user38

I think success could have been possible, but for the Germans.

I have been reading this thread and wondering why everyone considers 73% to be such a bad score. Every PC Gamer magazine publishes an explanation of its scoring system. For those who are interested: I haven't read the review yet (it will be another 6 weeks until the December issue of PC Gamer reaches Australia) but in the context of the PC Gamer scoring system 73% is a pretty good score. It is on the cusp of Fair and Good, and even the rabid CMBfN fanboys would admit the game needs more polish. As far as criticism of the reviewer not understanding the genre, I refer to an earlier post in this thread: I have listened to Zacny's podcast on Combat Missions: Three Moves Ahead Episode 129 – The Combat Missions. From this podcast alone it is clear Zachny has a wide experience and interest in the wargame genre, which includes extensive experience with the Combat Missions series of games. Game reviews are opinions, and they are necessarily the opinions of the reviewer. If we assume Zacny followed the PC Gamer review methodology his review represents a fair assessment of his experience with the game. Aparently he didn't consider it was a bad game, just not great.

This may be off topic, but as I understand the LOS rules in this game, LOS is calculated to the centre of the target. Therefore, if a target is mostly behind cover the firing unit has no LOS and cannot fire. However, I maybe wrong on this: and perhaps this behavior isn't a bug but a feature:

Is this turning into a Michael Dorosh thread now? When I (posted my Michael Dorosh post earlier ) I was making a joke (admittedly at slysniper's expense). But Michael Dorosh was banned on this forum in 2008 and you guys are still talking about him. It seems that posters on this board have some sort of fascination with Michael Dorosh. It is like some sort of man-crush gone wrong. He doesn't like the game. He has his reasons. You disagree with him. Fair enough. But Michael has been gone for three years now. I know that when you lose someone you grieve, but surely it is time to move on.

I note that killroy wrote: Well, if you follow the premise that everyone who doesn't hate and vilify Michael Dorosh is part the Michael Dorosh gang then Michael Dorosh and killroy are in the Michael Dorosh gang. Of course, on that premise I am also in the Michael Dorosh gang. On the subject of my membership in the Michael Dorosh gang I am not going to admit whether I am in the Michael Dorosh gang or deny that I am in the Michael Dorosh gang (the first rule of the Michael Dorosh gang is that you don't talk about the Michael Dorosh gang). However, slysniper, even if Michael Dorosh has formed a Michael Dorosh gang (and I submit there is no good evidence that Michael Dorosh has formed a Michael Dorosh gang or that a Michael Dorosh gang exists) then how is it inappropriate for Michael Dorosh or members of the Michael Dorosh gang to post comments about CMBfN. Please note, I am not suggesting that Michael Dorosh be permitted to post his views on the game in this forum. But the internet is free and logically there is no such thing as an invalid opinion. If Michael Dorosh or members of the Michael Dorosh gang choose to air their opinions of CMBfN on other forums (and in the case of members of the Michael Dorosh gang "their opinions" of course would be the opinions of Michael Dorosh rather than the personal opinions of the individuals who are members of the Michael Dorosh gang) that would appear to be entirely consistent with the object of the internet. Of course, there is an argument that the object of the internet is to facilitate the publication of ill informed and half arsed opinions. One may extrapolate from this that, give Michael Dorosh was a beta tester on CMBfN, the opinions of Michael Dorosh on CMBfN are, by definition, not half arsed or ill informed: therefore the opinions of Michael Dorosh on CMBfN are not consistent with the object of the internet and it would be inappropriate for the opinions of Michael Dorosh to be to posted on the internet (and this anti Michael Dorosh opinion theory would hold true whether the opinions of Michael Dorosh were posted by Michael Dorosh personally or whether the opinions of Michael Dorosh were posted by members of the Michael Dorosh gang). It is a thorny problem. On the one hand the opinions of Michael Dorosh (whether expressed by Michael Dorosh personally or expressed by members of the Michael Dorosh gang) are internet inappropriate because they do not meet the half arsed ill informed opinion test. On the other hand the opinions of Michael Dorosh (as expressed by Michael Dorosh and members of the Michael Dorosh gang) are internet appropriate because the internet is free and open to the ignorant and enlightened alike. Regardless of which theory of the internet is true, I consider the opinions expressed by slysniper on Michael Dorosh and the Michael Dorosh gang to be internet appropriate.

