c3k

As mentioned upstream, don't lasso all your CM troops and give them a far waypoint...unless you WANT them to form a single file like kids on a museum trip. Instead, as mentioned upstream, SPLIT your squads (if you want), but, regardless, give each unit (squad or team) their own movement orders. At most 2 or 3 men will follow one another that way. The rest will be spread out. As they should be.

I'm NOT saying anything about accuracy, suppression, etc., etc. However, did the test to wound one man have JUST one silhouette there? If so, that may be a bit understated. It is 10 times harder to hit one man in a given area than it is to hit 10 men in that same area. If they were all standing (simulating the moment before impact, at maximum exposure) when the round hit, then the one guy who lost a leg/arm/jaw or just got holed would tend to get everyone's attention. THAT could cause a bit of suppression... Now, if the test mentioned above had 10 (or whatever number) of plywood mannequins (sp?), then ignore the above. Ken

I have been to Sicily, many times. I would contend that early power/telephone pole layout in the field had NOTHING in common with any sort of plan, if any, laid out on how it _should_ be done. Roman era plumbing which has been added on to for, literally, millenia. Pretty cool when the flows reverse. At a minimum, it gets you out of your room and out on the town. I've seen wiring with the neutral screwed into a shower frame, and the hot going to the lightbulb over the shower. Hey, it worked, and no one got shocked. If it took a strong stick to hold the wires over a gate, well, there'd be a stick there. The more unique the placement of the poles, the closer you'll be to Sicily. (Ever see the pictures of NYC/Chicago wiring from the 20's and 30's? Sicily would be similar, just less dense.) String 'em if you got 'em.

The US mounted guns in halftracks as an emergency, stopgap, measure. The US Army theoreticians in AGF (Army Ground Forces) had come up with how they _thought_ battles would and should be fought. Their predictions (guesses, hopes?) were what drove the design and equippage of the actual army forces. In conjunction with lessons learned from our Allies (primarily the Brits), and the experiences of US forces engaged in combat, AGF realized they'd erred. (In all fairness, noone expected that they'd be totally correct in all their predictions, estimations. But, you do have to start somewhere.) To add immediate mobility to the guns, it was far simpler to mount them in halftracks. While those were being rushed to the units, the draftsmen were drawing up new, purpose-built, vehicles. Those would take some time to get designed, prototyped, fixed, produced, and equipped. That's why you see gunned-up halftracks in North Africa and Sicily, but not Normandy and Germany. Timing, not geography. Oh, RTFM and do a google search!

Yes, thank you for doing this.

Yes. (This is filler.)

ND, Great write-up! I appreciate the "Mentioned in Dispatches" just above. Thanks. Ken

It was my impression that the thread was tending towards believing that the Tiger had NO starter other than the crank. Hence the sigh. I like the way lessons get relearned. Look at how the M1 Abrams has been modified. It has MORE machineguns than it had. It has modern schuerzen added. It now has an infantry telephone/intercom system. It also has a separate generator so hydraulics and other secondary systems can be run with the turbine shut off. Oh, didn't they also add air conditioning? A lot of those req'ts were added to tanks after a lot of deaths. It's sad that they get stripped out, only to be added back after more combat. Ken

Sigh. For the record, the inertial starter was, IMHO, a pretty damn good idea. Have you ever seen what cold weather does to the amperage of a battery? Check under your hood. If you've got a lead acid battery, it _should_ have two ratings, CCA and CA. CCA is Cold Cranking Amps; starting amps at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. CA is Cranking Amps; starting amps at 32F. See the drop? It's not linear. It gets WAY worse as the battery temp drops below 0. Did the Germans ever fight in a cold environment? Somewhere that rhymes with "Russia"? The hand-cranked inertia starter would be used if the battery couldn't turn the engine. (They also had a built in engine heating system for a cold engine. As well, easy oil drain to drain the warm engine, bring it into the nightly hut and keep on the stove to be put into the engine in the morning, AND a coolant transfer system from one tank to another, so the running, warm, tank could warm up the cold un-running tank's engine and coolant system.) That's a pretty good piece of (over)engineering. Sigh.

