Blackcat
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Posts posted by Blackcat
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I just looked at my post above, and I see I struck the wrong tone. I sounded snarky when I meant to be droll. My apologies for that.
No sweat, mate. I did wonder if I was reading you aright.
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I think the fact that every building in the game is a big empty box is the tip-off that something is being abstracted there.
Martyr, I know about abstractions in buildings, they were mentioned in the manual of CMBO or CMBB - shame BF didn't carry on the tradition because then GaJ might not have felt as he did when he started this thread.
P.S. My post which you quoted was about the other issue raised by GaJ, not the buildings thing.
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Wokelly,
Thanks for telling us about that book. I have ordered my paperback edition from Amazon UK (£23.70).
The hardcover price is outrageous it might be $100 but Amazon Uk are offering it at £95!
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As far as multiple shots falling short despite clear LOS from the gunner to the target, I don't think this can automatically be assumed a bug. Imagine a gun elevated 1 foot above perfectly flat terrain firing at a target 1000m away that is also elevated 1 foot above the terrain. Let's also assume that the trajectory for this imaginary gun is nearly perfectly flat, but the dispersion at 1000m is 10 feet. Even if the gunner has the range pegged perfectly, some percentage of the shots fired are going to impact short of the target. And due to the random nature of dispersion, you could see every shot of a given number of shots impact short.
Lots of assumptions there that may or may not apply to the situation that GAJ was talking about. Furthermore I don't think anyone has suggested that the circumstances he described can be assumed to be caused by a bug.
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Are you saying there needs to be a warning on the box? Pretty sure this is in the manual, but if not, it has been known and discussed openly for the last 5 years.
A warning on the box, no. I can't find any reference to any of this sort of stuff in the manual, if you could point me to it I'd be grateful.
As for it being known about and discussed on the forums, you will forgive most CM players for not reading every post in every thread for the past five years.
I don't have a beef with what the game does and how it does it, I would just prefer it if that information was made clear, up-front, so we could all have a chance of understanding how it works.
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The level of abstraction has been reduced by an order of magnitude or more. An attempt to eliminate it completely would have your computer melting a hole in your desk. But Moore's law is our friend so it should keep getting better over time.
Fair go. As I said I can see the need for the stated level of abstraction, but would it have been better if this sort of stuff had been declared up front. If BF feel able to tell us about this stuff when people are wondering and complaining it clealry isn't trade secret material. I don't expect BF to publish their algorithms or deep detail but an overview of how comabt works would have been nice and, perhaps, more honest.
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This may be related to the age-old ( ie. in CMx1 you had it too ) problem whereby you can trace a targetting line right up to the front step of a building, but somehow the building itself is out-of-LoS.
No idea how ( upside-down invisible-yet-los-blocking mountains hanging from the sky ? ) such a thing can happen, but it does.
To be fair, I've seen much less of this in CMBN than in CMx1, but it does still sometimes occur.
Yup, it still occurs and in my experience it does so just as often as it did in CMx1. I never could work it out then and I can't now. However, I don't recall seeing this porblem very often, if at all, in CMSF. So I suspect it has something to do with the terrain features between the unit and the building.
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"It was good to hear the explanation of how the extra cover bonus works"
Astonishing is the word I would use. All this talk about rounds hit where they hit, turns out to be rounds hit where they hit unless the pixeltruppen roll a 6 on a saving dice throw. I can see the need for this but it don't really fit in with all the hype (mind you it would be nice to have a manual where such things are explained).
The business in the building is not exactly new, and certainly existed in CMx1. It was mentioned in the manual for either CMBO or CMBB, and on more than one occassion I had troops occupy a buliding only to find later that it contained an enemy unit that they didn't ever see.
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If I have got this correct the OP's mortar teams are firing their own small arms at the enemy as well as dropping mortar rounds. Can't say I have ever seen that myself and can only think he has got his mortars in very close, in which case they ain't going to last long anyway.
I am really not sure that putting mortars in the front line is good practice.
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- I asked a tank to area fire on dudes in foxholes at the other end of a street.
The street has a slight rise, ever so slight, between tank and foxholes. I think
that the tank commander can see the foxholes, but the gunner can't. As
a result the tank opens fire and each shot hits the ground halfway to the
target. No real gunner would have done that.
If the tank commander could see the foxholes but the main gunner couldn't then the target line should have been grey and the main gun shouldn't fire at all.
So, if the line was blue then either the gunner is an idiot who can't cope with the idea of adjusting the point of aim based a the fall of his last shot (a distinct possibility as I get lots of those sorts of gunners in my Shermans), or there is a problem with the game mechanics.
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"My last question is regarding on board mortars. When assigning these to fire directly using their own LOS to target versus using a HQ spotter, it appears that the MG equipped troops assigned within the mortar team open up with their small arms while the mortar is firing, which I figure is then going to give away the position of the mortar team as a whole. Is there any way to fire the mortar in this manner by itself without the rest of the mortar team also firing upon the target with small arms? "
I am struggling with this one. Could you expand on this, perhaps give an example?
