GreenAsJade

I was just going to say exactly this. The "apparently simple" answer to stopping it being abused is the same as the reason it wasn't widly used: it's not that easy to start a fire in damp vegitation. Model this coorectly, and it should be OK*? GaJ *Simplistic thinking alert

One thing that I haven't heard mentioned much is the modelling of the speed of sound. This is just fantastic. The way that this increases the "real feel" of moving around in the battlefield is quite amazing! I don't play any other PC games. Do other games do this? It's a wonderful thing! (I spent a little time in a recent battle just wizzing back and forth from my tank that was unloading HE on a distant target, and the target itself, and grinning at hearing the tank shot after the explosion ) GaJ

It's great to hear from people with real life experience! How exactly do you get the cucumber in the bucket at 3km? I have no real idea, no picture in my mind, of what the person who's aiming a mortar at a row of bocage 600m away is doing. The leader yells "give me fire in that corner of bocage where the MG nest is". How does the mortar aiming person land that thing right in that place? Direction is easy: you look through a viewfinder and point in the right direction. But how does distance work? Your average person can't guess distances to within +/- 100m, let alone +/- 10m or +/-1 m. This is why CMx1 mortars seemed so "right". They would land the round in the right direction, but usually they would go very long, then very short, and only after that they would land in the right place. I haven't used a lot of onboard mortars, but I don't recall seeing this effect in CMBN so far. Am I missing it? GaJ

Hey, I already posted in this thread, way back I wonder if you can get someone from BFC to post and comment on whether this optic thing is noteworthy or not? GaJ

Note: it won't, as you asked, hide threads I started, it will only hide posts I made. GaJ

Great - well, another thread another lesson FWIW, I still think it would be an improvement to have a contact marker ... but as I think that through I can see that even this would be problematic, because it would result in contact markers scattering the field where units have been eliminated, and that would surely cause complaints. So I'm happy to agree that this seems like a "good thing". I do want to say (again) that I didn't start this thread saying "BFC got it wrong". I started it saying "this surprised me, it felt wrong, let's discuss". If we didn't discuss what we like and don't like, and what works and what doesn't work ... what would we be here for? Just the Peng thread I guess.. Thanks, GaJ

It's just surprising to me to think of someone looking through a scope rifle and firing into the grass speculatively. However, if it's realistic far be it from me to criticise it! It just surprised me (and others). GaJ

Do you guys really think a sharpshooter would keep firing at something he can't see? I can take the point about inf in general. In this case, though, I think it would have been better if BFC had left a contact marker or _something_ that they are shooting at... GaJ

User-CP, top left. Under Miscellaneous-> Buddy/Ignore list. GaJ

Here is a movie showing a sharpshooter killing an approaching infantry person. The approaching unit vanishes completely (no icon, no bodies) but the sharpshooter keeps firing. It's as if the sharpy is shooting at the rest of the enemy unit, which he actually hasn't spotted. Over at WeBandOfBrothers folk have been talking about inf continuing to fire at nothing, also. GaJ

Never mind acquiring more ammo from elsewhere: how do you give back to the vehicle ammo that you "acquired"? It seems that once you have acquired it, that's it... Hardly earthshattering, but can from time to time lead to "darn"! GaJ

I don't understand your point. I was asking about seeing the oppos VLs _in the end game analysis screen_. It tells you which ones they were awarded, but you have no way of knowing where those are! GaJ

You should post those screenies in the screenies thread, for wider appreciation It's fascinating how we can leap to conclusions about the game when we don't have all the information eh? The feeling that VLls are fuzzy was certainly wider than just my mistake, and there were some fascinating theories about how and why it was working... only to find out through experimentation that the truth is different... ... it will be interesting to see if someone else can come with a screenie of an actual not-awarded VL that makes it look fuzzy... GaJ

Yay yay...

