Akula2

I'm gonna nuke it from orbit. "It's the only way to be sure". Siege!!?? How the hell did you seige!!? Over this night battle I have enough infantry to provide security for the slew (official term) of tanks that needa git up that evil road. I have a few poor bastards left over to wander ahead into the woods on both sides of the road like Hansel and Gretel waiting for some evil to pop up and cut them down. Poor bloody infantry are takin it on the chin in this one for the sake of those Shermans wich are only marginally effective in that terrain. Tanks I got. I really don't think I'll win this one. My opponent is too good. I've only gotten as far as the rubble that was previously the first two buildings along the road near town. (2 storys) I can almost touch the flags, but they might as well be miles away.

This is very intriguing to me. Unfortunately, I'm involved in 8 pbems atm, two of wich are the TPG tourney and one playtest. For this reason and to ensure your battle gets the attention it deserves, I'll only volunteer as an alternate, substitute or if for some unknown reason if you cannot get your five players. Sounds very very cool. This would be a bright trend for scenario design though it must certainly require far more commitment from the designer than normal. I hope you've thought about how many emails you could potentially get if you ever publish it, lol. Robert.

I'm playing Gemmano right now pbem as Allied. It's rough gettin up that hill. The Gerbles are tearin up my Brit infantry pretty good. We're in game 3, the night time battle. I think I've had 4 or 5 Shermans shot up already. One to the ATG, one to the StuG and the rest to what I think is a single pesky 'shrek team. All but one or two were abandoned and I expect 3 back in the morning. Lost all 3 Brens but I expect at least 2 back in the morning. One got shocked in the same 'shrek hit that blew the snot outta one Sherman. It's the infantry escort where I'm hurting. Gerbles are tearin em up at close quarters as they move ahead of the tanks. There's really nothin to do but take the lumps or stop advancing. Great operation. It's definately one of the hardest I've played yet.

It would be kinda cool to orchestrate the AI for specific battles with "if-then" eventualitys. Old Subcommand had a mission editor that allowed something along those lines. Perhaps some ideas will come out of the work they're doing with DW. Harpoon also tied quite a few orders to different waypoint "legs". The editor/player could change his battle group formation to adress changing axis' of threat or sensor activity each leg. For instance he might not emit for the first leg then upon reaching the second leg he might light off his radars intermittently with variables making it erratic if not completely random. I'd imagine it would involve quite a bit of work to get CM to do that but it would be awsome. It would be nice for a scenario designer to order a tank coming around a street corner to turn his turret into that turn like I imagine a real tanker would probably do. Bends in the road ... so on. I'm sure many designers would love to have various capabilities in order to orchestrate a battle.

What is meant by: ? Would that mean that the AI would learn from my own playstyle? Opponents? Or does that mean that we could customize the AI's behavior to suit a particular scenario? :confused:

FoOD FigHT!!!! :mad:

Smells like love is in the air!! (couldn't resist )

Me too. Except I might include one or both houses in the CA

I'm watchin a "Mail Call" marathon (or something) and they just did fixed wing gunships. Turns out that "Puff the Magic Dragon" was an AC-47. Same general idea as the later AC-130. There was also another one 'tween that and the 130. I just saw it 5 mins ago but I already forget the designation ... AC-119 maybe? :confused: EDIT- I see Michael already beat me to it.

I'm watchin a "Mail Call" marathon (or something) and they just did fixed wing gunships. Turns out that "Puff the Magic Dragon" was an AC-47. Same general idea as the later AC-130. There was also another one 'tween that and the 130. I just saw it 5 mins ago but I already forget the designation ... AC-119 maybe? :confused: EDIT- I see Michael already beat me to it.

That's kinda the rub though. For me at least, even when I'm given tanks on the defense, they're more often than not in the attack mode. I won't buy armor unless it's combined arms when I'm defending. What I mean by attack mode is that I'll usually use them as a mobile reserve. They'll move to a hotspot and counterattack. If my armor is up and slugging it out with the enemy while I'm on defense I try to remain hull down but even then I tend not to use a covered arc unless I don't want them to fire beyond a certain range or I want them to cover some real estate to the exclusion of any other threat. Combined Arms put a good tip in the StuG thread about reverse slope placement in support of infantry. It's still a good idea to know what I'm up against. I don't want my M4A1s takin pot shots at the frontal armor of a Panther or even an StuG from 1200m for example, but its generally not as much of a problem as an AT gun doing the same while laying in ambush. There really are no hard set rules. It mainly is dependant on the situation. [ November 22, 2004, 12:12 PM: Message edited by: Akula2 ]

