Rokko
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Posts posted by Rokko
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You're welcome. So far it seems the results could maybe (hope that's enough caveats
) indicate that indeed there is something with accuracy vs personell in the open and personell in vehicles. But maybe there is something off with the methodology or maybe there even is a reason why the accuracy is higher when shooting at halftrack gunners or TCs.
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I'd like to get some comments, preferably from some of the dev guys on the methodology before I waste my time actually running these tests. Five tests each is obviously way too few, but I guess a 100 each would give a good impression, so maybe some other folks can join in, do a few runs and post the results.
Also, I wonder if one should always restart the game after each run, like in completely restart the game by going back to desktop and starting up again. Sometimes I get the impression as if there are some artifacts left that are not properly cleaned up when you start another scenario or restart one. Probably I am just paranoid, but since the game is a piece of software it would be possible. Like in the second test it looks like there is some sort of progression, the number of shots is ever increasing almost. Of course this could be completely random but I have had this feeling at other times as well when doing tests.
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Ok here's the test I have proposed in another thread on the same topic, now with a fleshed out design for peer review
Set-Up:
Terrain is open, all ground is essentially short yellow grass. No wind, temperature cool, weather clear, ground dry, time 1200
One US MG Ammo bearer team on a patch of gravel, Regular, Normal, +0. Two guys with M1 Garands and a total of 1008 rounds (should be enough in all cases)
Test 1:
100m (roughly) in front of the GIs is a German truck driver (behind a waist high stone wall) with orders never to shoot back. The driver is set at Fanatic, Elite, +0 Leadership. I know this is usually frowned upon, but this setting is only to ensure quick recovery from suppression. Since he is only there as a target I don't think there is an issue with this.
Test 2:
100m (roughly) in front of the GIs is a German Sdkfz 251/1 Ausf D with the same orders. The halftrack is likewise set to Elite, Fanatic, +0 Leadership. This setting should ensure the halftrack crew never rattles or looses its covered arc and starts shooting back. I've tried setting it to immobilzed but that only made the crew bail once the volume of fire increased.
Test procedure:
Start the game as allied with settings turn-based and Scenario Author test. After you begin each turn you can start skipping 5sec intervals while the GIs try to spot the target and eventually begin shooting. Keep the halftrack or the truck driver selected and watch for their status. Once a hit is scored (either yellow or full casualty), skip back to the exact moment the casualty occured. Now select the ammo bearers and calculate the ammo expenditure by checking their current ammo count. Remember they start with 1008 rounds. Discount any shoots that might still be in air the moment the target got hit.
Denote the results in the following way:
Number of testrun - shoots fired(Type of casualty)
Example: 04 - 54(W). This would be the fourth test and it took 54 rounds to incurr a lightly wounded (yellow) target. Use (K) to denote a kill or "red" wound.
Expected outcome:
The halftrack gunner is a much smaller target behind an armored shield (from the POV of the GIs), so one would expect it took many more rounds to hit him than to hit the truck driver, who's upper body is exposed.
Known problems:
The truck driver will from time to time cower away out of sight, but never too long. I guess this still has some impact on the result. I haven't found a way to suppress this behaviour, but the fanatic setting makes sure he usually gets back up quickly. If anything unexpected happens (i.e. behaviour not described here), abort the test.
Here's the dropbox link to the test files (CMFB).
https://www.dropbox.com/s/q6wzc8zudsohu3r/Accuracy%20Test.zip?dl=0
Just as an example, the results of my first 5 test runs each:
vs HT:
01 - 14(K)
02 - 47(K)
03 - 08(K)
04 - 18(K)
05 - 02(K)vs Inf:
01 - 01(K)
02 - 74(K)
03 - 60(K)
04 - 80(K)
05 - 84(K)Edit: Following Steve's advice I haven't done more runs and posted my set up here first for discussion.
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2 hours ago, Battlefront.com said:
As I said, you can not find me one TacAI behavior that doesn't have someone voicing a complaint, concern, or suggestion for change. Because of that we tend to ignore more-or-less one off, marginally important, or situational specific complaints because if we didn't we'd never get anything else done. Instead we look for ones, like this, that spark a significant conversation backed up by attempts to quantify what the problem is/isn't. Now that this issue has risen to that level... we're now looking into it.