Actually, if you are Catholic you can't unscrew a woman. To a man brought up as a Catholic the consequences of screwing a woman isn't solely related to pregnancy. Sexual congress with a member of the opposite sex implies a commitment. That is, if a Catholic man has sex with a woman (Catholic or otherwise) he would feel obligate to attempt a relationship with that woman. I myself have had two disastrous relationships with women I had accidentally slept with. I should also point out that sburke's joke about unscrewing light bulbs is another blatant example of American parochialism. If Americans had a more global perspective on illumination technology they would realise that light bulbs are not seated via a screw everywhere in the world. It has been my observation that most American's assume light bulbs have a screwed cap like this: Whereas in Australia light bulbs have a plug cap like this: In Australia light bulbs don't screw in, they plug in. So while it is correct (albeit sexist and demeaning) to say that you cannot unscrew a woman, the "joke" implies that you can nevertheless unscrew a light bulb. And in Australia you can't. This so called joke fails on a number of levels. It is not only sexist and parochial, it is also dated in that it is premised on light bulbs being of the incandescent variety, whereas the international standard is compact fluorescent. So the joke would more accurately stated thus: Question: "What is the difference between a light bulb and a woman?" Answer: "Women have no sense of humor (and I am hilarious)."

Womble, LemuelG makes a valid point when he says "Wouldn't it be easier still to just get all the waypoints in the right place first-time?" And if you think about it for a minute, it is a suggestion that has applications far beyond a trivial computer games. Human error causes billions of dollars of lost revenues and destruction of property each year. Not to mention countless lives lost to mistakes. For example, earlier this year Brisbane suffered a devastating flood which was exacerbated by poor management of the flood mitigation dam. One wonders, rather than poorly managing the dam, would it not have been a better idea to properly manage it? Rather than make a mistake which causes a traffic accident would it not be a better idea not to have made that mistake? It is really quite a brilliant suggestion. (Rather than wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on a wife and children would not your utility have been maximised by spending that money on alcohol and prostitutes?) The problem is not that the interface prevents you from moving waypoints. The problem is you putting the waypoints in the wrong place to start with. LemuelG never makes any mistakes when he plays this game. Rather than wasting your time arguing with LemuelG, should you not direct your energies into emulating his error free play style.

My military experience is 100% peace time so I never had to fire my rifle at another person. However, I did train as an infantryman and I did participate in military exercises. Even in the thick of battle I rarely fired my weapon. The reason: its a lot easier to clean a rifle that has never been fired.

I had this problem with a machine gun team on one of the tutorial maps. I was supposed to moved my machine gun to a particular overwatch spot. I tried several times and each time the machine gun set up behind a tree with no line of sight to the target. In real life the machine gunner would have set up next to the tree. Of course, my guy was just ones and zeros and didn't know any better.

Is the subject matter of this thread now making jokes about JG11Preusse's bad English? JG11Preusse brought up a valid point about snipers firing against tank commanders. It has been confirmed by a few posters to this tread that there is a problem in this area. It is, of course, enjoyable to make fun of foreigners, but I am sure JG11Preusse is doing the best he can to communicate in a difficult language. I take no issue with posters who wish to debate the ideas raised by JG11Preusse. A silly idea is a silly idea and we should all be free to say so. But attacking someone's ideas by attacking the person does nothing to advance the debate.

I am emoticon challenged.

akd, thanks for posting the test ranges. I did some testing on your ranges. I gave the tanks short cover arcs and turned them 90 degrees to face the snipers. I used v1.01 on a PC. Here are my results: Real time - 100 metres 35 minutes - no tank commander casualties (reset after 15 minutes as the snipers run out of ammo) Turn based - 100 metres 40 turns - no tank commander casualties (reset at turn 15 as the snipers run out of ammo) Real time - 50 metres 5 minutes - tank commander casualties 9, 8, 8, 7, 8 (reset each minute as the tanks run out of tank commanders) Turn based - 50 metres 10 turns - tank commander casualties 6, 5, 1, 4, 4, 6, 4, 5, 4, 4 (reset after 1 turn) Analysing the data 50 metres The mean tank commander hits after one minute of play was 4.3 in turn based and 8 in real time play. The standard deviation for the real time data was .63 so on this test one would expect 7 to 9 tank commander casualties 95% of the time. The standard deviation in turn based play was 1.35. On my data the single hit on my third test falls 1.7 standard deviations under the mean (which gives it a 5% probability of occurring). If we recalculate the mean and standard deviation without this data point we get a mean of 4.7 and a standard deviation of .81. As such, on this test on would expect either 2 to 7 or 3 to 6 tank commander casualties 95% of the time (depending on whether we include or exclude the 1 hit data point). The above analysis assumes a normal distribution of results (and why wouldn't we). On this basis there is a statistically significant variation between results in real time play and turn based play. It gives one pause. 100 metres On my data elite snipers in this game (v1.01 on a PC) cannot hit a head sized target at 100 metres. (It is open to debate whether this is realistic or not.) I note akd reported hits on tank commanders at this range in real time play. If so, it further supports a hypothesis that the game engine is doing something different with snipers in real time and turn based play. Conclusion On the basis of the above tests the game is fundamentally flawed and broken. We should all play Achtung Panzer while we wait for the game to be fixed.

JG11Preusse, I think the problem here is that you expect snipers to be able to hit targets. As Steve from Battlefront pointed out, there is nothing special about snipers and in real life snipers were chosen at random. The game models real life. The fact that your snipers can't kill tank commanders is not a bug but a design feature of the game.

Fraps is the only way to go for screenshots. Infranview is fundamentally flawed and broken and needs to be fixed. I only use Infranview to view images, crop images, resize and edit images, save images from clipboard and to add text to images. Other than that Infranview is a pile of poo and is useless.

Weapon2010, if you had done your homework and read the thread you would have realised that the issue raised by you was dealt with in that thread (not the issue of your genius 10 year old, but the issue of ww2steel's complaints about the game). If you had bothered to visit his website you would have realised that ww2steel is a seriously obsessed grognard: so obsessed that I am tempted to tell him to get a life. If you had bothered to try to step into his shoes and see his point of view you would have realised that his complaints are perfectly valid and come from an intense love of CMx1 and an intense disappointment that CMBfN did not meet his expectations. Now I reaslise that your intention in posting was to refute ww2steel's criticisms and inform potential customers about the true nature of CMBfN. But I don't think that publicly attacking ww2steel or stabbing him in the back is the best method of achieving this aim.

______________ +1 ______________

Freyland if you are going to acknowledge my point of view and rationally discuss the issues I have raised you are going to take all the fun out of posting on internet forums. To be honest I am pretty disgusted by both sides of this argument. The post that started this thread raised a legitimate complaint expressed in a provocative fashion. I don't happen to agree with all of the opinions expressed in that post but I have to acknowledge that the opinions are valid in that they are ww2steel's opinions. I believe the post was calculated to create controversy, and predictably the reaction was an over reaction by those in this place who like to go negative. And the winner: everyone not taking part in the argument. I guess that makes you and me losers.

The basis of ASL Veteran's post was a straw man argument. That's pretty condescending.

