algorythms and formulae are LARGELY "under the hood" AND they are that way to intentionally encourage the player to play the game by getting a FEEL for how THIS game works. One thing about this concept..... IT WORKS and if you play hard enough and long enough you will undoubtably find consistancy in your results.These results in this game can then be fairly predictable. The results you complain about may not "feel" right to you (and to be sure this issue, has come ALL the time since the game was introduced in its beta demo release) but they are consistant and predicatable. AND these is all the things that have ALREADY been fixed as a result of suggestions and input from the players who love this game. (see below) Now the development phase is OVER so there will be no additional changes Please read this official BTS README before further posting: <hr></blockquote> Tom, who is speaking about CM:BO? Please do us a favor and cut out the complete text of the 1.12 ReadMe. A simple reference is enough, and it has nothing to do with the current discussion anyway . I said it already, but for you again: the top hit is only an example to reflect the limits of the program. I didn't take it as a specific problem. I don't understand what you mean with 'minimizing every mathimatical risk...'. I don't want to precalculate a result. Why should I? The game gives me this calculations already when it shows the chances of hit and kill. Knowledge of the formulas does not influence the result of a die role. I meant : only knowledge off the used parameters would give further discussions a base. Any comparison with the real world is absolutly senseless as long as we don't know how results are calculated. I bet people will still discuss gun accuracy when Combat Mission VII is available, and it will be still senseless. How many posts do you want to read like 'Hey, my book says the weapon x kills the tanks y - why is it different in CM?' followed by 500 test runs by various people? This is waste of time as long as we know nothing about the used calculations and parameters.

To give an example from CM. I placed a 57mm AT 60m away from a King Tiger, the KT shows his front side. The hit propability is 99%, the chance for a kill is 'none'. Of course there is always the small chance for a hit through the gun or more likely through the drivers view slit. Let me assume that this is been considered. How high does the programer see the chance for an unlikely hit? *** Now I rise the terrain, the gun is now on the top of a cliff, 60 meters higher then the KT (map contours set to 'steep', 12 levels difference) The distance to target is now nearly correct shown as 84m, the hit probality 98% and the chance for a kill is still 'none'. So it seems that CM completly ignores the vertical difference - let us assume the gun is so positioned that it can fire in that angle, it has a very high chance for a top penetration. If you now test this, the 57mm produced indeed only frontal hits, no top hits. And it was regulary killed by the KTs (mostly with MG, sometimes with the main gun - BTW, what is the vertical limit for the KT gun? (I really don't know). Well, this should not reflect the CM realism, the test is of course unrealistic. The result wouldn't be influenced by any presetting I have proposed. It should only show that the program can only do what the programer want it to do, and how results are influenced by the used (or ignored) parameters. So, back again to stats and facts: if you want to compare reality and Combat Mission, you must first know which facts has been used and how they are reflected in program formulas. Any discussion based on CM shoot results, and you may run them as often as you want, is only of limited sense if you don't know the basic formulas. It's like Newton's rules for gravity - they are basically right, but no modern physician would base his calculations on them and ignore Einstein's relativity.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Captain Wacky: How do you qualify the likelihood of this occurring? Well, calculate the area of the front of the Sherman, say in square centimeters. Then calculate the area of the of the circle that is the Sherman's gun tube. Divide one by the other, and you have the percentage of how likely a shell is going to hit the specific frontal area in regards to the entire frontal area. Similar to calculating your chances of getting a bull's eye in darts, for example.<hr></blockquote> What I said...an interpreter take some facts and stats and read what he want to read from them. You trapped yourself when you try to logicaly explain this event. Reflect this in stats, you will find out that this has happened (example) 5 times in the whole human history. For a statistican would this mean: it is something so unlikly that it has (statisticaly) not happened. Weather forecasting is completly based on facts and stats. Does it work? Often, but not always. The reason is simple, weather is to complex to be precalculated. The smallest events can change the data on which the forescast is based on, and you have rain instead of sunshine. If a shrapnell had taken a minimal different way in 1915 and killed Adolf on the West Front, the complete history of the 20th century would be different. To come back to CM: the likelihood of events is (in program terms) expressed in %. Always. It can not be programed different. My idea was to manual adjust this. If you don't like it, don't use it. If you play PBEM, where is the problem that the program report this numbers to your opponent, together with all other settings of the battle? Well, maybe this would indeed open pandoras box. So I follow the suggestion that was made earlier by someone else: BTS should publish the used formulas. Then we can see how they interpred stats, which physical models they are based on and which parameters has been ignored. Why are they kept secret?

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Captain Wacky: I'm not mad, I just think it's a feature that the game doesn't need. We already have experience modifiers and force strength modifiers that do much the same thing (especially the experience modifier). Your argument (I think) is that CM is innaccurate because it is based only on stats. What else should we base it on? Personal accounts from WWII vets? If that happened the Tiger would be invincible and the mg42 would annihilate entire squads with a single shot. The best thing about stats and facts is that they aren't based on personal perception, something that is often very unreliable. If the Sherman's 75mm gun only penetrates X amount of armor at X degrees, no amount of WWII tankers can change that fact, even if they probably think the gun did far less than that. You're right though, no one knows for sure. But you can get a hell of a lot closer to knowing by looking at performance stats and facts than you can by doing anything else.<hr></blockquote> Wasn't meant personal (mad) . I said nothing about the accuracy and what I think about it. I just people (well, some of my opponents) think it 'feels wrong, and I just think it would be nice if we can rise or lower the gun accuracy until it 'feels' right. Stats: Car A has a maximum speed of 20km/h, car B of 80km/h. The statistical average maximum speed is 50km/h. What does it say about realism? Nothing. Why? Because stats are only an artifical interpretation of snapshots. The problem is not only the numbers, it's the interpreter - a human being´, full of prejustice, halfknowledge, imagination and opinions. You can read very different things in stats, it depends on the result you want to find. Facts: You should talk with O.J.Simson's lawyers about facts .

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Captain Wacky: I don't know where you came up with those numbers, but here's the thing: it seems like every time someone posts a thread regarding some blatant innaccuracy they've found in CM, it only takes a day or two for people like rexford and JasonC to do the proper research and come back with an answer. The vast majority of the time the answer supports the results created by the game.<hr></blockquote> Ho Silver! Don't turn this threat into something else. I just said : it seems that no one knows for sure. And if the expert you named were not on the battlefield in WWII, than I guess that they only interpret stats, and I alreay said something about stats. I wonder why some people get mad when the game should offer more features.