ClarkWGriswold
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Posts posted by ClarkWGriswold
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Yes; though to be clear I'm pretty sure he meant next game family or later when he said this (i.e, we won't see this change until at least CM:Battle of the Bulge), and this is not something that we'll see in a patch or module update to CMBN.
I sincerely hope that is not the case. It's pretty disappointing to go from CMBB to CMBN and have much less control and much less realistic behavior when it comes to tanks and their capabilities of firing on the move. You would think that 10 years worth of progress would make this a non-issue.
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I went back and fixed part 3 to address the loop that somehow snuck in there during editing. All three parts are now up and all three are available to watch in 720p (which I suggest).
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
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One thing I'd like to add if anyone from BFC is listening:
Making movies and getting good screenshots would be much easier if we had a way to turn off or hide the interface. It takes up a large portion of the screen when capturing at 720p resolution. It seems like everything behind the UI is rendered anyway, so if it could be turned off we'd get a much bigger, better view for capturing images.
Ditto for the "Unit Lock" text when tabbed on a vehicle. It's pretty evident that you're locked onto a unit anyway. Being able to turn it off would make movie creation a little nicer.
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Final point, I wonder what the M3 drivers reaction was when ordered to draw fire away from the tanks!!
Well, I didn't actually tell him the "you're going to draw fire" part. I just said "That right flank isn't well defended and our boys are busy on the left. You run down there and hold the objective until the Shermans can back you up"!
I feel pretty bad for sending that guy to his death. I thought for sure he'd be safe behind that forest where I had him stop. Then, I figured he *might* get hit when he dashed out of the forest, but that the Stugs would be too slow turning to hit him, and they'd present broadside to the three Shermans. When the halftrack got hit, that plan went out the window and the three Shermans were on their own. But the Germans had the approach covered so well, and my smoke didn't go as planned, so my armor ended up out in the open taking fire from multiple directions. I felt really bad for getting Madden's whole crew killed. I felt even worse about Berger. He had the ONLY Allied kill of the entire skirmish, up until the last two minutes! When the Panther round hit his tank, my heart just sank.
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Glad that you enjoyed it! Sablove and his crew are definitely being recommended for recognition of service beyond the call of duty.Sablove for the Bronze Star! Fantastic AAR and a really simple and immersive way of commenting on the action, loved it!1. Were Stugs really able to shrug off multiple close range 76mm hits? I remember BF saying that people were surprised at how a 76mm could KO a Tiger, was their data so wrong in CMBO? I'd hate a new incarnation of the super-Stug thread that infested the CMBB board for some time.
I'm not sure how tough Stugs were in real life, but I suspect the game is very close to real world results. I don't know why it took so many hits for Berger to finally kill that one, but the ones on the hill had a BIG advantage by being up so high. Incoming shots were traveling in a trajectory that would be very likely to cause a ricochet. I will say that several times when Berger was engaging I thought to myself "There. That should do it!" only to have the Stug start moving again.
2. Still seems that KO'd crews are still too gung ho, I'd suspect they'd use any excuse to bail out, knowing death might arrive in seconds, after the first hit.Not sure I'd agree. I had two tank crews that I was able to get to the objective zone after their tanks had been killed. One of those two, the tank was already IN the zone when it was killed, so they didn't really have to go far. Only Olander's crew was able to "rally" and move forward following the destruction of their tank. All of the other crews panicked and ran (if they survived at all).
3. Seems to be an issue of shadows (Sablove's tank, ghost tracks on hull and dust guards and the Panther whose barrel's shadow seems to be striped.I'm not sure what causes this and was planning to post about it in the support section. It's REALLY annoying, and I'm running on a brand new machine. If you watch the video closely you'll see that about 50% of the time I have shadows turned off to hide this glitch. Sometimes they look okay, but most of they time they are striped like that and it's really, really ugly. Hopefully this is just a graphical issue that BFC can fix in a later patch.
Glad to hear the younger generation is enjoying it as well.(during the initial one sided exchanges, my 8 year old son kept muttering, "hit those damn Germans", given he has much loved German relatives, it shows the impact of the game!)
6. 1 to 1 representation might be sometimes less realistic that a ratio simulation, but boy does it grip you, I was rooting for Sablove and winced when his tank finally got hit.Yeah, I had several of those moments. When the crew member giving buddy aid gets nailed by the Panther's shell, I cringed. And when the ONE remaining crew member in Franco's tank (the co-driver, no less) managed to turn the turret and fire off a shell, I raised my hands in excitement... then promptly hung my head as his shot hit a tree and he took a fatal hit in retaliation.
ClarkWGriswold, thanks for all your efforts, much appreciated as I had a pretty intense day at work and am now chilled enough to do my 'homework', oh joy!p.s. Please can we have another soon, in the same format!
