Eden Smallwood

Good God man, could you possibly be more wrong??? Where in the entire world of commerce has the literal *genius* of the recent moves by Apple been equalled? For pete's sake you can buy a desktop *aquarium* from third parties in iMac colors, that marketing stroke had such impact. The new OS will inconvenience me very greatly, but I don't begrudge Apple one whit for it- it will be a long, long time in the future, imho, before the truth of how wise the architecture of the new OS becomes fully appreciated. Eden

Mac or Windoze probably makes a difference too. Sad to think how close some souls come to nirvana, only to shun the light... Eden

Ahhhh... * Ping Pong * Hee. That's a good one. Search for tophat reveals posts which seem to say that it's a valid technique even for just one tank... Hmmm. As far as the game has been to me, that seems like a pretty ineffective suicide. But back to the topic of the thread, would that Ping Pong thing be "gamey tank tactics" in the case where the tanks had no radio? Otherwise they'd have not much way of coordinating. Is seems unlikely that a flag/hand waving command line would exist connecting two tanks on separate sides of the field. ( It would be nice if the little info window for the tanks told us which ones had radio or not. ) But OTOH, maybe in RL a TC sort of "noticed" that their comrade was also shooting at the same heavy, so they knew that it was a ping pong situation, and hoped that their comrade figured that out too...? What I was describing that I've been doing wouldn't need to be gamey, since it wouldn't depend on radio, it could be a very simple SOP- "everyone target the heavy, but the guy who's being targetted himself should back up, and come back in thirty seconds..." Kind of the same thing, generalized ping pong, but it only works for multi tanks, because the retreating guy doesn't need to time himself according to the advancing guy. Eden

Cool, some education for me! ( Where do they get these names? ) In your first post you didn't mention moving "in and out of LOS"... that makes it a bit different. Now are you saying that all your tanks are moving in & out *at the same time* ? Or just the one that's currently targetted? If I have mutli tanks on an enemy tank, I will pull the one being targetted out, in the case where the enemy tank is utterly uber, like a KV or something, so my only chance is to not get hit. But I've never even considered moving *all* of them back 'n' forth constantly. Is that what you mean? Eden

Just remember it's always easier in hindsight... It took awhile, but I've got the sine qua non of this bug: It happens, as described above, whenever the applications heap is essentially full. Perfect one-to-one, if and only if relationship. I mean when CMBB takes up almost all of the remaining RAM. The reason it seemed persistent, before, is that my first reaction was to increase the size of CMBB's partition!! Insidious, eh? The backside cache thingie is irrelevant to this behaviour. So. A simple workaround, (just be sure to leave the OS a nominal amount of memory), and for a hypothesis, how's this: CMBB requests some service like temporary memory, which in all normal cases is granted, but when crucial to the OS is not granted, and somewhere there is a failure to check for the service's nonesxistence in CMBB::LoadingGraphics()... Well it fits, you see. And it *really* looks like a call to ExitToShell(). Anyhow, thank you for your attention. Hth, Eden [ November 11, 2002, 11:53 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ]

Well, it's difficult to tell, but it sometimes seems to me that the flag in fact spoils information about the enemy, not merely the case above. Could I ask you to verify how the flag "works"? EG, in one scenario, I drove several thousand tons of panzer power up to a ridge; there was a flag on the ridge; there was noone else in sight; the flag was "?". The only conclusion I could draw was that there was hidden enemy just on the other side. There was. As I say, I'm hoping, but it's hard to tell, that the flag shows me only what *my* knowledge tells me about the victory condition around that flag. It should be possible for *both* players to "think" that the flag belongs to them, while at most one of them is right. They can each see more of their own forces around it, suppose. If that's not how it works, maybe it should...? Eden

