THE Sabot

The only Panthers that were really in action were A and D so only one is missing </font>

****Good points. LOS has always been an issue in these 3D games. If you may remember, I had a bit to do with testing "GI Combat", as Lawrence Jameson. The bocage/hedgerow terrain was ill represented in that game. I believe that most bocage was made of mounds of earth and stacked rocks, topped with heavy foilage and trees; some ancient and twisted thick. These were used to both deliniate farmers' fields and to protect crops from violent winds during storms. As we all know, the Germans used these hedgerows as deadly mazes in their defensive battles in Normandy. IIRC, the bocage of GI Combat was tightly grouped trres and bushes, but no mounds. There were, as you know, many LOS glitches through those hedgerows, as well as strange ways the infantry(and tanks at times) took "cover" "in" them. In my ...ahem...Panzers modding, im currently wasteing my time on a huge Moratin area map with lots of bocage and sunken road action. Heres a screen from early development: ****Back to GI Combat for a moment...I hear you on the pace issue...but for all GI Combat's screwyness, I had some of my most gratifying moments of tactical wargaming against an AI during some of the earlier builds of the game. I think (know) it was rushed into stores way before it was ready.

****Bodies on the battlefield would be a nice touch, but its mox nix. Whats more important are persistant vehicle wrecks, which block LOS and provide cover for crunchies...that is if units in this game are allowed to take cover.

****Yeah, Tanks are hella shipkillers. Heres one taking out a Jap aircraft carrier.

****Does he not post here?...Sadly, Ive lost contact with him. I think he's in Arkansas.

I caught the new screenshots. I was horrified to witness not a single dug in AT gun. Wow, you would think that after showing us a dozen or more NON-dug in AT guns over the past month that they would go ahead and show ONE with a couple of sandbags stacked up nicely at least. </font>

****My own, limited experience in shooting human beings with automatic weapons, ranges 100-800m, 7.62mm and .50 cal. : Most of the time, the target dropped immediately to the ground, as if unplugged from a power source. No dancing, flailing, hopping, ect. ****BTW, will there be flaming crewmembers jumping from burning tanks?...'cause that does happen.

****aj...yo, check it...yo...yous a sorry excuse for a wigga...yo

****Holy Crap!!!I just had a revelation that I myself have become a "Pauser"!!!I was playing some CC5 the other day, paused the game and started to try to give orders...

"CodeLame Panzerwreck was a waste of time and money. Where do I get me refund?? Sometimes I still play Steel Panthers, ............. "And why not!?!?!?!?" ****Hmmmm...You should have kept that one to yourself. ****Your refund is presently in my lower intestine. I'll try to work something out for you. In the meantime you can kiss my ass. LJ

****Lets hope this "playable area" thing doesnt turn out to be a problem.

****Ok, back in the old days, I would have come out at you guys, guns-a-blazin. Im more calm now. Modding Codename Panzers has not been a waste of my time. At the very least it has honed my Photoshop skills ****Im not here to defend CP. But I will if I have to. ****First, FoW, although stunning graphically, has a HARD CODED hit Points system. That means you cannot mod or adjust their Hit points system. That eliminates it for consideration. ****SHOWW2 focuses on way smaller engagements than I want to play. Although I know some CP modders who "switched" over to Soldiers. ****Although CP uses a health bar for damage assesment, its a little deeper than that. Each weapon has a "damage" value, and you have 4 sides of armor values, plus the top. THEN, each crewmember has 100 "hit points". THATS where the demon was hiding in this system. What was happenning was this: A tank fires at another. The damage value of the firing gun is compared to the armor value of the target. Now, the armor value would take some of the damage, modified somewhat by range, and the remaining damage would be absorbed by the crew's Hit Points. This system sounds like its starting out ok, but heres the rub: The crew's HP value of 100 ea is not represented individually...its a lump sum. And so the crew was "dead" when they reached 0, and full strenth (ability and manpower wise) until then. So, thats why tanks in this system were taking multiple shots to knock out, even when grossly overmatched. The "health bar" you see is exatly that...crew HitPoints. And THAT was what determined the destruction of the vehicle. ****So, I did away with the hit points. Kinda. I just changed their meaning. Now I gave out hit points as an expression of X. X being a compination of crew skill, luck, superior vehicle design, ect...This number was much lower than the default...ranging from ~15 (halftrack) to 100 (Tiger). ****Now, with damage and armor values modded to mimic real life, penetrating shots would quickly eat the "hit Points" to 0 when appropriate. Balancing those HP with the damage/armor values was the key to getting "realistic" results. So, in this game I was using abstract methods to get "realistic looking" results ingame. All of this was possible experiments with my "test range" map. ****You can prolly pick up CP2 for about 10 bucks in the bargin bin of any EB store. Get it...play one default battle..or try to...I did...and I never played another. Anyways, download the last patch. Download my Kursk mod. Play any of the 4 singleplayer battles offered: Cherkasskoye, Ponyri I & II, and Provhorovka. Then, if you still want to say I was wasting my time, I will submit to arguments. Although abstract and limited in many ways, you still must apply real-world tactics to "win" the scenarios. And also...when Ive got the entire Tiger companys of Das Reich and LAH dueling massed T34 onslaughts, I dont care if Tiger S22 just got a glancing shot off the left side turret of T34 #1003, moving obliquly towards him at 657m....There are too many shots going off at one time at this scale to pay attention to minute details. Im trying to control and co-ordinate 70+ vehicles and troops sometimes. As long as the results are visually believable, who cares how you got them? ****Now I wont refund your money or nothin, but if you dont have fun playing it...you should just quit wargaming. LJ