OK, I went back and looked at the end game report that started this thread and found that I was completely wrong. The game had in fact given me the VL, which confirms the wonderful pictures recently posted: if you have guys in the VL and the oppo does not, you get the VL, easy as that. The mistake I made was in reading the very-confusing end game summary: I posted a link to this in another thread. What I didn't realise is that the Allied *** VLs are different to the Axis ones! This begs the question: when you are looking at the end game map, how do you know what the Oppo's VLs were? I _think_ the answer is "there is no way, you can only see your own"... GaJ

Yay for you guys, I might post this request over in Scenario Design, since you're agreeing. The rest of us: watch out ... that's a trap you should be aware of! GaJ

I only just realised something. Casualty-based victory points in scenarios are binary. You either exceed the percentage or you don't. You either get the points or you don't. No wonder CMBN games are showing to be so "extreme" in their results. My initial reaction to this is "Oh dear, that's bad". So many of us for so long have been fighting battles to inflict as much damage as possible, on the grounds that "each bit counts". But in casualty-based victory conditions, this is not the case! Of course, designers can use "Destroy" victory conditions, which would get around this. But are they? I haven't been paying close enough attention to recall. Certainly the most recent two scenarios I've opened have been "Enemy > 35%" type victory conditions. Thoughts? My thoughts are "please please designers don't use binary casualty conditions!" GaJ (Note: this is explicitly not the case for QBs, where points-per-casualty are awarded).

I really don't think that there was an enemy unit inside the walls, IE in the VL. However, now I will have to go and have another really close look. Just to confirm (as someone else said): the VL already lies entirely within the walls. I _thought_ that it was the enemy troops all huddled just on the other side of the wall that denied me the VL. That would line up with what has been discussed here: that if there is enemy close by, then you get denied. However, this doesn't seem to fit the wonderful pictures posted just above. I wonder what happens in this house scenario if a unit is placed in an action spot just next door to the VL? I will go take a closer look at my battle result., maybe post some pics GaJ

And/or the points that each side gets for each VL doesn't have to be the same.

There's an interesting consequence of this. Walls around a VL make it _harder_ for the defender! This is the case in Chance Encounter: there are high walls around the church precinct which is a VL. The attacker can run inf up to the base of the wall on the _outside_ and they deny the occupier the VL, yet the occupier can't get at them! That feels really wierd. GaJ

The funny thing is that I originally did H2HH before I knew about DropBox: I simply wanted to know who's darn turn it was for the 1 or 2 games I was playing! That's the only thing that the very first H2HH did GaJ

It makes sense that the radio is destroyed often: it takes almost nothing at all to blow the antenna off, right? I can suggest an "explanation" for why the game hit the optics every time in this case. Presumably the game engine is aiming at some point in the middle of the tank. It's probably the case that the intersection of the line from Taki's Sherm to the middle of the tank met the optics. Since Taki was so close, there's little variation in the path of the sherm's round, so it hits the optics every time. I think this sounds like a realistic simulation of "a Tiger is not invulnerable to Sherms at 200m". The details matter less: the outcome sounds correct. GaJ

I appreciate that the objective needs to be convincingly controlled. I'm very surprised to find that we can draw a line on the map and say "this area has to be secured", but the line on the map doesn't represent the exclusion zone for the enemy. I didn't mean to say that "any idea that the area has to be secured for useful use is ridiculous". I was objecting to the definition that says "you have to prevent any enemy fire into it". I also think that the manual's description of this is rather inadequate. It says "occupy the area". It sounds like it needs some more description of what other things you have to achieve. I'mm glad to have that clarified here! GaJ

Hah, easy when you look at it the right way, thanks! (I was seeing the VLs under the Axis as the Axis ones, and the VLs under the Allies as the Allied ones, doh!) GaJ

H2HH is modable Double click brings up chat because that used to be the only function on that row I agree that arguably double click should run the app. I'm not sure that changing it now is the best thing to do. Maybe if/when we manage to get H2HH actually starting the game, that would be the time for a change, in celebration GaJ