Have you played all the scenarios vs the AI? All the ones on the CD? All the non-CD ones at Scenario Depot? Have you played them again, and again? Some will say that the AI is just the AI, and a human can be much sneakier. Sure, sure, no doubt. But by playing the AI you *will* learn what works. LOL that image is really sad! I love what the other guy said about ignoring the flags- me too! It's about *destroying* the enemy, and destroying the enemy is about *local superiority*. Hth, Eden

Somewhat harder to be shot at, but ten times harder to hit anything, n'est-ce pas? Eden

Exactly. But, while I agree with your viewpoint, for myself I arrived at the opposite conclusion: If tank mods weren't so filthy, they might have a wider 'market', since everyone can drop them in *one at a time* without making the troops et alia look ridiculous. The alternative is to be required to download a filth mod for every single article of the game, which some here I suppose are more than willing to do, but... probably not everyone. Eden

In the case of a crouching or prone infantryman, that's exactly what I'd want. In every case, I'd prefer that "1" see exactly what the unit sees- id est, I have his eyeballs, his viewpoint, his los. Completely 1st person. Hitting "1" inevitably gets me a view of his back, with a bunch of trees that are right behind him, and I can see nothing. Eden

Well I appreciate that, I do. ( Is Xerxes really your name?) I have a problem, in more than one sense, in playing "Huge" scenarios... so far, I've tried a couple "Large" Ops, and they're pushing it. In a further stroke of bad luck, I did not enjoy the first scenario of either one, which is extremely rare for me, so... so I may never know what y'all are going on about, but I'd like to! Anyhow, Kudos to any SDs who make "Large" or gawd-forbid "Medium" Ops for us megaherzally-challenged little people, Eden

Exactly; thank you. #1) Quit where? #2) HD with respect to what point? As you say, I also was disturbed to find my tank happily driving across the entire battlefield when it decided the local choices weren't good enough. So for now I just stick my nose in view #1 and do some intensive land surveillance. Eden</font>

Hardly. This has been brought up periodically ever since CMBO was released, most recently a few weeks ago. The ability to assign HQs to independent units has been a much asked for feature.</font>

Am I sure about what? There was a pretty beefy quote before that question. It may very well be. However, one thing we can all be sure of is that the gun will be more suppressed when directly targetted, than when area fire is laid down in the area of the foxhole. That seems prima facie evident, and it also seems to be the behaviour of the game. I'm not asking for a guarantee that the gun be supressed if I target it- I haven't said that at all. From the demo??? I observe this behaviour in virtually every scenario or QB I play, which is quite alot! I don't see how you could play a scenario with enemy AT guns and fail to witness this behaviour; it's truly common. At any rate, your observation that area fire *may* supress the gun does not alter the usefulness of the nifty ideas here. Once again, we are beginning with the belief that area fire is *less* supressive than direct targetting, not that area fire is completely useless. Eden

Before I forget- I have an idea that would dramatically increase the replayability of scenarios vs AI, and this thread seems like a reasonable spot so... Simply, if it were possible for the AI to *repurchase* the AI's forces, in scenarios where it is possible to ask the AI to place them intelligently, it would, as I say, increase the replayability. If the AI went through and bought stuff in the same manner as we do in QBs- roll the dice, pick some here, pick some there... We'd know *about* what we were up against, but never *exactly*, as it is now on the second time around. Yeah? Eden

Guys, OP did not mention the word "blood", he just wants to see every soldier, alive or dead. How is that equivalent to his asking for "Duke Nukem"? Dyvim Tvar- nothing like that is going to happen in the patch; that's just light years away from what's in the patch. But FWIW your desire seems perfectly reasonable to me- by definition, it would give one a more graphically realistic sense of what is happening. Eden

No shame on me- that line crossed my mind too when I saw this post! But I'm not sure you have it right- was it: "I demand that we may, or may not be Vroomfondel and Djikstra." ??? What page? Eden

Exactly; thank you. #1) Quit where? #2) HD with respect to what point? As you say, I also was disturbed to find my tank happily driving across the entire battlefield when it decided the local choices weren't good enough. So for now I just stick my nose in view #1 and do some intensive land surveillance. Eden

