pichocki

> If the preference [...]is selected > then the data base window is going to show > all OPFOR tanks as having thermal sights. Oh, I got that now: The databse window automatically reflects the preferences setting. > I don't understand why this question > keeps coming up. As far as I understood you, the option to equip *all* OPFOR tanks with thermals has been introduced to make up an even game. Roger that. For a "real life simulation", however, I would like to be able to distinguish between the various kinds of vehicles - just as I have to for the BLUE side. So my suggestion is to alter the effect of the mentioned option to the following: - Remove thermals from the database's older OPFOR tanks, say up to T-72 or so (I am not exactly sure) for "normal" use. - Rename the option to something like "Add thermals to all OPFOR tanks" - If the user checks this, add a thermal sight to those tanks mentioned above. With this we would have two settings: 1. Simulation mode: Only those tanks having a high probability to have a thermal, have one. 2. Game mode: All tanks have a thermal. (I don't think there is any need for the current setting that *no* OPFOR tanks has a thermal, is there?

I mean *thermal sights*. When I just opened the TacOps "unit database" and checked the tanks from "OP Tank M84" over "OP Tank T55" up to "OP Tank, Type 98", it always says "Thermal sight". This isn't so in real life is it? So I suggest that you "simply" take out this feature from those which don't have it in reality and then "re-grant" it to them in case the option is checked. As you said this feature ("all OPFOR tanks have thermals") is only meant to balance gameplay, I don't think there is a need to have a "NO OPFOR tank has a thermal" option for simulation/education use. This approach: normally only those in the (altered) database have thermals, and with the option "on" all have - if possible in the game engine - should solve the "problem" mentioned by someone else some weeks ago. Same, of course, would be *possible* for ATGM thermals and improved ATGM heads then, too. And to your question: We don't have anything like infrared (thus between normal and thermal) in the game, do we?

Hi, Major! One more question - or rather a suggestion - on OPFOR Tanks' Thermals: I just confirmed that basically every OPFOR tank *has* one. Couldn't it be a solution to change the database so that only those tanks have a thermal that are expected to really have one in reality and then - in case the player checks the option "All OPFOR tanks have thermals" - add it to them on-the-fly whereas to do nothing, if the player does *not* check the option? ps/BTW: Do you prefer to have questions like this on the mailing list rather than on the forum?

Hi, Jim! > I plan on ordering the good Major's Military > Reference CD in hopes that this question and > all of my other ones are addressed. I really do recommend to buy it because of the wealth of information it contains. However, please do *not* except any gamey "HowTo"s on this CD; it rather is packed with a lot of (I think more than 150) original Field Manuals and other reference material. Of course, you can find an answer to the question "How does a MechInf platoon do recce?", but it may be "hidden" among many other things... ;-p

> Try this: > http://www.pichocki.de/download/LetzterAngriff/ > There's some great stuff at that site. Thanks, but what does my material have to do with "amphibious operations"?

Hi, Jeff! Here's a workaround that *might* work as long as there are no more elevation levels available. I tried it on my map (admittedly not very broken terrain), and it *seems* to work so far: I tried to code "elevation changes", i.e. a slope from 10m to 20m is modelled as a E0-E1-change. Then on another part of the map there may be a slop going up from 30m to 50m, which is modelled as a E0/E1 step, too. Now for the "trick": *Somewhere* between those two points you have to find a part of the map where it "does not matter", if you step down from E1 to E0 (for me, I found those in woods or towns quite often). Voilà. Question for the Major: Do you see any problems arising from this right away? I hope you don't...

> I think it would be a gee whiz feature > that most people won't need > or bother to use I don't think so, as I know from my own experience: The German Army system SIRA *has* this feature, as I wrote you some weeks ago, and it comes in quite handy. Furthermore it adds a huge amount of realism because by this you can easily "look around". An idea how to implement this might be similar to the way it is done in BCT: Draw "some" (maybe configurable: 6, 12, 36, 360) rays emanating from the selected unit similar to the way the LOS tool does it now...

> when do you anticipate completing the scenario Sometimes in the next weeks. > or is it already ready to go? Not yet. I completed the map - which was a big part of work because it is 28 km X 24 km with - no exaggeration - dozens of TacOps bridges in it; I completed the situations for BLUE and RED and the OOBs, as well as operational plans for their respective higher commands. I am working right now on the orders for BLUE and RED; and after this we are ready to go. > In which case, is there an upcoming CPX? Hoping that I don't charge me too much (I did RL exercises but no TacOps umpiring before), there will be three consecutive CPXs: Part 1 will deal with recce and counter-recce, part 2 will see an attack against a (hopefully well) prepared defense, and part 3 will solve the whole thing to one side or the other...