I don't usually put a covered arc on my AFVs unless I want the turret facing in a different direction than the hull, wich is quite often. When I do put a covered arc on them, it's usually 180^ and max range. I almost always keep them in complete defilade or dashing from defilade to defilade. When they do appear it's usually to support the infantry that is ahead of them. In other words they have a target to engage. Ideally the infantry has already scouted most of the likely enemy gun positions and I can go from defilade to hull down with some confidence. A covered arc isn't usually necessary in this case and it generally holds true for everything from halftracks to Tigers. Infantry is a different case. I almost always put a 180^ 40m covered arc on all my HQ units. I don't want them to fire generally. Though they can be ferocious, losing them is more of a pain than their firepower is worth. Squads depend on type. Generally I look at their firepower tables and set an arc at the range where their firepower makes that drastic dropoff. When I'm lazy it defaults to 150m for rifle squads and 65m for smg squads and "B" halfsquads. I often leave some squads without covered arcs to catch an errant enemy truck or jeep at long range. I like more control over towed guns and even machine guns. These units in my experience are too eager to shoot at extreme ranges and give away too much information to the enemy. I often keep them on as short a leash as possible until I manually decide wether to fire or not. Extreme weather conditions can negate the need for covered arcs all together imo. If I can only see 50m then I'm pretty sure they won't fire beyond that range. Covered arcs seem to encourage a unit to fire also. This should be kept in mind for arcs of interest. (I often wished that I could set arcs greater than 108^) Imo, the range of covered arcs often depends on the terrain also. Often I place custom covered arcs (strangely shaped) to cover areas of open ground. They are designed to allow the enemy to get well beyond his cover and into the open without drawing my fire. Then halfway across the open an entire company may open up on him. Inevitably, he'll sneak back out of these limited arcs towards his old cover. For this reason the next orders phase (turn) I'll cancel all arcs and dog him all the way back. I'm certain I'm forgetting something ... but its early ... ... someone will come along and say "Smoke!" EDIT- Most of this sort of assumes I'm defending. Attacking can be different but not always. Saving ammunition is often a consideration. Oh!! I almost forgot. If I'm in a situation where I have only infantry with no other AT capability I often set my infantry covered arcs to 30m in order to allow the enemy armor to get inside this range before they fire at the TC (and hopefully chuck a grenade bundle) Inherent squad AT capability, like panzerfausts, can increase this range to a good "To Hit" distance. Same goes for shreck/zook teams. I set VCAs to a range where they have a good chance of scoring a hit. It's usually well within their max range. [ November 22, 2004, 05:45 AM: Message edited by: Akula2 ]

The short answer is to select your unit and use the "t" key to target then place it over the enemy and left click. You can also select your firing unit and use the space bar to bring up the command menu. The long answer is: Are your squads "in command" of a HQ unit? Is the machine gun? Are your guys at least regular troops? Veteran is better. Is the machine gun? Try this. Get a platoon of Brits and with 2 squads lay down some covering fire on the machine gun and use the third squad with the Advance command to close the distance with the machine gun at 50+m intervals. Attacking like that is hard. Whenever possible assault like that in the command radius of a HQ that has a morale bonus (heart). A combat bonus is also very useful (lightning bolt) It sounds like your surrendering squad was taking heavy casualties in a short amount of time and was at least pinned down. This isn't uncommon. He probably would have broken or routed if he hadn't of surrendered. Try laying down some fire on the machine gun to keep him from pouring it on you before assaulting him. Someone will come along and say "Smoke!".

Dunno. It never got off a shot but it did have an armored CA. It was quickly assimilated anyhow. Maybe he was spotted? It was a German 50mm ATG thats setup zone was way too far foward at the start of the game and facing half a dozen T-34/85s and JS-?. He waited hoping for a side shot. Ah well, I'm glad to have an answer to this question since it's come up again. I truly appreciate it.

Wild Snarker. I've never seen that ... yet. No target lines or anything on them? Thanks all. I feel better about my current game. I feel crappy about the other guy though. I'm ashamed to say I was very suspicious. It didnt help that his luck was uncanny over 3 games too. I sh.t you not, he drove a jeep through a 5m gun covered arc. ... yeah, I was convinced. I was also mistaken. ah well, I guess it was just my turn to be the jerk.

It is an operation. The first one we've played. No, I'm not using pbem helper. When it happened to me though the turns I got back were in fact centered on my first independant unit just the same way the computer lines them up in a QB before setup and as if I had immediately hit the + key to begin cycling through the units. In fact, thinking now, the first time was an op too. Thanks guys. I'm becoming convinced that it's the operation but its still strange in that it only happens with one of the two players. First time it was me and now it's my opponent. EDIT- The operation is GP 10. Gemmano. I don't know who designed it yet because he picked it. It's really great so far. Deadly stuggle (and I mean struggle) for both sides. [ November 20, 2004, 05:05 AM: Message edited by: Akula2 ]

This is happening again. One of my pbem opponents just informed me that the turns that he's getting back from me have the camera position different than when he sent it off. Apparently this has just recently began to happen. The game is CMAK and this install has never been patched by either 1.02 or 1.03. I have another install of CMAK that had been patched early with 1.02 and now today 1.03. Though I don't know computers, I can't believe that the patch could possibly have anything to do with it. I also recently did a format on my hd with all the yadda yadda yadda. Incidentally my CDROM has starting having difficulty recognizing CDs after the format/re-intall. There's nobody out there that has ever had this happen to them before? I know when using the scenario editor in preview that if you leave the camera off the map when you go back to the terrain editor it will reposition the camera after going back into preview. Anybody? I don't want to errode trust with this opponent. He's ideal in every way I can think except that he regularly whoops on me.

Thanks again BFC.

This provacative thread is curiously arousing.

Kudos to BFC for their dedication to the best damn game to hit the market. (including HL2) I'm awed by their attendance to tweaking the game to meet contemporary conceptions of WWII. (though I don't always share their conclusions) I would hope they could look back to their original conceptions and assess their goals, with consideration to history and determine wether or not they remain on "the beam". EDIT- changed asess to assess you g'dang feckin anal proofreading buggers.

I believe that referred to a flamethrowing varient commonly used in the PTO. Ronson made the flamethrowers or the fuel IIRC and the nickname seems to have loosely applied to any flamethrower at all. Another case of American slang.

I just played a scenario that had American Demolition Squads, but I've never seen them before. (I haven't looked either though) It was Italy '44 I think. I'll look it up when I have a little more time and post it here if nobody beats me to it.

I don't think I've ever seen steppe in Finland though. :confused:

to the best of my knowledge Spooky refered to what we now know as the AC-130 gunship, as does "Puff the Magic Dragon". I could be wrong.

to the best of my knowledge Spooky refered to what we now know as the AC-130 gunship, as does "Puff the Magic Dragon". I could be wrong.