Cameroon

(As Spook said, Yelnia Spoiler alert) This is not just for Soviet FOOs. Any artillery plotted on the first turn is defined as a prep-barrage and cannot be altered. If you do not add delay time to the barrage it will begin falling immeadiately on turn one, otherwise it starts after the set delay.

I imagine so. I don't know which CMBO map versions are compatible. I'd feel pretty confident that if the game is telling you the map has to be in 1.12 format, then it isn't and needs to be

If I were to guess the likelihood that growing fires have more states, I'd guess REALLY low. Unless I've misunderstood, its purpose is to represent two states: on fire but not yet harmful and on fire BAD! You as the commander get to decide if the risk of charging through that small fire is worth the possibility of ending up in an inferno. Regarding fire: it'd be cool if fire spread uphill faster than downhill. Pesky rising heat

I'm in a slightly different boat, I was under the original impression that covered arc would be "cover THAT". After getting over my initial confusion (I hadn't expected to see the arc moving with the tank) I've adjusted. It means a little extra work and/or making the covered arc big enough to include the area of interest even if moving, but it works well enough for me.

I'm happy with all the changes I've seen from CMBO to CMBB so far. But if I were to pick the modification with the largest impact for me it'd be... yay! supression model. It makes the MGs effective and other smallarms too. Now I can use that MG ammo on tanks for something. I pretty much immeadiately started using covering area fire by MGs on attacks. It's pretty cool to watch almost all the available Russian MGs on Yelnia open up at the same time Speaking of MGs ... I think saw the heightened rate of fire last night while playing Yelnia. Either that or it was SMGs (but I really don't think it was). In either case, WOW. It looked like a narrow band of flame plowing into my guys.

Here's a question for you that the mention of the camoed initial positions raises. Split squads (for some fallback positions). When you rejoin squad 1B to squad 1A, does the cammo bonus for squad 1 exist? If it does, that makes it rather important to rejoin "B to A" since doing it "A to B" would lose you the camo bonus. Of course, if it doesn't keep the camo bonus then, BTS fix or do somefink And for those of you not sure what I'm referring to. Take a split squad and move part B to part A (which is, say, hiding in a foxhole). When it rejoins, the squad will be where part A was and hiding. If you move part A to part B (which is hiding in a foxhole), then you end up where part A was again, namely OUT of the foxhole and possibly not hiding.

After a short and decidely unscientific test, I am of the belief that vehicular turning in CMBB has been improved. A straight-off ninety degree turn still requires a big ol' slow down, but it isn't the stop & pivot I remember from CMBO. Other turn radii seem reasonable as well. I think the only time it will really show itself is when you've got to choose the faster overall path (min 3 waypoints) vs the smallest start delay (min 2 waypoints) for a ninety degree turn. The rest of the turn radii seem entirely fine to me.

Well, from where I sit it won't make much of a difference. I don't give long series of orders because the tactical situation usually changes much too quickly (for me anyway). Add that troops seem to tire a bit more easily in CMBB and suppress much more easily (yay) and I think long series of movement orders become much less profitable. I'm cautious about agreeing on the turns/curves aspect. If you watch carefully, the tanks "slew" around their turns without appearing to slow down much. As in, it seems that a lot of the reason to use multiple waypoints to complete a turn may have disappeared. I want to make a concerted test of this, to see how much angle you can get before you'd really need another waypoint. If it turns out that the technique of CMBO is still required, then I guess I'll sigh and be a bit put-out It strikes me that at least part of the new waypoint system would be to curtail the plotting of excessive waypoints in order to quickly change the behavior of a unit without having a command delay. Everything considered, CMBB is designed such that the pace of combat is slowed significantly. I'm not saying that slowing combat was a major goal, it's just what happened. [edit] Heh, darn, my post didn't make it before BTS At least my guess about the excessive waypoints was right. [ September 10, 2002, 01:50 AM: Message edited by: Cameroon ]

Well, only in so much as they don't bother advancing cautiously. I advance by platoon under a hail of suppressive MG fire from Maxims and T-34s. The AI advances more or less altogether with little heavy weapons support. I think that gives them a more aggressive appearance. Especially since all those bodies mean lots of targets for your few MGs, thus diluting their effectiveness somewhat.

Vehicle MGs are really useful with CMBB and they usually huge ammo allotments (for tanks anyway). I use three or four tanks in Yelnia for supression with their MGs. Area target is your friend!

