Vanir Ausf B

I keep clicking on that hot chick in Michael's post but nothing happens. Please fix or do somefink.

Ace, I was involved in some of those earlier discussions so I am familiar with the proposed solutions. I do not consider any of them feasable without turning CM into a command level game. Team play will reduce the effect but will not eliminate it. Every unit would have to be controled by a different player to do that. For the time being, I maintain that the best thing to do is not worry about it since there is nothing we can do to change it.

A small niggle: this is not taking advantage of Borg spotting. This is taking advantage of the "god's eye" view of the player, i.e. the fact that since there is one person controlling all the units on one side, he knows everything all his units know and can act on that knowledge. This may seem like a minor distinction, but they are actually two entirely seperate issues. Borg spotting (technically called absolute spotting) will be eliminated in the next CM by relative spotting, but there is no feasable way to "fix" the god's eye issue, nor is there any way to avoid taking advantage of it. [ November 06, 2002, 05:40 AM: Message edited by: Vanir Ausf B ]

He doesn't know he's dead.

Good point about TacOps SOPs, Michael. I've been wanting a similar system for CM for a long time. I think Steve said they were going to do something like that for the rewrite. One other "bug" or inconsistency that hasn't been mentioned here is that the rarity values for infantry are not displayed anywhere in the game, even in the editor. I think this is a must-fix.

Neutral steering is not modeled at all in CM. It would be nice if vehicles that could do it would get a bonus on their rotate speed.

CMBB manual pg 66: Small smoke shells or small burning vehicles (e.g. Kubelwagon) degrade, but do not always block, LOS through them. The only oddity I see is that a Sherman would not be considered a "small" vehicle, I would think. Does wind have any effect on this or do burning vehicles never block LOS anymore?

This echos a similar comment I made last week. Covered arcs are great, but there are some things the old ambush command was better at. I wish we had both. Unfortunately I have a feeling this won't happen until the next game. [ November 05, 2002, 07:28 AM: Message edited by: Vanir Ausf B ]

Hardly. This has been brought up periodically ever since CMBO was released, most recently a few weeks ago. The ability to assign HQs to independent units has been a much asked for feature. This would be nice. The problem is that there are times when you really do want to area fire so there needs to be a means of letting the game know that you would prefer to directly target a unit under the area fire marker if it becomes visible during the turn. There is currently no way to do this. Something to think about for the rewrite, perhaps.

Not exactly. It is true that units had to have LOS to the marker to target it initially, but after targeting it they could later move out of LOS and still retain their targeting of the marker.

I have seen all of these as well. I'm not sure if this is a bug, or just a quirk of the engine, because the ambush command in CMBO worked the same way. Yep. I had this happen twice in one game. I had 2 jeeps sitting next to each other behind some tall pines. They had no LOS to any enemy units and were basically well behind the front lines. On 2 seperate occasions they gave themselves fast move orders out from behind the trees and towards the enemy lines.

I have noticed on a few occasions units in CMBB that have stopped firing at the enemy for no apparent reason, even while identical units next to them are blazing away. I've seen others comment on this. I suspect it is a bug. The best thing to do is to save the file and send it to Madmatt with a detailed descripion of what to look for. Better yet, if playing against the AI save every turn just before you hit the GO button so you can see if it is happening consistently and is reproducable.

No sticky camera tilt? I play QBs almost exclusively and the maps don't look much bigger than CMBO to me.

BFC have stated that the only reason half-squads are even in the game is for recon. That settles the issue right there as far as I'm concerned. Secondly, it isn't an exploit of borg spotting. It's an exploit of the fact that there is one person (the player) controling all the units and therefore knowing what all his units know. This would be the case even with relative spotting. The best thing to do is just play the game and don't worry about it. I generally use extra HQs or sharpshooters or ATR teams for recon instead of half-squads. Some people think (and have openly stated in the main forum) that any type of recon in CM is gamey. I disagree/don't care, but to each their own.

DX 9 and OpenGL 2.0 have essentially the same functionality. DX9 doesn't really do anything revolutionary compared to DX 8, it just does it better. I'm not sure if 128-bit color and the expanded pixel and vertex shaders would really make enough difference in CM to be worth it. Remember, CMBB is still just 16-bit color. DX 8 shaders could be used for things like water. By the time CM3 is out DX 8 compliant cards will be common enough to support it. I also recall Kwazydog mentioning bump-mapped tanks...

It's the angle. The camera views in CMBB are tilted higher up towards the horizon compared to CMBO. That means you can't see units close to your position as well. To see the same number of units in CMBB as you would in CMBO you have to back the camera away further from the units which makes the units look smaller. This can be solved by hitting Shift+z one or two times. This will lilt the view down to where it was in CMBO so you are looking at less sky and more ground. The problem is that this doesn't 'stick'. If you change to another view level and then back again you have to tilt it all over again. It's very annoying. I have been one of several people to request that lilt angle be made sticky in a patch. I don't know about HE being less powerful. I'd have to run some tests. As someone else pointed out the HE blast values have actually been increased over CMBO. But that doesn't necessarily mean they are more powerful, they may just be calculating differently.

AFAIK, and I could be wrong on this, shot traps are modeled simply as an increased chance of a weak point penetration. There is no "shot trap" message. Whether this increased chance of weak point penetration only occurs when the shot hits the turret front or anywhere on the tank I don't know, but I've always suspected it was anywhere on the tank. [ November 01, 2002, 05:32 AM: Message edited by: Vanir Ausf B ]

Armor penetration for Soviet guns increases over time due to better quality ammo and a switch to capped ammo in 1944.

Well it's also THE ONLY GAME I've bought in the last 5 or 6 years that doesn't allow you to set the resolution in-game. I guess that's my perennial #1 CM annoyance.

I dunno. Seems to me having the armor penetrated would cause even worse maintenance problems.

My question on this is that if 2 FH plates resist better than one, why did the Germans move to a single plate with the later StuGs and Pz IVs?

It does appear that the 2 plates are a factor. In June 1944, at 1000m an SU-85 is given a "fair" chance of killing a StuG IIIG with 80mm armor, but only a "rare" chance against a StuG IIIF with 50 + 30mm armor. Where it gets interesting is when you run the same test with a Sherman 76. The Sherman is given a "good" chance to kill both models of StuGs at 1000m, even though it is listed as using APCBC with "large HE charge" and it's penetration tables shows lower penetration figures than the SU-85.

According to a prior post by Kwazydog on this subject, the Move command is now the new sneak command. Sorta.

No, it's not. One thing I think should be pointed out. The source for the 30% figure is... me, based on a test I ran many many moons ago for CMBO. Which means do not take it as an exact figure, but a close approximation. BFC has never said what the exact hit distribution is for the CM engine except for the lower hull (which is exactly 12% BTW, unless it has chanced since CMBO). If I'd known it was a contest I could have written a lot more.

Steve has said previously that the universal turret size will not change until the engine rewrite. All is not woe for the Russians, however. In this thread a while back Rexford posted some stuff that suggests the late model IS-2 should have a slightly thicker upper hull, 110mm instead of the 105mm it has now. More importantly, in a later thread Rexford proposed some changes to the penetration figures of several German guns that would have a significant impact on their ability to penetrate some Soviet tanks frontally.