hm_stanley

Read for yourself, illustrations at the bottom of the report. Quite interesting. http://history.amedd.army.mil/booksdocs/wwii/woundblstcs/default.htm

Quite elegant. What about the "in command pictures". The radio, the eye, and the long distance figure?? Those should be done as well. But, impressive work, awesome attention to detail.

That would be a nice feature, the abilty to cut and paste from one map to another. This would certainly enhance maps making, "borrowing from ourselves.." I would imagine this would be very hard to do... But it would be awesome.

Aside from dogs chasing cats, does anyone know a qb or a map that is LONG length wise and small depth wise? I really love maps that have that topography.

That was a typo. What I meant to say is the necessity of the Yom Kippur war drove the development of the Abrams, I was trying to say, here is our example of creating something to counter something. The Sherman didn't have that necessity.

Well said. I think a much better argument is t-34 vs Panther. Same doctrine, same reasons for creation, same tactical necessity, etc. It's a much richer discussion comparing Russian tanks vs German tanks. I find that it's there that the strategic essentials are worthy of comparison. The debate of American tank warfare to that if German tank warfare is like trying to validate that a Taliban fighter CAN win against American infantry. Sure, they can slew a few with RPGs, but face to face, it's a farce in paper. Them same can be said Sherman vs German heavy tanks, there is just no way of reconciling the enormous differences between the two platforms, since they just dint compare. Now, if the Sherman was fielded by the Russians in the beginning of Barbarossa, I can guarantee you that we would have seen a much improved and different tank by 1943 or 44. There was NO necessity to change the platform until the final months of the war, and even then it really wasn't a necessity. Desperation breds necessity, and unfortunately, we did not see necessity in creating a platform that would equal the panther until 1975, with the Abrams, and only after the Russians had evolved the art if tank warfare to it's pinnacle. Remember the Abrams was the birth child of the Yom Kippur war, after several hundred m60's and m48's lay smoking in the desert from sagger missile hits. Who needed armor when you have 1000's of tanks. Well, it's important when a cheap missile produced in the hundreds of thousands starts flaming your assembly line wonder machines. Desperation breda necessity. Let's talk about the is2 vs the panther. Now that's a good discussion.

Sure. Pie in the sky stuff. Ur right. The fact that the aim point is the center mass is probably, by and large the way all tank crews fired at opposing armor. I forgot for a second that you are not worrying about aim points when you're about to get fried by a pZgranite39 apbc round. Yea, after I wrote that post, I said to myself, "sure this would be realistic in one place, the target range in fort Knox". Not in the bocage of northern France.

This thread got me thinking on how an ai would improve in a game. If the ai knew the target type, let's use the panther for a second, it would then look at the skill level of the crew and determine if they were smart enough and trained enough to target weak spots on the opposing panther. Think of it as a giant decision tree, and the results would be tied to crew profile data. The same could be applied for human vs human, you target the panther, get a pick list of areas and choose. The skill of your crew would determine the quality of the shot, some random variable for lack of skill would result in hits to other locations on the panther, which might result in a kill, but at least you'd have the choice of targeting the tracks for example. To code this would require a rather large decision table, but you could I'm use create an efficient algorithm to determine the best place to aim for and shoot. This is something that I'd love to see, but I'm sure with the staff at BFC they would love to do a lot of things and this isn't one of them right now. Buy here I can see getting a little more bang for the buck when engaging a Heer Cat, at least you could attempt to immobilize it or shoot for the gun manley with the hope of hitting the shot trap and killing the driver. Stuff like that. I'm on the iPhone again, so not sure if this made any sense.

The very nature of tank combat is misleading. We are assuming so many variables in the thinking of Sherman vs Panther. The fact is, the panther was only as good as the crew made it. I read countless tales where inferior technology trumps superior tech that all we are doing is comparing stats. It's all cool to watch deflected rounds hitting the panther, but my experience in the game is that what we all want to do is just sit there, nicely curled up in our invincible tiger/panther and shoot stuff. I get that, trust me. But it's not what happened, and I for one delight at the prospect of my opponent sitting there nicely waiting for more things to shoot at, delighting in setting my Shermans on fire while I plot to move my main forces into position to rake his Heer infantry with m1's and BAR's. I'll eventually have 3 or 4 more armored vehicles than he, since he wanted to revel in his glorious panther, and I'll maneuver for a kill shot advancing to range that my poor un uber Sherman can blow the lid of his not so strong side armor. I guess my point is, what we are debating here is paper stats vs paper stats. I'm sure more panthers were lot to malfunction or crew destruction than ever to tank fire. I don't think the same can be said for the Sherman. Frankly, im totally rambling now and this post makes absolutely no sense, and I can't edit it anymore, since I'm doing it from an iPhone and it won't let me go up in this fail quick post box.

