Mud
-
Posts
366 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Never
Posts posted by Mud
-
-
MasterGoodale --
All units have an assigned cost. There is a base cost, based on BFC's view of the unit's combat effectiveness. This is modified by the unit's experience level, e.g. Crack units cost more than Green. This can be further modified by unit rarity (e.g. the Sturmmorser Tiger is, er, *very* rare and may get something like a +900% price modifier even in the months where it's available). Oh, and more expensive units are worth more casualty / exit points.
For Quick Battles (not Scenarios / Operations; for these, the scenario designer does all the choosing), the battle itself has a point value. For instance, a 1000-point battle gives 1000 points to the defender, and 1000*some_ratio (depending on battle type, e.g. Assaults give more to the attacker than Attacks which give more than Probes) to the attacker. There are further limitations on how the points can be spread among Infantry, Support, non-armor Vehicles, Armor, Artillery/Aircraft, and Fortifications based upon force type.
-
Note that the penetration tables are versus "typical" enemies. Performance may vary given the different varieties of ammo... even if you hit. There's only room for one table, and there are no buttons that let you say "Suppose the opponent's armor is face-hardened" or "Suppose it has some armor bolted on" or "Suppose it's spaced armor".
(M3 isn't a Sherman; it's a halftrack, or the designation of the 75mm gun /on/ the earlier M4 Shermans. Do you mean the M4A3(75), or the rather superior gun on the M4A3(76)?)
-
In the CMBB (and CMBO, for that matter) installation trees, there are 'wav' and 'bmp' directories. These hold, respectively, sound files (as .wav; Unix 'file' tells me they're Microsoft PCM, 16 bit, mono 44100 Hz *shrug*) and textures (as Windows bitmaps). Mods may replace any or all (!) of these files.
For a VERY simple example, consider the minefield signs. They're 1220.bmp (AP) and 1224.bmp (AT, both buried and daisy-chain), and by default they use the same color scheme and are a bit tough to distinguish from a high-level view. If you want to change the AT one, you could edit 1224.bmp however you choose such as by changing its background color to a dark gold.
Now, consider a more complicated example. Suppose you want gridded grass and snow . Grass is actually multiple textures -- 40 (1550-1589, 1470-1489, 1870-1889). You /could/ edit them all by hand, but that would be tedious, and you'd need macroing capabilities to produce identical edits. A saner process would be
(1) Designing your grid texture. For instance, for my use I made a 256x256 image that's mostly white, but has grey lines that, when tiled, form an octogon-and-square mix.
(2) Using an automated tool like ImageMagick + a Perl script to apply this texture as a bump map to the grass/snow.
Mods, then, are primarily collections of modified .bmp files (usually) or .wav files (some sound mods have been made) which replace, say, all the texture sets for the different T-34s or whatever. You can use whatever image editor or sound editor you're comfortable with, so long as you have a way to produce .bmp and .wav files. Also, since they're just .bmp and .wav files, they affect aesthetics, but not game mechanics.
(Edit: Adding some more info.
As to /what/ can be modded:
- Every single one of 2,324 .wav files, from the opening theme (I'm using a .wav converted from an .mp3 of the Soviet { and current, IIRC } National Anthem }.
- .bmps for Uniforms, vehicles, small arms, explosion animations, buildings, the sky, terrain... There appear to be 5,987 .bmps in my CMBB bmp directory...
For a very strange, fairly large "themed" mod, try searching for the "SS Weihnachtengrenadier" for CMBO (sp?) mod, featuring Coca-Cola trucks, snowmen, a candy-caned interface, at least one scenario, and a Jingle Bells .wav, IIRC).
)
[ November 04, 2002, 12:19 AM: Message edited by: Mud ]
-
Sinclair --
BTS has repeatedly stated, and tests strongly suggest, that there is no AI bonus beyond anything that they're explicitly given, e.g. handicapping.
More tips --
* Don't reveal your AFVs until you need to.
