c3k

LOL... the 13 fps is very smooth. FWIW, I am sensitive to screen refresh. I can see 60 hz...and don't like it. (My peripheral vision detects 60 hz or lower. Straight on it's much more subtle, but still visible. Yes, my career and personal well-being has depended upon visual acuity. Luckily, not so much any more. )
Freesync/Gsync are very cool technologies which smooth out the video experience. I recommend testing it out at a store, if you can. Or at a friend's. Whichever is cheaper.

Hey, if you liked it, show me the love. Hit that heart. Once I get 300 up-votes, I can trade them in for the entire CMBN bundle on the BFC website.

You have quite enough reputation as it is, thank you very much.

Hey, if you liked it, show me the love. Hit that heart. Once I get 300 up-votes, I can trade them in for the entire CMBN bundle on the BFC website.

If you still have a fiancée, you're not playing the game properly.  

Not at all. They were a new TOE which tried to tie together production abilities and lessons learned. One of those lessons was the effectiveness of automatic weapons. You should find that one complete squad in each platoon is fully equipped with StGs. They're the Assault Squad. You could dive into the editor and strip out the non-StG squads and have as many StGs as your heart desires.

Because they weren't 'removed', they were not included in the new engine. Your statement implies effort was used to degrade the game, but in reality it was a choice of where to put it to best improve the game...