Oh, and I forgot one important detail in that engagement. Carius' tiger was not one of the tanks firing, he was riding shotgun in one since they couldn't get his tiger into position for that ambush. He got all the credit though.

Oh. And in Carius' book when he did win the knights cross, he tallied a total of 35 tanks in one engagement, one of which was an is-2 driven by an order of Lenin winner who was gunned down running with a map. They killed a total of 17 is-2's in that engagement and not one is-2 fired back. Against six tigers.

Yes, I totally agree with you. After reading about these panzer aces, it seems to me killing tanks was more nuanced than I thought. I mean in reading Carius' book, he would recon the ground in his kubel, go back. Move the tigers into position, get out, go back in his kubel. Move the tigers again into an ambush position, etc. It was a lot of waiting, and not these shoot em up cowboy things we have come to believe. Also, one thing that was very fascinating was that it appeared that when they did engage, it was one shot one kill, period. No misses for these boys. I had come to believe that it was more a few shots then kill. Seems like they were pretty spot on. Also, he said the most important position on he tank by far was the driver. They were the difference between a great tank and a lousy one.

Neat test. I was curious about the same thing for dusk and dawn. Never thought about using a target against the unit.

Uno, ein, one. That's all I read. Who needs c2 when you have c3po?

Ok priOrity oNe.

If the whole point of elite is to anonymity to the opposing units force without definitively identifying those units, then elite is 1/2 broken. Or to be a total downer, completely broken. Since all it does is make me click more, and I can't imagine steve wanting to have players click anymore than they have to. Elite = (should read as in the manual) elite adds a level of annoyance to the game where if you want to know what the opposing unit is, you need to click on the icon, since the game will no longer visually represent what the units capability is. oh, it does also take an extra minute for artillery to come on station. Elite != added difficulty

Please point me to the manual location where it says that?? It's pretty clear in the manual, "elite adds a level of difficulty to the game where units are represented as soldier icons...." There is nothing there that even implies that, oh and by the way," it's completely circumvented by clicking on those generic icons and finding out exactly what that unit really is, we just wanted to provide a few more meaningless clicks to your game experience. " Please give me a break. I'm sure steve would agree that it's broken and it's NOT behaving the way he intended it to. Therefore it's a BUG!! So, why waste the time, play warrior level and then I don't need to click twenty more times in a game, that's a better experience.

We can argue all day on intended functionality vs expected behavior. To me, it's a bug. Either they didn't have time to implement it correctly or they implemented it and then decided that the way it was supposed to work wasn't exactly how they wanted it to work, yada yada. Bottom line, if I were testing on this project it would be filed as a bug, marked to be fixed, priority 3, since it's not crashing anything and it's half working as desired.

To me this is a complete bug. I realized this in a PBEM after I couldn't understand why my opponet was targeting my hq units?? I was saying, how does he know that is an hq unit, well I picked one of his icons and it told me what the unit was, a machine gunner in this case. I said, wait??? That's total fail, what's the point if elite if I know the unit by clicking on it?? Anyway, please FIX this bug. Very annoying.

Thanks.. I tell you, if only I was an angel investor here in silicon valley instead of a lowly PKI software engineer, i'd throw you a few bucks... just to get those vehicle flaming steel bits and pieces.. Good stuff man..

I watched it.. and then I fired up Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and then it made sense to me... They are firing upside down at an gun elevation that allows them to hit the Shermans? I'm not sure I understand? Are you saying that the Shermans should fire back?

Thanks Steve.. do you think we'll see damage on vehicles? Seeing that you model tracks movement and roller wheel movement, it can't be a "bridge" to far to implement some hit decals and "flying metal"? Reinforcements in QB can wait.. since I can do the same thing in a scenario..

