ClarkWGriswold

Well, not really. Looks like there are two Americans still left alive. I wonder if Capt can convince one of those guys to jump up on that Panzer and drop a grenade down the hatch?

What's the distance between that tank crew and the bazooka teams? It doesn't look very far, and the commander has binoculars, but I'd think that unless those bazooka teams were moving (not sneaking or crawling) they'd be darn near invisible. edit: Just want to say, your screenshots are fantastic. It's pretty easy to get a feel for the overall position of the units, while also framing the subject matter well and cutting out stuff like the interface and empty space. edit2: I just thought about this. All of your tanks are unbuttoned, but none of them saw the bazookas. Do they all have cover arcs outside of the bazooka teams' positions?

I think I'm even more confused than I was before... Let's say that I have two PzIVs driving in a column across a field, with a separation of 20 meters between them. 700 meters directly ahead is an enemy M10. The M10 fires and takes out the #1 Panzer. In real life, line of sight and line of fire would BOTH be blocked from BOTH directions, whether or not Panzer #1 is smoking, because there is an object of considerable size between Panzer #2 and the M10. It sounds as though CMBN would treat LOS the same as real life, but that LOF would be as though there is no dead vehicle at all. What if the M10 were offset 10 degrees to the approaching Panzers? In the real world he would be able to see that there's a second tank back there, but wouldn't have much of a shot because only a very tiny portion of it would be visible. But in CMBN he would be able to shoot through the dead vehicle for a center-of-mass shot at the remaining PzIV. Correct? What if the situation was a Stug and a PzIV? The Stug gets hit and does not smoke. In the real world the PzIV would essentially be completely hull down to the M10. Obviously a huge advantage for the Panzer. But if I'm reading you correctly, you're saying that the M10 could just shoot *through* the Stug and kill the Panzer with no real penalty? Is that correct? Or are you saying that LOF is blocked for BOTH vehicles? Is this same limitation true of other objects like houses? Why can the TacAI handle a vehicle that is hull down behind a hill, but not behind some other object? What's the difference?

You might be right about dead vehicles not blocking incoming shots against armor. I've never played CMSF, so I have no idea. But as far as aiming at the center of mass of a vehicle when only a portion of the vehicle is visible, that doesn't make sense and doesn't seem to jive with what Steve said earlier in the thread. Hopefully he can chime in and clear things up. I hope that dead vehicles aren't "invisible" to anti-armor shots. That's one thing I always hated about CMBB and was hoping that 1:1 representation would fix.

I don't see how that can be true. Steve said earlier in this thread that when targeting hull down vehicles, the TacAI aims at the center of the turret, which is the only visible part. If the AI always aimed at the center of mass of the entire vehicle, hitting a hull down target would be virtually impossible, and would only happen if the gunner overestimated the distance and shot high. I think there was also mention of taking out vehicles that were partially obscured by buildings and other objects. In that case, aiming at the center of mass of the vehicle would simply end up shooting the building. That makes no sense at all!

I'm not sure how that would be possible, given what Steve has said about how the game engine handles projectiles and hits. We've been told that the game explicitly traces the line that a projectile takes and what, if anything, it intersects with. The only way a shot could hit an AFV that is behind another AFV is if the shell goes clean through the first and comes out the other side *or* if the rear vehicle is sticking out from behind the front vehicle. Anything that's hiding behind another object, whether that object is an armored vehicle, house, tree, fence, etc. should receive protection from that object (as well as concealment).

Yes, in theory. But considering that the turret of a tank weighs 4+ tons, it would take one hell of a bump! Considering the rather slow off road movement of most WWII tanks, it's extremely unlikely. Also, don't forget that the turret sits down inside of the hull almost as much as it protrudes out. I wouldn't be surprised at all if the center of gravity of the average tank turret was very near the height of the turret ring. Even some (most?) relatively modern tank designs use gravity retained turrets. Check out this Libyan tank that's had its turret blown off. That happened last week! It was hit by a missile of some type, but I'd imagine that 20+ rounds of HE inside a WWII tank has at least as much explosive power. http://exiledonline.com/wn-blog-day-3-blown-turrets-human-shields-thank-you-libya/

Tank turrets blowing off when ammo blew up was not exactly uncommon. In fact, Germany's leading tank ace had that happen to him. Vehicles that do more than simply open hatches and smoke will be nice to have eventually. I think Steve said they were hoping to do them in an expansion.

