Caesar

Probably the biggest problem I have had with the command and control system that we currently have is that if I want to shift a squad a little to take into account a local tactical situation, I suffer the large delays. This means that I can't have my troops retreat/attack/whatever before it is too late even though they could obviously directly see the situation. I realise that we have to have some kind of command inhibitors to have any kind of realism but this doesn't seem to quite achieve the aim. I wonder if it would be possible to implement a sort of layered SOP approach where certain aspects of the SOP could only be changed at the highest levels (say for instance Company or Battalion) and so suffer large delays before being activated, while the rest are set at the Platoon level so are activated with little delay. The squads themselves can then move, fire whatever with no delay so long as it obeys the SOPs. I'm not entirely sure how well this would work in the game or for that matter how hard it would be to implement, but it seems to be more likely to affect CnC more realistically than the blanket delay system that we have now. The other pet peeve I have always had is the isolated troops (often crew of abandoned) that have been broken, shot up etc and are totally cut off, yet still effectively performing as recon. I hope BFC can come up with an answer to this one because it can totally turn a game by providing a warning that should never have been available. I think I would rather that the AI took over completely until these troops got back in CnC range than the current situation. Thanks Steve for all the time and info you have given over to this and the other thread.

Steve, Is there any chance of your doing ancients with your new engine i.e. pre-firearms? Ancients were always my preference in my wargaming days.

I am not sure that this is good advice. I have seen considerable benefits at work with my hyper threaded computer. Run 2 processor expensive programs at once and the speed gains can be quite impressive. I am a programmer and often run multiple compilers and have found that the time required to compile a single program is often little different from the time required to compile 2 programs at once. Maybe you do not get much benefit from CM but computers are not usually used for only one purpose. One thing that has surprised me with hyper threading is that you do seem to get much benefit with multi threaded programs. I have not looked into this much though

Fischkopf, any security system relying on a hidden file or registry key is pointless. You can put a watch on the registry to find the hidden keys or you can take a copy of it before and after installing and diff the files. You can find any new files by creation or last modified dates. If the security system is going to work it cannot rely on things remaining hidden - they will be found. The CRC checks on the executable is a good idea though I would recommend using multiple checks and having the CRC calculated from varying positions in the file. To trick a single CRC check is not terribly difficult. You may be able to get around the differing languages etc by only applying it to parts of the program.

Quite often it appears that an enemy unit is fanatic and unbreakable and yet the unit is in fact panicked/broken and you are basically just wasting ammo.

Originally by Peterk Basically you post windows messages to the CMX application telling it to move the mouse and then post more messages to click buttons etc. Doing this, you can force it to open the scenerio editor, set the parameters, switch to the map, generate a map, switch to the unit editor and select the units and out pops a game. It is by no means a perfect method and it does have some problems. You need different coordinates for everything depending on what resolution you are using. If you send to many messages at once you can cause problems where it misses messages so you have to have arbitary delays etc (actually I may have a better solution to that problem, but I need to test it). A player can watch the setup process and get some info about their opponent (not much though, it is very fast and you'd be doing well to read it all in time and you can do things like swap out the BMP for the text to help prevent it) I started this ages ago but a few real life things have come up and intefered with my progress. I hope to have this basically working by the end of my holidays.

What JasonC was proposing is exactly what I want to see in the next version. I want to be able to pick and choose which battles I want to fight and just tell the computer to resolve the rest. This would make the results of battles relevant and stop some of the ridiculous pyhrric victories that we fight for now. It would also allow battles where the task of the battle for each player is quite different and the scoring (under the current system) is irrelevant, e.g. rear guard battles. I am hoping that they will replace (or extend/suplement) the current Operation layer with something like this. originally by Peterk This can sort of be done now to generate the battles by remote controlling the editor. I have been working on such a tool on and off for a while and it can be done. Getting the results back is a lot more problematic and interupting a battle due to outside influences is obviously impossible.

When you are talking about a 50mm gun at well under 100m range hitting a Lee side on, I think it would be pretty safe to assume that we are talking about 100% penetration. The amount of energy possessed by the shell (and the armour fragments) after penetration is very relevant. The energy has to go somewhere. As you say, everything ends up inside. The closer the range, the more energy remaining with the shell. In the situation that BadgerDog and I have referred to, my M3's withstood multiple penetrations at point blank range side from 50mm L42 guns. As far as I know, the 50mm shell is APHE. What happened to the HE part of the shell? If it went off inside the tank, how could the tank survive? Something seems a bit off here.

