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moneymaxx

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Posts posted by moneymaxx

  1. AA guns are not moveable in MG, but in a recent QB I had one moving around on its own, changing its status to limbered. I do not have a save game but I did try to recreate the problem. In the picture you can see an AA gun that is limbered and the crew is deploying it. It did not move though (save game available).

    dh35fs.jpg

  2. This post does not contain any gore.

    http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/scientific_topics/wound_ballistics/how_a_high-speed.html

    This short article explains why the velocity of a bullet is an important factor to make predictions about the damage it does. If the speed difference is big enough, then a bullet with a small diameter does equal or more damage than a slower bullet with a larger diameter, e.g. a 5.56x45 rifle bullet does (much) more damage than a 9mm pistol bullet. That´s because it carries more energy. The 5.56x45 +/- 1700 Joule, 9mm only +/- 600 joule and the 0.50 cal a whopping 13.000 joule! (source Wikipedia).

    For those who do not want to read the article:

    A bullet does 2 types of damage. The primary cavity is the path of the bullet itself and upon impact of the bullet tissue is propelled outwards away from the bullet path as can be perfectly seen in this video. This is called a temporary cavity.

    The size of the temporary cavity depends largely on bullet energy and can be as big as 30 times the diameter of the bullet. If the tissue that surrounds the temporary cavity is elastic enough it might just bulge like the ballistic gel in the video or an abdomen of a human and fall back into place. While there might be extreme internal damage, only a small entry and exit wound might be seen from the outside.

    If the surrounding tissue is not elastic, e.g. a head, then the pressure of the moving tissue might be high enough to make it explode. Even if it was elastic the temporary cavity of a 0.50 cal is quite big, if a leg or arm was hit, I suspect that the surrounding tissue would not be able to contain the cavity rather than being torn or cut off it would more or less burst.

    (Primary and temporary cavity also depend on othe factors like the yaw of the bullet, material, shape but of minor imprtance in this context.)

  3. @Steve

    Since you agree that it is gamey that mortars can area-fire without LOS and without an observer, why isn't firing simply made impossible?

    Because area fire without LOS is not always gamey.

    A) A unit a 1000 meters away from the mortar spots an ATG. The mortar has not spotted the ATG, there is no way it has received the info from the spotting unit, has no LOS and LOF only to a spot that´s more or less close of the ATGs position. Area firing on that position = gamey.

    B) You want to area fire a little bit beyond the LOS of the mortar because you think that's tactical sound = not gamey.

    C) The mortar crew sees an enemy that then hides behind a wall/house... Area firing in the vicinity = not gamey.

    How shall the game decide when to allow area fire and when not? It's better to let the player decide to restrict himself to cases B) and C) though I mostly can not :).

  4. I much prefer the new style of interface, being a bit more fuzzy adds to the realism to my mind, if a unit is out of contact it is not instantly apparent just like the real world.

    I beg to differ. I think in RL it quickly becomes apparent when a unit is out of contact. Countless war movies draw their dramatic moments from the line "Sir, we have lost contact with (insert unit name here)". And it's not that the information is not being offered ingame, it is just not being offered efficiently.

    Grided terrain might be useful but I would rather be able to print out a map in topographic map style and have it as a reference rather than see it on the on-screen terrain.

    Gridded terrain would be nice if optional. Lack of realistic lighting and limitations in computer graphics make it hard to distinguish subtle hight differences.

  5. I agree with many of the above requests, I especially miss the command lines.

    Target lines however, if implemented, should only be available on lower FOW levels because they would undo much of the relative spotting system. E.g. one of your units sees an ATG, and draws a target line. Now you have a perfect visual clue for all other units where to area fire.

  6. I'm not entirely sure how having a UI display saying 'wast deep hay' adds to the information.

    The CMx1 style information e.g. "scattered trees" gave a good indication what cover and especially concealment one could expect. In CMx2 I´am a) unable to precisely put a unit where I want to because the game chooses a location inside an action spot and B) therefore unable to tell if the chosen spot offers cover and concealment.

    Unless WYSIWIG is really WYSIWIG which would render the information useless (as you said).

  7. Did it, got a minor victory in 4 minutes with 0 losses :).

    SPOILER ALERT:

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    Your post gave me the idea to try something different and it shows that scenario design is a difficult task. Since the US gets victory points for just touching the phase lines, I smoked the entire street with arty and then drove a tank through the smoke to the other side of the map ;).

