Haohmaru

I will heartily volunteer for the role of shooting at these Indians, I'm sure I can make their cries believable

In any case, I will certainly be buying CMAK, the main reason being able to play as the aussies. And you have to admit, the new Sherman models look absolutely beautiful, when I compare them with the CMBO ones it's like chalk and cheese.

One reason it is getting so much attention is because BFC has been billing this as one of CMAK's major new features. If they are going to use it as a selling point for the game, then it should get some scrutiny, and it should work properly. The M3 even features prominently on the splash screen, so how can we not think about it?

...Oh, and the funniest thing about Japanese people trying to speak Japanese is not their confusion about telling the difference between "l" and "r", but rather the fact that they MUST place a vowel after a consonant, with the exception of the letter "n". So, the way they pronounce McDonald's is Ma-Ku-Do-Na-Ru-Do!!!!! By the way, I'm not trying to look down on these people here, I lived in Japan for 2 years and am currently in Thailand, a lot of them speak English better than foreigners in their countries can speak their languages.

Language problems are not the same for all asian countries, they each have their own unique flavour. In Thailand for example, people can not easily pronounce "l" when it comes after a vowel, because in Thai language, although there is an "l" sound, it is pronounced as an "n" when after a vowel. So I always have people say thigns to me such as "Do you like footbon?", it takes me a while to work out they are talking about football!

Very interesting article about the M3, and it does raise a few questions. Obviously in CM you cannot distinguish between hull down, exposing only the top turret, and hull down, exposing almost everything so the 75mm gun can fire but hiding a little bit of the tank. that's a good observation about the mg being blocked too. I think by "indirect" fire support the article is talking about hitting fortified positions with HE, not firing at a tank, as it would be almost impossible to hit a tank if you cannot see it or aim at it directly! And just looking at the way the M3 fires in CMAK, it's shooting straight at the tank, not lobbing the shells in the air AVRE style. So, it would be good to hear from Madmatt or someone for an explanation, is this how it is meant to be, or is it a limitation of the old engine? Also, as stated before, I'd like to know if any of the allied vehicles have some kind of rating for optics, otherwise playing as them is going to feel like playing as the Russians again. Haoh

Also, have you noticed that when tracking a target both guns rotate and elevate in unison? Even though only one of them fires, it looks like they are completely dependant on each other. I've yet to see one gun shoot at one target and the other shoot at something else. Haoh [ November 22, 2003, 10:42 PM: Message edited by: Haohmaru ]

Correct Correct again IMO, Hull down in CM means hiding as much of the vehicle as possible behind a small rise or other terrain feature, while (Here's the important part) still being able to fire it's main gun . </font>

I just lined up a Grant and StuG III and compared the height of both vehicle's 75mm gun. The StuG's barrel is lower, and that vehicle has no problem firing from a hull down position. </font>

Yes, I am aware of that, as I said in my post all of the allied units have nothing listed which means standard optics. But my point is, do the entire allied forces have only standard optics while the Germans have a range of different fancy types? It doesn't sound right to me. Or is it just the units represented in this particular battle?

I actually saw this exact thing happen for the first time in CMBB just the other night. A T34 was moving full speed trying to get into a valley out of sight of my forces when a shot took it out directly in its left side. As it was slowing down it veered to the left side off the road it was on. I love the vehicle physics in CM, now all we need is rag doll physics for the infantry casualties One thing I've noticed that's different is fires seem to start a lot more quickly and frequently, no doubt due to the high temperature in the desert. In Furhlingswine after about 10 turns there were several patches of brush which had brewed up, and they quickly became full strength fires. Haoh

Hi there, I just downloaded the demo and tried out Furhlingswind. Overall, I'm very impressed with the new sounds, allied units, and the overall look and feel of the desert. I have noticed a few things though... Firstly is about optics. From the demo it seems that once again only the German units have optics modelled, because at least from looking at all the units on the allied side, none of them have mention of anything different from standard optics. The CMBB manual states that Russian optics were not implemented due to lack of information, that is fair enough. Now I know absolutely nothing about the subject, but surely there would be plenty of information available about American, British etc optics. So, my question is, are they modelled, and if not, why not? It seems unfair to give these bonuses to only the German side. Secondly, I found in this scenario that the M3 exhibited a few strange behaviours. When my M3s were shooting at some armored cars, at least one of them was using it's ap rounds in the 75mm gun, even though it was a very weak target and it only had about 20 ap for that gun compared with 60 ap with the 37mm gun. Unless there was some special reason such as the smaller gun had little to no chance of hitting, I think the tacai needs some tweaking on how it decides which gun to fire. Also, I have noticed that the lower 75mm gun can fire while the tank is hull down, I would have thought given the design of the tank this would be impossible. Is this due to game engine limitations or what? Hope to hear some answers. Haoh

You've really wasted two cents as well. I've wasted 6 cents and about 3 minutes, the clock is ticking...

This is one of the most rediculous conversations I've read. Lets organise a boycott of CM until they fix this "bug"!

Are the buttons really backwards? When the movie is playing, the play button flashes on and off. I interpret this like the display on a vcr, when a video is playing, there will be a flashing play light on the display. Now when you click again it will show that the movie is paused. Why do people make a big deal about this?