I don't have a problem if we were talking about a gun where it could easily penetrate both sides of the tank - I could see that it might go right through the tank without exploding. I also don't have a problem with a round that barely penetrates causing little behind armour effects. I can accept that a solid shot AP round may cause less damage behind the armour. The problem I am having is with an APHE that could barely if ever get through both sides, in an ideal firing position only occasionally able to cause a KO. Yes the M3 is a big tank, but it has more crew than most other tanks and an extra gun, so it's not as though it is all empty space (though if this is being modelled in the code then that is very cool). As far as I can see, in this circumstance, the most likely scenerio should be the shell penetrating one side and exploding within. If that wouldn't KO it, nothing would. It seems to me, that the behind armour effects are too little.

I don't believe that the shots going right through the tank was the cause of the odd results in the case that BadgerDog was mentioning. I am his opponent in this battle and some of the results were pretty weird. One of my M3s was penetrated at 30 - 50m side on by a 50mm L42. The shot killed a crew member. This happened at about the 25 second mark. The tank recovered in time to kill its assailant. In theory I suppose, the shell could possibly make its way through two layers of 38mm armour if at 0 degrees but there is a heck of a space between those layers and I would expect that the HE charge would have plenty of time to detonate. In the case of such perfect shooting situations where the armour is massively overpenetrated, shouldn't the burster go off inside the tank. I can see no way of the tank crew surviving this. My M3s were penetrated 6 times (from 7 shots, one shot broke up) at under 70m from the side by the 50mm L42. Only one shot KO'd an M3, one shot killed a crew member, the rest did no damage. These were point blank hits. The results seem a little off. At this range, with this amount of over penetration I would expect the results to usually be catastrophic not occasionally.

An excellent debate gentlemen. I am thoroughly enjoying it, while learning quite a lot. My knowledge of such things is a little too limited to enter this debate. I do have a question about the two layer armour though. I have read accounts of British 2pdrs encountering such armour in the desert (Pz 111s??? - can't remember for sure). The account I read noted that the British gunners were dismayed by the fact that the shells appeared to bounce off. The author noted however, that often what was actually happening, was that the outer layer of the armour was coming off and that the target could well be incapacitated. My apologies I have been unable to find the book that mentions this, (nor many of my books since the kids took an interest in 'the books with the big tanks in them' ) My question is though, if this was the case with a pop gun like the 2pdr, what was the state of the stugs after a hit with a gun like the 76mm. From what I have read (and assuming I am understanding this correctly), that the 2 layers of face hardened armour were causing the shell to shatter on the second layer. If this is the case, surely the top layer would be basically wrecked or blown off. How many of these upgraded Stugs were wandering around with only one layer remaining.

I suspect that some of the loss of LOS is being caused as much by the dust kicked up by your fire as by the gun crew cowering or hiding. I noticed that when I targetted the M3s with a number of tanks, I kept losing LOS. The only reason I could see for this was the dust.

This is a good question actually, how were HTs and the like (bren carriers etc) used in real life? Were they used merely as transports to get close to the battle with the armour and MG being for self defence only, or were they used in the battle itself? Were they considered too valuable and vunerable to be used as mobile MGs providing covering fire? Would they be used to provide armoured cover to cross open ground protected from MGs? Did the tactics vary much between nations?

I am currently playing a PBEM game with your rules in early 41. I can send you through comments/opinions at the end if you like. I like them so far - very easy to use.

Bump 'cause it took me too long to find them

Can someone clear something up for me. Did canister shells fire sort of like grapeshot or shot gun cartidges or was it a shell that burst having left the barrel. If it was the former then I would have expected it to have had very limited range effect and keeping down in cover (foxholes, craters etc) would be extremely effective. If it is a shell that explodes then its effect on good cover is at least explainable, maybe even reasonable. On the other hand, I ususally seem to end up playing Russian and I don't think I have ever seen it have the devastating effects quoted in this thread (and others) Are people quoting the extreme cases or have I just been very unlucky.

