TheVulture
-
Posts
2,270 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Posts posted by TheVulture
-
-
Gun elevation restrictions are non-existant in CM:SF.
You can shoot straight up into the 8th floor of a building while standing next to it with your tank.
I guess this cannot even be called a "bug", because apparently there has not been an attempt to even model such restrictions so far.
Do not ask me why, because I do not know. For me such a restriction appears to be trivial to implement, but apparently it is not.
Best regards,
Thomm
Imposing the restriction no doubt would be pretty trivial. But there's always more to it than that when making games. Firstly, you'd really want to find some way of making that information available to the user in a relevant way. Just saying in a manual that the maximum elevation of the main gun on such and such a tank is 37 degrees and imposing that in game, doesn't really cut it. The first thing you would see would be many 'bug' reports of situations where the tank has a clear LoS to a target but can't target it and the user hasn't noticed that they've run up against the elevation limit. And the same limit doesn't apply to some of the MGs on the tank. There is also the issue of plotting future moves and having no easy way of telling whether from point X the main gun can fire at target Y.
Many of the same issues crop up for hull down positioning too, which maybe illustrates that there is more to it than simply slapping the limits on. And look how often people complain about the difficulty of finding hull-down positions, particuarly in WeGo.
But the biggie is the AI also has to know about it. It can't stick its tank somewhere and open fire - it has to also take into account how the elevation limits affect its effective field of fire too (and this becomes much more of an issue when a vehicle is sideways on a slope).
None of these are insurmountable I suspect. But designing a smooth interface and making the AI aware of the limits both take time, turning it from a 10 minute 'code the limits' job to possibly a several day effort. Which means it has to fight with all the other stuff on the wish list for a slot in the schedule, and I dare say we could think of a year's worth of stuff we'd like to see in before this was addressed, given how often it actually comes in to play.
-
Just wanted to write a quick 'thank you' to whoever designed this scenario in the marines module. I've finally finished the damn thing after a few weeks (only really get to play in my lunch break at work, so it's taken a while) and had an absolute blast, despite being penalised for destroying civilian buildings by the simple expedient of trashing a whole company of BMPs next to them and the secondary explosions wrecking the buildings
As it happens, I got a nice bonus out of this scenario that will help in the next one (where the briefing specifically metions that I have a lack of AT weaponry). One of my javelin teams happened to get themselves killed. Sent the old recon HQ unit over to play medic, and one of them had the sense to grab the javelin command unit, so I sent them on a tour of nearby AAVs to grab a few missiles as well. The other part of the recon unit (and that whole recon platoon has taken a hammering in the mountain sections of the campaign) was likewise running around in recon mode at the end of the scenario and ended up with a 3 man squad with 2 M32 grenade launchers for added benefit. And all these nice toys turned up at the start of the next scenario too
Damn well equipped recon platoon...
-
***** SPOILERS*******
As others have said, one option is to replay the earlier mission and put more emphasis on keeping your troops alive. Heavy casualties in earlier missions might make some of the later mission nigh-on impossible.
On that mission, I played for time, from an earlier attempt in a previous patch where I did much the same as you - tried to pin down the Syrians at distance, and got chewed up by the BMPs (and tanks when they turn up). Second attempt I stayed a fair way back so that only the far side of the valley was visible, and all the valley itself was a blind spot. Keep the troops spread out there in split squads with short cover arcs, and when a Syrian squad comes over the crest, they run in to fire by 2-3 squads and go nowhere. The LAWs are not much use at range, but lethal against BMPs that come rolling over the near crest at 100 meter ranges or less. The AT SMAW weapons are a bit more reliable, but not accurate enough to reliably hit something on the far side of the valley. Again, they can smash a BMP at short range, or take out a T-72 on a flank shot - with added luck.
So my main idea was a closed defence - anything getting close runs into something capable of killing it quite easily, and the defenders avoid their main threat of being chewed up and spat out by enemy APC fire from across the map. Once your reinforcements show up you have a javelin team that can deal with the tougher nuts to crack, and then once they are gone the AAVs are quite capable of winning head-to-head against the BMPs, so you can go on the offensive.
But at first, just try to buy time, stay hidden, and only open up at short range targets, and see how that works out for you.
-
Will there be any updates with smoke on the battlefield in the CM Normandy or even in CMSF. Currently smoke put out by vehicles,infantry and arty is done well. It drifts with the wind and thins out the further it drifts.
Burning vehicles on the other hand has the smoke go straight up into the sky.