Hi! As Christian asked for the GM attack helo "Tiger" in hi sposting, I did a quick check in the TacOps database, and I think that there are several suitable replacements for the time being. The official Bundeswehr site states the "Tiger" to have - 4 SAM Stinger - up to 8 ATGM (PARS3, HOT3 - not both I assume) - up to 34 unguided rockets - up to 2 machine guns 12.7mm The TacOps database has the "AH64 Longbow MR" with - 4 SAM Stinger - 8 ATGM - rocket pod - 30mm cannon If you are looking for other weapon combinations, check the other AH64s or the AH1. Or have a look at the OPFOR KA50 and KA52 series. I am sure that you find a suitable helo for your scenario...

Hi, Christian! (Cool nick! I just checked your email, and - we seem to be real life neighbours! See private email for details. ) > why are vital German units missing? > Such as the Gepard, Roland or PzH 2000? > Not to mention the Eurocopter Tiger? It is true: The Major introduced some (IMO sufficient for now) German units after giving in to my (and others') pestering last year :cool: We decided to put in especially those units having considerable differences to those already present in the game. When at last the Major even put the PAH into, I was "content" for my part. And, be assured, with the units present you can (more or less easily) build up a whole German Mechanized Brigade. I did so right now for my upcoming scenario. Ad "Roland" and "Gepard": As air strikes are treated mainly "conceptionally" in the game anyway, it is sufficient to replace Roland = SA 13 Gopher and Gepard = ZSU 23-4. Ad "PzH 2000": This *might* be a problem, but AFAIK many PzArtBtl - if not most - are still equipped with the M109 (admittedly a range-mended one against the US version, but this does not play a role in the game due to map size restrictions). Ad "Tiger": I am not sure whether this one has finally been introduced. Has it? If yes, I am sure that you can find a replacement in the TacOps database. If you look for it, take into account that you can assign OPFOR material to the BLUE side, too. If you find a replacement, please let me know. If you are (or anyone else is) interested in my "material replacement list" or my PzGrenBrig OOB, let me know, and I will send you a copy. If you want to have a look at the other material so far available for my scenario, go to http://www.pichocki.de/download/LetzterAngriff And, Major: I am still trying

Having a "speed slider" might load even more micromanagement requirements onto the player, but on the other hand, with the current "unispeed" movement, it is very hard to make a non-joined company - or even a battalion - cross an LD at a give time, isn't it? And that's quite important a task sometimes...

I think that Jeff is right: Unless it is "the same" amount of work to code "arbitrary elevation", it might very well be sufficient to have "some" more (say 4 or five in total) elevation levels in the game. Except for very rare cases this will be enough. Elevation is "relativ" in most cases anyway: In my current map, the terrain is more or less flat, having elevations between 10 and 50 meters at most. How did O try to "solve" this? I didn't pla ythe scenario so far, but first tests showed that this might work: Wherever there is a slope or a hill, I code the terrain as a change from low to high TacOps terrain, say 10m up to 20m. It is very likely on my map to have a wood or town or other LOS before the next "step" is encountered. So I let "drop" the terrain back to E0 somewhere where it does not have any impact on the game - deep in a wood mostly. By this, I am back to Eo when I come to model the next elevation, say a step from 20m to 40m or so... Of course, this procedure does not work in an open terrain with long LOSs and more than one elevation step visible at once. But having four or five possible steps may very well be enough for most of the cases

> Perhaps they just like to get email Correct, at least for me: Getting a lsi mail triggers a window on my desktop and I can read along. Visiting a web based forum every now and then is a lot less comfortable. (Although very probably there are many people who don't want to fuss around with emails for a discussion...)

