ClarkWGriswold

I agree 100% I specifically asked about this before the game came out and was assured there was a tutorial. Well, that's not really true. There's a "beginners scenario", but the only tutorial is in the manual, and that tutorial doesn't work with the demo anyway. My best friend is a very avid gamer and WWII buff and he gave up on CMBN after the first 10 minutes. Only after I went to his house, changed to the alternate key layout, and walked him through how to play and interpret the UI did he bother to give it a second try. This game is hugely complex and the UI makes a lot of things difficult to understand. On top of that, the way you interact with the game (mouse and camera controls) are not really intuitive and don't follow conventions of any game that's come before. Even guys that played CMx1 for 10 years can't figure out half of the stuff in this game. New users really need a *walkthrough tutorial*. Something that shows them "click here and this is what happens", while walking them through winning a scenario. Unfortunately, I highly doubt we'll ever see such a thing, given the manpower constraints of BFC. I think this game would be more people's cup of tea if they could get past the incredibly confusing and frustrating interface.

The fact that they do not block line of sight or line of fire. Once a vehicle is dead, you can see it on the battlefield, but it's not actually there as far as vehicle-to-vehicle combat is concerned. If I have two tanks, one behind the other, then you kill the first one - your tank and my remaining tank can shoot at each other as though the dead tank is not there at all. Rounds will pass right through it. The only exception to this is if the dead tank is brewed up, in which case the smoke blocks line of sight.

I've seen nothing so far to indicate that is the case. Until we hear definitively from BFC, there's no reason to believe this is slated to be fixed (though I certainly hope it is).

That would sure seem like a safe assumption, since your vehicles are stationary and the enemy is moving. Additionally, if you were on a reverse slope you were likely hull down when they came into view. Seems very strange that you didn't get off the first shots. If it weren't for the uncanny ability of CMBN tanks to fire on the move, things would have probably turned out a lot differently.

I did some tests tonight, lining up halftracks and Shermans side by side. The vehicles were placed 12 deep, spanning a distance of about 100 meters or so (basically, one vehicle per action spot sized area). I then had Panthers shoot from a distance of about 130 meters away from the closest vehicle. Shots penetrated the first Sherman and killed the second often, but not always. Panthers shooting at halftracks killed up to 7 vehicles with a single shot (this test was more difficult, because you can't force halftrack drivers to bail out, so they start moving before the tanks fire). A single shot penetrating 7 halftracks seems pretty far fetched to me, but knowing that it only goes through a single tank at most (kills a second, but doesn't pass clean through) is acceptable, I think. Overblown from what we'd see in the real world, for sure... but still acceptable. At this point, I think some of the other wonky stuff about targeting is much lower hanging fruit that will have a greater impact on realism and gameplay (most notably, shooting through dead vehicles).

In CMx1 you couldn't deploy turn 1 arty in meeting engagements, only in attacks and assaults. Has this changed in CMBN?

Move tires out soldiers much less quickly than Quick does. It's not a good command to use for guys on the front line, but for men in the back (especially men carrying heavy equipment like mortars and MGs) it can be very useful.

Very nice! It's a shame that we have to worry about stuff like this, though. You would think the blast command would give roughly the same results regardless of how you plot the actual blast.

Sorry, Bowlie. I somehow missed your comment. I think that regardless of whether or not the "see through" tanks are causing this problem, that behavior is going to have to be changed. I'd much rather have dead vehicles block LOF and LOS than have them block neither one. Just treat every dead vehicle as though it's smoking (blocks LOS) and keep dead vehicles "solid" (blocks LOF) and I think a lot of these strange issues and unrealistic results would go away. Sure, there would be some new strange things that would happen (tanks that look like they should have LOS not being able to see past a dead vehicle, for instance), but I think they would be less of an issue than the current situation, and would probably give more realistic results and be more intuitive at the same time.

