YankeeDog

Yeah, there's lots I'm wondering about the new artillery modeling. In addition to the above, I'm especially wondering about how lighter off-board artillery is going to be handled on the new 9 sq. km map size. As I recall, the max. range of a german 81mm mortar is 2100m. Even if the off-board mortar battery were located exactly at the edge of the map in the center on a square map, it would only be able to reach about 50% of the map. The problem gets worse the more rectangular the map gets. When you take into account that presumably an off-board battery is a bit farther back to keep it safe, even some of the lighter gun batteries aren't going to be able to hit a significant proportion of the larger maps. I suppose ideally there should be a way of locating a battery of mortars on-map that was tied to a spotter. This would add whole new elements of gameplay. For example, counterbattery fire on-map batteries would suddenly become a possibility. My suspicion is that this would be very hard to code, though. It will be interesting to see what they come up with. Cheers, YD

I'm in!! I am happy to provide refreshments/food. I can also bring a laptop with a 15" screen and a 64MB video card to increase the number of machines available. I live in Manhattan and would be happy to offer space, but alas my apartment fits the stereotype of Manhattan abodes: tiny. I'd be willing to make the trip to Jersey for a peek at CMBB, tho. . . Here's hopin' YD [ July 19, 2002, 08:31 PM: Message edited by: YankeeDog ]

There's good answers to the questions you have on the CMBB FAQ thread, some of them from the horse's mouth. From what I've read, Sarge Saunders had got it pretty much right. In addition, it is worth noting that one of the reasons for the addition of the Assault Command is the changes to the Run command. Apparently, the run command in CMBB is much more of an all-out sprint - if afford even less cover and concealment than in CMBO, and most units will not fire at all while running (I think SMG troops will fire a little bit if at very close range) So the "Assault" command is there to give you more of an assault drill when closing on a known enemy position - it allows you to advance fairly quickly, but still take some advantage of cover, and be able to have some output of fire. And, yes, it is also my understanding that the "Assault" command is only available to trained troops (Reg and above??) as it represents a practiced assault drill. To refine Sarge's comments about rapid fire defenders: I have not heard of a specific command as such, so it sounds to me like it is not a command but a TacAI refinement. Basically, MGs (and to a lesser extent squads, which usually have an MG of some sort) will increase firepower output if they start to be severely pressed - i.e., in danger of being overrun. The downside of this is much higher ammo consumption and a higher chance of jamming. IOW, MGs can 'go cyclic' in CMBB. :eek: There is a GREAT AAR from one of the Beta sneak peeks by JasonC on the new MG features. It's pretty recent - within the last week, I think. Check it out - I think it will satisfy your defensive fire output questions. Cheers, YD

If it were me, I'd buy CMBO right now anyway, but that's 'cause I've been playing it for a year and I know how good it is - waiting for two months for CMBB without CMBO to tide me over would be torture. CMBB certainly looks like it's going to be a big leap forward from CMBO, but CMBO is far from outdated - it's still pretty cutting edge as far as it's game mechanics and play features. The graphics are a little bit dated now, but 3rd party graphics mods (which are free) can go a long way towards improving the look of the game. I guess it all comes down to how patient you are, and how much you want to be able to play both the Western and Eastern front. CM:BB will cover the Eastern Front only - it will neither be backwards compatible with CMBO nor will it include any of the American and Commonwealth units in CMBO (except for those vehicles sent to Russia on Lend-Lease). I, for one, will probably revisit CMBO occasionally after CMBB comes out - I can't imagine leaving my GIs and Tommies entirely. I imagine the vast majority of my time will be spent on CMBB, though. It's also possible that CMBO will come down in price after the release of CMBB. Your guess is as good as mine on this. Also probably depends on how much money is in your gaming budget. CMBO is certainly still worth the money, but if buying CMBO now would put you in a pinch for buying CMBB in September, I'd probably hold off. Cheers, YD