Letter to Victor Valdez (RED Commander’s AAR) Dear honoured Senor Valdez, if you want to pass on this report to Matteo Olmero, that FDA (or FBI or whatever) guy being an advisor to the Official Colombian Troops last night, please feel free to do so. Me, your trusted and devoted Lieutenant Radolfo Pi, Commander-in-Chief of your Plantation Security and Defense Battalion, at this time, I am sitting on board a plane to an unknown destination with my notebook computer on my knees writing this report to you. But, one after another, I first have to present you a bitter PILL (short for Pi’s Indelible Lessons Learned) that you have to swallow whole. Admittedly, until last night, you, Senor Victor Valdez, were one of the bigger fish in the Colombian Coca business (“drugs” is such an ugly and derogative word!), but I fear that this is over now. Be assured please, that I utmost hope that you will come back to your feet soon, and - even more - that your long arm does not reach to the place I am heading for. So, what are the lessons I had to learn last night? First, preventive, strategic pre-battle reconnaissance is crucial and has to be correct! If it fails, as was the case, everything is doomed to go wrong. Second, my enemy’s enemy is my friend! Too bad, your direct order made it impossible to follow that rule. Third, don’t plan sophisticatedly if you don’t have the time and men to communicate - and best rehearse - this plan! Sadly, my brave men had virtually no chance to act according to my plan. Fourth, no plan survives first contact with the enemy! Ok, that’s an old one, but true nevertheless, only that we did not identify our real enemy all the time. But, to narrate things chronologically, I will start with the instructions I received from you last week: You informed me that, besides the notorious threat by the Colombian Army trying to spray all coca plantations with agent orange, this time the danger would come from a different direction. You said, this time we had to expect an attack by our neighbour, the less honoured Senor Casillas, roughly from Northeast. You gave us, your three lieutenants Radolfo Pi, Honk Stoffo, and Jaime Sterreti, one of your three Battalions, in addition to the already present Plantation Security. After a short discussion, we chose the Battalion with the highest lethality value, doing without tanks, APCs, helos, but having lots of infantry and even a few ATGMs with thermal sights. After no one else seemed to have the time, I stepped forward during the second half of the preparation week, and volunteered to come up with a plan to fulfil our mission. Our mission, as stated by you, was to defend the plantation and coca laboratories against Sr. Casillas’ villains, and even to defeat him as a punishment for rising his hand against us. This mission was the utmost guideline for my plan. As we knew from your briefing that Casillas would have not more than two battalions, I reckoned that we could dare to not defend statically, but - we had to defeat him - play a much more active part. You know that our plantation, situated in Valdez Valley, has many spots of vegetation to its East, whereas the labs, lying south of the plantation, have quite open terrain on their East side, and south of the whole valley again, terrain grew thicker again. So my plan was the following: Build up a strong ‘anvil’ in the centre to protect the labs - our most valuable goods - and to dam up the enemy East of the labs. To ensure that Casillas would jam onto this anvil, I ordered a flexible defense starting far ahead in the North, steering the enemy in South-western direction -into the open arms (in double sense) of our main defense effort. If this would work, we would smash the bound enemy with a fierce counter attack from North, conducted by our strong reserve. In addition to all this, I planned to apply a mobile surveillance force south of the valley, just to prevent being circumvented down there. I still think that this plan, provided the given info were correct and complete, would - or at least: could - have worked. But it didn’t. Why didn’ t it? There were four decisive buts, leading fifthly to a decisive defeat. How did it come to this? First of my mistakes was to trust the information you gave us, BUT this information was neither fully correct nor fully complete. Ok, I should have known that informants always are somewhat unreliable and sometimes even lie, but I thought, this time, you would have ensured that no important topics are missing. Decisive, however, in this aspect was that you required us not only to defend, but even to defeat Casillas’ troops. My second mistake was to make up a plan for a well-educated, well-prepared battalion, BUT neither me nor my men were. Decisive, however, was here that my plan required my sub-commanders to have some time to read and understand its idea and do some detail planning for their own units to be able to fulfil this plan. Third mistake was that we let it happen that both of my subs retreated personally, BUT we would have needed prepared sub-lieutenants. Decisive was that Jaime had some problems with the Computer Mafia, burning his PC equipment, and Honk only narrowly did escape an attempt to hang him, having a sore neck being unavailable therefore Fourth mistake was that we had some last minute changes being applied to my subs, BUT I decided to stick to my original plan. Decisive was now, that both replacements we were able to recruit had virtually no time to get into the plan before battle, so everything had to go awry automatically. Let me present, at this place, my sincerest thanks to both of my then-new sub-commanders, Lieutenant Kendo Echancar and Lieutenant Charro Rost. Both of them did a great job, as far as they could, regarding the non-existing preparation they had. What did happen after those two stepped in, replacing the two deserters? As I said already, most of the things very destined to fail from the beginning: First, my subs didn't have any time for pre-planning, so they couldn't place a single one of the entrenchments they were entitled to. I don't want to mention that - after a terrible crash of Matteo Olmero's global satellite system causing a one hour delay already - he felt obliged to urge them into the game not willing to give them any more time for preparation - understandable under the circumstances. Then Charro's troops, originally forming two forces - mobile Defense North plus Reserve - were crammed up together and thus applied together. I never learned through the whole game whether he really used them as two different forces with different tasks. Maybe you could ask him for me. Furthermore, of course, he had no time and room to reach his positions in time that laid three kms East of the valley. He tried his best to get there, and I think he did a good job anyway. Kendo, on the other hand, had his two forces divided into Defense South plus Surveillance Far South. He did well by sending out the surveillance units right away and then placing his defense units, making up a quick sort of plan I assume. while he was still fiddling with the people there, however, his surveillance force ran into some Colombian Army (GREEN) ambush right after start of the game. Darn! Not only Casillas, but the Officials, too! I decided to ignore them so far and concentrated on our preparation for the main defense. When the Colombian Officials, however, attacked our camp from South-West after dropping some sniper teams from a chopper, I allowed all my men free fire on the Colombian Army. During the next minutes, we soon found out that those bastards of the GREEN troops seemed to fire on anything and anyone moving in front of their guns, so we had to reorganise a little. I ordered Charro (remember: Defense North and Reserve) not to dare too far East with his defense force and keep the reserve at the alarm. Kendo was to attack the Colombian GREENs with his mobile force coming from South. So far so good. Thinking everything was running smooth so far, I had to have a brief - hmm, retirement - with my lady, having promised her long ago. This lasted little more than an hour After I returned to regain command, my subs had to report that, in the meantime, all recce was gone, and Charro had thrown his reserve together with his main defense force fighting cleverly in the North, slowing the advance of Casillas' attacking villains. At least that was correct: they came from North-East! Kendo, on the other hand, was fighting with more and more GREEN Colombians trying to drown the camp and laboratories from South-East. Did those bastards cooperate? Impossible! Whatever we think from one another, how great ever the hatred between you and Sr. Casillas, none of you both would ever cooperate with the Official Colombian Army! So this simply had to be a very unlucky coincidence. Then I did another mistake. My plantation security being positioned on the heavily reinforced watchtowers was pounded by BLUE and GREEN mortars - although to no avail - and panicked! They tried to move themselves from one tower to another - and got killed. Bad idea! With lots of camp security gone it was more or less easy for GREEN to sneak into the camp and blow your laboratories with two heavy bombs. In the meantime, Charro and Kendo were doing a good job in slowing and attriting the attacking BLUE Casillas' men. Those, however, slipped through a gap between both defense positions and entered the plantation from North or North-East, I don't know exactly, but they did it. GREEN, smelling a good opportunity, called in his agent orange choppers then and sprayed most of the plantation with their despised herbicide, thus destroying our work of the whole last year... But what could we do? Cooperate with Casillas' men to drive off the Colombian Army and fight ourselves again later on? Never! This was out of the question all the time. It never even came to my mind; and then, you had ordered me to defeat him, not only to defend the plantation. Maybe I should have ignored that order and make friends with our neighbours, but I didn't. Maybe next time. To come to an end now, I feel obliged to inform you that I took my salary for this and the next ten years from the plantation's safe. Otherwise I wouldn't have been able to get onto this plane so quick and I would have had no chance to go somewhere in the world where you can not reach me. Thanks so far, Sr. Valdez, I stay Your faithful servant, Ex-Lieutenant Radolfo Pi. Credits/Performers (in alphabetic order): Kendo Echancar - Kenneth Chan Matteo Olmero - Matt Ohlmer Radolfo Pi - Ralf Pichocki Charro Rost - Gary Rost Jaime Sterreti - James Sterret Honk Stoffo - Henk Stoffers Victor Valdez - N.P.C.

