A Canadian Cat

Indeed - that was a pretty fast brain dump of all that information. Pretty cool example though.

Why? what business is it of ours who works for whom. Nope. I don't really know who or how many (see above) but in addition to their full time staff and people working on contracts there is also a significant number of volunteer testers. It is sad to see people we like moving on or unable to continue contributing but BFC have never have posted a staff list so I would not worry about the comings and goings - there is more behind the scenes people than public facing ones.

Several previous smoke discussions - that @MOS:96B2P has probably already read but just in case...

Artillery smoke screens are not IR blocking. I think there is some IR blocking smoke equipment I think it was smoke grenades on a vehicle but I forget what has it.

The forum search sucks. Combining everything into one forum will likely not help with that problem. Use google's site: feature alla: https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Acommunity.battlefront.com+victory+calculator&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 First two hits on that search are the original thread announcing the calculator and the last time someone found a link to it for another poster in the same boat.

This is something that @Ithikial_AU created and you can get the latest here: http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=4236

Well that does suck. I have to admit I have not tried the command with a target of a building. I'll have to try that and see what I get.

Just in case you don't find anyone to play against check out this thread for suggestions for finding opponents:

So now we have to eyeball and estimate where on the correct side of the hill to place the waypoint so that the tank can achieve hulldown??? Seems to waste the whole point of automating the process. Not impressed... WTH man are you hard of reading? My bold up there is *not* eyeballing anything. It is *not* manually picking a hull down location for the hull down command. It is simply picking a spot just short of the top of the ridge. That location is nearly fully exposed to the other side. I am genuinely sorry to hear that you and anyone else are having trouble getting good results from the Hull down command. Myself, I am getting really, really good results. Way better than I expected to be honest and I was getting pretty good at manually getting a good spot. It seems like @domfluff is having success too. We just want to help everyone else get good results too.

A good compromise.

Nice - a picture is worth a thousand words... Humm I don't seem to need to do this. I'm not sure what is up here. In this example I would have set the end way point just on my side of the ridge. Basically at a point just on my side of the ridge with a clear LOS to the target. It is a subtle difference and one that usually will not matter - because the hull down position is found before getting over the ridge. But I do it just in case. Keeping the way point on my side of the ridge if things go wrong the worst that can happen is my tank ends up in a partial hull down position as opposed to being totally over the ridge line.

Oh for sure already pointing the right way does matter. My concern is, as always, it's what you don't know that will kill you. For example when you have your narrow arc covering that particular intersection where you know the enemy tank is just around the corner. Then, surprise, a new tank shows up to the left at another location and you tank crew happily sits there holding their fire, cause you told them to, waiting to die. Clearly if you can be sure that a sudden surprise is impossible because you have good visibility and additional protection then sure go for it. My preference is instead to make sure the tank ends it movement pointing to the place I "know" the enemy is coming and then I do not give them a covered arc so when the surprise comes they are allowed to react.

LOL love the hood ornament.

Nope. Close proximity does that not covered arcs.

The key word there is KNOW. How often do you know? There are times for sure. The issue I have is what you don't know. Given that target arcs for for preventing a unit from firing I usually don't want that. There is no behind the scenes bonus. None. But the spotting works in CM based on where the crew are facing. So, if you use a covered arc to turn a turret to face a direction other than straight forward it will change where the crew are looking. THAT does influence the chances of spotting something. Therefore if you correctly determine where the enemy will be and make sure your people are looking in that direction things will go better for you. That's to bad. I use it regularly now and get good results the vast majority of the time. You are not wrong and facing and covered arcs are not magic tools to decrease spotting times. They are magic tools to get your guys to be looking the right way though. And *that* does help. Your men spot based on what kind of optics or other assistive devices they have and what direction they are looking - compared with where the enemy are coming from. So facing and target arcs are important tools to direct your soldiers stance but they do not change what they spot and the do not prevent or alter their usual attempts at situational awareness. In other words even with an arc on they still look to their 6 and to their left and right from time to time.

