somazx

Downloaded the patch linked to from battlefront on 3dgamer and it worked. Alright, so they were the wrong patches I guess. I got them from gamespot (cause its less of pain than fileplanet) but I guess they're only listing the CDV versions.

Well when I run the game it says it's v1.0 in the bottom right. Don't know anything about CDV vs non-CDV, but I ordered it direct from battlefront around when it first came out. Nothing on the CD about CDV...

I just re-installed CMBB to re-aquaint myself with this fine game before CMAK comes out, but when I go to install the 1.01 patch it tells me: "No Installation of Combat Mission 2 was found" Thought it was maybe because I installed CMBB into E:\CMBB instead of C:\Program Files\CMBB - so I reinstalled CMBB, this time to the default location... but the same thing from the patch. I've ran the game, began a scenario... just in case running the game would setup the registry values or something... didn't help. Wha'sup?

Wow. Nice moves. Was this your plan the first time you played this battle? I'm guessing - no.

Excellent, sounds like other's found it pretty challenging - that makes me feel a little better =) That would be good to see. [ December 08, 2002, 04:50 PM: Message edited by: somazx ]

[spoiler warning] I'm looking for some advice on how to approach the Lonely Country battle. I've played through this battle as the Russians and suffered a major defeat. What I did: For the sake of argument I'm going to call the corner of the map with the objective flag 'north'. I decided that with all the rocky terrain along the south west side of the map that I'd move my infantry through that area, then over the slight hills with threes to approach on the flag; avoiding the 'bowl' in the center of the map and the open terrain on the east side of the map. I have my T34s setup generally hull down to the opposing side of the map along the north edge of the setup boundry. I soon discover the nasty STuG IIIGs and my hull down T34-M43's are apparently powerless. I loose an one platoon of them - a platton that couldn't find any cover. The other two platoon's manage to get out of LOS amongst the scatteret trees and various dips in terrain. Realizing I needed side shots on those STuGs I decided to forget about tanks for the time being and focus on the infantry advance. I'm able to advance the infantry west through the rocky terrain and scattered trees with satisfaction - I use Maxim MG to area fire on the tree'd hills, suspecting likely ambushes and was able to confirm some enemy presence. Also by this time one enemy StuG has disapeared for a while, the other has turned his attention to my advancing infantry and has exposed his side. I get a few tanks my T34's out of the scattered trees and onto the road for quick shoot and scoot's but didn't manage to take the STuG out before retreating due to his rotating. I continue to improve my position on the first little hill on the west side which i've been doing a decent job of pinning and harassing the german's on - I'm too chicken to attempt an assault so I play it safe by staying in the rocky terrain around the base of the hill and just wittling down the germans there. Time however is running out; if only I could bring a T34 into support, but it seems insane with those STuGs out there. Couple turns later and the one visible STuG has again exposed his side. I hunt forward down the raod with two T34's and I move two T34's into hull down positions more on the west side, thinking if I sacrifice one of these two to take out the STuG, then I'd be happy. Exactly this happens. I loose one of the two T34's on the west, while the east side T34's get side shots and take out the STuG. Whoopeee =) I then fast move my remaining west side T34 to support the infantry assault on the hill top. His final destination will be out of LOS of most of the North corner of the map as I know there is still another STuG there somewhere. Sure enough the move reveals the STuG but the T34 makes it into position and out of LOS - I'm a little surprised how fast the T34 makes it the 300 m through patches of rocky terrain and scattered trees - in one turn! and now its just south of the hill my infantry have been working on for the past 5 turns. However its turn 20/20+ and the battle ends. I thought since I had a fairly intact infantry that the battle would go on, but I guess my loosing so many T34's and doing somewhat minimal damage on the germans, as well as having only made it half way to the objectve - the game ends. Major Victory for the Germans. Bottom line, I feel I had limited space to which to try and work angles on the STuG's. Best I can get is about a 90 degree side angle, and that is only on the rare occasion the STuG will be silly enough to rotate that much, which I don't think it has to even do to cover the entire map - otherswise its 40-45 degree angles. Furthermore its all messy terrain that the tanks can't shoot and scoot through very well. There are patches that are open, but little cover for the T34s to break LOS in. So that whole approach seems bound to be risky. How have others played this battle and how'd you do?

I also replayed DoVG last night with the new patch. I can't say I noticed units being any more effective in an open advance of 100 meters against a single MG - they still panicked and routed quite quickly. Though the MG seemed to actually do more damage =) and loosing more guys justified the panick and routing. So oddly enough, that works for me =) I actually saved the game right before the advance and tried various techniques: giving my maxims cover arcs,or having them lay area fire on the buildings while my 'toons advanced, are two examples. I tried splitting the plattons and sending the SMGs on the advance while the riflers covered along with the maxims. I retryed about six times in all. Every time the result was the advancing plattons getting nuked. In the end nothing worked and I have to accept that it just isn't a workable strategy under the circumstances. I toyed with the idea of posting the game on here asking for people to look at it and suggest what would work or confirm its not a sound approach. I may still do that but under a new topic. I've been playing CMBB assuming the Move command hadn't changed from CMBO - that Advance and the others were speciality commands intended for unique conditions. I'm finding however that where the Move command will repeatedly result in a platton being pinned and clawing in any direction for the nearest cover;with the Advance command the platoon will press on toward their intended destination even when pinned they'll crawl, and even under heavy losses. So where before my human wave or move orders were resulting in maybe a casualty and then a panic or routed platoon - with advance a platoon pushed on that last 15m to the cover I intended despite five casualties. Long story short, Advance is what I use to move units if there is even a remote chance of them coming under fire. Where Move was once a fairly versatile command, it is now imho a specialty command. The only time to use it is when your way from combat. [Edit: Apparently this is all in the FAQ which I hadn't read yet] I've also I guess been assuming that units were equally likely to fire at questionable targets without having to specify covering arcs being assigned. So I guess I've been somewhat handicapped by relying on what I had already learned in CMBO. Perhaps the hard core types who had little trouble adjusting to CMBB from CMBO were/are just more aware of how orders changed from their being actively following the forums. I want to suggest that the manual could have done a better job of conveying the usage of the orders. Hell the manual could have done a better job on conveying the usage of some of the more uncommon units. And the manual's tutorials are nearly impossible to follow without some pictures and I believe the Advanced Tutorial has a mistake where its suggesting Team A move right, then later says something along the lines of Team A should now be nearing the Left side Hill. huh?! Yeesh. Probably it sounds like i'm just lashing out at the manual now since the game has been established as perfect but really I'm just too lazy to mention this in another thread and organize my points better. And Steve... well I'm too lazy to convince you that you do sound patronizing when you begin using metaphors like rain getting people wet to illustrate the complexity of an AI problem. Then again your only really guilty of misjudging your audience. [ November 22, 2002, 03:05 PM: Message edited by: somazx ]

