Officer Meatbeef

Hmmmm... I tend to use the mouse for tracking a moving target or getting the gun generally centered, then the arrow keys for fine-tuning. Suomi's totally beat me to the punch on this one though. I don't currently have my joystick around, but if you have one that could definitely be worth a shot. And too low a frame rate will definitely make any kind of precision aiming very difficult. If that's the case, I'd highly recommend tweaking your graphics settings to try and smooth things out, and you should see a dramatic improvement in your ability to aim no matter what type of input you're using to do it. Hmmm, unfortunately I only have the demo and so I dunno if I can be too much help here. Perhaps the T55 is modelled to have an older, less-effective rangefinder? Also, I believe that in some missions in the real campaign your tank actually begins with damaged components, so perhaps the rangefinder on your T55 in that particular mission is simply broken. And a long shot: are you sure you're in a T55 and not a T34? The T34 has no automatic rangefinder at all, to the best of my knowledge. I actually have target boxes turned off, so I don't think that should be the problem. Indeed, the rangefinder not "working" when the target is <~300 is by design. At that kind of ridiculously point-blank range, there's really no need for it; just point and shoot. The longer distance issues certainly seem to depend on weather conditions however... in the Firing Range demo mission, I can only range a maximum of 1450 meters; attempts to range any further simply give a 9980. Whereas in the Dogfight mission, where the environment does seem to be a little less hazy, I can range up to 1500m before the finder can't get a decent value.

Alright, first off: as you play the demo, messages should appear on the left side of the screen with instructions on how to accomplish the basics like this. However, if you've chosen the pre-set "Full" realism setting in-game, there's a chance those "console messages" may have been turned off; I've done all my realism setting in the outside-game Configuration program, so I can't say that for sure. If they're not on, you may want to turn them on by running Config and setting Effects->No Console to "No". (Also, the readme in the main game directory provides a basic rundown of the keys 'n such) Anywoo, if you have enabled them but still aren't clear on how the system operates, here's a rundown that should hopefully help you out. So, from either the gunner position or commander's position in Dual mode: 1. Make sure you have the Fire Control System on (default key: s) or you probably won't even be able to get the main gun loaded, much less hit anything with it. 2. Use B & N to select which type of round you want to use. If you don't know which rounds are what, I'm not surprised; this is the one important thing in the demo that really can't be found anywhere in the Readme or the tutorial messages. Just in case you don't know this stuff already, here's a simple overview of round types: BPS: Armour-Piercing Sabot. Use against other tanks. OFS: High Explosive (for taking out infantry, soft targets like guns & thin-skinned vehicles like APCs) BKS: HEAT (High Explosive Anti-Tank) Shaped Charge, also for use against other tanks, but much tougher to hit with due to its ballistics. Penetration won't be affected by range if you do score a hit though, unlike with BPS. UR: Guided Missile. Used primarily for anti-air. No need for range-finding with this thing. P: Coax MG. Used to kill infantry. 3. Load the selected round using the default key R. NOTE: You can do this step BEFORE or AFTER rangefinding; hopefully you'll understand what I mean in a minute. Alright, now to what you really wanted to know: Rangefinding 4. Place the center of your sight right on the target you want to find the range to by using either the arrow keys or holding the left mouse button and moving the mouse. No matter which optics you are looking through on the T72 (Pgup/PgDn to cycle through those), the center of your sight should be at the tip of the largest caret (^) on the sight. Use Numpad + & -(or mousewheel) to zoom up and down on the main T72 sight (the one with the most scales, ranges and carets) and get a better view of your target, to help ensure accurate range finding. Note: If you're playing the "Dogfight" mission, you only have access to the T72's various fixed-zoom sights. For a stationary target: 5a. Press Enter or the right mouse button, and the tank's range finder should immediately determine range to the current target and display it numerically at the bottom of the screen (by default, it will say 9980). If the target is extremely close (less than 300m), or past 9980m, the range finder will simply display 9980 as well. But here's the important thing to know: Once you have found the range on a stationary target, you can simply fire! As long as you and your target remain stationary, the Fire Control System will automatically adjust the gun's elevation to score a hit with the currently selected ammunition at the selected range, and if you desire you can even move the sight around to make slight adjustments to your aimpoint or whatever. However, since each type of round has very different ballistics, you will probably only hit where you are aiming if you are actually using the type of round you have ranged for! That means the round type selected when you found the range, not necessarily the one loaded (ie. you could load a HE round, press B [selecting an BPS AT round], find the range, fire, and the shot would be adjusted for the AT type round, NOT the HE round). Simple enough really, but knowing it could save you some confusion later. For a moving target: 5b. If your target is moving in a relatively straight line, or your target is stationary but you are moving steadily, you can help increase your odds of hitting by rangefinding once the same as you would for a stationary target, and then within the next 2 (possibly 5) seconds, ensuring the aim point is again on the target and rangefinding once more. Your fire control system will then automatically compensate not only for elevation but the movement of your target, leading it accordingly. As long as it continues on the same vector and speed (and doesn't get substantially farther or nearer to you in the process), you can simply place the aim point on the target, fire, and you will score a hit. Again, this ranging will be performed for the currently selected (not necessarily the current loaded) ammo type. So if you wanted/needed to, you could actually load the appropriate round after rangefinding; of course, against a moving target, in the time it takes you to load that round you could very well need to re-range again anyway. And the final step: 6. Fire the round by pressing Space (or Q if you've ranged for your coax MG), watch your carefully ranged shot slice into your enemy like a hot poker through a cool penguin, and cheer with nefarious glee. Did I make all that sound too complicated? Hope not. Anyway, hopefully this should give you all you need to know to hit whatever you please using the automatic rangefinding ability of the T72. No screenshots I'm afraid, but if you still need some clarification just say so and I'll be glad to grab a few. Enjoy delivering 125mms of carefully-ranged destruction to all who stand before you! And if you thought all that was tricky, you should see my preferred style of gunnery: classic, computer-unassisted range finding with manual sighting adjustment and target lead! The choice of REAL men! Well, real men whose computerized rangefinder is either knocked out, non-existent (T34), and/or who simply wish to be cut to ribbons while they fiddle with sighting adjustment and ranging scales. Still, loads of fun when you can always just reload, and immensely satisfying when you score that perfect first shot. Feel free to ask about it if you're crazy enough!

