Skwabie
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Posts posted by Skwabie
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And the fact is that there is indeed a big "hole" behind the mantlet
I am saying there isn't. I am not saying there isn't because of what I say. I have presented pictures from credible sources. You are saying there is a hole. You are saying this is because of what you say. You are saying credible sources are incorrect and you have not presented other credible sources except your word of mouth. The CM fanatics will believe those but I think there is a limit.
Re: my mod. I don't consider it "realistic" either. But I'm happy to use it, that's all. And I certainly ain't justifying it to others. Maybe some will find it useful or acceptable, some will find it rejectable. I don't mind either way. Such is the way of mod.
You're entitled to your opinion, of course, but I find that people who are more interested in the data are actually less interested in good results.
While a fair assessment, over generalization for sure. Just as you have seen one side, there are opposite sides.
I think it's more accurate to say "baseless pessimism and paranoia are thick on the Internet"
We have nearly two decades of proving that when there's a problem we fix it, yet in your mind it's as if we don't. That says far more about you than it does us.This is closing to the line. But wait, since this is your line, it doesn't matter, right. As to the point, I certainly am not accusing CM of not fixing bugs for 20 years. In fact, I think CM has survived 2 economic recessions and outlived most of the indie game companies several times over. On this aspect I must congratulate the CM team for a business well run and very successful careers. In the business - customer relationship, by not making your game more transparent, you're assuming the customers are a, politely put, "beer and pretzels" crowd. Put bluntly, you think most of your customers are stupid. You hinges on their consumerism to buy good looking products without caring what exactly it is they're getting. So the consumers just bury their heads in the sand and buy more stuff. In the rule maker - player ecosystem, you are the rule maker, the dictator, the mini- Stalin, Mao, Hitler, the emperor, generalissimo, the MAN. You may talk the talk and appear to be quite easy going to foster popularity, but to the MAN I say F*CK YOU.
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Well, we were talking specifically about armour thickness.
Soft factors is a different argument.
We.. sigh. Obviously in this case, even armor thickness is not as straightforward.
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^They have not yet presented hard facts, only word of the mouth. It is and has always been good PR work from a business, but still just words. So sorry that I do not share the "blind trust" of you CM fanatics. And as this thread has shown, trust is a little thin on the internet. Also my doubt does not only come from here, but also past tests by others that reveals a few of the hidden data points. And at the basic level I do not like opaque systems.
Another point. You seem to think a game can just copy whatever the real life value to put it into the game. Well such is easy for armor thickness. But how about the soft factors? Say, armor hardness factors, vehicle turn rates, bogging chances etc. that may or may not be written in stone? How about mostly subjective matters like spotting chances, optics quality, shot accuracy. I ask what other standard can you put to it except the slang TLAR.
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He said that CM used Jentz' values, but they look to have been "averaged" and a closer look at the precise numbers is needed.
I don't know what TLAR is - is that a website or different game ?
^Numbers are generalized. The pighead mantlet is of complex shape, so if a number just says 150mm at 13deg, it certainly is generalized. There would need pictures and detailed measurements. We have not seen those detailed numbers and even pictures are scarce. The Jentz book does have cutoff drawings, but I suppose they can just say "that is also not correct" as well.
TLAR is... "That Looks About Right"
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Vanir,
I actually find that soviet picture adding to confusement. The trunion has what looks like a ring and that seemed taken off by the soviets. So it makes the opening seem larger than it is.
Battlefront:
So, you are basically saying Jenz is incorrect and Vanir is incorrect but CM's version is right?! What sources are Charles working off of? I just wonder and hope it's not TLAR. Ofc, it is your game and your "rules". But I happen to not like them. And because of the "never, ever, ever...", I will not be happy by playing your game.
I was happier however by using my makeshift mod. This is the reason I came up with it in the first place. I generally don't like your rules on ingame data so even if a fix was attempted, I expected this would happen. Although tbh I have moved back to flight sims a week ago, time and again I play a few CM rounds but it doesn't seem to stick. Will be around for more saliva spewing though.
