Wreck

Back on the original topic... There are two main reasons why CM battles are bloodier than WWII battles, that I have not seen directly addressed as yet. One is, that CM troops follow orders far better than real troops would. Only fire will stop them from carrying out orders, and even then not always. In the real thing, troops were resistant to getting into close quarters battles. You might order them to charge, but they would use their own judgement, conscious or unconscious. Players exploit this by routinely ordering infantry into grenade and even close combat range. This particular aspect of CM is something that we will probably have to live with, even for CMBB. For one thing it is rather hard to compute when an action might be "too dangerous". For another, even if this could be computed well, I suspect a large number of players would hate it. (I would like it, myself.) A second flaw in the simulation is the effect of firepower on moving men. In the real thing, firepower would drive men to ground, slowing and stopping their movement. This is hardly true in CM. Fire can stop men only via morale effects. Player exploit this by moving freely over ground "covered" by enemy firepower. It is particularly noticable for MG firepower, since it has long range, but in fact it is true of all sorts of firepower, including rifle squads, artillery, etc. Some solutions to this are planned for CMBB, at least for MG firepower. I am a bit sceptical that they have it as I would like, but we shall see. All told, I would expect CMBB to have somewhat lower casualty ratios than CMBO, because the augmentation of MG effectiveness will, hopefully, translate into reduced infantry mobility. But we should still expect rather severe casualty rates to be common.

Ideally you want them placed with a keyhole (very narrow) view of some terrain that the enemy is forced to go through. As you say, it depends on the map -- a lot of times there won't be any such place. So then you want to try to find a location that can see enough so that you still get to kill a tank or two. Generally speaking you should look at high places first. Remember that elevated fire often has an edge in penetration because it lowers the incidence angle of hits. If possible, alway place your AT guns in trees or rough. Brush or wheat will provide concealment until you open up, at least if the enemy is not that close, but they will not protect you and the gun will be easily knocked out. Try to find a position where with only a small repositioning through cover (i.e. 20m, perhaps), you can see a lot more of the board. This becomes your backup plan -- if the enemy confounds your expectation and does not seem likely to move into your initially chosen field of fire, then hopefully you can push the gun over and still be effective. Another useful thing to keep in mind while placing AT guns, is the evil interaction of CM's borg sighting and explosive buildings. Try to place the gun so that you can see bits of second stories in key areas (i.e. a village where a flag is). If you do this then you can often attack infantry in those buildings unseen. By the way, AP is not very effective against infantry by itself, but it is fairly effective in exploding buildings. So don't stop firing at a building just because you used up your HE. Things not to do: don't place AT guns directly behind a infantry position that will get shelled, close enough to catch some of the shells.

Another view on it: 60 years ago the Japanese attacked Pearl, inevitably (though stupidly) doing what the Roosevelt administration had carefully maneuvered them into doing. The resulting unification of American allowed that administration to do what it wanted: to go to war. Even now key documents from the time, which most likely will implicate the highest levels of American officialdom including the president, are still top secret. Do we still need to have secrets about the causes of WWII, and if so, why? Is the valor of the Americans who died at Pearl any less if their deaths were political expedients of the Roosevelt administration?

Kurt Lindquist: Read your mail! Then when you have cleared the queue, do let me know so I can resend.

Sounds good to me. There is simply no way to determine the best of a group without playing a lot of battles. So, we do what we can in the time available. Single elimination fills the bill.

Folks I realize it is fun to analyze the scenarios, and more fun to do it out loud. But please, there are people here still playing. Let's not blow the FOW; what y'all have been doing above with the XXX scenario (as if people will not figure it out) is tantamount to giving away the game. It may very well skew the results in group 1. Hopefully they have all started and are well into the game, so the discussion won't matter. But I don't think anyone here knows that. A few more weeks and we can talk all we want. Meanwhile, if you really feel the need to discuss it maybe we can set up a email list for WBW, Treeburst, and the folks that have finished? Of just discuss it privately between yourselves and WBW (though I would like to be CCed...

