Apexicus

Finally managed to get back on this. Just uploaded the cd art which I scanned from the base game, marines and british CDs to the repository. Still hoping that someone can help me with the NATO cd. Cheers Apexicus

I pre-ordered CMBN and decided that it was also about time to update my computer. So, I started making backups of my files and came across the NATO module for CMSF which I had purchased as download only. I have couple of these LightScribe discs lying around and I thought that it would be a great idea to burn the actual cd art of the NATO cd onto the LightScribe disc and put my backup of NATO there. Now my problem is that I (obviously) don't have the NATO cd so I cannot get the artwork from there, but it also seems that it is not available in the repository either (at least I didn't find it). So what I'm asking here is that could someone kindly scan their NATO disc artwork and post it here or upload it to the repository. It would be even better if Battlefront could make the original image files available. This goes of course for all the cd's but my current problem is only with the NATO cd, since I have the others already. Cheers Apexicus

Well I used 1 mile as the distance, not four. I guess I expressed it poorly.

Well the calculations made above seem to be good approximations, but the problem is that they assume you are on the equator. Unfortunately there the Coriolis effect is at it's weakest and it is strongest near the poles. I'll take the same distance to the target 1.6 kilometers (~ 1 mile) and time of flight (5.3 seconds) as above. Now assuming that the shot is fired near one of the poles, I get a deviation of approximately 0.6 meters, which is roughly 24 inches. This is definitely of relevance when taking the shot. If you want to know is the effect is still relevant in Syria, an approximate formula for the deviation when firing on a N-S-axis would be x = 2*pi*d*t*sin(y)/(24*3600), where d is the distance to target, t is the time of flight (in seconds) and y is the latitude. The formula is simple as it neglects the (local) curvature of the earth (and some other stuff) and thus won't work near the equator, but in Syria with a latitude of 33 degrees it should work fine. So in Syria the deviation would be roughly half of the deviation I got for the poles. So it is still of a relevant degree of magnitude and I would argue that taking the Coriolis effect into account is necessary when making long sniper shots. Of course you have to take into account a lot more stuff and the Coriolis effect won't be the biggest cause for error. Well, that my two cents to the subject. [ January 30, 2008, 05:59 AM: Message edited by: Apexicus ]

Whoa! I think the kid fired more rounds on that video than I did during my service, heh. Americans sure are crazy about guns. I've been thinking that while I visited Texas a couple of years ago I should have gone to some sort of guns expo like that. I'm not really into guns and frankly I'm a poor shot too, but it would be nice to be able to brag with the different types of weapons you've fired. Yeah, and kids with guns = not good.

With the T-55 I experienced some difficulties with the gun not being able to depress enough, but the low profile gives advantages too when it comes to hull down positions. The T-55 could find hull down positions in small depressions where taller tanks could not. The small depression angle is a hinderance in my opinion only when trying to engage an enemy fairly close and from higher ground. But it's definately a thing to take into account when fighting with such vehicles.

Sorry Redwolf. Starting a TCP/IP game in a few minutes. If noone else will help you out, maybe I'll be able to tomorrow.

I'll have to choose the T-34 because I like the way it looks. Also Russian tank design in general appeals to me somehow. I'll quote my army buddy: "Russian tanks look sexy". The M4 instead looks like a fat man with a small head. Maybe I'll return to this topic later when I have something more intelligent to say.

I'm no airwar/-craft expert but I was under the impression that dive bombing was more dangerous than level bombing (to the aircraft doing the bombing). In dive bombing and especially when doing combat support bombing the bomber has to go very low and can be shot at with every gun on the ground at fairly close range (in comparison to the plane flying at high altitude). So dive bombers have to avoid enemy ground fire and enemy aircraft while level bombers only have to worry about enemy aircraft and larger ground guns.

Light is an amazing thing... Maybe in the future we could see hills, buildings, forests and clouds cast shadows on the battlefield. The sun (and the moon) would be at the appropriate height for the time and date. And all this would affect LOS. Harder to spot enemies in shadowy areas or when the sun shines directly into your eyes from near the horizon. Add to this dynamic lighting from weapons, forest firest etc. and the sun and moon could move in the sky during the battle. If it's a rainy day I would really like to see a rainbow... Ahh... Is this too much to hope for the next CM engine?

