Dietrich
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Posts posted by Dietrich
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I may be old-fashioned, but I wouldn't mind not seeing this sort of über-high-tech stuff in CMx2. It's the same reason why hypertechnological future warfare games don't appeal to me -- sometimes, technology can be too advanced, so advanced that it seems to take the fun out of it. (That's kinda why I save my Javelins for instances when I'm facing actual MBTs and I have not much otherwise in the way of AT assets.) Similarly, neither WW1 nor the Korean War have never interested me as much as simply WW2 -- in the former, technology was underdeveloped (though it did see the dawn of aerial combat), and tactics were appalling; in the latter, technology was pretty much the same as in WW2, as were the tactics.
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I find myself frustrated at deleting things only to open up the scenario and see I have selected far too many troops.
Any help or ideas?
At the start, delete everything except what you know you want? Then un-delete units piecemeal from there? *shrug*
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I noticed that the animations for the bolt action rifles had the shells being ejected at recoil, rather than during the animation for working the bolt. That just can't stay! The end is nigh! Okay, not really.
But if it's not too hard, with all the Kar98's we're about to see, it may behoove BF.C to examine the shell ejection animations for bolt action rifles.
I don't recall having noticed that, but good noticing! I agree -- at least half of the rifles we'll see in CM:N will be bolt-action, so they'd better get the animation right!
(It's more or less a matter of adjusting the timing of when the casing appears to conincide with the bolt-working animation, right?)If the unit is already on your TOE on the right hand side of the screen modifying the quality of the equipment apparently only influences accuracy/frequency of jamming/etc.I had forgotten that subtlety. Thanks for the reminder.
anyone had repeatable success in ensuring .50 cal. equipped snipers get purchased?According to the CMSF manual, the game treats .50-cal rifles as representing "poor" (suboptimal, I suppose) equipment. (In other words, if you set equipment to Good or higher, you'll get just 7.62mm rifles; Normal will yield a randomized mix of 7.62mm and .50-cal rifles.) Set equipment to Poor or Fair before purchasing, and you'll most likely get a sniper squad with at least one M82/M107.
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There are many real life clues to fire origination which are absent in game. For example, the Sherman 1 which he says gets knocked out; is it "rocked" by the hit? Which side took the impact? What flew off? Is there an exit hole? The "crack" of the round? The "whoosh"? All these should give someone whose life is dependent upon these clues a little bit of a guess as to the location of the threat. Of course, sometimes these clues are missed, or absent.
Technically true, but consider certain aspects of the likely tactical situation which would have a bearing on this. A Sherman gets knocked out by an AT shell penetration through its upper right hull. True, the Sherman's crew realizes that the shell came from the right, but as they're bailing out, how can they reasonably pass on said information to any friendly units? (Granted, if friendly infantry are without voice range, one of the tank crew could shout to them "Hey, watch out -- there's an AT gun over to the right somewhere.") And just because they know that the shell came from the right, how do they have any idea where the fire came from except that it came from the right? If the Sherman's commander was smart, he had his hatch open and his head out the cupola, the better to spot and to hear potential threats. Even so, he wouldn't necessarily hear the report of the ATG nor spot the smoke of its firing. Once the tank crew has bailed out, they would likely be hugging the dirt, since they would be likely be ruthlessly targeted by small-arms fire from the enemy infantry, and thus they would be to busy/suppressed to say "Let's take a gander at our tank and see if we can deduce where that darn AT shell came from."
What I've read about tank crews in WW2 indicates that the situational awareness of the typical tank crew was rather limited because the interior of a tank of that era was quite noisy, so much so that it was virtually impossible to detect infantry nearby unless they were so nearby as to be actually on top of the tank. A crew could definitely tell when an AT shell ricocheted off their tank, on account of the jolt, the sharp clang, and the spark-type flash. Detecting the ATG itself, though, was much harder.
Naturally, I'm not saying that tank crews never or only rarely detected ATGs which had them under fire -- I'm just saying that there were a number of factors which would mitigate against their detecting such.
