Wreck

Sure. But the point is not that a vehicle can't bog w/ one set of wheels on a road -- it's that bogging when half on a road should be much less likely than when having both sets of wheels offroad.

You can area fire into buildings regardless of windows. And they cannot area fire back out -- because they can't see out.

Does anyone know what height is used for this check? I have seen this problem even without waypoints. I was moving a heavy machinegun across a wheatfield to fire on some buildings. While moving, I checked LOS -- it existed. So, not wanting to be any closer than necessary (in case the Germans were there), I stopped and deployed the unit, planning my area fire next turn. Except -- no LOS. My guess is that when moving, the unit's LOS was being checked from eye level -- 5-6 feet or so. Above the wheat. Once they stopped, eye level was kneeling -- 3 feet. Then the wheat blocked. I am not sure what can be done about this. I do think that perhaps adding another color code or two to the target line might help, and/or texts similar to the "hull down" ones we already get. For a tank, they might add a text "AA MG only", say. This would be displayed with the normal grey line. For infantry, there should be no blue line based on being standing, only on kneeling, unless the unit can fire standing. But certainly not for a heavy MG. A grey line, at most, for standing-only LOS (except mortars). Also: I've added LOS at the wiki. http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/Line_of_sight

Second that. Since they already have the ability to record one-minute scripts and replay them, it does not appear to be a huge extension to the engine. Basically put N scripts into one large file, then create a UI that allows you to select script 1..N for replay. (It would be slicker to have the scripts be automatically assembled into one large script, but that would mean more work.)

Some of your questions are addressed at the wiki: http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/Forward_Observer particularly the one about having to maintain view of the target. (You don't for much of the artillery cycle.) Your problem is that at short range in CMBN, infantry are spottable -- even in cover. So, either keep your FO at longer range (not always possible), or put enough other infantry on the same hedgerow so that the enemy cannot concentrate on your FO. (That's against AI. A human will target your FO if he sees it, because he knows what it implies. So try to avoid that.)

I've never seen them throw demos on infantry. I think I have had them close enough to notice it, but not certain. (I am sure I never put my precious move-through-stupidly-dense-utterly-impassable-channels-of-death engineers near enough to enemy tanks to see how they might interact.) When a normal infantry unit "assaults" a tank it looks like they are throwing grenades, but it does not use up grenades. Could it be something similar? Are you certain that the engineer unit actually used a demo charge on the tank? Was there a big boom? Was the attack effective?

Well it is a good idea. As it is I don't really see the point of Elite -- you can still get the info, you just have to click on every unit you see to see what it is. If you are into pointless busy-work clicking, then Iron is better.

Gentlemen: I have been looking on the forum for good screenshots, articles about how things work (particularly those documenting actual tests of the game engine), etc. I already stole a screenie that sonic made -- I have a PM out to him asking for permission. But this is very slow -- I cannot read the whole forum in any case, and then the additional time to get permissions might be very long for inactive users, but I can't really tell who is who. So I figured I would ask y'all for some help. Here's what I want: good articles from this forum. If it is research, I don't need permission since I would want to distill anyway. I just need to know about it. So tell me about anything you know about, whether you wrote it or not. If it is a tactics how-to, a screenshot, or other large chunk of info that is best used whole, and YOU wrote it and are willing for it to be placed into the "creative commons" (see http://community.wikia.com/wiki/Community_Central:Licensing ), then I might want it. So, if you wrote such an article and want to bring it to my attention, please let me know. If you are arrogant enough to know it is good, post the link in this thread. Others might appreciate that, especially those of us who have not been reading this forum since CMBN was released. If you are the modest sort, PM me with the link. But please don't PM me unless you want to give permission to use it. If you PM me about an article you wrote, I am going to assume permission to use even if you don't say so. (I will happily remove anything if this gets misunderstood, but I don't want to have to do PM back-and-forths just to say "you didn't make it explicit -- may I please".) Oh, and if you know of any off-site material that ought to be in the wiki, I'm also interested in that.

The thought of assigning pause orders in realtime mode gives me pause. I mean, unless the game was paused.

