A Canadian Cat

I just discovered one really good tip. Another reason to have infantry support for your tanks: because they can hear nearby enemy tanks! And your tank commanders cannot. This just saved my behind in a huge tank battle I am fighting. I had a Royal Tiger Platoon in position on a reverse slope waiting for their infantry to arrive before going over the hill and attacking the near by town. They were in place and waiting for four minutes (the infantry were delayed and the attack moved further away due to enemy artillery). The tanks were happily waiting with no contacts of any kind. The truck with the infantry pulls up and the guys file out and with in 20s enemy contacts appear in the field next to my tank platoon. I was astonished - my opponent had managed to flank me and I did not even know it. The Royal Tiger platoon was in a wheat field next to the field was a 20m or so wide strip of light forest but lots of trees then a road and another thinner tree line so they had no visibility into the next field over - and neither did the infantry. Clearly these contacts were sound contacts. Since I knew something was there I swung right and attacked through the trees. Caught his Churchills totally by surprise and shredded 6 of them in 2min with no casualties. Afterwards I talked to my opponent about it and found that his tanks had been there for nearly 10 minutes waiting for me to attack the town. His plan was to bring them at me from behind while I was distracted fighting in the town. A brilliant plan. But he had no infantry support with those tanks and therefore he did not hear my tanks either.

Thanks for revealing the mystery. In one of your screen shots you had a shrek team target a tank at what looked like 143m. Did I read that right? I never let my guys fire the shrek at those distances 100m is my go for it zone. Do you find you have success at distances like 140m? I know your guys took 3 shots to get their hit but I find they don't usually get a chance to fire three times. Usually they start taking fire from some where faster than that. Perhaps firing at 140m mitigates that and your guys survive longer than mine. I usually give my Shrek team a 100m circular cover arc.

So, true. Making a map is hard. I am hoping Stoneage's tool will help but you are right there is more than just elevation and terrain that needs to be right. To all the map makers out there - a big thank you.

Excellent I love it when that happens. I have only seen it twice. Once when a 105 barrage killed and AI panther (when it happened I had no idea there was a Panther there). Suddenly a black column of smoke came out of the middle of a barrage and later at the end of the battle I found it was a Panther that was hit. I have never had that happen with 105 again - and I have seen at least 4 other tanks hit by 105s. I was lucky that day - still lost though. It was one of my first battles and I had no idea what I was doing:) The other time I had an immobilized Sherman blasting away at an opposing bocage line supporting my infantry who were trying to cross the open field to get there. One round went through an infantry gap and hit something solid on the other side. Turns out it was my opponent's last Marder trying to move laterally to meet my flanking attack. Amazing. I hope I did not miss you saying what you hit before: My question is what was it you hit? The explosion is big; so from that I would guess an M7 Priest but I do not think it was part of the American's order of battle. So I'll revise my guess to; a lucky hit on a Sherman.

Excellent work guys and thanks for creating this. I saw your AAR start but did not read fully until this morning. Awesome. What a great game. I love how it ended - by the Americans breaking contact due to high casualties. Clearly having an operational layer helps mitigate the all in slug fests that can happen in a one off battle. Makes me want to try it. Can you guys share info about what you used for the operational layer? A friend and I are in the middle of a huge mostly tank battle that is total fantasy but we are having a blast. This game is amazing. Our plan from the start is to write up an AAR so hopefully we can come close to the quality of yours.

Great idea - I wish I had thought of that:-)