Really? I'd be on the opposite side saying how few I'd seen (compared to CMBO). Given the number of hits against those panzers in Citadel it surprises me not at all that some hit the guns. Fifteen tanks, maybe 7 hits per tank (on average, but maybe that's just my luck ) is just about 2% ... doesn't seem too bad to me. And none of those actually damaged the gun. Actually, immobilizations were the thing that plagued me the last time I played Citadel as the Germans. None from bogging, but 4 (5?) from AT shots. Still won though

Actually something similar to this came up in the CMBO days. During development they had crews automatically targetting the known "soft spots" on AFVs. Problem was, it was way too good at taking out vehicles. Perhaps with the improved penetration algorithms in CMBB this would be different, no way to know without being told though. So then they changed it such that the crew aims at the center of mass of the vehicle. From there, any deviation is due to the inclusion of randomness. After all, it'd be kind of silly if crews hit exactly whatever they aimed at all the time

Thanks, guess I missed it then. Carry on..

I think that's in the FAQ over on the CMBO board somewhere, but don't quote me In any case, it's the same as CMBO. Something to do with having to track the individual walls in order to make mouse-holing (that's the term, right?) possible.

Has anyone else seen this? I can post a screenshot if need be. This is in the total casualities and # of men killed sections, not the points section.

Read what Scipio has said above to Michael. And you can make someone notice that something is important and of common interest when many people express the same/similar opinion.</font>

Yes, I think that it does - certainly if you've got a Hull MG, as it needs to tell you if you are area targeting - maybe only if you use the targeting tool.</font>

The point those who are saying, "Why another thread?", are making is that we've already been over this. BFC/BTS is well aware of the opinion (and probably fact - though I play them quite a bit) that the CMBB demo is not as replayable as the CMBO demo. So rehashing it over and over does what? You can't make them know the opinion more. The demo in your hands won't magically change. The best that could happen would be a scenario download, but we hardly need another thread about this. If they're going to do that, they'll do it.

It leads to the StratCom page, might want to fix that

[spoiler? Probably not but...] Every time I look at a tank and see C I think that. Especially the KV-1S loadout where I really want something better than its piddly AP round to fire at the panzers.

If this is to meant toward me, yes I understand obviously, that graphics cards don't speed up caculation times. That is not at all my reasoning for getting a new vid card. I got some extra dough now and its just time for new vid card. </font>

Graphics cards won't do anything for the turn calculation, obviously. I'm sorry, I don't see why people are alarmed. CMBB adds a lot of complexity to an already complex game so of course it will be slower to calculate turns. My machine, a lowly 350mhz G3, gets through Yelnia just fine. There's 4 companies of infantry plus 6 tanks on that small map and I don't notice anything particularly "alarming" about the turn calculations. I hope I'm not stepping on anyone's toes, maybe I'd feel the same if my CMBO turns took 15 seconds to calculate and were now taking over a minute.

Edited because Madmatt's post indicated that they understood what tero and I were talking about. I definitely don't "want to have my cake and eat it too". I just don't want to have to wait until turn 2 to start using my FOO as normal, I want to be able to use him "normally" starting with turn one. I understand this is unlikely to change since it is only a 1 minute delay (have to wait until turn 2). Still, might be cool to see "Divisional Prep" in the command list on turn one for FOOs . [ September 06, 2002, 03:41 PM: Message edited by: Cameroon ]

What if you have very little ammunition and you want to conserve it or you simply need it eleswhere ? You can not call off the strike if you set it up during the first turn. I just wonder if people would find it useful to have an option between a zero delay "preplanned" and a regular with the appropriate delays. Even during the first turn.</font>

Thanks for the suggestions. I ended up putting a 2 ATGs and 2 ATRs on the reverse side of the small, right-hand-side hill right near the Axis setup and facing them to get rear shots on the tanks. This worked well, for one ATG taken out the Axis lost 5 tanks and refused to go near that flank any longer. I think I finally figured out where to place my ATGs near the first flag in the woods. I managed to cause quite a bit of havok, but not nearly as much as I would have liked. More experimentation required In the end, I did manage a total victory due largely to the rather lucky performance of my extreme forward AT element. I guess losing 1/3 of your force at the start might have an impact Wicky, how many panzers did your KVs handle? If I'm lucky my KVs get one or two tanks and maybe live. If I'm unluck, my KVs die (and a number of times burning, no less). In my victory, I was lucky. They took out two tanks and lived (though one was immobilized).