This is how we've handled things since 1999 and it's a system that, while not perfect, works pretty well. Hindsight is always 20/20 and generally speaking anything we fix today probably was mentioned by someone before. Probably more than once.
Steve
Well, I just felt JoMc67s comment didn't deserve the snarky reply it got
Besides, I have a feeling that this issue is closely related to the high mortality rate of halftrack gunners and that generally there is an issue with the TacAI shooting more accurately at people in vehicles than it shoots at people out in the open or behind walls or other cover.
Just to be clear, this is just a hunch I have and I dont have any hard data to back that up. Also I don't expect anyone to move a finger just because I have a hunch.
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To be fair - the issue has been around for more than a year.
I remember explicitely mentioning it in the briefing of my CMRT Right Hook at Sopockinie scenario to caution players not to get their StuGs to close to anything that can shoot back.
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I see. Thanks for the clarification.
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Wasn't it said that the game had already been finished weeks ago and the release had to be deferred only because of the delays with the new website? In fact I remember someone saying that due that delay a few new smaller features were being added that had not initially been planned to be part of the release candidate at all.
Am I mistaken here or were there some further hickups not only with the website but with the game itself that I don't know of?
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Kind of a scary thought having to cross the entire English channel in a rinky dink submersible PzIII and probably completely blind at that. Or was the idea to ferry them across for some distance first before depth charging them down to the sea floor?
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You can use the adjust all tool in the editor and decrease the overall height. Once a tile is set at 5 it cant go any lower. Do it long enough (max_height - 5 times to be precise) and everything is fixed at 5 aka completely flat
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Those are stowage compartments.
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I was talking about a propaganda technique that seems pretty unique to Russia where by a concerted and appearently government funded (by what I have read and what given the scope of it makes sense) effort internet forums, newspaper comment sections, etc. are flooded by Russian talking-points, lies and half-truths trying to sow mistrust and trying to obfuscate issues. You can see this almost everywhere on English language websites but I have also seen it a lot on German speaking ones.
I'm not saying there isn't any "Western" propaganda per se, but to me it appears to work very differently and perhaps you could say more subtly. At least I am not aware of anything of the sort of "Putinbot" action going on on Russian websites by Western "agents", but then again, how would I know since I don't visit those since I don't know the language
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Well I remember once reading an article saying the pay these Putinbots get is very low by Russian standards
Also, are you sure it doesn't work? I have a feeling that it works pretty well with "low-information" people aka 80-90% of the population.
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A certain ingame test I would suggest or would go through myself if I have the time, is to take a single M1 shooter (a truck driver for instance) set at Regular/Normal/+0 and have him take a shots at halftracks from the front (that don't shoot back obviously) at various ranges, maybe from 50-300m and compare the number of rounds it takes to take out the gunner with the number of shots it takes to take out a single German (truck driver) set at fanatic behind a low stone wall at the same ranges. The German also gets a covered arc so he doesn't shoot back. The fanatic setting is to ensure he doesn't duck away, just like the halftrack gunners never "button up" on their own. If the guy cowers behind the wall it might ruin the effect of increased per shot accuracy on the same target.
My hunch, based on personal experience, is that it will take more rounds to take out the guy behind the wall at most ranges, despite him being way more exposed. I think the same might be true for tank commanders.
I have a feeling that the game handles aiming at men in vehicles differently than aiming at men in the open.
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Note that the tile size in CMx1 games in 20m while in CMx2 games it is 8m. I have found that the best way to go is to increase the map size by 20% and have 3x3 tiles represent one tile from the original . Also note that elevations in CMx1 games are in various increments, while in CMx2 it is always in 1m increments.
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I´d also wish for the (german) ammo bearers to stay low as was historically the case, unless they were forced to engage in close combat. If the latter happens, then I´d consider a players HMG employment in the game somewhat ....faulty, so to say. HMG´s need to be covered with infantry and preferably engage targets only at ranges above 300m.
Still wonder about BFC decision to just have for a selected number of MG units (US MMG i.e) the ammo bearers seperated in a 2nd team. Maybe too much of a burden for an AI player to handle them properly...
