Crash Deaton

I already had the .NET Framework 2.0 installed. I thought that would be alright, but I'm getting a error message, flickering graphics and a CTD when I say OK to the error message. This happens as soon as I get past the first splash screen. Do I need to back date to version 1.1?

I'll play just about any wargame since I already own an embarrasing number of them, but current favorites are Uncommon Valor and Galactic Civilizations. Medieval: Total War is absolutely fantastic and I can't wait for Rome: Total War. Most anticipated tital for me right now is probably the new Grigsby Pacific Supergame. I like flight sims IF they have a "fan" on the front of them instead of the back end and I'm really looking forward to the Full Canvas Jacket Superpatch for Red Baron 3D so I can take to the skies over 1914 Europe once again. The only shooters I've ever <U>really</U> enjoyed were the Medal of Honor ones and GTA3 (I'm almost ashamed to admit. Nah. No I'm not.) I have yet to buy any sort of PS2, XBox, etc. But I'll buy whatever machine it takes to run the first really good boxing game that comes out - especially if it has a career mode in it. Hell, that might even get me into online play!

Lots of good discussion on this! While I think the simple solution of adding some more turns whenever a flag changes hands late-game would work as a fix to the current problem, I'd still far prefer something that really created a way to design a wide variety of situations and drive a lot of different behaviors in the players through thoughtful use of victory flags with objectives that can vary in value on different turns for both sides. The problem under discussion right now of overscoring the defense for objectives they have at the start could be solved (and a lot of additional flexibility would be added as well) if a seperate Objective Value table was set up for each side with definable vales for each turn. With that, you could score the Defender zero points on the turns that the attacker should be advancing to contact and only award them for hanging on during turns when the assault should be taking place. It would take more thoughtful work on the part of scenario designers and more playtesting, to be sure, but it would add a TON of flexibility to the game. Scenario designers could incent or discourage an agressive commander with higher or lower than normal points for taking an objective early in a scenario if they wanted to. If we could assign negative points for getting there too early you could do some really interesting things with that like run Special Ops and give the order that they are absolutely NOT to step on the objective before turn X lest they blow an ambush or whatever and then if they DO get there early, slap them with some negative victory points. Anyway, I run on (as usual), but if we want the most flexibility, I think this is a relatively clean way to go and as I said before, you could still convert all existing scenarios to use their current values on the last turn only without having to recreate all of them.

I agree wholeheartedly. Although I'd still like to see something that has even more flexibility, that would be an outstanding quick fix for the slightly premature endings we tend to see right now. Good thinking Hat Trick!

That rather depends on who has artillery!

It's not really about any one battle type, per se, Eric. It's more about the fundamental design premise that makes the very last turn the only turn that really means anything as far as victory objectives are concerned. The problem presents itself in a variety of ways depending more, I believe, on the combination of battle types and terrain fought over, than on any other factors. As I'm sure everyone here knows or has come to realize, every battle, real or virtual, has it's 'moment of truth'. It's that pivotal moment when the battle is at risk and either side could win or lose. Unless you just lost your lone King Tiger to a bog result in a patch of light woods (or something equally maddening), that moment is most often going to happen as somebody is making a move on an objective(s). I take no issue with that. In fact, that is probably as it should be in most cases. Ultimately, the whole battle really is a bit of a "flag rush" and at some point that rush is going to happen in every battle. Again, that is as it should be. The flag rush may or may not result in a victory. I've certainly Drawn about as many of those situations as I've either won by doing it or lost by having it done to me. It's just a gambit like any other. You are absolutely correct on that point as well. <U>BUT</U>, it's the same gambit in almost every battle. And <U>that</U> is the rub. Leaving casualties aside, the only moment in time that CAN mean anything for victory purposes in CM right now is the last turn of the game and our "Moments of Truth" almost always comes in the last 3-5 turns of the game when in real combat, there is usually a LOT of fighting left to do after the enemy decides it's time to make their move on the objective. So, unless we play operations where units are fixed in place at the end of each battle, the flag rush never really sees the kind of enemy reaction you would see in real life to the move on the objective. It's an unrealistic "free pass" for both sides because neither side has enough time left in the game to see the true results of their actions. So, I guess the point is (at least for me) that over time, and a number of battles, there is a nagging sense of deja vu to almost every battle we fight because they really do tend to end very similarly more often than not. I'd like to see that addressed. [ June 26, 2003, 02:01 PM: Message edited by: Crash Deaton ]