Of course, this is in a "one tank versus one anti-tank gun" situation. If there were two Shermans -- which there most likely would be, if not a whole platoon of four or five supporting each other -- the second Sherman's commander might have noted that the knocked-out Sherman got hit on the right side, and thus, as he moved his tank into a better position, he might very well search in that direction and thus might spot the puff of smoke from the ATG firing which then takes out his tank. =P
in Steve's scenario the player, as a godlike entity, knows the location and type of weapon that killed his Sherman.At least in CMSF, more often than not no unit of mine spots the ATGM which blasted one of my Abrams or the RPG which took out one of my Strykers. So my only recourse, as far as area fire is concerned, is to blast every place which might be occupied by the enemy -- but before I've had a change to blast even half of those places, the ATGM or RPG in question has fired again and very possibly taken out another of my Strykers or Abrams.
my experience with CMx1 is that tanks directly targeting field guns that aren't dug in frequently were knocked outWhoever is so inclined, you might find it enlightening to check out http://www.feldgrau.com/pnzfwd.html. Note a couple points pertinent to the "ATGs and tanks firing at each other" aspect of this discussion (italics mine):
9. When antitank weapons are encountered at long or medium ranges, you must first return fire and then maneuver against them. First make a firing halt in order to bring effective fire to bear - then commit the bulk of the company to maneuver on the enemy with the continued support of one platoon.10. When antitank weapons are encountered at close range, stopping is suicide. Only immediate attack at the highest speed with every weapon firing will have success and reduce losses.
The first point implies that the locations of said antitank weapons have been more or less deduced. The second point suggests that the tanks which come under fire don't necessarily know quite where the fire is coming from, but nonetheless, better to kick it into high gear (to make your tank a hard target) and blaze away, even if you miss.
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Evidently one can't really resupply 50-cal ammo. Sure, it would be nice for one's .50-cal snipers to have a surplus of ammo, but I find that typically the amount they have is sufficient for the number of suitable targets in a given scenario. (Playing "USMC 3:10 To Yuma" the other day, I had my M82-armed sniper team on the roof of the police building, sniping at the onrushing insurgent vehicles; the sniper got in his sights a UAZ crammed with combatants, and he fired once -- I was gratified to see four red plus-signs appear over the vehicle.
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Why would that be affected from changes to area fire?
You're right -- it's effectively a different concern. And since I seem to be (at least temporarily) incapable of phrasing my question in a clear and concise way, I'll let it be.
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I'm not suggesting 'fudging unit stats' or making 'artificial changes' of any sort. Please forgive my unintended implying.
I'm merely asking "Will a field/AT gun's shield afford a realistic degree of protection for small-arms fire and light shell fragments (from the front)?" In other words, say a rifle squad of mine spots a Pak 38 facing it and opens fire from 100m; will the Pak 38's crew have any protection from the rifle and BAR fire on account of the gun's shield? -
Presumably the walls of a gun emplacement would be built to withstand plenty of small-arms fire, yes. But I was referring to the shield of a gun (either an ATG or a field gun), irrespective of whether or not the gun is in a prepared position. The raison d'être* of the shield is to afford the crew a modicum of protection from small-arms fire and light shell fragments. (The Pak 40, for example, was fitted with a spaced double-layer gun shield which afforded greater protection than would a single plate about 30% thicker than the two layers combined.) And besides, an ATG isn't necessarily always in a dug-in position.
Sure, an ATG or field gun can engage infantry at greaters ranges than infantry can respond with anything more than suppressive fire (though LMGs would do better at this, and HMGs in overwatch would be even more suited to it). But an ambush involving ATGs or field guns wouldn't necessarily be launched when the enemy infantry is that far away. (Were I commanding the defenders, I would have my troops hold fire until the enemy forces were within range of both my ATGs/field guns and my small arms.) And just because an HMG takes a while to set up doesn't mean that by default it isn't already set up in at least partially concealed overwatch positions while the bulk of the infantry advances.
* raison d'être = French for "reason for being"
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What, though, about scenarios where one side has ATGs and the other side has no tanks (or tank-destroyers or self-propelled guns or anything that could just take out both ATG and crew with a single HE shell, whether through direct targeting or area fire)? Am I reasonable to figure that an ATG's shield will afford at least a modicum of protection from rifle/MG fire (at normal ranges, that is)?
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The US was also well known for leveling entire villages with artillery and/or airpower on nothing more than the suspicious of significant German resistance.
Sure; why send in the infantry (even with a hefty numerical advantage) when you can just bombard the village to rubble? Though I recall hearing/reading something about Patton ordering that a certain village not be artilleried into oblivion because a cherished cathedral or some such was in said village.
