ClarkWGriswold

I'm currently in the middle of a PBEM game with American 76mm and 57mm AT guns as my primary defense. They worked well in their initial placement, but as the enemy has advanced I've found myself needing to shift their locations slightly to get a better view past trees and such. Unfortunately for me, my guns refuse to move. I've tried for turn after turn while my guns sit there, getting cut up by enemy tanks. Late last night my frustration level peaked and I setup a test scenario to try to figure out how the hell these things are supposed to work. After an hour of messing with trucks and towed guns, I *still* can't figure it out! Here's the problem: You've got a gun that's setup and deployed and you want it to move. Every other deployable unit in the game (machineguns, mortars) can simply be given a move order and it will pack up and move, then be able to re-deploy at the next waypoint (or some other waypoint down the line). AT guns apparently don't work this way. Perhaps they are supposed to, perhaps they are not... but they don't and it's confusing as hell. When I issue a move order to a deployed gun it WILL NOT MOVE. It can rotate, but not move. If issued a move order the gun will just sit there and the order will never be fulfilled. So, I figured you must have to un-deploy the gun first, then move it. This also doesn't work. Or maybe it does. I'm not sure because it's not intuitive or reliable. Here's a 57mm American AT gun. It's limbered (says so in the UI and the feet are together). You can plainly see that the "Deploy" action is not selected. I could easily move this gun anywhere I wanted, as long as it wasn't deployed. Here's a 76mm American AT gun. It's NOT limbered, it is deployed. However, the "Deploy" action is also not selected here. So, two guns in different states, but with the same action selected (or not selected, in this case). You can also see that the 76mm gun has a move order to the nearby truck. Even so, the gun sat for turn after turn without moving. I tried multiple combinations of deploy, then move. move, then deploy. move without deploying, etc. I never could get this gun to move OR attach to the truck. I had another identical gun that I was able to get to un-deploy and attach to a truck, but I honestly have no clue how I did it. And that really sucks in a time sensitive game where you can only issue orders once every minute. This shot shows the "embark" icon when clicking a truck with a gun selected. Just the sight of this leads the player to believe that the gun will attach to the truck without any further action. But, as I've said, it doesn't seem to work. So, can someone please explain how this is supposed to work? Are guns supposed to un-deploy and move when given a move order? If so, what conditions, if any, would prevent a gun from doing so (assuming no crew casualties). What effect, if any, is the deploy command supposed to do once the gun has already been deployed?

I've very rarely gotten kills with bazookas. Heck, I very rarely even get HITS, much less kills. One of my first games I hit a PzIV *three times* in the rear and he just kept on rolling like nothing happened. A game I'm playing now I hit a PzIV twice and he doesn't appear to have received any damage at all. However, it's not always bad. I've also seen one 200+ meter hit (amazing, considering that most of my men seem to miss from inside of 50m) and had one 2-man AT team take out a Panther's main gun with a hit. They paid for it with their lives, but that shot undoubtedly won me the scenario because that Panther would have otherwise rolled over the rest of my defense.

I would also like to see this. Most Mac programs (if they follow the UI conventions) allow you to close the main window while staying active in the dock (this would require adding an entry to the menu). It would be nice to be able to get rid of the window when not in use, especially now that we have the option for Growl notifications.

I've been using H2HH for Mac for a while now and it gets better with every revision. Adding Growl support was a stroke of genius. This program makes dealing with CMBN games (especially multiple, simultaneous games) so much simpler and easier.

I'm in total agreement. This is something that I would personally really, REALLY like to see happen. It would be awesome to be able to launch CMBN from h2hh and have it automatically load the proper save game and pass along the correct password. Frankly, I'm shocked that the CMx2 engine has been around for this many years without having this sort of functionality.

Reinstalled from scratch, re-downloaded and re-installed the Mac 1.01 patch, and now it's working okay. My setup zone is actually around the victory location instead of off in the far corner of the map, and I've got the fps meter (which is handy, I must say). Looks like this was just a case of the "old" 1.01 patch, even though I downloaded it well after all the links were supposedly updated.

