c3k

A bump and an additional comment or two. I haven't noticed the "pip" thing in the manual. If, indeed, the command tank is denoted by a VERY subtle change in the unit info screen, a mention of that in the manual would be good. Also, a picture to show EXACTLY what the change is. Obviously, it would be better to have a "?HQ?" marker to make it as obvious as a 2x4 to the forehead. How DOES the AI discover a command tank? Especially at start? Has anyone tested the targeting issue vs. better quality crews? (Crack, vet, reg, conscript issue.) Let's get this to BFC's attention before the final patch is released. Ken

Matt, I agree. That's why I'd like the OPTION of allowing my unit to fire at known enemy units. The OPTION would be toggled "ON" by the creation of a covered arc. Known enemy units within that arc would be fired upon, breaking lock on the "Area Target". At any time there are no known enemy units inside the covered arc, the "Area Target" location gets targeted. If you do not want to stop firing at the "Area Target", do not add a covered arc. At least that's my idea. Ken

I, too, have noticed this behavior. I brought it up several months ago. I got dog-piled upon by various self-nominated grogs who told me I was wrong. However, I've seen my HQ tank get targeted first too often. Even if it's the last tank to come into LOS. In real life, early war tanks would have to remove their main gun to make room for the radio sets. Other vehicles sported large antenna farms. In the game, these visual clues don't exist. Perhaps they're modelled in the code. I don't know. Ken

Gents, (Okay, the change in subject _was_ gamey, but it did get you to read this!!) I've just finished another scenario and I finally realized how to improve Area Targeting. Here's the situation: there are several enemy "contact" symbols in some woods. To suppress them, you use a "target" command. Since you're not targeting a known enemy unit, your "target" command morphs into an "Area Target". That's all well and good, and as long as the enemy remains at the "contact" (or unknown) level, your unit will continue to blindly fire into the woods hoping to suppress them. Now, the same situation, except some of the enemy become subsequently become "known". In other words, they advance closer, revealing themselves and causing their respective "contact" symbols to disappear. What will YOUR unit do? Nothing different than before, that's what! Even if you put a cover arc over that zone - the area fire takes precedence. Your unit will ignore the known enemy, even if you know that the known enemy are the ones you wanted to suppress/target. My idea: I want to be able to area target a zone, BUT if I then gain a LOS to a known enemy, I want to zap them! I'd implement this by making the area target work as it currently does --with the exception that if you also set a covered arc command, any known enemy within the arc gets targeted with a higher priority over the area target. Of course, should that enemy disappear, your unit goes back to the original area target. Anyone have any thoughts? (Would an MP-44 unit be able to do this? Andreas? Snowbart? ) Thanks, Ken (Edited to make a shameless attempt to use sex to get some more comments. ) [ May 14, 2003, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: c3k ]

Gents, I've always particularly enjoyed the option of playing Operations. However, I concur with the assessment that they need to be greatly improved. Case in point: I'm playing a static op in CMBB. I'll leave out specifics to preclude spoiling it. As the German, I have a set-up zone, which I use. Some of my units are at the extreme forward edge. On the VERY first turn, many of these units are ON barbed wire. Under close (much less than 100 meters) range fire from enemy troops. Not too smooth. At the very least, how did fortifications (barbed wire) appear in my set-up zone? The closeness of the enemy was a surprise. (A briefing could cover that.) Additionally, in the next battle, a similar surprise occurred regarding the proximity to the enemy. Suddenly, what I thought were rear positions were actually on the front-line. I will lose this operation and my opponent will not get the battle he deserves, mainly due to my lack of understanding on how set-up zones are calculated and positioned. Ken

BFC, Great job! Thanks for the effort. Now, who wants to buy a "collector's copy" of the first edition? Ken