I'm not opposed to doing another, but it would have to be a real nail biter like this battle for me to consider it. Putting this one together took a LOT of man hours. For every minute of video I'd guesstimate I put in 2-3 hours of time capturing, editing, annotating, etc. And even then, I still managed to screw up and loop a portion of the third part. However, if I were to do it again I think I'd be a lot quicker, having learned a lot making this one.
The guy who was playing the Germans during this battle is already badgering me for a rematch, and I have another game going on that is nearly as exciting as this one. So... another video may be forthcoming. But don't hold your breath, because it'll take a lot of time to assemble if I do.
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Just finished watching part three. Really great stuff, Clark! I liked your reporting style and cinematics, and I was really surprised at the result, I honestly didn't think you could possibly get a victory when you had only one tank left, but not only did he do a great job flanking the remnants of the German forces, it also turned out they had much fewer active assets left than I had thought! Beautiful VAAR, thanks a lot!
P.S. You repeated a number of scenes in part 3, the sequence where your last tank takes out the Panther and Stug, to be exact. Might want to re-cut that vid.
Thanks for the comments. I really appreciate it. You're not the only one who didn't think I could get the win - because neither did I! When I was down to four Shermans (one with no gun) I thought I was screwed. When the Germans killed off two of my three operational tanks, I was ready to throw in the towel. But I decided to keep on fighting and wound up with a victory. I've never tasted one so sweet.
I realized after the upload that some scenes in part 3 got repeated. I originally uploaded the whole thing as one part, but forgot about the 15 minute maximum that Youtube has. So, I quickly chopped it into three parts
but must have mis-cut part 3. That'll teach me to edit at 2 am.
I'll re-edit tonight and upload a fixed third video without the extra footage. -
Part 3 available now:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMpMcGEb_-0
All three parts are available in 720p native. If you have a fast enough connection, I highly suggest watching in HD.
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I'm pretty sure sound contacts ARE in. At least, I think that's what Steve said before release. The strange thing is, we've got multiple people reporting (and backing up with screenshots) tanks "appearing" less than 50 feet from troops. Unless those troops have lost all their hearing from arty fire, I just don't see how that's possible.LOL yeah sound contacts are another issue, but I understand the reasoning for them not being in... -
Part 2 available now:
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Using smoke is something I wish I had done sooner. However, each tank only carries a few smoke shells (usually three) and I have no arty to fire smoke. So, using smoke is an option, but not something I could really do more than once or twice due to the lack of shells. I do use smoke later in the game. You'll see how that turns out...If I were you, I would use smoke shells regularly to close any flanked angle.. -
Against german stugs at this distance, it would be expected very bloody for US side.. Stugs must be flanked instead of head to head fight.
Understatement of the year! But flanking is much easier said than done when the map is wide open with so little cover. I was hoping the 76mm guns would have the punch to take on the Stugs at ~1500m, but as you'll see... they don't!
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This is a VAAR that I made of a game between myself and a friend. It's an armor-only matchup that takes place in June of '44. I used a computer suggested force mix (clicked a few times, but used it as suggested) of 2 tank platoons. I've got four 76mm Shermans and five 75mm Shermans (some with no radios), along with one halftrack carrying an HQ squad, and one Jeep. The Germans also have a computer picked force, but I think they're all set to veteran or crack. The extent of the German forces will be revealed throughout the AAR, just as it was to me.
The entire video lasts just over 30 minutes. This is part 1 of 3. My Internet connection is quite slow, so the other parts will be uploaded over the next couple of days.
Enjoy!
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I often find that things are exactly the opposite. I can't see anything through the trees, but the pixeltruppen seem to have x-ray vision that allows them to get a bead on AFVs through the most dense copse of trees.when are people going to figure out that seeing through a tree does not mean you are gareenteed a shot making it through the tree, it might or might not. it is like golf, take your chances.Of course, only my enemy's men have this gift. My own men all require Coke bottle glasses which seem to have been lost before the battle.
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Basically; yes. I have a large (2.5km x 2.5km), very complex map which is very sparsely populated with recon units. The file size is recockulous.
How big (file size) is the actual map? I'm wondering if the very first turn or two exchange the entire map so that both opponents have it. That could explain the ginormous file size.
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You could turn on Growl instead. That's what I do and it works great. Though the bouncing dock icon is a great suggestion.Suggestion ...When I run HtH, I "hide" it so it's not sitting open on the desktop. So, it appears on the dock along with other apps.
When a new chat or game arrives, is it possible to have it "bounce" up like other Mac applications do when a new even occurs that needs use attention?
It would save us from having to constantly be opening the HtH app just to see if there's any new moves or chats that have arrived.
Thanks..
