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Peter Svensson

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Everything posted by Peter Svensson

  1. Yes, but it's been a while since I contributed. Of course, I had to check out the reaction to the review!
  2. I used to play Combat Mission quite a bit, but haven't had time the last six months or so, in part of because of a greater load at work. I'm a business reporter for the Associated Press, and now I need some help with a trend story on older gamers. If you're born between 1946 and 1964, play computer games regularly, and are willing to talk about it, could you send me an e-mail? I'd like to talk about why you play, how your friends and family view it, etc.
  3. I played Dompaire as defensively as I could. I basically hid all my armor behind hills and depressions, and let the infantry act as spotters. Of particular use was the sunken area on the French right flank, in the middle of the board. I snuck a whole platoon of Shermans and an M10 in there without, I think, being spotted. From there they could dominate the right flank from hull down positions. My opponent party played into my strategy by being fairly aggressive. He advanced the Panthers pretty far up, so close that I could button them with my infantry and then nail them with M10s popping up from cover. Rather than orchestrating a massive outflanking like Holien describes, I picked the Panthers off one by one, by concentrating several M10s on each one. Final tally was eight Panthers destroyed and a ninth gun damaged, to four Shermans and two M10s lost. Luck was a major factor as well. I was very lucky to stop a particularly bold move on my left early in the game. I had two Shermans moving up to reinforce a Greyhound guarding the flank when a Puma snuck up and nailed my car. At the same time, a Panther came racing down the road along the left board edge, heading towards my rear. In a matter of seconds, the Panther, Puma and one of my Shermans was knocked out. The next turn, the engineer platoon in halftracks appeared right where the Panther would have been if it hadn't been stopped. I also had an exceptionally daring and lucky Sherman that played hide-and-seek with two Panthers in the center. It pretty much forced both Panthers to withdraw back to the village by constantly threatening to outflank them. This was after it took a Panther shell through its side armor with no ill effects. Only when I had about won the tank battle did I really advance. This was too late to dominate the VLs on the German side of the map, but at least I interdicted both of them.
  4. Well, it's mostly text, so I don't think it'll be too big. And part of the fun of reading AARs is comparing them to see what different people did in each scenario. As we've seen from the results posted, there has been a wide range of outcomes. Also, it's fun to post opposing AARs side by side on the same page, so you get a feel for what each player is thinking. That said, posting every AAR may be a bit much. I'm perfectly game for posting five of each scenario or so. I agree that we should have a heroes list! I've already nominated quite a few worthies in my AARs. It'll be hard to chose between the Panther that held off the whole American attacking force for half the game while immobilized, or the 75 Sherman that took a hit through the side, shrugged it off, then chased off two Panthers.
  5. I've volunteered to format the AARs for posting online. Maybe it's time to get that started, seeing as we have some completed scenarios and people want to read the AARs. I could provide the web space myself, but I think some of the established web sites would probably want them. Wild Bill, would you want them on the Boots & Tracks site? Otherwise I'll get in touch with some other webmaster.
  6. <blockquote>quote:</font><hr>Originally posted by Scipio: The axis forces are indeed in slightly higher terrain - but the SPW is out of the 80m zone - so this would mean, ONE single crew man 79m away and a few meters above can beat a Sherman??? If so, then I would already call it a bug! This is absolutly unrealistic and unlogic.<hr></blockquote> Aha! There's the elevation again. It really makes a huge difference, but only in some cases. In most cases, it makes no difference at all. I haven't figured out when it's important and when it isn't. And yes, I too think this is a bug.
  7. Regarding those extra tanks - units more than 80 m away from a VL have no effect on control. I've tested this quite a bit.
  8. I experienced a similar VL surprise in a tournament game, and tried to get to the bottom of it. My conclusion was that LOS was immaterial, but that in some cases, elevation was critical. If both sides have units within 80 m of the VL, the units that are higher in elevation than opposing forces sometimes count at about five times their value in determining control of the VL. See Previous thread on subject I'm not entirely sure that elevation is the hidden factor, because sometimes it clearly doesn't influence VL control, but it sure does explain the weird results I've seen. I'd also love to hear from BTS on this.
  9. I'm Swedish, and I'd like to take part, but I'm not sure I have the time. What's the deadline for applications? How about making it the Vodka Belt Championship, the stronger cousin of the Winecape tournaments?