I ran the same scenarios as Hister using my system with the following specs:
AMD FX 8320 3.5GHz 8-core (4 modules totaling 8 integer, 4 floating point, up to 4.0GHz turbo mode)
8GB of DDR3 1600 (CAS 9)
MSI GeForce GTX 660 Ti  - 388.00 driver
Asrock 880GM-LE FX motherboard (AMD 880G chipset)
Samsung 840 EVO 250GB SSD
Windows 7 Home 64-bit SP1 (latest patches)
Running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Using the default settings in CMBN 4.0 (Balanced/Balanced, Vsync OFF and ON, AA OFF) and in the Nvidia Control Panel I typically got about 6 FPS (measured with the latest version of FRAPS) in "Op. Linnet II a USabn UKgrnd" on the German entry side of the map (all the way to the edge) and scrolling right or left looking at the Americans in Richelle. In "The Copse" scenario it measured around 28 FPS behind the allied armored units at the start (scrolled around the map a bit).
Messing around with Vsync (both on and off), anti-aliasing, anisotropic filtering, Process Lasso (affinity, etc.), power saving settings in Windows control panel, etc. didn't seem to have a significant performance effect on the low FPS of 'Op. Linnet II...'. I overclocked the FX 8320 to 4.0GHz (simply using the multipliers in the BIOS and turning off several power saving features there too, such as APM, AMD Turbo Core Technology, CPU Thermal Throttle, etc.). With 'Op. Linnet II...' the FPS increased to only 7 FPS. Turning off the icons (Alt-I) did bump up the FPS by 1 additional frame (the option reduced the number of objects to be drawn in this view) to 8 FPS.
There are some Hotfixes from Microsoft that supposedly address some issues with the Bulldozer/Piledriver architecture and Windows 7 involving CPU scheduling and power policies (KB2645594 and KB246060) that do NOT come through Windows Update (you have to request them from Microsoft). I have NOT applied these patches to see if they would make a difference since they CANNOT have their changes removed (supposedly), even if you uninstall them. A number of users on various forums have stated that the changes made little difference to their particular game's performance.
I decided to compare this to an Intel system that was somewhat similar:
Intel Core i5 4690K 3.5GHz 4-core  (possibly running at 3.7 to 3.9GHz in turbo mode)
16GB of DDR3-2133 (CAS 9)
eVGA GeForce GTX 670 - 388.00 driver
Asrock Z97 Killer motherboard (Z97 chipset)
Crucial MX100 512GB SSD
Windows 7 Home 64-bit SP1 (latest patches)
Running at a resolution of 1920 x 1200.
Again using the same settings used on the FX system with CMBN and the Nvidia Control Panel I got 10 FPS in 'Op. Linnet II...' while scrolling on the far side looking at the American forces in the town. In 'The Copse' scenario the FPS went to 40 FPS behind the allied vehicles at their start positions. The biggest difference between the GTX 660 Ti and the GeForce GTX 670 is the greater memory bandwidth of the 670 since it has a 256-bit bus compared to the 660 Ti's 192-bit memory bus. So POSSIBLY the greater GPU memory bandwidth in conjunction with the Intel i5's higher IPC (Instructions Per Cycle) efficiency and the increased system memory bandwidth (faster system RAM) resulted in the higher frame rate on the Intel system, but only by so much.
I ran a trace of the OpenGL calls used by CMBN while running 'Op. Linnet II a USabn UKgrnd' on the FX system. This recorded all of the OpenGL calls being used in each frame. The trace SEVERELY slowed down the system during the capture (a lot of data to be written to the trace file). Examining the trace file suggests that CMBN is SEVERLY CPU BOUND in certain graphical views. This is especially true with views of a large amount of units and terrain like that in 'Op. Linnet II...'.
What appears to be happening is that some views in large scenarios of CM involve A LOT of CPU time in issuing instructions to the video card/'frame buffer'. The CPU is spending so much time handling part of the graphics workload (which IS normal) and sending instructions to the video card on what to draw that the video card does not have a full (new) frame of data to post to the frame buffer at a rate of 60 or 30 FPS (Vsync). At 30 FPS each frame would have to be generated between the CPU and the video card within 33.3ms. Instead this is taking around 100ms on the Intel system and about 142ms on the FX system (resulting in the 10 and 7 FPS respectively). Some frames in the trace file had hundreds of thousands of instructions, some reaching near 700,000 instructions (each one is not necessarily communicated between the CPU and video card, only a fraction of them are), whereas sections where the FPS was higher might only have less than 3000 instructions being executed. The low frame rate is a direct consequence of how busy the CPU is and this can be seen with both Intel and AMD CPUs.
So the accusation comes up, is the CM graphics engine un-optimized ? To a certain extent, it is. There are limitations on what can be done in the environment and with the OpenGL 2.x calls that are available. CM could be optimized a bit further than it is currently, but this involves a HUGE amount of time experimenting and testing. Working against this optimization effort is CM's 'free' camera movement, the huge variety, number and size of maps available and the large variety and number of units.These features make it hard to come up with optimizations that work consistently without causing other problems. Such efforts at optimization are manpower and time that Battlefront simply does not have as Steve has stated earlier. Charles could be working on this for years in attempt to get better frame rates. While this would be a 'worthy goal', it is unrealistic from a business standpoint - there is no guarantee with the amount of time spent on optimizing would result in a significantly better performing graphics engine. Other, larger developers typically have TEAMS of people working on such optimizations (which, importantly, does allow them to accomplish certain optimization tasks within certain time frames too). When CMSF was started sometime in 2004 OpenGL 2.0 was the latest specification available (with the 2.1 specification coming out before CMSF was released). Utilizing newer versions of OpenGL to potentially optimize CM's graphics engine still involves a lot of work since the newer calls available don't necessarily involve built-in optimizations over the 2.0 calls. In fact a number of OpenGL calls have been deprecated in OpenGL 3.x and later and this could result in wholesale redesigning of the graphics engine. On top of this is the issue that newer versions of OpenGL may not be supported by a number of current user's video cards (and laptops and whole Mac models on the Apple side).
As for the difference between the GTX 550 Ti and the GTX 660 Ti that Hister is experiencing, I'm not sure what may be going on. The GTX 550 Ti is based on the 'Fermi' architecture, while the GTX 660 Ti utilizes the 'Kepler' architecture. Kepler was optimized for the way games operate compared to the Fermi architecture which had slightly better performance in the 'compute' domain (using the GPU for physics calculations or other floating point, parallelized tasks). The GTX 660 Ti should have been a significant boost in video performance over the GTX 550 Ti, though this performance difference may not be too visible in CM due to the CPU bound nature of some views. It's possible that older drivers may have treated the Fermi architecture differently or simply that older drivers may have operated differently (there are trade-offs that drivers may make in image quality for performance - and sometimes this is 'baked into' the driver and isn't touched by the usual user-accessible controls). I have a GTX 570 I could potentially test, but I would probably need to know more details about the older setup to possibly reproduce the situation and see the differences first-hand.

Emrys. Hopefully.

EvilTwin posted this link on ChrisND's youtube stream at the weekend....thought it was a great read
Just in case you haven't seen this, I think you might want to take a look at this. Very enlightening. http://www.scribd.com/doc/274009061/Lessons-Learned-From-the-Russo-Ukraine-War#scribd

Nice job with clearing KT1...after learning about tank rider vulnerability!
 

Nice job with clearing KT1...after learning about tank rider vulnerability!
 

