Mud

I like it. It should also apply readily to non-functional tanks, methinks -- including the ones that aren't smokin' and thus don't yet provide cover at all. Say, er, is there a reason why roadblocks, bunkers and PBs don't provide cover? You'd think they'd be far easier to handle, AI-wise, than vehicles, since they don't move at all...

Yep. Even a regular squad can lob a grenade into the slot, if they're close enough and don't die first, or if they're at the back door of the pillbox -- no demo charges or AT weapons req'd. Of course, the back door might be covered by other defenders. So it might not be desireable to commit the expensive engineers, but rather to save them and their very limited demo charges in case of minefields or a strongpoint where the demo charge really is needed.

The files contain the actual movies right now, right (well, full combat results and so forth)? If, during the engine rewrite, they change it so that what gets sent is only the minimum information needed to generate the movie (the orders, current state, and complete pseudorandom number generator configuration) then both systems should be able to generate identical movies on their own. That should result in smaller files... of course, it'd need to run through the math every viewing, unless there was an option to stick the movie in the saved file once it'd been (locally) generated.

Hmmmm. On second thought, the original sequence did have the same potential problem I was thinking of (Player B finding a way to watch the movie before he sends it -- you haven't changed the amount of information there, so it's an old issue, not a new one). So it's a concatenation of Steps 5 and 7. *frown* That should actually work then, assuming that both parties are, as usual, trusted not to crack the files. My bad.

It takes both players' sets of orders to make a movie. You should be easily able to work out the fallacy from there.

Whenever I tried Chance Encounter, what struck me was that the AI moved its StuGs through the gap in the woods, piecemeal. That made 'em easy to handle as I kept my Sherms clustered so they all had near-identical LOS to that region -- meaning that each StuG had a good chance of getting KO'd before the next StuG came up to assist. Clearing the woods seemed a bit more problematic. Enemy units placed at the back edges of the woods and thus quite possibly out of LOS of your tank support can inflict nontrivial casualties during the final mop-up turns if you get careless.

Hmmm. Somewhat random order, and of varying degrees of importance and difficulty... - Relative spotting. - Better machinegun modelling. - Mouse-holing. - Solid vehicles with per-model hit-area probabilities; e.g. probability of turret hit vs. hull hit differs depending on size. Serious can of wyrms, however; TacAI would need to be smarter, both for vehicles (not blocking each other when it'd be a bad idea to do so) and infantry (e.g. taking advantage of moving cover). - Better handling of building damage. The 'winds are a bit too nasty here. - Smarter "finding cover" logic for infantry. - Dynamic lighting. Can o' wyrms, probably. - SOP menus. - Better handling of area fire special situations. For instance, if you target a known-occupied building w/ an SP gun, and the occupants pop their heads (stealing the SP's targetting focus) and then hide again, the SP gun will not resume smashing the building. If the building itself could be designated a "hostile" for the SP gun then hm. It would also be nice to be able to order an arty spotter to fire, but to have it stop firing when there are no suspected enemy contacts in the area -- mostly applicable when you're trying to smash multiple targets such as a troop concentration crossing an area that you have good LOS over. - Speaking of building designations, it would be nice if a building could get a VL designation that would be degraded or removed with building damage/destruction (e.g. representing something that's only really worth it if taken intact). - Smaller terrain tile size. - Option to show all known target lines at once, outgoing AND incoming. - Persistent waypaths/waypoints, and otherwise better movement coordination between multiple units (like designating a group to move at the speed of the mobile slowest member). - More information about units in QB unit selection, like summary of historical role, rarity, that sort of thing -- essentially "What the heck is a ---, and why would I want one?". - The ability to overlay a numbered grid on the map, obviating the need for two sets of textures. Might be useful for an AAR, or if there is ever any forum of cooperative play. Or for those who play multiple CM games simultaneously -- it'd facilitate note-taking. - AT teams that are far less likely to interrupt their sneaking to take an unrealistic frontal shot at a tank some 100m away. If they can estimate the hit/kill probabilities, they should try to behave sensibly regarding such. This is particularly galling when they'd been ordered to sneak and then hide at a suitable ambush location.