The smoke from burning vehicles also moves with the wind, and disperses over time (as it rises up). But, just as in the real world, smoke from a hot fire tends to go up very fast too, driven by the updraft from the heat generated by the fire. While smoke from arty missions etc. have no such updraft driving them up (and obviously are meant to stay at ground level to make them useful).
-
Out of curiosity, comparing tactical level performance, why does the Panther (44.8 tons) get compared to the t-34 (32 tons) rather than the more equivalent IS-2 (46 tons)? (including the IS-3 as a essentially an IS-2 variant).
-
Forgot to add the second half of the playstyle point - I am a rather cautious, risk averse player who puts a great deal of store in gathering intelligence, and keeping the enemy unaware of my position. Sneaking around ambushes and outmaneouvering them is something I do moderately well.
Conversely, I really suck at pitched battles and wide open terrain (not least, I keep forgetting about using smoke
). And I can well imagine that someone who finds those kinds of battles intuitively easy to run would have a harder time in this kind of mission.(Credit to the scenario designer though - nice to see someone using height well in a map).
-
"Wasn't all that difficult"!? After repeated attempts, all of which resulted in at least half a dozen knocked out vehicles (including a couple AAVs) before I had even reached the pass, I gave up, then restarted and hit "cease fire" almost right away, just bypassing the scenario. Those ATGMs tended to make life miserable for my troops, even when I kept the vehicles under cover and just probed forward with my dismounts -- one AT-14 in the middle of a Marine squad equals ouch for half a dozen guys. =(
Even so, I too liked the truly mountainous feel of the map.
Curiously, I've only just finished this mission too. I'd have to say that I found it fairly easy too, but what you find easy or hard is to some extent a matter of play style. The Syrian airborne positions aren't simple nuts to crack, but I got through with only 9 dead and 2 vehicles toasted. I may have had some luck too (LAV survived a full frontal RPG, and I saw a few close misses from ATGMs and recoilless rifles too).
My personal approach was split squads, keeping vehicles safely out of sight. Advance on enemy positions in a pretty wide pattern (one squad, split into teams, plus the fighter team, and an MG team, spread over 100-150 meters. Get enough shooters and mortar fun to suppress the ATGM / recoilless teams, and then rush up an LAV and AAV to hit them while they are down. Plus RPGs and recoilless rounds can't take out half a dozen men when there are only 4 in any one location. Use hunt commands to go over crests so when they take fire they can drop down and completely break LOS while letting you know where the enemy is, so yuo can maneouver other guys into position to suppress.
I find marine platoons have so much firepower, particularly with an AAV per squad, that I tend to split them and use them much like I would a CMx1 company
-
This is simulatable even in CMSF: just have the pixeltruppen show up as reinforcements on said rooftops.
Maybe it's just me, but that immediately makes me wonder what happens if you have a reinforcement zone that is entirely on/in buildings, and have some tanks arrive there. Do they turn up on the roof tops? May have to go test that at lunchtime...
-
There are lots of different random contour generating algorithms. Fractal ones are one option, but there are plenty of other ways to go about it, and different algorithms tend to produce different feels of landscape. Some are very good at mountainous features, others are very good at a kind of 'rolling hills' style. I coded one recently that tended to produce generally flat landscape with very roughly linear raised and lowered features, which actually did a reasonably good impression of British farmland (depending on the z-scale obviously), and often gave nice, tacically interesting maps with covered areas and important ridges for controlling large areas of the battlefield.
I'd love it if we got the ability to import at least contour maps. In an even better world, it'd be nice to be able to import full maps, but that would obviously require BFC coding up some long-hand uncompressed data format that we could generate independently, which would be read in and converted into the internal version.
I'm not expecting that though - within weeks of it going live, people will have produce QB generators based on it, and I imagine that the improved QB functionality of the next release is going to generate at least some of the sales desirability, and they might not want to undercut that with user-provided free versions...
-
On a tangentially related note (and not entirely serious) why not 'solve' the problem of co-ordinated movement the same as for co-ordinated fire? When you have a unit selected, you can only see the moves of units that have had chance to transmit that information through the C3 system, as with relative spotting. So you can co-ordinate with units close by since you can see their waypoints, but not with distant ones since you don't get to see theirs until some time later.
-
What?!? That would only make players plot complex million-waypoints-in-one-chain orders. Planning takes time in real life, and complex plans take lots of time to come up with.
The problem is that the complexity of plans has precious little to do with the number of waypoints. Following a road (simple plan) in CMx1 could take a lot of waypoints. Moving 4 units in a platoon into correct positions relative to each other might only need 1 waypoint per unit but be conceptually much more complex (mutually supporting positions, timings etc.)