You misunderstood my idea. All I am suggesting is that CM allow you to view multiple movie files in sequence without shelling out back to the intro screen to load each one. IOW, the 'extra' time at the end of each turn would still be there. You would watch the movie for one turn, including the 'extra' time at the end to resolve shells in flight, and then you would click the 'DONE' button, just as you do now. The difference is that CM would then jump immediately to the next movie, rather than to the orders stage or back to the intro screen to generate a return PBEM file. Is it full movie playback? No, certainly not. Is it an added convenience when you want to review the movie files of a whole battle, either to reacquaint yourself with what has happened so far, or if you are watching someone else's game for entertainment/educational purposes?? Most certainly. I could go on about how this feature could be refined. For example, it would be cool if while viewing the "Combined Movie File" you could, for example, switch FOW settings on the fly so you could see all units from both sides, or just from the perspective of what one player could see. This might be trickier to do, though - I'm not sure how the FOW setting and the movie file generation interact. It appears that all of the information about every unit is contained in every file, because you can pick up a game from any PBEM file without the program needing to refer to previous files, so this might be possible. The point is, all of this uses features and functions that are already in the game. It doesn't require a workaround of the "extra time" problem, it just uses the current way that CM plays turn movie files, but organizes it a bit more conveniently. Maybe it would be harder to implement than I think, though. I think this would be a nice little added feature, and it might mollify those who are really clamoring for full movie playback a bit until there's an engine rewrite, but I wouldn't want to lose a game feature like covered arcs or something for it. Cheers, YD

I also feel that there are more important features for CMBB than full movie playback, and if was a choice between cover arcs or whatever and full playback, I think BFC made the right choice. I still would really like to see it, tho. My apologies if this has been suggested before, but would it be possible to just 'stitch' the movie files together? IOW, create a feature that would allow you to merge all of the movie files into one larger file (no more HD space than just saving all of the movie files one by one). You'd still have to click on the 'Done' button at the end of each turn to load the movie file for the next turn, but at least you wouldn't have to shell out back to the intro screen and load the next file. This would be particularly good if CMBB would add the ability to save movie files from single player and TCP/IP games. Obviously, this is not as cool as being able to watch the whole movie uninterrupted while zooming the camera around at will, but it would certainly be a considerable improvement IMHO. 'Twould be very nice when you are picking up a PBEM after a week hiatus due to the intervention of Real Life to refresh your memory as to what's already happened in the battle without constantly shelling in and out of the game to load different movie files. Anyway, just a suggestion. I have only a very general knowledge of how stuff like this is coded, but my guess is that this would require substanitally less recoding to implement than true full movie playback. Cheers, YD

Now, now. He's new. He asked his questions nicely, so he deserves nice answers. Zee - You will likely NEVER see Combat Mission go RTS - the designers are pretty adamant about this and are very committed to the WEGO format. Those of us who hang out here at the forum are pretty committed to it, too. There's lots that's been written on this in the history of this forum, and I'm sure there will be more on this thread. To each their own - there's plenty of other games out there in the genre that do RTS. Cheers, YD

Wow!! That's really cool!! Just bumping this because people seem to be missing this great bit of info from the mad one.