****Eric?.... ****I have several mods out for it...Panzerblitz1 (yep, named after the old AH chit-pusher): high unit cost (small skirmishes 12-15 units ea.) Completely reworked data, bla, bla, bla...Panzerblitz2: low unit costs (big battles in skirmish mode...30-50 units per side), extra skins, music,loading screens, ect. ...Kursk: PZbltz2 data, 4 singleplayer maps, 3 MP maps, buku skins, music featuring Metallica w/special guest Hitler Sample mp3 , Wagner, Megadeth, Beethoven, Ministry and others. I am currently working on a supersized bocage/hills/village map for a small Mortain mod Im making. The MP version of the map will weigh in at about 20MP, Im figgerin. Also working on Panzerblitz3...increased ranges and experimenting with giving all direct fire weapons indirect fire trajectorys (set at 1 degree elevation) to try to induce misses shots at increased ranges. ****Anyways, Im hoping this ToW game will blow all that out of the water, and I can just remember all my work on Codename Panzers as a learning experience...just like Close/GI Combat! [ September 03, 2006, 07:37 AM: Message edited by: THE Sabot ]

**** @Hof: It's the one and only, baby. Hence the "THE". Auf peterstain, old chap! "Hey Sabot To the best of my knowledge, C:Panzers used a "health bar" system for tank damage modelling. I would assume this is still the case for your mod? What were the major things you changed with your mod? " ****Yes it does use a health bar. There are many limitations to the game that cannot be overcome. One, the Camera has a set range of zoom and depression, therefore true scale ranges make gameplay tiresome. Also, every tank maingun shot is a hit ...every gunner is an ace. Accuracy is adjustable for arty and indirect fire weapons, but not direct fire tank cannons. I could go on and on...but...what I did first was increase the ranges of all weapons to 3 or more times the default. This gave say a Tiger an edge to edge range when zoomed fully out on fullscreen (without interface)...approx scale range of about 7-800m Id say. Their values are not expresed in metres or anything recognizable in the files so I made a "test range" map with every unit in the game and set up poles and drew lines sort of like a football pitch...singleplayer, no objective, every unit on my 'team': I could then drive tanks head to head, controling all, force them to fire at each other at various ranges. From these extensive "scientific" tests, I juggled the data. ****I couldnt change the "hit point" system they had, but I could make it do what I wanted. First I cut all the Hit Points WAY, WAY down..(cause thats what was causing the "10 shots to kill a sherman with a Tiger" thing). Then I nutered all "repair trucks"...made them regular trucks ,then I adjusted the armor values (front side rear top) to historical values...which the default closely mimicked in its numerical values...although no benfits for sloped armor ect..Anyways I juggled damage values Armor and Hit Points until I got the results I wanted: Tiger Kills T34 frontally any range 1-2 shots, ect, ectect... ****Oh yeah, all this time I was skinning like Grizzly Adams on crack...over 70 historical skins for the Kursk mod. You can check it out here: http://www.coffinpilots.com/cp_pics.htm

"So...'fanbois'....is that French? Cajun?" ****I dunno...I saw it spelled that way here for the first time...thought it was netspeak. Heck, I just learned what "nerf" and "buff" ment last week! ":Anyone daft enough to want to try and mod CP in the first place needs to be given respect. And support. And a straight-jacket." ****Pretty women will cloud your judgement...remember that. Plus, its very, very moddable and has an excellent world editor. I was able to make some exciting Kursk singleplayer battles with many scripted events. ****This one looks very promising, but Ive read here there can be no modding../??. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

****I really hope this is "the one". You should have heard what I told people in 1996 about where I saw computer wargames at 5-10 years down the road. Its a travesty. ****Earlier this year I modded out a flashbanger called "Codename Panzers" to what I call 'tolerable gameplay'. Check it out at www.coffinpilots.com ****What Im getting at is: most of these "gamers" dont give a rats ass about realism...they only seek balance and/or exploits. Check out the newest flashbanger "Company of Heros" http://planetcoh.gamespy.com/ ****A utterly stunning blond dimwitted hooker it is. Wanna get "shouted down" for suggesting realistic ranges and damage models? You cant argue with the mass of middleschool Son-of-Starcraft.....and thats who's buying these "wargames" enmasse...so thats who the most talented (who want the most money) designers and artists cater to. ****Just for laughs, you might want to read some of their arguments on Sherman vs Tiger vs StuG... ]http://forums.relicnews.com/showthread.php?t=101962] ****Anyways, when I saw that Hofbauer had something to do with this forum, I figgered it must be a den of snakes...so I registered!