Zwolo2003

Gents, I would hate to spoil the fun, but over at the TankNet forum the original post was examined and considered a fake. Given that TankNet seems highly credible as far as Internet sources go, I would consider the claim that Soviet tanks of the 1990s are "effectively impenetrable" as definitely unproven (and to me, highly dubious). Link : http://208.84.116.223/forums/index.php?showtopic=27279 Zwolo PS as opposed to the Soviet tanks of 1980s when 105mm-armed tanks (including the original Abrams) could certainly have problems penetrating T-64 and T-80s from the frontal aspect

Earl Grey, I would be happy to take part in the snowball (European part) and do my bit for the community. Sent you a PM a couple of days ago with the details. Cheers, Zwolo

Can anyone confirm whether a "paused" vehicle shoots as if standing still (i.e.higher accuracy) or as if moving (i.e. with reduced accuracy)? This is a critical consideration for the above tactic to work. Zwolo

Looks a lot like the flowers in ToW. Are they copy-pasted from ToW? Zwolo

I meant that it would not be good for the game to have reviews posted all over Internet claiming it has obvious graphical bugs such as soldiers with MP 40 in hand but with rifle ammo pouches on the webbing, implying poor quality control and lack of proper playtesting. Your mileage, as well as opinions on what is the proper way to play a game, are of no interest to me. Zwolo

Sure, graphics do not affect the gameplay but they do affect the experience. The example you quoted is a good one, because there the graphical inconsistency is actually somewhat annoying and easy to spot: the figure has an MP 40 in his hands and webbing for Kar 98, with rifle magazine pouches instead of characteristic long magazine pouches for the SMG. I would urge Battlefront to avoid this if they can for PR reasons, as it can be easily picked up even by 10 year old "amateur historians" and end up as a negative point in many reviews and user opinions. Besides, it somewhat undermines the attractiveness of 1:1 representation, if accuracy of representation of individual figures has to be sacrificed. Last but not least, if the game can show the wonderful variety of uniforms of WWII it would be its very strong selling point, so why lose that? Summing up, I think that Battlefront should, if possible, try to have several soldier models based on material differences between headgear, uniform and kit (e.g. German infantry: guy in officers cap and webbing, guy with rifle, guy in field cap, guy with MP 40, heavy weapons crew, guy in camo jacket, guy in long garment<coat or rolled up zeltbahn>). Letting that drop to the bottom of priorities would be in my opinion a mistake. All the best, Zwolo

CMMODS is up now. Zwolo

Polish. They speak Polish in the former Prussian city Danzig these days. They do speak Russian in the former Prussian city of Koenigsberg, however. Cheers, Zwolo

I strongly believe it would be a superior solution to alltogether remove the restriction on area fire if you can't see the middle of an Action Spot, as long as it is technically possible. There is a very good example why in one of the user created campaigns, I believe it is the first scenario of "The Crossroads". There is a house surrounded with a wall with small opening, and you can see the middle of it only if you enter onto the courtyard or make a breach in the wall. Otherwise it is impossible to place area fire on it. The Red defenders fit comfortably in the portion of the building from which they can see and fire through the opening, and happily fire away. The Blue can only return fire if it sees the firing Red soldiers, incapable of following up with area fire once the Reds duck away from the window. In real life the Blues would be blazing away at whatever part of bulding is visible, regardless that the rest is obscured. This situation can be readily reproduced (I have seen it on other maps as well) and exploited by a human player. Steve's solution above would only go halfway to remedying the problem, because it would only allow area fire after someone is revealed in the non-obscured part of building, and then for limited time only. The Blue would have to parade a man in front of the building to get the Red to fire, and would likely lose the man (range is very short). Also, it would just not be realistic and damage suspension of disbelief (somewhat) - just why, if you want to assault a building, it is possible to suppress it with area fire if the middle of building is visible, but you need to wait until fired at if you see less of the building? Regarding the technical issues, from what I have heard from Battlefront about the game engine, the coupling of Area Fire with Action Spots does not seem necessary. Action Spots are there to facilitate LOS checks. Area Fire should be possible wherever LOF exists and LOF is drawn with more fidelity than LOS. If I understand correctly and the concepts of Area Fire and Action Spot are indeed not related for game engine reasons, I would be in favour of disconnecting them and allowing Area Fire anywhere that a unit can fire. Zwolo

This points to another issue. Time and time again I find that there is no command really suited to advancing under fire (I know the wisdom of doing this in the face of modern small arms can be debated but sometimes it just has to be done). Assault is not that command. Firstly, it can be used only with a whole, multi-team squad which is (see above) too unwieldy to use half of the time. Secondly, Assault gives you a squad doing bounding overwatch, and the bounding team must stop somewhere to allow the overwatching team to move. Trouble is AI has problems finding the right spot to do it and often the bounding teamstops in the middle of open ground and is shot up. Hunt does not work either - the unit stops when sees the enemy and will not advance. Quick and run also do not work. Firstly, the soldiers do not fire back. Secondly, they run in single file, so even if they could shoot back, they would not do so well. Thirdly, they are more likely to panic as apparently this command simulates soldiers not expecting to be fired at. And finally Move does not work either because of morale hit when shot at. I think we are missing a command where soldiers move in arrowhead or skirmish line formation, expect to be shot at and stop to fire from time to time. On the other hand Run and Quick are almost interchangeable (except that Run tires troops whle not being that much faster so I use it rarely) One of them could be dropped. Or move - I almost never use that, except to reposition crewed weapons. Zwolo

Yup, same problem seen in several different scenarios. To me looks like some kind of a problem with pathing where team-squad interaction is involved, i.e. you give orders to squads which then the AI has to translate into paths for teams. I think sometimes AI has trouble with fitting in all teams at once, but instead of queueing them one after another, it sends the whole squad around on some roundabout way to try and find a better entry point. It is also very unpredictable as sometimes queueing works well. Also, another problem which might be related to squad-team interaction is where the player plots a movement order to a good, covered position and finds that one team wanders off into the open and gets promptly slaughtered. Increasingly often I use the whole squads only until they make contact with the enemy and then maneouvre by teams. Obviously, this adds a new layer of micromanagement, but gives better results. Zwolo

Very probably. It would be better if the soldiers could react when they spot their colleagues being hit not only the firing enemy. Or if they can hear shots fired close (i.e. the first guy turns the corner, there is a burst of gunfire or explosion, the second guy stays put). I think generally the sound spotting should happen more often in the game and trigger more reactions. Now it seems substantially less than CMx1 Zwolo

That's actually all the more worrying! It would mean that the game combines very detailed mechanics of hit resolution with very crude targetting routines. Consequently, fire effects would be very random, more so than necessary(and randomness to me includes the situation where you can only properly fire by employing an arcane and unintuitive solution, such as targetting a patch of ground rather than the actual target). The same would likely apply to use of cover such as trees, bushes, etc. I am starting to wonder whether the "more abstraction/uncanny valey" crowd got it right... Zwolo

Read the first post. The problem according to the original poster is that ordering area fire in front of a building does not result in grazing fire, but wall-piercing (or wall-avoiding) fire. Apparently it is better at killing people in the building behind the walls than fire directed at the building itself. If true, this would be allow a gamey way of going around the proper protection that buildings ought to provide, which is obviously a problem. Zwolo

Steve, how about the "fire into the ground in front of the building to kill people inside"-effect reported by the OP? That one can't be a design choice. Zwolo