I would probably go for it, myself. Those big turrets are very slow... But as follows: move fast most of the way across the street, then hunt towards a waypoint further on, out of LOS of the enemy. When hunting your tank will stop and engage the enemy, of course. But by having the "extension" of your move already locked in, if by chance you fail to kill the enemy and he swings around and fails to kill you, you can then change the waypoint from hunt to move fast, and very quickly escape. The ambush thing is a good idea, *if* you can get it to within 20m of the enemy, or to a point near the enemy that you will lose LOS to during your move. If you can, hold off on the charge until you can arrange for a decent threat in front of the enemy, i.e. a M-10 or somesuch. Then you move in back and, with a delay, move in front, and the enemy is sure to die.

Ambush. Nobody has mentioned this yet. When the enemy is close enough that the sharpshooter will reveal himself by firing, you generally don't want him to fire. So, put him on ambush with the aiming point right next to him, so that he will only fire if the enemy is really close. Or put the ambush point way out in a field somewhere that the enemy isn't. Of course this means you won't get any sniper shots, but a live sharpshooter with 10 ammo is often better than a dead sharpshooter with 9.

I see you did not test the appearance of the site with Mozilla. (It is all mushed together -- unusable.) Or maybe this is one of those HTML things where IE is out of synch with the standard? Oh, and on the registration page, you have "double check you're info"; you need "your" there. I submitted a comment on the "experience for infantry " poll and it did not appear. Do comments work? Did I do something wrong? Other than that, looking great!

Redeker: your experience is like mine; craters seem to act as foxholes. I have not tested this in most terrain types, though. That makes another good newbie tip, though. Watch carefully where the craters appear and use them for cover in an approach (if they are in open, wheat, brush, etc, and there is no better cover). Or use them as fighting positions if they are in woods, scattered woods, or pines. Of course it is rare that they are exactly where needed.

Well well well. Email problems it was, for me. Good old verizon. My email there was supposed to be being forwarded to my older address. And it was -- some of the time! But sometimes, inexplicably, it was not! Those frickin' losers. Thing that burns me about it is I am rewarding them for their ineptitude by moving over to my verizon account as my main account. In fact I am about to deactivate dc.net. So: section 3 guys I should be getting back to you soon enough. If y'all (other than Commissar, who I am still tormenting) do not hear from me today, then it is because I think *you* have the turn, and you should resend it. And please use leonard.dickens@verizon.net, not leonard@dc.net. I think all of you are, already, so it should be no problem.

If you want to get beat on hard, head on over to tournamenthouse.com and ask for swamp. (There is a chat room linked off the main site, which swamp often hangs out at.) Swampy is very good indeed. He is also available to play, unlike most of the other people named here. His win streak is up to 31 as I post this, and a good many of these are good or excellent players. But he can always use another patsy. The only catch is he probably won't play you unless you join the TH ladder so as to make the game official. TH players tend to like the extra adrenaline resulting from games that count. Hell, I could use another patsy, so if you join TH drop me a line too.

Lopaka -- yes, I did want TCP, and I mean to get around to scheduling it with you eventually. Just been a bit busy around the weekends lately. Meanwhile, I figure it would not hurt to bounce a few turns back and forth. Sunday afternoon is looking good for me.

No.

Yo section 3... my status. In short: everyone owes me a turn, as I see it. So I am wondering what two of you are talking about. The specific breakdown: Commissar: no problems, mate. Let's try to set a TCP date sometime. Warhammer: I have economy 01 on my hard drive, and it is yours. Please resend economy 02 if you have it. Else tell me to resend 01. Lopaka: I have gotta get up 01 on my drive. Same deal as above. Kanonier: aftermath 10 is what I have. Carrot: enough 16.