* Don't sit there firing from one place for multiple turns, unless you have a /huge/ advantage (e.g. hull-down JagdTiger engaging T-34/76 at 2.5km away)...
* Pay attention to terrain and LOS. This is absolutely key, unless you're playing on an utterly inane map like a pool table.
* When you do, employ them in force, not piecemeal. Got a platoon? Even if they have radios, don't spread them across the map -- e.g. 4 4-on-1s are far better than 4 1-on-1s.
* On the other hand, if you have two platoons, it may make sense -- if you have sufficient infantry to screen in front of them -- to separate the two, so they can catch an enemy from different angles. This might be considered gamey depending upon how unrealistic the amount of required coordination is, however...
-
(1) Are the 878 / 478 numbers casualties, or are they points from casualties?
(2) Pre-game casualties -- e.g. in a Quick Battle, the losses that occur with a non-0% casualties setting -- are currently counted in the "casualties" total, but no points are given for them.
-
Oh, the realism improvements have made it a LOT more fun for me, as they encourage far more reasonable tactics, which should allow much more rational scenario design.
"A Battle of Minors" as attacker is absolutely tasty; enough units for manuever, but not too many; plenty of interesting terrain to teach the importance of concentrating firepower, of overwatch, and when to use the different movement commands; and the delightful dilemma of when and where to move up your AFVs when every patch of woods could hold an ATR, gun, or AT rocket team. On the other hand, that sort of map under CMBO rules might lead to an absurd attacker rush, taking advantage of the weaker MGs, the extensive use of cover even when fast-moving, the generally weaker suppressive effects...
-
I've seen this as well. Oh, and speaking of gun kills... Shouldn't the FOW lift on gun kills, just as it does for vehicles (e.g. listing "Flak 88" and not just "gun") when the battle is over? It seems a trifle odd that there's fine detail for AFV kills, but not for guns.
-
AcePilot -- it's possible, if he allowed vehicles to move from lane to lane after destroying their opponents in their own lanes. Of course, this completely annihilates the "independent trial" assumption and drops his number of tests WAY below the recommended 30. It would also mean that he'd be estimating the hypothesis (the ratio of kills seen by, say, playing one side) on just six observations...
-
I have no craving for additional pure eye-candy, but that doesn't mean that I'd oppose graphical / interface improvements that provide additional functionality. It may even be possible to justify some unrealistic playing aids such as the ability to toggle a grid or elevation lines, given that the player is also unrealistically hampered by engine limitations (Example: the player plays not only a high-level Bn- or Co- level commander, but also everybody down to squad-level because he can't delegate... and it would be rather much to expect, given the AI and interface nastiness that would result. You can't expect a natural language parser, for instance. This means that the player essentially needs to remember every detail that his soldiers need to, because they won't do it for him.)
I wouldn't mind, for instance, seeing unit ID labels (e.g. "T-34?") on a high-level map, to save the need for clicking them individually. It would be very useful to be able to select a friendly unit, and get a display showing what it can see (e.g. a 360-arc shading parts of the map depending on quality of LOS) rather than sweeping w/ the LOS tool; being able to select multiple units and see what they can see would be even spiffier (check for blind spots). Inverse LOS (which of my units can see this location and how well) would also be nice...
Additional play aids could summarize knowledge that a soldier might have, but the player (who may not have any military experience whatsoever) might not. For instance, an experienced artilleryman might be able to tell me the likely area that a given fire mission would cover -- however, the game won't tell me the spread, so as a non-soldier I might have an unjustified difficulty in knowing how much of a safety margin there needs to be. A MG might be able to tell me whether fire at a given range is likely to suppress, or to actually incapacitate, instead of harder-to-interpret FP numbers (something like this is already done for AT fire -- hit/kill probs.). A squad might be able to tell me "I can bellycrawl there, sure, but it'll probably take 10 minutes and I'll be exhausted." And so forth...