The Combat Studies Institute (http://cgsc.leavenworth.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp ; I would provide a more accurate link, but I can't get the page to ever finish loading) published a study of tactical responses to heavy artillery attack. According to this study, a characteristic German tactic during in response to Soviet artillery bombardment during Operation Bagration was to withdraw from the MBL to second-line positions during the bombardment, then reoccupy the MBL positions once the artillery had stopped firing. Also, the study notes that the most detriment the Germans suffered from the combined artillery and aerial bombardment that opened Operation Cobra in Normandy was not due to losses in men or equipment (a fair number of guns were demolished, and tanks were flipped onto their backs by the countless explosions, but they didn't suffer that many actual casualties) but because the shells and bombs severed their field telephone lines and wrecked radio antennae, so that the German communications were severely disrupted, such that by the time the German generals had gained any sort of picture of the situation, the US forces had penetrated their lines.
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After searching the forums and espying the aforementioned picture of Mishga, I can confirm*...
A woman CM player! Will wonders never cease.
Not only a woman CM player, but a woman CM player who designs scenarios as well(!)
* Yes, I'm new around here.
Except in the sense that I've been playing CM for about three years now. -
We are talking about illiterate peasants many times vs literate and battle educated troops that have been trained to follow military tactics.
In CMx2 Ostfront, perhaps. But we're talking about CM:N, so (as far as I understand) we're talking about literate and battle-educated troops versus literate and battle-educated troops. Taking into account the armies involved and the historical timeframe, you could have regular/veteran Fallschirmjäger defending 5-to-1 against green/regular US infantry, or you could have regular/veteran Fallschirmjäger clashing head-to-head with veteran/crack Airborne. (I'm very much looking forward to playing Carentan/St.-Mere-Eglise scenarios.
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Dietrich, yes that computer:girlfriend equation is a tough one to beat. Maybe Meach can give you some pointers on how to be able to play with your lass sitting on your lap or by your side.
Ah, but I don't have a lass to sit on my lap or by my side. =P Had I a lass, I would have not as much free time to spend playing CM:SF or any other game. Besides, I would have more engaging activities vying for my time. (And no, I don't per se mean that word that begins with "s", ends in "x", and has "e" in the middle.)
I'm looking for a lass who (as Arthur Dent said of Trisha McMillan) is "charming, beautiful, devastatingly intelligent." =) You know, the kind of girl who could be seen to lean over my shoulder, peering at the screen through her elegant glasses and with her lustrous hair framing her lovely face, and offer some sage tactical advice.
I think the success of World of Warcraft among the fair sex can be attributed largely to the fact that it's as much a social game as it is a kill-monsters-and-earn-gear kind of game.
I would be honored to play a scenario created by a woman. I'll have to take your advice, Meach, and look for such on cmmods.
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In light of how long it takes (or can take) to call in artillery or air support, I think general command delays would make sense. As it is, the closest thing I see to any sort of command delay is when, for example, I tell a tank of mine to area-fire on a certain spot and there's a pause (a brief one) before the turret swings around and brings the cannon to bear on that area.
Command delays -- insofar as they would be fairly short for Elite units and fairly long for Conscript units -- would help distinguish the men from the boys, so to speak. For example, a Green T-62 crew ordered to area-fire on a building 800m away at 10 o'clock might take, say a dozen seconds before the turret started traversing, whereas a Crack M1A2 crew would take only a few seconds, i.e., the time it would take to bark "gunner - 10 o'clock - second-floor balcony - 800 - HE - fire!" This is how it could be for area fire. I suppose the delay(s) would be less for spotted targets -- that is, if a T-62 spotted an Abrams, it would bring its cannon to bear on it more readily than if the gunner were responding to a 'fire on the indicated area' order by the TC.
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Dietrich : there are two girls on the french CM site "Appui-feu" !
Mhh, two out of 200... Statiscally it is an endangered species :eek:
Deux filles dans la...! :eek:
...Oh blast, my knowledge of French isn't nearly as good as would be needed to woo a French CM player-ette. =P
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Indeed -- I've never actually heard of a girl or woman (other than some pseudo-mythical gaggle of gals called the Frag Queens or something like that) playing even so straightforward and popular a game as, say, Halo, let alone something so groggy and not-all-that-graphically-sophisticated as CM.
I've figured that my chances of earning a girlfriend (let alone a wife) are in direct proportion to the extent to which I don't spend my time playing "video games."
Verily, has there ever been a woman CM player? *shrug* The only game that I know of which is played by a significant number of girls/women (indeed, a significant number of people) is World of Warcraft. I imagine it would take quite a nerdy/groggy girl/woman to be interested in CM. But I like nerdy/groggy girls.
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I agree that for Normandy this should be possible with all vehicles including tanks, but the real value would be keeping unit leaders in the fight. When a tank unit commander had his ride shot out from under him, he typically would switch to another tank and keep going.
