Hpt. Lisse

While we're all working the tank crew AI stuff.... Same battle, one of my Pz Mk IV's has taken a couple hits - still operational, but down to 3 crew members. Nearby, a Crack Mark 4 crew of five is smoking cigs after losing their ride... job opportunity! I bail the tank, and order the Crack crew to man it. Instead, they mount the hull as 'riders'...

Another option for this would be to institute 'tanker realism' at the warrior difficulty level (similar to realistic artillery response times, etc.)

Yup, had one of those too (that was obvious)... now, this particular T-34 85 had spent two rounds 'bracketing' the intended Pz MkIV, but got slapped (ricochet) by a 75L48 round a moment before firing (rocking on its suspension) but nonetheless scoring a direct hit. Keep in mind the long range of the engagement (this one - 1100m) where even slight gun movements would be telling... Strange thing is, I have played an MG battle where a short-range deflection clearly caused the return shot to miss (hit the ground not far from the barrel)... wonder if it's only modeled past ' a certain point'... Phil?

Hello all – I’ve been having a wonderful time playing RT – truly the pinnacle of the CM engine – a big shout out to Aris and Kieme for their respective mods. But it’s time, for the sake of realism, to re-visit the whole ‘shell impact on crew’ mechanism. I’m playing “The Passage” battle from the German side right now, which is CM at it’s finest. I don’t think this is ‘spoiler’ material, but there’s a lot of Panzer MkIV vs. T-34 85 ‘at range’ (1500 meters in some cases) firefights going on. And it’s perfectly balanced – the more accurate gunnery of the German tanks vs. the less-accurate but harder-hitting 85mm Russian guns, the superior armor of the T-34’s vs. the more vulnerable Mark 4’s…. beautiful. I doff my hat to whomever designed this scenario. My issue lies with AP tank penetrations, and their effect on the tankers. I’ve seen numerous front turret/gun mantle full or partial penetrations that were NOT knockouts, only to be followed by a world-class shot 1 or 2 seconds later. This is not sour grapes – I’ve seen it happen from my side (the Axis) as well, despite injury/casualty to crew members. I cannot imagine the ear-busting chaos that an AP shot smashing through my tanks’ turret would create. But I don’t think that CM currently models this well, given its realistic morale system. It’s bad form to not offer a solution to a perceived problem… I’m thinking that there should be a delay of firing in line with the crew’s experience level, slightly randomized of course. I would also like to see a penalty for successive penetrations on a crew within a certain time limit (except fanatical ones) as well. (There’s one T-34 85 in my battle that has no less that 4 front turret penetrations, and is still blasting away…) Comments, suggestions?

That's great news, and much appreciated - you are the God of Mod!

Whoa. So the 'mainland' and 'muddy' versions are now official slots in the CM inventory? I did the usual and re-named my 'pz-iiin-hull [muddy]' to 'pz-iiin-hull' when I placed it in my 'Mods' folder... Hpt. Lisse

Fuzer - long time fan, all my CM modules are populated with your 'real-world' artwork... Question, tho. I have your Pz IV H mod for FI, but it doesn't appear when checking with the 'CMGL dealership' battle. Same for the Pz IIIM - CMFI dealership displays the modded tank, but no love in GL. (your recent 'N' mod appears in both, for example, as does the Pz IV G mod) No other mods in place... ESTO error? Or manually change IV H mod to 'early' and 'late' (doesn't explain the IIIM though...) Many thanks for your continued efforts.... Hpt. Lisse

Having watched 2 separate sub-squads (v2.0) pass up rear doors on some barns, only to get fired upon as they round the fronts, I BUMP this idea...

Marka, For the cash-strapped, any laptop running AMD's A10-4600M processor (look for NextGen tag, indicating the 2nd generation Trinity chip) is a winner. The quad-core processor has a HD7660G graphics chip built-in that significantly out-performs Intel's 4000 graphics proc. I assembled one at Toshiba's website for $529. However - Combat Mission is currently not a multi-threaded application. Thus, the fastest throughput of a single core of any processor favors this game. Intel's mobile i5 procs win this competition hands down (or i7 if you can afford it.) However, now you need to keep an eye out for a discrete graphics chip (be it Nvidia or AMD) to pair with it. For example, I see a Samsung on sale at a popular on-line retailer that uses a 3210M i5 proc, 6 GB of RAM, and a AMD 7730M GPU w/2MB of video RAM for $649. With either choice, be advised that trading out the original Hard Drive for a Solid State HD is alot easier on some models (HP, Toshiba, Samsung) than others (Lenovo, Asus, etc). Many notebooks ship with performance-sapping 5400 rpm HD's, so it's becoming fairly commonplace to swap it out for a SSD. Hope this helps.

Gents, My brother and I are trying to start a QB (inter-family CM is the way to resolve all issues, BTW We have successfully played a number of H2H PBEM battles - now, we want a shot at picking our own troops. Twice, I have gone through the menu, selected the appropriate entries, generated an initial turn which I send off. My brother successfully returns an 002 file as per usual. When I attempt to launch this, the "Loading" meter reads 5%, then either hangs indefinitely, or immediately crashes to desktop. The first time, I set the map choice to auto-select. This one hung at 5% (HDD light still flashing here and there) until I Ctrl-Alt-Del out of it - then crashed, and some error report was generated. Tried to start it again after re-booting, and same exact thing happened (incl. error report). Our second go, same entries except this time, I chose a medium QB map myself. The 002 file he sends back loads to 5% then immediately CTD (no error report this time). We did start a ready-made H2H scenario after 2.0 upgrade with no problems (stopped after my brother realized he had played it previously against the A.I.) (Some folks might construe that as, ahem, cheating, but I digress...) We haven't tried a QB PBEM before the 2.0 upgrade, so nothing to compare it to. Both machines are Win7 64-bit using ESET antivirus software, which has never given us any trouble before. We both own CM:FI - I could try using that to see if it happens again... Ideas?

