FinnN

I guess it'll be (penetration at 30 degrees) x (Cosine 30 degrees), so 0.866xP. Have fun Finn

If I understand correctly, his initial attack was in the flank and the gun crew had to rotate the gun (ie entire piece). This matches my experience as well - it doesn't happen always but it does happen. I've had my tank crews do the same against enemy infantry, so I'm not sure it's an AI cheat issue (in fact, if we exclude scripted artillery attacks and the like I haven't seen any evidence of AI cheating at all, which is a refreshing change). I've read that the closer you are as an infantryman to a tank the safer it is, I don't find that to be the case in ToW. I suspect the same would be true for AT guns, otherwise why was it standard practice to shield them from infantry using infantry, and for the gunners to use machine guns and small arms for defence close up? Have fun Finn

You can see the files for both, I've not edited them to see what affect they have as I've been concentrating on the infantry (and I don't know much about armour etc in any case) - but it seems on the face of it possible to mod both the encyclopedia entry and the actual armour entry. Every piece (even aerials etc) has a top/bottom/left/right entry, the figures look like 0 degree values to me - but that's just a guess. The devs have said that angle is taken into account so I'd guess plate angles are stored elsewhere (3D model maybe?). Difficult to say for sure though. Have fun Finn

That'd be a great help - I'm looking for what would be regarded as a fairly 'standard' at different parts of the war and for different types of unit. I notice in the stock backpacks it's typically 2 M24's (the stick grenades) sometimes 4 (either 4 M24s or a mix of them and later types). The grenade bundles and PWMs seem to have been allocated in pairs too. Rifle grenades are missing of course but, animations aside, I think these are implementable to some extent anyway. A guy running around with 8 of them seems a lot to me though. Then there's the Panzerfausts - Close Combat gave out 2 per squad if I remember correctly. Any idea if this is historical? Have fun Finn

Yes - and I've had them working ingame too. I'm currently getting a basic database together so that I can easily update and regenerate the necessary text files. Textures and (I think - this is the only bit I haven't tried yet) the 2D icons can also be customised, and I did plenty of this sort of thing a while back for the MS flight sims. I'm still not sure where I stand on releasing stuff as obviously some of it is based on copyright material from the game that isn't easily accessible (without Dr.Jones' help I wouldn't be able to do anything). So far I've just been doing minor fiddling, but my girlfriend is going away for a few days tomorrow and that's when I can start going intensively - not back until after the weekend so I should have something to show about then. Have fun Finn

Actually with an (unofficial) extraction tool you can modify files, including ones that seem to control armour values for every little bit of a tank. Dig down a bit and you'll find a thread talking about just that courtesy of Dr.Jones. I'm already working on a major infantry mod (hence my question in the other thread) and I'm sure others are experimenting too. Potentially the game is amazingly moddable, but it'd be nice if we had an official comment on whether or not it's ok to release things. I've tried asking...but no response... Have fun Finn

There's 'could carry', and 'usually carry' though. For example, it seems there were 6 rifle grenade attachments per platoon (3 squads in ToW) at least for mountain troops and paratroopers. But how many rounds? I read 15 somewhere per attachment, but to me that seems a lot. Have fun Finn

It's quite easy to find information on how many weapons like rifles, machine guns, etc were distributed within a squad - but much harder to get more than vague information on the other weapons - grenades, anti-tank mines, grenade bundles, rifle grenades and panzerfausts. None of the books I've looked through have this information, and I've only found vague references on the internet. Anyone got any pointers for me on what would be typical and if it varied between types of unit (presumably it did)? Have fun Finn

From what I can work out it seems you get a certain amount of experience for length of time on the battlefield (so anyone from your initial force who survives will get a lot more experience than one who turns up in the last 10 minutes. According to the manual you improve the marksmanship score by firing more. So...you could argue that if your men do all the fighting they'll get more experience, but I think you'll find that if you don't soften up positions or assaults against you when you have artillery support then you'll take far higher casualties. As dead men don't get anything I think you're better off using the support. Have fun Finn