Laterzzzzzz.
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Not sure if you read the whole thread Steve, but the really big problem here is that an end user has shown he is able to change armor values in game, in an indirect and very messy way, but that nonetheless undermines user confidence in the data integrity of the game in MP.
Oh here we go again.
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Probably correct.
OK, Ninja'd. You could have weighed in sooner, Vanir. Do you have a take/source on the Kingtiger mantlet scheme?
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I think this thread is an excellent teaching moment about why we do not allow end users to change armor or other values on their own. The simple reason is that it eliminates a "vetting process". Someone can put their own interpretation of facts into a model and put it out there for people to use and not describe or defend methodology or reasoning for the changes made. Worse, it's not unusual for people who believe they have a superior understanding of the facts to find all kinds of things "wrong" with many different models, so they change a bunch and package them together without specific comments about any one particular change. Because this won't be limited to a single person doing this behavior, there will inevitably be lots and lots of versions floating around out there. Worse still, once the mods are released they tend to get mixed and recombined without a necessarily strong tie to where any one model came from or why. Worse and worse still, often the people making these recombined packages of mods make their own tweaks to the tweaks and either don't document them or don't explain/defend them.
For a game that is specifically aimed at accountability to the facts, what I just described is pretty much the worst thing that could ever happen to Combat Mission. Let me repeat... opening up modification to any random end user's whim is the most irresponsible and self destructive decision we could ever make for Combat Mission as a long lived and respected game system.
Which is why Combat Mission will never, ever, ever, ever, EVER happen. And for those of you who don't understand why, please entertain the thought that is the problem right there in a nutshell
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/91523-battlefront-the-game/?page=2#comment-1188202
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/92283-i-wonder/#comment-1197909
http://community.battlefront.com/topic/72118-fan-made-points-system/?page=3#comment-1147257
And there're many more like that.
Do BF ever consider making the game database more transparent to end users? Where players wouldn't be able to change them, but just be able to see them? ...Never mind. I have read many like that as well!
The better, MUCH better, way to go about it is seen in this and many other threads. Someone finds what he believes to be a problem, he makes a case for it, others weigh in, a debate occurs, new facts/perspectives are introduced, the debate refines and until resolution. At which point the developer (in this case us) implements a fix to address the actual problem so that all customers get the correct fix to the correct problem. The one downside of this is the developer has to be willing and interested to make such fixes. Since we have a long history of being both willing and interested in getting things right, this method works fine for Combat Mission. Not so much for others
More and more frequently such debates have been resolved to show a major flaw in the original position and therefore no changes are needed. That's because the game system and the data within has had a chance to be pounded on by thousands of people over many years. Obvious problems have been long since discovered. But occasionally something does happen which causes us to implement a change or at least reexamine what we're doing. This is an example of that.
Having said that, this case also shows something that is fairly frequent. The Skwabie did apparently find something that needs attention, but the diagnosis was mostly flawed. Meaning, he made some good observations that appear to have merit, however his original position was based on some flawed understandings of both the real life tank and how Combat Mission works. Which is OK because we understand how the game works and therefore if someone can show us an end result that doesn't make sense we have the knowledge necessary to trace where the problem comes from. There's no need for end user forensics to be accurate.
Steve
I have yet to be pointed out where my understanding is flawed. ChrisND has said CM's armor layout is partially correct, but I am disputing it by 1. the provisioned fix is not correct; 2. even the layout is correct, i.e. the data is correct, the engine still has issues. This is not an issue of whose opinion matters but simply facts, so if facts say otherwise, what I understand wouldn't matter.The reason that you get the "flawed" understanding is that I modded the game, put up links for it and it upsets the HvH players. So the major part of the thread is spent on that.
