stikkypixie
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Posts posted by stikkypixie
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I hope you will my boss and give me a small 20% pay raise :-P
Ok, I just made a simple test:
- CMBN installed on the hard drive.
- I loaded up two battles from CMBN, the ones being the most complex ("My Honor is Loyalty", axis side: and "Colossal Crack", allied side).
- I measured the loading times with a stopwatch. They measure as follows:
My honor is loyalty - 1:28 mins
Colossal Crack - 1:25 mins
- I then transferred the entire CMBN directory from my sata3 hd to my sata3 ssd
- Repeated time measurements:
My Honor is Loyalty - 1.09 mins
Colossal Crack - 1.15 mins
Basically I must agree with wiggum, in stating that there is not much of an improvement (abt 20%), so I'll probably stick with the hd.
One thing of note is that both the hd and the ssd are sata3 enabled.
That probably means that with a sata2 hd the loading times would be kinda higher, and maybe transferring CM to a ssd would give more of a performance increase.
Anyway, had no problems at all with drms.
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I believe you can cut and paste. I sometimes make a second copy of my CM directories to have multiple versions (1.0.1, 1.0.2, etc...) of the same game on my hard drive. The only potential problem might be that future patches might be looking in wrong place, and you would have to point them to right place when installing said patches.
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I just saw this in the Russian campaign. My guys were under fire from attack helicopters. One of my vehicles was targeted by a missile, however instead of following the usual trajectory, the missile seems to bounce. Very weird.
Save game here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/4elci0thduxo7qi/Missile%20bounce.bts?dl=0
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Out of curiosity, what is the exact version of the T-90?
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Thanks for taking the time to report it!
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Last night I was playing one of the stock scenarios when one of my M1 seem to have spotted an enemy vehicle *behind* a building. The only explanation I can think of is that it somehow knew the vehicle was there due to a UAV, but still one hell of a shot.
I have provided the replay if anyone want to look at it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8cm2b60a3f3rssk/Impossible%20hit.bts?dl=0
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Hhmm. Bugger me! You boyz are canny. In playtests I had to beef this up as testers were having real challenges with it. Now you guys just walk all over it...
Well, for those interested, if you rely less on your precision stuff you'll find it a different challenge. Although I think how you guys played it is closer to the actual reality of how a US force would deal with this type of situation.
Spoilers
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There are several AI Plans - for both sides - but it was found in playtesting Russian stuff moving about was prone to blowing up! Hence keeping some stuff static. Also the static stuff has reasonable air cover to protect it but that's no use against precision fire or that Grey Eagle. Just goes to show. I'm interested to see how you two get on with Bridgehead at Kharalyk. If you play it be sure to post how you found it please?
Even if I wanted to, I could not take a more pro-active approach. Every time I manage to get an M1 in a position where they LOS to the enemy tanks, they retreat almost immediately due to laser warnings.
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I was also in control, it's just the difference between my expectations and how the battle eventually unfolded. Good to know I'm not the only one :-)
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So I just finished playing the scenario First Clash as the Americans vs the AI and I'd like to share some thoughts. The mission is to lead a tank heavy force a Russian spearhead. The map quite big and open with subtle undulations. I begin by slowly and cautiously moving the force forward and things go quite by the books at first. My dismounted infantry spots one or two enemy units, UAV + precision artillery or Javelin kills it off.
Things get pretty crazy fast though, suddenly it seems the whole Russian armoured forces have been amassed against advance. So I decide to sit tight and wait for reinforcements, while at the same time trying to kill off as many tanks as I can using air and artillery support.
Normally I expect, given the numbers of both friendly and enemy tanks on the map, this scenario to be one big tank duel-fest. However, the Apaches and precision artillery are so good that I never really got to use my huge tank force. The Apaches both expended their 16(?) hell-fire missiles, my UAV fired 2 more and I expended all precision artillery rounds on static targets. This means that most of the action happened on the other way of the map, about 3km from my position without my main force taking active part in the fight. Most of the scenario consisted of waiting for air or artillery support to arrive.
Things only got hairy twice when two platoons of enemy tanks rushed down my right flank. I finished the scenario with a very "passive" feel. I wonder what your experiences were on this?
