Grimly Fiendish

Gorgeous! I want to cry. What the hell is a Tortoise? A-googling I shall go . . .

Koenig, please tell us more! KG, you're kidding, right? You're killing me!

Dandelion---The determining racial theory in the US has always been the one-drop rule, so there were no degrees to consider. Practically, this means that if a recruiter looked at you and thought you were black, heard you and thought you were black, knew a distant cousin of yours who was black, saw your address and thought you were black, then unless you were light-skinned and he decided to look the other way to meet his quota and you bluffed through it, that was it: transport battalion or medical unit at best. Same in the Pacific, where the blacks humped all the ammo and wounded and more than once had to take up a weapon to hold off the enemy, in addition to medical men's being singled out by Japanese snipers. How this worked out on paper is an interesting question. No doubt draftees and volunteers were simply assigned to units based on their perceived "abilities" per the recruiter's recommendation or on the town they enlisted in, towns being segregated then. No one was turned down or forced away, except the sons of Japanese immigrants. It would be cool to be able to do a 761st Tanker scenario. But most of the battles those guys were in were in the meatgrinder of the Gustav Line. Not too many exciting breakthroughs there. Just hard work.

KG, are you serious? Because that would be very funny and disturbing at the same time. It has occurred to me that an advantage accrues to the Axis when 2 typically monoglot Americans play CM. This is because the Axis player can swoop around the battlefield gathering intelligence about enemy morale and casualties but the Allied player cannot. I have deciphered a few phrases such as "Kamerad!" ("Friend," i.e., I surrender), but if you can't pick it up and spell it you can't translate it.

I understand why they do this, but I find it is VERY difficult to model historical OOBs. (The platoon view for buying armored vehicles was a vast step forward.) And the arbitrariness of some decisions is revealed by changes between CMBO and CMAK in the size and number of squads in a German platoon or HQ squad, even when they have pinpointed the arm and month. of course the historical OOB revisions are notorious for the Germans. Conversely, it would be great if you could edit a unit to be an HQ unit, thus allowing you to form an actual tank company.

Here's a little thing: A way to set the default "inbox" and "outbox" for PBEM files so they never get confused. Also, I agree with the "seek turret down." Along with that, how about "pull back to hull down"? How many armored vehicles would THAT save? Seems to me tanks should *normally* try to keep hull down from any recognized AT weapon. But I can understand if they want to give us the option of behaving like damn fools. That IS part of the game. So then give us the tools to be smart, I say. Side note: I think BF is focused enough not to implement anything like actual medics or "killer graphics." They know that, beyond an ambulance or 2, they aren't worth the effort to model visually. We should be grateful (I am!) BF is not the kind of company that puts out $40 "expansion packs" like Combat Mission: GI Joe vs Ninja! or Combat Mission: M.A.S.H. We can dream, but they know their product has to meet this forum's standards, and if CMX2 doesn't stand up they will be torn to shreds. :cool: [ September 30, 2004, 04:52 PM: Message edited by: Dave Stockhoff ]

More seriously, one general thing that frequently drives me up the wall is the way CM combines top-down control with bottom-up, forcing me to think 2 ways at once. That is, while I understand that IRL an officer is always telling green or panicked troops to do the opposite of their natural inclinations, and that tank drivers can do dumb things when they are jumpy---and therefore it follows that units must be modeled to actually have that natural tendency, declining with experience, to do these dumb things---I find it tedious to be BOTH battalion commander AND tank driver. If I tell a tank to sneak around a patch of woods, I do not mean "go get stuck in the woods, turn around and back up in full view of the enemy, and get shot up from the rear." Basic pathfinding and common sense, then, but my desire is not just better quality but less responsibility for management. After all, isn't that what officers are for? And those tanks DO have drivers, don't they? (probably student drivers!) So 1) more and better AI pathfinding 2) Vehicles that back up under fire behind easily available cover, not just straight back, and other more logical responses to being targeted Another complaint is more of a bug, but I have seen it in CMBO and CMAK, and it probably has a name already: when "Rotate" orders for vehicles suddenly become "Fast" or when "reverse & fast" becomes "reverse & reverse." When this happens, all your careful micromanagement is wasted because the vehicle inevitably gets its hatch lifted.