Bump to this - It's still happening after the upgrade to the 2.0 engine. It's not just the icon, the squads end up w/the incorrect AAR 'kills', too. Thx.

Many thanks, Ales. Great that Rambler provides both 10% and 5% transparency models for both near and far trees. I'm in the midst of a H2H 'Carbide Carbide' battle w/my older brother. To my surprise, the '10% near' foliage was still too thick, so now using the 5% option. Not quite as comfortable with it as the FI trans tree mod, but as I stated previously, it took me a couple battles to warm up to it in FI. What would help the cause would be a 'translucent bocage' mod to go along with it, at least the 'tall' stuff... trees are good, but seeing through those hedges would complete the look & functionality of the translucent BN mod. Could this be done, Rambler? The ideal scenario would be, if BF chose to work this in, to have the foliage transparency set by a slider (or whatnot) in the graphic options table...

As I mentioned to RocketMan, I couldn't find Rambler's BN translucent tree mod in the Repository... unless I just missed it... I did a search by his handle. I would love to have it, as BN is more foliage-laden... Beatmasta - I will say that I didn't take to the mod right away. First battle or two, I was on the fence. Now, I wouldn't remove it for anything.

Sergei, that sounds like a reasonable implementation to me. The .txt of the mod file says it contains "both near and far" trees. Have you tried just the "near" trees in the mod folder?

CM Team - I've spent a fair amount of time now in FI with the Translucent Tree mod by RocketMan - http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=314&func=fileinfo&id=2215 This mod has improved the quality of my FI life immeasurably. Instead of using Alt-T repeatedly during battles, it conveys the sense of foliage coverage & density without hiding my units. My suggestion is to make Alt-T a 4-step process - Full foliage, translucent foliage, tree trunks, no foliage. But I guarantee that most players will end up using 'translucent' as the default. I understand that those graphics would have to be added to the stable, but it doesn't seem like a lot of work. As always, thanks for bending your ear.

Hey, that's fine if it's something that can be 'worked', points-wise... not a big deal. I also noticed the 2.0 engine lacks 'fire'....

I don't think Sgt. Barkmann was in his own Panther the morning of "Barkmann's Corner", either.

...a different Mk IIIM. Playing the German campaign (I will forever be a more careful tank driver, after observing the cumulative track damage to my Pz MkIII's & IV's battle to battle). I bail a MkIII crew out of their beaten up tank, and try to mount a different disembarked IIIM (crew still huddling out there somewhere), as it's in much better shape (wanna bring this to the next battle). No mas. Why? Was it deemed unrealistic, even for the crew of the same type AFV, to shift vehicles? Or is this a coding issue (happens rarely, difficult to code)?

You gents wanna expound on the computer hardware being used for both sides? High end rigs, or just biting off one small section of the battle at a time?

More to GAJ's point, the battle type - H2H, Axis vs AI, etc. - should be REQUIRED in the initial battle description. It's a pain the the ass to download, start & sift through scenarios just to find out they're not H2H appropriate.

Amizaur - see "17pdr. bug" post in tech support. There's something going on where sometimes the 17 pdr. spontaneously limbers w/o orders to do so. I submitted it to Phil for analysis...

Arnoldio's description is precisely why I don't play R/T. I've played CM for 12 years now (42 yrs old), and always felt (as others have in this thread) that: A) Your role as a CM battlefield commander, is to issue (ultimately imperfect) orders to your troops via the control system. The AI (also not perfect, but Steve et al. works on it incessantly) acts as an interpreter for all the events that occur in that 60 second time frame. I am the 'general', and ordering my Tiger tank up that path was a bad decision... The replay value - all those little & big dramas that I would have missed in R/T - is a large part of the battle/game experience for me. C) Waiting for my older brothers' WEGO PBEM drives me nuts! (The same guy who intro'ed me to ASL as a kid). Patience, young Jedi, patience...

Gents, Playing my oldest brother in a vicious H2H battle (oh, I think he regrets introducing ASL to me when we were kids now...) and having a great time of it. Got my CW pre-order in, of course. However - as with CM:BN previously - once I run the 1.10 patch, will our PBEM games become incompatible?

Yeah, just didn't want to see immobilized or stuck vehicles in the same bag as destroyed ones.

After completing two campaigns (Courage & Fortitude, Panzer Marsch) on Warrior difficulty, I wanted to report an observation or two - There has been some discussion about 'knocked out' HT/Trucks as far as the recovery of ammunition. My feeling about this is it should be randomized, but - more importantly, I was surprised that 'immobilized' trucks were equally inaccessible. So, my 251/3 gets stuck in the mud (which they undoubtedly did) but I can't get any ammo off it? Doesn't compute. On a lesser note, I never once saw a 500 round cache of 7.92mm Kurtz ammo aboard any vehicle. Yes, it would have been rare at the time, but as it stands, any lucky soldat w/a MP44 has no way to re-load during campaigns. Thanks for your time - and a phenomenal game.