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Gents, A quick question: I submitted a request to elicense@battlefront.com for a licensing request; should I have received an email confirming receipt of my message? Thanks, Ken

40 minutes to grow a beard? Damn, those Prussians run things by the numbers...

The drunken old man in a beret, clutching his hoarded bottle of wine, yelling, "Ami! Ami!" ...and his shy -but curious- 18 year old daughter, hidden in the hay loft all these months...

THAT would add a lot! Count me in.

Wouldn't it be nice if a tool-tip brought up a balloon stating that when you ran your cursor over that symbol? (Ducks and runs...) Ken

Agreed: hepta-cores are the wave of the future... The two issues I noted above are, to me, minor and well understood. Yes, there are circumstances in which they have a pivotal role in a firefight, but those circumstances are few and far between. Knowing how they occur lets you plan around/for them. The same for the rooftop hyper-elevation issue. Minor annoyances at worst. It would be nice to sort them out, but they are not gamebreakers by any stretch. Ken

To me, the only two remaining issues with LOS/LOF are regarding friendly vehicles and action spots in buildings. Everything else seems to work quite well. Heck, the two examples I'm about to elucidate work well the VAST majority of times. Friendly units can use friendly vehicles to block incoming fire, but are able to fire through the friendly vehicle. This violates the two way LOS/LOF rule. It doesn't happen much, but I will be the first to admit I love using friendly wrecks to help my guys out. The other issue has been brought up before, and addressed in detail by BF.C. An enemy unit may fire from a window on the edge of a building. As long as that particular enemy soldier is in LOS, friendlies may fire at him. Two LOS/LOF is maintained. However, as soon as the enemy ducks/cowers below the level of the window, he disappears from LOS. At that moment, the friendly will be forevermore incapable of area firing on that window. The enemy unit MUST be in LOS to allow LOF to the window. This is a result of the limited number of action spots in each building. Again, this is known and has been discussed at length. (Note: this only applies to SOME windows, based on action spots.) Otherwise, am I sometimes frustrated by my BMP or T-72 not spotting something? Yes! But that adds to the WeGo drama. I can only imagine the shouted curses going on inside the armor vehicle. So I do imagine them - and speak them aloud! Ken

Full vs. empty? Flaccid vs. bulging? C'mon, give me the VISUALS for a squad loaded for bear...

Folks, I understand that the AI _may_ surrender once casualties reach a certain percentage of available forces. I also understand that reinforcements DO count towards the base percentage. Hence, if I add reinforcements, I can skew the surrender algorithm so the AI won't surrender (specifically if the reinforcement schedule is designed for them to be unable to appear prior to the battle's end; e.g. 60 minute hard time limit, reinforcements scheduled at 90 minutes). What size ratio of onboard versus reinforcement forces are needed to ensure no surrender? Thanks, Ken

How about remove the ammo pouches as their ammo depletes? Yeah, baby, NOW we're talking. Hey, if the ERA tiles can be individually tracked and modelled, why not ammo bags? Get coding! Ken

What kind of results would occur from hitting a fully loaded 60-tube launcher with, say, a 75mm HE round? I'm thinking a combination of 4th of July and rock concert level fog machine...with a bit of conflagration thrown in for good measure. As for the German vehicle pictured above, that seems to be a captured 60-tube T34 4.5 inch launcher field modded onto the halftrack. Ammo supply would be difficult. Also, what if the enemy ISN'T to the right side of the vehicle? Ken

The AC-130 lost in GW was lost due to ground fire. The plane's aircraft commander made the decision to stay on station, against SOP, in order to continue to provide much needed support to the user. They stayed past sunrise. So, the loss did not result in a "change" in how they were used, but an increased emphasis on the SOP's.

A bit of googling led to the following snippets, all from Wikipedia. Take it for what it's worth. I did a bit of cutting and pasting to focus on the pertinent parts. The McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet (official military designation CF-188) is a Canadian Forces aircraft, based on the American F/A-18 Hornet fighter. In 1980, the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet was declared the winner of the New Fighter Aircraft competition. The order included 98 single-seat variants and 40 dual-seat variants, for a total of 138 purchased, plus 20 options (which were not exercised). The F/A-18 Hornet was then dubbed the CF-188 (the name Hornet is not used because the translation in French is Frelon, which is already used by a French military helicopter). However, in every context except the most official of military documents, the planes are referred to as CF-18 Hornets.[citation needed] Reasons for the selection listed by the Canadian Forces were many of its requested features were included for the U.S. Navy; two engines for reliability (considered essential for conducting Arctic sovereignty and over-the-water patrols), an excellent radar set, while being considerably more affordable than the F-14 and the F-15. Variants CF-18A: Single-seat fighter and ground attack aircraft. Canadian Forces designation CF-188A. CF-18B: Two-seat training version. Canadian Forces designation CF-188B. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CF-18_Hornet I will quote this part, again, for emphasis: "However, in every context except the most official of military documents, the planes are referred to as CF-18 Hornets." (There is no citation.) It has been years since I was assigned with a Canadian exchange pilot, so this is ancient memory, but I have NEVER heard anyone in the USAF (for what it's worth) refer to them as anything but CF-18's. Apparently the official nomenclature is different. You learn something every day... Now it's time to find some flying Canucks and hear what the pilots in the squadrons call them. I'll lay a fiver it's NOT CF-188. Thanks, Ken