Minutes 35-33 Part 3:   On AOA 1, 3/2 squad is ordered to advance to the small woods on the left, bringing them a bit closer to the objective and observation range of the contacts in the town.    The IS-2 that brought them moves to the edge of the woods to provide cover. The original IS-2 and armoured car and both sections of 3/3 squad remain where they are, observing and ready to provide cover fire.    The two HQ T34s and their infantry arrive at KT 2.      RU120   I was worried about 3/2 squad taking fire as it walked over to the copse on the left, but with the IS-2 and a couple of squads of infantry doing nothing but overwatch, it is a reasonably safe bet they would be protected. They reach the trees, and almost immediately, spot an HMG42 position forward of the town.      RU121   As the newly arrived Tankodesantniki dismount and advance into KT 2, a second HMG42 is spotted.      RU122   I definitely can’t advance with infantry across those open fields of grass without some prep…. As the west-most IS-2 stays alert for newcomers, the other bombards the HMG42, with success.     RU123   The HMG42 disappears from view. Now the tricky part comes: seeing what else is here before I advance. I know there is a Marder shifting westward toward this force. Alone, it is no threat, but what else lies in wait here?      RU124   Now that both KT 1 and KT 2 are in my hands, I have options, and decisions ahead.   

Very little is more terrifying than a T34 breaking into your lines loaded with guys with SMG's blazing away !
It's over very quickly, one way or the other.

Depends on how high they model the tire psi...
 

Nice catch...

Depends on how high they model the tire psi...
 

Nice catch...

Amedeo, just an observation on the data, informed by my experience dealing with that kind of data while working on another game
Always take that kind of figures as the "best that weapon can do". Full stop. These figures were collected from field trials, with the weapons being operated by technicians or marksmen on perfect conditions (a firing range with props that allow to measure exactly dispersion). The British Army Ordnance Service conducted a more "realistic" testing using recruits and the differences one can see between the technical specs and the actual outcomes achieved with highly reputed weapons as the Sten or the Enfield, well, let's say that the technical specs of the weapon predict very badly how they will actually perform in the hands of your average recruit, under psychological stress and against targets that try to close the range quickly or are using cover in an intelligent way.
From a more "operational" point of view: when you feed this data, taking it as the baseline probability of killing or maiming, on any reasonable model of infantry combat by fire, you'll get massive casualty rates. Massive as in totally ahistorical. The data is "wrong" in the sense that either it needs to be toned down to set the "any given Sunday" to a more reasonable level, which is difficult, since the definition of "any given Sunday" is a moving target, or the combat model (and the AI if it is empowered to manage ammunition) has to provide with the elements to "modulate" these figures, starting from the assumption that it is an absolute upper bound on what that weapon can do. That data integration and curation job is very hard. BFC call seems to be to have the AI to disregard the PPSh as something that can be fired above certain ranges... and I think it makes all the sense in the world.

Yet as ASL Veteran and others point out, there seems to be something a bit off with the lethality of these weapons on the latest versions of the engine. I do tend to agree with those observations. But I don't think the data BFC is using is wrong, their models are buggy or the AI is being unreasonable: I think it is more a question of design of effects and interactions with other aspects of the design of the CMx2 engine. Regarding design, I - personally and subjectively - would like to see the volume of fire these things can put out at ranges beyond 60 meters to result in more suppression over a larger area, rather than generating killing or incapacitating hits. As for interactions with other parts of the CMx2 design, the tighter-than-in-real-life packing of our pixel truppen due to action spots constraining their deployment that increases lethality. If you have five guys standing in a 8 square meters area and something like 100 rounds of ordnance shot fly through the volume encompassing the action spot and the men, chances that all of them are hit will be quite high, as they will be physically occupying a significant proportion of that volume. And that assuming that the rounds trajectories are uniformly and randomly distributed, for even loosely aimed fire, those chances can become almost a certainty.
Observations about action spots and burst fire extreme lethality have been made in the past, I am not sure what is BFC opinion on that.

Saw this and took a look. Interesting, but not surprising. Looks like the maker of this has some other interesting videos:

I'd be happy with smoke grenades being a defined munition in the Unit Information panel. I think those squads with smoke capability only get one "smoke". I'd love for engineers (or other assaulters in different time-frames) to have a little smoke grenade icon with a number, designating how many times they can order ";" to be used.