The 280mm shaped-charge round is nasty enough to tickle a pillbox from the side, if memory serves. Most other vehicles require estimating the PB's firing arc for a safe shot at the firing slit, or distraction games (multiple vehicles far apart, hunting forward/reverse backwards, to confuse the PB's targetting).

Hm. See any buildings you want to level? Other than that, they're big enough that the "fire shortly before making contact so that the enemy is still suppressed when my troops start firing" tactic isn't terribly a great idea. For one thing, it tends to kill rather than suppress, and for another, the blast radius and scatter are both considerable...

Hm. Interesting. Can't speak as to how realistic it would be, or how difficult to model... but it would add serious niftyness. And if combined with, say, the ability to provide a briefing with inline graphics (say, a certain amount of HTML support, heh), it could add yet more immersion. The briefing map might include a 2D map with annotations and arrows drawn along it, maybe with estimates of enemy strength, while the initial 3D map would be mostly hidden. Hmmmm.

Would you rather that miracles were commonplace ?! Fanaticism *does* happen; I once had an Ami rifle half-squad, out of any HQ (once the HQ itself got killed -- itself getting 10 confirmed) get 34 confirmed kills, all at very close range, without ever breaking despite being directly in the path of the enemy's main force. But it does not, and should not, happen very often. As for biggest flaw, yes, I'd agree with absolute spotting. It distorts recon and makes masses much more coordinated than they should be, particularly when using off-board arty given their ability to target blind. Ouch, poor AT guns... Vehicles being transparent to fire also bothers me. Infantry should be able to use vehicles for cover against small-arms fire, and vehicles shouldn't be able to shoot through each other unless it's rather powerful ammo through soda cans, and even if a round went all the way through somehow there'd be a lot of energy loss.

OTOH, the new 28.23 official drivers (which, at least on my Win2K Pro/GeForce2 MX400, appear to behave sanely, e.g. the white-transparency issue remains fixed) appear to come as a single executable that is itself an automatic installer. Might be easier to simply use that set, unless it introduces horrid incompatibilities with something else you've got.

Install != unzip. Uninstall the previous driver via the Control Panel; reboot; then install (again, Control Panel time) the new version, being sure to specify that particular directory and that driver instead of any other nVidia drivers found elsewhere.

If it's a minefield, it should be pretty obvious due to the signs that'll be sticking out of the ground ASAP. An AT gun up in some treeline might be pretty hidden. Or, some location where it might get "keyhole" sighting (extremely narrow but long field of view where it's in LOS of only its victim, in general)... And, it'd probably be easier to hide than a tank. OTOH, the tank could be doing hunt/reverse, hunt/reverse... Turn of vehicles. Look at the ground where the tanks are. Are there craters *under* where the tanks were? Oh, and is the opponent American? British? It might help to narrow down what sort of guns you're dealing with -- taking out a Tiger, at least frontally, from long range rules out many of the smaller ones, anyway.

Hm. If a selected unit is being targeted for rockets or bombs by a plane, there should be a yellow targetting line leading up into the sky, plus some nasty craters afterwards if it's bombs. Replay a turn when you lose one, select the unit, and watch carefully. If there's no yellow line, then -- since planes, AFAIK, are never considered concealed in CM:BO -- you're dealing with something else entirely.

Ah, but the triple Sherman has a huge advantage in that it's turreted, giving it the ability to deliver a nasty lil' broadside if it doesn't mind exposing its side armor. Of course, only the front turret can shoot forwards... hm. Now, if the Jagdpanthers were paired Galaga-style, side by side, then the combined frontal firepower might be somewhat useful... but it should still be less effective at anything but a frontal engagement.

jjelinek -- It's not rushing the objective, by itself, that's gamey. It's doing so on the last turn, usually to throw an enemy-held flag into contention, especially when using sufficiently weak forces that, had the game lasted a few more turns, the only lasting result of the rush would be dead rushers scattered around a still-enemy-held flag. ::edit:: Yes, theoretically, this sort of thing could be resolved by automatically adding more turns if the game still appears to be in flux. But, IIRC, it's been said that this sort of thing would have to wait for the rewrite. [ March 16, 2002, 12:32 AM: Message edited by: Mud ]

Or, if you don't have a base plate, just use a shotgun-style launcher -- two barrels, dober and under.