For a really dedicated modder the information is out there to do some really nice work in Western Europe these days as aerial photographs from the period are now available for most areas where combat occurred. Add it to some height maps and away you go. I agree mods (plus extra stuff via add-ons) is definitely the way to go with this game. Have fun Finn

Work smart - not hard! Have fun Finn

I think what bruce means is that there's a limit to the numbers - if you try to select for example 3 squads a few men will be left out. Fifty cal - that's pretty much what the mod I'm working on allows you to do, but much easier than now. In the selection screen you'll see things like: Rifle Squad (1944) 1/2 - Rifle Rifle Squad (1944) 2/2 - LMG Section 2 has the LMG plus an assistant, section 1 has the leader (with an MP40) and everyone else. In game this means that you'll be able to quickly give orders to sections by double clicking on them. On occasions where you want to send a complete squad off together you'd group them and move them like that. I've given it a go and it's so much more intuitive and easy to handle than the current system. I've taken some information from a few different books and also the squad lists from the CM games and am in the process of implementing everything except the pioneer squads (too many weapons are missing to make it worth doing these) - about 100 or so in all. I've split each squad into 2 or 3 (one for each LMG team, 2 or 3 men depending on period, and the rest - unless there's no LMG in which case I've split the team down the middle). I'm currently sorting out a database to hold the different teams and loadouts, hopefully I'll have something to test with by the end of this weekend coming up. Depending on how smoothly that goes I may also have the 3D graphics ready by then, mountain troops, lfd, panzergrenadiers, ss camouflage, security/police units, dismounted cavalry, etc. Also the correct ranks - so we have Jaegers (etc) instead of Schutzes where appropriate. And if I (or rather Dr Jones) can figure out the 2D graphics then more differentiated rank badges as well - eg seagull collar patches for luftwaffe personnel, yellow piping for cavalry, etc. Phew! If I can manage that lot, then I'm going to give it a go to create a new country - 'French Collaborators', with milice uniforms from a retextured early panzerman uniform as well as (if the models work) resistance fighters for the existing French country. Have fun Finn

Close Combat 2 (The Arnhem one) was perfect in this regard I think. On a bigger scale lots of flight sims also have it - the now ancient Red Baron 3D I guess being known as the best example. Interestingly I think this is could be possible by writing an external campaign engine, but it'd be a shed load of work. All the supply/reinforcements/force and map selection stuff would probably be quite easy to program, but writing routines to place these units on sensible positions on the maps and giving them a set of scripted orders that made sense and responded to player actions and in an even vaguely sensible way would be a nightmare (I suspect). Have fun Finn

If I had to pick one thing that I like the least about ToW, it's the campaigns. They jump all over the place, in some of the battles none of your forces carry over to the next but reappear in later missions, you have to win to proceed (unless you turn on the cheaty ignore campaign loss option), you constantly face overwhelming odds (although I found the French campaign on hard a walkthrough for some reason), ahistorical OOBs, crude reinforcements, bugged victory conditions, etc - the list goes on. It's not quite so bad that I'm not enjoying it, but I have little desire to replay the campaigns as they stand now. The Moscow campaign looks to be a lot better, I really hope it puts more emphasis on tactics rather than wave after wave of 'cool stuff'. Have fun Finn

Select the units you want to to group and then press shift+a number (eg shift+1). When you press the number again (1) on its own it'll select that group of units. It's very handy for concentrating fire from multiple units, well worth doing with tanks/AT guns but too fiddly to mean much with infantry. Talking of infantry and groups, I'm working on a mod that completely re-organises the German infantry (chose them as they're the easiest to research). Basically instead of the squad you get now, I'll be breaking them down into smaller sections so that they can be used more realistically by the player. Additionally there'll be a whole range of different squad types with their own graphics. Initially I thought I would just do Luftwaffe Field Divisions, but after starting on it by hand editing I decided it was going to be easier (and safer if the patch changes things) to put the data in a database, so it turns out there's going to be a lot more! Have fun Finn