I tried the scenario three times last month: First go (Kelly 1) was very easy (maybe bad AI). Second attempt I switched all US units to German units (somewhat weaker, actually), switched the 2 helos to 5 PAH (AT helos), and added 5 Jaguar ATGMs. It was hard, but manageable: I destroyed 60% enemy then began my retreat. Because I had lost many vehicles I granted myself 5 trucks to carry away my infantry. With this "cheat" I succeeded, very narrowly though. Third try was I stripped the AT helos which - I think I didn't end it - seemed to become a major desaster. If anyone is interested in longer AARs for these, go to http://www.offizierschule-des-heeres.de/hptzh/forum/index.htm and have a look there (German only!).

I do not fully understand the answer regarding IP addresses above. What I tried is: I did give my NT4 machine two different IP addresses and tried to host a game on one machine (Two Player and Multi) and tried to join it from the same machine (but different IP). It did not work. I even started TacOps from a different directory after duplicating all its files, but it did not work either. What's the reason for this? I think Bruce70's objection is not so very far from reality: Sometimes one wants (or better: three want) to play together with virtually nothing to do for the umpire. Why can't this be possible?

Hi, Major! Just to satisfy my curiosity: I thought there is a certain amount of random things in every turn. So how is it possible that EVERY computer in a Multiplayer game performs a turn with a guaranteed identical outcome? Or do you mean the umpire's machine claculates the outcome and then transfers the results back to the client machines? Regards, Pi. :confused: