Mud
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Posts posted by Mud
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(1) Don't ask for games which don't exist, like "CC Beyond Overlord".
(2) If you're /that/ poor, get a job or sell something, or look for somebody who bought yet doesn't like the game but for whatever reason hasn't gotten rid of his copy yet, which seems unlikely given that CM:BO isn't exactly recent. Try E-bay, or one of the marketplace Usenet groups.
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I think he's talking about penetration charts -- the colorful, circular diagrams that show, for each (ordered) pair of units, the penetration capability of the shooter vs the target depending on range and angle.
I'd be surprised if they were there; even discriminating just by gun and not vehicle for the shooter, there are a /lot/ of vehicles and that'd be an awful lot of charts to include.
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I don't yet have CMBB, but I'd figure that it means that the armor presents a curved surface (like... hm, a Panther G gun mantlet?) rather than a single flat plate. Hence, it's more complicated than having just a single angle for that facing.
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Aye, it /can/ be done, but it's unlikely, and if the vehicle's still mobile it's likely to scoot away ASAP.
Cover will help. Attacking from the rear should help, at least with a buttoned vehicle -- many CMBO vehicles lack both remote-flexible MGs and close-defense mortars. Assault guns without either of those features will be especially vulnerable when buttoned, since they'll need to turn their hull before fighting back.
Note that CMBO gives unlimited grenades. CMBB, however (being in the US, all I have so far is the demo), appears to track /regular/ grenades in addition to AT devices; at least, that's what I gather from the appearance of (single, not bundle) grenades in the inventory, which IIRC represent something like five each. (Well, it /could/ represent an abstract scarcity, e.g. more grenade symbols => more grenades present => more likely to toss one, but there's no actual counter).
1- Can you run out of grenades in CMBB?
2- Will this hurt your close-assault chances?
Somebody else will have to field that one, 'tho.
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Tungsten was scarce, and in real life you wouldn't have a "turn count" or other artificial limitations on whether or not you were going to have to make do with what you just have left against /another/ attack.
Imagine using tungsten rounds to pierce a tank that you could have KOd with AP, and then not having any left for a subsequent wave of tanks that deserve it more (perhaps they've got tougher armor, perhaps they're standing off beyond your AP's capabilities, et al). Just the possibility of this happening might discourage being too free with the tungsten.
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Hm, it could be folded into rarity or as a bias for preallocated casualties...
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Glantz and Erickson, if memory serves, both state that at different periods the military commissars had either parity or inferiority to the commanders, depending IIRC on how much faith Stalin had in his military commanders at the time.
Unless the NKVD troops were /on the actual battlefield/, they're not terribly relevant to CMBB except, _possibly_, as a fanaticism or global morale modifier, and for that you'd probably need to present bona fide evidence that they actually had the desired effect (instead of, say, encouraging outright surrender rather than flight).
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Glantz gives some figures in the conclusion of "When Titans Clashed".
German military losses, in the east, to 30 April 1945: 10,758,000 killed, wounded enough to be considered a loss, or captured.
Table A, "Red Army Personnel Losses, 22 June 1941-9 May 1945", gives Soviet military casualties as at least 29,629,205 (! presumably working form official records), including serious-enough wounds to consider losses.
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The Allies made "rhino tanks" by welding attachments to the front of Shermans. These attachments allowed the tanks to breach the bocage. In CMBO, this is modelled by letting all the Allied tanks (IIRC, only the fully-tracked vehicles do this, but I might be wrong. It's in the manual where it describes what units can move through what terrain) move through bocage after... July '44, I think.
The Germans don't get this ability, as they apparently never did this.
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A 'vanilla' Sherman is simply a normal, plain-Jane Sherman.
It sounds like you're engaging the King Tiger from the front, on a large open map. BAD. Frontal long-range engagements are its strengths.
Its strengths include:
- A good main gun that is powerful enough to matter at range.
- Pretty strong armor, making it tough to penetrate <i>at range</i>.