  10. I just got a cable modem, so I'll be phasing out my dial-up ISP. Those of you who have been mailing me at petersve@speakeasy.org, please use psvensson@nyc.rr.com instead. Thank you!
  11. Aw, man, Stixx! I'm sorry to see you go, especially since our battle was going so well
  12. If you have abandoned the idea of having the game's computation of victory scores determine who is the winner, you may as well introduce some new victory conditions. For instance, it's quite common in CM scenarios to have a victory flag on some important road, which then becomes the focus of fighting. But dominating the road surface itself is quite useless if enemy units have LOS on the road and can interdict movement on it. So you can construct victory conditions like: "the German player gains ten points if he has unbroken units that can fire on any stretch of the road." This would simulate striving to comply with the Clear order above. You could even have recce-type scenarios, where one player gains points depending on the accuracy of his estimate of opposing strength, submitted just before the game ends. Or you could get points for assassinations of key units etc., etc. Many possibilities. Would be refreshing to fight over something other than VLs and casualty ratios for once.
  13. If you position a tank behind a hill and tell it to hunt towards the crest, it will stop when it spots an enemy tank. In most cases, that will make it hull down, since it spots from the turret. So you don't need to back up. You do need to take a close look at the terrain so that the tank doesn't hunt forward too far after the duel is resolved and exposes itself.
  14. My parents live in Shanghai, and while I haven't managed to turn them onto CM, I'll be visiting them sometime next year. I'll take you up on a beer and a LAN game!
  15. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Treeburst155: I would probably vote for full disclosure inspite of how it affects player tactics toward the end, just for that reason. However, modifying tactics based on various statistics isn't too realistic. Every battle should be played like it is the ONLY battle. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I agree it's not realistic to modify our tactics depending on what we know from sources outside the scenario. But sometimes you just can't help yourself. For example, yesterday I was going to do the setup for a PBEM with one of my regular opponents. Not thinking properly, I opened the scenario on the Allied side, only to remember a couple of minutes later that my opponent wanted to play Allies. Figuring I'd just forget what I had learned, which wasn't that important anyway, I re-opened the scenario to set up the Germans. But I just couldn't forget what I knew about the Allied set-up, and that knowledge spoiled the fun. So I had to go find another scenario. What I'm trying to say is: thick, damp, fog of war is one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game. And once it starts lifting, there's no way to bring that curtain down again.
  16. I reluctantly agree that we should have info black out. Now that the scoring system is in place, we can't really figure out our standings anyway until all the games are finished. So the only real result of posting game results as they happen would be to lift the fog war somewhat, as Wreck points out above. It's too bad, because I would have liked to see the horse-race as it happens... [ 10-01-2001: Message edited by: Peter Svensson ]
  17. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nabla: Hello Peter! I'm not sure what you mean by transparency. I could devise another function for the purpose (if not else then by approximating the one we've made), a polynomial or something else more familiar. However, I don't think that would make much of a difference in providing intuition about the function itself since it would probably not be any clearer. But is this what you were talking about? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> 'Tis. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Nabla: I think the best way to provide an intuitive feeling about the score functions is to plot them as we've done above. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> You're right - the graph is probably sufficient to make the formula graspable. Even if we can't use the formula program, we can approximate our scores using the graph, and that should be enough to make people comfortable with the system. [ 09-28-2001: Message edited by: Peter Svensson ]
  18. I can't follow the details of Nabla's latest proposals, but what I like about it, compared to the "golf-style" system proposed by Treeburst earlier, is that it's continous - i.e. you increase your final score for even a small increase in the percentage score. Say I have 60 points in the next to last turn of the game. I have a chance to hunt down some hidden enemies, which could push the score up to 62 or so. If the final score is determined in bands, i.e. if I get the same score whether I have 60 or 62 points in the AAR, then I have no incentive to do my best. Intuitively, it makes sense to use the median instead of the average to determine the "normal" score, since it reduces the effect of extreme results. If the Allied players in five games of the same scenario score 25, 30, 35, 50, and 85, the average is 49, while the median is 35, which better reflects the "normal" score. The drawback of any system using exponents is, of course, transparency. It would best if everyone understood how their score is determined. Any chance of simplyfing the formula to avoid using e?