Also, flying monkeys with flamethrowers!

I'd like to see separately saveable maps in the Scenario Editor. Often I start a battle, generate a map I like, and then wish I had started it as an operation. Seems to me I should be able to use the same map for both purposes and see which works better. of course it would have to be a long map to really work for both, but that's my problem, not BF's!

The Finnish satchel charges were not really satchels, but sticks. Bet you could throw them farther. Still, you'd have to run out 15m and throw 25m, and of course to get the top of the deck you would need some accuracy---no rolling or bouncing.

let us know!

Thanks for a set of excellent answers. Some notes: 1) At some point I googled "gammon bomb" and read that some 80% of tank kills by the Allies in Arnhem were by gammon bomb. (or was it PIAT?) Either way, in close urban fighting demos can be quite effective. This was a semi-urban locale. 2) I also googled "satchel charge" and read that the goal of such attacks was usually immobilizing the target, not killing it. Kills were not common, and the treads were in any case easier to damage. 3) In this case, the Tiger was buttoned and paused next to a small rubble patch; the Polish terrorist [FREEDOM FIGHTER] was positioned in a large rubble patch next to the smaller one, and could reasonably have dashed over using the available cover. So to summarize, a lucky result but in retrospect not a surprising one. I will be more careful in the future! [ September 25, 2004, 09:45 PM: Message edited by: Dave Stockhoff ]

This is for all the demolition fans out there. I just lost a Tiger to a Polish satchel charge thrown by an engineer squad (sorry, don't know the year exactly but it was in Italy) from 35 meters. Now I know the contents of a satchel were variable and also varied over time. But how can you throw a ~10-pound bag 105 feet? let alone the fact that it was, I guess, a lucky throw from the side/rear that hit the Tiger's deck and set the engine afire. A lucky, lucky throw! I understand that the game doesn't always perfectly represent pure physical reality. But how typical is this occurrence? Naturally, I thought I was safe passing by these engineers such a distance away. Turns out I had less to fear from the PIATs peppering me from the front.

Thanks for the comments amd ideas, and thanks, Verg, for the link to ROQC. Dave

Exactly. The thing to figure out and agree on is this: what would benefit a player in the next battle, and what would hurt his opponent? By "benefit" and "hurt," I mean something that would not necessarily increase the chances of winning the next one (though that's a possibility: maybe a scale of increasing force bonuses with each increase in the level of my victory over you), but rather that would close off my enemy's options and increase mine, leaving me something of value I can hold in reserve if I choose, even if just a get-out-of-battle-free card. What is needed is something that is fixed and does not change, so that other changes have meaning. For example, if we agree that I am in a tank division and you are in a parachute division, then we can fight it out to determine whether the next terrain will be heavily wooded (benefiting you) or less so (favoring me), because I will always be using armor (the armored force setting, picked by the AI for realism) and you will never. Or, the battles could be tied to the historical offensives. Tank battles in the hedgerows until the breakout, then paratroops in the plains, then blitzkrieg in the winter woods, then desperate defenses by the hapless Volksturm militia. Another question is exactly what makes a battle easier to win? I have observed that attacks in clear terrain on the AI are far more devastating than attacks in wooded hills. If the engagement type is fixed, then, I could screw you with terrain; if the terrain is fixed, then I could screw you with the engagement type. The problem here is that exploiting a victory means attacking again and again, so that eventually the attacker may run up against a defender in the wooded hills--which is exactly where an attacker doesn't want to attack! (The Ardennes offensive being an insane exception.) Maybe the best course is to start with a standard battle series. Pick a city: Paris (flattish, lightly wooded?), Antwerp (flat and open), Bastogne (hilly, wooded), Ruhr or other, maybe Bavaria. Define and fix the terrain parameters for each zone, realizing that heavy buildings will progressivly replace heavy woods, and set the weather to random and the season to the historical one. Then: Small meeting, rural Medium attack, farmland Medium probe, village Large assault, town If the zone is Bastogne, the Germans get the attacks; otherwise, the Allies. If the attacker loses any of these, he loses the match; if he wins, progress to the next item in the list. If a match is lost, you start a new match with a new meeting engagement. The winner wins the town and you progress to the next town. Unfortunately, this approach puts a lot of pressure on the first battle. Alternatively, each side is assumed to have a town to defend, and the defender is always the loser of the last battle. There are so many possibilities I don't know where to begin! But I might point to the brilliant approach of the PanzerGeneral series, in which victory brings prestige, and prestige brings forces if you choose to spend it, but throwing away your forces means your prestige drops, so it's never just a snowball effect. That system provides an accurate model of the swing of operational initiative back and forth during a campaign. (If the winner were awarded a cumulative 10% force bonus, unneeded forces could always be sent offmap. That way, they are safe from destruction, and if you win you get them back because in the next battle you'd get 20%.) Then again, I am afraid I tend to make things complicated!