I remember the Nato page listing a "CF-118" as an aircraft type. I believe that is about 100 too many; it is the Canadian version of the F-18, hence "CF-18". Thanks, Ken

Tell me about it. This lack of OpenGL support by nvidia has tipped me into the ATI camp for my current build. It's a free market: Nvidia's drivers broke the rendering; ATI's work. Hence, my money follows the producer which meets my needs. (Currently using a Q6600 CPU and an 8800GTX GPU; Building a Phenom II, HD5000.) I hope Nvidia starts supporting existing users better, rather than trying to get a fast buck with new razzle-dazzle fermi marketspeak. Ken

A serious question: as long as vehicles can be placed in this manner, is it possible for units on the plateau to hit the underbellies of the vehicles? My question is purely for testing the penetration of the thin underbelly armor and see how it is modelled. Would a 14.5 Dshka at 100m penetrate? Etc. Ken

As an afficianado of the "Roadrunner" series of animated artwork, I have to ask: if you zoom in to the front of the Bradley, is there a small branch growing out of the cliff? I have found that frequently the Coyote finds such protuberances and is able to retard its inevitable plunge by a few precious moments. This may be what we're seeing in this screenshot.

Wrong? Why nothing is; you've just paused the replay in the split second prior to that Bradley breaking the standing 0-60 acceleration time! Or, are those the new Mod. 7 "Spidey Grip" tracks being modelled?

At very close ranges (sub-10m) ISTR that you can see projectiles coming out of vehicle guns at an angle. E.g., the gun may be depressed 10 degrees below horizontal, but the bullet stream/shell leaves the muzzle and travels in a path 25 degrees below horizontal. The gameplay reason is clear: if a target is too close, in many cases the vehicle would manuever and use micro-terrain features to gain an LOS to the target. This enables the vehicle to fire on an enemy which is very close. (Tank hunting often took advantage of gun blind spots. This is a gameplay trade-off.) In a similar vein, high angle firing is not limited. I agree: in a perfect world actual gun elevation limits would be nice to have. However, then the terrain mesh would need to be modelled to a much finer level of detail. Perhaps a compromise would be to allow the current low angle "fudge" to continue, but restrict the high angle? (Note that then Thomm's comment about AI reprogramming would still be a MAJOR task.) Regards, Ken Edit: I just noticed the remote .50's angle of fire. Notice how it is trying to parallel the red target line? Almost there, but not quite.

Interesting... Thanks for posting Isby's information. I don't know if the size of Isby's target is the same as the size of the Wikipedia target, but the salient point gathered from comparing the two tables is that the target's motion status does not significantly alter the odds of a hit. Ken

I'd love to see the same hit probabilities based on the same target/same projectile vs. a stationary target. Ken

The Javelin verses AT4/M136: If I'd been humping a Javelin all friggin' day and I finally got a chance to dump the thing by blowing up an enemy vehicle, you can be sure I'd be knocking my squadmates aside in my rush to launch it! Getting rid of it would give me a spring to my step for the rest of the day; blowing up an enemy vehicle would be icing on the cake! For whatever that's worth....

Alan8235, Good catch. Interesting that it hasn't been seen before. Perhaps that's a new "low collateral", cellulose casing, inert fill, JDAM? (For the unitiated, the USAF and USN are developing and procuring low collateral damage versions of the 250lb and 500lb bombs. The casing is non-metallic; splinters fly, explosions are predictable. The fill is a denser explosive. (They need to keep the bomb weight and cg the same as the metal cased bombs for separation and ballistic reasons.) The explosive, though heavier, is less dynamic - on purpose. It's a "tuned" boom.) Ken

birdstrike, Thank you very much! Ken

Gents, Okay, now that I can move the map around (thanks to Johnny (FGM)), I'm having a bit of fun creating some situations. I'm currently experimenting with buildings. I know a lot of you have already figured this out, so I'm looking for a bit of guidance. When I put multiple buildings down with adjoining walls, does the initial building facing have ANY effect at all on gameplay? Obviously, the initial facing determines which way the door faces. However, in the 3D view I can use SHIFT, ALT, or CONTROL so that I can totally change the appearance of the buildings. I can add, move, or delete existing doorways. So, after the initial placement, assuming I then edit the building in the 3D view, does that initial placement create ANY effect on the units? Do you have any other lessons learned about interior doorways, walls, windows, etc.? Also, is there any way of cutting and pasting a building so that you can create multiple copies easily? Thanks, Ken