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womble

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Everything posted by womble

  1. The only way you can keep the HQ spotting and not shooting is to use a "Cover Arc". Cover Arcs will, by and large, restrict fire to targets within the area covered by the arc. It's not absolute, and if the unit believes it's under sufficient threat from the target, it will fire upon it, even if it's outside the arc, but it's pretty good. I don't have much trouble with HQs spotting for Arty with very short cover arcs set. Rifle teams seem more likely to take the opportunity to attempt to suppress the target when I'd rather they didn't than HQ teams do.
  2. It depends. Perhaps especially in WeGo If you know there's an enemy unit watching where you want to move some infantry, and you have it spotted, whether you manually target it, or let the AI, they'll stop shooting at it when it goes to ground. You know that it will pop back up again in 30s or so, but the amount of that 30s that's left at turn interstice will maybe not be enough to get across the covered gap... So you have to whack manual area-targets on the enemy, because leaving it for the AI to pick up the target and then suppress by aimed fire might mean the enemy gets off several bursts of automatic fire at your moving element. My gut feeling, too, is that troops fire more intensively at spotted targets that they're assigned rather than those which they have acquired for themselves, at least when they're not the target of the enemy. So suppression of the enemy is achieved more quickly.
  3. Don't be any more stupid than you have to be. You don't have to build special tanks for propaganda. Just abuse the crap out of them with no regard for the consequences. So what if your final drive fails while filming? There aren't any tanks really shooting at you. There is almost no footage of actual real combat. Please provide the link for it. So this tank was pre-ww2 but it was a development of the P4-chassis with a 90mm gun. Right. Really worth taking anything you say seriously. Really. Fine, if writing in a second language meant you made a mistake, but don't then call me on projecting off your mistake. Forgive me for thinking you were talking sense.
  4. Documentation from where? Propaganda? My recollection is that, particularly the Panther, if you slewed fast you would be spending a week rebuilding the final drive. Fine for 'look how good the tanks you'll be fighting alongside' footage. Not so much when you're in action. Personally, I'd not be surprised if rather lighter vehicles (as the pre ww2 examples would have been) have somewhat less trouble with their drives. It seems to be generally agreed that the drivetrain was one of the places that the kitties struggled, being underpowered and fragile.
  5. No it doesn't. Hold the left mousekey and move the mouse horizontally to slide L-R or move it vertically to slide forward and back. You can combine the two to move obliquely, and the distance you drag the mouse with the button held from the point where the mouse cursor was when you started holding the button determines the speed of your movement: press and drag it half a cm and your view moves slowly; press and drag the mouse near the edge and your view zips along. Similarly, hold the right mouse button to pitch up and down. Vastly superior because you can control the speed of your movement. It has its niggles, it's a long way from ideal, but it's about a hundred times better than one-speed pan-and-glide. CMBN: Click the unit. Press a letter for how you want them to move. Click the destination. Click another destination to set another waypoint. Delesect and click a waypoint to be able to do funky stuff at that waypoint. Again, it's not perfect, but it's no worse than x1. x1 had moveable waypoints. x2 has actions at waypoints. Swings. Roundabouts. Heard of 'em? And once they're out of command you have no idea which HQ they were originally under. Since in BN, the looey in charge of Charlie-1 can't command the guns from Able-4 or any other platoon, it matters more that you know who's in what chain. It's usually pretty obvious whether an infantry element is near enough its HQ to be in command.
  6. The current system already allows customisation of key shortcuts, to a certain extent, using a config file as you describe. It is, however, limited to using (approximately) ASCII characters under 127 and can only adjust functions that are already assigned to that sort of keystroke, plus the 9 "relative" keys. There is no syntax in the ASCII config file to represent <DEL>, <CTRL>, <F1>, <Backspace> and the like.
  7. Nope, you can't carry ammo from one unit to another. If they're in the same lowest-level organisational element, and are within 16m of each other, they'll share, but I expect that's not much use. Thing is, testimony from those that have driven tanks and other tracked equipment says otherwise. You have to be careful how you turn for various reasons, from throwing tracks to mangling your final drive. These are not tanks from Battlezone, and most of them, IIRC, can't actually turn by throwing one track into reverse with the other going forward; best they can do is brake the inside track.
  8. There are places in Russia where you can't dig a foxhole in the summer. It's called permafrost for a reason Lots of places get frozen that hard in the winter.
  9. It's a change since pre-patch though, and not one that's going to make any bunnies happy. It was quite clear that mortars wouldn't engage with their tube unless you told 'em to. Maybe that was a mistaken conclusion, but it sure would've come up sooner that mortars are blowing through half their ammo load in a minute, I think. I'm starting to fear the code control is creaking, with all these apparent glitches with the patch.
