BletchleyGeek

Not surprised about that degree of granularity causing space problems. In SB you can see the main gun of a Leopard oscillate up and down as it races through cross country between battle positions. That's some non trivial physics being simulated right there, which may not be possible to recomputed from scratch. CMx2 files get quite big too, until I got fiber to the premises uploading a turn of the big scenarios could take an hour (and kill the Internet for everyone else in the house).

I am more of a nerd in Napoleonic warfare, but indeed, there's plenty of notorious recorded incidents involving that "age old problem" in the American Civil War. Indeed, you're right that how to make fun out of that is difficult. As years have gone by, I am finding myself of the view that in simulations/games that try to be convincing from the perspective of "realism" when it comes to command in WW2, you need to care less about the "shot trap" on a Panther frontal armour and more about uncertainty about how long it will take for a platoon of Panther tanks to get in position to tackle on the flank an enemy armored counterattack before they overrun a company of infantry. Also, for a game about the Ia Drang campaign, it is more important to have in place mechanics that allow a - simulated - young Lieutenant to sometimes send his platoon on a charge after a couple of riflemen who took a couple potshots and run into the bush, starting a chaing of events that led to a whole battalion to be pinned down and encircled by two regiments of the North Vietnam army. And you should care way, way less about whether the M-16 was a piece of crap compared with the AK-47. Just two examples I have in mind recent from my reading. We tend to "categorize" games as "tactical", "operational", "strategic" or some other arbitrary label, when I think that it is more useful to think along the lines of what is the focus of the simulation, what is the ability of the player to influence the events happening during gameplay, degree of FOW etc. There's kind of a Kriegsspiel revival at the moment and I am in contact with people who play games like "Le Vol de l'Aigle" (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1813031/test-time-four-year-old-review-le-vol-de-laigle), even if that means insane amounts of manual work by the umpire to make it work. An analyst at a defence institute I know quite well when shown CMANO said "jeez, it looks like work, does people pay for that?". So one person "work" can be another person "fun". The major problem to make FOW heavy games games fun - from my point of view - is how to deal with the downtime between events of interest. This is generally a problem with RT games, like Take Command or Scourge of War, as you have to wait your ass off for very long periods of time where nothing much happens... until it **all** happens at the same time and it is game over. In CMx2 we have WEGO, which in single player allows you to skip uneventful 60 second intervals until "something of interest" happens. When you play CMx2 WEGO H2H this cannot be done - I am now playing a game organised by the Blitz and it's been 25 minutes (almost one month in real time) until my US opponent has finally stumbled its way onto my outpost line. CMx2 is very close to be able to deal with that... since unlike SB, probably because the underlying sim has lower fidelity, allows perfect rewinding of the simulation to any point in time, and it can be replayed. I am pretty sure that Charles could modify easily things - adding a magic shortcut key - to allow saving games at any given point in time, and allowing to replay stuff. I am pretty sure that @Bil Hardenberger would love that feature very much, as well as any tester trying to replicate one of the curious bugs which have been discussed recently on these forums. The gameplay design problem is how to come up with a "fair system" where players can have issue commands to respond to those "events". Interestingly, Kriegsspiel, which was invented in the 1820s, prescribes that time advances not by turns of fixed length, but in bounds set by "interesting" events judged to be so at the leisure of the umpire. That's the high water mark... and it was set 200 years ago!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGvBbxATf_E Ou est la baise Grouchy!?!

That, and similar occurrences, have knocked that game dead in the water for me. Great post by @Thewood1 on those two white elephant games... and @Mord's coda was quite fun too.

I recently bought into SB motivated by the high resolution terrain, and a more realised simulation of infantry, UGVs and UAVs. That video they made featuring a Central African locale pretty much sold the new iteration to me. If I had to compare, SB can play like TacOps but with a fully realised simulation behind that you can check yourself by jumping into vehicle stations. Still they need to simulate soft factors better, scaling up the sim as they have means that more and more clever automation - with humans in the loop perhaps - is needed to provide a good red challenge. Graviteam's come a long way since 2011. I only play CM with other humans these days, and I find that the Ukranians' sometimes clunky and sometimes brilliant game offers to me a more interesting single player experience. Infantry models are not detailed as in CM, but they seem to have a system that determines casualties depending on the weight of fire on a given area, which I find quite acceptable if I want to see Regiment level action on my screen.

"Brave" is indeed one way to put it. I think that there's still people resenting that act of bravery. It was a radical move not helped at all by having to comply with Paradox release schedule. Twelve years on, BFC looks to an external observer as "conservative" as the senior command of the French Army was in 1940. They may hit the defense "jackpot" though, and have that as an incentive to be "brave" again. But then they won't need us needy middle aged nerds anymore...

That, plus flares, and we would have a great night battles sim.

I can't believe I clicked through to check this thread, jeez. This is must be like the Galactic Emperor of Dad Jokes.

Good one, no idea there was a mortar carrier with the same designation.