-
For CM: Normandy I am in favor of putting it back in as an option for WeGo. I do like the feel it brings to the game in terms of making it more or less difficult to move units around. As has been pointed out, it doesn't prevent unrealistic movements, which is what the feature SHOULD do if it were reflecting reality, but it does throw a bit of a monkey wrench into things. Which means it has some value even though that value isn't arguably realistic.
Steve
I'm in favour of leaving delays out - at least if it is like CMx1's per-waypoint basis. Delays based on quality of troops, morale status, suppression status and a sense of urgency make more sense. Infantry advancing caustiously and making contact with a tank don't need 20 seconds to organise themselves to get the hell into some cover. Units, supposedly on the attack, who have been sitting around in a house for 20 minutes with no sight of the enemy have probably had time to light a fag and grab a drink, and might take more time to get organised for movement.
Probably a pipe-dream though. I don't know how plausible it is to track some kind of 'readiness' variable for a unit which gets modified by morale, suppression and quality.
-
Smoke and muzzle flashes are now subject to FOW rules - as you'll see in 1.20.
Be careful what you wish for
Excellent (until I lose a platoon of tanks to it...). Does smoke FOW also apply to the vehicle Dust Radar ?
-
Yeah, but from a planning standpoint, you had to make sure you had your command structure in place just to coordinate an attack. While I know there are combat penalties for being out of command, I have complete flexibility in moving units around in CMSF.
But I do wonder how much of that is psychological (and I agree entirely about how I actualyl play the game BTW). Being in/out of command is not actually that obvious form the UI. Thorw on the big red / black lines as in CMx1 and I wonder if people would start paying more attention since they would have a "this unit is not as combat effective as it should be" marker in a hard-to-ignore way on the screen. And it doesn't really affect whether you win a shoot-out in CMSF so much, as change how long it takes the US side to win slightly.
The longer command ranges with US C3 equipment is another factor at work here too.
But I do think sticking the command lines back in (CM is broken without it! You hear me!!!!) would make people more concerned about keeping the lines nice and red (although not as much as adding in command delays as well would).
-
Depends on the unit leader. Remember those +1/+2 leader modifiers. They were more important than the command delays IMHO, although unlike command delays you never get direct feedback on their use, so it is less obvious. IIRC out of command units were basically 'lead' by a leader with -2 modifiers everywhere in effect, and each +/- moved you one step up or down the conscript-green-regular-veteran-crack-elite chain (did I miss a level?). Wasn't so concerned about the stealth modifier for the most part, but the morale and combat ones had a massive effect on your squad firepower and staying power under fire.
I assume the same system is in place to some extent in CM:SF (any chance of confirming that Steve?) although the firepower / routability discrepancy between the two sides is pretty large, so even out of command US troops seriously outgun Syrian troops in good command. (I just had a single marine LMG rout all 3 men of a Syrian ATGM from a range of 3-400m in two minutes, with no-one else firing at the unit. They were in pretty crappy cover though...).
Such 'minor' advantages add will add up to a significant swing when you have more evenly balanced squads in CM:N, and a player who routinely ignores it will effectively have troops a few levels lower in quality than one who plays attention to it.
-
Correct about the lids having to be "perfect" in order to work. If the terrain mesh were completely flat and uniformly textured that would be pretty easy to do. But that's not the case at all in CMx2, obviously. So it becomes "expensive" to do right, and since anything less than that won't work it's something that just won't work.
Steve
Dragging this discussion back up again (and I'm not entirely sure why - just musing in public I guess).
I'm not sure why you'd need multiple copies of the entire terrain mesh in order for spottable trenches to work. Well, if you just had the mesh and nothing else, you would. But you have the basic map info, you know which tiles contain trenches, so you know which tiles you need to have multiple copies of. Namely just those with trenches (and probably some adjoining ones for e.g. trenches that cross diagonally between two tiles - presumably some parts of the other two tiles meeting at that corner need some adjustment too.
It all then hinges on how easy it is to insert copy A or copy B of a given tile into the buffer stream. (Which, I admit, nay not be trivial, depending on how you are optimising the polygon draw order: may well not be tile by tile, and the fact that the trenchful and trenchless copies of the tiles will have greatly different numbers of polygons in them).
Assuming it is possible to do that without a big performance hit, then the matter of determining which copy to draw is fairly trivial and low processor impact. For each tile affected by trench ambiguity, loop over enemy units and determine which have LoS to that tile (done from the pre-computed LoS maps). An even lower impact version (if a little more convoluted algorithmically) is to generate a list of which tiles can be seen by which units at the start, and just update it when a unit moves from one action spot to another.