Yes, simultaneous fire from mgs and main gun is a good theory. Since you can't track kills with FOW on I have no idea at what point this error occured. Again, I'm not trying to say that this is a game killer or a big deal, my point is that some sort of bug has occured and one wonders how often this sort of thing happens. It may have been some kind of glitch due to the fact the soviets were so densely populated and were getting mowed down very quickly, who knows. Haoh

It was very interesting reading about the fortifications bug, and now I have found another one. If this problem has been noted many times before I apologise, I am only new to CMBB. I just finished a battle against the ai where I was defending on an open map. The ai had a particularly bad day and it placed all it's troops in one concentrated position in the open. By the end of the battle my Panzer IVE was credited with 156 casualties and 9 mortar kills. The bizarre thing about this was according to the AAR, a total of only 7 mortars were knocked out! I went through the soviet forces and counted the number of mortars destroyed, it was in fact 7, so why were my panzer's kill stats wrong? This is not a game killer, but with all the other oddities ie fortifications causing casualty points, killed crews not counting, split squads causing oddities(which I think has been fixed) etc, it really makes you wonder what's going on with the scoring!! Are these problems going to be cleared up in a patch or at the very least fixed for CMAK? Please do not blame the game engine on this BFC! If anyone wants to see the file I will be happy to send it. Haoh

Very interesting. I always thought that the instant drop in gl. morale at the beginning was due to initial starting casualties. Was this bug ever foun in CMBO? I certainly never noticed it, and so a bit disturbing if it's only just crept its way in in CMBB. This game has been out for one year, why no fix for this problem? Haoh

Thanks for the reply Scarhead, I've got it now. Just finished my first battle, it was surprisingly difficult when you cannot necessarily choose an optimal force. The soviets had a large armor force and I was forced to spend 1000 points on vehicles. In the end 21 vehicles dead on the soviets side, 25 on mine, for an overall result of draw and loss of favour points for me. My second battle is at night in the fog, argh! But fully supplied and fit crack troops versus green soviets with 50% casualties and 30% ammo, should be good fun. Haoh.

Sorry for the newbie questions but I have another one. I am a bit confused about allocating after battle experience. According to note 5 regarding casualties inflicted by armor: So from what I understand of this, a tank may only get experience if a minimum number of casualties greater than 1 is reached. However, the example then contradicts this: I am confused because according to the above note #5, 2 casualties should not be enough to gain +1, (min. 3) so there should only be +1 for the pillbox, not the casualties. Am I correct in assuming this is a typo here or am I interpreting the rules wrong? Cheers, Haoh

I've just downloaded and started getting into Biltong's Campaign Rules for the first time ever. I truly hope that the potentially unfavourable conditions and user-made maps make the ai a challenging opponent. If it manages to kick my butt on more than one occasion I will happily retract my remark of it being "embarassing". Again, I have yet to see the ai play particularly well but apparently with the right map, it can. I hope that in the future CM releases BFC will make some improvements that will allow the ai to inherently play well, (or better than currently) including qb generated maps, rather than designers having to "coax" intelligent behaviour from it. I am all in favour of having the option for the ai to cheat as in the methods Steve has mentioned. Who cares if it's unfair for the ai to know what you are going to do, if it makes it more of a challenge it sounds like a great idea. Haoh

Thanks for your reply. I've already gone ahead and chosen a "medium" sized map from the list, but in future I will choose something bigger if I get a force multiplier. I look forward to playing some maps which improve the ai's performance, just as in the discussion in the other thread about ai, I really want to have more of a challenge against it, that's why I'm looking forward to trying this campaign. I spend so much time playing combined arms in qb, it'll be good to have some variety. Haoh

Hi there, I've just downloaded Biltong's rules and am starting to get into it for the first time. I have a question about the map packs though. For my first battle I am supposed to play a medium sized map, but my force size multiplier is x5. Should I choose a medium map from the list of available ones, or should I choose something bigger to compensate for this? Cheers, Haoh [ November 02, 2003, 09:20 PM: Message edited by: Haohmaru ]

Uh... is it just me or does that sound like "you can try to make the squirrel have a hairy tail"? Aha, you mean make the human dumbER! Hey presto, no problemo. Just take a six-pack or two. You might want to ask a sober friend to help you in clicking the go-button after that, though. </font>

Wow, with even some scenario designers chipping in here, this is becoming a big discussion! It is starting to gain somewhat of a nasty tone however between Steve and JasonC, so I think I am going to pull a Romania and step out of the battle. I do like JasonC's suggestions but as Steve has plainly said, they are the ones who understand what can and can't be done with the code in its current form and he doesn't. Not knowing anything about it myself, I think JasonC has underestimated the complexity of the game. Example, about the idea of analysing the map grid for threat zones, good LOS zones etc, that is ok but one 20m x 20m tile is not uniform, there might be one good position on it with good LOS + cover, but another part of it might obscure LOS altogether. So for the ai to really make good choices in this fashion it would have to explore all angles of LOS from every single metre in the setup zone, this is a huge task. I don't like people's attitude that this should be multiplayer only. If it's going to be that way you might as well make it an MMORPG! I like to play pbem, but I don't like waiting 1 month for the result. It is good to have the facility to be able to set up a quick game and finish it in one evening. Yes I know there is tcp/ip mode, but I don't like to have time pressure, and the good thing about the ai is that it doesn't complain about doing the orders turn slowly! Anyways I have one final question in this discussion. The author of 21st Red Army Counterattacks has blamed himself for the ai's behaviour, rather than on the ai itself. So my question is, what scenario included with the cd would people recommend is a good challenge against the ai? And I'm not talking about making a challenge by adding +50% or more and +3 experience, I mean maximum +25% and +1, which is usually what I give it. Do any of the operations offer a really worthwhile challenge? I particularly like operations due to their epic nature, but I usually find that the ai has capitulated after about 2 battles and then it's not fun anymore. In conclusion, I hope CMx2 shows a much better ai. Indeed, the whole game should be revolutionary, just as CMBO was. Haoh