A Canadian Cat

Humm how does this work? I think what you are saying is that the Arena IR signals cause the Javelin to follow the wrong signature end up hitting nothing. Do I have that right? And I so why doesn't Arena just work for the target tank when it is all alone? Please enlighten me as to how this could work even theoretically?

LOL I was going to say something about the use of a stacked chart but decided not to. I have now changed my mind . Data presentation is an interesting area and the misinterpretation that @The Steppenwulf made is classic (not picking on you man it is a problem with the use of the chart). So to critique @ithikial_AU 's use of that type of chart there are two issues: A line char is not really appropriate. Each month has a discrete number of battles. If you want a trend line then a regression can be applied if you want. A stacked bar makes very hard to compare one thing to another. This is especially a problem when there are several small values and one big one in the data set. The scale has to accommodate the total which makes seeing the small values even harder. Then you have the issue of what kind of stacking is this? One value on top of another? One value in front of another? Hence @The Steppenwulf 's confusion. The most appropriate chart type here would be a multi bar chart where each month had seven bars next to each other. It might make showing all those months impractical but the scale would change accommodate only the largest and the smaller numbers could be more easily compared. Plus, no one would interpret the top item as being the largest when it is actually not. And don't get me started on the misuse of pie charts

Well there ya go. Better answers with actual data - nice.

I have no idea. Both theBlitz and A Few Good Men have active communities for both games. There are more ww2 players probably but CMFB is no more active than CMBS as far as I can tell. Both are good games. I would recommend picking the time frame you like best.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the September scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMRT: Bunkers Burning CMBS: Lights, Camera & Action The form post on theBlitz for sign up.

The Blitz is running two scenarios this month. Sign up for the September scenario of the Month has started over at the Blitz. This month the scenarios are: CMRT: Bunkers Burning CMBS: Lights, Camera & Action The form post on theBlitz for sign up.

Hummmm, so how many scenarios and campaigns would you expect there to be for CMBN? By my count there are 290 scenarios available for CMBN. Mind you that includes the shipped ones so user made is a little less than that. That seems like quite a few. For campaigns there are 23, 11 of which I think shipped with the game. I might be off a bit there but the jist is right. The game system shines when played against other humans so it makes sense that there are fewer campaigns since they cannot be played against other humans, at least not reasonably. Personally, making campaigns work via PBEM would be a top three new feature for me. If they ever did that, campaigns would suddenly be a top priority for me.

@Ivanov I don think either of those speeds makes a difference regarding that decision. Fast will make it much less likely. That's the only one that changes things.

Now that it is done are you going to submit it to the scenario depot? Please

Oh that is interesting. To me that looks like the HT gunner is being aimed at while the sniper is not but instead the team is more area firing like their NCO thinks there is a team there. Note I'm not really trying to say the game is doing that just that it looks like that.

LOL Yeah I know but that's all I hear when people say they want this or that tweaked for fix some specific situation . We should probably stop since @rocketman is investigating a real issue and our philosophical discussion is just distracting from that. No I set the circular covered arc to indicate what "close by" meant. They should respect it. Otherwise what's the point of having that command? I'm being serious now. If orders are not going to be obeyed the majority of the time we give them then we have a different problem. OK so let say the platoon LT did not screw up and there is a tank protecting their flank. What then? Now there is someone who's job it is to deal with that Sherman. So the crew should continue their task as ordered now right? Careful how you answer that because in my example I said the building was empty but how does the tank crew really know that? They were ordered to fire at that building. It could be there is an enemy MG in there that is holding up the advance and the entire attack rests on them doing this one job. After all they were ordered to do it. And that's what orders are for success. My point is just that a, normal, possible, outcome that could have happened in real life did happen in the game. So, we should probably not be fussing about it because the TacAI is never going to have information about how important any particular orders are, what other units are up to etc. What we have now is pretty clear and already leads to believable results. In my opinion. Its all good-ish.