Steve's comment is here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?p=1257318&highlight=crew#post1257318 Evidently guns are infantry teams which "carry" an exotic heavy weapon, whereas vehicles are objects separate from crews. So to change it would require work -- making a gun its own object. Oh, and I see Steve mentioning the no-swap crews thing, although apparently it does not apply to vehicles that an untrained driver can drive -- trucks, jeeps, halftracks. I do not think that tank crews should be interchangeable. I just thought that maybe they were -- it seems like a logical consequence of dismount and remount.

Well, given that they managed to do it with vehicles, it seems like it should not be such a stretch. Vaguely related: I recently discovered that a crew can only re-man its own vehicle. I had two panthers, one of which had taken two crew casualties from infantry fire, another which had all its crew but had taken gun damage from 75mm bounces. I thought I'd just have them swap vehicles -- wrong.

Vehicles tend to be noticed (as a contact) in circumstances where you would not get anything for infantry. So, if you see a ? show up off on a flank distant from any unit, or behind a hedgerow at moderate range, it's probably a vehicle. Another thing you will see is a ? that is moving. Probably infantry can do this (not sure), if they are close behind a vision block. But usually only a vehicle will.

There has been a wikia wiki for CM for some time, however it has not taken off. Wikis need informational bootstrapping. My goal is to do that! Last week I asked BF (via Moon) to give us players the permission to re-license the content from the CMBN manual into CC-BY-SA, so that it could be used at the wiki. BF said yes! (All together now: thank you BF!) With the manual to borrow from, I now have the wiki at a sort of barebones level of content where it seems usable -- the most obvious concepts are there. The front page is here: http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/Combat_Mission_Wiki (Yes, I am aware that the front page is ugly. Currently I am trying to get permission to edit it from the wikia people; then I'll make it pretty.) What is not there? Well, pretty pictures, for one thing. Many whole topics are absent: unit stats, formation stats, strategy, any discussion whatsoever of the Map Editor, full documentation of the UI. The list is nearly endless. So, there's plenty to do if you are interested in helping. I read this forum and lately I have been stealing some of the best tidbits of info for addition to the wiki. I'll probably continue doing that. (For one example, I've linked up Lt. Bull's work on bogging into a new page on bogging: http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/Bogging .) I will also entertain requests for pages wanted. I'll write up just about anything that is related to CMBN. You got any requests? What would be most useful to you in a CMBN reference?

Lt. Bull, great work. I think the best way to proceed would be to run the same sort of test for all terrain types, or at least a good sampling, using the same tank in each one. (Since you've started w/ ShermanM4A1 (mids) regular crew -- that.) Then we can at least determine relative rate of bogging for that one tank. It is likely that the relative rates are the same for other tanks. I.e., from the above we see that the rates of bogging in mud are roughly 450x as high as grassxt. This is only true for sure of the Shermans, but it is probably true for all tracked vehicles or even all vehicles.

I don't feel it should be an option. The TacAI should make the cost/benefit calculation for the troops: if they are shooting at close and/or fully exposed troops, and the fire they are taking is light, you probably want them "up" (and it also in their self-interest if the enemy is close), so at least more experienced troops should stay up. Conversely if they are just area firing, they should probably hide. There is complexity here, but not great complexity. I am sure any TacAI behavior will sometimes be "wrong"; but I don't feel that is problem unless the troops act in some way that is unnatural. Otherwise it is just colorful antics of pixeltruppen: "I ordered them to advance across the field, but then mortar fire hit and they all dove for cover but this one crazy guy..." What bothers me is what it currently does which is wrong, for example, continuing to stay "up" in a field as mortars hit all around. Every infantryman knew the sound of a shell incoming and they quickly learn to hit the dirt, regardless of what mission they are trying to do.