I agree, in my opinion all MG teams should be split in two teams like mortars and ATGs. In fact, some already are, at least in some German recon TOEs where the infantry is driving around in VWs. The way it is now the MG teams are just too large to fit in one action spot and since the ammo bearers often don't stay low they are unnecessarily prone to suffering casualties.
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Have you considered making CMx1 type games moddable or releasing the source code? I doubt there are many copies sold these days and maybe some brave soul could find a way making this work under the newer OS for nostalgia reasons.
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Multithreading is not someting casual that you just turn on or off. It requires careful consideration and can cause some serious (logical) headaches throught an entire project and its code. Adding multithreading to a 10 year old engine that wasn't designed for multithreading in the first place is probably not feasible unless their programmer (I think it's really only one) decides to live in a cave for a year and do nothing else but code.
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Generally patches do not introduce this sort of thing, but for sure at some point it will get into Normandy. Whether it is part of a larger Upgrade or slipped in I do not know yet.
Steve
If I remember correctly, footpaths first came with CMMG and were later added to CMFI as well in a patch, so I thought it might be applicable to streams as well.
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Will the CMBN patch also add streams to game or will that happen later (or not at all)?
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I wasn't talking about trenches being easy so spot, which I think is also true, though. That is a harder case to make I guess (though when you can spot a hole in the ground from 2000m something is probably off).
I was talking about not needing to spot trenches in particular at all because they are clearly visible as long as the camera is far enough away from them. This is a clear bug I would argue.
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This is already in the game I think. Tigers for instance can only cross the larger stone bridges for instance and no wodden bridges (talking about CMRT here).
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I was wondering if there are any improvements in this area in the upcoming CMFB and also as patches for other CM titles. We all know the old CMSF trenches are not coming back because they are not affected by fog of war, but the way it is now the new trenches are not FOW 'secure' at all, I'd even say they can be easier seen that the old ones and thats been that way since forever I think, since you can clearly see where trenches are from far away, which is a LOD issue I think. But also from up close you can easily tell where trenches are, since they remove any foliage doodads. This makes them especially obvious in wheat fields or the like.
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Well appearently it's on their todo list for 4.0 anyways, but there's a bunch of stuff that comes to mind pretty easily. Just off the top off my head:
- more branching options and conditions (not just binary win/loose conditions)
- reusing maps and keeping battle damage (craters, destroyed buildings, knocked out vehicles, KIA maybe)
- better refitting system (users can chose which units to refit/repair/resupply between scenarios maybe)
- more options for refitting in general, like differentiating between armor and infantry (e.g armor gets repaired but infantry does not recieve replacements for instance or only some specified units are resupplied while others are not)
None of those would be really major overhauls I think and could be extensions to the current system
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Huh, no you read it right.
Option B means module 1 would essentially be like CM Commonwealth, same timeframe (June- September 1944) but a bunch of new forces.
But either way, I read it like either option would put all the timeframe extension in one module and all the different forces (including their TOE changes for up to seven months) into another module.
I am not sure whats the reasoning behind this and its definately a very different approach from what we have seen so far. On the other hand, the upcomming CMFI module is going to extend the timeframe by eleven months, while also adding a lot of other stuff appearently.
Anyways, under those circumstances I guess I would also prefer Option A..
) indicate that indeed there is something with accuracy vs personell in the open and personell in vehicles. But maybe there is something off with the methodology or maybe there even is a reason why the accuracy is higher when shooting at halftrack gunners or TCs.
Small arms casualties - tank crews
in Combat Mission Final Blitzkrieg
Posted
What do you mean by correct? As I wrote in the procedural description I counted the delta in ammunition from the moment the hit happened in comparison to what was there at the beginning, 1008 x .30 rounds. If there was a round in midair (I could see the tracer) in the moment the round hit its target I discounted that round. So if the team had 987 rounds left when the target was hit and there was another round already fired that didn't cause the hit I'd count it as 20 rounds.
(K) stands for kill, everytime a "red" casualty occured I counted it as a kill. "Yellow" wounds (light ones) didn't occur in my 10 tests and would have been denoted by (W).
I didn't increase the elevation. The truck driver is kneeling behind the wall at the same elevation level as the halftrack. I guess you could put the wall on a small mound, but I don't think that would make difference. At best I'd expect this to decrease the accuracy, but probably it's not accounted for just as gun depression isnt' for tank guns.