Regarding mortars in CM: the effect of off-board artillery in CM is proportionate to the "blast" number squared. You pay an amount linear in blast times shots. The result is that low caliber stuff sucks in bang:buck, all other things equal. Other things are not equal, though: time to target is free and thus big mortars are bargains. Other heavy arty is good (and great for Americans w/ their fast time to target). Little mortars suck, except for smoke chucking. On board mortars work somewhat differently than offboard one, but I suspect that their effect is still likely to be proportionate to blast^2, while their price is linear in blast. It is also computed in a rather silly manner which, among other things, devalues the ammo load and values the number of crewmen. The upshot of this is, that on-board mortars suck, excepting the 76mm. On the historical effect of mortars, I think they were more effective than you typically see in CM. Part of that is blast ratings -- at least one mortar shell is arguably undermodelled. I don't know about the 60mm in this regard though. I expect that in WWII most 60mm teams would have more than a handful of shots, at least in a typical defensive or planned-attack situation. In CM you get the amount of shots you can carry.

Steve -- after your last response (well second to last, now), I was quite happy, so I shut my yap. The variable RBP, as you describe it ("uncommon" shows up in 40%, "rare" in 10%, "very rare" in 2%) is exactly what I want. Part of our miscommunication had to do with "rare", which I was using in a simplistic, boolean way, basically having mind anything that in ASL would have been rarity 1.2+ (assuming you recall ASL's system). You had that four way division in mind, so you though I was asking for something of King Tiger rarity in every battle. I was really just asking to see a Panther now and then. That said, I am bit concerned about making common things even cheaper, but only for play balance reasons. And I am sure y'all have the problem well in hand.

Yes changes. Germans commanders are... Putscheid -- Jake Kapplan Walhausen -- Chris Campos Route 324 -- James Morton Gentlemen, start your engines.

To my opponents -- you all should have turns from me. Well, other than Commissar, who I am torturing. We're gonna play TCP one of these days. So he gets zip until the blessed day and hour.

Hey all! Just finished my last game. An attack against Tacpub where I [censored] . In my other games, I [censored] against [censored], [censored], and [censored]. And I [censored] against [censored] and [censored]. All in all, [censored]. What's delaying you guys? [ 11-16-2001: Message edited by: Wreck ]</p>

Steve, you point out that RVP will get variety because rarity will change from month to month. That's fine, I understand the point. But I am concerned about variety not just over the course of the war, but within any given month as well. Imagine choosing a Kursk quickbattle and every time, the German buys PzIVf2s, and the Russian, T-34-76bs. To be general: my point is that with RVP, within any given month, there will be little or no variety, at least with Fixed RVP. The common things will be bargains, others things won't, and that is that. Why not just got to boolean RVA, and say you can't pick rare things at all? In other words, what's the point of putting in an "option" that is always bad? It does not hurt, I guess, but it is just a tiny bit confusing. One thing you can say for it, is that it would allow a good player to intentionally handicap himself in a way that will become obvious to his opponent during a game, but not setup. For whatever that is worth. With variable RVP, there might be variety, but only if a rare item can drop down to a common rating. My understanding from what I have read of the system in other posts, is that this will never be -- a rare unit will never become "common" (== cheap), just "less rare" (== ess expensive, but still more than without rarity on). In which case, effectively Variable RVP is little or no different than Fixed. Now, all that stated, I agree that given the criteria you have stated, your system seems to fill the bill. The implementation is, IMO, is a bit weird. My criteria for what I want in a rarity system include all the things that you want, but go further. Mine include two more. (1) Wanting a variety in battles within any given month, and (2) wanting to have a balanced battle with the occasional rare unit mixed in with a majority of common units. That's what I believe my proposal will do, and what I have proved your system will not do, outside of the possibility that Variable RVP sometimes allows "rare" units to be rated as "common". I suppose, given that you are stating you are not going to change at this point (which does not surprise me; I'm a programmer), the only point in my posting anything more on this topic is to beg you to make variable rarity sometimes produce "commonness" even for rare things.

sightreader, RVA is simple from user's point of view. Either they can buy an item, or they can't. "Grey out" the ones that aren't available -- they should be shown but not clickable. What is complicated is getting that yes-or-no question right. Actually, RVP is also simple, from the user's POV. Simpler, really, since you need not indicate on the buy screen whether something is available or not.

