slysniper

You get a little more for your money when you buy the older stuff. They have the bundle package that saves you $10 bucks or so. But with version 2.0 still a few months out, you might want to wait to get that once they offer the old games in the bundle and the ver 2.0 update. So I would suggest going with the new game with all the latest toys, enjoy it. it will give you plenty of entertainment for now and when you find you like it so much. You can always get CMBN and the mods later when you have the money, plus by then it will be playing the same way as to what you have become accoustomed to.

Now that the next release of the game has come out, maybe a little testing is in order. But I still have issues with what I can test that would make any inpact. First, the designer has told us that to give the AI the ability to fight when on offence. It must have the ability to fire on the move, since it cannot stop, fire and then start moving again. So since the AI rules and ours are the same, when we order units they also have that ability. So he wants it to spot, fire and continue moving. we have to assume it is protraying . moving, stop, spotting, fire, then movement again. (never have liked this decision, but I dont know what factors he is up against to get the game to play well either) So that part of the programming is not changing soon, so my case for not being able to spot enemy units on the move is not going to happen. So that leaves being able to spot moving objects more easily. Which could be tested and which could be adjusted if it appears to be lacking. That testing should not be all that hard to see what is going on presently, with spotting moving to non-moving targets and get a feel for how long it takes. Exspecially when it is that elephant right in front of your noise situation.

FINISHED "CATCH THE TIGER" Just had to get one game in to see the new little tweeks and stuff. I noticed a little more than just the commands, some nice improvement. Played as the Americans,fun little battle to win. But there was a enemy sniper that had a hay day against me, killed eight of my troops. he was driving me crazy, and that was against the AI. 3 of them 8 were from the team I sent up there to take him out, sure did not work so well.

Ok, You guys are in trouble. My first download attempt crashed at 80%, but now I have it and the game is up and running. You wasted 15 minutes of my time, I could be that much farther now if you had stayed quiet.

SAME HERE, AND ISNT' IT NICE, IT IS SO,SO,SO FAR AWAY.

All you really need to know about the Peng is. If them guys start posting in your thread (they have considered it funny, normally because it has turned into some ugly flame war). You need to stop your actions immedietly - for you have gone to a dark place and there is a chance that you might not ever return. Learn their names, watch and see if what I say is not true:)

Well, actually, these spotting actions that occur in the game happen much more than just with the armor. It happens in the infantry fighting also. Moving infantry able to see and then fire on motionless infantry waiting for them in woods or behind hedges or such. Or infantry that cannot see a tank that is less than 20 meters in front of them with no apparent sight blockage at times. But in general, it is much more accepting because its only infantry, and it might cost a man or two, but when its a AT group, you hear the complaints because they have a chance to bag a tank, but for some reason, they cannot see the thing even though its the size of a elephant right in front of them. But of course, we really notice every action to our precious Armor. Its of the most value. So we watch every round, every move it makes. So seeing how the spotting works in the game become much more clear. Again, it is not that I do not like the spotting in the game, I do. It adds alot to the game and does make it seem more realistic. It does add to the fates of war as to who sees and fires first normally wins a conflict. there is plenty a military paper that will back that concept and how important it is to be the side that does it. So since the game is trying to create that type of concept within its play. Then it best try to get that number crunching aspects of that as good as it does its armor penetration numbers. No question, some testing should be done to see what the results show. but it does not take rocket science to understand how movement should affect spotting. Take it from someone who has had to sit in hot fields with bugs crawling over them, less than 50 yards from 4 or 5 men trying to spot them and could sit there for a hour and not be spotted, but the second we were forced to move would be spotted in a fraction of a second. The thing is , pretty much we all know that, we all have many life experences that tell us how sighting works. How many times have you passed a dear on the side of the road and you did not see him until the last second, because you are in a moving car, focused on the road. And there he is, big as life, in the open, just yards away and not until you are right on top of him do you see him (that is because you are the one moving and your sighting is processing all that changing terrain data.) the game does not have this basic spotting concept right. Unless there is something in their programming that reflects moving as to its plus or minus aspects, which I kind of doubt that it does. then we will cotinue to see the same results which are just not natural, that is all.

