stoex

I guess I didn't communicate very well about the mortar. I totally agree that a barrage is principally a good use for it in this situation, and I certainly didn't mean you shouldn't be doing that. Basically I just meant what JonS clarified (thanks JonS): futher out, lower ROF (probably 'Harass' for the 60mm 'cause it's so quick), and a delay would probably increase (or would have increased) the barrages usefulness. Anyhow, looking forward to seeing how this battle plays out. While I wait for the next installment, I might just start the campaign it's from.

Hi, first of all let me say it's great to see another DAR being posted here, and even better that it's one with views from both sides. The turn files for download are a nice extra, though I don't think I'll be downloading a lot of them. Just reading the DAR and looking at the screenshots is usually enough for me, but anyway I always find such reports riveting to say the least. Second, and I'm really sorry to spoil the fun a little here - I don't think you're going to get a lot out of your mortar the way you are using it. I think it's much too early and much too fast. With the settings you are using, that 60mm will start firing right away and blow through its ammo in under well under 10 minutes, as the fire rate at 'medium' is about one round every 3 seconds (for a point target), not one every 20 seconds like you indicated. Admittedly, with the additional aiming required for a linear target, the rate will be a little reduced, but not much under one every 5 or 6 seconds on average. I'm afraid your mortar is going to be empty before the jackboots show up anywhere near its shells.

Sorry, rocketman, I have to refute that. I have also just run a lengthy test and I found that NOT every smoke shell that hits a roof will bounce. At least not the German smoke shells. I tried every caliber howitzer smoke shell that the Germans field (75mm, 105mm, 150mm), and while they all will sometimes bounce off of roofs, they will more often go through the roof and explode inside the building. I have a feeling that larger calibers tend to bounce less, but I didn't count them. I also couldn't manage to bounce a smoke shell off a roof into a Priest despite a lot of tries, but I DO now know the following: 1) A 75mm German howitzer smoke shell on a direct hit into a Priest will likely damage the vehicle (optics, tracks mostly) and often, but not always, injure one or more crew members. Very rarely will it knock out the vehicle. A near miss will rarely damage the tracks. 2) A 105mm German howitzer smoke shell on a direct hit into a Priest will always damage the vehicle (optics, tracks mostly; engine sometimes) and always injure one or more crew members. It will sometimes, but not always, knock out the vehicle due to crew losses, very rarely due to fire aboard. A near miss will almost always damage the tracks. 3) A German 150mm howitzer smoke shell on a direct hit will always damage the vehicle (optics, tracks, engine, radio) and always injure several or all crew members. It will always knock out the vehicle due to crew losses, sometimes due to fire aboard. A near miss will certainly damage the tracks and occasionally immobilize the vehicle. The 150mm smoke shells can actually penetrate the thin armor of the priest on occasion when they fall ON it as opposed to INTO it, with identical results. 4) Smoke shells that bounce off roofs will always explode and generate smoke wherever they impact the ground. 5) Direct hits from 210mm Brummbär howitzers using HE shells will catastrophically kill Priests almost every time, and rarely leave any survivors . Did that test for fun . 6) Interesting: 210mm howitzers fired in a mission with duration set to maximum will only fire 20 of their 80 shells (4 tubes). I think this is due to the barrels overheating, but I'm not sure.

Thanks, that puts the test into perspective some more. To be honest, I don't know exactly either. I was a little drunk yesterday evening and it seems I was rather into watching myself type just for the heck of it. Sorry . Anyhow, I think I meant about what you just wrote back, that a set of tests across all or some of the vehicles with other factors identical is a good starting point. Testing all permutations of all factors, and then trying to distill general parameters from all that data would be just a crazy amount of work, but getting some numbers down could give us a good idea of what to look for, what to do and what to avoid, and whether there might be unrealistic issues with bogging in some cases. Personally I don't think so - I don't have any particular trouble with bogging, but then I am a very cautious player in general and don't try to make my vehicles or men do all kinds of heroic stunts. My gut feeling is that MOVE is the speed at which stuff tends not to go wrong the most (for vehicles), so that is what I use in unfavorable conditions. Back to the point. My prime interest would be to compare wheeled and tracked vehicles in terms of bogging, so how about you get some numbers for, say, some Stuarts and some M8 Greyhounds next? Or use Pz IVs and Pumas if you like. Meanwhile, I'll be off to the editor to check out something else nowhere near as worthwhile. I remember a challenge someone uttered last week about bouncing smoke shells off roofs and landing them in vehicles.

