Zarquon

BTS said that breakdowns are out of the game's scope. This is an example of those 'one in a 100.000' chances. Bogging is IMO possible in every terrain and ground condition, only for roads the probability is *quite* low, especially with light halftracks. But if your armada includes 100.000 halftracks, you can expect to see one of them get stuck. P.S.: the square root of the I-Ching% number should be about 0.0043. This needs further tests but my CPU can't handle 100.000 halftracks on parallel roads at once.

Please read some of Schoerner's earlier posts and make up your own mind about whether this is thinly veiled hate propaganda or a discussion based on accepted historical facts. Prepare to be told that accepted facts are those which are accepted by the poster. Prepare to install the Wassen-FF patch that restores the full graphical glory of the Schutzstaffel. Engage in flame wars. *Expect* the Spanish Inquisition. Zarquon (tired of this)

All rrright, all rrright, gentlemen. You've had your fun, so please step back into the pool and let this board continue without any further, eh, disgraces. Nobody enjoys a good joke more than I do, you know. Abbot, drop this MasterGoodale persona. Nice try, but did anybody really believe in it? Figuring out how to post in bold letters? Inserting smilies? Finishing whole sentences, sometimes? Replying to a post before it was even started? No, my lad. A fake is a fake is a fake by any other name. Yours truthfully, Zarquon (retired)

Smoke concealing a building may be the only situation where you might have a chance of actually hitting your target. Even then, no one (except a Sturmtiger) would do it because you would want to hit a specific part of the building, not just anywhere. At night /in fog : how can you hit a target you can't see? And the game would have to store information like 'unit X had LOS to point Y just 10 seconds ago' - and there are thousands of points 'Y' on the map and hundreds of units. Can you say '20 MB PBEM turn file'?

Against open or very lightly armored vehicles it works *sometimes*. Don't count on it (i.e. it's mostly a waste of ammo). Never try unless you're certain there's nothing else to fire at. (My only test of this was to place a couple of CMBO open topped vehicles and fire at them with one 81mm on-board mortar each, at 200-300m. I got one direct hit that caused no damage, then I ran out of ammo)

BTW, which parts of a tank are inflammable at all? Fuel? OK. Ammunition? Should go BOOM, I suppose. Hydraulics oil? Are there any hydraulic systems in a WWII-era tank (besides gyrostablilizers in US tanks)? Anything else?

I just noticed that, after deleting a unit in the scenario editor, leaving the unit screen and then returning, my chaotic list was automatically sorted, ordered by unit type. CMBO didn't do this IIRC. A small, but pleasant surprise. Brown-nose out.

The only test I've done so far was to put a company of regular Germans in a long trench, flanked by a 20mm on each side. They were attacked by 6 regular Sturmoviks (4x220 pnd bombs each plus strafing). The guns fired a few bursts at each passing aircraft but didn't shoot down a single one. Only 2 (or 3? can't remember) actually dropped their bombs in 30 turns and only one of those nearly hit the trench, causing ~10-15 casualties. Maybe another 5 from strafing. So, all these planes didn't really hurt me. I don't know if this very bad performance was due to the AA, the trench, bad luck or the fact that aircraft are useless against trenches anyway.

I've just began my first two CMBB PBEM's. Both are 2000 pts, medium size maps, one Axis, one Allies. Everything else is set to random. Sounds silly, unless you try it. I would never have played Finns vs. Soviets in an extremely cold winter night in '41. You've got to do with what you've got.

In regard to realism, EFOW is just fine, I think. Even if units were too hard to spot (I don't think they are), there still is the issue of Borg Spotting. Either no one can see them or everyone can. It means that when a single man spots a single enemy, the whole company (plus tanks) opens up a few seconds later. This is unrealistic as well and in the end it might even out.

Just an anecdote from a recent CMBO PBEM: I had a Coy HQ sneak up to a lonely, large wooden building on a hill on my right flank to provide spotting for three mortars. When he entered the first floor, three US tanks opened fire and destroyed the house in the same turn. Exit HQ. My opponent said he never spotted anyone on that hill but his tanks had a lot of HE to spend and that house on the hill was such an obvious position for a spotter, well...