OK, wait- he said he didn't see the spotting round. Ok. But if arty has already been give command to fire for effect- continue firing until spotter says otherwise. Even if spotter dies, rounds should continue, right? Eden [ November 05, 2002, 07:41 PM: Message edited by: Eden Smallwood ]

Born in Ann Arbor, but took immediate steps to correct the matter. Eden

Oooooooooo, ahhhhh... Emrys shoots & scores. Even better than spelling "cooperation" with an umlaut. I'm adding this one to my xmas list. Eden

An answer from whom? I have also pointed out, more than once I think, that Arcs restrict rather than engender opening fire. The hill that we're up against, I believe, is simply that it seems very natural and easy to believe that Arcs coerce or encourage the unit to pull the trigger more often. What seems reasonable is often proof enough. To the topic: #1 headache) Mortars shifting their spotter to the nearest HQ. This one drives me out of my mind with just about every single game. But I'm the only one?? Ok, you guys. #2) Ironic Area Fire - The unit in foxhole "disappears", so you Area Fire the foxhole, yet the unit reappears, and your unit *continues* to Area Fire, (to little effect), rather than target the now visible enemy unit. #3) Disappearing Pillboxes - Honestly. #4) Disappearing ATGuns - OK, maybe so- but if that place in the shrubbery which previously had an ATGun poking out of it, if that rhododendron is firing AT shells at me, then that rhododendron has got to go, and I'd like to *target* that rhododendron, please. Not Area Fire, a point target on that rhododendron. #5) AT Rifles at Inf or Area - if this was done in real life, please let us do it here. Only if I *tell* them to, AT Rifles should be able to target infantry or Area Fire at a building. #6) Whatever those guys were saying about unindentified trucks being semi-identified as halftracks, or was it the other way around, or something...? Well, I think that's my complete xmas list. Big Time Santaware? Eden

"Not a zip file or corrupted." I can unzip anything else in the CM universe- is there something funky about that file? Eden

Oh! Well in that case I rescind all my comments on possibilities viz alterations. Hope they didn't offend- as stated, it was a blast for me personally. Eden

In fact it's TOO large, judging by the effect of Area Fire on an inhabited foxhole, to supress the unit *in* the foxhole. Area Fire "targetted" at a foxhole allows the unit in that foxhole to fire more easily than targetting that unit directly. I've complained about the irony of area fire more than once- it fails to do just exactly what it is meant to do- suppress the enemy. And that happens every single game. LordFluffer's idea makes perfect sense and seems like a perfect solution to me . Consider the sequence: 1) Enemy AT Gun in foxhole is firing 2) You fire at him 3) AT Gun "disappears" 4) You target the foxhole with Area Fire 5) AT Gun "reappears" 6) Your unit *continues* with Area Fire on the foxhole, rather than electing to directly target the unit, and the enemy remains unsupressed. I don't know about you, but #6 doesn't float my boat. LordFluffer's idea seems to me a natural way to provide Area Fire over some certain arc, in a way compatible with the idea that an appearing enemy should be targetted directly should it be within that Arc. NOT true. They *may* be targetted- the stated effect of an Arc is to *prohibit* fire outside the Arc. The manual does NOT state that giving an arc will make the unit *more likely* to open fire on an enemy appearing within range. Possibly they do, but for myself I've found them to be just as trigger happy without one. The unit's notion of what consitutes a worthwhile target seems independent of the existence of an arc, IME. Getting back to LF's idea, a few Arcs would be neat: 1) Open Fire on anything appearing in this Arc, regardless of how dismal the chances of inflicting true damage are. 2) Add to #1 suppressive fire over the space of the arc, even when no enemy units are visible, (but they were seen previously). 3) Add to #2, suppressive fire over the space of the arc, even when no enemy units are known to have existed. Eden