GreenAsJade

In couple of recent long, slightly winding threads, the question of "if you have a covered arc, does it increase the chance of your units opening fire" was discussed. Other side questions came up as well, and I was left unsure enough of the answers to feel like trying it out. I marched infantry, halftracks & tanks in turn back and forth across an opening in some trees through which tanks, infantry & ATGs were looking. I tried different settings of "hide" and "covered arc" for the lookers. Here is what I found: </font> If the onlookers are hiding, with no covered arc they will not open fire unless they are fired upon or unless something walks right on top of them.</font>If the onlookers are _not_ hiding, they will open fire on anything that they see moving, as long as they have a reasonable chance of hurting it.</font>If the onlookers are hiding and have a covered arc, they will open fire on something that walks into the covered arc, wheras before they would not have.</font>A "cover armour" arc will not cause an AFV to open fire on a halftrack that has no gun that could hurt it (this was described in a recent thread, and completely suprised me!)</font> Finally, I did a slightly different test: I had a platoon in some pines, not hiding, and watching one of their squads advance across the open to another patch of pines 100m away. In that pines was an enemy squad hiding, about 15m back from the edge, so the other guys could just see them once they spotted them. Without covered arcs, the bastards back in the forest watched their buddies get slaughtered as they entered the opposite forest. Hey, we're comfy here, and now we know there are bad guys over there. heh heh. With covered arcs covering the forest into which the hapless scouts were advancing, the scout buddies in the forest opened fire on the baddies as soon as the baddies opened fire on the scout. Moral of the story: use covered arcs if you want to be shooting. I can send anyone the test map if you want to prove it for yourself (though it was about a 10 minute job). GaJ.

Can't say I've ever noticed the wait for the turn to be calculated. Now if someone could speed up "Loading 3D graphics", that would be a gift from heaven...

Hmmm - there must be variants floating around: the version I had (still have) had only one ATR, only one sharpie. There was debate about adding one Maxim (taking it to two total). I found it necessary to have 2 to be able to get a victory...

It keeps all of your turns, and knows how to play back just the "movie only" turns to show you the whole movie after the game has finished.

I think you need to add Fuerte's PBEM Helper Page With all respect to "one click to combat", PBEMH rocks its socks off

Actually, mods are good for increasing enjoyment of the game. (I'm still waiting for the 114th Zombie Battalion mod). I for one think that I would enjoy to hear the soldiers cursing in a way that I could understand. I can very easily sympathise with someone who would not want to hear that, but I can't really understand the strong negative reaction ... sheesh, if you don't like it, don't install it! :mad:

On one hand there's the issue of what does happen (it's being claimed "not as much"). On the other hand there's the problem of what _can_ happen. It would be agony to see a gun pop out of nowhere 30 seconds through a turn, and have to wait another minute or more before the chance to issue corrective orders....

Actually, I'm amazed at the negative reaction to a suggestion like this. Especially in the light of recent revelations about what the Russians are actually saying, I think it'd be great to hear them swearing in English in a Russian accent. Lest I be mistaken for an English bigot, I do actually have a smattering of German and Russian (since I work with people in both those countries) but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be fun to have the option to hear what the troops are saying. How about for CMAK we have a "subtitles" switch: get the voices in their natural language, with translations across the bottom of the screen.

Well done. On the modified map I got a tactical victory too, despite the game going on to Turn 36. If you managed a TacVic on the original map, much kudos to you! (how did you deal with the tankettes???)

I thought the same myself! I opened up the editor, then stared at it for a while wondering how to test it, then returned to the forum to see if anyone else had

Thanks for this info. Just to make sure I understand: if, in a particular situation, a unit wasn't firing, then adding a covered arc won't change that? This would be contrary to the advice offered quite often... and it's very tempting to think otherwise. I'd swear I have units that stay hiding, but when I put in a covered arc they pop up and fire. Is this coincidence? Thanks!

This comment is exactly what I am questioning. I'm sure I read that "Covered arcs only purpose is to limit fire to within the arc. A unit will not be distracted by something outside the arc, (so for example a tank's turret won't get rotated away from where it needs to be by a distracting target) but its chance of opening fire on something in the arc is not changed compared to if the arc was not there. If it wasn't going to fire before you put the arc there, its still not going to even with the arc" This is the impression I had: I'm willing to be educated otherwise... but my question is how do you know? Are you sure? This was triggered off again for me by this thread about why won't my units open fire where people said "add a covered arc to encourage them to fire". If no-one knows for sure, I guess some tests are needed...