- It's somewhat less vulnerable to close assault than, say, many Shermans, because of the Nahrverteidgungswaffe (sp?).
Its weaknesses include:
- It's slow -- slow at moving, slow at rotating.
- It's expensive, meaning that it's unlikely to have brought many friends.
The Allied vehicles, especially the Hellcats, have manueverability and reaction time as advantages. Use them. The KT's main gun doesn't matter if your vehicles are shooting and scooting behind cover faster than the KT's turret can track you...
And if you must close-assault, strip off the accompanying infantry first just to make life a bit easier. As for the Allied guns and AT infantry, don't just open up because you've got a shot. Open up when you've got a /good/ shot.
If you want to see a NIGHTMARE scenario for a King Tiger, try a knife-fight like the bizarre bocage-maze scenario (1 elite KT vs multiple elite Stuarts (37mm!), some FTs, and a couple of AT guns).
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Nope. If you want to mod units, you're limited to changing their textures or sounds only -- no new models or game mechanics.
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Well, there's the AGP 1.0 limit which means that I wouldn't get that much bandwidth, if memory serves, but the other reasons I held back from anything more than the GF2MX400 were (a) a suspicion that the old CPU would mean that I might not get much more out of a faster card, (
cost -- it's such an old machine that it might double (or more) in value given, say, a GF4 Ti4600, while an MX400 was rather cheap © I don't play that much 3D (at the time, only Shogun:TW and CM:BO; I've dropped Shogun:TW and added Rogue Spear).I don't know how much better a PIII 500MHz is vs a PII 450, not having used 'em or ever studied them for a possible purchase. Schullencraft could probably tell you more.
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Badly.
More seriously, I spend a fair bit of time in views 3-4 (well, 3-5 in CMBB demo). As for style, I try to avoid using tactics that only make sense in the game instead of real life, like creating a mysteriously well-behaved solid wall of flame around a victory objective (which won't be quite as helpful in CMBB since it can spread...), or sending POWs or ammo-less units ahead to detect minefields (that being a war crime).
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Just something that I realized last night --
When the TC is killed, such as by a PPsh salvo from a tank hunter team, shouldn't there be a delay before the hatch is closed? I mean, wouldn't the TC, er, be in the way (assuming that he wasn't killed so forcefully that his body was flung clear)?
The one time this might actually matter would be TC-kill + one or more Molotovs/other close assault, since if the hatch is jammed open a Molotov might have a better chance of pouring some of its contents inside. Whereas now, the TC gets killed and then the hatch goes down instantly (AFAICT), which eliminates or at least probably dramatically reduces one possible way for the Molotov to kill the crew.
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Yes. Do consider upgrading that video card, 'tho; the high resolution textures will appreciate it.
My box is a 4yr-old PII 450MHz, SE440BX mobo (so AGP 1.0), w/ 384MB RAM (not sure how much matters) and a GF2MX400/64MB running W2K Pro, SP2.
Even with that setup, my difficulties w/ the CMBB demo come far more from inexperience with armor-only or conscript-heavy forces, instead of any performance issues.
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Mmm. This is the only game I've ever preordered (and I feel fine).
Now for two weeks (hopefully not three) of tasty anticipation...
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Here's another data point. First try as the Russians (after having eventualy beaten it as the Germans, after figuring out that maybe I should steer clear of the woods instead of trying to clear 'em).
I placed a battery of 6 of the 45mms back and to the right of the front hill, with a fairly narrow LOS to enemy territories.
Three of the 45mms I put in front side of the woods by the first flag, but on hide orders -- I planned to start them when the panzers were looking at the 6-gun battery, or vice versa. These guys got the HQ.
Three I put a bit further back than that, with an across-the-map view only, just in case things went really FUBAR or the AI went crazy and sped forward.
The two KV-1Ss, I put behind the front/right hill covering a narrow front view, but otherwise not exposed.
The infantry assets were fairly scattered; the only one that really made a difference was probably an ATR that I'd put in a far forward position in woods, but on the rear side and with a cover-arc aimed towards my own positions. This guy basically was set to plink the panzers from the rear. I also had some assets in the bowl closest to the enemy, to distract them and get some shots at 60-80m.