Maybe the old driver was corrupted, but in any case a new driver (45.23) made the stuttering go away.

My CMBO has recently developed a BAD audivisual stutter during both playback and plotting. It may be systemwide; my PC (Win 98) may be dying; my cheap mouse may be misbehaving. These all could be true! But I didn't have the problem until 2 weeks ago, and it's only a problem in CMBO. -CPU overheat? -Fiddling with Internet radio? RealPlayer? -Nvidia TNT2 card is older, no new drivers -Haven't tried turning of FSAA, if it's even on Any thoughts? :mad:

:eek: [ November 29, 2003, 07:40 PM: Message edited by: Dave Stockhoff ]

The point being---I should clarify---to raise the stakes for each battle.

Has anyone developed a set of rules that introduces an element of operational-level direction and thought to a series of otherwise random quickbattles? perhaps by giving the victor of a engagement enhanced ability to determine the circumstances of the next battle? I and some people I play against have already agreed that the victor sets up the next quickbattle. But we are so fair to each other when we do this---each of us no doubt fearing bad treatment in return---that the privilege we have earned is meaningless, and we find that we each win every other battle. I have proposed that the victor can also ditch any game he comes up with once he sees the map---to refuse battle, having won the initiative and therefore the right to do so. I can envision a series of battles progressing to the end of the war (perhaps 5000 points per month, or a set of battles each month beginning with a small probe and ending with a blowout assault determining the next month's circumstances?); the winner of the last battle may even win the war. Fionn's rules would apply; weather should probably be required to be always random. Has anyone else been thinking along these lines, or already worked this out?

I assume the mention of sewers refers to CMBB, not CMBO??? :confused:

I assume the mention of sewers refers to CMBB, not CMBO??? :confused:

I wonder if anyone else has seen this behavior: I just designed my first battle scenario and have played it about halfway through with a human opponent. I gave myself some Tiger (2) and Panther (4) reinforcements. When the time came, the much-needed reinforcements turned out to be 2 Kubelwagens and 4 trucks. (So i am hoping to scare off the soft Americans with engine noises in the woods!) To answer the obvious question: yes, my opponent had access to the file and no, I did not save it as Tournament (read-only). But I also trust my opponent. Has anyone else seen anything like this?

This time I'll type something first! Immediately after, and I have never seen it before. I also saw it once with another game demo, so it's not just CM. I did install the Asus-board AGP driver, but that CD is well over a year old, so that might be the thing to do. I have not seen a new driver on the Asus site, but I haven't looked closely. Thanks!

[ June 29, 2002, 06:00 PM: Message edited by: Dave Stockhoff ]