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... [CMBN] will provide me dozens if not hundreds of hours worth of entertainment...
So you are not planning on spending much time with the game?
The game has been out for about 20 days, my per-hour cost is runnng at about £0.40 and I have barely scratched the surface. By the time the 21AG module comes out I would expect the cost per hour of the entertainment provided by CMBN to be fractions of a penny - effectively free.
Good computer games are sold too cheaply.
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"The mistake I often make is to give orders to the passengers of a vehicle instead of the vehicle itself. Then I watch in horror as they jump out and run off into the open."
I am glad I am not the only person who does that.
My latest idiocy is to give a movement order to some point in enemty territory so that I can check the view from there using the target tool (I know its gamey, but it is a game). Then having had a good look around, I move to something else forgetting to cancel the movement order. A 60 second banzai charge then ensues.
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ah ok thanks guys. i just tried to buy it and it says it wants $20 for shipping! i didnt want to download it because i just know i will loose the file. if i can burn it to a disk however i might. how easy is it to put it on a disk? thanks
Assuming you have a cd or dvd burner it takes a few mouse clicks. Tell you what, as you are in the UK, once you have bought the game send me a PM with your address and I'll create a disc and send it to you. I am sure BF won't mind as without an activation key the files are useless.
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Interesting. Is it possible the extra large HMG team ( 6) is to blame as the individuals reposition themselves to the new FACE command? Perhaps make this unit splittable?
I shouldn't think so otherwise other people would have picked up on it and reported it by now. I have put HMGs into buildings of every size available, but I have never seen the reported behaviour. Something uncommon is at work here.
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The only place is Battlefront's own web site.
If you buy the download only version then there is nothing to wait for and no chance of the product getting lost. You can burn off a CD with the setup files on it, print off the manual (if you really want to) and you are away, minus some eye-candy.
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"Concerned about pointing the gun in the right direction."
In case you missed it, do you have windows and/or doors in the drection you want the gun to point?
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I was surprised I couldn't, for example, use the Delete key in the QB purchasing screen...
Strange. It has worked every time for me. Of course it won't ley you delete something that would leave your chosen forces breaking the rules of the game, but that is just sensible interface design.
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I have never had this problem and I have never previously seen it reported. Are you sure that the direction you wnat them to face has windows or doors that they can fire out of.
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"The Churchill was the most heavily armoured tank in Normandy and had excellent mobility,"
It could certainly climb very steep gradients that other tanks couldn't. It wasn't very quick though; wasn't its top speed around 15m.p.h..
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Sluggo,
There is a mod which gives "effective" ranges by each small arms weapon in a units roster. It is available from the Repository. Other than that the information is not displayed in the game.
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Its OK. You can target troops trying to surrender, but your pixeltruppen will not actually fire. So the worst that can happen is that your miss the opportunity to fire at a hostile target. That said, I like the idea of a white background for the icon.
I wonder if the behaviour of not firing on surrendering troops will apply to SS units.
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The maps look very nice. Thanks for putting in the effort.
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I have been working my way through the scenarios provided with the game and I have been hugely impressed. All the ones I have played so far have been very, very good - not a dog amongst them.
I am given to understand that the scenarios were created as labours of love by members of the beta test team. Battlefront, and us ordinary players, are very fortunate that these talented people have given so freely of their time and skills. Imagine what it would have been like if the game had been released with crud scenarios.
Designing a scenario that is balanced enough to present a challenge when played against the AI is, I think, a hard thing to do, to say nothing of the creation of the maps with all their intricate webs of lines of sight. Then on top of that some of the designers have built in some suprises to catch the player who thought he had got it sussed (yes, Herr Blucher, I am thinking of you).
The game has lots of clever stuff under the hood and its design and coding has been top notch, but without good scenarios it would fail as a game.
So, gents, I think a vote of thanks to the builders of the scenarios is due.
Reuqirements on spotters for arty
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Well, we know that in CMBN can take a little time to set up a radio comms link. I also fairly sure from my casual observations that man-portable radios cannot be used on the move. So it maybe that if the spotter is on foot and moves the coms link will break and need to be re-established. That in turn suggests that if the link is down at a crucial point in the cycle (e.g. spotting rounds landing) then, according to the manual, the mission is likely to be delayed. It may also be off target when it does arrive though the manual is silent on this point.
In CMAK if the spotter's view of the target area was obscured by smoke/dust etc as the spotting rounds were landing then the mission could be relied upon to land anywhere but on target. There were threads in the forum about this at the time. I don't know if this behaviour is replicated in CMx2 but I wouldn't be surprised if it was.
Setting up reliable tests to explore these issues would be difficult and very time consuming. However, BF will certainly know the answers and might just tell us, if we ask nicely.