Jason - The issue I had heard with the Panther (and, indeed, many german vehicle designs) is that, in addition to the rather higher cost of manufacturing (which you have pointed out was not so much the case with the Panther), the vehicles were also more difficult to maintain in the field. More complicated maintainence = less tanks available for combat at any given time. Alas, I live in a New York City apartment with no room for a book collection, so what I read eventually has to go back to the library, but I read something recently with figures for vehicles available for action in German Tank formations vs. Allies - the difference was pretty remarkable. As I understand it, some of the reasons for this were as follows: (1) Closer part tolerances on many moving parts - can result in higher performance, but also tends to make machines more prone to breakdown in field conditions. It can also lead to parts from one vehicle not fitting into another vehicle of the same type ("seating" problems). (2) In General, German vehicle design tended to be more mechanically complex. In general, more moving parts means more things that can break. (3) Very short part life on some important components of vehicles. Tiger I treads is the one I remember in particular - they had to be replaced quite often if the Tiger I had to cover any significant distance under it's own power. (4) Especially late in the war, German tanks were often rushed into deployment without proper break-in time for the engine and other components, resulting in high mechanical break-down rates. This acutally relates to (1) above - closer part tolerances generally require longer break-in times. Anyway, if there is an area where German tank design was truly inferior to the allies' in WWII, I had always thought that it was the generally high maintainence. If 1 out every 4 of your tanks is in the shop at any given time, this dramatically increases the cost of fielding said tank compared to a similar tank that only has 1 out of every 6 or 7 in the shop on average. Curious to know if my assumptions are accurate in the opinion you and any other grogs who care to comment. Cheers, YD

Hopefully, BFC is on the ball (as they usually are), and "detailed armor hits" is NOT an available option when playing CMBB on the "Extreme FOW" setting. All they would then need to do is delay the display of the "flaccid main gun" graphic until after the "Death Watch" was over, and I'd be pretty happy. Of course, tracks flying off the idlers, a belch of oil smoke from the engine, and tanks slewing around violently when the wheels on one side get hit while the tank is on the move and other graphical goodies like that would be great eye candy, but not necessary IMHO. I'm also hoping that the "Death Watch" modeling is good enough that when a target "Brews up", the Tank/Gun will immediately stop shooting at it - occasionally, it's very obvious when a tank is taken out of action by a shot. Jets of flame and smoke coming out of holes in the hull would certainly be one of those occasions. My guess is that BFC has already figured this out, tho. Cheers, YD

My take on this situation: It seems pretty clear to me that you should engage the scout in some way - whether you should engage him at 100m, or set the ambush closer (to, say 50m or so) depends on details of cover and what kind of platoon you're ambushing with. Ideally, you want to wait to ambush until his scout (probably a half squad) can be rendered combat ineffective (i.e., all killed or panicked) in one 'shot' from your combined platoon. If all three of your squads can fire on the scout at 100m, this is probably a fine engagement distance for most squad types. For killing ambushes, 250 'firepower points' is the magic number I use - if I can get this much firepower on the unit at the ambush (assuming little cover), I can be pretty sure the unit will be substantially destroyed in the initial ambush. You don't want the scout to come too close, either - it may see at least your foxholes (sometimes you can spot foxholes before you spot units), and then your enemy will have gained valuable information on your exact location. Basically, you want to ambush it as far out as possible but still be reasonably positive that you will destroy it. Obviously, I think it all depends on situation, but most of the time I also think you have to bug out after you knock off the scout. To stay in place will allow your enemy to focus support assets on your ambush position and wipe you out. If you have a good covered route of withdrawal and other assets you can bring in to support your platoon and cover it's withdrawal, you might be able to stay in place for a turn or two - your biggest worry is an artillery barrage on your position, and that will take at least a turn to start coming down unless he's really smart/lucky and has already guessed your ambush position and plotted a barrage there. If you're really lucky, the scout will be killed so quickly that all he'll get is a bunch of "Sound Contact?"s from the shooting, and no hard sightings of your units, but I wouldn't plan on this. Cheers, YD

Not a beta tester, so I have no first hand experience. I spend insane amounts of time wandering around this forum, so this is what I've heard: The down low is that there is a considerable improvement in the sounds in CMBB, both in number of sounds (like the addition of setup/breakdown sounds for MGs & Mortars, and marching sounds), and quality of the sound files themselves. It's worth noting that if you don't like the way the current CMBO sounds are, you can change them - the WAV files for the sounds are just as moddable as the skins for the vehicles are. I have been known to replace CMBO WAV files with cartoon sound effects WAVs on occasion just for laughs. My favorite is to replace the 'incoming round' sound and the explosion sounds with the falling anvil and anvil hit sound from Looney Tunes. Adds a whole new twist to the game. I think it's safe to assume that CMBB will incorporate this same 'open architecture' and allow you to swap WAV files at will. Cheers, YD