Regards,
Doug
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It doesn't make sense to me that a bigger map would make for a bigger turn file. Only the number of units on the map (and what they can see or shoot at) should matter.
If you have one German tank and one American tank on a map, and they can see each other, it shouldn't matter if the map is tiny or giant. You're still only dealing with two action spots and two units - meaning a very limited amount of spotting and firing.
I can't test it from work, but if you put a small number of forces on the huge 4km X 4km map and the exact same forces on a tiny map, are the turn files of similar size? I would expect the bigger map to make larger turn files only on the very first turn, where the map info is exchanged.
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That is SO frustrating!You're going to have quite an adventure when you try to cancel your fire order after the FO's been killed! Apparently the mortar crew thinks the absent FO had just wandered off for a 'bathroom break' and will eventually return to spot the rounds they're firing.FO calls for fire.
FO dies.
Spotting rounds fall.
FO doesn't reply... guess he must want us to go ahead and fire for effect.
Platoon commander tries to radio mortar crew to cancel/change order.
"Sorry, Lieutenant, but we're kinda busy here shelling that spot over there that the now dead FO told us to 10 turns ago".
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Personally, I hope the modules are a long ways off. There's still a lot of stuff I'd like to see changed/fixed in the base game first, and there are still so many scenarios and maps I haven't even touched yet.
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Speaking anecdotally about the PBEM games I've played against a couple of friends, I've found that while the game results might show a decisive victory or total victory, the battles themselves are generally much more even and hard fought than the results would lead you to believe.
For example, I just finished a game where virtually my entire force was wiped out. I had one HQ unit that hadn't taken casualties, one Jeep crew, and one Sherman left at the end (along with a smattering of surviving tank crew members). All of my other armor (9 tanks and a halftrack) had been destroyed, and very few crew members survived. But I still won a total victory because I was able to destroy or disable enough of my opponent's forces that he could not drive my few men out of the victory location. He ended up having no choice but to surrender. A total victory for me, even though he had fewer losses in terms of vehicles and men.
An earlier game against the same opponent ended with me having three halftracks and a handful of engineers, while his entire force was wiped out. I estimate that I had 85% of my original forces KIA/WIA against his 99%. Even so, I won a total victory because I had a few guys on the VL and he had nothing left.
Two different games that I ended up "winning", even though my own forces were nearly wiped out and the battles themselves were very, very close.
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There are small arrows at the top of the screen that show the location (compass direction only) of each friendly and enemy unit. I think it might be helpful if those arrows were replaced with the unit icons, then had a "flagpole" running down to the actual location of the unit. That way if a unit was behind a hill, tree, house, etc. you could at least see that the flagpole disappears behind that object, and icons would never float above the view of the camera, since they're pinned to the top of the screen.
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If you CMSF dropboxes are fully of old files and you turn this option on, it will take a little while to run the first refresh, while it tidies up all those files. If you regret tidying them up, you should find them in your Trash/RecycleBin.
I haven't tried this new option yet, but if you guys are moving files to the recycle bin you might want to reconsider. Dropbox archives deleted files for, I think, 30 days. That's how I managed to recover a bunch of files for creation of an AAR. Moving the files to the recycle bin/trash might be a bunch of unnecessary activity that just eats up bandwidth and disk space.
Not sure how other users feel about this though, obviously.
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I wholeheartedly agree with this. However, I think the height of the floating icons is about 1,463rd on my list of usability issues.It's not arbitrary. It's about usability. Something that BFC needs to take lessons in.
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I'm eagerly looking forward to a stable new release for Mac, since the new "launch CMBN" feature is something I've really been hoping for. The H2HH utility is coming along very nicely in a short timespan.
Now, if BFC would just answer our prayers and provide a way to pass savegame and password as command line arguments...
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I do know that the pack-up time for these guns can be pretty long (the 76mm is 6.3 minutes!). I suppose the only way to know the gun is packing up and not just sitting there is the green crew action text in the bottom left. If that is the case, then the deploy/undeploy actions are more confusing than they need to be. If a gun is deployed (un-limbered) then the Deploy button should not be available. If a gun is being packed up due to being given a move order, it would be great if the UI showed that fact. Not a big deal for things that take 30 seconds, but for guns that take 6+ minutes you get no real feedback at all about what's happening.
I'll have to do some more testing tonight and see if simply waiting 7 or more minutes will allow the gun to move. Even so, the Deploy button needs to be addressed, IMO.
New VAAR: Darkest Before the Dawn
in Combat Mission Battle for Normandy
Posted
Edit: It seems I just can't win. I fixed (mostly) the loop in editing, but now the sound is off for the last several minutes. <sigh> It's just going to have to remain that way (at least until my OCD kicks in and prevents me from leaving it imperfect).