Adding in my .02; A floating window with OOB listed. Make it transparent, take up a small corner of the screen, scrollable, and "hot". By that, I mean when you scroll through your OOB, you can click on a unit and the map centers on it, and it becomes the selected unit. A loss chart. At the end of each turn, a list of what units have been lost. Sadly, this is due to the propensity of my soviet tanks to become funeral pyres. In large games, I sometimes, err, forget about them until I see they're gone. I'd kind of like to know what happened, WHEN it happened. Ken

Madmatt, An additional item has just come to my attention. My apologies for such late notification. In the planning phase, I accidentally hit "Split". Okay, instantly my squad split. As I said, that was not the action I'd intended. (I just wanted to check the LOS, but my finger slipped as I pulled the mouse down.) So, no problem, I'll just recombine them. At least, that's what I thought. No chance. (The "Split" put half the squad above a crest line, in LOS of half a dozen enemy units. Not what I wanted!) There was no "take back". Now, if I plan a squad to run at a machine gun, sneak back, throw a demo charge, then withdraw, with a covered arc, I can undo ALL of those while I'm still in the planning phase. Isn't there some way to recombine a just split squad? (Since they haven't even moved, they must be close enough!) Thanks, Ken

Hardcampa, We're a turn and a half from finishing Rearguard. Where are you? If you lost me email, it's in my profile. Thanks, Ken

TT, Thanks for the advice! Ken

BFC, Tag-teaming on the all the ideas for improvements is one I'd like to see: a visual indication of which building walls are passable! I just played a game and had my troops use a single "move" waypoint to go from one building into an adjacent building. Adjacent, as in they shared a wall. The move line was blue. Ah, very good! Then I watched the replay. My troops, 9 strong, walked out of the front of the building into the firezone, got targeted by every weapon the enemy had, then entered the next building, 5 strong. Planning turn showed the remaining 3 waypoints the TacAI plotted to get them to my original destination. Now that's a tough lesson for those troops! If I'd known the wall was not passable, I'd have sent them out the back! Some walls are, some walls aren't. In game, both types of walls allow a "move" to be plotted through them. My solution is simple. Either make the "move" line red to show that movement through that terrain (the wall) will not be allowed, or make a visual indicator that the wall is solid - like a big black bar on the ground. Thanks, Ken

Bueller? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?

Gents, In two games, one v1.01 the other v1.03b2, I've had a squad split on its own. They were not under orders to split. They were not receiving incoming fire. At the end of one turn they were whole. At the orders phase of the next turn, they were split. In one, I was/am unable to recombine the half-squads (Soviet conscripts). In the other, they self-recombined after one turn (adjacent, crack Fallschirmjagers). Has anyone else seen this behavior? Is there any explanation for it? Thanks, Ken

Gents, Just tested the overturn behavior. One simple test with PzIVF's. It seems that the "bug" is dependent on several conditions: speed of the vehicle when it turns; the turn point is the LAST waypoint; the turn point is placed VERY close to the previous waypoint. In essence, it appears that the TacAI is endeavoring to get your tank to the location of the last waypoint, but the speed and turning radius and closeness of the waypoint prevents it. When the distance between the last and the next-to-last waypoint is great enough, the vehicle/TacAI is able to get to the endpoint with minimal oversteer. Is this consistent with the behavior others have noted? This behavior seems to be present in the April 8th beta build. Ken

Madmatt, Testing the April 8th build of the 1.03 beta. I was only concerned with the "guns behind a hill" issue; I used a combination of early 45mm ATG's and 76.2mm/L16 (?) guns(to ensure low probability of damage) against Tigers and StuG IIIF's. 14 guns, evenly split, versus 10 AFV's - either all Tigers or all StuG's. All guns and AFV's were veteran. The latest results were much more in line with what one would expect. The Tigers did well, but were unable to hit 2-3 guns before their HE loadout was exhausted. One of these guns (a low velocity 76.2mm regimental infantry gun) knocked out a Tiger at 750 meters! (Hurrah for them.) This could well represent the difficulties of a flat trajectory weapon going up against an optimally sited high trajectory weapon. The same test with the 75mm/L43 StuG's resulted in all but one of the guns being eliminated. A more even field with regard to trajectories. In short, regarding the issue of un-hittable guns behind a crest, I am satisfied with the results obtained with this patch. I did not test for any other issues (tanks spinning in place?). Thanks for the work! Ken