I do not have any real life experience but urban fighting really interests me so it was one of the first things I tried in the game. My friend and I have fought several urban battles now and I admit to some disappointment. Some comments on your comments below and further discussion about what I think will help below: True, but the buildings in the patch seems stronger - or the troops are positioning them selves inside better now than the original game. Couple that with the fact that I learned to split my squads and spread the teams over the floors in buildings at ALL times. Makes this a lot better. I would like some fortification ability for buildings - I think it would be great to buy building fortifications like you buy trenches. Having said that I can live without this. Not sure what that is can you clarify? Yep spot on. My other big gripe for urban fighting has to do with the action square to action square visibility requirement for area fire. What this means is that a tank in a street can target spotted enemy soldiers in buildings down the street. But when those soldiers duck or run suddenly the tank can no longer target the front of the building with area fire. Even though they were just putting rounds on that very building face moments ago. The problem that causes is that as I am clearing a street my armor support cannot fire at the face of buildings down the street while my guys move to the building next door. Yes, yes I can hear the tears - armor is already to powerful:D Which brings me to my opposite gripe - tanks being able to target enemy soldiers on the sixth floor of the building they are parked beside. I know why they gun elevation is not modeled and I understand why. I get it. But I don't like it in a close quarters urban fight. I wish some bright person could come up with some limits that would not break the AI but would allow me to safely have solider's in upper floors when the bad guys tank is on the street below. What I want is for it to be a bad idea to just drive tanks down streets with out coordinating infantry support. +1 Oh amen to that did I say +1 already? Allowing some of that would be cool yes. I am not sure if this necessary for good urban fighting but it would be nice. Some changes here would be nice yes. Again I think this would be good for the game overall and not sure if it directly effects urban fighting. Probably the single biggest issue I had with my urban fights was the maps. So, let me start by saying I mean no disrespect to the map makers. I have tried it. Clearly it takes an iron constitution to create a good map. So far the maps I have fought my urban fights on, have not been good enough. The problems of infantry not surviving long enough in an urban setting to punish poor use of tanks is real and the factors mentioned above all play a role. But, I submit another large factor, is with map design. For infantry to dish out the proper punishment they need to get close to enemy tanks and fire their AT weapons from some kind of cover. The maps I have used lack enough cover in the streets, twisty alleys that tanks cannot drive down. I have lost tanks to close assault - yes I was using tanks recklessly and I was punished, just as I should have been. So I know that infantry can destroy tanks if they survive getting close to them. An urban map that is more like a real urban environment would go a long way to making urban fights more fun. IMHO. To improve urban fighting the goal to strive for is to make it harder to just drive tanks down streets without coordinated infantry support.

I'd Rather Dig, A Moving Fox hole attracts the Eye.

I was watching a turn tonight and ended up seeing this: This is from an on going game with Siffo998 from "Linking up and breaking out". This is behind the real action so I am not giving anything away. Through the smoke you can see just a hint of what is going on at the pointy end of my attack. The burning jeep was first blood. I miss understood the briefing and thought I was moving into a undefended area. Ooops the recon guys paid for it. Actually some of them got away but the jeep sure did not. Also the team in the near ground were caught in the open by a HT's MG42 all lined up. It sucked to watch that one burst and four men down. This is getting interesting.

LOL - if you've got it use it. I am currently dropping approximately every fourth building in "The Main Event" as I fight my way into the town. The locals will not be very happy with me.

There is another possibility: It could be the long hinted at PBEM turn management / opponent finder application.

I am not 100% sure but I have never seen them in game and did not mod them for my version of the low vis icons for CW. If they show up they will stick out like a sore thumb. I think they are unused right now. Any one hazard a guess as to what ltv means? Is it for an APC of some sort? If so could it be used once Kangaroos are added to the game - he says hopefully.

It was Sgt Schultz http://smtp.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1287716&postcount=11

Yeah and he did it in such away that you cannot easily see it in game - impressive.

+1 to both of those. Suggestion is brilliant - if you spot a member of the gun crew you see an infantry icon but when you finally spot the gun you see the gun icon. I would add that the icon should be centred over the members of the team that you can see. Right now it is centred over the whole team which means that if you can only see one member of a squad you can tell approximately where the rest of the squad is by the direction and distance of the icon from the spotted solider.

