MengJiao
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Posts posted by MengJiao
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HEY, I am not knocking that a person can make the AI into a good competitor.
I'm sure human players are much better competition, but I'm backing off of making big committments to fixed amounts of gaming time. I have one guy I play PBEM with and he's as irregular as I am and these days we are playing WitPAE.
I should say, not from a competitive angle, but from the point of view of pure entertainment, CMBN provides a lot of things such as the map editor and the AI tools that can repay 10 minutes of idle fiddling with hours of pleasantly gut-wrenching horror.
Anyway, I don't understand taking a negative view of CMBN. It takes a classic and yet never-before-well-simulated topic (that's great in itself) and gives an elegant play experience to go with it. The editor is as flexible and comprehensive as any I've ever seen and the results can be surprising and enlightening. What more can you ask for in a game?
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But they should realize no AI is up to par if they are going to play the same scenario over and over again.
I think the AI in CMBN is pretty good if you give it something to work with.
If find the AI does fine with formations about the size of a reinforced company and these formations need to be given pretty explicit orders that don't leave them wandering over large distances between objectives, artillery support, room to manoeuver and a range of possible plans so you can't read them right away.
On a broad front with battalion-plus forces clashing in mixed terrain, playing in real time, there are moments when even the AI you've set up yourself can toss you some dynamically worrisome situations.
I steadily compexify the solo scenarios I work on so I sometimes get hit by old plans I've forgotten about.
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For the life of me I cannot understand why people play games solo.* Ok PBEM takes longer but it does mean that two brains are involved. Solo play is a sort of necrophilia where you rely on the final twitches of a departed intelligence whereas you could be having a much more interesting/testing time wrestling against another live brain.
*Okay for getting the hang of the system
I play most games solo. I work on getting the AI to do sensible things.
It's really more like fine carpentry than necrophilia, I think. I know nothing about either, but that's my take.
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Forumites may get a jolt of perspective from this amusing column: Ignorance is Bliss, by Tim Stone.
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/06/20/heavily-engaged-ignorance-is-bliss/#more-62713
It's odd that "historical knowledge" is assumed to apply only to the history of objects simulated in games and not to games themselves. Given that, its no wonder the graph hits a sweet spot at moderate knowledge. If you include a knowledge of the history of games, there's a trend toward the pleasure end of the spectrum that goes up rendering more knowledge more pleasurable.
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I shudder to think how you can handle an entire battalion in realtime...
It can be pretty horrible. I've gotten used to having Company C massacred because I often forget about them right after I move them up into spotting range of the enemy.
BOOM BOOM BOOM
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#3 is don't care if they win but yet they care on what they did to win or not?
That's like not caring about success, but caring about the measurements towards that success. It's like an incorporeal entity caring about its high blood pressure and diet. It's like a kid's sport where everyone is given a trophy at the end. It's like mastering another language, yet never visiting the country that utilizes it.
I think I'm a #3.
It's like being too proud to fight as Woodrow always used to say.
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What kind of scenario you like to mostly play? What kind of scenario is your dream come true?
I'm currently thinking making new scenarios and hope to narrow down what type of scenarios people like to play.
I build my own. I tried making small scenarios, but since I play against my own AI (so to speak), it seems like the AI does better with more to work with...so scenarios have gotten steadily bigger. Within the overall RT mayhem, I find some interesting situations and work with those. For a long time it was C Company that always seemed to be in trouble, but now my sympathies are with PZKWIVs. Man, they have a tough life. So I'm building "ArmorAdventure" scenarios 2.2 km deep and 1.4 km wide with many micro environments where the delicate, but marvelous mechanisms of the PZKWIV can thrive.
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German operational handling had its last master performance in southern Russian in early 1943, and even that was only recovering from being outplayed operationally over the previous six months. And for the whole remainder of the war, that operational direction, as well as the overall strategic direction, was god-awful. On every front. It is no exaggeration to say a reasonably intelligent boy of 12 could have done better. Fact.
Impressive! And quite true. I'm re-reading Blumenson's account of Kluge trying to get SS General Hauser to make at least a few sensible moves during the Cobra breakout. You have to sympathize with Kluge a little at that point.
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I say that there are four types of CM player.
1/ The type that don't care if they win and don't care how they do it.
2/ The type that do care if they win and don't care how they do it.
3/ The type that don't care if they win and do care how they do it.
4/ The type that do care if they win and do care how they do it.
So you can either be a don't don't, a do don't, a don't do or a do do ?...........i'm a do do, what are you ?
I only play against the AI in scenarios I design myself so I'd like to win, but not in a way that exploits the AI's big blind spots.
