Tarquelne

It take it that Sneak was too slow, even though it was very stealthy and took good advantage of cover, but Move would have been faster than needed, and you would have liked _more_ cover and stealth? Sneak and Move seem to be on two extremes of the "stealth" scale - with sneak maximally stealthy and Move more a "walk quietly and carefully" sort of thing. I think it'd be nice if there were some sort of slider in the interface, with the current Sneak at one end and the current Move at the other - set the slider appropriatly for the situation. But that'd be a pretty big change to the current interface and code... (as would the less extreme addition of multple new movement commands like "Kinda Sneaky" and "Move More Slowly") I think we just have to accept that BFC can only make so many improvements to each iteration of CM, and there's going to be some situations, like your case with the 'shreck, where the tools we're given don't quite work. BFC could have made Sneak faster... but then in the name of realism they'd have to make it provide less cover and stealth. (Hmm... though I wonder what speed/stealth units "Following" a vehicle use. Will 'shreck teams Follow?) I think the best argument against the current Sneak is that it's a little too extreme: "In actual play we'd find a faster, if less stealthy/"covering", version of Sneak more usefull. It'd be appropriate more often than the current command." Note I'm not making that argument. There are times when I've wanted units to be stealthy but Move was faster than necessary and Sneak far too slow... but I've also used each command quite a bit. Put me in the Not Flawless But "Perfectly Satisfactory" Is An Understatement camp.

"Sucks" isn't exactly a technical term, so I'm not certain just how bad you think the early T-34 is, but: A) The penetration of many 37mm guns will be downgraded slightly in the patch. There's a _reason_ the Russians up-armored the T-34. The word "sucks" may have even been involved.

Ok, Vanir... Look at the BA-10 vrs. the BA-6. There was a thread on the cost differences between them yesterday.

Yes. I never used CMMOS for CMBO and had no problem setting up 4.0. Just follow the instructions. I think the key thing that some people might be having trouble with is that you don't need to download mods/rulesets into the CMMOS/CMBB directory structure. Just download them where you normally download things and load them into CMMOS from within CMMOS.

What was awful? If it was that vehicle apperances didn't "match" -"Here's Mr. Noobies dirty/green KV1 and here's a bunch of white tanks - yuck, who's your decorator green and white are so '70s!" that's not a CMMOS problem, that's a you-mismatched-vehciles-problem. Did CMMOS do something to Mr. Noobie's tank? Wouldn't re-installing Mr. Noobie's tank after the whitewashed vehicles (just a couple of clicks) have fixed this? In other words: I'm trying to figure out just what did _CMMOS_ do to cause a problem that wouldn't have happened had you been adding/deleting the mods manually?

Thanks, will do.

An amusing anecdote (I was amused, at least): Not long after I'd read a good spate of "What's wrong with my infantry?" messages I played a CMBB quick battle as the Germans. I was still trying out the various movement commands and concentrated on Advance that battle. My Regular troops Advanced in the face of fire from the Russian squads with ease. A little suppression, make sure the troops are rested, select "Advance" and off they go. Piece of cake. "Boy, everybody having trouble moving their infantry must be a bunch of wankers." Well, the Russian infantry turned out to be SMG squads. Once the range closed I found that a leeetle more care than I'd previously used would be required.

I'm not a mod guru, but you might want to look at Combat Mission Times anyway. Mods section, voidhawk's annotated bitmaps. When you download, btw, be carefull about accepting any biologicals. Those Edenists can be pretty sneaky. [ November 19, 2002, 12:20 AM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

I think you should get it. I skipped it back in the old days, when I played CMBO, and didn't miss it much. CMBO's graphics weren't exactly splendiferous - I picked my mods, slapped 'em in, and played the game.* But I looked forward to it and snapped it up first-thing when the CMBB-compatible version showed up. It's even slicker and easier to use than previous versions and more importantly, given CMBBs improved graphics, I'll want to play around with mods more. *Hmm... IIRC most of the Allied vehicles used Gordon's skins anyway. [ November 19, 2002, 12:10 AM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

Infantry only? Attacking? ... and you have time to be careful? Mortars mortars mortars mortars mortars.

Thanks! Great documentation too.

Good suggestions for fleshing out the current waypoint control system. But: I think coordination between units should be _more_ difficult. For example, I'd like to see a random element added to the delay times (the lower unit Exp. = more randomness), though any units "in command" could all use the delay of their HQ. (I think this every time my out of command radioless T-34s pop up on the enemy's right flank at the same time the other out of command radioless T-34s pop up on the other flank.) AND relative spotting. Has that been mentioned yet today?

Looking in the editor... If you're refering to Rarity - Nope. When Rarity is off the BA-10 is cheaper. If you don't mean Rarity: BFC didn't lower the combat-effective point value for commonly produced units, did it? The BA-10 has only about 60% the MG ammo, and 93% of the shells carried by the BA-6. Other than that, all the stats in the unit info screen are the same, or the BA-10 is better. A leetle more armor (10 vrs. 8mm), a leetle faster (34 vrs. 28mph), and a leetle lower (71 vrs. 78 sil.) At equal costs I'd rather have the BA-10... Interesting question.