Why are soldiers who receive buddy aid removed from the battlefield? This is something that would happen after the battle in real life, and it doesn't seem to be for framerate issues since dead, non-buddy aided bodies still remain.

Ah, yes. Okay, that makes sense. For some reason I automatically assumed that you dismounted crew from a working tank. The Americans have been taking such a pounding the last few turns, I sorta forgot about the KO'd Panzers from the first few turns.

I'm not really clear on how Buddy Aid works. Can the German tanker who was injured be patched up and return to duty, or is this simply a matter of wounded vs KIA? Does buddy aid actually "aid" the person who's injured, or is it more about getting useful gear from the dead and wounded for use by those who are still alive and well?

Don't you think it was just as risky sending the crew as it would have been sending a whole tank? Perhaps even MORE risky? If one crew member dies (the driver, for instance), the tank is more or less useless. And the crew are not bulletproof and only have pistols, whereas a tank has two machine guns and armor. If there had been infantry in those woods instead of just crew, you could have essentially lost a tank (by loss of the whole crew) to nothing more than a single American with a Thompson. Something that has bugged me since I first saw screens of CM:BN, and that I kept hoping would get better before release, is the arms of the men. The shoulders and, especially, elbows just look huge and bulbous, and not at all natural. The overly-large size of these joints makes the arms look too long in proportion to the body (especially the upper arm). I'm sure this is a byproduct of having joints that can move without "stretching", but it still looks strange and unrealistic. Nothing to do with the combat itself or the strategy going on in the AAR, but I thought the above picture illustrates the problem well.

I really enjoy the CM:BN wallpapers featuring the different tanks. (found here http://battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=275&Itemid=458) In fact, I'm running the Sherman on one screen and the Panther on another. But they both have a mistake (as do the others). The word "LENGTH" is misspelled on every single one! I'm guessing that BFC could really use a sharp eyed person like myself to look over the product, so feel free to send me a test copy of CM:BN any time, guys. :cool:

I guess that would depend on where the round hit. I've seen lots of tank kills in historical footage. Some of them show a puff of dirt and debris and a neat hole when the shell hits, others shoot sparks, still others shoot flame out of the hatches and turret ring, and finally some blow up in what could best be described as a mushroom cloud. So, if EVERY hit blows up in a hollywood style explosion, then maybe it's overdone. But some of them? Seems realistic to me. We also need to keep in mind that we're seeing 1/30th (or thereabouts) of a second of gameplay. It's quite possible that we're seeing what only amounts to a brief flash when viewing things in motion.

I dunno about min time, but the current AAR is a Quick Battle, and according to the thread it's a one hour time limit game.

The 2010 MacBook Air is only a Core 2 Duo and M320 GPU. Don't expect miracles. It can run fairly recent FPS games at an okay clip, but not blazing fast. I'm sure it'll play, but with that GPU it's not going to be a great experience. Notice in gaming benchmarks that at low detail (even at fairly high res) it does okay, but once you turn up the detail the frame rate drops. Considering that Combat Mission makes use of a lot of high altitude views, looking down on a bunch of men and vehicles, it might get choppy. http://www.anandtech.com/show/3991/apples-2010-macbook-air-11-13inch-reviewed/10

Understood. I should have stated that differently. I've read through that entire thread and understand the facing of each soldier and limitations on their field of view. What I'm really curious about is how the game simulates someone seeing and identifying an enemy. There's been a lot of talk in this thread about center of mass targeting versus targeting a specific area, but before anything can be fired upon it has to be spotted. I think that's where the real meat is for me, because in reality units were often extremely difficult to spot. I can imagine a tank back in a treeline being virtually invisible until it shoots (and perhaps even after that). And beyond being hard to spot, ranges were determined by knowing the size of the object being shot at and how large it was in the sights. So, not only do I find this interesting from a game mechanics perspective, but I think it's a key consideration when a discussion about targeting a turret comes about. Targeting a side-on tank in full view is one thing, but how much more difficult is it to get an accurate distance when all you can see is the turret (hull down)? And how much harder is it to see just the turret in the first place, before you even have to worry about determining distance? I think these are important considerations, especially given that CMx2 doesn't use a probability model like CMx1 did (the very thing that people claimed gave weak turret vehicles a worse chance when hull down).