I'll find the highest HQ, then pick one subordinate unit. Say, A Company. I'll take all of A Company and put 'em on the left. Then B in the middle, and C in reserve. Or something. But that way, I can SEE what organizations I have. Once I've got a grip on my order of battle, I'll break down the battle taskings and mentally assign them to the units. Like, A Company will take the railway station. B Company guards A Coy's flank. C Company will hang back and plug holes as needed.
That "tells" me what I need to do with A company. 1st and 2nd platoon up front, 3rd in trail. Weapons platoon in overwatch. Once 1 and 2 reach the highway, then weapons moves forward and sets up for overwatch on the highway. Etc., etc.
 
Breaking it up into steps, both your units and the overall battle tasks, will lead you to which unit should be assigned to which task.
Start smaller.

Okay, I was not following the thread I started very closely because it went away from game mechanics and the development of TACSOPs to play and win PBEM games. But I happened to notice one of the above posts and then spent some time skimming through the thread and found a few more similar posts.  I guess I should have paid more attention and spoke up sooner.  
To be clear the opening poster was not complaining about hard coded SMG range limits.  I was sharing this knowledge in an effort to spark discussion about the TACSOPs that could be created with the knowledge of the range limits. I even offered a TACSOP along with a partial counter TACSOP.   I am not a grog and have no interest in changing range limits or arguing about xyz weapons manual stating 123 that contradicts abc weapons manual.  I am a fanboi and trust BFC to produce the best game they can with the resources they have.   
My interest is in identifying game mechanics and developing TACSOPs to use in conjunction with the game mechanics in order to play and win PBEM games.
See ya in a combat mission on the PBEM field.  
 
  
         

You said "backdoor" and "keyhole" in one post: score!
 

 
 
Great pix.

Amedeo - I wouldn't mind there being significant differences between the SMGs, based on their muzzle velocities for instance.  The PPsH was better at 200 yards than a Thompson, for example, simply because the 7.62x25 round has nearly twice the muzzle velocity of the 45 ACP.  I don't think that the hard cut off is the way to handle that.  Neither should be firing beyond 200 yards, and neither should be competitive with a bolt rifle in aimed fire at 200 yards.  The latter is the *reason* why they shouldn't be firing beyond 200 yards - because it is a waste of their great close range firepower to shoot off all their ammo at their least effective ranges, ranges where a bolt rifle seriously outperforms any of them.  
Get the effective accuracy fall off *correct*, and that will all handle itself.  Including allowing a hard cut off at 200, where nobody would want them firing, because the hits per burst would have already fallen to levels where the players would rather save their ammo and use them in closer.  To me, the issue only arises in the first place because the fall off is *not steep enough* right now, and therefore the SMGs appear too effective at 150 to 200 yards.  That leads players to *want* them to fire at those ranges and longer, and to feel "gyped" if they can't fire the PPsH at 250, say.  If firing at 250 just missed and blew the ammo, nobody would feel gyped about not being able to do it - the cut off would be acting as the designers intend, and would be a feature, and everyone would be all for it (most already are, no doubt).  I think it is a feature regardless, because bolt rifles and LMGs *should* be dominating firefights at ranges of 200 to 400 yards, and "turning off" SMGs at 200 is a step in that correct direction.
To me, this reduces the difference between me and Amedeo to, he would like to see the PPsH significantly more effective than a 9mm or a 45 caliber SMGs in the range window 100 to 200 yards. That'd be fine by me, but it is a much less important issue than the fact that all of the SMGs are performing too well in that range envelope.  Absolutely, and compared to the rifles and LMGs.  Arguably the PPsH should do better than a Sten in that range window, maybe especially in the second half of it.  Bully.  But neither should be matching a bolt rifle at 200, let alone exceeding them, and that is what is happening now.
I see two reasons that is happening.  One, the increase in the difficulty of a shot with an increase in its flight time to that distance is undermodeled.  Range makes a shot harder for all weapons by increasing the impact of aiming misalignment, and of the lighter automatics by increased bullet dispersion from muzzle climb and shake from recoil and all that.  All of which effects all the rounds.  But range also makes shots harder with slower bullets, even with a sight with range graduations, because it increases the flight time, thus the bullet drop, and thus the "golfing" aspect of shooting - the holdover, and the need for an accurate range estimate, and such factors.  All make it so the difficulty of a shot grows as a function of both the range (all weapons) and the flight time (affecting the lower muzzle velocity weapons the most).
That's all reason one.  The second reason is just that the bolt rifles are firing too slow, too infrequently, and this is exaggerating the benefit of the ROF of the automatics, because their short bursts are being compared to frankly muzzle loader rates of fire for the bolt repeaters.   Bolt rifles in aimed fire shoot 10 to 12 times a minute, not 3 to 5.  What we get as things are now is the SMGs firing 6-9 round bursts with each round 1/3rd the modeled accuracy, for 2-3 times the expected hits per shot, in the 100 to 200 yard range window, and even out near the far end of it.  At 100 with the PPsH I'd buy that relationship, and at maybe 70 for the 9mm SMGs.  But by 180-200 they should have a lower chance of hitting with a whole burst than the bolt rifle does of hitting with a single (supported, aimed) shot, while using 6-9 times the ammo to do it.  And to keep from running dry almost immediately, they aren't going to fire 6-9 round bursts 10-12 times a minute, where a bolt rifle readily can fire single rounds that often.  The bolt rifle will thus be getting more hits per minute at those ranges, while also being able to keep it up for far longer, because it is getting not around 3 but around 10 times the hits per round, at those ranges.
To me, all of that is way more important than whether the PPsH has 33% more effective range than a 9mm SMG.  You don't need to worry too much about the relative SMG effectiveness - the PPsH armed infantry are going to rock anyway, because they have SMG numbers and they have cyclic rate of fire advantages as well, and both are modeled and modeled correctly.  We do, however, emphatically need to worry about SMGs seriously outperforming full LMGs and bolt rifles in the last 50 or so meters of their effective ranges.  Because that isn't historically accurate and it messes up the actual tactical relationships of combined arms tactics and such.
I don't think there is any reason for BTS to change the 200 meter range limit.  I do think they could look at adjusting the rate of fire of the bolt rifles upward, and the rate of drop off of weapon accuracy with range more generally, and of the slowest muzzle velocity weapons especially.
 A uniform formula could do the latter objectively, if it has the form, per round accuracy is a function of three variables (actual range, flight time, inherent weapon dispersion).
All automatics have higher inherent weapon dispersion, and the lighter SMGs the largest, and in unsupported fire especially so.  But basically this can be taken from weapon specs as 1 MOA sniper rifles, 2 MOA single shot rifles, up to 10 MOA SMGs, and a middling figure between the last 2 for full LMGs.
The lowest muzzle velocities have the longest flight times, and the difficulty of a shot grows slowly for flight times over 0.25 seconds and rapidly for shots longer than 0.5 seconds.
Range causes a linear increase in the importance of any error in the angle for all weapons.  The initial error in the angle is determined by firing stance (prone and supported best, standing upsupported worst e.g.), some quality and morale state adjustments perhaps.
How I see it, for what its worth...