I do not, however, think that any unit/crew should be able to commandeer any friendly vehicle (which I think may be the case in ToW).
Agreed. That's why I said "'commandeer' a tank in their platoon", since it would be one of the same type. In a Villers-Bocage sort of scenario, one would certainly not want your "Michael Wittmann" crew/HQ to be useless simply because his Tiger got its track knocked off by an errant 6-pounder shell.
In CM:N, having a bailed-out tank crew commandeer a jeep would, I think, be functionally no different than an HQ team jumping into a Humvee in CM:SF.
(In ToW, you can have, say, four guys from an infantry squad climb into an empty tank, but if none of the guys has any "driver" skill, then they won't go anywhere, and if none of the guys has any "gunner" skill, they won't fire the cannon or MGs.)
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Is there an order which specifically places a unit on overwatch, or is that just their default move if they don't have another order at the moment? I've been putting a target arc on areas I suspect would have an enemy prescence.
Overwatch simply means a unit is stationary and in a good position to provide covering fire for a friendly unit that is moving.
Assigning a unit a target arc will, for one thing, make that unit spot enemy units more readily and return fire more promptly.
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Howdy.
(I know some of this is rehashing what Gpig has just written, but this is a cross-post anyway.)
1) For a string of movement orders, left click on the waypoint marker (triangle or circle) and select an order. You can have multiple orders (one of each type) per waypoint -- for example, you can have a Stryker pause for 10 seconds at a waypoint and area-fire at a targeted building.
2) Assume the enemy has at least a few RPGs, if not two or three ATGMs. Thus, keep your armored vehicles well away from buildings and anywhere else the enemy might be lurking. Use your infantry to screen for enemy AT assets before moving your armored vehicles up -- you may even want to keep your armored vehicles under cover until you have some idea where the enemy's AT assets are.
Hope this helps.
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So the M707 can call in artillery faster than an FO, eh? Interesting. I'll have to experiment with that. Sounds like the M707 could be a fast, maneuverable and lower-profile stand-in for the BFIST or FSV.
The next time I'm playing a scenario with M707s and artillery/air assets, I'll have to remember to use that de facto LOS tool.
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Some wonderings in advance (well in advance, I admit) of CM:Normandy:
- How will air support be handled? Will it be pretty much entirely TacAI-controlled, as in CMx1? In WW2, as I understand, it was a pretty much a matter of "the major says a couple o' fighter-bombers will be over our area at or near H-hour", rather than someone on the ground having more or less direct communication with the aircraft. To what extent -- if at all -- will ground units be able to request air support? Secondarily, will shadows of aircraft look anything like the aircraft they're meant to simulate?- How will artillery support be handled? Will calling for support be limited to forward observers? Will HQ units be able to call on and/or spot for artillery (presumably not as accurately or quickly as FOs)? Will units with C2 to their parent HQ be able to ask for artillery support (with perhaps an even greater accuracy/promptness penalty than the HQ itself requesting said support)?- Will on-map mortars need their own LOS to a given targeted area? (I suppose this would apply more to 81mm/3-inch "medium" mortars than 50mm/2-inch mortars.) Will mortars be able to fire indirectly (though presumably with relative inaccuracy)? Will HQs be able to spot for mortars within their command radius?- Will units in prepared positions have field telephones? In other words, will radio-less units which are out of visual/voice range of friendly units have some means of communication? TacAI-controlled signal flares, perhaps? (According to a post by Steve, inter-unit runners will be abstractly simulated, which I think is a good subtle aspect of C2 pre-FBCB2.)- Will TO&Es and unit purchasing be CMx1-like or CMSF-like? Will we be able to give units particular names (and with an HQ's name reading "Lt. Murphy" instead of "Lt. Murphy HQ"*)?- Will unit ammo supply be adjustable (such as to simulate stock-piling of ammo in prepared positions)? Will tactical resupply be an option? If so, how might that work? (Sure, halftracks and other vehicles -- at least for the Germans -- were more rare than some scenario designers would have you believe, but surely a Panzergrenadier squad would carry a few spare boxes of belted 7.92mm ammo in their SPW, right?) Will handgrenades be included in tactical resupply?- Will bailed-out tank crews be able to man other tanks? For example, say I have a Crack tank crew and their Panzer IV gets knocked out but they are unwounded; could I have them 'commandeer' another tank in their platoon crewed by guys who are merely Regular? (In ToW I used this to good effect when my best crew's tank got its track blown off or its cannon damaged.)- Will hand-to-hand combat be simulated, even just abstractly? Will handgrenades always explode on impact (as they apparently do in CMSF)? Will infantry be able to pop smoke (whether for expedient concealment or for signalling)? Will smoke-popping be aim-able?That's all I can think of at the moment. Feel free to add your own wonderings to this thread. Please understand, though, that I don't mean to imply "if the game lacks any of the above-mentioned things, I think it will be broken"; I'm just musing out loud and wanting to stimulate thoughtful (and respectful
) discussion.* By the way, I noticed that in the CMSF scenario "Bomber Takedown" (thumbs up to the scenario designer, by the way), several of the units had specific names like "Sgt. James Wheeler" and the unit leader's name (the name by the upper left box beside the unit portrait) was the same (i.e., "Wheeler"). I thought it wasn't really possible to make the unit leader's name a particular name; I thought it was more or less random. Any ideas?