This have kind of gotten off on a tangent on this thread, but there is one element of CMBO where I think fast turrets are kind of 'overmodeled'. Sometimes, when an AFV is presented with multiple high-priority targets (like a mix of tanks and AT assets), the TacAI will have a panic attack and switch back and forth between targets. This happens especially if the targets are moving. With a relatively slow ROF, slow turreted AFV like a tiger, sometime the result is that the Tank will spend the entire turn rotating it's turret back and forth between various targets, and never actually get a shot off. It doesn't happen very often, but every once in a while I see it. I suppose this is partially realistic ("Ach, Hans, eine neue panzer!! Links, mach schnell!! Mein Gott, mehr! Schnell, zuruck nach rechts!! usw) but having multiple targets to focus on seems to bit a bit too effective at sending Tiger crews into a tizzy, IMHO. Otherwise, the modeling seems all right to me. As mentioned, the way that CM players use tanks is not exatly indicative of their historical deployments. Cheers, YD

Well, I think there's two different issues here: "Human Wave"-type attacks, which are sometimes tactically sound, and sometimes not, and bad generalship, which is by definition not tactically sound. The early war Soviet used a lot of Human Wave attacks. They also had a lot of really poor quality officer who ordered their troops to do really stupid things. I suspect most of us will try to use the "Human Wave" command when and where appropriate, and will avoid bad generalship if at all possible. Cheers, YD

Very cool stuff. If every vehicle in CMBB looks as good as that Panther, I imagine that we're all going to be discovering exciting new visual treats for many months after the inital release. I forsee a lot of "Hey, have you seen the whatsit on the thingie?!" posts in the first few weeks after release. MODDers will probably take the new 3D renders as a personal challenge. At least, I hope they do. You guys rock. Cheers

Jason - Thanks for all of the excellent information. Yours is the best description of the new MG modeling features I have seen yet - and that includes the reports from the powers that be themselves. I know you have long advocated updates to the MG modeling in CM - your past posts on the subject have certainly been quite educational, and if I am reading between the lines correctly, you sound pretty happy with the changes. No model is ever perfect, but it sounds like things are a dramatic step forward. If it's good enough for you, it's good enough for me. Thanks again, YD

First - W00t!! I'm guaranteed to be playing CMBB on by Birthday!! There could be no better gift. Yeah - I noticed this, too. That's downright huge!! Now I'm really starting to wonder how CMBB is going to deal with small artillery assets - on a 5km x 5km map, 81mm mortars can't ever reach halfway across the map. . . hmmmmm. . . .

I'm just guessing here, but I'm sure you'll be able to sound mod in some whistles and bugles if you really feel like you need them. I myself am going to replace the human wave sound file with a sound file of a bunch of stampeding cows. Just for fun, try replacing one of the explosion sound files in CM:BO with the "anvil hit" sound from looney tunes (you know, the one where Wile E. Coyote gets hit on the head with the anvil). You'll never look at artillery barrages in the same way again. Cheers, YD

