c3k

Thanks for doing this!

^^^ The .50 cal. and other heavy machineguns will, at a minimum, cause suppression for friendly troops in/near the impact zone. All other SMALL ARMS will NOT cause friendly casualties. * (Exception, below.) All HE (high explosive) CAN and WILL cause friendly casualties. Area Target/Target Light is useful. Target Light only uses small arms (when infantry squads/teams are using it), so that would be the order to give if you have other units entering that action spot (or nearby). Otherwise, the firing unit may use grenades, rifle grenades, bazookas, etc., all of which have HE filler and can thus cause casualties. ("Target" means use everything you've got as rapidly as you can.) * Exception to the above: at NIGHT friendly units can misidentify other friendlies and create fratricide accidents. In that case, friendly small arms will cause casualties. Ken

Are we excluding "Crysis" from consideration? Ken

This is actually a good idea. The trick would be to determine the two saved games to ensure they are representative of cpu/gpu stress. Ken

To give a serious answer, the "issue" is known. Enemy tanks do not block LOS, but they do block LOF. Note the "enemy" part of that sentence. (Wrecks may be agnostic...I've forgotten.) This leads to the friendly tank seeing through the enemy tank and trying to fire on a target. Unfortunately, the LOF is blocked by the intervening enemy vehicle. Gamey bastiges can take advantage of this. There are MANY reasons for it to be this way. Ken

My sentiments, as well.

Thanks for the reminder! Just placed an order for a copy. Ken (If this does not improve my gameplay, will I get a refund? )

My bold: not really what I meant. There are limits, obviously. My point was to only take a look at the issue from the opposite perspective. A cluster of men behind a wall within grenade range of the enemy SHOULD be in danger. I suggest some tests. I've done some, well in the past, regarding the throwing range of German "stick" grenades vs. "pineapple" grenades. IRL, the stick grenades went further. Not so in-game. This roll through the wall behavior is sub-optimal. Bounce off a wall would be more sub-optimal, no? That was my point...

Let's flip this around: grenades thrown towards walls bounce back towards the thrower. How much WORSE would that be? Sure, watching a grenade roll through a wall and kill your guys leads to ragequit. But, um, who the hell bunched his men behind a wall within grenade range of an enemy who knew they were there? What should've happened? The grenade should've come OVER the wall and killed them. Actual: grenade killed everyone by rolling through wall Real Life: grenade killed everyone by sailing over wall Potential "fix": grenade misses target, bounces off wall, and kills throwing unit Of the three options, it is clear which one is the least offensive.

Obviously the bricklayer had enough forethought to've built small drainholes along the the base of the wall. Proud of his work, he had been taught by his father that water is masonry's biggest threat. The standard round drainhole was sufficient to ensure that no standing water would rot the mortar. No one had ever asked him to proof it against grenades rolling through.

MacArthur? Interesting to compare modern day Hiroshima to modern day Detroit. There are worse things than nuclear bombs.

Typically, snow is regarded as being 1/10 the density of water. Add in the odd molecule of salt, calcium, undigested Spam, uniform, that "Dear John" letter in the breast pocket, and ammo clips, and I'd suggest that a very rough man:snow ratio would 1:20. So, 1 body, supine, approximately 16" from left to right (arms out of the way) would be about 26' 8" of snow equivalency. (Loose, granular, not packed, nor icy.)

Ammo Sharing =/= Ammo Scavanging Trying to scavange ammo (or weapons/gear) from dead or wounded is hit or miss. I _think_ that the greater the energy used to kill or injure, the greater the odds that the weapon/ammo being carried by the wounded or injured guy is destroyed, and won't be able to be scavanged. - A man gets hit by a single sniper round. Odds are his "stuff" can be scavanged. - Man gets hit by 14" naval shell. Don't hold your breath trying to get the bazooka rounds he was carrying. It makes sense. (Even the single sniper shot MAY have damaged his gear. The old "bullet hole in my bazooka" trick.) Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. (Think about the blood, the injury mechanism, loose gear lost in the grass, etc., screaming, etc. Maybe the wounded git refuses to get medevac'ed without his personal rifle, or somesuch.) Ken

Obviously, you've never enjoyed the pleasures of sitting in the piazza of small Italian town, nestled at the foot of the alps with snow-capped mountains loaming over everything, warmed at your table by the sunlight and a bottle of robust chianti which fairly begs to be quaffed, reading something suitably academic, all while admiring the wonderfully athletic legs exhibited by the women walking about the town. Steep hills and high heels have a wonderful effect on the female form; far more aerobically challenging than hopping on a machine at a gym. I'm sorry. Were we talking about snow?