Fix bayonets and charge! Kill the interlopers. If you allow one of them in, then like cockroaches, rats, and fleas, they will multiply and overwhelm you. By advancing in the open, they are taunting you. Your manhood has been challenged. If you keep your men cowering and hiding in their dugouts they will no longer respect you. Attack, as always. Let us know how it works.

Yeah, the old tree-trunks-turned-off based-bug report. It ran into some trees it _thought_ it could navigate past, due to your "straight ahead" orders. Do you really think this is a bug?

Hah! A "great idea" would be to take that de-linked UI and...wait for it...have it on your smart-phone as a separate app! Yeah, remote control CM!

THAT was also well-played. You're on a two-fer roll.

Thanks for resurrecting this. The eternal flame and all that... I've run across SECONDARY references regarding those WO results, but they are buried somewhere under other tomes. The problem with the APDS rounds was sabot separation characteristics. Getting the sabots to peel off reliably and consistently and simultaneously was quite hard. (I hope I'm not repeating upstream information.) Please don't let this thread die out... Ken

I have NO solution, only ideas. I think banning certain game functions as "cheating" is counterproductive, both here in the forum/community and in the game. If _your_ belief is that a player should not have a certain function, then, by all means, don't avail yourself of that function. But let's not FORCE your play style on someone else. Tyranny, anyone? As well, bandying about the term "cheater" will only inflame emotions and this will sink further into the pit of namecalling and derogatory references. I recall BFC stating that having an on-the-fly full LOS map available would be too processor intensive. (That's my memory of it. I'm ready to be proven wrong.) Having said that, I can see the utility of a PRE-GAME check LOS tool. Select a spot, toggle the "show me everything I can see" switch, and get a highlight of viewable (or, alternatively, UN-viewable) action spots/terrain. Whatever the processor overhead, if it occurs as a separate, apart from gameplay, function during the setup phase, it can delay the game with no penalties. Of course, I'm talking out of my arse when I say that. I have _no_ idea how much processing time it would take or what the ramifications would be to the game of providing this type of function. Just my .02.

Obviously, quality costs more. If she is satisfied with her purchase, that's important. Even more important (and this is where John Kettler needs to pay attention and drop the wife under analysis, systems approach, to marriage), is how does she LOOK when she's holding that bag? "Damn, babe, that bag makes you look even hotter!" Yeah, NOW who just benefited from that $800 purchase.

Gadzooks! I certainly hope that bag came with at least $750 inside it! (Wait a few weeks, then tell here about how that brand has sold nothing but knock-offs for the last 6 months. See how that plays out...)

Thanks for the kind words, and the offer of the 10W30 (but I've got CASES in the garage Now, beer is a different matter...). FWIW, I did not mean to post a "look at what I do", but rather to focus on how much effort it takes to tease out results. My work pales in comparison to the efforts put forth by others on the beta team, and even more so when compared to those on the alpha team. Big group hug. Great. Now let's start machinegunning each other's men.

Hey! You old-timers knew what would happen. For the newb, here's your illuminating moment: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=92544 Yeah, baby. Light 'em if ya got 'em! Ken

