ClarkWGriswold

That might be a work around, but this issue needs a FIX. I was bitten by this same problem last night. I called for an arty barrage (off map 81mm). Between the time I called the barrage and the time the spotting rounds finally started landing (8 minutes) my HQ unit took fire and had to be moved. A few spotting rounds came in at least 100m off target. I tried to get my spotter back to his original position, but that apparently didn't work, as just a turn or two later I heard "Roger. Firing for effect" and many of my men got hammered by my own artillery. If the spotter can't see the spotting rounds, FFE should never be called.

I've never seen anything that suggests BFC is modeling armor degradation. Do you have a source you can cite? Not saying you are incorrect, I just hadn't ever heard this was modeled and would love a confirmation.

This has absolutely nothing to do with an obsession. It has to do with results that do not seem to match the data that is available. If it makes you feel better, pretend that we're not looking at a Tiger but a Space Lobster crustacean-tank. Assume that a space lobster tank has 100mm frontal armor and 80mm side armor. You run a scenario and the side armor is ricocheting shots while the frontal armor is being penetrated at the same distance. And not just a few penetrations, but the majority of frontal shots penetrate. What would cause this? Is it a flaw in the armor? Is it a flaw in the test methodology? Is there an unknown factor not being accounted for? Is it a bug? THAT is what this is about, and it's not the first time someone has uncovered strange behavior through some fairly simple testing. Far better to bring up the issue and find out why it's working that way (and get it fixed if it's broken), than to resign yourself to the fact that something doesn't work the way it should (if, indeed, that is what's happening here).

This does appear to be something that only Steve can answer, but I would really like to hear that answer. Nobody is disputing that frontal shots from an M10 could kill a Tiger (given the right circumstances). Nobody is disputing that "lucky" shots should happen (hitting weak spots, hitting shot traps, etc). What IS in dispute here is the fact that frontal hits are penetrating the frontal armor more often than not, while side hits are constantly ricocheting - despite the fact that the frontal armor is supposedly thicker and more robust. My guess is that the front simply isn't angled steeply enough to "thicken" and cause ricochets, but I am unable to view the replays right now and confirm that. I wonder if using an extra long tracer graphic and a transparent explosion graphic would make it easier to see exactly where the M10 shells are hitting? Not sure if it would do much good, given what MikeyD has said about the resolution of the hits.

I think that "fine" and "big enough" are very subjective terms. I also find the UI to be too small on my machine (21.5" iMac). To alleviate the problem I've switched from running desktop resolution (1080p) to 720p instead.

That's great to hear. I think the first patch is going to address a whole host of issues people have been having. Seemingly minor stuff like this can make a big difference though.

Are you sure you were at 45 degrees? If you were slightly less angled, side shots would be more likely to ricochet and front shots would be less likely to - possibly explaining why the front shots penetrated. Another possibility: The armor on a Tiger (especially the front armor, where the coax MG, driver's view port, etc. are located) is not a uniform piece of steel. There are weak points and the penetrations may have been hitting those spots. It's too bad we don't have hit graphics, or you could see more clearly where the shots were landing to see if they were on known weak spots.

It would be great if someone could create an extra bright version of the movement squares, as was done with unit bases. Or, better yet, BFC could alter it in the stock game. That change alone might mitigate a lot of these types of questions. Probably not as big of a problem in CMSF, given the terrain. But with all of the grass, trees, hedges, etc. in CMBN, I often find the boxes to be difficult to see (just like the stock unit bases).

I'm not sure if anyone else has seen this too, but my PBEM password often gets rejected, even though it is typed 100% correctly, if I enter it too quickly. If I wait a few moments longer I can backspace and retype the exact same password (it doesn't use *'s, so it's easy to see that it's the same) and it works fine on the second try. I can reproduce this 100% of the time, so it's no fluke.

A "Cancel" button when you click the red button to finish your PBEM turn. It's way too easy to click that button when you meant to click something else in the UI. If you do, you get the dialog box to name your turn file and NO OTHER OPTION. If you clicked it on accident, you're stuck saving your turn prematurely, reopening the last PBEM file you received, and doing your moves all over again. I'd also really love to see a "show all cover arcs" button, since the only way to view cover arcs now is to select each and every unit individually.

I've found that most of the time squads will end up in the action spot that you order them to. However, sometimes squads come under fire during their movement, and one or two guys will go to ground. In these instances, the majority of the squad will end up where they're supposed to be but a couple of stragglers may wind up in an adjacent action spot or even further away.

