eltorrente

ASL Veteran, good post. I have seen the same thing over the years of PBEMs. A lot of times that I read people's tactics and suggestions on how to play, I often think they're talking about playing the AI and not an actual, intelligent human opponent.

Why aren't you posting the pictures in the thread? It's pretty easy.

Maybe if the scenario is a half an hour long (?)..

Yes. The games each get their own tab.

Troops normally fire at targets that they can see, unless, of course there's a target arc preventing them from doing so. Issuing a target briefly command will negate a target arc, so after they are done targeting briefly, they see a threat in front of them and start firing on their own. I think Target briefly is most useful for blasting away at an area - like a forest with troops that are hidden or something like that. If they are visible troops that aren't hiding, then I'd want to just shoot the bastards until they are dead or hidden from view.

I'm always surprised when people don't feel they have any use for it. Once people actually install it, everyone loves it. It just makes the whole process of PBEM so much easier. I love the Tidy feature, too. Whether I have one game going, or 4 or 5, it makes everything so easy and automatic. I don't know how I managed without it! Oh yeah - the chat feature is awesome, too.

I used to be in the Navy, stationed on a submarine. When we were on the surface, I spent a lot of time as lookout up in the sail, with binoculars. Submarines don't have keels, so they rock quite a bit, even in the smallest waves. With the sail so high up, it moves a significant amount back and forth. Spotting never seemed to be an issue for us with binocs, and I didn't find it too difficult unless it was a heavy sea state. HOWEVER - that is on the ocean with professional sea-legs. I can't imagine how hard it would be in a tank with a rough suspension, going over bumps and dips and things, and being jostled around constantly. I would probably put the binocs down and just use my eyes unless I was on a flat road or something.

Correct. It will fire the mortar slowly - maybe 3 rounds per turn or so. Unfortunately, your rifleman will also shoot at the area. Battlefront stated a couple days ago that they are going to address the rifleman also firing in a future patch.

When CMBN came out, I found it more difficult to do things I used to do, and had gotten used to, in the older games. Moveable waypoints was one of the things that I really missed. As time went on, I realized how much more detailed this game was though, and I thought it was a big step forward. I never used to like abstracted soldiers, for instance, and I felt like CMBN took place on an actual battlefield. It just feels more "real" to me. I think it was easier to pick up the older games and just start playing. It was easy to give my friends a few minutes of instruction, and they'd be able to start playing right away. This game just takes more time, and punishes you more for mistakes and bad tactics. That's fine with me. I've always liked games with more detail and nuance, because it takes longer to master and offers more replayabiity. Some people are opposite, and don't want to be bothered with more stuff to worry about. Luckily, the people that prefer the older games can still play them and find plenty of opponents for PBEMs. As for me, I haven't even looked at the older games since CMBN came out, and they don't exist on my harddrive anymore.

It would have been interesting to see this tested with dissimilar tanks. Do Shermans see tanks quicker than German tanks? What brought this discussion up was the AAR that showed a PZIV sitting still, facing down the road, and a moving Sherman saw it first. It might be interesting to see if there is a major difference between Shermans and other tanks, or if they actually have equal chances.

Yup.. In fact I'm a victim of this right now.. The studio I worked at just got closed down suddenly. We had just put a game out that sold 1.5 million copies, and we did so under budget, and on time. Our studio was ran really well, and we stuck to our schedule and had no problem cutting features that needed to be cut, and making design decisions that got us to the finish line successfully. It was reviewed well also, and fans were looking forward to the sequel. The problem was with our parent company in a studio in another location. They worked differently than we did. They had been working on a game for over 6 years, and refused to cut features because they wanted EVERYTHING imaginable for their perfect game. They kept hiring people to make it happen, and spinning their wheels as they kept changing direction and wanting to make sure it was all perfect for their perfect game. They were a classic case of too many cooks in the kitchen and they couldn't make decisions and just make the friggin game. Of course, they ran out of money and investors/publishers weren't buying into their BS. They imploded and sank quickly, taking down our studio with them - and hundreds of people were suddenly without a job. Such is the nature of the gaming industry - it can be brutal. Gamers should understand that NO GAME gets released with all the features that were on the devs wish list. EVER. Whether it's a small studio with 20 people, or a behemoth like Blizzard with all the resources in the world.. it just doesn't happen. Stuff must be cut and trimmed, and compromises made to get the product out the door.