I'm not talking about a "chance to hit", I'm talking about a "chance to see". The game has some method of determining what an AI unit can and cannot see. That's what I'm trying to determine. How do you simulate eyes scanning terrain?

Thanks for the explanation on spotting, Steve. I'm curious, when you mention that you modify visual scanning for soft factors, do you take into account different optics and such. In other words, I've read many times that German optics were superior to U.S. optics because they used a more precise range finding method (the "triangle" sight versus the US's more simple crosshatched sight), had a wider field of view, etc. I could see this being simulated by simply saying if vehicle == American then chance to hit = chance to hit * .95 or something similar, but I guess it's also possible you do more in depth calculations. When AI units are actually spotting, how do you account for things like hull down, cover, etc.? You mention that The_Capt's tanks may not even see Bil's tanks because only the turrets are exposed. How does the computer actually "see"? Is it based upon the actual size of the object that is unobstructed? Is there any factor for movement, color (compared to surrounding objects), etc.? What I'm picturing in my head is an AI unit looking directly at a tank 700m away in clear, open ground. The unit would have X% chance to spot the vehicle based on the size of the vehicle (the number of pixels or square area it occupies) compared to the size of the overall scanned area. Now, if you put a bush in front of the vehicle, chance to spot goes down because less of the object is actually visible. If the vehicle is moving, chance to spot goes up even if exposed area remains the same. If the vehicle is green and the bush is green, chance to spot goes down, but if the vehicle is brown maybe it goes up? If the vehicle fires, chance to spot goes up, but it perhaps goes up more if it doesn't have a flash suppressor or doesn't use smokeless powder. And so on. Sorry if I'm asking you to explain a lot - and please don't feel obligated to do so - I'm just trying to get a feel for how you model what is essentially a human perception of the world around them. It seems to me to be quite a complex thing with many, many variables to account for. Lots of people can look "right at" a deer standing on the side of the road and not see it, but as soon as it moves "oh! There it is". If the deer were bright orange, most everyone would probably see it. How you simulate this type of thing is what I find interesting. Hopefully I'm not straying too far from the original topic...

I would really love to see some video too. It seems like BFC has been hesitant to put video out there, but now that the game is nearly done and the artwork is pretty much final, I'd think that we might finally have a chance of seeing some video.

New guy here. I'm also eagerly awaiting the Mac Steelbox version. I know of at least one other person who is, as well. And two or three other friends haven't preordered, but are planning to buy the Windows version when it's available. I think this game is going to be even more popular than CMBO/CMBB/CMAK (and rightly so). I foresee many sleepless nights in my future and can't wait to get my hands on this game.

I think JasonC did a fantastic job of explaining ballistics in laymans terms and illustrating how much errors in distance estimation can affect a shot. Being an avid shooter, I really love this kind of stuff. So, now that everyone more or less knows the basics of ballistics and shot trajectory, perhaps Steve can give us an idea of how pixeltruppen in the game spot and judge distance. I'm really curious how the AI handles this, especially if the tank is hull down or not fully visible (in trees, partially behind a building, etc). There was talk (controversy?) earlier about how being hull down is advantageous because there is simply less area to hit (even if the hull is has the thickest armor). In real life the advantages are multiple: Less area to be seen, less accurate range estimation if you are seen, and less area to hit if you are seen and properly ranged. So, how does the computer "see" targets? Is it done via the number of pixels that are visible to the AI from its position? How does movement affect this? If a unit is seen, how does the AI determine range?