poesel

BFC should really change to that scrum model... just for the fun of seeing the forum explode in vitriolic hate as every one explains why HIS feature is the most important and should be implemented next!

 
Customers don't know what they want (me included). Its BFCs job to find out what enough people want to pay for their time.
Supposedly it was Henry Ford who said: 'If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.'

BFC should really change to that scrum model... just for the fun of seeing the forum explode in vitriolic hate as every one explains why HIS feature is the most important and should be implemented next!

 
Customers don't know what they want (me included). Its BFCs job to find out what enough people want to pay for their time.
Supposedly it was Henry Ford who said: 'If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.'

BFC should really change to that scrum model... just for the fun of seeing the forum explode in vitriolic hate as every one explains why HIS feature is the most important and should be implemented next!

 
Customers don't know what they want (me included). Its BFCs job to find out what enough people want to pay for their time.
Supposedly it was Henry Ford who said: 'If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.'

In general, normally, in a typical software development process when you decide you are done (features are all in, all major show stopper bugs are fixed) you produce a final candidate or release candidate (mean the same thing) build.  From then on each build is considered a possible release build.  You never just release it, you always test it 1) to make sure the last fix you made did not accidentally break something else and 2) make sure the nasty show stopper bug you just fixed is really fixed 3) give testing a little longer to make sure no other nasty show stopper bugs are easily found.  The issue then becomes deciding what to do when you hit a bug because leaving it has obvious risks but fixing it does to.  The big boss has to make a call.  If the call is fix it, you make a fix and a new build and start the final test cycle again.  The absolutely right thing to do is not to have an actual hard release date which leaves you free to delay things for another build if you find something you think your customers are going to hit often.  I am speaking here in general terms.  I have worked at five major companies and multiple products and the end game is always just like I describe above with variation in the terms and variation in the care given and variation in results.  Having done software development for 20 years I have seen this process handled really well and really badly.
 
I don't speak for BFC but they are a software development company and the tend to do the right thing in terms of quality.  I suspect all of us will see that reflected in how the end game plays out.  Well actually you will not see it I guess - sorry - but the results will be good.  What you should know is that they have an excellent track record of doing the right thing - even if you don't get to see the inner workings.  Having played these games for several years now and now having helped out with testing I will say the BFC is on the best end of the scale at handling this end game of the release.
 
So, if there is a delay - don't think "damn that's bad, what is wrong with them" - instead think "whew good for them, they are making another fix that would have made me miserable if they just shipped it".

Conscript in the German army for one year in the early 90s. My 'oh crap' moment was during basic training when our Hauptmann came over and told us that there was a revolution in Russia (the one with Jeltsin). If that had escalated I would have been automatically enlisted for an indefinite time. Yeah, great - just when the cold war was supposedly over.
 
Served in the canteen for the rest of the time but did not peel the infamous 'Für Schweinemast und Bundeswehr' ('For hog feeding and Bundeswehr') potatoes.

Conscript in the German army for one year in the early 90s. My 'oh crap' moment was during basic training when our Hauptmann came over and told us that there was a revolution in Russia (the one with Jeltsin). If that had escalated I would have been automatically enlisted for an indefinite time. Yeah, great - just when the cold war was supposedly over.
 
Served in the canteen for the rest of the time but did not peel the infamous 'Für Schweinemast und Bundeswehr' ('For hog feeding and Bundeswehr') potatoes.

I had the same problem with my iMac. QT does not record the sound that is output to the speaker. It is recording from line in instead. Don't ask me why.
 
You have two options:
 
1) make a little loop connection from line out to line in (microphone). Downside is that you won't hear a sound while recording.
 
2) buy software that does this. There are several possibilities from free to paid. Unfortunately I forgot the names so you have to google that yourself.

'unable to depress its guns'!?! Narrative or really happened? Because gun depression limit is AFAIK on BFC's 'never' list.

'unable to depress its guns'!?! Narrative or really happened? Because gun depression limit is AFAIK on BFC's 'never' list.

I also don't have a clue about the innards of CM but I doubt that any of these things you mentioned are pre-calculated.
 
Spotting distance depends on who you are, stance and terrain - changes often.
Hit probability - we don't have that.
Ground conditions - change over time.
Light levels - also change. Set up a QB at dawn and wait a while to see the sun come up
Fatigue - depends on ground conditions -> see above.
 
Maps can be played with any kind of weather so nothing seems hard-coded. My guess is that it is technically feasible.

We already know anything about the map (with the exception of enemy units). We can fly where we want and take a look from any angle. So every information is already there for us as players to get. It is debatable how hard it should be to get that information.
 