The problem with CM bug fixing is relied on grass root / crowd sourcing. This isn't very effective. Players are not beta testers. The public forum is not a dedicated beta-testing forum. You can have bugs lurking and nobody's the wiser. And the next time someone opens up a "debate" it'll be some other non-related issues that the debate side tracks into. And usually multiplayer/HvH is the worst form for bug hunting. And so a bug can exist for years before someone finally notices it, or during when new features are added. If this armor thing is indeed a bug, I wager it has been since CMSF/CMBN, which is 4 or 8 years.
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I spoke with Charles about the issue of the KT's mantlet strength.
- The assumption that mantlets are laid over the turret front, thus resulting in an armor thickness of "mantlet+turret" is, in many cases, mistaken. Instead (in this case for the KT at least, I won't pretend to speak for all vehicles everywhere) there is a cutout in the turret front where the mantlet is. In the King Tiger case this is born out by another review of our data. HOWEVER, there is a small area where the edge of the turret cutout edge and mantlet edge overlap, and if a shell hit that border area, it COULD have to penetrate both mantlet and turret.
- Reviewing our data of the King Tiger's Henschel turret mantlet, we found the following:
- Our current arrange of how the front turret armor and mantlet overlap is correct, as described in the front paragraph.
- However, upon review we now believe that some of the data we used (from Jentz) to determine the King Tiger's mantlet thickness and slope is probably not entirely accurate.
- The mantlet appears to vary more in thickness and curvature than our modelling currently depicts, which is probably understating the real-world strength of the King Tiger mantlet. And this is the effect being noticed by people.
- Charles is going to re-calculate his measurements from the King Tiger blueprints and strengthen the mantlet accordingly.
The mantlet thickness is indeed problematic, an 85mm shell can go through the "dish" portion (wasn't APCR, checked in scen author mode). But more importantly the dish portion is where the turret and mantlet overlap, and no WW2 era shell should be able to go through it. And the real problem here should not be data -- even if the "dish" thickness is only mistakenly set at 10mm, penetrations by 85mm shouldn't have happened. But rather it should be damage engine, does the engine take into account both layers of armor into account.
I have ran a few tests with sherman 76s where mantlet and turret front also overlap. The result doesn't look correct. Every 75L/48 shell from PzIVs penetrated from 1000m. If you guys have the means, it would help by setting up a test tank, where a turret mantlet covers the entire front section of a tank, with the mantlet set very thin and turret/hull front set extremely thick, and see what happens when a shell hits. If the game engine is bugged, all hits would be penetrations, and vice versa.
Thanks for taking a look ChrisND.
And case in point, where exactly is the cutout? There is that "trunion"(?) that looks like ears on the 2D drawings, but is extremely small, and while not as thick, it is sloped. There's no at all other opening. Cutout?
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Actually I was speaking about JonS' comments about the Tiller games, where the hacking is trivial--just by editing text files.
The early age of computer gaming. It was the wild west.
Now the latest I've read, there's this evil/disgusting concept of "internet sovereignty". Puters and webs are gradually coming to the main stage. And more and more regulated too.
And your previous post did not refer to what game you were talking about. And even if I somehow did allude to the understanding that you were talking about another game, I understand it's mostly dead so there's not much point unless... theme of the day is nostalgia.
And I'm missing some of the drama, negativity, and ego in this thread, do we need to kick it up a notch?
Well you did jump in on the 4th page... Last time I was here was something like 9 months ago, so I kinda forgot how it was. Couple of pages later I remembered, so fine by me~ Although atm it seems the CMFB subforum is where it's at!
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Well, HvH was never on my radar. For a singleplayer/modding mindset, if you discover something and not share it, you're considered selfish. So I guess there's a culture gap there. Had lotta MP in the past with other games which have free modding, but the MP were co-ops and not competitive, so it was never a forefront issue.
My problem is with the nature of public forum. Ppl go to it for drama, negativity and ego. It's just how it is i suppose. Maybe it is interesting for some... And none of your imagined "hacking" is doable, you fear what you don't know and I imagine how the mod works isn't easy to understand. What it can do though, is turning a unit 'unspottable' by the game engine, I've accidentally found. So if you're using it in a HvH game, your oppo will never know you had such a unit ninja killing everything. That's gotta be interesting.