Yeah you could make a successful argument that this is not optimal - I will not disagree. In my situation it is pretty clear but if you switch it up and now its a elite fanatic scout team with a tight cover arc: is it right for them to ignore your order and expose their position the deal with a threat outside their cover arc? Probably not. The TacAI is trying to simulate soldiers but it is a computer so has to use some rules. For us humans to be able to deal with it we have to know what those rules are and how it behaves. So, BFC cannot program the TacAI to "do the right thing as I see it". It is just impossible to do: so we have what we have. I personally believe on balance the behaviour is good. What I meant by that is, averaged out, the behaviour of the TacAI under combat is very reasonable. Even the Panther doing the wrong thing is OK really - their Platoon CO had them lay some HE fire down for the infantry they were supporting and because they were doing the job they asked they missed spotting the Sherman until it was too late. It *is* possible to sneak up on a Panther and KO it on the battlefield. So, it *is* OK to see it happen in game. Just because I might think that they should have been smart enough to do the right thing doesn't mean that's what a real crew would have done. A real crew could have been surprised and not been fast enough too. And the real failure might have been the platoon leader who should have had another tank in the platoon watching that flank. Just like the game commander (i.e. me) should have probably done the same or at least used target briefly to fire at the house so the crew would have been more alert to other threats at least most of the turn. Actually, I think the quote should be "In the end, we're never going to see a TacAI that always reacts perfectly to all situations and that is a good thing." What I am saying is that looking at the specific details of one situation and "fixing" the TacAI and repeatedly doing that will lead to two possible outcomes: uber soldiers (and we will still not be happy because the other guys uber soldiers killed my uber soldiers) or a mess (and we still will not be happy because we will have chaos but be unable to figure out the rules). There are improvements I would suggest for the TacAI but this detailed level "make them behave perfectly" is not it.

Actually I didn't mean correct their aim over time - but they do do that too if they miss. I meant that each subsequent shot that *hits* will not hit the exact same place every time. The game simulates scatter between shots that hit. This kind of stuff is per solider. And they are aiming at something; could be a vehicle, could be a particular enemy soldier.

Yes, I believe it does at least in one sense. In the sense that the gunner manning the gun is seen as a greater threat than the HT itself. The TacAI knows that the gunner is the danger and so targets him. No it would not change anything because in this sense there is only one target. If you tell the TacAI "target that HT" it will fire at the HT vehicle if the gunner is buttoned up but if the gunner is up it will see the gunner as the threat and target him. The decision is all about what you ordered the TacAI to do and what the threat of the target is. So, when you tell the TacAI to target the HT it will but it will also decide that an active gunner is the biggest threat and specifically target him. In this situation the TacAI does not even have to counter man your orders because the gunner is part of the HT. If there were two HTs, one buttoned and one with an active gunner and you told the TacAI to target the buttoned HT it would have a decision to make: obey your order or break from your order to address the greater threat. That decision could vary soldier by soldier, the willingness to break your order will depend on the motivation of the troops (fanatic troops will likely not break from your orders), it will also depend on the experience of the troops (crack troops will want to address the greater threat more than keep to your orders). As you can see there is a conflict there and you can sometimes end up with rather perverse situations where your crack, fanatic panther crew will continue to fire HE at the now empty building that I ordered them to shoot at and ignore the Sherman tank coming at them from the side. That is why using direct target orders as little as possible is a good thing (and the main reason I love target briefly). My crack / fanatic Panther should have been like no other team on the battlefield at foiling silly Sherman tanks trying to sneak around but because I gave them a direct target orders they lost out. Story exaggerated to make my point (it was only a veteran highly motivated Panther). Yes the centre but with caveats - they vary their aim slightly with each shot, if shots hit obstacles (e.g trees) they re aim away from the obstacle and troops can switch between targeting the vehicle and exposed crew of said vehicle as necessary (which probably means that the poor crewman becomes the target - at least for small arms - tank main gunners do not do this with the main gun at least).

Awesome - nice work taking it that extra step to show how it effects engagement times. I added the link to my FAQ list so next time we can point back to your work!

Yes! Picking something other than fast as a speed can also let you coordinate convoys (or any other type of coordinated movement) better. If you have a tank leading the way with a fast move I usually give my wheeled vehicles quick moves so they stay in their place in the queue. Also in CMBS giving fast orders tells the crew "this movement leg is important and it is generally safer to complete than abandon and make up your own plans". This means that two tanks moving in the open between tree lines that get lasered; the one with quick orders will stop, pop smoke and pull back while the one with fast orders will likely decide that completing the fast move is the better thing to do. This allows you to have the AFVs rush between cover and not have them abandoning your orders in the middle of an open field.

Yes, thanks. @c3k, the only problem with keeping things stationary is that the soldier in the open will tend to kneel or go prone - even before the shooting starts. Is there a way to avoid that? As soon as that happens he should be much harder to hit and that creates a change during the test. Would having them move at move speed be better? I'm just thinking out loud here...