I can see both sides of this discussion. I'm in game development, also, and have been for well over a decade now. I work on "mainstream" action games and have been on many different projects. I know what it's like to be in the trenches at crunch time, and during long dev periods where everyone is working on a common goal for a complicated project. People always say stuff like, "why didn't they just do THIS", "I can't believe they didn't do THAT", as if noone on the dev team ever thought about that and decided to leave features out on purpose just for the hell of it. The smallest thing, no matter how seemingly easy, affects the production schedule in one way or another. It takes iteration and testing and coding to make the simplest thing work. You decide to steer in another direction for a bit to get some feature in, and the rest of the team is often affected in some way. The programmer/designer/animator or whoever could be working on something more critical, or maybe someone else needs to be hired with specific skills, which costs money. Unless you've actually been on a game project, you can't really know how "easy" this or that is to just throw in the game and make it work. The best teams are the ones who stick to a schedule and don't constantly deviate every time someone has some bright idea - otherwise the project runs long and money starts running out, then it gets rushed out the door and has all sorts of issues. All this being said, however, most dev teams do read forums and reviews and gather information about common complaints and wish lists and what not, and takes note. It's then discussed in a future production meeting, and maybe gets placed on a prioritized to-do list for some point in the future - if deemed important enough. I personally think this game is really awesome, but isn't perfect - and BF knows this better than we do. I'd love to see some tool tips and UI work. Volume sliders. Scroll bars for menus and stuff like that - but ultimately the game is realistic and fun and is only going to get better.

I think it was a mistake to put it in a position to not be able to back up, and if he had been on the other side of the house, he could have still seen down the road, and at least had a good portion of his hull hidden by the house. Given a choice between the two spots, behind the house would have been safer. His position behind or in front of the house probably didn't matter in terms of him seeing or not seeing the Sherman, but the Sherman would have had a slightly harder time seeing him.

I could get 93 kills with a sniper against the AI if it's setup right, and I give him some extra ammo. Heck, you could do it with a vehicle crew, also. It has no bearing on what's going to happen in an actual game against a real opponent, though.

Good AAR. When I play PBEM's, if I lose my armor and my opponent still has a couple tanks rolling around, I'll give it a go for a bit, but usually surrender is the best option. If I'm in the Victory location I still have a chance and will fight on, but if I have to cross open fields to get there and he's just waiting for me - then the outcome is a foregone conclusion. He made a few errors that really cost him - the first being, of course, the placement of his tank in front of that house on the road with no cover in front, and the house blocking his rear. In the future, I'm sure he'd put it behind the house with half or more of his tank in cover. Not that anyone is beyond mistakes, of course - I make them all the time.

C'mon now.. seeing the lens flare isn't what is going on here. Give the guys a facing order and make them look the other way and it's not gonna make them suddenly invisible.

I think maybe the rarity cost should simply be higher for Tigers. As it is now, in a large battle, you can buy 4 Tigers with standard rarity, and 8 Tigers in a Huge battle. Since they were so rare, maybe they should be more expensive in rarity points. If you want to play with a bunch of them, then the rarity setting could simply be set to "none", which would denote an unrealistic force and be agreed upon by both players before the battle.

I think most of the time that this issue comes up is in a QB ME. Your setup zone is the opposite of your opponents, of course. You could hit that zone really hard, plus a road or choke point heading out of the zone, and the game is decided first turn. If you guys want to play that way, that's fine, and it's totally "legal" because the game allows it to happen. I play matches mostly on TheBlitz, where it is a rule that you can't do that. When I play non-ladder games there or with my friends, we also don't do that - simply because we want to decide the battle on the field in an actual fight and not decide it on the first turn.

EXACTLY! Which is why it's perfectly fine and not "gamey" for the attacker to bomb the defender first turn. The defender isn't bunched up in a small zone in the opposite corner out in the open. It takes planning and is a guessing game to figure out where the defender might be setup. You could bombard him and not come anywhere close to where he actually is.

In an attack/defend scenario, sure it's fine if you are the attacker. Other than that, it's silly and unrealistic because the enemy is bunched up in a small setup zone that is known to you and you can destroy most of his forces on the first turn. You've already stated how you enjoy gamey tactics, so no point trying to convince you. Keep "pwning n00bs" with any means possible, I'm sure you're a real treat to play against.

Bombarding the setup zone is MUCH, MUCH more gamey than picking a unit that is "legally" available to purchase in the unit selection screen.

I'm offering you the official version. If you'd rather wait as a matter of principal, then o.k. then..

So do you "fight fire with fire" before actually knowing that your opponent is going to buy a couple of Tigers and not play "fair"? How do you know that he is going to do that? If you know he's going to play like that, then why would you play him at all? Sounds good in theory, but it doesn't work that way in my experience. If someone is "gamey" and plays like that, then I wouldn't waste my time playing him again.

If you need the .pdf manual, I could just share a dropbox with you and give it to you. Give me your email address and we'll solve this real quick.

I don't know.. I find the 60mm mortars in PBEMs to be not very effective against me. I usually play the Germans, and very often mortars land right next to my guys and don't cause any damage - unless they're moving and not laying down. Yeah, they'll get nervous, but rarely are my squads destroyed or routed. If spotting rounds come in and I can't run to safety, I just hide and wait it out. The real losses occur when they hit trees above my men, or of course, land right on a group of guys. Sure, it causes some losses, but nothing like what I see talked about here. Their real effect against me is to cause me to stop firing and slow down my advance, or evacuate the area temporarily if I can. The pic that a poster showed with 93 casualties from 60mm is just plain ridiculous, and it isn't gonna happen against a human.