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$ 55 for two campaigns and some scenarios? No thanks.
Passing as well. Waiting for CMx3. The x2 titles seem more of the same.....
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Yea seen it, actually not bad at all.
Also saw this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1883092/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
I think both are very anti-war while they're war movies, which is nice.
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I don't even think that far. It would be great, if only the settings are just visible to the player. But it have been many times requested and denied far as I can read.
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^Yeah no it's not a good "approach", as I have said. But it is actually quite ok for myself, and if you wanna try something better by all means.
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Disregarding the source and most of the comments on the page, then there are some interesting photos of German turrets (looks like a Panther turret). It seems like there is nothing substantial behind the mantle except for the gun mounting and the gun itself.
TigerI and panther is indeed empty behind. TigerI's caveat is mantlet edge backed by 100mm+ turret armor. Tigerii's using saukopf mantlet similar to those of jagdpanzer, jagdpanther and some stugiii and is a separate piece from turret front. Stuck at work again but can upload some pics from jentz' book when back.
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My point is that there is no "proof". So, let's keep facts straight. There is a question about the modeling, but there is no "known bug". Note that I'm not taking a pro or con stance, merely trying to keep the initial supposition clearly where it belongs: as a supposition.
IF there is an issue, I'd think it may be present with other vehicles. Regardless, IF there is an issue, I'd expect a patch to rectify it.
The time and effort needed to test it in game is not insignificant. The real-life evidence of qualitative armor resistance of specific locations against specific weapons at specific ranges against a rare vehicle is obviously hard to find...if it even exists at all.
Ken
Ok purely from a game engine standpoint, I think the Sherman would be more acceptable to most, it also has overlayed mantlet + turret front and I can run a small test later. ~90mm mantlet and flat unlike Tiger2's complex conical saukopf, don't expect any bounces say 75L/48 @ 750-1000m so shouldn't take long.
Don't have v3.0 though so won't have hit decals.
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Back to the main point: where was it verified that CM has a bug regarding mantlets?
The original report is obviously in my first few posts. The detailed statistical testing, historical reference and the convincing of everybody will have to come later. There're a few pictures in the Jentz book to contradict the "hole behind the mantlet" theory. More detailed reference I'm gonna shop some books online and have them shipped here which would take time.
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Has anyone even tried yet if this can be used for cheating in H2H games? From my (limited) technical understanding something would much rather lead to crash of the game than to a useful cheat. I am fairly sure this issue is way overblown.
Pretty sure it was outta proportion dayz ago
But I consider we're just talking for talking's sake now, like a chat. Or a pissing contest, whatever it might lead to. It is after all a public forum. -
Sticking the head into the sand is no solution. Who knows how many players have been cheating and told nobody about it?
If Battlefront wants to prevent cheating in H2H games, they can implement an anti-cheat mechanism.
I haven't done much if any... But perhaps I'm able to explain which is rather quite simple, the game is designed as unmoddable, the game database is hardcoded in the .exe files, like armor thicknesses, gun penetration data, etc. The exception is textures which is only eye candy. As a result, there's no need to worry about cheating.
If one is super paranoid though there are I suppose super hackers that can reverse engineer executables, But I think that is tin foil hat land and even not, those ppl surely have better things to do than hacking a video game. There are however other problems with open modding and not so easy to address... It would firstly make the developer unhappy, because 1. modders would have created addon vehicles weapons formations maps etc in any era they fancy, like WW1 or vietnam or.. battle of the bulge. So this quite simply creates competition and would hurt sales of CM titles. I think CM would consider this a direct threat to their current business model... 2. Customer support nightmare. ppl like to use mods and often times don't know better, so they create support tickets unaware that mods screwed up the game. Mods tend to do that, they're free of charge and is usually of lower quality and/or isn't 100% compatible with the game because well, modders didn't write the code. They often don't know how some variables and mechanisms in the database work and what changing them would lead to. Furthermore they don't have time to do extensive testing because they have real life duties that put food on the table. So in a nutshell mods tend to create stability problems, and these would end up being a burden to the game devs. 3. Piracy in severe cases. Suppose if the game 3D models or other materials can be openly imported to dev softwares for editing, ppl rather than create mods for the game would be able to re-export it and sell it on the net, which is obviously very bad. Basically these are very valid concerns for a business Imo.