The TacAI will do some dumb stuff, that is no surprise to us nor is it preventable. It might even do some dumb stuff very consistantly in a given situation, that is also no surprise to us. The problem is that tons of AI programming time generally doesn't help the overal situation. There will always be something that could use specific coding to fix, and since AI coding is extraordinarily time consuming... we as developers just have to "cut our losses" (so to speak) and move on. The simple truth is that even a rather dumb player can correctly point out the shortcomings of the AI. But that doesn't mean anything because identifying an AI problem is generally akin to figuring out that if it rains you get wet... </font>

Yes, thank you. However a little concerning that my carefull and delibrate rush went far worse than your lazy and hurried one =) However I think we've established that this battle makes for a good illustration of two behaviours (possible excessive routing and possible failing to fire problems)that people have been debating. Folks complaining that there is a lack of reproducable examples should quiet down now - between this scenario and the others mentioned. This scenario and discussion should be enough to aid the developers in making a more precise scenario to further isoloate and reproduce the behaviour and either identify a problem or deffinatively point out justification for what we've observed. [ November 21, 2002, 01:50 PM: Message edited by: somazx ]

MORE SPOILING of Defence of Verkhne-Golubay Hi Tom, Three questions, for you to answer: So sounds like although difficult, you feel the game/battle played out in a reasonable manner in terms of being practical. Or do you feel the MG was excessively EFFECTIVE? Did you happen to experience your own Maxim MG's being stubborn about not voluntarily acquiring targets as well? If not, did you use covering arcs - as other posts suggested that using covering arcs improves spotting and target acquiring - personally I have not made big use of covering arcs. And did you note that your squads were routed or panicked without having taken significant casualties and after rather short lived exposure to MG fire? Not trying to corner you, just trying to clarify. PS - I'm actually blown away you did as well as you did. My first attempt using a rush didn't get me past the cemetary and I surrendered to try again - but I wasn't getting much in the way of cover fire from those MGs and I can see that making all the difference. I played that map a second time and with equal focus on flank attacks as the central attack. The central push again failed miserably even with tank support. However both my flanking efforts went reasonably well and in the end I accomplished about the same as yourself: gaining control of the flags along the river. If I played it again I would forget all about the central push, concentrate on the left flank (one with the functional bridge) and push for the hill with the main flag. [ November 21, 2002, 01:15 PM: Message edited by: somazx ]

WARNING - further spoiling and spoilage I experienced the Maxim MGs not acquiring targets as well when playing that battle - both times I played it. Though I attributed it to strange things with LOS either by design or by accident - as visibility is limited due to weather but I was basically trying to rationalize what I was experiencing. In fact, that battle (DoVG - along with some similar experiences in other battles but on a smaller scale) is what made me come into these forums; because one factor has really been a thorn in my side. Being pinned, panicked, routed, etc by what appears to be largely ineffective machine guns (100 fire power rating at 100M shooting from 150m out) with veteran units (at least in DoVG they are) with few to no casualties. Yes I know the machine guns are effective at suppression, but the result was all my units (four platoons worth) panicked and routed within a turn by one MG - with the platoons and squads well spread out over about a 500m area - a large range to suppress in 60 seconds I would think. My usual style is a cautious advance clinging to cover, and leap-frog men - which usually works well enough for me. However I'm often running against the clock with my overly cautious play. I decided to attempt the blitz/storming approach on this battle against a certain nagging feeling that it would be foolish to attempt it but there were several other reasons why I did it: - The number of units was large enough I felt at least half my troops ought to cover the distance without being decimated (or rendered ineffective) and it appeared I had excellent cover with my Maxim MGs. also the default setup of the troops seems to suggest the approach - an impression that historically speaking the Russians won by sheer numbers - the human wave command (perhaps misunderstood by me) seemed to reinforce the above two points as I thought it was intended for just this sort of thing So answer this, is the above a sound tactic for this battle - can it be made to work and I just didn't work it well enough? Or is the above a sound tactic in terms of realism, but not the games current modeling? Another rationalization myself and my human opponent were considering was that maybe the Russians had some intrinsic penalty to morale or experience and this had to be taken into consideration. Load that battle, take the four closest platoons to the church in the center of the map and human wave or move them 150m to the cemetery area. Watch 1 machine gunner nearly hold back the lot of them. I'm not saying its necessarily a problem in the games modeling, I'm just adding my voice to the numbers who mentioned these factors. Whether the solution be further training material for us newb (well novice anyway) players, or tweaks to the modeling, or just accepting the change. I still play the game, though I find it more frustrating than CMBO but I am embracing the challenge.