Every now and then someone suggests that we get toggleable fields for LOS so you could see at a glance to which areas a unit has LOS and which not.. This has been rejected by BFC as making things too easy. I partly agree: for the higher difficulty levels it should stay as is but it would be a big help for beginners of this game.
 
Now contour lines are IMHO something different. First I would guess that commanders in WWII would have had such maps. Probably the first thing you do when you sketch out a plan: hills, valleys, rivers, settlements - the important stuff. All the nice details WE get like where bushes are or what kind of crop is growing on that specific field would be left out of such a map. A map with contour lines only is much easier to 'read' that the 3D representation we have.
 
This leads to the second point: what we see is a 2D representation of a 3D world. The real world observer would have a much better impression of distances and heights than what we can get from our 2D view. This is remedied somehow by our ability to fly around and look at things from several angles. Contour maps provide 3D information for a 2D map.
 
IMHO it wouldn't be necessary to get an overlay like in the example above. A simple 2D map would be more than enough.

Hey, all.

Turn up your speakers, go full screen, make sure you're on 1080p HD, and enjoy my new CMRT video:

http://youtu.be/QLuoK3melRo

Screenshot:


Thanks!

Macisle

At the edge of Krickek, a 30 year old Ukrainian private was smoking a cigarette.  He was a rough looking character, with a light beard over heavy acne scars, and the tobacco stains on his teeth hid the poor dental repairs.  But despite his ragamuffin appearance, he was alert and was keeping his smoke low in the hole he shared with a young high school kid from Kiev. 
“There, look…” he said, carefully setting his smoking cigarette against a sandbag. 
“It is a Russian – you see him Bubi?”
“Don’t call me that, you derelict.  Of course I see him.  Are you going to shoot him, or just admire him?”
The veteran grinned, never taking his eyes from the Russian trooper, creeping along a hedgeline in the little ville on the far side of the river.  For such a young punk, this kid had spirit!  He gave the AGS-17 grenade launcher a nudge to the left, and triggered a burst without even rechecking his aim.  The machinegun chuckled, and spat out a short stream of deadly little balls – like black little golf balls he thought, as he followed their short flight.  The rounds bracketed the hedge, detonating close around the Russian soldier, who quickly dropped from sight.  The private fired three more bursts for good measure, precisely dropping the grenades onto both sides of the hedge.  No more could be seen, but a shout in Russian seemed to promise that at least some of their fire had done some damage.  He smiled a crooked grin, and tucked his cigarette back into the corner of his mouth.  With the dust raised by their firing, it could hardly give away their position now.  Behind him another volley of artillery slammed down on Krichek, shattering street cobbles, bricks and roof tiles, as it detonated against the streets. 
 
http://youtu.be/jyIP2M3Av3s
 

 

 
LT Lysenko was wondering exactly who had his range.  He wasn’t certain, but his little post had taken nearly 20 rounds of something, and though he thought initially they had been seen by a tank, now he feared someone had zeroed in on his little band with a deadly large mortar, perhaps two.  The rounds came it at fairly regular intervals, and though he couldn’t get a direction from inside, they certainly seemed to be falling from above rather than below.  He popped his head up long enough to see a Russian infantryman plowing through the wheat, heading towards him from the north, then ducked as another bomb whistled in before detonating against the roof of the power plant stack to his east.   He strained to catch the fall of shot against the truck he had targeted with his own mortars, but could not see anything but a cloud of dust in that direction.  They must be on though, and he carefully pulled the radio set from his dead RTO’s back to raise the antenna so he could make the call.  
 

SSG Venar wasn’t exactly sure what was going on, but he knew it wasn’t good.  The Ukrainian infantry up the slope from him seemed to be having a bad time of it, and the shrapnel from the airburst they continued to receive rattled the trees above his head.  He turned to his teammate.
“We need to get the hell out of here.  Lets go.  I’ll call the LT as we move.”
 The two scouts began slithering back down the hill towards the gully they had infiltrated along.  As they moved, Venar keyed his mike and spoke into his headset.
“Fernandez, you there?  I don’t see you.  Where did you go?”
His driver responded almost immediately, gasping loudly,
“Outlaw 13, this is 13 Delta!  We had to pull back.  We got hit – no idea where it came from, we were just sitting there and BAM!  The right fender is all blown to ****!  I think the run flat is still okay, but I don’t know if it hurt the engine, or…”
“Delta, are you in cover?”
“Roger, I backed further up the gully.  I’m pretty sure no one can see us from here.  Michaels is checking the right side.”
“Okay, hang tight.  We’re gonna try and get back to you.  Too hot up here.  Switching higher, so just hang on.  13 out.”  Venar switched his radio over by feel, and immediately keyed on the platoon net.
“One Six, this is One Tree, over.” 
“This is One Six, send it.”
“One Tree, it is way hot here.  Green boys on the hill are getting their ass handed to them by our friends in red.  Could not stay.  Displacing back.  My Delta says our truck took a hit.  Seems to still run, but will have to assess when I get back.”
“Roger, bound back and stay under cover.  Let me know when you are remounted.”
“Wilco, out.”  The two scouts began working their way down into the ravine. The veteran NCO turned to his teammate.
“Get that AT-4 ready.  I don’t like those engine noises, and that green BMP over there is backing up.” 
 