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Re: the "God problem" -- in CMSF, more often than not, a Stryker/Bradley/Humvee/Abrams of mine gets hit or even knocked out by an RPG (to say nothing of ATGMs) which it does not spot, even after the hit.
Re: gamers' complaining -- considering the consistent quality and (in my experience) the virtually limitless replay value of BFC's games, I'm quite confident I will immensely enjoy CM:Normandy. The only BFC game I have not been thoroughly satisfied (which is to say I enjoyed it, but not as much as the CM games) with was one which BFC had not as much do to with as the CM games.
Just imagine: with the camera positioned over the shoulders (so to speak) of a 57mm ATG's crew, you see a Tiger come into view over a rise in the near distance; the ATG fires, the round bounces off the Tiger's glacis, and then you see the crew actually putting another shell in the breech and slightly adjusting the aim while the Tiger reverses into hull-down position....
(Overall, I figure CM:Normandy will be what ToW wants to be when it grows up.
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My understanding is that due to the GAU-8's ultra-über-mega rate of fire, the sheer multitude of rounds impacting more or less the same area on a tank eats through the armor. Rather than any given round penetrating, each round each chips away at the armor a little bit, but the rate of fire is so high and thus the frequency of impacts is so great that by the time the A-10 has finished its 0.66-second (or thereabouts) burst, the tank is Swiss cheese.
Were a 30mm 'autocannon' (like a slightly larger-caliber version of the Bushmaster) to fire at the same spot on a tank (preferably the side armor) for half an hour, perhaps the rounds would start penetrating.
It makes me think of photos I've seen of Tiger front armor after prolonged combat -- in several places the armor is deeply gouged; definitely no penetrations, but perhaps if two 57mm shells had hit the same spot, the second would have scored at least a partial penetration.
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My typical experience is that I carefully drive my M707s into hull-down positions in hopes of preemptively spotting enemy units but then they get taken out (usually by ATGMs) before they can spot much of anything.
An LOS tool would make it much easier to ensure that my M707 is hull-down rather than mostly hull-down. As it is, I move the camera to the area I want to recon, wind down to the lowest elevation, and zoom in on the M707 to see how much of it is visible above the crest. Kinda laborious.
Unfortunately, hull-down sometimes just isn't what it seems to be. In "Crossroad at El Derjine", either my Abrams are so hull-down that they can't see anything or they're positioned with the forward hull angled upward and above the crest, perfect for getting the driver WIA/KIA by an ATGM hit to the lower front glacis.
(It's more or less a matter of adjusting the timing of when the casing appears to conincide with the bolt-working animation, right?)
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BV 202 in British module?
in Combat Mission Shock Force 1
Posted
As an amateur Anglophile (or is it anglophile?), I think I'm in a position to say that my impression has been that the British have a sort of love/hate relationship with the French, linguistically as well as gastronomically. Many Britons speak French and dig French food, even while mocking the French for certain other characteristics of theirs.
Of course, Monty Python also did a couple shows in German. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Python%27s_Fliegender_Zirkus
Ah, so the USA isn't the only ethnocentric Western nation as far as language goes. (What's the code for a 'raspberry' emoticon?)
Interestingly, the Normans were descended from Vikings who invaded (rather than simply raided) the region that came to be called Normandy and intermarried with the Frankish and Gallo-Roman folks there. They were distinct linguistically, militarily, and culturally from the French proper (to say nothing of the dozen other ethnopolitical groups in what is now northern France), hence their being called "Norman" (derived from both the Latin and contemporary French terms for "north men").
Perhaps that's part of why English is becoming effectively the lingua franca (pardon the inadvertent pun) of the world -- it has incorporated words from countless other languages.