dieseltaylor, Good questions. MOST of what I test is under various beta builds. The determination of what I test falls totally under my own purview. A lot of the tests I try to create lead nowhere. A lot the tests take a lot of work to get it on target. A few examples: - The Tiger gunner facing sideways: that was the result of of my testing. NOT that I knew the gunner was sideways. But the spotting was off. That was a test of accuracy for the 88L56 as mounted in the Tiger I compared to other weapons. That took every bit of spare time I had for over two weeks. I ran literally thousands of iterations. It would be impossible for me to describe the exact methodology that led to my results. The final test had a 4km firing range with 20 or 25 lanes. I would run that test to get at least 200 results and run statistical analyses on EVERY shot. I had the Tiger (or other weapon) fire at a Sherman at 3km until the Sherman was destroyed. I tracked EVERY SHOT and MEASURED EVERY MISS. Tigers, Panthers, PzIV's, various Shermans ALL went through ALL the tests. (I still have nightmares...) - The "Mortars don't miss after their first hit" issue. That got my attention. I asked for the test which a poster said they had. I was told it was easy to do myself. Fine. I created a new test. That didn't work. It took me the better part of a day to craft a test which would eliminate any outside influence and purely test mortar accuracy versus different targets. I tested different ranges, different azimuths, different ranges AND azimuths, different mortar calibers, different sides, different experience levels, different movement displacements, etc. And yes, I recorded EVERY SHOT and EVERY MISS DISTANCE (if any). That took two extra days. - Spotting: I will NOT write an essay describing all my spotting tests. I have spoken up in various threads and given criticism where the tests obviously are flawed. Or, I have pointed out potential pitfalls if the tester hasn't shared his technique. It is best if everyone tries to create a solution on their own. I would hate to have a test not occur because the player thought, "oh, I've just been shown the ONE TRUE way to test, and mine was not that way." - Back on the Sherman/PzIV spotting thread, I saw an obvious fallacy. A poster was comparing spotting by Shermans vs. PzIV's and comparing them to spotting by PzIV's vs. Shermans. Apples and oranges. If you want to compare how well unit A spots compared to unit B, you need them both to spot the SAME object. - How many eyeballs does each unit have? If Unit A has 5 men and Unit B has 6, then you SHOULD get a skewed result. - Binoculars? - Scoped rifles? - Relative sun angle? - Experience? - Terrain? - Leadership? - Intel? Et cetera. In short, whatever I start testing, no matter how much thought I apply beforehand, I _always_ find multiple shortcomings in the test setup I create. For the last 5 days I've been digging into something. I have only yesterday gotten the test scenario to work the way I had expected it to...last week. Now comes the data collection phase. It will take me about a week, I expect, to come up with around 1,000 iterations. Why so many iterations? Well, look at the "a grenade knocked out my tank" thread. Outliers do occur. 1,000 iterations tend to damp out their influence. (As would as few as 100.) And no, I won't reveal what I'm testing! That falls under the NDA and good manners. What I test as a beta goes through the beta peer review process. If I am wrong, then all I've done is wasted my time without creating chaos and false expectations in the outerboards. If I am right, then all credit goes to BFC for crafting the game and the software which reflects the expected results. As to floating decimal points and whatnot, I'm running various flavors of CMx2, release and beta, on 4 machines. They are a mix of AMD cpu's, Intel cpu's, AMD video and Nvidia video. I finally got rid of my last XP setup (no longer needed), and am running W7/32, W7/64, and Vista64. FWIW, I work full time, I am a serving member of the Air Force Reserves, and I'm trying to corral 2 teenagers while renovating my house and performing 2 engine swaps based on 3 engine blocks and full, down to the piston rings, rebuilds of the engines. Tetchy? No. It's the refrain, in Finnish, of that horrible video going round and round in my head. So, those are some facts coupled with some opinion. Next time you're concerned that you'll wasted time with a test, post a screenshot and a savegame showing what you're doing. I'm sure you'll get plenty of input. Shrug off the noise and press on. Run a bunch of iterations and present it. (Great, now I've used up my lunch-time with an overly wordy post instead of testing or playing. If ANYONE criticizes hoplite susceptibility to flanking elephant attacks, I blame dieseltaylor!) With a to ensure you recognize this is in good humor. Ken

As a player, I REALLY appreciate it when the designer does this. If the designer has the units pre-positioned, I keep 'em there, figuring that's part of the gig. If they're NOT set up, having them organized by unit makes it SO much easier for me to allocate setup zones.

I wouldn't have watched...but for the Tobias Funke comment. I admit I had no idea what they were singing about...the first four times I listened. Suddenly, midway through the fifth replay, I suddenly understood Finnish. I found my inner Laplander. Either that, or it's simply the beer...

...and to think, I actually clicked on that link. And then waited for SOMETHING I could relate to. My eyes! They burn!

Gah! I'm of the "toss the counters on the map and play 'em as they land" school. If you can't deal with what fate hands you, then, um, something. Or other.

Fuel tank vent...leading to a fire, which burnt out the engine and filled the crew compartment with heat and smoke.