The first one is the halftrack mounted mortar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M21_Mortar_Motor_Carriage the M4A1 is an early variant of the M4 Sherman tank https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M4_Sherman_variants from Wikipedia for the M4A1

I can still see the anti-aliasing being switched off on a NVIDIA GTX 1080

All modules have come to date with substantial numbers of QB maps. From the product page for GL The GL ones came with a distinct "mountainous" feeling, what I would expect from the Apennines/Abruzzi highlands, and other maps covering areas like Anzio, Cisterna and Santa Maria Infante (check out the 2nd DAR by BilHardenberger for GL IIRC was happening on the later).

The product website doesn't say anything about QB maps, but I guess that is an oversight. GL QB maps are amongst my favourites across all games. FWIW, GL came with very strong huge scenarios based on Anzio which I count amongst my all time favourites, too.

Some of the most mysterious "logical" or "physical" bugs that in CM2 - bridge crossing, units unable to leave or enter buildings - were traced back to graphics card/drivers updates. As potentially relevant stuff to consider there's also the issue of squad elements getting separated when going through hedgerows under certain conditions. I sent two bug reports through the helpdesk each time I have found them over the past three years and probably were as random as this issue seems to be. Just for reference, I hope it is useful, here's the ticket numbers with the reports Ticket ID: 20187570 Date: 2018-08-08 Ticket ID: 14570189 Date: 2017-05-02 The issue was first discussed in Christmas 2016 in both cases I have seen it happening, it happened on bocage maps with intricate elevantion changes. The most recent instance was in a test game with @HeirloomTomato on a huge map by Ithikial.

I have known Harry for a very long time so there is context to this which, of course, is none of your business. Take care of yourself and recover soon.

That wasn't very helpful or very informative. You obviously have more time to go and take a picture of your collection of books (or dig that picture up from wherever, who cares) than to provide a short explanation that would provide some learning or enlightenment. Don't bother "elaborating" as you are ignored from now on. THANKS FOR NOTHING.

I am not sure that they were used mostly for indirect fires in the offense - these are weapons optimised for busting fortifications and trenches (it could pretty much fire almost verticall. They also carried out quite sophisticated sights. I guess that as a very specialised piece of equipment it eventually found its niche as an indirect fire weapon, since the German Army was more commonly found defending fixed positions that on the offensive.

I don't like wasting my time either, Harry. I still appreciate coming here and having the odd exchange when I think I can contribute or learn something. Maybe I was wrong in this instance and it is better that I invested my time elsewhere. Take care.

Accuracy of fires around TRPs is greatly increased provided that you have LOS - that's what I meant when I said a "similar effect" to pre-registering HMGs. I have personally never tried to fire directly with weapons on a TRP I felt like I had no LOS to at night - I have kind of assumed I wouldn't be able to. You can most definitely plot indirect fires at TRPs your spotter has no LOS to. What you request is a quite specific form of fieldcraft that I agree it is not very faithfully captured by this (or any other) engine. Night combat and fortifications aren't really the forte of CMx2 either.

You can get a similar effect to that with TRPs, Harry.

Leaving value judgements on coding quality aside, you are right that in cmx2 the concept of cover (or more generally, being "safe" from observation or fires) is a static attribute of map tiles, it does not seem to change during the game as units positions, orientation or stance changes. They react to incoming fires on map tiles, though. In other games we faked situational awareness by keeping, per side, "anti personnel fire power" and "anti armour fire power" layers on the map. This was updated every tick of the simulation, as units spot enemy units and identified their equipment and composition. Of course, this introduces potential instantaneous communication between units, an analogue of borg spotting. Keeping such a layer on a per unit basis is quite ridiculous imho, feasible for games happening on a space the size of a football pitch and not too many guys moving around. Having said that, on a WW2 or earlier game, I can't see how the nonlocal comms that such a device could enable could be exploited - like to call artillery strikes - as long as it wasn't visible to players and only to the TacAI.

Excellent point Harry, it looks better from afar as it gives an unmistakable visual cue of a firefight happening.

What a fantastic video @Kaunitz, thanks for sharing!

Note I said observations rather than questions. The truth is hidden from us and I am not expecting you to backtrack, Leibniz style, all the way from what is seen to the ultimate causes of what is seen. The probing you have been doing and discussing have greatly illuminated part of the mystery. CM2 isn't a 100% what you see is what you get game/sim. You noted projectiles going through foxholes and I have seen all kinds of small calibers going through heads, arms, legs and groins of pixeltruppen. The environmental effects are referred to as "microcover" and were confirmed by Steve.

Fascinating to see how you two are de facto modding the TacAI @Kaunitz. Just two observations: - I am pretty sure that there is more than just direct hitbox-ray intersections to determine whether pixeltruppen are hit. I would bet money there is in place some fudgy "saving roll" that depends on environmental parameters (like the terrain type of the type where the pixelsoldat stands) and probably behavioural ones (like which is the progress through the sequence of behaviours/animations). The latter would be a way to take into account that the pixelsoldat isn't completely still as it transitions between stances. - Besides the looks of it, I think that popping like that is a bit unrealistic, it happens too fast. The effect of that, a lesser PK due to reduced silhouette, would be probably stacking with any unseen behavioural components of a hypothetical "saving roll". Have you observed some Hollywoodienne ability to withstand direct fires and stay alive?