I have to admit, when I first loaded up the QB unit pick lists and with rarity on and seeing all the neat shiny toys I could not afford (well NOT afford in rarity), I was confused - why would BFC stop me from getting my greedy hands on these armored hulks?. Now I've come to really understand the underlying beauty of this functionality. I've never played close attention to unit makeup before in wargames, with the exception of high level strategy wargames, like Grisby's "War in the East" (which BTW, is just too big, I can't seem to settle into it). Anyway, for small unit tactical simulations, you got points, you picked lots of shiny king tiger tanks and a couple of infantry cannon fodder and went into the hinterland, clubbing the AI (or your unsuspecting co-worker) into merciful submission with sloped armor kitties and birds chirping 20mm tungsten rounds into their robot inspired human wave pixel-Ivans. Oh, the joy! AND!!, we are quick to point out (at work or on these very boards) that we "are playing on the MOST elite level.. therefore we are uber.. and that the game is easy and boring after two days (tow2 Kursk anyone?) Now, in CM, we actually have a properly model infantry or mech infantry company, with supporting weapons elements with NOT so shiny toys in all their glory presented to us in a windows explorer-like c:\ driver setup. Now before I could get all my toys, but now, the damn tiger tank costs 429 pts, but has a rarity point value of 20k, CRAP!!! these are TOO expensive, wha wha wha, boo hoo hoo.. Then you hit "OK" and you're stuck slugging it out with pixel-Yanks in modeled terrain that is not so easy to understand, let alone apply traditional fire and maneuver tactics - and slowly you begin to become quite familiar with the "Quit" hotkey. However, if you do gut it out, and I have.. much to my pleasure, and then after those 60 minute games, that run an entire weekend, you are left in most cases with 1) a stinging defeat or 2) a Pyrrhic victory. Great!, I won, and my rattled platoon is still holding the chuch!, WOW, I feel more like Pickett then Eichelberger.. One aspect of world war ii warfare that many don't really understand is that front lines, especially those on the eastern front, would ebb and flow for months. I've just finished reading Otto Carius' "Tigers in the Mud" and the descriptions of his unit's action on the Leningrad front are more about the folly of engagements -- T-34's just driving down the "Rollerbahn" with troops sitting on the back, driving right by his Tiger tank, while they are catching a breather and smoking cigarettes, the T-34 is lost (he blows it to bits).., his description of his Tiger sitting on a Russian trench line, leaking radiator fluid and no infantry behind them to assault the trench works.. and doing that several times in a given week, and no ground taken on either side.., is just mind blowing... but that was combat. Many have explained that this game is analogous to chess. I agree, in part, Chess is an end-game, meaning that you get to a stage in Chess where there is little left and victory is uncertain. No one really knows where that point is, but it will exist at some point. The same can be applied in this game, it too is an end-game strategy, however, in the real sense, war is strategically an end-game, but tactically it's not. However, in CM, we do in fact have an end-game, that point in the game, where you start hitting the keyboard and screaming at the dog and look up and notice that the shades are still on the windows and the TV is on.. in war, and end-game is the radiator is leaking water, and if the tiger's engine gets above 250 degrees Celsius, you're going to have to get out in the middle of a trench line with mad Ivan's shooting at you.. or, you can reverse the tank, trying to keep the engine cool by not revving the engine and pray to god you get back to a defensive line where Klaus has some schnapps for you to drink and laugh about your latest hole in your 1M Reichmark behemoth.. BTW Steve, One thing that the QB would benefit from would be a "reinforcements" capability, that is, you can allot forces into the battle at some time-interval. I know I could create a scenario to do this, but it would circumvent the picking of units for both sides. Finally, I like to use tried and true methods of small unit combat, stuff I've read about for years, that I can finally apply to a game. This game is a very good representation of the insanity of combat, but it is also a very good game in the representation of combat tactics, meaning, you can use "real" methods of engagement that if presented with a similar "real" situation, you could argue you might approach the situation the same way ... now, that's neat.

Man..their is a very distinct and notable difference in unit performance from veteran to crack.. it like pvt. Pyle vs. Rambo. Wow.

Game = fun Wiki = work Work != fun