I think that some of them at least are already in the English version, but presumably not in the older Russian version. eg "Infantry scatters before the moving technology". Will be interesting to see what the final list is from Battlefront. Have fun Finn

Well, kind-of. What I mean by it isn't 'reacting' to you - the mission designer has programmed it explicitly to target your troops (ignoring spotting) and shell you. The AI won't do this independently. On the other hand a squad of infantry that hasn't spotted you in some cover won't suddenly turn around and shoot at you - whereas if some other unit spots you, they become aware and will turn around and take a pop. Have fun Finn

Spread and things like ricocheting are in AmmoRating.ini and AmmoTypeProp.ini, but some other variables probably affect this. Actual penetration seems to be calculated once past all that though. These files, and lots more are just plain text .ini files sitting in the SFS files. One of the best thing a patch could do would be to move these outside so that people could tweak them themselves, thus freeing up developer time for new things for the game rather than (potentially) tweaking things backwards and forwards. Have fun Finn

Not true (in ToW), if you haven't been spotted by any units the enemy won't react to you at all. Once one has they'll all know about you (just like the player does). sdp has is right, in the mission scripting it's possible to draw a rectangle around your troops and then get units to do something to it (storm it, shell it, etc). You don't have to do this, but the mission designers for these ones chose to do it that way. Rubbish, but it isn't an intrinsic part of the engine. Have fun Finn

Not quite as important, but what do people think of the French infantryman's uniform? To me it looks more like a Free French one (ie US) rather than 1940 (even given the missing greatcoat). The officer seems right though. I don't know much about this sort of thing though, what do others think? Have fun Finn

Nice mission, very interesting to watch. I think you need to work on your assault skills though, all the German infantry got mown down before they got anywhere near the trench and two of the halftracks got too close and knocked out by grenades. They won in the end anyway, as the soviets panicked and the last halftrack hunted them down. I think the idea of mechanised assaults like this is that you deposit your infantry in the flanks or rear of the enemy lines (and pray that they don't have any AT guns/tanks - as they always have several with interlocking firing arcs in the stock campaigns I haven't experimented much with this sort of tactic). Have fun Finn

Well, if they had ToW to base their estimates on they would have been right! Silliest bit of advice I ever saw was in an early (but after the interrupter gear was introduced on German aircraft) WW1 magazine suggesting the safest place to be was immediately in front and slightly below the enemy. Oh dear. Also of interest: http://www.britishpathe.com/ and from the other side of the fence: http://www.wochenschau-archiv.de Have fun Finn

Yep. Spalling and concussion through the armor wins a price. But they don't ki11 t3h cr3w. They may and kill and injure individual crew members, but to disable a tank crew? Rarely, and yes there are instances of that happening but the game has got it pretty much right as is. HE shouldn't be and isn't a tank (crew) killer. </font>

who is talking about effective? did you even bother to read thread </font>

After some experimentation last night I think I'm in a position to start modding the game. As an experiment I think I'll add some Luftwaffe Field Division squads. Also a new infantry team structure (by splitting the 10 men squads into constituent elements). So instead of picking a 10 man squad, you'd have, say (just off the top of my head), a 2 man lmg team, a 3 man assault team and 5 man officer and rifle team. You'd select the three bits and their points value would add up to the current one for the 10 man squad, and if you wanted to use them as a single squad in the game you can still add them to a group. Apart from being less work for the player, you'd end up using far fewer groups than you would currently to achieve a similar effect. These won't affect existing missions of course, but would be available for people doing that sort of thing. I've got as far as having them in the game, now I just need to sort out text descriptions etc, make sure all the equipment is correct, ranks and other odds and ends. All that'd need sharing is a few copied and edited text files and a couple of modified textures. Are we allowed to share this sort of thing, bearing in mind it's not officially possible to look inside the SFS files? Have fun Finn