<blockquote>quote:</font><hr> I think there are really only three options for non-gamey forces, computer pick, 3rd party pick, and pre-made scenarios. <hr></blockquote> Another problem worth noting with rarity-via-price is that it cannot be used for computer-picks. (Well, it could I suppose but very likely the results would be silly, i.e., 1000 point battle and computer picks you a platoon of gjagers for 500 points.) Whereas, rarity-via-availability would work fine with computer-picks; in fact it would improve it considerably.

Steve, the use of price alone as a means to implement rarity is not an ideal system. Assume for the moment that all the prices in CM currently are perfect. What will a cherry-picker pick? Anything; it would not matter. Now, we all know the prices are not perfect. Some units are overpriced and some under; all that means is that these are the ones avoided and picked, respectively. This is what currently cuts down on variety in competitive games. To the degree that the bargains also happen to be rare, this is a problem from the POV of historicity. But not all bargains are rare. In fact "bargainness" and rarity are quite orthogonal. There are rare bargains, and common bargains, and rare ripoffs, and common ripoffs. Now consider what happens when you adjust prices of common and rare items. Again, assume that all prices were perfect to begin with. Then you can see that with knowledgeable players, in any price-adjustments system whichever prices are adjusted upward become ripoffs, and any adjusted downward, bargains. In the rarity-by-price system, no rare item should be chosen by a player playing to win. Common items all become bargains, and rare ones, all are overpriced. Therefore you will see a sort of historicity overshoot. It used to be that you never saw PzIVs; they were common but not bargains. Now you will only see them. Of course, seeing only PzIVs is not as bad from the POV of historicity as seeing only Hetzers. So rarity-via-price is still an improvement. But it is still not as good as seeing a variety of things. The second main problem, I would argue, with rarity-via-price is that you will cripple newbies in competitive play. Before, even if they didn't know much they could still pick a competitive force, since anything they picked was reasonably priced. Now it is quite possible for them to pick rare stuff, meaning overpriced stuff, thinking that the price warrants the purchase. So they lose the game versus any player who knows what is common and what is not, and pick accordingly. Now, this second problem might be addressed by making the "base" price and the rarity-altered price both visible to the player. But the first problem is inherent in the idea of rarity-via-price. Allow me propose an alternative system, which would work better. Call it rarity-via-availability. In RVA, prices are not changed; they reflect only in-game usefulness as they currently do. Instead, you are only allowed to buy a finite amount of any given unit. That amount is determined by its rarity factor, and the amount of points allocated to that category in the particular battle. You will only be allowed to spend a certain amount of points on each kind of item; and if that amount of points is less than the cost of the item, you cannot buy it. If the amount of points is only sufficient to buy one of that kind of item, you can only buy one. Let's say it is a 1000 point battle, and you are allocated 250 points in tanks. PzIVs are common; their "divider" for amount allowed to spend is 1.0. That would mean there would be two PzIVs available to you. Hetzers, though, are relatively rare. Perhaps their divider is 4.0, meaning you can only spend 1/4 of the category points on them, meaning, 62 points -- so no Hetzer is available; the cost is still 83 points, but you cannot buy any. Thus far, the results are much like those of rarity-via-price. Now look what happens when the players do a similar battle, but 2000 points. In rarity-by-price, the smart player still buys all PzIVs. Because the Hetzers each cost 166 points (if 2x cost, say); they are not a bargain. In rarity-by-availability, there is ONE Hetzer available, and the smart player will take it (since they are, in fact, bargains at 83 points). Then he fills his force with PzIVs. So, variety is preserved, as is rarity. And note that newbies cannot be shafted by being misled by prices. I can think of several refinements of the system, that would make it work even better. Here's one: rarity for all items of a type should increase with the purchase of any item of the same type. This would prevent the problem that would otherwise occur, of a player getting a non-historical force via picking lots of individual rare items. Another good refinement would be to make some items not available at all, again based on rarity. So even in a 5000 point battle there just may be no Hetzers to be had, and that is that.

Hear hear. It would be nice if they programmed it so that the more flags were in contention (neutral due to forces from both sides in range), the less likely it would be that the game end.