Uh huh. Sure. How can you expect us to believe anything you say after the Soviet AA gun thread? I chuckled over that all day.

"Breakout...Minsk, 41". (One of the many scenarios called to my attention after I expressed a liking for early war battles. I've yet to see a JS tank or a Panther...) How could a scenario cause such a lockup, btw? Terrain not "assembled" quite correctly? The presence of a buggy unit? I've got the saves - after a few heartwrenching expereinces with a TCP/IP bug in CMBO I've gotten into the habit of saving most every turn. Also usefull for "what ifs"..."Lets start again at turn 11, exploring the question "What if you weren't such a bonehead and didn't walk that platoon into HMG fire?" One more thing: IIRC, the blue-bar that goes from left to right over the scenario name while the turn is being processed only appears on one computer, correct? If so, the _other_ computer always locked up. (Two different computers have been involved now.) [ November 17, 2002, 10:10 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

CMBB is locking up during a TCP/IP scenario I'm playing. The game (and computer) freezes up while the "Data transfer in progress" window is up. I'm not sure if that's the right text - the window is the one that appears in the middle of the screen after hitting GO and has the red bar that fills in from left to right. My opponent recieves the turn and can watch the movie. On my computer the "data transfer..." window never goes away and a reboot is the only way to leave CMBB. I tried switching to PBEM for a turn - same problem after changing back to TCP/IP. Win98, GeF2, latest drivers. Any suggestions? Thanks.

The "invulnerability" of units has been discussed before... and it's probably about to start happening again. So, I'm going to skip everything else in your post and just talk about Rarity. I recommend Variable Rarity. Many competative players are loathe to pay a Rarity "tax" on units, and for good and valid reasons, to them, ruthless b*stards that they are. The obvious problem is that playing with the rare stuff is often fun. The solution? Variable Rarity. You'll _usually_ just get the "vanilla" units, but every once and awhile Tigers, KV-1s, whatever will be down to normal cost or just 5%-10% above. If you're willing to grab a calculator you can try this: Use Standard Rarity, and each player is required to spend X number of points on Rarity. (Ie, the points only go toward paying that Rarity "tax". In a 60 Required R-points game you'd fulfill the requirement by buying a 260 point unit that had a +30% Rarity factor. Both players have "wasted" the same number of points on Rarity, so they have equal combat-effective point forces. Set "X" higher for games with "uber" equipment, low for games with only a little. (I'm trying to figure out how many unspent Rarity points could be counted toward your victory point total... you forgo using any Rarity points and get PzIIIs rather than Panthers, but have some portion (125%, 50%?)victory points added to your final score... anyone have any suggestions?)

Ah, gnuif. I wondered who's job it was to ask that question. I think you may have missed the thread on AA and A-filtering? I was tempted to ask, but didn't want to interfere.

Squad has LOS to rear of pillbox, pillbox has no LOS to squad. [ November 14, 2002, 08:05 AM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

"Frisco!" "Lt. Smallwood, sir?" "I want your section to advance to the house sheltered by that little hill over there." "What about the enemy squad to the north, sir?" "They aren't a danger." "They'll probably see us, sir." "They aren't a danger." "Uh huh... Sir." "Off you go, Frisco." "Sir! Yes, sir!" /scamper scamper/ "No no NO, Frisco! You'll be too tired when you get there that way! No bound and cover!" "Sir?" /crawl crawl crawl/ "Hurry it up! What's wrong with Jenkin's, can't he crawl? What? You're tired!? Get up, move, move, move!" /scamper/ "FRISCO!" "Sir!" /saunter saunter BRAAAAAAPPPP crawl crawl crawl/ "Sgt. get those men off the ground. YOU ARE IN NO DANGER!" "Sir!" "Was that a "Yes, Sir!" or a "No, Sir", Frisco!?" "Sir!" Maybe after the patch... [ November 13, 2002, 02:18 PM: Message edited by: Tarqulene ]

Perhaps put "I only express opinions, never facts, nor do I make any factual claims." in your sig?

I am. But remember that with Kazaa, and AFAIK all the big peer-to-peer networks, you can never search the whole network at one time. (And I think just hitting the "search" button again doesn't let you search a different part of the network - I don't know though.) If only two of us are sharing it finding the mod is probably pretty dicey. I have no ideas what the actual odds are - how much a file has to have proliferated to making finding it "easy."

I just want to make it clear I'm only hear to mock lawyers.

Simple facts. Fantasies. America _did_ win so America _would have won_ - cool, you are a lawyer!

Are the URL references correct for the article? Pointing to your hard drive, maybe?("file:///C:/Data/Words...") The Properties trick that ususally allows the viewing of pictures on the forum isn't working, at least. Nice site, though! And thanks for bringing this up. I'm always fascinated by the significant often-easy-to-overlook details of how weapons are used and wars are fought.