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CM1fan

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Posts posted by CM1fan

  1. I need to play CM again I feel, but I need to unload some grievances I have about CMBN before I feel I can give CM a new chance.

    CMBN has a great game engine, I think, but too many missions dissapointed me. I felt the time for completing many missions were so short that there were no time for delicacies, like outflanking defenders. Also there were sometimes that the initial set up zone or the zone where reinforcments come to got under fire immediately, which I have very little tolerance for.

    Some missions were great though and was satisfying to play.

    It may seem that missions are too short to accomplish the required objectives, but the time clock doesn't stop at 0:00. The clock just turns red and starts to count up. I haven't seen a scenario end because time ran out. My opponents and I normally agree on a cease fire or one side's surrender when there seemed no point in continuing.

  2. You want the AI to spontaneously move your armoured vehicle so it can engage a target that poses no threat to you?

    Uh, yeah. Good luck with getting BFC to buy in to that terrible, terrible idea. Can you imagine the shreiks of outrage from all the players who lose their tanks because the "AI moved my tank, and I didn't want it to!"

    Where did you get the idea I want the AI to spontaneously move my AFV to engage a target that poses no threat? In the situation I described, the Brit soldier did pose a threat. That's why I ordered him soft targeted. I wanted him eliminated by MG fire rather than dismembered by an HE round. (And the AI ignored my choice and instead dismembered a different Brit who was aiming a rifle and, in my view, a negligible threat to the AFV.)

    We already accept the AI disregarding our orders -- and moving tanks we didn't order to move. I'm just asking the AI to be more intelligent when doing so.

  3. This seems like one of those cases where the AI needs to be tweaked a bit. Regardless of whether the machine gunner had true LOS to the target, the main gunner and /or commander DID have LOS to the target and should be able to communicate that to the machine gunner that "hey, there's some Tommies in the shrubs over there, shoot them to hell".

    I agree. The members of an AFV crew should be able to yell to each other about what they can see, with nearby enemy troops being a likely topic of conversation. The crew member spotting the "Tommies in the shrubs" would probably also say something like "about 25 meters to the right." The radio operator would then say "I've got 'em" and fire his MG or say "can't see 'em. Back up and give me a shot."

    If one of the spotted men seems to be aiming an AT weapon, I'd have no problem with the AFV commander or the gunner firing an HE round at the man. However, if the spotted men are just aiming rifles and posing a negligible threat to the AFV, why not move the JP and use its machine gun.

    I accept that mistakes are easy to make in the pressure of combat, but this crew has made (what I consider) the same mistake more than a dozen times in six minutes.

  4. I'm playing the German against the Brits in a Quick Battle in which my forces are defending five locations against about two companies of attacking Brit infantry. My force has a JagdPanzer IV and two Wespes for direct HE fire against the oncoming Brits.

    The JP carries around 50 rounds for its main gun and many hundreds of rounds of machine gun ammo. Unfortunately, it relies primarily on its main gun to pick off individual Brit soldiers and seldom fires its machine gun.

    After three or four minutes of shooting about a dozen rounds of main gun HE and averaging about one Brit soldier for every other shot, I gave up on just facing the JP and letting its crew decide how best to engage the Brits it saw. For the next minute, I ordered to JP to light target a particular Brit unit about 25 meters away. The JP crew ignored the order and instead fired two more HE rounds, one at the close Brit unit and the other at another Brit unit further away. The JP got its standard result -- one Brit soldier for two HE rounds fired.

    Does the JP have to fire off all its main gun ammo before it will rely on its machine gun?

    I recall reading that the 8th US army during the Korean War ordered its infantry units to request artillery fire only on groups of more than four enemy troops. I wish there was some way to make my JP perform similarly.

  5. Playing the Last Defense scenario? I had the same problem. As I recall, a bazooka team can carry only four rounds. In a real situation, the jeep's occupants would be glad to hand over bazooka rounds in the jeep to any team that requested them. In CM:BN, though, the team has to board the jeep, acquire the rounds, and then leave the jeep. If the jeep has occupants, they have to leave the jeep so the bazooka team can board, and get back into the jeep to ride where they want to go.

    It might be nice to unload the bazooka rounds from the jeep at some useful location, but CM:BN doesn't provide that option.

  6. _______________obj unità______obj territoriali ____rapp.unità/terreno

    Scontro (ME)______punti 600______ punti 400 ______ 1.5

    Ricognizione ______punti 500 ______punti 500 ______ 1.0

    Attacco___________ punti 350______punti 650 ______0.54

    Assalto__________punti 250 ______punti 750 ______0.33

    * from my italian blog

    Thanks, Berto. That cleared everything up for us Eyetalian readers. :)

  7. While I've had great difficulty using jeep radios with mortar teams, I have been amazed by jeeps surviving multiple "lower hull penetrations" and "wheel hits." I don't blame the jeep driver continuing to drive in preference to changing a tire under small arms fire, but I do wonder how far a jeep could go on wheel rims with its driver hunching down to minimize his exposure to the fire before he ran into something. The jeep lasted three minutes (turns) before brewing up.

  8. Off topic but this question burns to be answered: Where did the whole "Hun" thing get started, anyway? I know the British used it in WWI ("Beware of the Hun in the Sun" the aviators always said), but why "Hun"? Did Attila have anything to do with Germany or the land that was to become Germany? Or was it just a label that helped portray the enemy as warlike barbarian hordes?

    My favorite WWI story was told by a pilot who shot down four fokkers in one day and then said "Two of them fokkers was Messerschmidts." (Contact me privately if you want this comment explained.)