For the community this sometimes tend to lead to "fracture", i.e. one community using one mod pack, another community on another and another community on official dev updates. It is OK when you have a large player base but otherwise it'll be quite hard to have enough ppl to refresh forum threads
or gather enough bodies for multiplayer. For a novice gamer that just want to play the game the installation/configuration is significantly more difficult and he probably wouldn't have the patience to troubleshoot himself. For the forum culture it would sometimes create bitterness as nobody is entitled to make suggestions or point out bugs.The freedom of open modding is quite empowering but I am aware of some problems. So as said it is like politics, there are far left far right and middle. I'm like one of the middle guy, CM and the HvH players certainly are far right - my own interpretation of it ofc. There have been suggestions for an in-game encyclopedia to make the system less opague which is very very mildly towards left and they've all been denied. With these said I'll still mod them and make good gaming experience for myself and others who choose so as free choices always have a price tag, but one shouldn't pass on them because of it, I'd know better. Life is too short to waste otherwise!...
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You're obviously either not reading what I wrote, or not comprehending what you read. I did 1, I did 2, I did 3, and I did 4. None of that is the problem, and I do like PzCs open architecture. The problem is that in PzC it is trivially easy to cheat, even inadvertently.
The same thing now applies to CM because of your mod here for the K-II. I'll assume you are a stand-up guy, and that you wouldn't deliberately cheat, and that you've done good research and your data for the K-II is perfect and your mod faithfully reflects your research. Where's the problem?
Well, consider this; not everyone is as standup as you. There will doubtless be people who will take the path you've blazed here, and use it to mod other vehicles to what they think they should be. Shermans too strong and knocking out too many PzIIIs? No problem; just drop the all armour values of the Sherman down to 0, in the same way you knocked out the armour of the K-II mantlet. PzIVs burning too often when they go up against T-34s? No problem; just double all the armour values. And so on.
Now whoever starts a CM H2H scenario is under suspicion - are they using armour mods? Which ones? Do they even know which ones they're using or do they have something installed which they've forgotten about and which is now baked into this PBEM.
I certainly did read, your original point 1 was criticizing the open modding structure of PzC using Wittman's uber tank as an example, stating that it is wrong to give it uber stats resulting it destroying the game play experience. You didn't mention you did change it after. And should I say this proves that it does not destroy game play experiences, except for those that don't wish to be resourceful in the least degree but only like to complain. Your problem with multiplayer was expressed in point 2, which I replied that if a game supports both MP and modding nowadays there would usually be an anti-cheat.
When everyone is using the same data in CM we can all complain about it but while the playing field might be rough it is at least level. Now, with your mod in the wild, we still know that it's rough, but can't ever know if it's level.
Which is what I said:
Also I suppose that purely from a HvH competition standpoint, it doesn't really matter if the system is correct, as long as everyone is subject to the same one.
And in previous post:
However, such an action disturbs the multiplayer community, compounded by the fact that CM HvH is strictly competitive, and not cooperative, and probably the fact that the CM community has never had a data/behavior modding culture. I can understand that. It is a pity, but OK. There are enough games out there that I can edit to my heart's content.
So I get it, and the download had been disabled. So.. you can keep saying "you suck" but I can't do nothing more about it. But none of your suggested examples can be done with this edit, it can only nullify none-hull hitboxes, nothing more. And nothing more from me.
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Yeah but I would prefer option 6. A game where the designers have done a good job of research and everyone plays with the same system and when people find bugs the designers fix them and when people make unreasonable requests they are ignored and no one has to deal with the possibility of playing against them.
Even though your work is of the "find a bug and try to get if fixed" variety (and that is a good thing (tm) ) if others copy your method would could end up with a bit of confusion.