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If it works anything like the M7A3 Bradley B-FIST, the sensors will ensure that your fire mission are much more accurate and take less time to spot. We should test this
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Enemy casualties need to be spotted just as other units. Don't think there is anything wrong with your machine.
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One thing I like to add is: pay attention to the exact model of tank you have. At least in Shock Force that was incredibly important. In the WW2 games, whether you had a M4A3 or M4A1 doesn't make much of difference in terms of combat power. However, in Shock Force and to a lesser extent in CMBS probably, the exact model will have a significant impact on combat performance. There is literaly a 40 year technology gap between the first T-72 model and the latest one fielded now!
The older models maybe crap compared to the new M1s, but underestimate the latest models at your own peril
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See I would use expressions like that, but in my case the following turn I'd likely lose 2 Abrams to mines, a 3rd from a close range RPG another to a long range ATGM and my last would pop smoke running away screaming. The last sound in my ears would be that shout that went up from Ken Watanabe's men in Last Samurai after they killed all the Ninja's. Only it would be Russians shouting it.
Yeah, this one
I never knew the Last Samurai had ninja's, going to have to watch that movie now...
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Usually spotting works very well, but sometimes strange things happen. For example, T-34-76 in CM:RT. May be I don't understand developers's intention - may be player should "target" question marks manualy. Or such micromanagement is a gamey, that shouldn't be used?
These spotting quirks don't occur for German equipment?
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Do you think it would be good idea for a T-90 commander to do it like his grand father did and roll into battle unbuttoned? I know from CMSF that some older Syrian models actually perform much better when unbuttoned (T-55, T-62 and so on) but i dont know about the T-90.
I thought it had lots of fancy stuff, like IR vision, periscopes, a fully stabilized gun, a laser range finder and the like, basically all the things the M1 has too. So where does the spotting and accuracy advantage of the M1 come from?
I guess first of all not all equipment is created equally. What really makes the difference is the battle-awareness granted by the M1's communication link to other units on the map. Again, the T-90s have stuff is as well, but in an average CM scenario the US forces are going to have better communication, info sharing and spotting for all units than the Russian forces. 1 M1 might spot marginally better than a T-90, a whole US mech battalion is going to spot a lot better than its Russian equivalent because of the cumulative spotting effects.
In CMSF, I always leave the newer Russian/Syrian tanks buttoned, just as I would with the western stuff.
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When I play Steel Beasts, for example, I sometimes shut down my Tank and PC engines in order to vastly reduce my noise signature, but also to cut noise pollution so I can listen for enemy vehicles.
Will there ever be a way to do this in Combat Mission. I understand with older WWII vehicles that were harder/more complicated to start, you might be less likely to want to shut them down (though I think it would be reasonable for a commander to at least be able to weigh the trade-off for noise vs. immediate mobility and have the option). But for the more modern vehicles, don't they have a much shorter and more reliable startup sequence?
I had hoped that "hiding" would cut engines, or that there would be a command for this, but there isn't to my knowledge. Any word on whether this will be coming? Or is the lack of this as a feature a deliberate design choice which won't likely be changing (presumably for some well-thought-out, good reason)?
EDIT: even after "bailing out" the engines are still running. Obviously in PvP humans can hear the other player's vehicles and vice versa, but does AI "hear" vehicles? Isn't that part of the "question mark" contact reports; that they hear something like a rifle report or see something vague? I can move the camera about the battlefield to listen for vehicles above my own vehicle's engines, but that's a bit of a stretch. Does it simulate shutting down engines while I listen? Or is that just gaming the sim?
Sound contacts are not coded in CMSF, so at least for this game it doesn't matter. Unless your opponent really scans the map of course.
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There will always be outliers. You just have to suck it up like the rest of us.
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Only M-kills
. If the AI was any good at using artillery support the numbers would have looked completely different. -
@stikkypixie: you managed this one on the first go :eek: What was the end result? How many casualties? How many tanks did you loose? Honestly, I did not deem it possible to win this one with only brute force (allthough that is perhaps the most common Soviet way of doing things...). You learn every day.