Michael Emrys is not absolutely correct on this point. The immature pricks who engage in attention seeking infantile whining are, without fail, personally attacked. The views the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks express are subjectively true (an invalid opinion is a logical impossibility) yet when the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks express these opinions the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks are invariably personally attacked by those who appear not to understand the difference between a subjective opinion and an objective fact. When the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks express a personal view that they don't like the game the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks are attacked on the basis that the opinion expressed by the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks is wrong because the game is the best game on the planet. Not everyone attacks the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks . However, those that resort to personal abuse of anyone criticising their favorite game obviously has too much of their life invested in that game. That sort of behavior is called fanboyism. The issue here is not that the fanboy forum posters don't recognise the flaws in the game. (Fanboys are invariably critical of the object of their obsession.) The issue here is that fanboys personally attack those who don't couch their criticism in the approved form. The personal abuse was not started by the attention seeking infantile whining immature pricks. The "fanboy" label was brought out in response to some breathtakingly rude personal comments. There are some bad people on this forum. And that's a fact. +1 anyone?

I must say I am finding this thread confusing. Who am I supposed to be hating here: joebloggs or ww2steel? Joebloggs, I have to take issue with you for calling the forum posters "fan boys". The forum posters who take a different view to yours are not fan boys. The correct term is fanboy. And, on behalf of those forum posters exercising their legitimate rights to flame you, I demand an apology. And ww2steel, what were you thinking? I admit you may have a valid gripe with the game, and you may have been disappointed with it, but seriously. The other posters are right. You should have done your homework and read widely on this forum. Then you would have realised the futility of making a subjective complaint of what all right thinking people would agree is the best game on the planet.

SlapHappy, I edited out my comment that "Australian's like a little socialism" because it was a non sequiter. But I agree that a lot of people don't know the difference between communism and socialism and conflate the two terms and they also conflate capitalism and democracy.

I get offended when people say "I have just insulted your country and I am going to keep insulting your country" and I get offended when people say that my pride in my country is misplaced. I know I should be big enough not to be affected by the opinions of others, but I am. I actually agree that Australia Post (and Telstra) should not have been privatised. The reason I felt offended by Steve's post was the context of his suggestion that Australian Post should not have been privatised. To break it down for you, this is what I understood to be the point of Steve's posts: I am annoyed at Australia for levying a Homeland Security fee I don't care that the fee was levied by Australia Post I am still annoyed at Australia I am now going to insulting Australia by unfavourably comparing it to the USA Australia is not a country worthy of national pride Put in that context, if one likes one's country it is hard not to to take offense to an assertion that the Australian government has made a bad policy decision. I know Australia isn't perfect. If Steve had of expressed his sentiments in a less pejorative fashion I would have agreed with it. But what upset me was Steve's statement that he intended a deliberate insult to Australia by suggesting that Australia Post should not have been privatised and what really really upset me was his statement that my national pride was misplaced. My country is not perfect. I welcome any rational and objective criticism of the shortcomings of my country. But I am still proud of it and I find it hard to tolerate deliberate and premeditated insults of Australia.

This reference was in respect of a series of posts on another thread. You criticised Australia for imposing a handling fee to deal with the additional costs of complying with Homeland Security regulations. When it was pointed out to you (by several Australian forum members) that the fee was not imposed by Australia but by Australia Post (and that Australia Post was an autonomous non government controlled organisation and Australia imposed no export duties) you replied by criticising Australia for not having a government run postal service (the theme of you post was America has one so you should too). Some examples of tactless and offensive comments: and I was offended by these comment. Australia may not be the best and greatest country in the world, but it is my country and I get offended when Americans tell me that something we do in Australia is wrong because it is done differently in America. I feel offended when people intentionally insult my country and I especially feel offended when people assert my country is not worthy of my national pride. But these are your opinions and it is your business whether you express them or keep them to yourself. As for me, my criticisms of you personally were tactless and motivated by an intention to offend (and therefore inappropriate). I could as easily have said that you were a man of strongly held beliefs and a straight talker and I now feel belittled that my straight talk has succeeded in causing offense. Given that mendacity is the oil that lubricates the gears of social intercourse I appologise for the personal nature and bluntness of my comments. As to the other stuff, I was not imply that CMBfN was designed to be unnecessarily hard (that is, complexity for the sake of complexity). Rather, what I was trying to say was that CMBfN was unforgivingly hard. I have no real issues with the interface (except for that bloody red button). I was referring to the simulation aspects of the game. CMBfN simulates something that is very hard to do. I image it takes several years to learn how to plan and execute a company or battalions sized assault on a defended position. The design ethic in CMBfN seems to be directed towards a faithful simulation of the operational aspects of that command process. The fidelity of the simulations necessarily makes CMBfN a very hard game. In making a reference to the game design philosophy expressed by the pinball table designer I did not intend to analogise wargames and pinball machines. I was making an oblique reference to the shaping and reward aspects of operant conditioning. The point I was trying to make is that there is not a lot of shaping going on in this game, the rewards are hard to come by and mistakes are brutally punished. The solution of course is to turn CMBfN into Company of Heroes. It is not a solution I would advocate. I like the fact that CMBfN faithfully simulates company and battalion sized combat. I like the fact that CMBfN faithfully models the weapons and equipment used in the historical period. I don't like the fact that I suck at the game. But that particular failing is mine. I don't want Battlefront to change the game to turn it into a game. I don't want them to change it at all. What I want is to get better at it, and I will either continue my study of WW2 era small unit tactics or I will admit defeat and turn to Halo 4.