My point is that through and through penetration of the target would be nigh impossible in most of the situations we're seeing it. Explosive AP shells would fragment long before making it completely through two armored vehicles. Even solid kinetic rounds would be unlikely to go completely through a tank and continue out the other side with NO deflection at all. Something isn't right. Vehicles becoming "invisible" to the shell might explain it. Shells not modeling explosive detonations might explain it. There are lots of things that could be the cause, but I really don't think this behavior is realistic.

I don't think anybody is questioning the accuracy of the guns themselves (especially the Tiger and Panther guns, with their flat trajectories). The problem is the accuracy of the human firing the gun, when that human is on a moving, vibrating, bumpy platform. Imagine how hard it would be to sight in a target using a little eyepiece, rotate the turret to the correct angle using foot pedals, raise the barrel to the correct elevation, etc. while someone else is driving the tank (most likely in a direction other than the one the barrel is pointing) hitting bumps, varying speed, etc. The chances of getting off a shot under those conditions is very slim, even with a very close and stationary target. With targets 500 - 1500 meters away and moving.... no way you could make a shot like that. If you could, they wouldn't have bothered with gyrostabilized guns, computer range finding, etc. that are found in modern tanks.

The perfect argument why tanks should not be firing on the move in the first place. Nice work with doing these tests. It's nice to see that actual changes in the mesh of the terrain cause aiming problems. However, it just seems to underscore the fact that tanks shouldn't be shooting on the move anyway, certainly not in rough terrain or at anything other than very close distances. What sort of hit percentages did you see when firing on the move over grass and dirt? I wish I had the game here at work, because I'd also love to try firing on the move while traveling laterally to the target. Firing while approaching the target is one thing, but firing while moving sideways would be an incredibly difficult shot for any WWII tank to make, but I'd wager that the tanks in CMBN easily score hits after their first or second shot.

But you can only do that if you know exactly where the enemy units are (or that there are enemy units there at all). With the old CMx1 Hunt functionality, you could ensure that your tank stopped as soon as it spotted the enemy, fired, then continued on its way. Often, this would allow you to get off the first shot before the enemy could target you. If you try to do that with waypoints and pauses you very well might pull right into the line of enemy fire, then stop, making your AFV a prime target.

I wonder if this behavior has something to do with the way vehicles are treated when knocked out? The way the game works, KO'd vehicles are basically "ghosts" that can be shot through with no effects. This was done to address problems with the TacAI firing round after round into a dead vehicle, trying to hit a live vehicle behind it. To fix the problem, BFC made dead vehicles so that AFVs can shoot through them as though they aren't there. This is why we see, for example, the Panther in Barkmann's Corner shooting through three dead Shermans and killing the live one behind them. I get the feeling that perhaps this behavior is having unintended consequences in these situations as well: The AP round hits vehicle #1 and kills it. Vehicle #1 is now dead, so the game treats it as though it's not even there. The AP round continues out the back of the vehicle, not impacting anything on its way out. The AP round hits vehicle #2. If vehicle #2 is immediately KO'd, then the whole thing starts over and the round continues out the back of the 2nd vehicle. If any of the vehicles in the sequence aren't immediately KO'd (just crew casualties or whatever), then the round may be contained inside that vehicle since the game is not treating it as a dead "ghost" vehicle. No idea if this is actually what's happening, but it seems like a plausible possibility. At the very least, it seems as though explosive AP rounds are being treated like solid, kinetic energy rounds. There doesn't seem to be any fragmenting once a round hits an object. Even if the "invisible" dead vehicle behavior isn't what's causing this problem, it should probably be changed anyway.

Not to mention the fact that the game designers have basically said that using covered arcs should almost never be necessary, and that we're better off not using them and allowing the TacAI to do its job. I'll add my name to the pool of guys who don't like the new system. Hunt is basically Move to Contact and there is no replacement for the CMx1 version of Hunt. This is basically made up for by the fact that tanks can now inexplicably make unrealistically good shots while on the move. If BFC fixes (I think most people agree that it's broken) the uncanny ability to fire while moving, they're also going to have to address the fact that the movement commands don't force/allow vehicles to stop, fire, then continue.