I used all my tanks to push along my left flank. I was *very* lucky not to lose any of them.
On my right I limited myself to the woods, which dominates the German trenches.
In hindsight I should have assault the woods first and then followed up on the left flank.
German MVP (or what's left of him):
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He he he, I recognize that battle. It's Bunkers Burning. And the video he made is really good!
But I have never seen it play out like this before! Nobody of the Beta testers (or me for that matter) was able to do an all out assault on the MLR like this and live to tell the tale.
Maybe we are all just bad players
. Or I should have made the battle a lot harder (can't imagine, the Beta's comments pointed out in the exact opposite direction: make it easier). So I wonder how this was done.But anyhoo, great to see this little piece of cinema. Saving Private Heinrich on the Ostfront
. That was the aim of the battle when I designed it and with a video like this it comes close.I managed this one on the first go by relentless pushing my men past breaking point
. One german HMG did take out 51 of my boys though, but the breakthrough was secured! -
Ok, before I start this post I should make clear that it's not to complain in any way about the game, and that I have already been searching for posts about this and reading a fair bit.
With that out of the way: How vulnerable were halftracks really against small arms fire, as compared to how they are in the game?
According to this site, halftrack side armour was 64 mm thick.
According to this site, MG42 regular bullets could penetrate 50 mm of steel at 100 metre range - and that assumes a perfect 90 degree angle of attack, that was rarely ever achieved in battlefield conditions.
So, if we believe this info, shouldn't halftracks be protected against machinegun fire, unless it comes from closer than 100 metres?
In the game, the halftracks seem to be made of tinfoil, hardly providing better protection than a regular truck (I've seen trucks drive all over the place while getting hammered by machineguns, of course they don't survive forever, but they keep trucking for a long time) .
So, what's your take on it? If you think the halftracks are modeled well in the game, then please explain your point of view. It's always nice to learn something new.
Are you sure you are reading the numbers correctly? 0.64cm = 6.4 mm and 5mm = 5mm. That aside, it seems there were many types of ammunition around, maybe that accounts for some things?
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Thanks for getting back so quickly. I am using the pc version. I already downloaded the CMBN demo and played all 4 battles but when i do the same for FI and open the battle tab there are no battles to fight. I am trying to decide which game to get.
Do you have separate user and administrator accounts? Did you install the game as admin?
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120mm mortar vs T-34/85
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I'm loving the CMRT maps! One thing I'm encountering frequently in QBs are woodlines that are 4-8 action squares thick, but with light reverse slopes that allow the defender to fall back out of suppression fire zones. This, coupled with the v3 ability of defending units to more intelligently fall just out contact and then set up an ambush (over and over) makes taking such woodlines a real pickle (particulary for German infantry, IMO).
In the spirit of the Eastern Front, I've resorted to a tactic I've never used in CMBN: massed AFV overuns with assaulting infantry right behind them.
Basically, I'll put the AFV platoon HQ in AT overwatch and send the rest into the woods in a line using move/pause/target-briefly/repeat combos to shoot up the woods to take the pressure off the assaulting infantry (who are also using the M/P/TB/repeat command combos. I also allow for some units to have self-directed fire intervals to allow for flexibility.
Against a human player, this could be very risky in terms of AFV flank attacks while your own AFVs are busy, but against the AI, it's been working quite well.
-Just gotta' really be detailed and careful with your commands in the command phase (sorry RT players!). Also, it is, of course, a safer tactic for the Germans to use, since the Soviets don't have schrecks/PFs. You can't nickel and dime it, though. You need to really put muscle into it to "blitz" the defenders to keep them from regaining their composure.
Oh, and of course flamethrower tanks are a big plus for clearing woods (and fields, and...like...everything!)
Quite right, though squad backing up from bad positions has been since CMSF
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. Or I should have made the battle a lot harder (can't imagine, the Beta's comments pointed out in the exact opposite direction: make it easier). So I wonder how this was done.
Playing as Ukraine
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted
I just played this scenario and it didn't strike me that the Oplot was that bad at spotting. It was basically 50%-50%. There is a lot of variability it seems.