Originally posted by Seahawk-vfa201 Actually the answers are yes, yes and yes (though I have only recently heard of Biltaid and have yet to down load it). Has it ever occurred to you that while Biltongs rules are a great idea and they fulfil the wants of many gamers, they may not actually provide the answers to all. Have you really read all of the above posts. Many of the wants are not provided for by Biltongs rules. It seems to me that there are a lot of people involved with this game that are willing and able to put a lot of work into creating very good campaign systems that will provide endless pleasure to campaigners of all ilks. The addition of an API or the like will make these projects radically simpler, more robust and cleaner to use. I do not suggest that BFC try to retrofit one into the old engine, only that they consider it for the new engine. What I don't understand is the vehemence of some of the opposition to the idea. If the API or file export/import interfaces are considered in the original design, they are not a massive amount of work. [ April 16, 2003, 05:22 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]

I think it would be enough if BFC added an interface to allow externally generated maps, units etc to be imported into the game (even if it was just a special published file format) and the results to be accurately exported. Once this is done a program can be written by anyone that allows a reasonably tight integration with their CMX games. They could even write one themselves and sell it as a separate program if they felt there was a market for it. My hope is that they allow for this in their new engine. I think it is pretty certain from what they have said, that they are not going to do it in CMAK. It sounds as though it is not written in a way to make this an easy proposition. ISTR Steve saying that they had received detailed propositions from a group of programmers. He said that they had checked it out and ended up putting it in the too hard basket. To all those who appear to see a campaign only as a way to follow a unit through the whole war, there are other reasons for such a campaign. Non balanced games where you have much less idea of the strength of your opposition, forcing troop preservation rather than the do or die approach in QBs, mismatched force types and so on. The more people that run manually administered campaigns, who write campaign management tools, who produce campaign rules etc the better. If we want BFC to put effort into additional coding then it is only reasonable that we show there is a market driven reason to do so.

Pyewacket, it sounds like you are working on pretty much the same as I have been. I have been going on it for some time now and am making slow progress. If you want to exchange a few ideas my email address is in my profile.

Time for a bump I think. This bug affected me on 4 separate occasions in one battle.

I believe the thing that Mark Walker was trying to encourage in the strategy guide is that if you get the unit in a cross fire it is more effective than your whole unit from one angle. When the second unit suddenly appears firing it will also be more likely to cause a panic. As far as I can tell from my own experience, it appears that when you first come into contact with a previously unspotted unit there is an increased chance of it causing panic (which seems quite realistic BTW)

Up until now I have had quite good success with minefields. If defending I would almost always buy some (of all types) I have killed a lot of AFVs with them. I don't think I have ever seen an AFV cross an AT mine without dying, though I have seen infantry manage to cross AP mines on occasion. Either I have had very good luck or you have had very bad luck I would say (unless of course patch 1.02 reduced their effectiveness) A useful trick I have used with daisy chain mines is to use them to shepherd AFVs onto your AT mines. I have had so much success with this that my daisy chain mines are now effectively twice as wide to some of my regular opponents as they won't risk going anywhere near them. I have tried the same trick with barbed wire onto AP mines but it is not nearly as effective (or rewarding) [ February 22, 2003, 09:16 PM: Message edited by: Caesar ]

Posted by Thin Red Line I meant for quick battles. No doubt the scenario designer decided that you should have some. On attack and for meeting engagements you get no fortification points and that is the section where the TRPs are located. I assume that there is a reason for not allowing them (it seems reasonable for meeting engagements), heck it mught even be a simple matter of the game mechanics making it too difficult to allow. If not, I was wondering what the reason was. [ February 10, 2003, 06:55 AM: Message edited by: Caesar ]

What is the rationale for TRPs not being available to the attacker? I would have thought that an attack could have pre-ranged the guns prior to the battle. In most of the battles (well operations really) that I have read up on the attacker not the defender is the one that opens up with the arty. In fact I have rarely read much about the defender's arty usage at all. Could not the TRPs been available to the attacker even if it was at a greater cost or limited to how deep it may be placed etc. Note, I guess these questions now relate more to the next engine as the current game is finished.

Playing with casualties on does not reduce the number of points you bring to the battle. You still will end up with the same number of points - you just start with more and get some units removed from you. The main impact is that you can lose some of your more critical units.