A couple of thoughts. Starting with why do you want a target arc? My thoughts on target arcs is don't use them. The only exception is when you don't want a unit to fire. So, for example troops doing recon have short circular cover arcs so they don't start shooting at distant enemies. Infantry AT teams have a circular armour covered arc at a decent range for their AT weapon. That way they don't take low odds long shots and they don't start shooting at enemy infantry. Why would you want a tank to get into a hull down position and then not fire at the enemy? There is an alternative way to perform hull down. I personally don't do this because its scary to me. The other way is to set the hull down move order way point at the location you want to be hull down to. So instead of setting a hull down move order just over the hill you set it over the hill down the slope and into the tree line. The tank is supposed to move along the path and find a hull down position relative to the end point. The reason I find it scary is because if it does not find a hull down position it will drive to the end which by definition is where you expect the enemy to be. But if you are OK with that adding a cover arc at the end might be respected when the tank stops. I never tried it - I only ever tested this method of hull down and I never tried adding covered arcs into the mix.

This is the method I use - and I have also not added commands after the hull down command Bummer - I have used it the way @domfluff describes to great effect. I really like the command and use it lots. In fact the Sherman that scored the last PzIV kill in our game was positioned using the hull down command the right behind where your tank drove up. Re #4 I believe but have not tested this personally a target command will be cancelled once the hull down position is found while the target briefly command will be executed once the hull down position is reached. That lets you control if the tank area fires or not. I still typically only have on hull down command at the end of the other movement commands. If my first guess cannot get an area target on the desired area I just adjust the final way point and try again.

The activity here has picked up since the CMSF2 was announced. Honestly I never liked the idea of asymmetrical warfare. But I have to admit the conversation here is starting to win me over. I am still not pulling the trigger for two reasons - don't think I could stand the difference in features and UI and I know I will be annoyed with the licensing. That plus, I have more CM projects to do than I have time for already so adding a new game to the stable needs to be seamless not bump filled CMSF2 should fit that bill.

I am still not a SF owner waiting for CMSF2 but reading in the mean time. LOL yeah I hear ya. The study of economics is changing - they are moving from the broken "everyone behaves rationally" to a much more realistic "everyone's decision making is kinda interesting and not always rational even though they think it is". As a consequence economists are getting better results.

Another time I wish we still had the like button +1

Nice succinct list of resource links - bookmarked to share in the future.

Well the Economist is - this link is basically an opinion piece - if you read it, the issues they are talking about are already issues with Orthodox Jewish communities, Catholic parishes and even various Amish and other Christian sects. The true issues are that various religions have a habit of stomping in people's rights the Sharia that is actually an issue is no different at all. The real problem is there are political groups that like to twist it into some siren cry that our legal system will be swept away and there will be floggings, beheadings and hands chopped off in public parks. Which is utterly ridiculous. I'm all for getting religious zealots to stop telling Catholics they cannot re-marry or stopping the Church of S from shunning people and splitting families. If the focus was on those issues and they covered all religions the same... But they don't because their true motives are not about social justice at all. Just think about it - if the people spouting this stuff were serious about people's rights why do we not hear them go off about other religion's treatment of women, children and favour "men" in their dispute resolution. Just think on it - if you do you might see the truth. But we are getting even further off topic now.

LOL I think it speaks volumes about the human condition. Everyone's bias to see the head winds and not the tail winds: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-is-my-life-so-hard/ Many of us should find some things to be grateful for in general but here relating to CM. That last sentence will make sense if you listen to the Podcast.

I decided to host my images for posing on my own web site using Piwigo gallery. I now have that running on my site and I am using the extension Piwigo2Img to generate [ IMG ] tags or [ URL ] tags for insertion into posts. That gives me a solution nearly as easy as Photo Bucket but totally under my control. My hosting service offers support for Piwgo gallery so the install was a piece of cake.

But even then they would most likely come to the fight with some kind of weapon. Picking up gear off of enemy casulties would most likely be disassembled and cleaned first and used tomorrow instead of in the moment.