I was coming from work the other night on my bike and it suddenly struck me. It was almost as dark as it gets here (Southern Finland) at this time of year and I could clearly see the factory pipes that were at least 4 kilometers away. I remembered that in CMBB the view distance at night is never greater than 200m. And so I did a little testing. The view distance in CMBB for Finland in June at night was 200m when the sky was clear. So, that obviously is modelled wrong in CMBB. With overcast sky the LOS distance was 75m. This seems to be a too short distance in my opinion, but I haven't got any proof of that, just a feeling. Maybe possible if the sky was really clouded. My tests also showed that the max LOS distance is not affected by ground conditions or the time of year. Also the region doesn't affect the LOS distance. Only the time of day and the weather affect LOS. In my opinion the region combined with the time of year should affect the viewable distance and so should ground conditions. For example snow on the ground reflects light and should make surroundings brighter. I don't need a patch for this though, but for CMX2 this could be taken into consideration. CMAK probably wouldn't really benefit from these ideas much, I think. Please feel free to comment this if you have more info or just want to say our opinion. And sorry if this has been discussed before, I did a quick search but didn't find anything similar. Maybe in the archives...

I have to disagree with this at some level. In one exercise during my army days we were fighting some T-72's with our T-55's and my wingman drove into a "minefield". The exercise "referees" determined that the tank was okay, but had lost a track. T-72's were about 500m away behind a hill out of LOS and we had my other wingman covering us, so we drove right behind the immobilized tank and it's loader came out through the bottom hatch and connected our towing cables and we towed the tank to a safer location. So, my point is, unless a bogged tank is under fire from heavy weapons or significant amounts of small arms fire, it is possible to tow it with another tank during the battle. The time needed for the towing would be probably in most cases around 15-20 minutes, so it's in the CM timeframe especially if you're playing a longer scenario. Of course the tank that had lost it's track would be immobilised for a long time since getting a new track during a battle is quite difficult and installing it would probably take at least half an hour even if the damage is light and several hours and a repair crew in the worst cases. But if the tank is only bogged and the towing tank has enough power to pull it out (in the worst cases you would need two tanks doing the towing) then the bogged tank would be operational as soon as it was pulled out. Just my opinion.

I understand what you mean Redwolf. I could argue that with inexperienced crew even those tasks would take longer than with experienced crew, but I won't since the game doesn't model those kind of things. And that's a problem since the game isn't really a tactical level game and the player isn't supposed to "micromanage" his troops, but he sometimes has to. This makes the command delay issue more complex since sometimes the waypoints represent orders from platoon/company even batallion level and sometimes when the player has to "micromanage" the waypoints represent orders from the tank commander and given the scope of the game those really should be done by the AI. Since it would be very tough to create an AI that could move the forces in a correct tactical manner and take their experience into account, I really can't be very dissapointed with the current system. My point is we shouldn't have to be issuing tactical level waypoints/orders, but we have to. The fixes proposed by Redwolf and others are good and I would like them to be implemented, but don't really solve the real problem. But as I said before realistic tactical AI would be very hard to code, so I really can't complain, especially, if the penalty for those tactical level commands are cut down a bit. (Can't say they've bothered me that much though.)

I'm not going to comment the issue about tank rotation speeds, but I have to say that I have had no problems with command delays. I must admid though that I haven't played that much with conscript tank crews. I like my tankmen to actually hit their targets. If the command delays seem too long for two additional waypoints etc. with conscript tanks, you might consider the fact that there is also communication going on inside the tank. The drive has to be told what kind of route they are going to be taking and since the (conscript) driver isn't really used to looking out those litte periscopes and the commander hasn't had any experience in giving orders it can take a long time to explain the route. For example Tank Commander: Drive to the left side of those trees and then take a right. Driver: Which trees? We're in a god damn forest. So getting the driver to do what you want him to do can be very difficult, believe me, I know. And maybe conscript drivers have difficulties getting the right gear on. I couldn't do it, I have this thing with gearboxes, they hate me!