Baneman, my last comments were directed to dieseltaylor. But does apply to anyone that get so upset with how the results of combat in the game might affect them now. I actually agree with sbuke that most of the time in game play, I get the results that seem correct when I guard roads and such. But it also normally depends on multi units watching the road, units with concealed locations and arcs that allow them to not fire before I am ready. So I agree, cannot think of many situatuions where good tactics have not prevailed in game play. But I can think of some. It is always a factor when you are in a match where you have only a few units. Then the situation might be you only have one tank that can cover a road from enemy use. The terrain is not able to give you a hide, which is common since you only have one unit, so you want him located so he can see down the length of the road. Now we are in the perfect situation where it takes only one enemy tank to pull out on that road and it comes down to who spots who first. Needless to say, I have had the moving tank either spot while moving or after stopping and get the first shot off without the defending tank see anything. I know the irritation, I know the non-logic to it. but i still can accept the fact when it happens. I just place a story line in my head, the tank crew was tired, half asleep and not alert. Sad to say, these type of things do affect the crazy stuff that does happen in real life. So having the game throw me crap does not feel all that un-real. But i would prefer to have my troops not miss seeing 15 ton tanks moving down a road. or do i want to see moving tanks spot while they are bouncing across terrain and see units that should be receiving decent concealment. So room for improvement. but does not stop the fun or the level of competition it presently gives.

you better go back to your other interest, because I can promise you it is not changing enough to become realistic if you presently do not think it is realistic enough. I think the problem might lie in the fact that for some playing competatively against someone else, that any game mechanics that throws in chance actions where units are dieing to things you cannot control is the issue. So no matter what the designer does, I am not sure you will be happy with the game. because in general, they are designing it more and more to take away your god like control over the unit and that as a player you must accept your units actions whether good or bad. They want the player to focus on tactics , not micro managing each unit and getting perfect results. Gone are the days that I can gareentee myself moving three units into place will gareentee me that all three will spot and fire on one unit I know is around the corner or bend. That I can expect that 2 of them 3 units will survive after I overwhelm the enemy unit with firepower. That was wargaming in the past, but not all that real either. Now I have to approach that same challenge with more realistic methods.

have you ever heard, when you post a thread like this. They delay sending you the message a day that the game is ready for download. So you are now at the mercy of someone else letting you know when the real release has occurred.

Well I am more accepting than that, Even with the flaws, I enjoy the game so much, I have no issues wih paying for their product, even with areas that I love to point out as being flawed. Now if there was something out there competing with what they are doing, they might lose my bussiness. But really, nothing in recent years has come close to me as for what I want a tactical game to provide. So i will be more than happy to buy their product as long as it interest me. They ask a fair price and I get tired of those that try and claim other wise. Anyone sitting down at a machine has invested the money for the machine and the money to be on line. I cannot understand where they can complain with the cost for the software of the game if they are using it. lets see. I have spent approx $100.00 dollors for CMBN and its first mod. I probably spend a minimun of 12 hours a week playing this game, so that would be 60 weeks x 12 = 720 hours of entertainment. So at that price it is costing me 14 cents a hour for that entertainment. And no I will not add the machine or internet price since I would need and use them whether I had the game or not. Now for some , they say they cannot aford it, fixed budget. Easy way to fix that. Get off your chair and go do some work. I think you only have to hold the job for two days before you can get yourself fired and go back to being on fixed income. unless you are in part of the world that abuses you and your labor, for them few souls that might be out there trying to stay in this hobby. I do feel for you, but that is a issue that has nothing to do with this product.

The problem is, we are talking about this too late. Here they are ready to release the next little generation of programming and it will be back programmed to add to this game and I doubt there is any change to how spotting presently functions. To get Battlefront to take notice, decide to address and then actually see that feature addressed, seems to take a long time in a world that now sees change so constantly, you just cannot keep up with it in most areas of life anymore. BF could use a little more of that. But I do have hope that maybe something more has been done to pistols, to tone down their accuracy. (been waiting on that since from shortly after the original release of CMBN. It was many threads of discussions to get them to even take notice. but I know they have at least looked into it.)

yes, this is very normal in the game as it is presently designed. Very much a luck factor. What I have noticed is two units facing each other even in open terrain have a random time for it to take to spot a enemy unit. When at extreme distances it normally takes from 30 seconds - to over a minute to get the spot. at 500 meters it might be more like 10 seconds to 30 seconds, once it is 200 meters and closer it can be immediately to about 20 seconds. But there does not appear to be any advantage to either side other than random luck, movement and location of unit does not seem to play enough of a factor, it might be there, but is not realistic enough. like I have said before, the one factor that does impact it alot seems to be having another unit with eyes on target, then if your unit can communicate with that unit, you have the advantage of getting a quicker spot.