Lt. Bull, Two things your post from which I quote are noteworthy IMO: First, (unless I missed it despite reading your post twice) you neglected to report which speed you ordered your Shermans to travel at in your initial test runs on GRASSXT and MUD. Care to enlighten us? Second, if we leave aside weather conditions for the moment, there appear to be (as you point out in the quote above) four variables which affect the probability of a vehicle to bog/immobilize: terrain, speed, ground conditions, and the actual vehicle in motion. As far as we know, all of these variables may not have the same effects over their possible ranges in all combinations. For instance, while all vehicles most likely bog more easily in wet conditions than dry, bogging frequency may change more drastically as the conditions become wetter for certain vehicles than others (wheeled vs. tracked?). It is also imaginable that different vehicles bog more easily on certain kinds of terrain than other vehicles, or at different speeds than other vehicles. There might even be 'invisible' soft factors involved, e.g. the effects of "micro-terrain" which also affects cover for infantrymen, or the difference in situational awareness at various speeds affecting not only spotting, but also driving. Who knows what else? All this means that meaningful trends across the board (of all vehicles or vehicle types) may not even exist, or at least not be very clear-cut. By extension, this means the only valuable information that can be gleaned from such tests (aside from obvious recommendations like avoiding mud as much as possible) MIGHT be on a discreet per-vehicle basis, i.e. going through all the permutations of combinations of terrain types, speeds and ground conditions with each vehicle in the game, to determine how best not to bog THAT particular vehicle under certain conditions. I don't need to tell you that's a lot of tests to run... What's my point you will be asking? I think under the circumstances it might be an unachievable objective to find general trends for bogging/immobilization probability, beyond the relatively obvious (dry vs. wet; or mud vs. asphalt roads), with these tests. Such trends might not exist, or might be very hard to pinpoint in the near endless permutations of cross-influencing variable combinations. Exception: there may well be a noticeable difference across the board between wheeled and tracked vehicles, but even that may be hard to find without a whopping load of tests. To my mind what can be done is to maybe answer individual questions regarding a discreet combination of the four variables such as "Why are my M8's bogging so much in this particular scenario?" or "How can I drive my Panther through this patch of soft, damp ground while minimizing chances of it getting stuck?". Unfortunately, for some cases the question only becomes apparent when it's already too late...

Please explain or point me to what exactly you are referring to. I was hitherto unaware of any UI improvements scheduled for the first CMBN module and am very interested to hear about them.

Again, sorry. Rereading my post I notice I came over quite a bit differently than I intended. I didn't mean it to be interpreted as something that I thought had actually happened, or even something that could happen in the game engine. I was merely astounded because it seemed to me that c3k actually did think it might have happened. If it was possible, that would seem such a grave oversight, or strange design decision if it were intentional, that I guess I got overexcited. What I really meant to say was simply "Boy, I hope that's not what's happening." Or words to that effect. As has been said, move along, nothing to see here...

Why in the name of everything that is good and makes sense would a mortar firing in direct lay launch a second spotting round before the first one landed (or at least should have landed, if they couldn't see it)? That would be incredibly stupid behaviour IMO. How would they know in what way to adjust the second round? That's kinda why they're called spotting rounds, no? P.S.: Sorry for being blunt but you gotta agree that this should absolutely never happen, even to an untrained jittery mortar crew. It's just common sense, isn't it?

See the Wikipedia entry on swastika - it is, historically speaking, not primarily identified with Nazi Germany or faschism in general. It is most notably a Hindu and Buddhist symbol for good luck (usually in mirror image from the way the Germans used it, but not always), and has been used for millenia as a common symbol in many cultures, even in classical antiquity (Rome, Greece etc.). I'm often surprised at how many people know it exculsively as the symbol used by the NSDAP and modern faschists. Go to south-east Asia and it's everywhere...

Wait, you can't go now! Happy hour starts in 15 minutes! Oh, I understand...you don't DO happy hour, do you?

Unfortunately, at the moment you can't clear those things at all. Gotta go around.

mjkerner, As long as you only want variations on one of the textures for a particular vehicle (meaning either just on the turret, as you said, or just on the hull), while all other textures are a single standard image, everything will work fine. However, if you want several vehicles of the same type (say, a certain Sherman variant) to have matching sets of markings on the hull as well as the turret (i.e. one tank should have turret mod A and hull mod A, another tank should have turret mod B and hull mod B, etc.), it won't work out that way. This is because the game will randomly apply your turret mods and hull mods to any tanks, so you could get turret mod A with hull mod B etc. in the game. This means that you can neither individualize single tanks, nor can you be certain that your tanks will look different from each other even if you have several modded versions of the textures.

Haha, this is just a perfect example of how asking two people the same question will get you two completely different answers, in the best possible sense. Just compare the two previous posts in answer to slysniper's question, one by ian.leslie, one by myself. We're both saying in effect the same thing, but going at it in completely different ways. I don't think our two posts share more than a handful of words between them. Made me smile Cheers to ian.leslie and I hope at least one of us helped you, slysniper!

slysniper, they are embedded pictures hosted on other sites, in effect links. What you need to do is first upload your pics to an appropriate photo hosting site (Photobucket is a commonly used one). Then when you are posting here, you click the little button in the bar above where you're typing that looks like a yellow picture of a mountain under a sun (or something, it's called 'Insert image' when you hover your mouse pointer over it). Then you get a popup into which you paste the link to your pic which is easy to get from your hosting site. The pic will then be loaded into your post for all to see!

Just finished watching part three. Really great stuff, Clark! I liked your reporting style and cinematics, and I was really surprised at the result, I honestly didn't think you could possibly get a victory when you had only one tank left, but not only did he do a great job flanking the remnants of the German forces, it also turned out they had much fewer active assets left than I had thought! Beautiful VAAR, thanks a lot! P.S. You repeated a number of scenes in part 3, the sequence where your last tank takes out the Panther and Stug, to be exact. Might want to re-cut that vid.

What kind of units were they? If they were heavy weapons teams they might have been packing up their gear. Only thing that comes to my mind right now...

You should be able to achieve this by modding the ?? markers to be see-through.

If someone were to mod one side as Star Wars Stormtroopers and the other side as Ewoks, I'd use that for sure! It's too bad we can't alter the models themselves or someone could make the Space Lobsters mod the world has been waiting for since before CMBO!

Well, it is kind of, isn't it? I mean, if all the soldiers already have gaping head wounds as they go into battle, and the only thing preventing their brains dripping out is their helmets, that sounds pretty zombie to me. Just kidding, of course. it's actually quite a creative idea, I think, though not something I personally would want to use.

GaJ, Besides the points made by other people in this thread, I have a few of my own thoughts to add as to what we see in the histograms you originally linked to and why: First off, you make the claim that both sets of data come from games played by people with varying skill levels. While that is certainly true of the CMBN games, it is probably less true of the CMAK games. After all, people playing CMAK on WeBoB are very likely, IMO, to be at least somewhat experienced in CMAK, if not very much so. After all, if they weren't, why would they still be playing CMAK, and why would they be WeBoB members in the first place? There is also no indication of the skill levels involved in the games recorded in the histogram, so your claim is at least unfounded. I believe it is realistic to attribute a fair level of skill to CMAK players on WeBoB simply on the basis of the fact that CMAK has been around for many years, and people who play H2H regularly in an organized fashion (like on WeBoB) are likely to be more skilled than people who don't. As for CMBN, I would hazard the opinion that no-one could yet be considered highly experienced in CMBN, as the game hasn't even been out for half a year yet, and it is still evolving in terms of patches and scenario design. This is witnessed by thread upon thread of people (even ones very versed in CMx1) asking all kinds of questions about how this feature or another works in CMBN. We all ain't seen the half of CMBN yet, to be frank. CMAK? No surprises anymore there, people who are still playing it now know exactly how it works. Compare this to sports of any kind: at the world championships, the best teams rarely beat each other with high margins, the games instead tend to be relatively close-fought. This of course tends to skewer results for several reasons: One, people on a similar high skill level are more likely to produce closer results, obviously. People with very disparate skill levels (one thing we see more in CMBN than in CMAK) will obviously produce more extreme results. Now comes the big one: IMO people on similar low skill levels (which I believe we see a LOT of in CMBN currently) are not only likely to produce difficult-to-predict results, but also more extreme results on average, simply because it is much easier to exploit a really bad tactical mistake by your opponent than it is to avoid making one yourself, if you are not that good. And as opposed to most sports, combat losses tend to snowball, so often it will come down to who makes the first big mistake. Another factor which may contribute to the results in the CMBN histogram (if they are actually statistically useful, which is debatable due to sample size) is that the higher fidelity of many aspects of modeling in CMBN compared to CMAK makes for a lot more possible outcomes of a situation and much less predictability. Plus, as I said, we are all still learning, which means we don't yet have a really good grasp for which situations are more or less predictable and why, at least in many cases. This results in the whole act of playing being more of a "gamble" at this point (than in CMAK), and we all know that gambling often produces extreme results... What I mean is, there are far more possible game-changing moments in CMBN than in CMAK, and most players are not experienced enough yet in CMBN to correctly determine how to make those game-changing moments work in their favor. Thus, results will vary widely when compared to the orignal "plan" and unit-make-up. Third, and this has been touched upon already by other posters but I think it can stand to be underlined once more: I am pretty sure (though I have no statistical evidence) that the average CMAK battle tends to be larger (number of units at least) than the average CMBN battle. And as others have said, smaller forces lead to more extreme results on average. Wall of text end.

My guess is that mod makes all soldiers zombies. The only way it could work is if all the soldier textures have the headshot wounds already on them from the get-go. Of course you only see them when they lose their helmets. Rather gruesome...

Some answers and comments: Well, he was certainly performing SOME sort of service... I know what you mean, JonS, but these men were in the right tile for sure. I tried them in the next tile over as well, but they made no effort to get close to the fallen man in that tile. Hint: the tile to aim for in order to give buddy aid is the tile which contains the fallen man's weapon (if you can see it), not necessarily the body. Michael - Nice idea, but I still think it is some sort of cult. Cannibalism maybe?

+1. I have them all and they look absolutely fabulous. Thanks so much, Aris a.k.a. Fuser!

Ok, I finally made a of this weird scene. It doesn't show the pushup wave I mentioned, but it does show the squad members moving to and away from the body, and there are some pushups at the end after they have congregated in a circle around the fallen soldier. This continues for as long as you care to watch it, with the occasional pushups here and there, and sometimes a soldier will move a ways away and come back a few seconds later. They never give buddy aid. Funny thing is, when I reloaded a slightly older save and moved the squad to the fallen comrade, they immediately administered buddy aid without a problem. Maybe the one save file is corrupted somehow? But everything else works fine. Any thoughts?

In that case, I'll have a large beer, please. Goes on the tab of the nice and slightly embarrassed-looking man over there *points*.