Boo Radley -- Was it the AI controlling the Allied side? Against a human player... even on the defensive, I'd worry a bit if given an infantry FT, due to human players being more cautious about screening their vehicles with infantry, and not bunching up... except, perhaps, at night where hiding and sneaking should be easier, or in really constricted terrain like the silly (but quite aesthetically pleasing, I'd say) Bocage Maze scenario. Heck, if it was within FT range, it was also well within faust range. Ouch. Crisping infantry might be good enough, 'tho, depending on who's the screen in that area. Now vehicle FTs on the other hand... a wasp horde in a city map could be really, really annoying, I suspect...

Hm. The Ostwind and Wirbelwind are armored (lightly), if memory serves, so the HE-vs-unarmored vehicle flaw shouldn't affect them. The flak trucks (SdKfz 7/2? Don't recall precisely -- unarmored flak trucks, that is) ARE a problem, however, for the reason Bullethead mentioned. The Ostwind/Wirbelwind were rare, though, IIRC. Some also claim that they get far score gun hits than they should due to high ROF/accuracy, and tests did show that they're extremely efficient at smashing buildings (high ROF + high ammo load + way CM:BO models cumulative building damage means that they're terrific at it). If you use 'em for THAT purpose, your opponent might be right to complain.

VJ -- Would dropping the tank on a rubble tile and lowering the elevation a step work? Or is that too coarse-grained? (Speaking of which, what's the tile size in CM:BB? Hrm.) Patgod -- Enemy units can't hit the hull of the tank if it's buried, and what they CAN hit presents a smaller target. Of course, if the turret armor is very weak compared to the hull armor, this may actually be a negative (IIRC, CM:BO tanks do NOT specifically target tank parts based on relative armor strength; that is, they don't say, "My AP rounds will have a high chance of bouncing off the hull but will more easily penetrate the turret, so I'll try the latter". Digging in leaves the opponent no possible target except the turret).

Sure. You'd need - - the start state -- full information on where everything is, their status, et al. - the rules (game-world physics, et al) - the random number source state (a PRNG produces completely reproducible results if full status is saved. Could theoretically be platform-dependent depending on what they used. *shrug*) - the textures - the sound files - the orders That should be everything needed to regenerate the 3D views, I'd suspect. Of course, the texture and sound requirements mean that you probably won't be sending off fully navigable (player-controlled 3D camera transformations allowed) stand-alone videos to people who DON'T own CM, unless nobody minds the huge bandwith requirements... and even a recipient who owned CM wouldn't see the exact same video you do unless the .BMPs are identical.

Not until the engine rewrite (if then), unless things have REALLY changed. Computing the lighting effects, given terrain, weather, nearby flaming vehicles... gah. Figure that it'd open up numerous cans of wyrms, such as whether or not units should have impaired night-vision, how much and for how long... and so forth.

Somewhat related, it might be nice to see more information when looking over available units. One bit is that there's a lot of detail that's not there; for instance, armor penetration numbers, thickness and slope of armor facing in different directions (CMBO provides a range that covers... the entire vehicle? Or is that just frontal?)... basically, the 'Hit Enter' information, minus ammunition and so forth. The other branch that's not there at all (not during the battle, even) is a historical usage. It might be useful for the relatively non-groggy to learn what, say, a unit's main role was, how rare it was, whether or not it performed well, and so forth. I guess we'll get some rarity information, implicitly w/ the price adjustments, but *shrug* it might be interesting to know loosely how many were deployed or side info like that. But that's all flavor text.

'sides which, it's still a tactical game. It's not like the Soviet player could demand more or better troops earlier, claiming that he wouldn't have repeated various strategic mistakes of the past; in QBs, he'll still be limited by the point constraints imposed by CMBO/CMBB to try to present a decently fair game (no 5000-pt forces crushing 500-pt ones...), while scenarios will still rely on the discretion of the scenario designer. There were probably lopsided battles. That doesn't mean that there's any compulsion to recreate those actions; just, if you're looking at historical scenarios, find actions which were more evenly matched or otherwise interesting.