Also the BigDork game is not a great example of a problem either. from looking at at AAR. It appears to be raining. Rain is one of the best things in the world as to concealing all the things the human eye is in search of. So if a good rain was falling, that tank can be sitting in the open and not be noticed. There is that factor of, just because you can see it in the game, it does not mean it is designed for the playing pieces to see what you see. The game would not be too fun if you could only see 100 ft at night when it was a night scenario. Or in the rain , all you could see was falling rain at a 100 meters. The game is designed to play, not to potray every aspect of life real. We way to often want just that, everything to function just as real life does. Not going to happen. But I can still lobby for the sight programming to improve, cant I

Dont take the comment so literally. What I meant is it far more important of a factor than most of the others. If I had to assign a percentage of how it would impact spotting, movement would likely be 60-70 percent all by itself. Color is next in most normal situations, but since tanks and troops are not wearing bright yellow or red colors and such, it would be not be as high, so not sure what I would rate next, but I know outline is something that the mind pick ups on very quickly. thus the reason to avoid anything like a crest or ridge where you might reveal part of your outline. As to some of the comments from others, yes a tank at 1000 meters away could easily be missed as to movement bacause of size and clarity and other terrain that would catch ones attention. But at 500 meters, it has some decent size and becomes pretty clear as to what you are seeing unless it has something giving it good concealment. At 200 meters, you would have to be blind or dumb to not notice it in real life. even if you only see some of it while in motion. Just run some test in the game, I have seen tanks pull out in front of tanks on open roads in the game and not get spotted in 10-20 seconds at 200 meter distances. I like the fact that they have the spotting in the game, I dont think there is a perfect answer for it either, it is a judgement call as to how to represent real life as to what happens. But time and time again. I feel stationary units . which should be the best units as to spotting, seem to not spot things quick enough. And moving units, should be just the opposite of that in that they should hardly be able to spot any new unit unless it is clearly in plain sight and has no concealment, or unless it is moving itself. Observation was something we had training on constantly as a sniper, so maybe that is why it bothers me so much. But I know my game tactics are totally twisted compared to what I know I would do in real life. So whenever we get a thread like this one where players start wondering what is wrong with the results. It is my opinion that until they adjust how sighting functions. There is going to continue to be a issue. I really do not think Shermans have a data problem that is giving them a advantage. I think in general, there is more shermans in play than any other tank in the game, so there is more events with them showing the sighting flaw.

without going into a text book explanation. I do recall that the human mind is programmed to hunt or determine danger by certain instincts. Sight being the largest one used for this. It relies on sight in different ways to determine this, like shape, color and movement and some others. But movement is by far the easiest and most instinctive thing for the human eye to be drawn to. Your eye is always drawn to movement. In combat, movement is by far the best way to get yourselve spotted. The game just does not have it right at the moment. You can throw all the other factors out. A tank moving has nothing going for it as to staying hidden other than if the line of sight is totally abstructed and its color if by chance it blends in with the backround. Where as a tank that was stopped, behind a bocage. has no movement, Until it rotates it barrel. Has no outline since the vegetation should be breaking it up and to a large extent there should be no color problen since it is behind concealment making it much easier for the color to just appear as backround tones. So in just the example I gave in my last post. There is no way a panther moving up on a enemy unit in a open field should be able to get the jump on the sherman behind the bocage facing and watching said field. It is against nature. At the moment in the game spotting goes to the side that gets lucky. And what I am saying is. If you can spot the enemy first with another unit, like infantry, then the advantage seems to go your way. I find time and time again. if I know where a enemy unit is and I pull my armor up into place to also have a line of sight, I normally get the spot and shot off first. The program is not correct to the real world, my opinion, but again, I think the best fix would be to correct what moving units can spot and it would resolve plenty of the problems.

I will add my two cents to this issue once again. I do not think it has to do with the sherman, i think it has to do with the game spotting mechanics. I have for a long while now been playing my armor by intentionally being the side that finds the enemy armor in position, then moving mine up into position to create line of sight and then a attack. Why, because I kept losing position tanks to just this type of result. some enemy armor moving into position would spot my unit, fire and get first hit before My unit saw anything. I find if I spot the enemy with infantry and then move my armor into place I almost gareentee I will spot and shoot first. Now testing this might prove a issue. But in general, for the time frame and battle sim that should be potrayed. The stationary armor in the game should have a huge spotting advantage over moving armor and it does not. Personnally, I think moving armor should just have their spotting ability greatly reduced to all forms of targets and I think it would improve the game to a much more realistic general results as to how combat should play out. Until then, I will stay with my method. Just did it in a present game I am playing. Enemy had Shermans overwatching fields to my approach from behind bocages in a flanking position. I moved my panthers up, one right in a open field behind a little rise. Both locations I did this, spotted and fired first. The one location, my panther must have fired four shots before getting the deadly hit. But at no point did it appear that the enemy sherman spotted my unit.