  19. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kingfish: A few more off the top of my head: 1) Are any of the units out of command? 2) Are any of the units out of LOS to the opposing side, or to the VL? 3) How far away are the Americans from their friendly map edge in relation to the Germans and their map edge?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Hej Kingfish, Hope your dinner was good. Believe it or not, but I love chopped liver and gefilte fish, and I'm not even Jewish. I now think I've found the secret factor in VL determination, but I'm not sure. I'm thinking of elevation. It seems that if one side has units that are on a higher tile than the opposition's units, they count for a lot more, at least three times more, when determining who dominates the VL. This explains our PBEM game, were my guys were below yours. It explains the QB posted above, where the German squad is placed higher than the American platoon and so carries the flag. I noticed that if I moved the German squad closer to the VL and down to the same elevation as the Americans, the VL went from German to grey! I tested this with another QB, which pretty much confirmed the result, but then I made up my own map, with exaggerated heights and valleys around a VL, and didn't get any height-related skewing. I think I'm on the right track here, but there's probably another variable I'm missing. [ 09-26-2001: Message edited by: Peter Svensson to update with new test, inconclusive results] [ 09-27-2001: Message edited by: Peter Svensson ]
  20. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Leeo: If you kill/rout/break the majority of the other guys troops, you're likely to win. Too much emphasis on the VL flags, particularly in QB's, can be detrimental to victory. It's hard to ignore them entirely, but I think the focus should be on killing the other guys troops. If they happen to be defending a VL, then the capture of the VL is the gravy on the taters.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> True. Casualty ratios are usually much more important than VLs in determining victory. But we can't ignore the VLs either, because they simulate real-world orders to field commanders: seize this piece of ground. They give the battle direction, and while not the only or even the greatest factor in determining victory, they should be important.
  21. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kingfish: Something to consider is the proximity of units to the VL when the game ends. IOW, are the German units closer as a group than the numerically superior Americans (who might be spread out)? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> No, that can't be it. In the QB the Americans are the closest, yet lose the VL. In fact, they have a squad in the small building that flies the VL flag from its roof. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> But I was defending the VL in question throughout the game. I had possesion from the start. Perhaps that does play a part.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> That would make sense, but again, in the QB the Americans are first to the flag, yet can't make it theirs. The only thing I've been able to conclude is that unless one side is completely alone (except for broken and routed enemies) within the 80 m radius of the VL, there is no telling which way the VL will go. It might go to the numerically superior force, or to the inferior, or be neutral. There has to be some hidden factor here, but I can't for the life of me figure out what.
  22. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kingfish: What you see is not necessarily who actually controls the VL, only that your forces believe they do. Unless you have overwhelming strength or the enemy is no where near are you assured of control. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Hey, Kingfish. Our PBEM, where I was flummoxed by the VL control, was only the start of my investigation. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> I could be wrong here but I believe that there are other factors that determine VL control besides location and enemy strength. IIRC, I read where routed and broken units cannot control a VL, so morale might be a factor. Possibly ammo levels as well, but again I could be wrong on this. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I agree - I've seen routing and broken units lose control of a VL. But that's not what happened in our PBEM, or in the QB I posted. In the QB, I played both sides. Both sides think they have the VL in hand, but when the game ends, the VL is awarded to the numerically inferior Germans, for no apparent reason. There has been no fighting, so all squads are at full strength, in perfect morale and at full ammo. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> Perhaps your single German squad didn't see all the Americans around the VL, but enough to know that control was in dispute. This might have given you the wrong impression on who actually controlled it. Only after the game ended did the true strengths of the nearby units became known, and a full platoon + Tank destroyer will win every time against a single squad. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is possible, but seems unlikely, or at least, poor programming would have to figure into it. I did see all your troops. I didn't see the exact number of men, but when the scenario ended, the numbers of course turned out to be quite depleted. And what I saw a squads turned out to be teams. And no, a full platoon plus a TD doesn't always win against a squad: in the QB the American needs that large a force merely to make the VL grey. I've considered the possibility that the "Attacker" setting in the scenario somehow is a factor. In the QB, which is a meeting engagement, the U.S. is the attacker, and it's possible the Germans have an advantage in VL control determination. But in our PBEM, I was the defender, yet didn't get a similar deal. I've also considered the possibility that it matters who is first to the VL, but that doesn't seem to fit either. In the QB, the U.S. is first to the flag, yet they can't even dispute it in the end unless they are reinforced. [ 09-26-2001: Message edited by: Peter Svensson ]
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