Hear, hear. And really, it is at a level now where it seems like it shouldn't be too much work to improve in modest ways. In particular it seems like it should be easy enough to pre-compute directional choke points for any map, perhaps just for assuming north/south or east-west travel. (This should be done for vehicles and infantry separately.) Then use these, along with cover/concealment and LOS, to compute "goodness" values for all positions on a map. The AI should then prefer "good" positions in its expected attack direction while avoiding "bad" ones. This ought to improve setup, at least, for defenses. Well let's not be hasty. The TacAI is much closer to where it ought to be; I'll agree with that. I think mainly this is a function of not needing to be particularly good, though. Certainly the TacAI has nothing like the problems of the StratAI. It would be nice for pixeltruppen to be smarter when moving around. For example, units should cancel move orders and seek immediately nearby cover or concealment if they take close range fire. This should be a function of their experience level, and not suppression. Non-hiding troops who are in any form of cover that would improve if they hide (trenches, foxholes, not sure about buildings) should automatically hide if they come under artillery or mortar fire. And they should also automatically unhide themselves when the artillery ends. Similarly, troops should auto-hide if they come under fire of any kind which they cannot "effectively" return -- i.e. tank, infantry from outside their covered arc, HMG fire from a distance, etc. ("Effective" would have to be fudged, but this should not be difficult with firepower numbers ala CMBO in hand.) As things are, the player needs to micromanage this, which is a PITA plus being unrealistic. Experienced troops in particular did not need to be told to duck. Indeed, it seems reasonable to me to have troops duck even before being shot at by a seen tank, at least if moderately close. As soon as the turret points in your direction, you should not need orders to know to get down. One other super-easy tweak for the TacAI would be for tank commanders to unhide themselves when they feel it is safe. In fact as of 1.01, it appears TCs are really hard to shoot before they button up, making it a good idea to unhide them every turn even when infantry are 100m away. (The infantry will thus shoot at the TC, revealing themselves, and the tank then can target them without wasting shells as it would if you just area fired.) So unbuttoning your tanks is kind of a no-brainer. But even if the level of TC safety were scaled back to more CMBO levels, it would still be a good idea for the AI to unbutton its tanks when they were reasonably safe.

Lots of the German halftracks have a similar thing: a MG but only a driver. Do you know if a radioless team in a track that has a radio is considered to be in C2 via the track?

I had played Buying the Farm before but only on the Allied side -- where I won (of course), and strangely don't even recall the minefields except on the road, or the wire. But of course, unlike the AI, I make it a point not to advance across open ground against an occupied hedgerow. I played it as Germans yesterday, and I think I understand why you think the AI is good -- it acts particularly sanely in this scenario. It is programmed to shell the obvious location for the AT gun; it is programmed to shell other locations that the German is (a) constrained to be, and/or good terrain. So, the AI ended up killing my AT gun without it firing; I had rearranged the defenses to be more sensible, but still had problems with the Stuarts. The AI seemed to handle them fairly smartly, but I have the feeling that, also was staged. I.e.: sit in the rear a few turns. On about turn 5, move up to LOS with defense then sit there and fire for a while w/o moving. After about turn 20, attempt to force through. My mortar was quite effective in crushing the main push on the left, and on the right, the AI's infantry had no hope advancing across the aforementioned open field plus wire against my defenses. One of the two Stuarts there hit a mine and immobilized; the other was killed by my panzershreck team as it attempted to drive past the hedgerow on its own. On the left the tanks caused more problems, but still the infantry lost the fight so I had a few guys left to faust the one tank that tried to drive past. The other just sat back and never got close enough, although it also kept hurting me to the end. I ended up getting a tactical victory after 5 minutes of overtime. My force was shot up pretty bad. You don't need all that. Just try it again, moving around the setup locations of the key units so that they are not in the initial artillery zone, or they are in a trench. (Foxholes are OK for turn 1, but move to a trench before trying to fight.) And then make sure they hide when artillery is hitting nearby -- hide everyone in a hole or trench on turn one until you know where the enemy hits. It's very effective. Even small AT guns take several minutes to get packed up to move. (According to the manual, the 50mm PaK takes 3.2 minutes to pack up, 1.6 minutes to deploy.) It does work: I am moving the gun in a second go at it. I have the feeling the moves are canned, at least on this map. The tanks have tried the same thing both times.

What battle are you talking about? I should like to try it. I've certainly not noted the AI doing anything clever on offense. On defense it seems to simply sit where it is placed and fight to the death. It won't move at all so far as I have seen. And this is usually fine -- it allows the scenario designed to create whatever sort of staging he wants. On offense, though, the AI sucks. It seems to have no notion of "too dangerous", so it will cheerfully push its pixeltruppen into open-ground death zones. Also it doesn't appear to do combined arms, so its armor tends to drive ahead of the infantry, wreaking some havoc but also allowing me to get at it with fausts or zooks.