End result --
Of the 6-AT gun battery, four were destroyed fairly quickly after only immobilizing a PzIII. The remaining two, however, accounted for a few kills and kept plinking throughout the battle.
The 3 in the forward half of the forest got a few kills, without sustaining any losses or possibly without any significant return fire at all. Perhaps they weren't spotted for sure.
The KV-1Ss sustained one casualty (exactly one penetrating hit during the battle) and got the rest of the panzers, after popping out while the panzers were taking fire from the front (the woods), the front/flank (the two survivors of the gully battery), and the rear (the plucky ATR behind them). During all this fire, the panzers were basically stationary (some were known to be immobilized, the others perhaps confused).
End result was something like 89-11, FWIW after the German forces finished losing their tanks and surrendered.
Were I to replay, I'd have ignored the clump of woods smack in front of the enemy center as a probable death trap (it was), and put another ATR at least with the force meant to smack them from the rear -- or maybe even a 45mm or two, with tank hunters to protect them. I'd probably reduce the forces in the gully, as well.
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It darn well should.
Last night, I was playing the CMBB demo, "Citadel Schwerpunkt" scenario, on my aging 450 MHz Pentium II w/ 384MB RAM and a GF2MX400/64MB, at 1280x1024 IIRC. Turn computation time was a bit slow, and scrolling somewhat choppy, but it was quite playable. It also handled the full CMBO (*) pretty decently (with a whole host of vehicle and terrain mods, many of them hi-res), although chaotic armor-heavy scenarios like "Sherbrooke Fusiliers" could bog down.
I would really, really hope that your machine should handle it well.
(*) And it's relevant, because the CMBB engine is heavily based on CMBO. The full rewrite may come next if we're lucky.
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What I have problems with is vehicle-only advances, such as "A Day in the Cavalry" (CMBO operation) or the "Citadel Schwerpunkt" scenario (CMBB demo).
At least when you have infantry in a decent quantity, and ample turns, you can spend some time probing with small groups e.g. split squads some distance in advance of the main force. If there are woods or other nice terrain/cover that look like they'd be a good choice for an ambush to spring (on you), you can check them out. If you don't have time to check out everything (do you ever?), then you can at least check out positions that could be most damaging, and try for overwatch on other areas. As long as the recon doesn't stray THAT far from your attack groups, and isn't used most absurdly (e.g. a solo suicidal split squad rushing right past a known machinegun nest just to peer behind a wall or into a building and telepathically report all they can see before they die), an opponent shouldn't complain.
If all I have are vehicles, however, and there are a decent number of woods or other cover around, then I'm not at all sure what to do. Recon by fire isn't (even with the improved MGs in CMBB) that reliable against somebody unspotted, in good cover, and in a foxhole, and you can park vehicles for a while right outside and not spot ambushers inside for some time. If you ignore them, however, then you may expose a flank to a small hidden AT gun, or perhaps an ATR (14.5mm => 800m range), MG (a concern esp. if you've got thin-skinned vehicles, or you need those TCs e.g. tanks w/o radios) or a zook-type weapon. Hm.
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Erickson (The Road to Stalingrad) also mentions tanks inside the city, e.g. page 404 cites a 62nd Army war diary noting "Up to two enemy companies with 30 tanks in support moving on `specialist houses'".
Page 408 notes that the remnants of one 13th Guards holed up in a building; after the survivors stalled a German column, tanks were used to demolish the building. The same page notes that inside Stalingrad itself, the Germans often used armor in this role -- the levelling of strongpoints after they've been identified by the infantry.
And page 410 notes that German tanks operated w/n 150 yards of the western bank of the Volga, where they could fire on Soviet reinforcements attempting to cross.