I feel the same way, I did manage to create two scenarios with the new tools. But I have tweeked the defence and offence of the AI so much on one, I cannot come close to saying how many hours I hav invested in it, but enough to know that I just dont have the time to do AI programing to the level I want.

well, thanks for this reply and all the others. Personally I wish I had the time to get into the designer features more, so with improvements I can hope it equal time I want to invest I agree with you that it is solving the problem of quility also. As the level goes up, only those with the skills are willing to put it out there. Of course, I had no problem with taking someone elses work in CMX1 and modifying it to a level that I felt was needed. But I could only use it for myself and did not want to share it back out because it was not my creation. I recall once making a few suggestions to one designer, he was offended, removed his scenarios from the share site and acted so unexpected to me. All I was doing was trying to sugest what might make his work better. Oh well., it takes all types. Anyway, I have no fear there will always be new work at there as long as the tools are provided, I would like to be part of that myself, but retirement might need to come before I see that these days.

Very true Though it is not realistic as it is now, it sure has stopped that bullcrap that was going on in CMx1 where players would stack armor up one behind another and another because they could shoot through each other and all have the same line of sight without any penalty, go ahead and try it now. I LOVE SEEING A ROUND KILL MULTIBLE UNITS BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT LOCATED IN A GOOD SPREAD FORMATION, which would you prefer.

I thought the same thing at one time. But after some testing I have found that my expectation and what works seems to be the problem. In other words, I should not expect 2 placed MG's to be able to pin two platoons of men coming at me, even in open fields. If I am lucky the MG's open up and each gun might pin 6 or so men each before return fire starts coming my way. But that leaves 40 men that start to return fire, soon I will find my MG's pinned and useless. So I did some test, what I find is a 2 man mg team can pretty much win a fire fight with most any enemy squad. So one gun against 10 and they do great, they normally pin the squad first and start to get kills in a short period of time. They normally even do good if they are up against two squads, but watch out for rifle grenade launching units, once the mg pins, the battle can switch advantage quickly. But open up against anything beyond that, I can promise you the Mg will be pinned very quickly and be of no value. So when placing MG's you must either use them as support to get firepower advantage or. If as you are talking, you must position them so as to not be battling more than a squad or so at a time to have a true advantage. Most of these comments on this thread goes back to my statement. - Good tactics, just played poorly equals poor tactics.

Plenty of the scenarios were redone in CmX1, so to see some in CMX2 is not impossible, just needs someone in the community to do it. I know I did some myself in the CMx1 format, but only placed one out there for public use and changed ity enough that no one ever asked if it was based on a SL scenario. The problem is, Though in some ways the new tools make it even better to recreate anything you can come up with, it also seems to be even more time comsuming, and getting the AI right now takes some real skills, which I know I have not wanted to invest the time into. And from what I see on the community inputed scenarios, it might be a trend. It appears as we progress, we have less and less input from communty players offering additional scenarios.

I have been trying to put a finger on it, as to something that makes the game different than any I have played before. It comes down to the infantry in the game, even though my love of war gaming has always been the tactical level. it was always focused on the armor or other major assets, Infantry in most games were nothing more than the pawns on a chess board. Inportant in their own right, but nothing more than sacrifical pieces to use to promote my powerful pieces. CMBN has given me a whole new look at that. Much of the time now, my armor and arty and big guns are now reserved to help my infantry, they are the focus of my desire for success. though they are the weakest piece on the map, they are also the queen of the battlefield. they truely do hold the ground now, when nothing else can. They are a threat to any attacker, no matter what they ride in. I now need to watch their ammo, their strength, their command structure, their radio communication net and so on. they have become much more real to me than in any other game. So I play them more realistically, I focus on their tactics much more than I have with other games and I feel their battle as if it was real. No other game has done that for me, the closest would be Close Combat, since it had many similar features. But Istill had a disconnect with them generally. The battles were all about the same length, I hardly ever worried about their ammo or morale. As I watched them die it meant little most times as to if the success of the mission depended upon that one squad. Now, My lead squad means a ton to me. as they hit a objective, the enemy responce is going to tell me so much as to what the next 20 minutes might be in the battle. Companys will plan their actions from what has happened to my few first men. No ones life is taken for granted in the thought process as I play the game. And this is even in a game where I might be commanding 400-500 men. the game still has plenty of things it can do to improve how the infantry acts to make it more realistic. but I already think it has added what has lacked from any source before. FPS give you some of that, but lets face it. FPS generally are not very realistic to true battles, the players risk nothing, and play and tactics are not realistic in any sence to anything a real person would do in real situation. organization lacks, and many times is nothing but a free for all. For now, this is were it is at.

Lets see. Poor tactics Yes poor tactics do not work well in the game Why, because they are poor. Actually, some times players try to use good tactics, but they execute them poorly. Same results, they then become poor tactics. I think that about covers it. I know, not much help was it.

I agree 100%. Plus they are just pretty straight shooters. they generally try to do the right thing, plus put up with more than they really need to at times on this forum, but seem to be able to handle it well.