I know exactly what the OP is talking about, and I've seen it too. It's very aggravating. I want to mortar a building several hundred meters away. The building is 1-2 stories and easily seen, but there's short hill between my unit and the building. Even though I can clearly see the building from my unit's position at camera level 1, because I can't see the ground the building is placed on I can't fire. I'm pretty sure that my guys would be able to see whether or not their mortars were hitting a building or not, regardless of whether the ground right next to the building is visible. Aggravating. Same thing with firing through smoke. My guys can't see to the ground through the smoke, so they can't fire into/through it. Even though I *know* there's a unit there that I could easily kill if I could just get my guys to blind fire into it. But no.

What info is it you can't seem to find? If you're not capable of reading the manual (or better yet, doing a keyword search since it's a digital document), then I'm not sure there's much more anyone here can do to help you. You might also want to look into printing items as black and white only if you don't want to use up expensive color cartridges to print a bunch of brown pages.

I'm not sure what you mean by "targeting scrolls the view" and "if you accidentally click (the view changes)". Pushing your mouse cursor to the edges of the screen scrolls the view. You can also scroll using WASD keys (if using the default key layout) or by clicking and moving the mouse (my preferred method). But targeting units for fire doesn't change the view, and neither does accidentally clicking. Clicking an open area will de-select whatever unit you had selected, but it doesn't change the view at all. If you accidentally click somewhere and deselect your unit you can always hit F12 to re-select it. Hit tab and you'll jump to the selected unit's location. I've also found the key for turning the camera 180* to be very helpful. I can select a unit, plot multiple waypoints, then turn the camera around to select units near the first. Ctl+click will jump you to a spot on the map, which can save a lot of time and scrolling. This isn't CMBO/CMBB/CMAK. It's a totally new game. I'm not a huge fan of the controls either. In fact, I think they're frustrating as hell. But with a little practice and some shortcut keys, it's at least workable. You basically have two choices: 1) Spend some time to get accustomed to the new system and work within its constraints, or 2) Don't play. I've chosen the former. <shrug> If you haven't already, I'd suggest using the alternative hotkeys instead of the defaults. It gives the game more of a CMx1 control style that everyone I know finds much preferable. While you're in there you can customize the keys to your own liking. I don't know that there's an easy way to do this. I certainly haven't found a way, and I know that other people have also had this issue and suggested someway to highlight man-sized holes in the bocage. Whether or not that suggestion will be implemented, I have no idea (but doubt it).

The triangles work whether or not the unit is on screen. As long as the unit would fall within your field of view, a triangle is shown. Also, I'm pretty sure enemy unit triangles show even when you have a friendly unit selected that can't see enemy units (enemy unit icons disappear if your currently selected unit cannot see them). A pdf version of the full game manual comes with the demo.

How would you pick a good spot to locate a unit in real life or in CMBB? Get down to ground level and look. The Target command shows pretty well what you can or can't see, but there are a lot of variations in the ground, unlike the CMx1 games. You might be able to see one spot, not see the spot 10 feet further, then see again 20 feet further than that, due to undulations in the terrain. Use the Target tool as a guide, but not the be-all, end-all of where you should place units. I don't know of any way to quickly get you back to a "favorite" map position and orientation, but just like in CMBO/CMBB you can hit Tab to jump to a unit and use the number keys to adjust camera height. I'd be more concerned about why you're scrolling all over the place when positioning units. Is this intentional or inadvertent?

Those triangles provide useful information (where your units and/or enemy units are located), but they are not clickable. Moving your mouse to the top of the screen scrolls by default. No way I'm aware of to change that (and I doubt anyone would really want to).

I setup a quick battle tonight with computer chosen forces. I was given six US mortar teams. I setup all six teams right next to an HQ (Identified as Platoon HQ). Even though all six teams are equidistant from a radio equipped HQ, only half of them are able to be called upon to fire by my FOs - the other half are not. Here are the unit designations and command status: 1) 3rd Section HQ (in visual and vocal command; Command chain listed as "Mortar platoon") 2) 2nd Section HQ (in visual and vocal command; Command chain listed as "Mortar platoon") 3) 1st Section HQ (in visual and vocal command; Command chain listed as "Mortar platoon") 4) 2nd Section HQ (Not in command; "Mortar platoon" is red X'd) 5) 1st Section HQ (Not in command; "Mortar platoon" is red X'd) 6) 3rd Section HQ (Not in command; "Mortar platoon" is red X'd) Here's what my FO sees: I can understand the three mortars being out of command and getting a penalty to their performance, but I do not understand why they're unavailable for use when they are literally right next to a unit (an HQ no less) with a radio. It's my understanding that these guys should all be available for use as long as any radio unit (HQ, Jeep, halftrack) is within visual/sound range. Is that not correct?