Driving the GUI to provide "out of program" enhancements is an inherently fragile design. Even a slight change to the program can break the added value community. This is why software companies do not support tools of that nature. They need to be able to fix things and redesign problem GUI components as needed. The right way for "out of program" tools to be created is with a public (or private) interface of some kind. That can be a programming interface (API) or a file import interface or even a command line interface. When a company designs such an interface they are also offering support for that interface and an assurance that changes to that interface will be managed some how so that supporting programs will not break without notice. The business advantage for companies doing this is that it helps create and expand a community of users. Part time developers add value around the edges of the vendor's product and the customers get additional features or other benefits. An excellent game related example of this is Eve Online. They have a API interface that has been used by many out of game developers and even players themselves. In their case the "out of program" developers are adding a lot of reporting applications (players can track important events in the game - your kills for example plus trading information that can rival stock exchange's reporting) and some design applications (ship design assistants). An example that might be relevant here is map and scenario design. Clearly BFC's current map editor is doing its job. Lots of scenario are being created and people are really enjoying many of them. Well done everyone. But there are people out there who would like to design scenarios but feel there is a barrier to their entry. I am one such person (see item 1 on my wish list). There is a long list of features that designers would like to see in the map editor. Those items go on a back log of things BFC would like to do and they have to prioritize them. Lets be clear. 1) Prioritizing features is the right thing to do. 2) BFC has show, in my opinion, that they are excellent at doing that. 3) I mostly agree with their choices. 4) I back them in their decisions even when I don't agree. (After all it is there game) What that means is that if BFC spends their time on non map scenario editor capabilities there is a group of people who will not create scenarios. And the simple fact is that might be just fine. You never know I might suck at creating scenarios:-) Here is where having a map creation API or file import capability comes in handy. There is a cost to them for giving me my top feature in a future game. There is a cost to them for giving other people their top feature. An alternative is to declare the current editor good enough and instead spending the cost of developing several new features towards creating a way for out of game developers to enhance (or replace) the map / scenario editor. They pay that once and then essentially forget about making new enhancements to the editor. If there are enough people willing to spend some time working on this area new tools can be made that provide a kick start to map editing just like @StoneAge has done. Apps using a supported interface become more reliable because they will be supported from release to release. It means that @StoneAge can work on new features he wants with confidence that his program will last long term. It also means that BFC can see what features really are used by designers. So in future games they can incorporate some of those ideas into the game. Or better yet they can look at the what features are hard for out of game developers to do and provide support for those areas in the game editor. More clarity: 1) I am *not* saying anything bad about @StoneAge's work. My opinion is quite the opposite I am very impressed and I would like to see more such work and for that work to be easier. 2) Click driving the GUI is not a good design choice in general terms. Currently there is no other choice for a tool like this: therefore saying that is in no way a criticism of @StoneAge for for that matter BFC. OK I'll stop now - long post. Just my 4c worth. Ian

That's cool - I was just making sure. BTW - for anyone reading this thread in the future: I meant "show stoppers" not "show stores".

Oops, my bad. I was looking in the wrong place. Thanks for steering me straight.

Oh, yes go ahead and use it. I did not mean to imply any bugs were show stores by any means

Yes, I have seen it happen as well. No, I do not have a test for it. I'm not even sure how to create such a beast. The time I do remember it well was when a Sherman was crossing a breached bocage bump. It fired its main gun (based on the area target order I gave it on the bocage line on the other side of the field) just as the shocks bounced low after the tank came over the bump. The He round hit halfway through the field instead of on the other side.

Something seems to be odd - I don't see your carrier mod yet and I cannot find the Churchill IV either. When I list vehicle mods by date I do not see anything after February. What's up with the repository?

Yes that is exactly what it does. I find it very useful. I have given Mad Mike some feedback - more work for him:D and pointed out a few bugs. I hope he decides to do some more work on it.

I see that too. That may not be a serious problem. I suspect that the scenario does not have a picture. The scenario organizer should not create a broken link but it is harmless. OK that is telling me that it had trouble processing one of the campaigns. I would suggest that you move the Kampfgruppe Engel and Scottish Corridor campaign files out of the directory and try again. If you get the same error then I would remove all the campaigns from the directory try again and then add them back in one at a time to see which one it is having trouble processing.

I'm not Mad Mike but I have used his tool and conversed with him about it several times. And as a Java developer I might be able to help you get it to run. OK that just means I have some test version he sent me you should replace the name "CMBN_Scen_Organiser_v0.3.jar" with whatever your .jar file is named. Sharing the error message you see after you do that might allow me (or others) to figure out what is wrong. You are not supposed to do anything with that. It is there for java developers to see his source code. I have not even looked at it though. Don't worry about it. And using 7zip manager will not get the program to run it will just show you the inner workings of the .jar file. Which is not likely to help you in any way.

That makes sense @Ranger33. There was a lot going on - my Royal Tigers on the tree line plus his two Achilles on the other treeline plus various Churchill's floating around. I never even noticed the second hit which is why he made the video.