I'm currently working on "ArmorAdventure" scenarios, where there is a big, pretty even meeting engagement and I follow the fortunes of a few PZKWIV tanks pretty closely. Why the PZKWIV, you're wondering? Because its not particularly capable and my RT manoeuvering it is pretty crucial to its survival and effectiveness.
When you're down in the weeds with a hapless tank, the AI seems pretty threatening.
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Is the barrel of a traversing tank gun blocked by obstructions, natural or man made, in CMBN? Why is the Panther better than the Tiger, whose side protection would be more of an advantage in the terrain, is it a weight issue?
It's more of a context Issue. Since the US didn't run into any Tigers in Normandy, they are more of a (almost literal?) hors d'oeuvre than a serious German tank in this particular game. Other than that, a Tiger might well be better than the Panther in bocage.
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Is any of this evidenced in CMBN?
The Panther is by far the best German tank in CMBN. The Tiger is good for dramatic contrast, but for serious battles you need the Panther. The PZKw IV is clearly obsolete in CMBN.
However, the Panther loses most of its advantages over the US tanks and TDs in even moderately rough terrain. It still will be relatively dangerous picking things off from good positions, but in moving through more cut up terrain and villages, it becomes just another target (like any tank) -- no worse, but not much better either.
This at least seems historical, if not very exciting. For excitement I prefer the Sherman or the Tiger or the M10 or even the STGIII.
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Another odd one is that you cannot order a unit to dismount or otherwise exit a vehicle and deploy its mg/mortar in the same turn, at least not AFAICT.
Wow. In RT, that all happens pretty fast. Stop. Dismount. Deploy. Takes about 10 seconds.
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Smaller ATG's can be pushed around in the game. It takes a looong time tho.
It can work quite well though. One thing I've learned is that (maybe its just me), you get more out of your 57mm guns if you keep them hooked up with the trucks until the situation develops.
Once, long ago (well a couple of weeks ago), I stalked a Panther with a 57mm and it all turned out okay. The truck got the gun close. The Gun was detached and crossed a small field, unlimbered and I put it on area fire at the back of a Panther (it didn't seem like they would actually spot the tank through the hedge, but area fire worked for some reason). 19 shots later the Panther blew up.
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I think it may have to do with reaction time.I have noticed from time to time when a guy with an MG pulls a pistol it is almost as if they were suprised and did a quick draw type of thing rather then taking the time to bring an MG to bear.
It's true. I learned this playing the Tobruk mod of Red Orchestra: if you were an Australian, the quickest way to aquire an MG42 was to fix your bayonet, take a quick loop around the town square and come from the far side to an alley where the Germans would run up to this one house that acted like a magnet for Germans with machine guns. Soon a German with a machine gun would come along, heading for the back door to his favorite house. You would step out right in front of him (much easier to hit a bayonet target that way) and he would do this dance while he looked for the pistol button: binoculars? Hat? Jump? Ah pistol! Too late! You'd eviscerate him and take his machine gun. Run down the hill, shoot off your 3 drums and acquire a an SMG and live like a King in Jerryland. All thanks to the superior speed of the Bayonet over the pistol button.
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...that I will spend hours and hours with this game. Please post your "it"-moment.
For me: Reaching the top of the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc, soldiers scurrying back and forth for cover, bullits flying everwhere - all hell breaking loose. One of my all time gaming moments.
I liked CMSF and cmBB and cmAK, so my it-moment was as soon as I learned CMBN was being worked on.
But still CMBN was surprisingly good in a visceral way as I first noted when in the Vierville scenario, I had about 100 paratroopers storm the town with the German mortar fire landing behind them. All those little guys seemed to know where they were going. There was a very different feel to it even in comparision with say the Total War battles.
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Even when my unit sees the enemy, in CMSF I often order my Syrian infantry to area fire on a building to make them fire their RPG's, which can cause a lot of casualties.
Good tip. I was wondering how to get an infantry squad to shoot off everything it could. I was planning on pulling them out of line since they were getting low on rifle ammo, but still had all their bazooka HE.
In the end I left them in line and things turned out okay anyway since the Germans mostly broke. By the way, the squad was in a trench and it seemed to protect them pretty well against MG and rifle fire.
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To expand a little: I started a QB with almost everything in random, Strict Rarity and when I entered the Setup, I found that I had no troops.
The Savegame seemed to me eloquent enough, avoiding me to write a post in bad English.
The cpu must have encountered that rare state where it picks something so rare that it doesn't exist at all in the frequentist world.
You need a Bayesian Prior.
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I don't think the Panther was as expensive as a lot of people seem to think. Hard numbers are difficult to come by, by according to this website the Panther cost only slightly more than the Sherman.
Are the man-hours recalculated for slave labor?
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Total realism was basically collection of skins and edited text files. Making Cavalry more realistic involved changing text values for speed, morale etc. Total War games are insanely tweak able/modable. I loved Rome:TR, but I don't think you can do anything close to what you can do with CMx2 games just judging by the mods that are available.