-
Changed my sig? Hm. Not that I know of... probably just cleared the checkbox by mistake.
-
That's some darn good shooting... and a considerable amount of armor. Large point budget, I take it?
-
Actually, it would be. You think a WWII commander at any level above, say, the squad, would know PRECISELY where all his individual soldiers are at any given time? Even the platoon lieutenant won't know that at all times...
-
A somewhat related question that's been disturbing me:
How is the 75mm AT cannon on a certain Heinkel aimed? Surely it's not automatic (!), so AT + single-shot (by the time you reload, you've moved quite a distance) + flying through the air at decent speed would seem to suggest that tagging an AFV should be pretty difficult...
-
Originally posted by Mercury:
I was soooooo looking forward to battling it out with a few lethal poodles.
If they've got these beasts in Sudden Strike 2 I'm gonna convert to that game. Its got to be more historically accurate, right?
-
Some adjustments for those used to CMBO:
I've played CMBO since Day 1 by sneaking into Charles' house nightly and finding the daily builds. I used to love taking down those arrogant big cats with my Super Pershings. How do I need to change my tactics when fighting for Comrade Stalin, the Motherland, and the right to not be invaded by the Wehrmacht?
If you mostly played the Americans, you may find yourself missing the ubiquitious flexible machineguns, rifle grenades, and bazookas. As the Soviets, you'll need to work much harder if you've got infantry against armor, because you may have no more "special" weapons than a Molotov... and you may pay a far higher price for neglecting AA guns. Not only will you have, in general, fewer flexibles to provide basic AA defense, but aircraft may be more robust and their armaments can be quite impressive in CMBB.
The anti-tank rifles, on the other hand, are new to CMBB. These teams are very difficult for the opponent to spot and identify, and fire tungsten rounds that have a pretty decent chance to score a penetration. However, they are rather small rounds, so against genuine medium tanks you can count yourself rather lucky if they get an immobilization, let alone a kill.
In addition, with the larger maps in CMBB, long-range engagements are a bit more likely. Combine this with the optics modelling and the often significantly lower muzzle velocity of the Russian tank guns (Compare the T-34/76's "F-34" 76.2mm/L41.5 gun with the long-barreled PzIV "KwK 40" 75mm/L48. The former gets 662m/s w/ BR-350A AP ammo, with 71mm penetration of 90-degree armor at 500m; the latter, 790m/s with a faster, heavier PzGr39 AP round that penetrates 114mm at the same range and slope, according to Achtung Panzer's PzIV page.), and you may find yourself at a significant accuracy and penetration disadvantage. Plus, there's no bocage to narrow the ranges and constrict only the enemy's movements... This game, don't overlook tank destroyers like the SU-100 w/ its "D-10" 100mm/L54 gun, or long-barreled AT guns... or at least, don't pretend you have heavily-armored, very well-armed Super Pershings ruling the battlefield.
Another adjustment is that your artillery delays are much longer than for the Americans in CMBO. The Soviet artillery system was not especially responsive, and some of your spotters may be hampered further by needing to contact higher-level artillery assets that are not specifically assigned to your unit. In addition, your spotters using wire instead of radio will be slower at getting into position for spotting. Learn to love the preparatory barrage, especially with high-level artillery in heavier calibers.
-
More notes.
In operations:
- Units keep their placement, but lose their cover arcs. Seems odd.
- Would it be possible to add, to the briefing, information about parameters such as the level of resupply, or at least the amount of time between battles?
- The saved game default always seems to be "Untitled". It could probably be the name of the operation, maybe concatenated with the battle number.
- Maybe it's this particular operation lacks a "No Mans Land" setting, but in "SoviettownnorthofKharkov Roadblock", a few German AFVs materialized literally right next to some of mine at the start of Battle 3. My AFVs were far-enough forward at the end of Battle 2 to be locked-down, but apparently the AI was permitted to put units around them. (Not that the enemy vehicles lasted very long...).