 

 
On the south side of the hill, SGT Cox continued his crawl, cursing all the way.  He could not believe that his team had not worn their anti-thermal Ghillie suits.  He would never be sure, but he felt those might have hidden them from view.  His crawl was slow and deliberate, as he had been taught, and as he had done numerous times in training and in Afghanistan.  He gradually worked his way back towards his torn teammates, focused on at least recovering their dog tags, and double checking to ensure they were both actually dead.  Unfortunately, his premonition on vulnerability to thermal sights was well founded.  A Russian tank gunner on the south side of the wheat field, equipped with solid second-generation thermal imaging sights, courtesy of the French company Thales, caught a hint of movement from within the treeline.  The commander told his gunner to fire if he thought he saw troops, and a 125mm high explosive fragmentation round screamed across the intervening kilometer in less than a second.  Though it missed him by over 20 meters, the shell exploded at a height of nearly 5 meters off the ground, blasting steel shards at lethal velocity in all directions.  SGT Cox felt his body struck by half a dozen splinters.  Three drove into his body armor and stopped, bruising him, but doing little harm.  Two tore into his right arm and shoulder, piercing his muscle but doing recoverable damage.  The last was a strip that failed to fully fragment, nearly 20 cm long and razor sharp, peeled from the length of the bursting shell, still flying at nearly 600m per second when it struck him in the left leg just below the knee.  Dazed but still conscious, SGT Cox clamped his left hand down on his gushing leg while his right groped for his Combat Application Tourniquet, conveniently rigged, per training, for single handed application. 
 

 
As the Russian forces decimated KPT Antonyuk’s company, the first two BMP-2s to die had been 1st Platoon vehicles.  Now the sole surviving vehicle hunkered down in the gully and watched fate bearing down on him.  The commander could not quite spot the enemy vehicles, but he could see their antennas moving towards him as he peered over the lip of the gully embankment that shielded his track.  He looked behind him, and was gratified to see his squad of infantrymen moving up into the trees to his rear.  The LT was dismounted and ordered to keep his men in and around the village of Starov.  Obviously he had decided to interpret the village borders somewhat loosely.  Perhaps they could still manage to hit a few of the Russian dogs as they came hunting for him.
 

 

On the north side of the hill, the remnants of 3rd Platoon were still being ground down by the advancing Russian BMP-3s and infantry.  The Platoon leader came staggering back through the forest and collapsed by a tree, falling next to the last two surviving dismounted infantrymen from his small command, both bleeding from multiple shrapnel wounds to their faces and upper torsos. 
“Sir, are you okay?”  one asked.  The Lieutenant’s haggard face told the story as he just stared at the man in obvious shock.  In that instant, another burst of lethal 30mm cannon fire struck, directed by the thermal sights on an unseen enemy vehicle, and the officer fell forward on his face and was still.  The two infantrymen cried out in panic, then both began crawling away from the source of the fire, one whimpering in fear and the other snarling in impotent rage.
 

 
Note:  BMP in background is destroyed Ukrainian 3d Platoon vehicle.  
 
