Magpie_Oz

When is the pre-order for this? In all seriousness, I for one have no problem with the interface at all, maybe I am just too easy going or something but it seems fine to me and I have played 'em all since CMBO.

Is it because they have a heightened sense of fair play? Not sure if it is fair comment but it seems on the wargame from the "balance" of a scenario is all important, perhaps more so than others might be concerned about?

Hey? When was the last time the dead blokes wrote what happened?

Not exactly, it is only if they attack with their weapons, they are allowed to defend themselves. "In modern times, most combat medics carry a personal weapon, to be used to protect themselves and the wounded or sick in their care. When and if they use their arms offensively, or carry arms that qualify as offensive, they then sacrifice their protection under the Geneva Conventions."

Thing is, it is a changing world. I wouldn't consider ordering from BFC via post, I much prefer the downloads. This is a bit of a thing across the board where email is devastating mail services across the world. Ironically with the whole online shopping thing you would think that parcel post would be rising but it seems we are not at that stage just yet. I can see a day where the retail store is a thing of the past and all of our shopping is done in the home with a delivery service. I am much at that stage myself it is rare I go to the shops, even for groceries. The times they are a changin' No best not, they wouldn't know what to do with it.

As has been said before, the victor writes the history

Take it easy mate, I think you'll find BFC have put a butt load of work into this sort of stuff and refine their modelling all the time, no real need for their direct comment on what we say here. Problem is AT ballistics is a hugely nebulous concept with all sorts of odd things happening. BFC have to work out a useful algorithm for all that which is never easy.

Yeh it is more a PR marketing thing, if they up the postage everyone says"Hey they are upping the postage" if they say Surcharge because of 9/11 "We go, oh no! Bloody terrorists, we gotta help our mates in the US out" It's the Australian way, blame it on something else and invoke mateship. The other little problem we have is that we are all a very long way from each other so our postage really does cost a lot more. Not sure where domestic violence comes into the picture but it is almost impossible to insult an Aussie, lest you liken us to a Kiwi.

Lead from the front. "Follow me men!" All the combatants, the SS particularly, suffered huge casualty rates in their junior commanders.

On a serious note, this would be a great feature, I'd love to be able to generate a topographic map from the CM maps, turn the elevations into contours and all that.

I suppose those actions need to be in context a bit and I guess this is where it becomes difficult for the AI to adapt to the will of the player. What I was saying is that it seems silly to me that if you order a unit across an open field and the enemy ambushes them the troops don't hit the dirt or run away before being shot to pieces which seems silly. BUT you raise a good point in that in some instances, the bayonet charge for example, you want your lads to charge across the open ground without stopping and the AI has no way of knowing the difference, I'd not thought of that till now. Just to throw it out there I remember TacOps has a setting in it for "Actions On" that you can set for your units. So you can say to a unit "Move Fast but if fired on go to ground" or "Move Fast but if fired on keep going". Something like that could go a long way to resolving some of the difficulties in the AI that Steve mentioned. Oh and I was RASigs not smelly infantry so charging MG's was a bit outside my job description.

I don't agree, Like Blackhand says setting the covered arc or many of the other things you can do to control a units fire is simply the act of the commander saying things like "Hold your fire until they leave the tress" or "Shoot the second tank to trap the first" all sorts of things that a typical commander might do, not God level at all. Sure the TacAI can come in with its own tuppence worth but I would have expected that it would take a fair bit for a unit to disobey a direct order, regardless of whether it makes sense or not to the unit concerned. Varied of course by experience, morale, leadership etc. I also think that units that lose their nerve and disobey orders would be more likely to NOT fire rather than open up.

The nub of the issue I guess is where does they player sit in the grand scheme of things. Are they an "on high" entity that seeks to nudge the pixeltruppen in the general direction of the overall plan OR are they representative of the different levels of command within the unit ? If it is the first one then a reasonably autonomous AI would be expected, you simply give general orders, "like move to here and defend". If it is the latter you would think that in this instance you have been in the position of the immediate commander of the AT team and have ordered them to move to the point and defend against threats in a given arc which in effect tells them not to engage the tank that is there when they get there. It has always been a bit odd to me that if you order your troops to run across an open field they will do so without hesitation and be gunned down without stopping, yet often they take matters into their own hands quite readily in contravention of a fairly clear and specific order when it is a bad idea to do so. As you rightly say there is a limit to the intelligence that can be programmed so that is where the player's intelligence comes in and to my mind should not be so readily overridden.

Yes it is called nominating their covered arc, i.e. ignore anything out side this arc unless it is about to kill you. I'd reckon that a tank that has been there since you got there and not moved in the interim doesn't fall into that "going to kill you" category.

You forgot the other bit "This surcharge has been introduced solely to cover the costs of the revised security arrangements required by the United States, and Australia Post does not profit from the surcharge." It is to cover US stuff not our stuff, so it is an additional cost of delivery it isn't a duty or fee or govt tax or anything like that. It's like it costs more to send something to Afghanistan than the US simply because it costs more to get it there. I know if I send something outside Auspost, say via DHL, there is no government fees associated with it at all, indeed I get a refund of GST. Auspost is also not a government organisation. It was privatised some years ago.

I think it is fair enough though that GaJ has said to the newly arrived team, "Look take up position here, see this tank it is abandoned so keep a look out of any others." and to have the team do just that. I mean as the commander this is what you would do and I agree that this does seem to be a bit of a fault in the AI plan that should be looked at. Particularly when the action that they decide on gets them killed. It would have been more realistic if the team had simply engaged nothing rather than fired willy nilly and get themselves shot. I just don't see that a panicked unit or unit that feels threatened should respond by opening fire, rather they should hide.

Yes I got all that, thought he had tested in game as well but it was Chad

I think it can only fire at aircraft ?

So what did you test of the game show? that there were lots of cas @ 100m? 100m does seem quite a long way from an explosion as small as a 75mm ground burst to be a real danger.

I thought about something like this once before. I wonder if the ultimate form of the game will be us simply talking to a number of highly advanced AI's who represent our subordinates?

If it were me my tanks would spend 20minutes idling at the board edge.

You can certainly use telephones in the attack, just lots of running about winding out and in wire! Of course 2 MAJOR issues for including phones are 1. Breaking the line with all the various things that can break it from enemy soldiers to wayward tanks 2. Fixing said breaks.

- ahhhhhh - the joys of a free trade agreement. No customs, no duty, no worries !

I can't see a way that CM can be altered to reflect bad commanders or bad cooperation between units, I mean that is what we do ! I guess you could drop unit quality to reflect the level of indecision in the troop unfamiliar with the operating environment.

This one is pretty good http://www.onwar.com/tanks/ Gives detailed run down of each type