It is very obvious that you have a strong faith in CM, Ian.Leslie. But I believe everything is made by man and is unavoidable to contain errors; Also I suppose that purely from a HvH competition standpoint, it doesn't really matter if the system is correct, as long as everyone is subject to the same one. But in singleplayer it is perhaps somewhat opposite.
Actually I was not trying to say that what you did specifically was cheating the point I was trying to make was it opens the door to cheating. But you are correct the majority of us live in free countries and are free to do as we please. I'm just worried - perhaps unjustly but perhaps not.
Sadly I do not. Here democracy did not win. I suppose it is why I have such a strong feeling about it... I can only say... be careful what you wish for.
As for bug reporting, I've done plenty in the past for another game (and believed, very strongly), but likely way too much with a pretty big personal cost. I intend to "retire" and leave it to the ones still mentally young
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@JonS was not talking about the kind of settings that can be changed in the CM scenario editor. He was talking about the armor values of the tanks. In other words exactly the kind of mod you made except instead of investigating a bug fix it was for cheating.
Was way too busy with work to reply. Firstly, the real TigerII mantlet area is 337mm LOS thickness (150mm@13deg mantlet + 180mm@10deg turret). In CM, since the turret armor is discarded by game engine, it is only 150mm of mantlet armor. With my edit, it is only 180mm of turret. So it's either one or the other and neither of which reaches the thickness of the RL value. How is this exactly like puffing a WW2 TigerI ace tank to a super space fortress?
Secondly, if JonS does not like the mod, he can 1. adjust the mod to his own liking - since PzC can be openly edited, nothing stops him from doing that. Be it change the unit's experience level, its armor and/or fire power, or whatever other values, whatever he thinks fit or likes. 2. simply delete the mod, which is offered for free, is it not. 3. Furthermore, he can make his own mod - Or not, and just play the game vanilla. 4. Ask the modder, respectfully, for a change. Free choice. Do whatever you like. There's ofc another choice, go to the modder, and complain about it. It is an option (that many ppl take), yes, but actually least productive.
Lastly, I'm simply doing something I deem right. The turret armor is bugged. I improved it. It is a half assed method, given, but the best I can do by myself. And I'm fine with using it, myself. And if you consider it "cheating", well sorry, too bad. But by the same token, if CM says the earth is flat and the sun orbits around it, and ppl changed it, you'll say they're cheaters?
We have nearly two decades of proving that when there's a problem we fix it, yet in your mind it's as if we don't. That says far more about you than it does us.
or gather enough bodies for multiplayer. For a novice gamer that just want to play the game the installation/configuration is significantly more difficult and he probably wouldn't have the patience to troubleshoot himself. For the forum culture it would sometimes create bitterness as nobody is entitled to make suggestions or point out bugs.
Kingtiger Mantlet and Coax MG problem, and an attempted 3D model Fix
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted · Edited by Skwabie
Battlefront.com,
Now that you've posted your sources, everybody can see exactly how much overlap there is. Cutout? Empty? Unless I am blind.
Yes I have issues, with the Man. Everywhere. Some ppl like to cater head over heels for authority but I don't feel that way. Unless this game becomes more transparent and open, I'll always have a problem with it. This thread has taken 5 pages so far. There have been plenty of 20 pagers before. What happens next time someone else finds something?
As to my own fix, it is of course half-assed, because there are no tools for making proper fixes. Suppose there are, and it's still not correct, and you don't like it. - Grab the tools and fix it yourself, simple. That's instead of spending another 5 pages on the forums. No, your real concern is open modding being financially harmful. What if modders have already created a Bulge game addon? Same as your veto for a game database viewer: distracting for development and time is money. So please keep pumping out new games that have less and less innovation in them.
It is interesting that I can still post. I was literally requesting for it, but thank you for extending the courtesy. Now I am saying it straightforward, be noted this is my own request: Please delete my account. I am not happy here and do not wish to spend more time on it.