Unless your version is something different to the one I have (I bought direct from BFC), you definitely should install. You clearly can't write mods over the top of the CD Try turning off "autorun" for your CD player, then use "my computer" to "explore" the CD. Click on the "install" thingy you find in there (good technical explanation, eh?) You will need to end up with a directory called CMBO, usually under "Program Files", and in it there should be a directory called BMP. That's where the bitmap mods go. (All this assuming you're burdened with Windows. If you have the joy of Mac, then I can't help you 'cause I don't, but I expect its something similar).

Quite a few times recently, people have said "give your unit a covered arc, it encourages them to open fire". I'm almost positive I read in the manual, or strategy guide, or some darn place that covered arc only limits what your unit will do. Where before it might have fired at someone outside the area of interest now it will not. But it is not supposed to mean "fire in here if at all possible". Is there any evidence to the contrary? Can anyone find/quote the reference that backs up my impression? Thanks!

Its hard to imagine how convenient it is, before you get it. It's hard to imagine playing PBEM without it, once you have it. CLick on the attachment in the mail, next thing you know, there is the game up in front of you, password entered and everything. And that's just the basic functionality. In addition, it lets you do two turns per exchange of email. Once you've tried that, it will be hard going back to "plot your orders, wait for email, view the turn, wait for email..." And finally, you can view the whole movie using it (admitedly you have to press a button and wait for a load between minutes, but better than anything you can do without). Playing CM by mail? Get PBEMH...

Sounds more like a direct hit with big arty? That will take a small light building out in one go...

It's the act of farting that the English find so desperately offensive. The visibility is much better from the rooftop. (That's why we only fart in their general direction, as opposed to wait till they are on the TRP, then fart right down the boresight at them).

I agree - the kind of game I'm interested in is one where no-one peeked. The troops in real life didn't have a chance to walk over that hill and see what little valleys there were on the other side! Of course, this is purely a matter of taste: someone else said they want their opponent playing their A game. Fair enough... except for me part of a good A game is being able to cope with what the terrain throws at you, not how well you spent an hour crawling over the map! It's matter of taste. One thing that is important though: it definitely is cheating if you take a peek and don't tell your opponent.

Just guessing but if you fired one of these downwards from an open window you might expect to have more trouble with the backblast hitting the ceiling? </font>

Tutorials are pretty optional. One comment I would make is that I'd recommend considering starting with CMBO before taking on CMBB. Either that, or start with "veteran" and "crack" troops only if you play with CMBB. Otherwise, it could be very frustrating. CMBB forces are much more fragile than CMBO ones. This is more realistic, probably, and more challenging certainly, but I can easily imagine a beginner getting totally put off when all his troops panic and run away or die at first contact. As someone else said somewhere recently, CMBO is like eating popcorn: pretty light fun.

I was disappointed when I received it. A large number of pages are "fill" as far as was concerned: tables and tables of unit data without much in terms of "so what" about that data. Also, there are illustrations in there that are completely unreadable. A patch of splody grey with a caption below it. That really irritated me. Finally, the author's style didn't work for me. The "friendly" style is OK, but I'm not one of trivialising war & death. I found the author's euphamisms did that... for me it grated. All that being said, there _was_ helpful advice in there, and the interview at the back are good reading. I thought it was a 5 or a 6. (Compared that to Ligur's Scouting primer, in a recent thread, which is a 10). Martin.

We continue to look forward to questions that irritate you enough to draw out more from the fount of knowledge...

{blah blah snip forget it!} [ June 21, 2003, 08:07 PM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

Actually, I considered doing just that! But then Wassermann posted a workable solution. ... Shift-R to see at a glance what type all the buildings on the map works for me. That being said, have y'all looked at the Panzertruppen and Magua CMBO building mods ? They are really very nice. What would it take to "port" them to CMBB?

I didn't realise there is a title in the editor separate from the file name (well, it's obvious, it just hadn't sunk in). I renamed the _file name_ of the other scenario, and that's what made everything work!!!! Note that renaming the file name of Trap One's scenario did not fix anything!!! :confused: (Sorry for misnaming the scenario: I was too lazy, when typing the post, to go get the right spelling Y'all know what I was talking about )