The main complication obviously comes from applying terrain deformations to both tiles, which depends on how the code for deforming stuff is handled. Ideally, it is possible to apply the deformation to both tiles when a shell explodes to make a crater. But (and that might be another big 'but') that's assuming that it is possible to add a crater to the trenchless tile depending on where the shell detonates in the trenchful tile (which may be e.g. at the bottom of the trench). And that other aspects of the crater won't cause discontinuities and glitches between the two versions of the tile (and the way the merge with the surrounding single-copy tiles which may also contain part of the crater).
Obviously only the real (trenchful) copy is used in all game calculations - the copy is just inserted into the draw buffer depending on the spotting determination. It is the updating of both copies in response to explosions / terrain deforming that might throw up trouble.
Thought?
-
Move delays suffer from the same problems as area fire, in that the game can't tell between the extremes of a unit is moving because of co-ordination with other units it has no communication with, in response to something happening a mile a way, out of LOS, versus a unit moving in reponse to its immediate situation. Which is one reason I wasn't overly fond of the CMx1 delay system (although I don't think it was attempting to address the god problem of the player co-ordinating movements unrealistically). Low quality units could have a minute's worth of delays doing something very simply, like moving from A to B to break LoS to a tank that hasn't spotted them yet <pictures the NCO sitting everyone down in a circle and drawing a little map in the dirt with a stick to explain the move order...> (yeah, the withdraw order provided some workaround, but I almost never used it succesfully
)You certainly need to have adjustable waypoints if you are going to start putting move command delays back in.
I much prefer the CMx2 system of not having command delays, for the exact same reasons that BFC are against area-fire penalties at the moment: it penalises some perfectly valid moves, whilst ultimately not preventing the main god-problem. Again, I gather it wasn't meant to address that so much as to simulate the delay between the unit leader saying 'move out' and everyone actually getting moving (I may be wrong), but I suppose there is then a case of making the delay also depend on how long a unit has been stationary.
-
Y'know moon, I have my doubts about how serious you are being
-
I am preparing a bunch of new British Forces screenshots, at least one of them is showing a new GUI button called "Target Smoke" for infantry. I wonder what it does?
It calls in a team of worms who attack the designated point with bazookas?
Yay!
That's one of those annoyances that isn't game breaking, but I find at least once a game I can't get smoke where I want it and it is very frustrating.
-
But I am not getting this:
Can some one give a like step by step?
After doing the preliminary through password then what?
After you enter your password, you have to email the file to your opponent. There is nothing else to do - no orders to give or any such thing.
-
I don't understand - maybe I didn't make myself clear. The men had routed, its just that they just didn't exist after that so I couldn't get them back.
I understand that if they were in the open they could have run away but they were in the back of a BTR so they couldn't go anywhere. then my command squad could get in the vehicle with the last guy who had not disappeared when it should have been full of panicked men.
That's normal CMSF behaviour. When a man routs, he simply disappears from the map (after the excalamtion mark shows). No coming back. Been that way since the start by design. Whether it will ever change back to the CMx1 version of routed men running off around the map, we'll have to wait and see.
-
Another rather long AAR of a PBEM between me and BigDork - lots of pictures and bad spelling to keep you entertained. Not strictly speaking finished yet, but close as damn it, and with the next patch out now, this 1.10 PBEM will probably be put on the shelf. Since one side is down to 1 man (vs about 25-30) it is a foregone conclusion anyway...
Here's the link to the AAR. Enjoy, if you enjoy this sort of thing
-
Okay - maybe I need to poke my firefox installation and see if something there is borked.
-
Clicking on the patch download (CM:SF marines version) with a firefox browser doesn't start the download, just take you to an empty FTP directory.
Got the patch with IE happily, but you might want to look at why firefox is barfing at it.
). And I can well imagine that someone who finds those kinds of battles intuitively easy to run would have a harder time in this kind of mission.
Gun elevation
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
Can't currently hadle them - I was mostly pointing out that putting something like that in isn't just a question is putting the elevation limits in, there is also other work that has to be done (such as how the AI handles it) that turn it from a trivial job to one that will take an appreciable amount of time. I dare say the AI could learn to handle it, but it still takes time to code and debug.
I'm tempted to suggest that it explodes... or ignores it if the 'threat' can't harm it
BTW do minimum range for tank main guns apply for APFSDS rounds too? I can see it for HE-related rounds where the round doesn't arm until X meters out of the barrel, but a solid kump of metal doesn't need to arm (and I don't imagine that the sabot casing not being fully separated would be much of a problem either).
And the MG having a minimum range?? What's with that?