Madmatt, Wow, fast response! The link at the beginning of this thread shows the same beta file as the original. You mentioned that there's a new build available. Where is it located and how (filename) is it differentiated from the original beta? Thanks, Ken

Matt et al., Thanks for the continued work! Now, will this slow down CMAK? I ran a test w/10 Sov 45mm ATG's on a ridge vs. 10 Tigers. 3 guns were never destroyed. Game ended after 5 turns with Tigers out of usable HE ammo. Not one single Tiger round overshot the ridge! Not one. Every single round impacted the ridge short of the guns. There were bright blue LOS lines to/from every gun and tank. (Guns showed tanks as hull-down.) The guns were knocked out by blast effect, highly dependent on distance from crater to gun. Some guns were abandoned without being knocked out. Some of the ridge was unrecognizable due to cratering. The 3 remaining guns were slightly more set back due to folds in the terrain than the other guns. They survived. Let me emphasize, however, that these guns showed a good LOS at all times. I think this behavior needs to be tweaked a bit more. At one point 8 tigers fired 3 turns worth of HE at a single gun. No hits, no knockouts, with LOS. Thanks, Ken

BFC, Thanks! Sign me up for a copy. One question comes to mind, though. What happens when my forces slog up the boot of Italy to meet the Russians coming from the east? Patton? Patton? Ken

Since I refuse to follow the ill-mannered practice of "self-bumping", I shall have to wait for someone else to move this message back up to the top. Ken

Gentlemen, I don't know if this has been addressed yet or not, but as I just noticed it I thought I'd raise the issue. With unit bases toggled on, and vehicles toggled off, the units which are riding on vehicles do not have their bases visible. This is an issue using a high level viewpoint. Unless I "+" and "-" through my OOB, I'll miss my squads and teams. Thanks, Ken

I'll chime in on this: The reason the M1 Gas Turbine engine is a gas hog is, as referenced, because of its OVERRALL high fuel consumption. I would submit that the amount of fuel used per horsepower produced at PEAK production would compare quite favorably with diesels (modern, but especially with engines available in the early '80's). Any recipricoting engine will generally produce more power at higher rpms (I said GENERALLY!!), and they will consume more fuel with higher rpm. Hence, when no power is needed (the tank is still), the engine idles (producing little power), and consuming a minimum amount of fuel. Not so for the M1's turbine. Turbines have a lot of good points. However, this one was designed for a peak power production. Because of this there were design tradeoffs. (Anyone wanting to discuss iterative design cycles with turbines are welcome to join in.) One of the tradeoffs was that it was optimized for a narrow rpm band. Hence, at an rpm off that optimized design point, the fuel usage skyrockets for the horsepower produced. Yes, the latest M1's are designed to have an auxiliary power unit - a diesel generator. Ken

Esper, Thank you for the link. Ken

Gentlemen, First, thank you for your collective work. I've followed this thread and through it have found three missing bmp's. Is that all there are? Also, the "CM Mod Database" is referenced but does not have a link. Where is it? Finally, does this type of missing a referenced bmp for thumbnails problem describe the issue whereby German 10.5 cm field howitzers (leFH18?) have a thumbnail picture of an infantry gun? Is there a solution for this? Thank you, Ken

I'll chime in as well. I'm playing a game in which my PBEM opponent has an AT gun behind a railway embankment. I've got 6 tanks/spg's with LOS to it (30% to 70% exposure). The front of the embankment has been hit with approximately 100 rounds. NOTHING has hit the gun. Doesn't seem correct. Ken

Tankersley, Is this the program with which you can make a LARGE map and then select certain sections of that map for CMBB to create automatically? (With the large support base created by talented programmers, I'm getting confused as to which program is which.) Thanks, Ken