Phil, I don't recall seeing the fps numbers, so my guess is that my patch isn't correct. I downloaded after it was supposedly updated, but have a feeling that I got the "old" 1.01 and not the "new" 1.01. Tonight when I get home I'm going to just wipe everything out and do a complete reinstall and fresh download of the patch from Atomicgamer. We'll see if that sorts things out.

That didn't happen in my case. I picked my forces and when it was time to deploy I was still stuck with that small blue setup zone on the opposite side of the map from the victory location. I'll try reloading multiple times, as suggested earlier, but I've already loaded this game twice and been stuck in the same predicament both times. I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't get the non-updated "updated" Mac 1.01 patch...

Ditto. I also went to the deployment phase and my setup zone was the blue area in the screenshot above. I'm on a Mac running 1.01. I thought all of these side-swapping problems had been solved, so I figured this was a map issue and not a problem with the defenders and attackers swapping setup zones.

Until now all of the Quick Battles I've played have been meeting engagements. Using random maps has meant that most of the time there are two or three victory locations, usually one near each player. However, my most recent game is another story. This time I chose an attack (Americans on Defense and the Germans on offense). This is the map that was chosen, with my setup zone shown in blue: Someone please tell me how in the hell I'm supposed to defend a victory location that is clear on the other side of the map. Additionally, let's say someone chooses, oh, some anti-tank guns for their defense (since Germans tend to, y'know, use tanks). What the heck kind of defense can I put up with that small of a setup zone? You certainly can't place any effective defense with a setup zone that small, and towing around a bunch of AT guns is probably not going to happen when you've got wide open lanes of fire that are just ripe for a Panther or Tiger to pick you off as you move. Is this seriously how quick battles on these maps are supposed to work, or is there some serious flaw here that was overlooked? I can't imagine that this scenario is going to be anything remotely resembling fun.

I'm sure this is easier said than done, but it would be nice if you could have the first two significant digits work, with hotfixes and such incrementing a third digit. ie: 1.1 Windows works with 1.1.1 Mac 1.1.3 Windows works with 1.1.6 Mac 1.2.X Windows works with 1.2.X Mac (but not necessarily with 1.1.X) etc. Having three (or more) versions of "v1.1" for the Mac is going to get confusing in a hurry, if it's not already. In any case, glad to hear that the next patch is coming. Any chance you're going to fix the (admittedly very minor) issue with "ALT-TAB switch to desktop" so that it correctly reads "CMD+TAB switch to desktop"? </threadjack>

They're more expensive, yes, but you certainly get what you pay for. Comparing a Lenovo to a MacBook Air is like comparing a Hyundai to a Mercedes. Both of them will get you from Point A to Point B, but one of them does it with luxury, style, and unparalleled quality. What other company would make a notebook out of a solid chunk of milled aluminum?

That's nothing. Two of my buddies just started a QB and one of them was able to place his units anywhere on the map. The setup zone was visible, but his units could be placed anywhere; victory locations, the enemy setup zone, etc. That made for an interesting first turn.

Even if there's no 3D map preview option, I think an overhead view of the map would be much more helpful. Showing me 100 yards of road and some trees doesn't really do much to let me know what the map actually looks like, how much tree coverage there is, how many buildings there are, how many victory locations, etc. I'd much, much rather have an overhead view that shows a good overview of the ENTIRE map than a pretty picture of one small section.

It's working fine for me because I'm still running Snow Leopard. I won't even consider upgrading to Lion when there are multiple people on here having issues and no confirmed fix.

CMBN works fine under Lion for you. Big difference. There are plenty of people having problems with the game under 10.7.