  8. I was suprised too to see that mortars with voice contact have such a long delay.

    I understand that off-board assets take some time because

    1) The spotter hat to determine map references

    2) Send them

    3) The arty has to receive them

    4) Convert them into firing orders and

    5) Then start to fire beginning with spotting rounds

    6) More delay is added because off the quality of the communications channel due to e.g. technical problems, bad sound quality etc. (it even takes time for the sender of information to realize that it has not arrived at its destination).

    For on-board assets more or less the same applies if orders are transmitted by wireless. But one can argue that it should be quicker than off-board because the arty is an attached unit. E.g. they could have taken part in the pre-battle planning, therefore knowing about possible targets and their location (map study) which would help with point 3/4. Knowing the people that you are fighting with also can help during communication problems, point 5.

    Voice order should be much quicker though since there is really no need for point 1/2/3 and the communications channel is much better, even better if there is eye contact as well. IMHO it should not take much longer than direct mortar fire to at least get the first spotting round, FFE should take a little bit longer though because of the need to report where the spotting round landed (but still faster than wireless/off-board).

  9. Given the sheer complexity of the whole thing one can easily see why BF came up with the solution anything below 50 cal doesn't cause friendly casualties.

    There is a small problem with that though, especially in WEGO mode. You can area fire (target light) a house with a Panther and move in your infantry at the same time but you cannot do the same with a Sherman since it's 50 cal will kill your troops (as I had to experience).

  10. I never was a hardcorer wargamer but was always interested in the subject. When I was a child (in Germany) I never saw a board game like ASL, the only non computer game I knew of was Risk, which I liked. Then the Commodore 64 came along but it was not really suited for wargaming I guess and I do not remember any wargame that I played on it. Played Battle Isle and History Line on the Amiga but loved Harpoon which I accidentally bought from a bargain bin. When I switched to PC I played Allied General etc. but the first really exciting game was Close Combat. Probably searching for news on it I found the CMBO demo. I really liked it, but CMBO was not sold in Germany at that time and short on cash I was reluctant to order it in the US. I was lucky to find a copy of it on Ebay (the American version not the CDV one).

    I must have played CMBO and CMBB for hundreds of hours (CMAK not so much). And though I play all kinds of computer games (a lot :)), CMBO and CMBB are among the few really important highlights in more than 25 years of gaming.

    CMSF wasn´t for me (asymmetric, desert, modern), but I did play it and with the latest patches I did enjoy it. Therefore I have high hopes for CMBN.

  11. Since some software tasks benefit from multicore and others do not, how can one be certain that the CM2 software would benefit?

    There are calculations in the game that effect every unit. Take LOS/LOF, TacAI, pathfinding for example. I dare to say, obviously without inside knowledge, that those use quite a lot of calculating time. On a single CPU you calculate for unit 1, then 2 and so on. Now imagine you had 100 cores, 1 core for every unit calculating not sequentially, but at the same time in paralell. In theory much faster.

  12. Fifteen fatalities from a single 50 mm seems just a tad high even though they were all bunched together. Fifteen wounded to one degree or another strikes me as entirely plausible.

    Michael

    I would not be all that surprised if all were dead. The lethal radius for the Mark II A1 frag grenade is mostly stated at around 5 meters (weighing 640 grams). Given that the truck is roughly 7 meters long you already have a good chance of killing everybody with it. Since the Sprenggranate 38 is roughly 3 times as heavy (1.8 Kg) a 100% lethality does seem plausible, especially since they were not not in any kind of cover.

  13. With this the Germans rode into battle:

    Pantherfibel:

    http://ia700304.us.archive.org/25/items/Panther-fibel-BetriebUndKampfanleitung/Panther-fibel-BetriebUndKampfanleitung1944119S.Scan.pdf

    Note pages 16-17 which not only explain the effect of the angle of armour (vertically) but also the attack vector (horizontally). Also note the pages from 106 onwards that depict aim points for the most important allied tanks, armour data and maximum penetration ranges at an 60º attack vector.

    Tigerfibel:

    http://www.fprado.com/armorsite/TIGER-1%20FILES/tigerfibel.pdf

    In the Tigerfibel itself such data can not be found. Not because it was not important but because there were 2 separate appendixes called the Panzerbeschusstafel KwK 36 (tank-shelling-chart KwK 36). A quick google search did not find a pdf file of that appendix but on this page a small picture of it can be seen (5th and 6th picture from the top). http://www.usmbooks.com/tigerfibel.html and the Panzererkennungstafel Russland (tank recognitian chart russia).

    It seems at least plausible that the crews of different German tanks got similar instruction, even if not printed.

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