It's not that the price is high (or "too high"). The problem is that wages are too low. Obviously, this is not fair. The only redress is a world-wide "game fairness tax". Of course that sounds bad. We'll call it the "leveling the playing field for all" act, and impose "fees" on anyone buying...milk. Or eggs. Or cheese. Because dead cows are in the game, so people who use cow stuff should help. It's only fair. I mean, if they can eat cow stuff, then I should be able to pay for my game without making a choice about giving up my own milk, eggs, or cheese. (Cows do make eggs, don't they?) Really, why should I work for something which fills a need or desire in my life? Others can afford it, and I can't. It's not fair.
 
Hang on, I just heard my Mom come back in.
 
"Hey! Mom! I'm hungry and the basement is chilly! Cook me something and turn up the heat!"
 
Where was I? Oh, yeah. It's not fair. BFC needs to give up some profit.
 
Ken

"Greed" is used when someone thinks they can extort something from YOU in order to give it to THEM. Work, and the freedom to self-value your own labor, is a concept fraught with opportunity and risk. Those who are afraid of the risk take the opportunity to try to take your labor for themselves.
 
I don't like the price of new cars. Those manufacturers are so greedy. They should cut the price in half. Back in '60, a new car cost 1/10 of what they cost today. It isn't "fair".
 
By using terms such as "fair" and "greed", they try to impose a false morality on the marketplace, and thereby upon the free laborer. You want more money? Work harder, work longer, work smarter. Or, in many cases, just work. How about I look at your possessions, meager though they may be, which you have earned through your labor (or been given by a government which coerced the wealth from the productive members of society and transferred some of it to you), and tell you which possessions of yours that I deserve? If you refuse to give them over to me, you're just being "greedy".
 
I love redistributionists. Or thieves, as they used to be called.
 
And, yes, this comes from someone who once bought diapers and formula on credit cards and went hungry on alternate days, and I'd almost shed a tear when I had to break a $20...