  9. I read an account of a US 57mm anti-tank unit that came upon their Brit 6 pounder counterpart in convoy. The Brits were low on AP and the yanks had no HE so they traded rounds. A couple days later the yanks were told to target a church steeple that housed a sniper and brought down the steeple in one shot. They were *horrified!* They feared if the CO had caught the show and discovered they had swapped rounds with the Brits they could be court martialed. One does not trade-away government equipment to foreign armies. :D

    That story's hard to believe. Even if the AT unit's CO wasn't the person telling the unit to target the steeple with the sniper, no US court martial would be likely to convict members of a unit which swapped ammo in the field with an allied foreign unit.

  10. I find that I'm letting the "Suggestions" button pick the base of my forces and then I trim or augment them to my liking. It usually picks a nice healthy mix of armor and infantry without being too gamey.

    My experience doesn't match yours. I find the AI purchasing too many AFVs and too few infantry. I still hit the "Suggestions" button, but I seldom hold onto much of the AI's selections.

    By the way, although the Infantry choice is always highlighted when the selection screen comes up, many of the available units to select are armored or motorized. As there are Mechanized and Armored choices, why aren't the lists of available units specialized accordingly.

  11. How can I select a waypoint along the path I have given a unit?

    For example, I'd like my unit to pause for 10 seconds at its first waypoint. I select the unit, select the Movement panel, select the type of Movement (almost always Quick), click the map where I want the unit to stop, and then select the Admin panel, and select Pause twice. The unit shows the desired 10 sec pause, but the pause occurs before the unit moves rather than at the waypoint where I want the unit to wait.

    I can't select the waypoint directly, because clicking on the position of the waypoint just deselects the unit I wish to command. As many units may share a particular waypoint, clicking on the waypoint's position would be ambiguous in any event. Obviously, I must select the unit first. What do I do then?

  12. It's in the UI panel at the bottom of the screen. When you click on a tank, for example, you see a silhouette of that tank in a panel near the middle. To the right of the silhouette you see 3 tabs that show ammo, damage, ect. When you click on an infantry HQ unit the silhouette panel shows a black flag and the 3 tabs to the right become 2 tabs: a single flag tab that shows "Units" (units directly under the HQ command), and a 3 flag tab that shows "Formations" (essentially subordinate HQs).

    Thank you for that info. I didn't realize how much of unit panel I could click on. I still don't understand why I can't select the floating icons of many of my units, but I see now how I can jump from icon to icon with single clicks. That makes all the difference in organizing and positioning my units, and in commanding them once the scenario is underway.

  13. TRPs allow for almost instant un-spotted arty which I think is both unrealistic and not in keeping with the game.

    Not quite "almost instant." I believe TRPs just reduce the wait for impacts by a minute or two. CM:BN grognards may have detailed info, which I'd like to see.

    Those TRPs aren't free. They cost 150 points for five, about half the price of a decent AFV. I like them and buy them when I can, but others may not.

  14. Hello:

    Some of the missions have small setup areas and the units are really close together. It makes it hard to separate them out into platoons, etc.

    Wondering if it an off-map space could be added as a temporary organizing area? One could sort the units here, then place them in the setup, and hit the red button. It would make the initial steps of any mission a lot easier.

    Gerry

    Using the off-map space could help with the setup problems being discussed on a thread I started a few days ago. It shouldn't be too hard to let us place units there, fiddle with their positions and organization as we like, and then place them back on the map. As CMBN stands now, though, any attempt to position a unit outside the set up area leaves the unit in place and generates a path to your chosen location for it. And, of course, CMBN won't let you choose an illegal position at all.

  15. In an email game, my US opponent and my German forces have been fighting over a small patch of woods for about 15 minutes / turns. His defense started with around a platoon of infantry, and my assaulting force was comprised of a two dismounted PzG platoons, two HMG teams, a StuG, and four half-tracks with MGs.

    With none of my units selected, three ?s appear in the woods, one underneath my StuG! As I select my units in or near the patch, two or three ?s appear in different locations in the woods, but rarely very close to the selected unit.

    My opponent and I are playing a "friendly" game in which we tell each other what we're doing and what casualties we've sustained. He told me a few minutes / turns back, that my forces had taken out all his units in the wooded patch bar a few stragglers fleeing in the open toward the town about 100 m away.

    Do these ?s ever go away? Other than dropping a Nuke or a fuel - air explosive on the wooded patch, is there any way to get rid of those pesky ?s?

  16. I don't recall CMx1 working like that at all. You controlled units in almost the exact same way as in CMBN. The only reason CMBN is more micromanagement intensive is because of the 1:1 infantry modeling.

    You may be correct. All I know for sure is that, with the exception of incredibly twisted paths sometimes given vehicles by the AI and discussed in many CM1 and CM:BN threads, my units in CMBO, CMBB, and CMAK acted pretty much as I expected, while my units in CM:BN don't.

    I greatly enjoyed playing the CM1 games, and I believe that my former enjoyment would return if I could control directly the stance of my units in CM:BN.

  17. If you want to perform at a higher level of command with a "stance" capability, there are other games with an AI capability like that. They are not at this scale, are not 3D and are playable only against the AI, but I understand they do a credible job of what you are looking for.

    I think to expect that in CMx2 would require that BFC actually change the nature of their focus in the game and their programming resources. Not something I nor I suspect a lot of others would like to see.

    I said "different level", not "higher level". I like CM:BN's scale, and I enjoy playing against others as well as playing against the AI. I'd just enjoy CM:BN a lot more if I could get my units to perform the way "stance" gets the AI's units to perform -- the way I recall the units in CM1 performed.

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