Ahem... If you could coordinate and fine-tune all your units' actions the way you can do it in CM, it wouldn't be much of a Napoleonic game. And I'm not sure if I'd like those 30-minutes turns you'd need to simulate command execution time in the 19th century. If the sound of smoothbore guns and bright uniforms is what you want, why not go and rent a movie?

Twisting a scenario so that the AI plays a better game is not unlike helping a mentally retarded man to play basketball by chaining him to the basket. He probably will not win, but at least he can't leave the field and run away. At the moment the AI seems to handle all it's units the same way, for maximum flexibility, perhaps. It would be nice to hear if BTS plans on adding new editor functions in the rewrite.

CORPORAL: Sir! GENERAL: Yes, what is it? CORPORAL: News from the western front, sir! GENERAL: Yes...? CORPORAL: Big enemy attack at dawn, sir! GENERAL: Yes...? CORPORAL: Well, the enemy were all wearing little silver halos, sir ... and ... they had fairy wands with big stars on end ... and ... GENERAL: They what ... ? CORPORAL: ... and ... they had spiders in matchboxes, sir. GENERAL (in disbelief) : Good God! How did our chaps react? CORPORAL: Well, they were jolly interested, sir. Some of them... I think it was the 4th Armoured Brigade, sir, they ... GENERAL: Yes? CORPORAL: Well, they went and had a look at the spiders, sir. GENERAL: Oh my God! Thank you, Shirley. A girl emerges from under the table. She is a blonde WAAF. CORPORAL: Sir! GENERAL (to a sergeant): Get me the Prime Minister [...]. Gentlemen, it is now quite apparent that the enemy are not only fighting this war on the cheap, but they're also not taking it seriously. AGEING GENERAL: Bastards. Flying Circus, Episode 42

October 30th, 1942 : The first recorded use of heavy sarcasm by the Wehrmacht. The results were devastating.

I think you can expect all vehicles in a CMBB to have their engines started before the battle begins.

All non-moving tanks rotate *very* slowly now in comparison to CMBO. That makes StuGs and other turretless vehicles much more difficult to handle now, especially when attacking.

Actually, I like this quirk. It gives you unpredictable forces, maybe unrealistic ones, maybe some useless ones, but that way I have to make use of what I've got. IMO it increases the fun of playing vs. the AI.

That has been discussed for a long time. As far as I know the answer was that it would be easy to implement, but a unit spreadsheet would distract from the feeling of being company/battalion commander who in reality has a quite limited knowledge of details once the battle has begun. The more troops you have, the less you care about micromanagement. If it makes you overlook things, maybe that's what was intended by omitting statistics.

Repurchasing would be neat as long as it's possible to mark certain units that must be included in the new force, e.g. the Big Cat or an engineer platoon. Not suitable to historical scenarios, of course. BTW, what about semi-randomized setup locations for the human player and the AI a an additional option? You could designate different zones for each and the Program would choose one.

I think we all agree that scripting must be purely optional. And when you set the scenario to Random AI Setup, the current StratAI would have to take over anyway because a fine-tuned plan/script needs to include the attacker's starting positions. Several approaches are possible with the system I outlined in my first post. Imagine two groups, 1 and 2, attacking their objectives. Each AI controlled unit can 'see' those invisible waypoints that are in a range of two squares, have a number corresponding to their group number and lie in the general direction of their objective. They move from waypoint to waypoint and when reaching one they select the next one from a small group of valid points at random (of course, platoons or even companies have to be kept together, depending on battle size). This would lead to group 1 having 3 different approaches to the target and it would be impossible to tell which platoon chose which approach. Some paths are 'fuzzy' to avoid the units goose-marching behind each other. Group 2 could be made up of 2a and 2b. They all follow the path of "2"s until splitting. No fuzzy paths for the first part (imagine them following a road under cover). The target would then be attacked from two sides. The scenario designer can set an many points as he wishes, thereby allowing for e.g. a tank platoon to exactly follow a path that maximizes cover from terrain elevations or an infantry company spreading out for an attack. This is a very simple sketch, but I hope it illustrates the point.