I don't know of a way to "unlock" the camera from the tank, but you should be able to rotate about it/elevate/zoom in and out as much as you want with the numpad keys without having the other components move with you... have you tried turning your NumLock on?

It's certainly possible to brew up the Leopard in the demo, though it can take a few rounds, as one would expect with those modern fire control systems in place. I've never seen it suffer a catastrophic explosion, but I imagine those should be even rarer anyway. My T72 hasn't been so lucky in that regard, however... that pesky cat tracked me once and put a round into my turret that must have hit the HE because it completely demolished it. Fun!

Those messages are indeed in the demo as well. If you'd like to turn them off, Effects->No console: Set it to "Yes".

It is?! Well now what the hell am I supposed to do with all these "Don't Catch the Millenium Bug!" novelty PC face masks? Probably not just you (unfortunately), but nah, the terrain ain't half-bad. We'll get to that in a second. Yes, it is a game that is primarily a sim. The two are not mutually exclusive? Heheh, ok, I do like the idea of describing a game engine as "diabolical". It really helps give engines the sort of menace they so sorely lack. "Who knows what sort of nefarious schemes that diabolical engine is plotting behind its beguiling cloak of dynamic light mapping?!" Well, ok, I've looked at the scenery for all these games (alright, I never got around to playing Joint Ops, and BF2 will not run on my vid card, but I've seen plenty of screenshots for both) and don't get me wrong, they are all very pretty. Far Cry probably still does the best jungle scenery in the business, Joint Ops has a good viewing distance mixed with some decent foliage, and Battlefield 2 is... well, just generally nice looking I guess. However, and I'll try to limit this to strictly graphical terms since that seems to be all you care about, none of those games (well, maybe Joint Ops does, that's the one I'm most unfamiliar with) do dynamic time passage, destructable structures 'n (this is a big one) deformable terrain, dynamic weather and environmental effects, and (this is another big one) draw/viewing distance of more than 2 kilometers. Joint Ops does apparently about 1km, Far Cry says 1.2km, and BF2 only draws about 500 meters! If you've been playing games for any length of time, you should be well aware by now that even a few dozen meters of extra viewing distance means you'll have to make some sacrifices on other graphical features. Those other games can get away with it, but for a simulation of real, modern tank combat, you need all the viewing distance you can get. Welcome to the eternal issue of graphical tradeoffs. And speaking of tradeoffs, that's all disregarding the issue that a (small) (Russian!) developer trying to make a fairly detailed sim with full ballistics, accurate penetration and armour modelling, AI capable of operating these beasts in a fairly believable manner, and all the oodles other stuff that is needed to make up actual gameplay can only spend so much time on making the pictures look a bit prettier for the small percentage of the audience whose system could even paint those pretty pictures in a playable manner. And one other thing... even in the photo-realistic glory of the real world, there are a whole hell of a lot of places that actually look really drab and boring. Trust me, I come from one of them. Ok, there's not really a nice way to say this... if you honestly just removed a game from your system after, what, 5 minutes just because the imagery didn't excite you, then you are a excellent example of one of the big problems in gaming today, and I wish you would go away because you quite frankly make me very sad. Sure it is. Here's the funny thing though; whereas a game's graphical capabilities can be shown off just fine via screenshots and videos, you can't really bottle up little bits of actual gameplay and send them out discretely every week for people to salivate over. So the primary purpose of releasing a playable demo is to let people sample how the game plays. In other words, show the game's capabilities in what actually matters! Sometimes, but then I just apply a hammer until they fade away into a soothing buzzing noise.