I'm curious about the leader-hit-first effect, as well. I suggest 100 tests using 10 man squads facing embedded machineguns (or tanks firing coax mg's only.) Have each squad facing its mg in a separate lane. The Leader will be the front man. He is LEADING. (See USMC 2LT casualty statistics.) Quick the squads at the mg's. Note the % of 1st casualties. The Leader casualties should be 10% (1/10 of the squad), all else being equal. It is not. Next, split the squads. Do whatever you need to do to get the leader out of the unit. You may be left with 6-8 of the original members. Repeat the test with the reduced squads. Does the FRONT man take the same % hits that the Leader took? I'm curious. Anyone? Edited to add an on-topic post: When the Tigers were introduced on the East Front, they were famous for shrugging off massive numbers of hits. Obviously, the Germans had mostly PzIII's and the few PzIV's to compare to the Tigers' perfomance. Equally, the Soviets had a few poor 76mm guns (mostly), with poor ammo, with a liberal dosing of 45mm guns and lots of anti-tank rifles. Even with weapons incapable of penetrating any of the Tiger's armor, many Tigers were put of action due to secondary damage. Many TC's were wounded due to shattered cupola vision blocks; tracks were shot off (or running gear otherwise rendered inop); main guns "jammed" and stopped working; radios were knocked out; external smoke dischargers caught fire and blinded the tank and debilitated the crews; other crewmen were injured by various mechanisms; etc. It was "invulnerable", yet many were rendered combat incapable.

I would prefer an in-game bonus available to be used in pbem games. Say, a total of +10 leadership modifiers. Sprinkle them amongst your platoon commanders during setup.

I'll take you up on your examples. Have you ever had your toaster give out? If it was within the warranty period, was the repair free? This would be akin to the one-year/10 download limit BFC places on the DOWNLOADS. You can install it as many times as you'd like from a single download. THAT and the ACTIVATION - for 4 machines, or is it 5, is what you purchased. If your toaster dies after 10 years do you demand a new one for free? What about your car? If something breaks outside of warranty, does it get fixed or replaced for free? Do you demand that your car be in the same shape, at no cost to you, 10 years after you purchase it? 15 years? 20 years? Yes, you did purchase the game. You can do anything you want with your purchase. You can drive your car over your toaster. However, you cannot simply demand a new item if you haven't operated it correctly. Drive a car into a tree and then demand that the dealer fix it under warranty. Download an installation file, delete the file (purposely or not) and then demand a new one? Actually, the instruction IMPLIES that you would pay a FULL re-purchase price outside the 1 year/10 download timeframe. Pretty cool that it's only $5. That's the part where it tells you what BFC will do for you in exchange for the $55 purchase price. It's called a contract. No commercial transaction outside that contract is implied. If you drive your car into a tree, wouldn't it be nice if your dealership gave you a 90% discount on the parts you needed for the repairs? That's what you get with the $5 download price. No. My imagination is quite broad and flexible. However, a backup which doesn't work isn't a backup. It's a paperweight. Years ago, I religiously backup up to a second, internal, hard-drive using Acronis. It's a well-known, successful, backup software company. My harddrive failed. Cool. I'll just use the rescue disk, etc... Except none of it worked. I had never tested it. I had ASSUMED something. I have had 3 hard-drive failures. (I've used over 3 dozen, or more, drives in the various computers I've had over the last 20 years.) My new backup process: Macrium backup to a second, internal drive. Remove the initial drive. Add in a NEW, unformatted, clean drive. Use the backup to reinstall onto my new drive. If it works, I have a backup. If not, then I put the original back in and try something else. That is the only way to be sure you have a backup. It takes...wait for it...patience, work, and effort. You do the backup, you test the backup, you archive the backup, you make new backups NOT on the archived backup. Is that good for your imagination? I cannot see a USB drive "going bad" if it has been unused and stored correctly. Perhaps a stray cosmic particle? With the price of USB sticks, I'd think an extra copy wouldn't be too onerous. Although, the $5 cost of a new download is pretty competitive. Well, see above. If you don't TEST your backup, your strategy is really just HOPING that it works. The odds of a PROPER backup failing simultaneously with the original are zero. If I copy my download file to another folder on the same hard drive, have I made a backup? Some would say "yes". I call that a copy, not a backup. Relying on a single-point failure (the same hard drive) is foolish. So, elementary stuff: if you call it a backup but have never tested it, is it a backup? No, it is, again, merely a hope. How was the OP misled? Did he receive the product for which he paid? Yes. He want MORE than what he paid for. If I buy a car, do I think I'll get a motorscooter tossed in? I am not defending the policy with "anger". I am calling out the OP. Look at my first response. I believe it was civil. He may not be mature enough to understand that disagreement does not equate with rudeness. The policy is not unprecedented. When I buy games, I NEVER assume I get to buy it twice. You are correct: it is Battlefront's decision. The free market allows them to succeed or fail based on their decisions. That same market allows you to choose to engage in commerce with them based on their business decisions. "Misleading and exploitive" :) and an "LOL" for good measure. Really? A written agreement is misleading? Perhaps for the illiterate. "Exploitive"? Could you, please, expand on that? That word is used a lot, usually, in my experience, by those who demand the benefit of someone else's labor. (Reminds me of the video of Tom Morello (sp?), of "Rage Against the Machine" leading an Occupy Wallstreet chant against corporations, all while strumming his corporation produced guitar, given the free time gained by his recording corporation proceeds, financed by the music distribution corporation, aided by the concert corporation, to listeners who adore him based on cd's and itunes distributed and produced by yet more corporations. And this multi-millionaire is telling these people that corporations exploit them. That is a classic.) Seriously: How is this exploitive?