Dan: agreed. Whatever scripting option it is, it should supplement, not change the AI. Or else we might never see it realized. Scripting options are for pre-made scenarios only and shouldn't be enforced on anyone. xerxes: It's a great idea to allow the scenario designer to give different priorities to flags. Alas, we don't know if there isn't an algorithm in the code that does this. If there is, it will not be replaced unless absolutely necessary. What I like most id the idea of 'Anti-flags'. It would be the most simple way of avoiding those tank graveyards that result from the AI parking all his vehicles on a coverless hill in the middle of the map. Easy to understand for designers, hopefully not to complicated to implement in the code. The best thing is, it does not require other, more complex options to be implemented as well. What about different Tank and Infantry NoGo-Flags? Invisible, temporal AI flags should be regarded as waypoints, not to be held. Pre-planned scripted artillery should be easy as well. The realism question is already answered because CMBB allows for those. P.S: : there's a post from 2001 about improving the AI: http://www.battlefront.com/cgi-bin/bbs/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=16;t=017386 It's a discussion about implementing different SOPs (in the TacAI) and/or adding user-scripted SOPs as plug-ins. Both are pitfalls, for different reasons. Jörg

Ahhhh... Now, my last try at hobby game programming was a kind of VG-Ambush!-like game done in BASIC (10 GIs fighting 20-20 Germans). Long time ago. For every map I had to create a special map 'overlay', where specific points were marked with numbers. Each AI controlled German attacker was given a number corresponding to those, say, "3" as well as a target coordinate (could be a victory location or some other strategically important location). When it was his turn moving, he tried to move from "3" to "3". Whenever multiple "3"s were visible to him, he chose one at random as his short-term goal. He could "see" only those "3"s in a radius equivalent to 2 turns of movement. You still follow me? That made it possible to make up attack groups that, for example, followed the road for the first 3 turns, then moved into a forest, spreading out (randomly). At the forest's edge, they regrouped into two groups (of random composition), as all possible paths of "3"s in the forest lead to only 2 paths of "3"s leading toward the final target, but on different routes. Patrols were easily set up this way, but it was possible to create patrol paths that allowed for patrolling units to randomly "go and check out that house over there". So the actual movement of units was not predictable, but it was possible to set a plan for the attacker, something the AI currently lacks. Of course it took some time to set all those "potential waypoints", but the system was simple and worked (for me). It allowed for the attacker to use covered routes much better. It didn't require a Cray to calculate all possible moves. I think it could easily be implemented and improved upon. Replayablity could be quite good, because you could set up a lot of those "waypoint groups", chosen more or less randomly. And the scenario designer would not be obliged to use them. He could mix units with specific "plans" with those having none, being moved by the current AI. The TacAI would still be in control of firing, holding platoons together etc. This is only about pre-planned, semi-randomly movement paths. Add sets of behaviour for each unit, like "advance" (carefully, prefer cover), "assault" (get wasted), "defend" (flexible), "hold" (stubborn, don't move). I had no algorithm for coordinating actions, as this proved to be exceptionally difficult. Maybe Cm has, it's hard to say. However, my gamey AI bastards nearly always won, even on the attack (having 2:1 numerical advantage). Of course, CM is not man-to-man combat and there are many things that can not be covered by such scripts/waypoints. Unit coordination will still be, well, you know. But I would prefer that to opponents rushing the nearest flag head-on. Remember, I'm not talking about Operation Flashpoint-like scripting here where nearly every detail can (and sometimes must) be taken care of. It is amazing what can be done with this but it is a totally different genre and the purpose of many scripting options is to immerse the player in a movie. All I suggest is a simple way to suggest movement paths to the AI. Jörg P.S. : And I *demand* rail guns. On board. Fix or do sf. [ November 05, 2002, 11:30 PM: Message edited by: Zarquon ]

hey Chris, could it be that you've changed your color settings in Excel (black to white)? Just a thought.

BTW, is there any way of knowing how popular CM really is (short of BTS giving us sales numbers ? I demand this to be a niche product!