 
In Krichek, KPT Kovtun knew that the Russians were up to something.  The artillery  continued to hammer down, but there was simply not enough fire or probing coming from the far side of the river, especially given the destruction of one of an enemy BMP over there by his ATGM team several minutes ago.  Someone or something should have been hunting, searching, trying to pin down the missile team or flush out its comrades.  He called the BMP2 section which had moved up and taken position along the row of houses on the west, facing the river. 
“Borsuk 11, have you seen anything?  Any activity from the far side?”
“Nothing Viktor, hang on, I’ll move up and take a quick look.”
“Borsuk 11, this is Vovk, Hang on 11, don’t do anything stupid.”
“Trust me Viktor – we are good on this.”
An instant later a Kovtun heard the unmistakable hammering of outgoing 30mm fire, over the shriek of another incoming artillery shell.  As his ears were still ringing from the tremendous detonation, he gradually heard the voice calling again on his radio.
“Vovk, this is Borsuk 21…  Vovk this is Borsuk 21…”  with a heavy heart, already knowing Kovtun took a deep breath and replied.
“Go ahead 21.” 
“11 is destroyed.  We never saw what did it.  His track is burning.  No one got out.” 
“21 this is Vovk, do me a favor and don’t DIE in the next five minutes.  Keep scanning but keep YOUR heads down.  We need your track, your cannon, and your missiles!  Stay under cover and respect the enemy’s abilities.  Vovk out.”  He passed the handset back to his RTO, making a deliberate effort not to throw it against the wall, and carefully peeling his white-clenched fingers from the black plastic.  An instant later, he took it back and spoke again.
“Brytva 22, this is Vovk.  Move to checkpoint 2 and observe.”
“This is Brytva 22, understood.  Moving.  I have permission to shoot?”
Podpulkovnyk Tymoshenko stepped into the room.
“You are committing the Tunguska?”
“Brytva 22, destroy anything you see.  Out”  Kovtun gave his Air Defense Commander a hard look. 
“Yes Sir.  It is needed.  We have lost too many combat vehicles, and now 11 has stupidly gotten himself and his crew obliterated.  I need a check on the south, and it must be fast, and lethal if anything is there.  Brytva 21 on the other side has done quite well, although he said he saw nothing from his new position.”
“Absolutely.  Good, I approve.  I trust you Viktor.  Keep the fight going.  Levchenko will get here with the Americans.” 
 
http://youtu.be/cKvN6JINyaw
 
Outside, Major Harris drew the same conclusion from both the sounds of cooking off ammo from the recently destroyed BMP up the street, as well as the radio traffic which he and Beach were monitoring.  He too drew out his handset:
“Guiness, this is five, over.”  As a small team, the SFAT had adopted informal call signs.  SPC O’Brian was well known for his heritage, and his favorite beverage.
“Five this is Guiness.”
“Need you to get over to TRP 2 like we discussed.  Seen anything? Figure you can make it?”
“Roger.  We can make it.  The green boyos over here saw a couple dismounts earlier, but they laid into them with their AGS and we haven’t seen any movement since.  I think our move is still masked.  Same mission?”
“Roger, just like we rehearsed, over.”
“Guiness moving.  We’ll be back in a bit with notches on our CLU.  Out.”
One hundred meters away, the SPC O’Brian picked up the Javelin launcher, tapped PVT Metcalf on the shoulder, and headed quickly down towards the river bridge, carefully skirting the anti-tank mines laid on either side of the road.
 

 
At the Ukepor Power Plant, LT Lysenko grinned as he spoke into his mike. 
“Yes, that is in there.  Fire for effect.”
The infantry in the field had dropped from view, discouraged by a few bursts from his squad in the entry building, and the mortar spotting rounds had bracketed the position where he had last seen the Russian truck and troops.  He hoped the mortar boys would fire fast so he could shift them closer into the field.  He doubted his few men could hold off a platoon of determined Russians. 
 
Starshiy Kostenko knew he was a dead man.  The 2nd Platoon private was on the ground, crawling past the body of one of his comrades, trying to follow his section leader back down the hill to the west, away from the murderous fire from inside the trees.  It was like a horrible story to tell little children.  From dark shadows beyond sight inside the trees, the forest had suddenly belched fire and flame, and all around him men had fallen.  His own thighs and cheek burned with shrapnel, and he felt the warm sticky wetness of his own blood on his pant legs as he crawled.  Suddenly, right behind him, he heard a crashing roaring clatter of sound.  He turned his head and saw the Russian beast, a BMP-3, a mere stones throw behind him.  He swung his rocket launcher around, and thought to himself how sad his mother would be…
 

Sorry for going at it again but there is another aspect to this that is independent to bad LOS.
 
TL;DR: the aiming penalty should not only add a delay to the gunner - it should also prevent turrets from turning towards the enemy
 
Situation: I had Intel on the enemies location and the direction he was looking at. So I snug a M5 behind him to shoot him in the back:
 

 
 
Again the targetting delay hit me and while my crew patiently waits...
 

 
 
I still get the first shot out but now against the front turret and not the back. Not much difference for a IV but different story with the heavy cats. Also to consider: if the M5 would have shot immediately the IV might not have spotted him so fast (less eyes in the back). That may have given the M5 enough time (spotting+turning) to get out a second shot.
 
IMHO the targeting penalty for tanks vs tanks in close range should go away.