I complained about this same problem in another thread. I had a recent QB that only ended after a mutual cease-fire, despite the fact that my opponent had ONE man left alive (a crewman leftover from a destroyed halftrack, IIRC). In reality, his force had become completely ineffective at least 10 turns beforehand. I've also experienced the anguish of one or two hidden men denying me an objective, despite the fact that they had no chance against my well preserved, well armed forces. It's frustrating. I'd love to see a system that uses "front lines" or something similar, that can weigh the reach and effectiveness of each force. The further the attacker can push his front lines the more points he gets, and better the defender does at preventing the front line from moving forward, the more points he gets. Something along those lines. Of course, actually programming something like that would be non-trivial.

Were any of those hits against tank commanders? I don't remember any. Perhaps snipers are effective at standing infantry but not so good against TCs, prone men, etc. due to the way they target?

Half the time people are complaining that men shoot outside of their assigned cover arcs, the other half of the time people are complaining that their men should be shooting outside the cover arc for self preservation. You can't have it both ways. You specifically ordered your men to face one direction and shoot ONLY in that direction. What would have happened if you simply faced the shrek team the direction you wanted but didn't give them a cover arc? My guess is that they would have spotted the threat, turned, and taken it out. Next time don't use a cover arc. Problem solved.

That's another idea. There are lots of possibilities. But given how much the icons are used for interacting with units, they really need to be more informative. Right now they only tell you four things: 1) Which side the unit is on (American or German) 2) What the unit is (though, special units like engineers don't get their own icon) 3) Which units belong to the selected units group (but only when you click one of them. There's no way to see more than one group at a time) 3) Which units are routed/paniced or otherwise not able to be given orders. Ideally, I'd like to see the unit type, unit grouping, C2 status, suppression level, fitness level, morale, etc. You could even show something when a unit is low on ammo, immobilized, or otherwise ineffective (FOs who can no longer spot due to a dead radio man, for instance). I think it would be possible to show all of this information in an easy to view and non-overwhelming way if some time was put into it. You shouldn't have to click each and every unit to get this sort of information. Stuff like buttoned/unbuttoned I can understand (though, even that is not shown anywhere in the interface), but C2, suppression level, morale, etc. are so core to the game that they need to be conveyed to the player in a more direct way without having to hunt or dig for it. And there's a lot of wasted screen real estate that could be put to good use for this sort of stuff.

I also play WeGo and, honestly, can't even imagine playing a game this complex with this many commands in realtime. That sort of overwhelming clickfest is not at all attractive to me.

I think there's lots of options that would work. For me, personally, the key is that I should know if someone is under command or not without having to select the unit. If that means that the unit icon changes (perhaps changing colors or shapes) depending on command status, that would be just fine too. I don't really care if a unit is under command via radio, close view, long view, vocal only, etc., since the effect is basically the same. But I need to know at a glance if a unit is under command or not. Really, the more information we can tell about a unit without having to actually select the unit, the better. It would be really great if the unit icons could not only show command status, but morale, fitness, suppression, etc. You'd have to be careful not to make things too cluttered, but between different colors, shapes, sizes, outlines, etc. there are a lot of options. Many of them could probably be implemented without major changes to the game engine.

I really enjoy CMBN, but the patch hasn't really fixed any of my major gripes with the game. It's great that lots of the minor bugs and niggles have been fixed, but the stuff that bothers me about CMBN is much deeper and probably won't be addressed until CMx3. I hate, hate, hate the C&C system and really miss the red/black lines from CMx1. Keeping squads under command takes way too much micromanagement. The camera control is workable, but frustrating. The movement commands don't allow enough control over units (the whole hunt vs. move to contact thing). I still really enjoy the game and think it's light years ahead of CMBO/CMBB, but the complexity of managing my men and vehicles can often be grating. Because command bonuses/penalties seem to be so severe now, it's made even worse and can't simply be overlooked.

Can you give more details? What map? What force selection? Scenario or quick battle? There's not much to go on here for anyone else to try to replicate the problem.

This doesn't bode well...