MOSwas71331, you make some good points. This game is stupidly hard. I think it was meant to be that way. It is hard and long and in many ways unrewarding. I once read a book about pinball machines. In it a pinball machine architect discussed his design philosophy and he said he tried to incorporate into the design a feature he called "come close, try again". He designed tables so that there were a range of targets that were progressively harder to hit. Players would have some successes early on, and as they learned the table they would hit more and more of the harder targets. Players were rewarded with flashing lights, bells, extra balls, etc. In this way players received positive reinforcement and were motivated to continue playing (and pumping more dollars into the machine). This "come close, try again" feature seems to be lacking in the design of CMBfN. I think it was done deliberately. Battlefront could have made an easy game that was a joy to play. But I think they had a different design ethic and were creating a game for a different market. They were clearly creating a game for that small segment of the population that enjoys sweat and toil and misery and suffering. It is not for everyone and kudos to you if you have come to the mature decision that you don't like it. I myself have mixed feelings about it. I find I like the idea of playing the game more than I like playing it. It is hard and there a few rewards for even experienced gamers. And kudos to you also for resigning as a forum poster. It can be unpleasant here if you march to the beat of a different drummer. I know at times Steve's posts seemed to be very rude and opinionated. I assume the explanation for this is that Steve is a rude and opinionated person, and it is his forum so he doesn't see the need for tact or diplomacy (it's his game and screw you if you don't like it) (smiley face, wink icon). I can understand this. He is a passionate man and he is free to act on his impulses. I myself get mightily pissed off when people criticise my work. Unfortunately I work in an environment that doesn't reward free expression. As in life so it is in this forum. I think someone said that the key to happiness is finding what you like and then doing it. I would guess another key is finding what you don't like and not doing that. MOSwas71331, best of luck in not playing this game and not posting to this forum. I wish I was as sensible as you.

As REVS and Magpie Oz point out, you cannot insult Australians by bagging Australia Post. It is not part of the Australian Government and is not subject to government control other than through specifically enacted legislation. You are correct that (absent international treaties and free trade agreements) it is perfectly legal for a government to enact legislation to impose a fee or a duty on exported goods and arguably such a fee is a tax. However, Australia has no export duties. I am unfamiliar with the legislation as Customs and Excise is not my area of expertise. However, the Australian Government has a long standing commitment to free and open international trade and I note the following on page 78 of the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service's Customs Export Control Manual (found on this site): Regarding Australian companies imposing a specific administration charge to cover the costs of complying with the US Homeland Security import regulations, such a charge is an entirely legitimate component of the price of an export under the cost-plus pricing methodology. Indeed, given exporters have to comply with government regulations at both ends it would seem odd if the administration costs of complying with such regulations is not factored into the cost of exporting the goods. Perhaps it is the case that Australian export companies are the only companies that itemise the expense. Regardless, if the US import regulations are unusually onerous I am fairly confident that all export companies (not just the Australian companies) set their export prices in such a way as to pass on the additional administration costs.