While that would work for lots of battles, I'm afraid that would just change our problem from what it is today to a slightly different problem where we'd have an unreal level of focus on making sure we held onto everything for as long as possible - in every game. It's the darn in every game part that is the rub. While, strategically speaking, we want to hold things as long as possible because that's how you win a war. Tactically speaking, it makes you rather predictable and that will lead us right back to a problem much like the one we already have. Almost every battle will be at least a bit "different" in some regards from all other battles and we need a system that can give us that flexibility. Certainly there would be lots of wartime situations where "hang on for as long as you can" is the order of the day. In fact, that is very likely one of the most common orders, but there are lots of other types of missions as well that we couldn't model in that way. Sometimes, it's only worth being there on turn X (A la my assasination scenario example) and we really need to be able to simulate that fact as well. I've been thinking about this a bit (could you tell?) and I think it's really about having the "Fog of War" that we always talk about apply to the victory conditions - just a bit. Not that I'm suggesting a game where we never could tell if we are winning or losing (that would suck BAD!), but it shouldn't be quite so apparent. It is that clarity about what the enemy objectives are that leads to such unrealistic play where one side can decide to either coast to victory having already secured a sufficient lead or they can do the CM equvalent of football's "two minute drill" and snatch the objectives with the end game "Bum Rush". While either tactic might be perfectly reasonable in a given real-life situation, it certainly shouldn't be a valid option for every single battle. If our victory conditions <U>could</u> be done in such a way that coasting (or bum-rushing) to victory is not a sure-fire formula for success every time, we will introduce some more realistic variability into our games and squash the current problem. The player that uses the same tactic every time should now lose a few because, while they were kicking back and taking a smoke break in the midst of a firefight, the rest of the war kept moving and <U>those</u> events might change the value of their accomplishments so far resulting in less success on the battlefield because a commander wasn't aggressive enough. It certainly wouldn't be the first time THAT ever happened in a war. C'est la guerre! Cheers! OH MY GOD MY SPELLING SUCKS TODAY!! EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. [ June 26, 2003, 12:09 PM: Message edited by: Crash Deaton ]

Not at all Tom, I agree completely. I guess the real point of this whole thing is that the lack of a time or value variable for objectives really forces us, in some ways at least, to have to fight the same battle over and over. (At least it will have the same tempo almost every time.) Clearly, that's not taking full advantage of this great game. That's really all I'[m driving at with any of this. Cheers to all!

BINGO! You just described almost every PBEM Club game I've played over the last 6 months. To be clear here, I really don't fault my opponents for what some refer to as "gamey" tactics. It's just a function of the 2.5 dimensional objectives in these games. (The following is not meant as a slam against the game or anyone. Hell, I like this game a lot better than I did my first wife! Please give me a shot at explaining myself before you get ticked at me ) With few exceptions, EVERY military objective exists as: 1) A Place (that might move around a bit if the objective is potentially mobile) 2) A Time (which might be a single fixed point in time, a series of single-event times, or variable period with variable starting and/or ending time) 3) Degree of importance (which can also vary because of a host other factors including changes in Times and Places brought about for any reason whatever) Finally, remember that "No plan ever survives contact with the enemy" and tuck away the fact that all of the above is subject to change, on-the-fly, with (or without) notice, and you have the basic ingredients for a Military Objective. so... We already have control over the Place as long as we are happy with fixed point objectives. I'd love to see individual units be able to be assigned an additional objective point value so you could do a "Kill or Capture Hitler (or the HQ Unit, etc.)" scenario or something along those lines - but I digress a bit from my main point As it exists right now, we can really only control the Time element of an objective in one way. We set the scenario length and decide if it is variable or not. That's it. It's a car with an ignition key, but no brakes or gas pedal - but you do get to decide if you want to measure the gas in the tank or just "eyeball" it. Either way, it's "Just drive 'til she quits, pal. And, by the way, the Highway Patrol knows exactly where you are going, when you have to be there, and they're waiting for you. Have a fun trip!" Without regard to what decisions we make on the game length, the only Time that <U>really</u> ever matters in CM games, is the very last turn. And for us "serious" players that play enough to learn such nuance in a game, it can tend to give us something more akin to "Stepping on a Landmine" than a "Combat Mission". If the mission is to get someone/thing/unit to be somewhere on turn 20 so they can cap Adolph's motorcade as he drives by there and put an early end to the war, you're going to have to make it a twenty turn game without a variable end time because that road junction isn't really worth squat before turn 19 ends or after turn 21 starts. I could certainly be "creative" with scenario design and do that, but the real action in any assasination scenario would be much more apt to happen on turn 21 AFTER the first shot was fired. Alas, we won't get to see that because our game just ended. Degree of Importance is the last element to an objective and that is also a fixed value right now. Much of the time that is probably fine given the time scale of most CM games. That said, in wartime there are certainly lots of situations where the longer you don't hold an objective the worse a situation might become. Since CMBO pretty much defined playable tactical anyway (after they went and over-complicated good ol' Squad Leader with the ASL Library of Congress)I'm guessing that most of us grew up playing more operational and strategic type wargames where we were trained to think of an objective as a big place you go capture and hang on to while you are marching for Moscow, Berlin, Paris or Rome. I know BFC tests the hell out of things to make sure they're great, but I think the collective "we" took our eyes off the tactical ball just a bit and let an a operational way of thinking about victory survive the translation into a tactical game. I hate to say it, because I really don't like much about the 1st-person tactical shooters, but the Clancy stuff that I've seen does a much better job of simulating the intricate timed "Ballet of Combat" than does CMBB, just on a smaller scale. It's a easy mistake to make that a lot of young platoon commanders make in real life because we're programmed almost from birth that you have to hold onto things after you get them. In the tactical world, things are cut with sharp knife and possession of the turf at a given point in time is usually what matters most. IMO, we need more control over our objective's timing and values to really be able to realize the full potential of this game for simulating real-life combat missions. I know serious changes require serious money and the current game is pretty damn close to perfect already (and would be if everyone played it as if their life was really on the line). So I'd really like to find a solution that is workable AND viable. The simplest and most flexible solution I can think of would only require that each objective have a seperate table for each side with turn-by-turn values for that objective. It seems to me like a simple way to facilitate modeling almost any set of circumstances we might want to create and it offers the added benefit that existing scenarios objectives could default to the same single value they are currently assigned on every turn and the added functionality could be added to future scenarios (and I'm sure that the MOD community would do something about the current "stock" scenarios pretty fast once the ability was there). OK, I'll shut up now. [ June 25, 2003, 09:17 PM: Message edited by: Crash Deaton ]