I think that is the right thing to do. As for dates - let me look... I did not track when the 2.0 upgrade came out for CMBN (I have a list of all game and module releases with dates) but the first game family with the 2.0 code was CMFI and that was released at the beginning of August 2012. The v2 upgrade for CMBN was after that but I do not know how long afterwards. You could use that as a starting point and dig through the news page to find the 2.0 upgrade announcement if you want a better date. Yes, but they may not work quite as expected because there could be built in tags for one game but not another and that could cause interesting behaviour. For example I have no idea what a CMBN mod used in CMFB would do in certain snow conditions because there would be no snow version of the CMBN mod files. It might just use the built in graphics but there could also be a chance of some unexpected mixing and matching. Regardless nothing will crash or anything. That would be my recommendation too. It just makes your life simpler if you keep to using the mods designed to work with a certain game.

Sounds like you are onto something interesting. So, how many bullets did it take to hit a member of the FO team? Some of this could be a good thing. When shooting at the FO team the enemy soldiers NCO will likely be OK with rounds going wide because where there is one enemy soldier there are more. I remember my drill Sargent saying when we had no one in particular to aim at he didn't really want us to be hitting exactly the point he asked us to aim towards because he wanted the rounds to spread out. Now that's for area fire and I have no idea if the game is meant to do this in these cases or not. I would be curious if the FO team were reduced to a single man (might need a scout team at 50% for that) if that would make a difference. Might change from "fire aimed at a group" to "aimed fire at an individual". Aimed fire at an individual would be more like the HT gunner case. It might not make any difference if the Tac AI teams' NCO are not doing that. It would be good to rule it in or out. Yeah, I was just wondering out loud there. Ack - I for some reason had German HTs in my head even though you clearly said US HTs earlier. Yes, they have a gun shield that should offer more protection from the front. You can add a German HT to the test on the US side. Do that by switching the game to Red on Red and adding the HT to the US order of battle and then switching back. One more question: Are the opposing teams the same? You already said they had the same weapons but I was wondering if they are all lead by the same rank? Are they all A teams or are the a mix of A, B and C teams? I honestly don't know if that matters but if one lane has a Sargent leading three guys and the other lane has a Corporal leading three guys it might make a difference and your test will amplify it since the same team is always shooting at the same target (sorry for using the wrong ranks there).

I recommend turning the hyperbole down a notch. I always found that stating the case with actual facts works well with BFC. Sigh - no one did any such thing. HT gunners are very high priority targets. So, if you mean "bullet magnets" in the sense that lots of people on the battlefield want to shoot the gunner then yes they attract a lot of attention. But if you mean "bullet magnets" in the sense that they are easily hit then this is the first test that shows the beginnings of a possibility that they might be easier to hit. At least that is my recollection. Remember having tons of people say "my HT gunners die frequently - whaaaa" is not evidence and the previous discussions of this have been not much more than that. @rocketman is putting together a nice test that will be useful - lets help him to succeed instead of derailing this in to the abyss.

Hummm. Is that really the correct conclusion though. I am not sure it is not - but I am not sure it is either. From the infantry's point of view the HT gunner is by far the biggest threat that they can actually do something about (clearly the tank is the biggest actual threat but rifles cannot really do anything). What effect does that have on the number of rounds fired? So the questions I have are: How many rounds were fired at the HT gunner? How many were fired at the soldiers in the open? Based on the answers to #1 and #2 then you have to ask: Should it really be harder / easier to hit the HT gunner vs the soldiers running in the open? Is the fact that the gunner is raised above the round make it easier / harder to hit? Does it make up for the better protection he has? Was the HT gunner always facing forwards and behind the gun shield? Based on #1 and #2 you might also wonder if it is correct to compare a group of soldiers in the open to a single guy in the HT? Yeah I can already answer that - no because you are taking one man down in the FO group as equivalent to the HT gunner going down. - Yes I realize that fixing this may even strengthen your conclusion - so go for it. Those are my initial thoughts - other people could have other questions. We should go where the evidence takes us - It will be interesting.

That is my recollection too and I searched but could not find it either.

At the moment it is just the last patch that came out. Damned annoying yes, and it has been mentioned internally too. I see no indications that there are any plans to do something like that. On the other hand I do not see a need for it either. Currently there is only one thing that, if modded, needs to be redone for each version and that is mods for the strings. The one mod I am aware of that fits this currently is Vin's animated text mod. The only other time things were changed that effected older mods was the grand renaming of uniform textures that happened with the 2.0 upgrade. Other than that mods that worked in one version work in the next version. Hence I see no significant problems. Now if you are spending a lot of time trying to get mod X originally designed for CMBN to work with CMRT then I think you are on your own. Unless I am missing something. If I am please enlighten me.

??? What is the problem? Is there a broken link in a previous post? Where are you seeing that error? I had a look at the top post and a few other pages in the thread and could not see any problems. ???

Yes, there is. If Engineers are next to a minefield action square they can detect that it has mines. I am sure it is way less efficient than you want but it is there in the game.