ZPB II

Sorry to hijack a bit, but this is to illustrate a point. Not to mention I think it's a smashing screenshot. The casualty figure is way out of wack, but it's possible in the game. But I'm not saying the game is broken.

I installed the hotfix but now atleast the Italian Blackshirt HMG Ammo bearer icon shows up as a black box.

I'm not 100% following that logic. Doesn't that mean larger caliber artillery caused casualties behind the lines whereas smaller, more responsive fire caused casualties in the frontline? If the spotter stands next to you, the response time is marginal and thus you gain accuracy faster. Having to wait for instructions over the radio net is cumbersome. I haven't tested if there's an inherent accuracy modifier regarding direct/indirect.

It's almost as if this thread offends someone's political sensibilities.

I have had the exact opposite experience while playing. So many times I have cursed how is it possible that two 57mm guns can shoot at my Tiger for dozens of times before I get something other than a vague sound contact. Dry ground gets kicked up a lot especially if the gun is dug-in and the barrel is closer to the ground. It would take a lot of water to bind it and even then the wet spot can look different. I also have this feeling that canister rounds get spotted more easily (as would make sense.) I've spotted 37mm guns in foxholes under some trees after they fired only a few shots of canister. Who would have guessed a big flying cloud of metal shards would register in peripheral vision. The simulated chaos is why I love CM.

Well I did give it a second thought after I got burned thinking the panels on one of the T-62s were bugged in CMSF, but the vehicle commander's severed head hovering in the air 2 meters away from the rest of his corporeal presence had me suspicious. If you unbutton before giving the arc the entire pixelguy hovers next to the armored car. And dies unsurprisingly fast. It looks like this and it happens every time. If it was an Italian design I could deem this legit. I jest, I jest! http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/818/bugyht.jpg/

It's not absurd, it's just that the AI is not very good at avoiding bunching up. If you fire 40 x 60mm rounds into a crowded market... I've had tanks or mortars rack up three digit stats when the AI deploys an entire battalion into a 100x100m square. I've been running tests where I'm trying to get a Tiger with over 1000 casualties...

Toggling the sound does fix this issue when it pops up, but I found yet another bug, this one happens in singleplayer too... Basically, the pivot point on the turret of the PSW231 is in the wrong place. It should be in the middle, but it is on the edge. The result is that when the PSW231 turns it's turret, it looks like the lid being slid off a jar. If you give it a cover arc directly behind it the turret ends up hovering in the air next to the vehicle.

I remember reading that the (vast?) majority of casualties were caused by artillery and especially mortars. Any grognard with some estimates? Even though mortar crews were always laughed at, I know for sure I wouldn't want to test it out. Can't have enough of them in quick battles.

I haven't fired up the editor yet but I'm hyped about all the improvements. I was designing a byte campaign for CMBN but I'll transfer the basic design over to CMFI. Can't go back to 1.0, the new FoW icons are simply that good and I don't know how it's been possible to play without them.

That's not the crux of the issue. What people complain about is the fact that even if a squad has only one leader, he will order his men to spread out more than they do in the game currently. Being able to spread a squad over a couple of actions points would alleviate this problem and yet retain the realistic feel of having only a single leader in a squad. It is not realistic to shoot at huge blobs of men. Not a single picture or video of Italians in WW2 comes to mind that depicts that kind of scene currently in the game. I could understand a large group of men cowering behind a single piece of cover, but it's not about that. There is plenty of cover around but it's not utilized. It's not a massive gamebreaker but indicating that people who want it fixed somehow don't want realism or historical accuracy is meh.

I had to shoot the Tiger in that certain scenario roughly 20 times with Bazookas before the hatches popped. Couldn't get a perpendicular angle to the side plate so it was tough. 70 meters range.

I use the Face command after pretty much every end of movement order, but it doesn't have that exact degree of finesse. Sometimes you have to plot a new movement order to get them to go somewhat into the positions you wish. And even Face command doesn't help when you're in a certain kind of tile, say the corner of a wall or a small crater. The entire squad will clump into the narrow corner and no amount of turning will change that.

Steve, how about the suggestion of being able to paint a movement order over 2-3 adjacent action spots, spreading the squad on these? Lowers micromanagement and makes it a bit easier to play with the Italians.