First of all, calling me a "damned fool" is both insulting, ironic, and humorous. YOU are an idiot. Really. We'll go over the facts, as you seem mentally incapable of doing so. From the Battlefront.com storefront, in a very attention-getting style: Purchase your game (no need to login) A Customer Account is created for you during the Checkout and you are automatically logged in Download immediately after purchase (do not wait for emails) Look up your License key inside your Customer account immediately (do not wait for emails). The same key is used for download and license activation. Change your Username and Password for your account so you can log in later even if your anti-spam filter block the email with your generated password Backup the installation files you downloaded! Downloads expire automatically after 365 days or 10 downloads. We do not offer digital storage for your purchased games. Install, launch, activate and start playing! Let's have you focus your feeble-minded attention at what is labeled number 6. Oh, that is BFC's bold. If you had it backed up, you'd need 2 simultaneous failures. First, your main installation had to fail, then, simultaneously, your backup needed to fail. A failed backup is not a backup. - You were instructed to backup your installation - Even if you didn't, you still had a year to have 10 downloads. You must've had over a year, not something immediate. - You said you backed it up. You lie. - You hint that you may've had a hard-drive fail. Too bad for you. - You state, my bold, that your installation was backed up and it crashed. You're an idiot. - When told you've got to pull a 5 dollar bill out to replace a $55 game you purchased over a year ago, you bitch. You're cheap. - When directly told why this isn't that big of an issue you become insulting. Let's see where we're at, based on your exhibited and stated behavior: You're a lying, idiotic, cheap, insulting fool. I usually give whiners a bit of leeway. I imagine they're spoiled, immature, pre-teens who are used to getting their way from their over-indulgent parents by the simple act of throwing a tantrum every time they want something. The fullness of time will usually correct such spoiled behavior. Not in your case. I do not think you are a pre-teen. Now, I shall continue to enjoy a nice cup of coffee while I imagine how wretched your life must be for you to be so upset by your own incompetence. That's the humorous part. Thank you for the smile and making the sun seem to shine a little bit brighter.

Sometimes it sucks when you don't read the instructions. Seriously. In this case, it's the hassle of $5. No, I'm not minimizing it, but, well, it is just $5. There have been many threads pointing to the reasons for the additional surcharge. My understanding is that it only kicks in after a year. (I may be conflating activations w/downloads.) FWIW, I keep ALL my downloads in specific archive folders. Yes, for ALL my programs. Hard-drives are pretty cheap these days. An external case and a 1TB drive (USB 3 or eSATA) runs about $150. That's a whole lotta backup. I know why you're angry, but I don't think it is appropriate.

Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys: didn't they include tomahawks as req'd pieces of kit? As well as starting a credo... (Someone insert it, with its frontier-speak grammar. )

The Panther glacis is one of the toughest armored fronts in the game, if not THE toughest. The M10's gun was a makeshift solution; it was not up to snuff. I'm not sure HVAP would've worked, either. (References not at hand.) Shatter gap and all that... If you have an AFV staring at the front of a Panther, it's time for you to move your AFV.

Slightly OT: I remember, quite clearly, when my Marines in CMSF were trundling along inside their AAV. One RPG round later, ~27 (?) dead Marines. I never again drove an AAV, loaded, anywhere near an uncleared route. Ever.

Totally based on my recollection of distantly read passages, but other than one unit near St. Mere Eglise, didn't the Ost Battalions tend to surrender as soon as feasible?

What vehicle are you looking at?

I want destroyed vehicles to rust into nothingness. Say, about 4 minutes for a tank to oxidize back into elemental iron-ores, and 1 minute for jeep. That simulates the push-away time and lets the "ghost-through" occur with no suspension of disbelief. Yeah, rust catalyst. THAT's the ticket... ^^^ All tongue-in-cheek. Although that is a "solution", it's not one that this game milieu would support. This is a near-simulation; therefore, when the physics are not near-realistic, there are complaints. There are solutions: some may not be acceptable. Some are worse than others. You may not accept the current solution, but it is far better than some.