You don't actually have the recommended hardware, when it comes to the video card. The recommended video hardware is: -DirectX 9.0 Compatible Video Card (i.e. GeForce FX5600 or Radeon 9600XT) There is an enormous difference between a Geforce FX5200 and a FX5600. As others have already pointed out, the FX5200 is not a good card. Here's a quick primer, because this is a common situation thanks to Nvidia's terrible (the less generous might even say fradulent) naming system for their low-end cards: The Geforce FX5200 is actually SLOWER than a Geforce 4 4200 in nearly every way! It's a similar debacle to the garbage Nvidia pulled with the Geforce 4 MXs (which were actually closer to minorly-upgraded Geforce 2s than anything! But at least the MXs were clearly labelled as a seperate (bad) card; that FX5200 naming scheme is much more insidious. In fact, the only thing an FX5200 does faster than a Geforce 4 4200 is DirectX 9 operations, for a very simple reason: Geforce 4s don't do DirectX 9 stuff at all! That little extra feature is how they manage to get away with selling the FX5200 as an FX at all, but DirectX 9 features are still fairly rare anyway and having the support for better shaders and what-have-you that DX9 provides doesn't do a whole lot of good when the card can't do basic rendering well. I actually have a Geforce 4 4200 and the demo runs very well for me, particularly after I turned off the drawing of grass. I've left everything else at the default values: 1024X768 res (no anti-aliasing of course) and pretty much every bell and whistle turned on and/or set to "highest" detail. I don't know if the game auto-configs based on detected hardware or not. You should still be able to squeeze a decent framerate out of that FX5200, because the rest of your specs are just fine, but you'll probably have to turn down a lot of detail. Sorry, but I'm afraid this is your video card's problem, not the game's, so a patch probably won't be able to do much good. Good luck with your tweaking!

Care to explain how you moved an 88mm? </font>

Ha ha, he's right... I tried moving a mess of different guns, both Axis and Allied, across shallow fords, and the minute they hit those fords it's like they're on skis. Didn't seem to matter what size... they might take varying amounts of time to be pushed up to the ford, but the minute they hit those fords they just zoom whether they're 20mm or 88s. Maybe they're just using the backblast to ride the things across. "Achtung, Fritz! Fire!" BLAM! "Wheeeeeee!" (Or German equivalent)

Wow! I didn't realize the people of Quebec were that far ahead of us in technology. No wonder they want to leave the rest of us backwards countrymen. Heheh, I mean no offense, your english is certainly at least 3000 times better than my french. I just found that quote too awesome to leave alone.

Hmmmmm... are you "previewing" the map? The flags won't appear on the terrain editor grid, but they show up like any other unit when you preview the map, allowing you to place them at will.

They got several copies in to the NE Futureshop quite soon after the release date... and at the very reasonable price of $39. Still have no idea how the Canadian price matched up with the US one so neatly. I tell ya, software retail has me more and more convinced that whoever's in charge of pricing just spins a wheel, multiplies that price by the current phase of the moon, then sets it to $60-$70 anyway if they had a good dinner the previous night. Still, if that whole insane process somehow ends up with me getting CMBB for less than even Battlefront offers, in US dollars no less, then I certainly won't complain.

I believe the higher firepower rating at range is due to the fact that the LMGs are being assisted by the other SMG-bearing members of the squad. Once the distance is closed enough for the SMGs to be effective, the '42s are left on their own while the '40s use the opportunity to prove their worth. Or maybe once the enemy gets that close, the LMGers just always panic, pick up their weapon and start firing wildly from the hip until they fall over. Yeah, just think of it that way. And your games will be all the more fun thanks to the imagined zany antics of those kooky MG42s.

Or friend Mr. 1123, in his dapper olive green helmet with matching radio handset(?) and an exceedingly fine mustache, is a proud icon for the American Airborne artillary spotters, '44 through '45. Get yours today! Topographical Coordinate Action Map, Fire For Effect Fedora, and totally rad VT Shades sold separately. [ April 16, 2002, 07:32 PM: Message edited by: Officer Meatbeef ]