-
Off-map artillery:
If the spotter is still on the map, you can find out (and, in CMBB, FOW is lifted at end of game, so you find out the /real/ number). If he's left the map, there's no way as far as I can tell.
Minefields, I could see... they just need to be selectable.
The problem is aircraft: either their needs to be a whole new interface/method to getting kill counts (because they didn't stick around), or... the only way the "select a unit to find out how many kills it had" method would work would be if the aircraft were somehow converted to on-map units at the end of the game.
-
Both 29.42 and 30.82 should work fine, IIRC; I'm using 30.82 w/ a GF2MX400/64MB and Win2KPro, for what it's worth.
-
How do I capture vehicles?
You can't. You can purchase captured vehicles for a Quick Battle, or receive them from a scenario designer, but you cannot capture (and use) a vehicle during battle.
Where is Barbarossa?
It's not really 'where', but 'what' ('Operation Barbarossa' being the code name for the German invasion of Russia, starting June 22, 1941 or 'who' (the operation having been named for Emperor Frederick 'Red-beard' Barbarossa, b. 1152 d. 1190). Barbarossa to Berlin, then, implies that it covers from the beginning of this attack to the final days of the Red Army's assault on Berlin.
Where are the Americans | the British?
They're outside the scope of CM:BB, having mostly left this area to the Red Army. If you insist on playing them, try the previous game, "Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord".
I'm looking at the vehicle menu, and they're all greyed out?
If you're in Platoon mode, try switching to Individual. Tanks generally are available in platoons, but non-tanks may not be.
My radio-less tank was out of command due to being buttoned, but when I unbuttoned him, he was still out of command? What gives?
While buttoning/unbuttoning is instantaneous, you need to wait until the turn replay to see the command status change. It's also necessary for both tanks (commander and follower) to be unbuttoned.
-
Well, don't forget that the penetration and optics models have changed. In CMBO, most any penetration could KO a tank, while in CMBB, even a turret penetration from a decent gun won't necessarily even freak out the receiving crew enough to get them to bail, let alone KO the tank. In addition, the German vehicles might have a higher accuracy due to their optics gear.
Also... the T-34 was upgunned to the T-34/85 probably for a reason, and tank destroyers like the SU-100 also have a part to play. The IS-2's power is also quite hefty... if it hits.
-
What kind of squads are we talking about here? If you haven't tried them yet, have a look at how SMG-heavy squads (like the Soviet all-PPsh squad...) do in close quarters. Also, if one squad in good cover ambushes somebody on the move in worse cover, it can be over fairly quickly.
-
Hrrrrrrm, you didn't select the Operations list by mistake, did you? They should both be in the Scenario section.
Actually -- did you have any issues installing the game? I could be wrong, but I seem to recall that for those whose drives that had trouble reading the CD (some glitch in the CD manufacturing stage), some or all of the scenarios went missing. If those scenarios really aren't in the list, you may want to eyeball your CD and compare it with what's described in the tech forum ("CMBB install issues").
-
Why only the MG?
It's the only crewed weapon of the bunch -- you don't, for instance, have one guy aiming a Kar98 and another guy fetching ammo for it, or changing barrels. A submachine gun/machine pistol is the same way: one guy fires it, reloads it, and unjams it if need be.
A machinegunner needs somebody to keep feeding it belts of ammo, and to change its barrels as well. If the gunner's alone, he needs to at least periodically stop firing to fuss around with ammo...
-
It'd be useful.
Another map-related toy I wouldn't mind seeing would be the ability to add a landmark-style visible-only-to-the-owning-player annotation to the map, rather than having to take a screenshot and make notes on that. (I'd consider printing out a level 4, 5 or 8 view and writing on it... if I had a printer). Maybe in the rewrite...
If its a movie, where are the subtitles?
in Combat Mission Archive #4 (2002)
Posted
Hm. How do you put coherent subtitles when so many units may be screaming at once all over the screen?