Page 412 states that "After 25 September... Eleven German divisions were arrayed before 62nd Army, three Panzer divisions (14th, 24th and 16th), two motorized (29th and 60th), six infantry divisions (71st, 79th, 94th, 100th, 295th and 389th). The 16th Panzer Division was on Chuikov's right flank, the 389th Infantry Division, moved out of reserve, in the Gorodishche-Razgulayayeva area, 295th Infantry Division reinforced with armour near Mamayev Kurgan, 71st and 76th Infantry Divisions in Stalingrad 1-i and the central landing stage, four divisions including 14th and 24th Panzer in the southern reaches of the city. For a new attack on the factory district the German command had also set about regrouping: the 71st Infantry Division, one of the crack divisions of the German Army, was to mount the attack on the Krasnyi Oktyabr factory settlement and the 100th J\"{a}ger Division was assigned to the attack on Mamayev Kurgan."
(Pardon my TeX...)
Description of the assault continues on 413, noting movement by 150 German tanks from Gorodischche and Razgulyayeva, up to 80 tanks going to Krasnyi Oktyabr, and so forth.
There are undoubtably more references there (I just looked at a few pages), but from that I'd conclude that there were rather nontrivial amounts of German armor involved within the city itself (and, although I didn't quote it, aircraft and arty support as well).
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It would have been nice, but not possible until an engine rewrite or two.
If they'd worked and worked until the very first engine was complete with all the features we've screamed for (e.g. full-battle movie replays, allowing arbitrary pairs of opposing nations e.g. Heer versus SS, a dynamic lighting model, solid vehicles...) maybe it would have ended up as late as (the still AWOL, as far as I know) rather ambitious _War in Russia_.
I'm guessing that the small size of BFC (well, BTS when they released, IIRC) and the need to actually release and generate some revenue to support themselves meant that they had to make a /lot/ of compromises, like hard-coding. Hopefully many of these will be rectified in a rewrite or two.
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Additional CD drives are cheap these days, in case that REALLY matters to you...
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Plus, you might want to let somebody get deeper into a killing zone before you unleash fire.
Say you can set up multiple HMGs to cover a field, and behind the field is a forest that the enemy will come through.
If you let your HMGs fire at will, at widest arc, they might start when the enemy's still in the woods (say, nearing the edge). They'll have a decent amount of cover, and they'll be further away.
If the arcs are narrower, and your enemy suitably oblivious
, you might be able to catch him in the open where you can better pin him down and massacre him.The same /might/ hold for AT guns, if you're expecting to see a serious armor convoy (e.g. letting the column come closer so you might nail multiple enemies before they can respond; if you let your AT gun zap the first one 'round the corner, the others might back off before you can kill them).
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I'm pretty sure a Mastercard was what I used for buying CMBO, as well (*). Mind you, it was at least a year after I'd heard about the game, so maybe policy changed 'tween initial release and when I bought.
(*) I did have a Visa card as well at the time, but I've never used it except on purchases that would exceed my bank's debit card limit -- which CMBO, at ~$45, definitely did not. So I'm pretty sure I used the MC debit.
Since you use Citibank -- I seem to recall that Citibank offers a lil' program which generate single-use credit card numbers (and you can set a dollar limit on the transaction size, further reducing the risk). If you're worried, you might want to look into it and see whether they offer the same program for debit card users.
cost -- it's such an old machine that it might double (or more) in value given, say, a GF4 Ti4600, while an MX400 was rather cheap © I don't play that much 3D (at the time, only Shogun:TW and CM:BO; I've dropped Shogun:TW and added Rogue Spear).
much more realistic, but is it more fun?
in Combat Mission Archive #4 (2002)
Posted
EFOW + improved machine gun modelling + cheaper fortifications + less protection when moving + different rates of ammo use depending on proximity + prep barrages + ... improves the "feel" for me. And, where problems with realism penalized real-world rational play or promoted game-world-only play, I'd say the game has improved.
I don't find it as much "fun" when gameyness like using *winds to shred buildings (faster than SP guns!) or when MGs focus on individual squads without suppressing an area, and I'll likely be happier when the Mother of All Gaminess (borg spotting) is dealt with in the rewrite.