I love both CMBO and CMBB but I have one complaint that I'd really like to see addressed in a patch or at least a future version. The complaint revolves around the fact that the way the game is currently set up there is often very little/no incentive for a player to move on an objective until the last few turns in a game. Certainly, terrain can impact such tactics to various degrees in different batles, but for the most part I've spent way too much time playing games where I fight for and hold objectives for 25-35 turns only to have my opponent rush the objective on the last couple of turns with everything he has so he can be sure I'm pushed off it just long enough to get the points. It's a lot like Muhammed Ali's "Rope-a-Dope" boxing style. Let the other guy win every round while "punching himself out" and then move in for the kill in the last couple of rounds. A great tactic in Boxing and a realistic strategic approach for a war (especially Russia), but not very realistic at the tactical level. I've had some military experience as a grunt and as an "air winger" and I can tell you, unless you are a SEAL, Recon Marine or SF guy of some sort, your mission is almost always to take and hold something - and usually you need to get there by a certain time. You know, they're actually downright particular about that sort of thing in wartime - just not in CMBO/B. I can almost here the orders now - "Sure, Captain. Show up any time you like. Just make sure you're there when the curtain goes down!" RIGHT!! Here's what I propose: 1) "What time is it? My watch took some shrapnel" - Keep variable game end times (it was a good first step to solving this) but ADD an optional possibility for a scenario to end early if the objectives are <U>not</u> being actively contested - a sort of reverse twist on the current approach for dragging a scenario out. 2) "Where the heck are we -exactly?" - Keep the "Mystery Objective" feature 3) "We needed that objective 15 minutes ago Lt. Go see if you can reanimate those guys you just got killed." - Add definable start and end periods for when an objective is actually "active" and worth victory points and make it where these conditions can either be known or unknown to the other side (That'll stop those last turn rushes cold - -HAHAHAHAHA) 4) "Get the enemy off that hill before their big guns get set up. Their artillery spotters are murdering us." - Add a feature that allows the value of a victory location to be defined on a per turn, or a turn-by-turn basis. By this I mean you could either say it's worth a flat X points per turn between turns X and Y, or you could define a unique value for each objective, for each side and for each turn number. 5) "Get that hill so we can spot for artillery fires that are due to happen at X o'clock." - Add a "You must hold the objective by turn X" feature that could be set by the scenario designer. 6) "Make sure there's no bad guys over there and then go take that hill and wait for relief" - Add a "Hold the objective for a minimum of X turns" feature. This would allow you to simulate an objective that just needs to be passed through to make sure there is no enemy there vs. one that you really need to tae up residence on. I'd certainly welcome any other ideas (besides the obvious answer of picking a new opponent) that anyone has for using the existing system to avoid this sort of P.I.T.A. gameplay until we have a reasonable fix for it. This is a wargame, not foreplay, and I'm really getting sick of spending 35 turns watching opponents "hang back" and 5 minutes on the real battle. Actually, it's a perfect analogy for the women's joke about men that say, "Was it good for you?" after they've only had a couple of minutes of serious fun. The answer is a resounding 'NO'. (Not that the game itself isn't a blast). [ June 25, 2003, 06:33 PM: Message edited by: Crash Deaton ]

Thank you, Marcus.

Picked off a Panther the other day with a Brit A/C. It was great for about 5 seconds until the second one blew him to the moon!

I've recently done a little mod to change the unit portraits to pictures of actual participants from the Western Front, but after loading a ton of scenarios I still can't figure out what type of units bmps 1116, 1119, 1122 and 1123 map over to. Can anyone help me out? :confused: