stoex

No need for Dr. Phil, finalcut, I see your problem clearly here...as a seasoned CM player, your correct wording should of course have been 'Hey, honey, whose butt mod are you using?'

womble, As discussed in this thread, there is an issue with any saving/loading and multiplayer with regard to tree placement which will be fixed in v1.01. The problem I mention here only occurs when saving and loading in the setup phase - at least I could not replicate it after I had started the clock. Also, units not in foxholes seemed unaffected (in all the positions I tried, though I certainly didn't test exhaustively in that respect). It certainly is less of a problem than the shifting trees, but can well have an impact on the effectiveness of a defensive setup, since LOS/LOF for individual soldiers and their weapons will be altered if you save and reload during setup.

Okaaaaay... Further testing reveals that this issue is independent of moving or giving orders to the units. Simply put, saving and reloading during setup will always randomize the positions of units in foxholes. I would call that suboptimal...possibly it could be fixed? Not a really big problem though, the workaround being not to save and exit a battle (with foxholes) during setup, but immediately thereafter (after the first turn).

While testing for a different issue related to trees shifting positions, I stumbled across the following notable problem: It appears that soldier positions within foxholes are not included in savegames created during the setup phase. I loaded up a battle (Apple Jam), saved during the setup phase without having moved any units or given any orders, then quit and reloaded the battle. Each time after reloading the savegame, the positioning of the units in foxholes was randomized as you can see from the following images (watch the change in the positioning of the bazooka team in the shots who happen to be facing towards the camera). It is in scenario author mode which is why all the enemy icons are showing: In the initial setup, the two members of the team are in two separate foxholes (I forgot to select them for the shot, but as I said they are the two men facing the camera)... This time around, the bazooka team is in different holes...note how the positions of the MG team sharing the foxholes also changes. On this occasion, Tube Guy and his buddy decided to get all cuddly in a single foxhole - somewhat obscured by the tree, but you can see their green bases showing. The question is, what gives? Does this have to do with the fact that I hadn't given any orders before saving? Would things have been different if I had manually placed the bazooka team in the foxhole once? More pertinently, does this mean that placement by the scenario designer is randomized each time I start a battle (which would suck for scenario designers..). Anyway, this behavior did not occur after I started the battle - any save after the setup phase had the units remaining in their positions from before the save. Anyhow, not really a serious bug, but something that might be good to know - your perfect positioning for your specialists/gunners/whatever might be worthless if you save and reload during setup. You may also notice that the prominent tree in the shots, while maintaining its position, changes its orientation each time. Don't know if this makes a difference to spotting/LOS/LOF, but I believe tree positioning is being fixed in the first patch anyway. Thoughts?

Great news - although there is a good side and a bad side to it, as well as a question and a separate issue which I found and will take up in another thread because I think it is not directly related to this... The good side is, it's being fixed in the patch, whenever that is. The bad side is, there's no point now in showing you all the great stuff I did while satisfying my curiosity in multiplayer mode with my girlfriend in bed. Too bad for you guys... The question is: Does this fix apply to multiplayer as well, as per the OP? Winecape says it applies to 'each time you load/play a scenario', but that doesn't really answer the OP's issue with shifting trees in MP. I expect the fix will remedy that issue also, but I just want to be sure. For the other issue, I just started this thread here. There are pictures, but not of my girlfriend or my 'curiosity'!

I've just been out walking my dog and couldn't stop thinking about this. I'm not usually the one to test such things (being lazy and all that), but when I came back I ran a few short tests in single player mode and the results are not quite what I expected, but still interesting. However, my girlfriend awaits me in bed and I just don't have time to post my results with pics now (also I haven't done enough tests to satisfy my curiosity just yet, particularly in multiplayer mode), so I will come back tomorrow and let you all know what I've found. If someone beats me to it in the meantime, fine . I'll leave you with the cliffhanger that there appears to be fascinating stuff to be seen, though .

If this is what it looks like, then it's not a bug but a very serious design flaw, I would say. Don't want to jump to too many conclusions, but at best it would defeat the WYSIWYG principle for at least one of the players in PvP, and probably reciprocality of LOS/LOF, too. At worst, if it also is true that every loading of a map creates a totally new scatter of trees (though the same number), it would completely defeat individual tree modelling for purposes of map design as well. Besides, if I have to leave a battle for RL reasons and when I reload it, every tree is in a different place, it opens another can of worms altogether. Changes the dynamics of every ongoing firefight with trees involved... This really needs to be closely inspected and tested, could be a really really big problem in my eyes.

ZING! He got you there, Sergei...

JG11Preusse, If you want a unit to hold fire until you are ready, give it a very small cover arc. When you have moved the unit into position, remove the cover arc and it will start firing at the enemy.

It certainly appears that something within the whole system of representing armor hits is off somehow. Those hit texts definitely don't correspond to what one appears to be seeing.

Riiiiiight . Got my references wrong, shame on me. In the case at hand, it still looks like ACP stands for "Accelerated Cobalt Plasma" .

Um, I think what PezBailarin means is that 9mm pistol rounds probably shouldn't be causing great hunking explosions when they hit the side of a scout car. If that is indeed what he means, I wholeheartedly agree!

Sergei, just check a randomly chosen thread and you're likely to find something.