It always amazes me when someone brings up the heroic, unstoppable bailed tank crews that wreak havoc on infantry and mop up the enemy with nothing but pistols. I haven't had time to play a lot of CMBN yet, but in the games that I have played (including Barkmann's Corner as the Americans, twice), I have yet to see a crew that doesn't panic and run as soon as they bail. In fact, I've had more than one crew bail out of a perfectly fine vehicle (hit, but not damaged and certainly not destroyed). These crews not only bail out, but by the time they've become un-rattled their tank (that was perfectly fine when they got out, remember) is destroyed, because instead of firing back, reversing, popping smoke, etc. they got out and left their tank there to take multiple hits from whatever spooked them in the first place. Same thing goes double for Puma and Greyhound crews.

The problem is, even if you're talking about guns that use separate projectiles and powder charges (such as battleship guns), the current system still doesn't make sense because it uses up both types of rounds (HE and smoke) right away. If it were a case of only having X number of powder charges, then smoke shells shouldn't magically disappear when they haven't been fired and when there are still enough powder charges available to fire them.

That's not the case for 105mm and smaller guns, which also have this issue. I made a post about this in the tech support forum, reporting it as a bug. I was pointed here, and this thread is more active, so I'll put in my two cents: If the numbers represent "artillery time" then there's still a bug. If I have enough "artillery time" to fire 140 shells maximum and/or 40 shots of smoke, then my smoke shells should not start being depleted right away. They should remain until they are fired or until I fire my last 40 shots. The way that it works now is that the first 40 shots use up your smoke AND your HE, which doesn't jive with the concept of artillery time as it's being explained. If those numbers are really supposed to represent time or "availability" instead of number of shells, then assets should not be used on a first-out basis, but on a last-out basis. Also, the UI really needs to be changed to reflect the difference between off-map arty and everything else. For every other asset (including on-map mortars) those numbers represent the number of shells. Additionally, the manual needs to reflect the fact that you don't get what it explicitly tells you that you have available.

I think the OP was a little harsh in the way he stated it, but I agree with him in principle. Lots of people really dislike the ambient (background) sounds and/or find them distracting. The only way to turn off the ambient sounds without turning off ALL sounds is to mod the game - which you, Phil, explicitly say isn't guaranteed to work. This is something that goes all the way back to CMBO, where users are required to replace a sound file with a blank noise to fix the issue. It's great that we actually can fix the issue, but it would be really nice if some of these types of things were available for control within the game, in the same way that resolution is user selectable. I know that the answer to this is going to be the same as it is for pretty much every request: We don't have enough time to do it all. But I'm just sayin', a lot of users would probably appreciate this functionality, and it doesn't appear to this admitted layman to be a huge deal to implement. My $0.02.

The only things that really bother me are the shimmery, strange looking shadows and the LOD pop-up. The former is only really bothersome at pretty high camera heights, and the latter only really bugs me when I notice the grass or flowers growing in a circle away from the camera, or roads that look like they suddenly change to big, flat polygons 100 meters ahead. Other than those two issues, I've got no real gripes. I think the game looks pretty damn good. The models are beautiful (though the soldiers' arms are kinda funky) and the skins look great, right out of the box.

My steelbox arrived undamaged, but given how they were packed (a simple padded envelope) I had a feeling the forums would be full of people who'd received damaged goods. I was kinda shocked that they weren't shipped in Amazon-style cardboard wraps. That sort of packaging probably wouldn't have prevented a lot of these issues.

So, you're telling me that if I have two companies of men on screen, I should manually have to keep track of what each and every squad is? Honestly, that's absurd. If that's the case, why do HQ units have their own icon? Why do AT teams have their own icon? Why do each of the different vehicle types have their own icons? If the icons are just there to give you something to click on, BFC could have easily made all of the units use a single icon and saved a lot of work. Obviously, distinguishing units is important enough that they spent the time and energy to put in specific FO icons, HQ icons, and so on. So why not distinguish engineers and ammo bearer teams? Saying "just click each individual unit and be happy" is, frankly, a pretty crappy response to a legitimate concern. Especially one that has been halfway addressed by the inclusion of a dozen different unit type icons already.