On recon, recon with scout teams (2 men, or 1 once one gets it). Never recon with more than a four man Assault team. Against the AI, some tricks work that may or may not work with people. For example, each time you get to a new covered position (i.e. hedgerow) that the enemy may be able to see, take a turn to fire at the next hedgerow or some other position which might be good. The AI, lacking fire discipline, will often reveal itself if you do. Since your team is in cover, they usually won't take any losses. (A good human sets covered arcs to avoid plinking away at covered enemies.) Achieving fire superiority once you have located the enemy is a matter of bringing up more units than they have, particularly your BARs, and letting them have it. The AI doesn't seem to move its troops much, so once you know where they were you can use area fire into the location to suppress them and even get hits. Against a person, you should expect them to crawl away (even if just a square), and remain hidden, so area fire at ?s is less effective. You'll know when you have suppressed the enemy because he will stop firing back and turn into a ? marker. (If the enemy has no cover/concealment, you can just look at them to see their status, but this is rare if you are attacking.) Once you've got them down, it is time to start the scouts moving again: you are looking for routes to get your assault teams into position to finish off the suppressed enemies you have located. Against the AI you can do this sort of thing piecemeal to each individual unit or small group as you find them. The others won't move to help. A human is not so easy.

I proposed to keep the button, which would allow you to not deploy on a stop -- just that when you set a new waypoint, by default you get a deploy. You can click to undo the default. The point here is just what is the default you'd like: to have to click every time you want to deploy, or to have to click every time you don't want to deploy. Surely you deploy 51% of the time or more? Then reversing the default saves you clicking.

I want them to auto-deploy at the end of any move order, or when I cancel an existing move. The game could retain the ability to not deploy, by clicking the button from down to up. I don't think I'd use it much, though. Also, any deployable weapon should autodeploy whenever it is idle, if it is not deployed.

Sounds like a minor misfeature in the engine. I mean, even if he cannot see an enemy tank any more, it's not a like a commander who just saw instant death in front of him is going to forget about it.

Michael, there are certainly tradeoffs, and you're right that adding anything like that does increase the management. Whether it be all-too-micro management... well, so far my take on the "feel" of CMBN is that it is naturally smaller scale than CMBO. This happens naturally in a game which simulates every man and every weapon in a squad. So the suggested change is in the spirit of a smaller game. On the other hand, unless the tacAI was improved, any such change like this increases the advantage of the player over the AI, and of experienced players over newbies. One thing that might help split the difference would be for the game to automatically assign secondary covered arcs in a sensible way. I.e., all small-arms get a short range 360 degree CA.

Here is a feature I would like to have in CMBN: a secondary covered arc. The idea should be fairly obvious by the label, but the idea is to give the player better control of a number of different types of units, each of which has the property that it has multiple types of weaponry, that need to be employed in different ways. The UI implementation would just be a button in the combat orders, perhaps labeled "Arc(2)". Each unit would have one more covered arc. Also, I think it would be nice to color-code two kinds of covered arcs: one color for covered arcs controlling weapons with AT capacity, some other color for covered arcs controlling only anti-infantry weapons. (This would be a helpful change independent of the rest of this post.) The semantics would be as follows: every unit could have a particular kind of weapon deemed its primary weapon, and then other weapons. The primary covered arc controls only the primary weapon and the orientation of the man controlling it, or for vehicles, the vehicle's orientation. Other weapons obey the secondary arc. Many units (i.e. normal infantry squad w/o LAWs) would only have a primary weapon: in their case, small arms. In their case, the secondary arc item would grey out and not be usable. Many units have 2 attack types: unit primary secondary ---------------------------------- armor main gun MGs AT teams LAW small arms infantry+LAW small arms LAW sniper teams sniper small arms mortar teams mortar small arms Note the mildly confusing aspect of the reverse in infantry/AT team semantics. I have thought about it and I think what I suggest is better, but I might be wrong.