IIRC from CMx1, the M10 and 76mm Sherman had the same main gun. I have noticed M10s to be a good counter to German armor, but haven't had much exp with 76mm Shermans. Do they perform similar to M10's in the AT role in game?
I think the 3-inch ATG and the M10 gun are the same, but I think the 76mm on the Sherman is not quite as powerful. Kind of like the underpowered 88mm on the Tiger I. Anyway, the Sherman is so good for suppression and flanking that I tend to use even the 76mm Shermans more or less like 75mm Shermans. The 76mm Sherman may be almost as good as the M10 at a good range against Panthers, but I just tend not to use it that way.
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I have not seen it anywhere on a thread so I was wondering if anyone knew why the dead disappear.
1. In terms of realism its not great. After all a pile of bodies does help identify the interesting areas of the battlefield
2. When I look at a unit on the GUI I have very large icons of the weapons and even wounded weapons. Why not show me weapons in red so I can instantly gauge how the unit is suffering/suffered and what my guess is to its morale state.
Guessing a US units original strength is not too difficult but I do not want to have to memorise all the various German units and their original strength.
I like seeing only the unplundered dead. It's like having pirate-eye vision or something.
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This is a funny turn of the thread. Before we go further down this road, could we please post the turret rotatation rates - as they actually were - not as they were erroneously reported by early wartime intel.
I think that would be interesting to some posters.
Well, if we include the human element, the Panther commander also has to let the driver know to rev up the engine to get the turret hydraulics pumped up to turn the turret. So add 20 seconds for that for an average crew and the commander may usually skip that step and use the idle speed travers. So the Average Panther, turning say 60 degrees at idle (no order to the driver) would get on target in say 15 +30 seconds or around 45 seconds. With better crew quality that would go to say 20 seconds and with worse 60 seconds (including orders to the driver). Shermans would be about 5-55 seconds faster (no need to say anything to the driver and the gunner can already see the target area).
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Agreed. A little more humanity in the process would be nice, not necessarily crucial. It is not at all unusual for a tank to rotate, elevate simultaneously then lick a shot the very same moment it arrives in place. No pause to confirm, no adjustments, just whirr-vzzzt-kaboom! Again and again and again I see it, and it feels phony.
It seems like Shermans should be really fast in getting the gun on target. The commander gives the range and angle and the gunner already has the target in his periscope. Other tanks should be somewhat slower to get the gun onto a new target. Around 30 seconds for a Panther, for example, just for the gunner to get his sight on the target in the non-ergonomic environment of the Panther.
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If as an American commander in the game you want to duplicate these realities (not saying the game is good at it, or not - just haven't tried it enough to know) then (1) take M10 tank destroyers (2) use them with supporting arms that spot the critters first (3) let them come to you whenever possible (4) you want initial LOS to be oh about 5 feet, but anything under 200 yards will do just fine (5) mutual hull down to hit their turret (6) strip and button them with acres of artillery fire (7) the previous also let's bazookas and other lesser things go to work on their flanks, but that's just supplemental - rely on TDs.
The M10s work well to knock out Panthers. You don't even have to be
too fancy. One key element is to deploy any anti Panther defense in a as long a line as possible athwart their axis of advance so that you get flank shots as the Panthers are fired on from different angles. With a long line of M10s and some artillery to keep the Panthers from spotting too much, the M10s can knock out say 20-30 percent of the attacking Panthers at 600-700 meters and not suffer too badly in return.
If you are attacking, in some ways it is even easier since you can use artillery, smoke etc. to suppress and overwhelm and punch through on a narrow front and then get quickly on the Panthers' flanks. Of course this can go wrong, but it usually works if you have a wide enough front and lots of artillery and plenty of shermans and M10s. Shermans actually seem pretty good at that kind of narrow penetration move and once you have the Panthers from a wide range of angles and you keep up all kinds of suppressive fire, the Panthers get destroyed pretty fast.
But, the M10s are definitely the best anti-Panther weapons most of the time, if they are reasonably well supported and reasonably well positioned.
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+1
But one notices that even soldiers in foxholes can fire through hedges with the the grey LOS line.
Better yet, it would be cool if the trenches could be moved up right to hedge. Now they can't. But such a position becomes, one imagines, nearly impregnable, requiring intense arty to move them out. But the Germans apparently did fortify to this level on occasion.
Maybe insert a bunker in a hedge (ie run a hedge, leave a gap, insert a bunker in the gap)?
New Unit for Scenario Design: Ad-Hoc Riflemen?
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
In a possibly unrelated note: I built some Free French Irregulars using a Wehrmach unit. Some way of mixing and matching weapons in a squad might have helped with that.