Well there must be some kind of misunderstanding going on because, xian, you say that your HQ can "clearly see" the second floor, but "isn't given LOS". These are contradictory statements. Either they can see it, or they can't. Or, of course, it's a bug but I find it hard to imagine no-one else has ever noticed this before. So there must be something you have missed or neglected to mention here. Maybe is your HQ simply cannot see the second floor over the bocage even though you think they ought to be able to. Second possibility, you are trying to call in your arty on the bottom floor accidentally, which of course the spotter cannot see. Rereading your OP I believe this is the problem. Place the target line on the visible second floor and you should be good to go. Sorry, not trying to be snide or anything. It's just that your original post is somewhat misleading/incomplete. Point is, you CAN call arty on anything your spotter can see in the game. (Again, unless this is a freaky bug that's gone unnoticed for some time.)

You generally can't see second floors of buildings over tall bocage in my experience. At least if you don't have a raised position to observe from. It's two ways, though - my men cannot target over the tall bocage from the second floor either.

Another one of my favourites: Murphy's Extended Law of Combat Mission Heroics... 1st Law: When one of your units does something totally magical, beating all odds to save the day with a crazy fit of heroism...you have invariably forgotten to start Fraps before you started playing. 2nd Law: When this happens, you are invariably either playing in real time or will forget to save the replay. 3rd Law: Mildly frustrated, you will then post a detailed and epic description of your unit's antics on the forum just to vent how happy you are. At this point, occasionally you will get lucky and one or two people will reply something like "Wow, that must have been cool to watch!" or "Great stuff bro. I love this game!". However, in 9 out of 10 cases some forum member (generally one with a join date sometime around 2000-2002) will show up in your thread immediately and reply "Pics or it didn't happen! :D:D". After that, the thread will die. Try it, it's true!

AFAIK, yes. I had an AT gun crew abandon a working gun on me in 'Devil's Descent', and their gun did not show up anymore in subsequent battles. They carried along some ammo, though, so at least they made decent ammo bearers for the other guns .

When trying to advance using bounding overwatch, it's always your intended next maneuver element which has LOS to the places you want to shoot at, and not your intended overwatch element. Oh, and: When you are absolutely sure there is no enemy left in that field and tell your tank commander to unbutton, the one enemy guy who is still left stops panicking, stands up and shoots the TC in the face before your two platoons of infantry even see him. He then hides behind a daisy and vanishes from view for the next 10 minutes.

Yeah, when indoctrinated fanatical love for the Vaterland runs wild, telepathic empathy is just around the corner...actually if they had had a little more time, do you think the Germans could have finished their Death Star and won the war?

Thanks Winecape for taking the time to check this out in detail. Obviously what happens exactly is situationally dependent, and in the scenario I played I hadn't the opportunity to check the exact dependencies. I'm glad that the underlying issue will be looked at.

Polo, It's hard to notice ALL posts at the moment since the forum is so active, but I try to notice the ones I think are important . Just to clarify my point a little more closely, as my original post seems a little - well, harsh - when reading it again (as posts sometimes are when something really bothers you right then ): 1) I am all for troops taking a morale hit when Bad Things happen close to them, i. e. they fear for their own well-being, or when BAD Things happen to their direct comrades (as soon as they know about it). 2) The main issue in this case is that the effects of C2 communication seem to be neglected amongst units of the same formation, meaning they are suffering the morale it instantly even when out of C2 with no way of knowing what happened. 3) The secondary issue (which may be a lot more difficult to get a handle on) is that I think serious morale hits (e.g. going from OK to panicked) should be reserved for units who are in immediate fear of Bad Things happening to them, or at least are directly witnessing Bad Things happening to other units close to them (meaning abstractedly they see body parts flying around or dozens of men in the next trench get massacred with bayonets etc.). However, being informed over the radio that the other half of your battery/platoon across the map got wasted should not cause crack units to panic (as was the case in my example). It should make them nervous or cautious, maybe, but not panicked.

Martyr and Broadsword, I agree in general terms that units should suffer morale blows when they witness bad things happening to other units, for sure. However, please see my example in this thread why I think the implementation could use some reviewing.

Thanks Winecape, You can use the Germans with their default setup in A Delaying Action, as stated above, since it perfectly reflects the necessary parameters. PLUS the two mentioned Flak88's will get the chop early on for sure . Or feel free to use a simpler setup if you like, anything like a firing range should work fine.

One must also take into account what 'obviously dead' really means. I know this sounds silly, but regardless of how gravely someone may be injured, they are usually still alive (technically) for some time afterwards, and may or may not die with or without treatment (a different story). The only 'symptoms' of being obviously dead beyond doubt (as I learned when I was a paramedic), are the head being completely removed from the body, head and/or torso crushed beyond recognition, or immediately visible signs of decomposition across the entire body. Anything else counts as an injured person and must be treated appropriately. This may be a reason why sometimes soldiers in CM games are marked as 'wounded' when you are thinking "Jeez, that guy is dead for sure..."

As for your second issue, make sure your soldiers are in the same action spot as the wounded that you want to administer buddy aid to. This can be a bit tricky to see when the wounded are lying on the border between two action spots. Tip: zoom in, highlight each of the possible action spots with a move order, and then pick the one that has the "most" of your wounded soldier on it.