I concur. I flew on Aluminum Overcast a few years ago. Some of the best money I ever spent, and I've never once regretted it. It really is a once in a lifetime experience that I'll never, ever forget.

The first post in this thread details a Tiger spotting targets at 1500 meters without optics. That's a long, long way off to see something without magnification. Especially given that a Panther tested in the exact same circumstances can't see the targets. If we're to believe that the Tigers spotting targets at 1500 meters, and killing targets at 1000 meters - all without the aid of optics - is simply because they're looking through vision slits and periscopes.... then why can't the Panther do the same?

BFC doesn't have the time or resources to program it to be otherwise. There's a difference. Not really. Gunners in the game always aim at center of mass, and the turret is not center of mass. The only way you'll ever get a turret hit is blind luck or a bad shot. At these sorts of ranges, turret hits happening after the first shot or two is extremely unlikely, because factors like wind, incorrect range estimation, projectile drop, etc. have virtually no variation on where the round lands. Bullpucky. When you've got seconds to get off a shot that you aim for center of mass because it's the most likely way to get a hit. But when you're ambushing or very close to a defenseless vehicle, you pick your shot. Relying on anecdotal evidence is always risky, but there are simply too many first hand accounts of tank gunners aiming for weak points (when the situation allowed for it) to say that it didn't happen. This bit I'll actually agree with you on. There is simply no easy way to design an AI to know when to take the first shot it can get versus picking a tougher, but more likely to kill shot. There are too many variables and we'd likely end up with behavior that's just as bad, but in different ways.

I'm fairly sure that "optics" only means main gun optics. Crew should still be able to spot using view slits and cupola. However, we're talking a distance of 1500m in this test. At that sort of range, even a tank is visually very small. It seems unlikely that someone would be able to see a stationary vehicle at that distance without binoculars or some sort of magnification. I highly doubt that the crew of a tank with damaged optics would be able to spot an enemy vehicle at that sort of range without unbuttoning and spotting with binoculars.

screen recorder for OSX that works with CMBN? Maybe you missed this part?

Quicktime has screen recording capabilities built right in. You just need to make two small changes for perfect capture. Pipe your headphone-out to your mic-in using a double ended cable, and change the settings for audio capture inside Quicktime's preferences. You can import the video right into iMovie and edit with titles, transitions, etc. Works like a charm. I had no problem capturing 1080p video on my new iMac. Check out to see an example. It took less than a half hour to make, including capture, editing, etc. Easy peasy.

I agree that tanks seem to be way too accurate firing on the move. From what I have read, shooting on the move was only really done when firing harassing fire or shooting at large targets, such as groups of infantry. For one tank to shoot at another from over 500m while moving would be very rare in real life. For that shot to actually hit would be unheard of. Seems as though our Panzers and Shermans have inherited their optics and computer stabilizers from their Leopard and Abrams progeny.

I've seen lots of surrendering guys get killed, but always because they were caught in the middle of a firefight or caught a stray round. Not long after I took this video there was a German surrendering between two hedgerows. I had a squad taking cover behind one, and the Germans had a squad behind the other. This poor bloke got cut down by his own men as they were shooting at my guys. But, this was the first time I'd ever seen a troop throw up his hands, say "I surrender!", then get BLOWN AWAY. It would have been interesting to see if it had been a rifle or a grenade, but when it's a tank from point blank range... wow.

My American tank crew begs to differ. Not that I approve of killing surrendering troops (even dirty rotten Nazis), but I just had to capture this for posterity.

I sure as heck don't. If they're trying to simulate X amount of "fire time", then whichever round you are not using at the time should not deplete. If you have 40 smoke rounds available, they should not start disappearing until you've fired off all but 39 of your HE rounds (leaving 39 HE and 39 smoke). The fact that the smoke rounds disappear first (whether or not you've actually fired them) doesn't make sense from a UI standpoint and it still doesn't make sense given the explanation about how it's supposed to operate.