  10. It does seem to be eligible to call arty though, so it kinda supports the HQ by letting it stay with the mortars to provide the RT link as only it (or a vehicle) can.
  11. Yeah, a 10-hour movie would need a break to attend to bodily functions. Or diapers and waitress service. Playing CMBN isn't really analagous to either of those passive passtimes, in my estimation. It's more like the difference between speed chess and standard duration games. Or the difference between 15-a-side rugby and sevens.
  12. Why not, indeed? Playing a campaign of 5 100-minute missions can be a bit like that, after all. A pipe dream of mine is a huge 4km x 4km map covering the area of operations of a battalion or more on each side, with fighting backwards and forwards over the whole thing... In my mind, I get lots of little closures out of a long scenario: it's a bunch if 10 minute (or shorter) tactical problems (jump that field; take that house; stalk that kitty etc) strung together and in parallel. I, personally, get more satisfaction out of including the tactical problems and how you string them together/coordinate parallel threads, rather than just having one or two to deal with in any one helping, then jumping on to another, unrelated, duo or trio of distinct situations.
  13. The foxholes do, but I seriously doubt that this is what BFC are modelling. You don't see troops standing in foxholes in the game ('less they're trying to shoot over something higher just in front of the position), they're always kneeling or prone. Which is why I said they look like the "prone shelter (not a fire trench)" on page 55. I think what they're meant to represent is some frenzied scraping with a shovel, rather than serious, methodical, by-the-book fortifications. At least that's what the visual representation seems to be, to me.
  14. I reckon they look closest to "prone shelters" which are "not suitable as firing positions". It'd be shiny to have that much variety of fortification.
  15. I have to say I'm a bit puzzled as to the specific appeal of short missions. If you've got h hours per week to play, why does it matter whether it's n 40 minute missions rather than 2n 20 minute missions? It's not like you can't stop what you're doing at any moment in the course of the game...
  16. It's usually pretty much an error to hide in a place that you can't get out of without exposing yourself to enemy fire. Unless you're confident that there won't be any return fire, whether that's cos the enemy is dead or they never knew to look in your direction...
  17. Ancient recollection of an incident in Northern Ireland reported in the news during the Troubles. While propellant technology had improved a little in the 30 or so years between Normandy and Ulster, AIUI, the round the FAL fired was substantially similar, ballistically, to the M2.
  18. I don't think it'll make any difference to the outcome. The info you get from the 'not always generic' icons is available in Warrior if you click 'em, and faster buddy aid is hardly significant wrt outcomes. Slightly faster arty might help. but it seems to work for the enemy too, so you just end up having to push harder to keep out from under their mortars... Calling them "Skill Levels" is, I feel, a misnomer once you get past Basic Training; having info on weapons and posture of the enemy is a big help, and very useful to learn what effect you're having on the enemy.
  19. No, you're not missing anything. There are no "compartments" with limits to them, as there were in CMx1. You could buy all artillery, in a "Mixed" battle, if you wanted.
  20. They're fine when it's only their explosives. It's when the Tricksy Foe augments their bang with some hidden goodies that they run into trouble... I guess that's abstracted out into the "can't blow self up with own charges" thing, though you're right of course that it would also make it harder for the Tricksy Foe to arrange for a big enough extra bang to do demolishing engineers much harm. Frame charges for every occasion. Kept in pockets the size of Pluto...
  21. And, quite possibly, one or more of any teams nearby, including the one detonating their charge...
  22. Oh, that's happened too At one point I refused to let any team of more than 3 men go upstairs in any building, and that at Slow, with a very short cover arc, because it seemed almost as if troops moving any faster, or who tried to shoot back from upstairs windows were about as well-protected as a balloon on a long string... I've just been fighting around a few more building types since, so I know they're not all like that. In fact, where a building's walls are considered tough enough to bounce M2, troops in upper storeys seem less vulnerable to shooters below them. As I understand it (i.e in a very limited fashion) some blank-looking walls are considered porous, particularly if they're damaged. Also, there are a few buildings in scenarios where the graphics and where the engine thinks the openings are, don't match up. Sorry, I'm an almost complete novice in the mapmaking department. I've only tinkered with a bit of elevation and some linear obstacles on the flat. I've noticed that US rifle grenades are pretty handy for killing, suppressing and driving away enemy in buildings. But they're pretty uniformly useless in open field fights, it seems. Though 175m is a bit long for the grenadiers.
  23. Have they suffered a casualty in the SMG department?
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