I'll have to try that out. I have another quite nasty bug to report that happened to me in a TCP/IP game. I ordered an Italian scout team into a Fiat truck and after they dismounted they had lost their weapons, both in the UI and the 3d model was also gone. They could not fire. It was a small scenario so the loss of 3 men was quite painful.

A really, really cool feature now that we have moveable waypoints would be the ability to paint a move order over 2-3 action spots and thus spread the squad on these tiles. This would easen micromanagement load of splitting squads and placing them right next to each other to have good fields of fire and allow a bit more flexibility with the Italians.

Dismount a halftrack crew and order a scout team into it. They will crew it and their icon will change into that of the halftrack. I do understand your point, it's just that the UI is a quagmire to sort out and the more you think of a really simple thing the less simple it starts to seem.

Ken, you've misunderstood me. I have no problem with the way the game currently works. I was just trying to illustrate the same point to GreenAsJade.

When I join a TCP/IP game, not host one, all my vehicles constantly play the loudest moving sound instead of the idle sound. I was a bit miffed when I had some 20 Semoventes in ambush positions on some idyllic hills and this Beautiful Moment was drowned out in the noise of a nearby Monster Truck rally. This has happened with all the Italian tanks, I will need to test US & German. I have also witnessed several times a condition where my unit will simply stop what it is doing and glitch in place until I remove the order and give it again. No suppression, no bogging or anything like that. This stuff has only happened in TCP/IP. No sweat, since it is the hardest gamemode to sync properly and thus buggiest. But I like it. Will do some more testing when I get the time. It's a great game, thanks BFC!

I'm fairly certain that this is a very specialized condition and has some signs of the tempest in a teacup phenomenom. The vast majority of time I deal with jeeps, they already have a specified driver. I'm trying to remember battles I've played, most of the time the jeeps have drivers. Some battles might have had an empty jeep or two. If you buy one in a QB, it comes with a driver. So it is a condition that likely manifests in a specific scenario where you are given jeeps without drivers and a plentiful sprinkling of scout teams? The rationale is the reduction of UI clutter and this is always a double-edged sword. I mean, you could argue that tanks should have two icons all the time, one for the crew and one for the vehicle and the point would be that this would help you identify an abandoned or dismounted tank. Another player would like a different icon for an abandoned tank and a different one for a dismounted tank. A third player wants no icons for dismounted or abandoned tanks at all. How do you solve this optimally?

Yes, I thought about the same. One solution would be to implement optional mechanics for the host, such as being able to delegate the troops to another player or the AI for the duration of the leave so the entire game would not stall. The current AI is not up to the task but seeing that Steve has expressed the desire to buff the AI and the possibility of triggers, I expect a bright future. Longer turns and the possibility to configure SOP + boolean logic chains...oh...oh...One can have wet dreams...

Yes, it's yet another quality title. I would love to see Co-op. Imagine playing a huge PBEM battle with say, 8 players. Each player would have his own company and his FOW would be limited to what his own units see and a very, very rough approximation of the locations and objectives of his friendly companies. After sending a turn you could record a brief radio message about the progress of your company and request an update from Bat HQ and your colleagues. What's happening and where? Are those friendlies? Who gets support? Why is Mr. Emrys's company moving at a snail's pace when it should be supporting my tank rush in the middle? Add in some metacampaign spice and you're approaching the wargaming Xanadu. The immersion would be tremendous when played realistically and it would be supreme fun to play with more players even in a lighter setting. The technical challenge is huge and I'm not sure what would have to be traded in for this to happen. The turn rate in PBEM would be abysmally slow unless you play with some hardcore folks or the turn length could be adjusted, but there's always pauseable RT.

John Kettler, the trench is shallow due to technical limitations. The trench is placed above the ground so it doesn't deform the terrain mesh. Thus it cannot be made very deep or it would look extremely out of place and it would also require a new set of infantry animations. It makes the game run a lot faster and simplifies the FOW aspect of things. What I hope is that trenches and foxholes incur a hidden abstracted cover bonus, since the pixeltruppen expose far more of their vulnerable fleshy bits than is advisable due to the animations.

It depends on whether the vehicle has a driver or a not. If you put a scout team in a halftrack or a jeep that has a driver it will show the scout icon over the vehicle icon because they are passengers. If you put a scout team into an empty halftrack or a jeep, it will have simply the vehicle icon because the scout team becomes the crew.

You can stretch your imagination and think of the 20mm shell hitting a grenade hanging from the belt of an unlucky GI...