I'd have to agree that there isn't an easy solution to your problem - if you don't have a vehicle to help move them, your heavy weapons teams are inevitably going to trail behind the faster squads. Any choice you make is going to involve compromise - moving a lead element up ahead of the heavy weapons puts that lead element in danger of being wiped out before the heavy weapons make it up to help it out. OTOH, slowing down your lead element so the MGs and Mortars can keep up will eat up valuable time and may allow your opponent to outmaneuver you. It really comes down to what kind of movement drill you use: Traveling, Traveling Overwatch, and Alternate or Successive Bounding Overwatch. If you are unfamiliar with these terms, there is a very good article on them at CMHQ. Here's the link: Infantry Tactics in Combat Mission by Christopher Hall I often use a movement drill that's a variation on Travelling Overwatch when I'm moving MGs and squads together in CM. Here's one example of how I use it: I hate to move my leading edge of infantry through open ground. My lead squads (or half-squads, depending on the situation) usually spend most of their time slogging through trees, rough, running in and out of buildings, etc. This is partially because I often want to check to make sure there's no zooks or shrecks hiding anywhere waiting to ambush my following tanks, but it's mostly because closer terrain represents better cover - when contact is made, if possible I want my grunts in terrain that will give them some protection. All this scurrying back and forth between trees and buildings tends to slow my squads down some. I usually try to have my MGs follow 50-100m behind the squads, but they take a more direct approach to the objective on more open terrain that's easier to move through. Presumably, since the squads have already been along more or less the same route that the MGs are following, things are fairly safe, so the MG teams can afford to trade some cover for speed. In this way, all units (squads and MGs) move towards the objective at about the same rate. For example, let's say I'm advancing a rifle platoon (with an MG team) along a road towards an objective and enemy contact is a definite possibility. My squads will generally not advance right up along the road - it's too open and exposed - They'll uses the trees or buildings or whatever on either side of the road so they have a bit more cover. The MG team will follow 50-100m behind the squads, but will take the road. This way, my squads will usually trigger any ambushes, or spot enemy units before the MG team comes into danger and I can adjust the MGs orders to put it into cover. When my lead squads to make contact, the MG is only one turn behind, and can offer fire support in fairly short order. I usually use the above system in addition to more traditional overwatch support from other units. It's not perfect - a cagey opponent might let the squads go, and then open up on the rather exposed MG team when it comes into view, but I think it's a reasonable compromise between speed of movement and security. I'm sure others have other ways of dealing with this problem that are equally useful. It's one of those tactical problems for which there is no simple, universal solution. Cheers, YD

LOL. And, given that the threads were the same, you could change a couple of the 60mm mortar rounds to HEAT for that nasty top-attack against otherwise invincible uberCats </font>

Not only is it how they fed their soldiers, it's also how they fed their guns and tanks much of the time. Lack of sufficent transportation and logistics support is a major part of Nazi Germany's defeat on the Eastern Front. Cheers, YD

John - Wow! A neat little tidbit from your Uncle there. That's definitely one for the engine rewrite. Some sort of system that automatically substituted 2-3 "HE" (i.e., 60mm mortar shell-tipped) and/or incendiary (if verification of deployment can be found) rounds for HEAT rounds in the zook's ammo loadout on urban maps would be the way to do it, I think. Of course, loadout would be customizable for scenario designers. I suppose that BFC would want a little be more verification than just one anecdotal story, but I'm sure that can found with a little effort. Probably not worth the work for CMBB, though. I know a few zooks made it over to Russia on lend-lease, but IIRC it wasn't very many. The only warhead I know of the the Shreck other than the HEAT one was an experimental AA warhead that was never deployed. Thanks again for the great info. Cheers, YD

Smoke and Incendiary rounds were manufactured for the Bazooka. It's possible that there was an HE round was well, but I've never been able to find mention of it anywhere. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any information about when these different types of round were first used in action, or how common they were. 'Zook smoke rounds strike me as being of very limited use in CM, and may well have primarily been for target-marking purposes anyway. I suppose incendiary rounds might be useful in a city fight. Cheers, YD

Well, if you've tried Alt-A and Alt-Q and they don't work, there's definitly something wrong. The only other quick fix I can think of is to check and make sure your Caps Lock key isn't down - this alters some of the CMBO Hotkey commands. If that doesn't work, I would suggest posting your problem on the Tech Support forum - sooner or later Schrullenhaft or another techical guru will check in and help you out. Here on the CM main forum, you're just going to get responses from crazed wargamers impatiently searching for any info about CMBB's release date. Cheers, YD