Bulletpoint
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Posts posted by Bulletpoint
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There's always that special minesweeper medal...
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(multi-core are now the "standard").
I agree, even my ancient laptop is a dualcore.. and it's the computer I use to play the game, so even for me it would give a performance boost. I only play WeGo though.
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I'm a bit worried the tank riders won't be clever enough to jump off once they come under fire. The preview said they didn't...
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Bulletpoint: There is rarely one simple answer to any of your questions. It will depend on the circumstances.
I understand, but it would be nice with some pointers so I can better see what the lesson here is.
Trial and error is good too, but with the infantry mission there was a lot of great information to read before doing it.
For example your hint about the AT-gun turning speed. That's really useful to keep in mind.
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I can't answer to Bil's intentions, but I can offer this: moving tanks can't hit for toffee. Having them stationary gives far better results for their shooting. Sometimes you don't care too much (a company of tanks advancing towards a treeline plastering it with HE - it doesn't matter much if individual rounds miss), so you could ignore the drill, but most of the time you want as many rounds to have as good a chance of hitting as possible.
All comments are welcome, not just Bil's. I thought I'd post my questions here so more people could learn from it
As for the tanks: so the idea is to advance with two tanks in bounding overwatch, so that if tank 1 (moving) spots an AT-gun, tank 2 (stationary) can immediately get a good shot at it?
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Hello Bil, thanks for doing all those tutorials and training missions. I wish you would explain the armour training better though, as I don't feel I'm "getting it" despite three replays
In your infantry training, your briefing and the tactics on your blog made me ready to take on the mission and learn from it. But in this mission, you say I should use the same tactics from the infantry training, and I am unsure how to apply those lessons to the tank platoon.
I hope you will take a moment to clarify some things:
FIRE BASE - You state that tank 1 & 2 are to remain in the forest to provide fire support. How do I actually do that? They start hidden in the forest, with no lines of sight. Should I move them out of the forest right away so they can get a LOS to suppress the AT-gun, then move in for the kill from the flank with tank 3 & 4 - or the other way around, shooting from the flank first, then roll out the fire base tanks?
FIRE AND MANEUVER - Infantry needs to be stationary to fire effectively, so it makes sense that one team fires, the other maneuvers. But tanks can fire and move at the same time, so why have them do this drill?
RECON BY FIRE - if an AT-gun spots your tank, it will fire, no matter if you shot at it first or not. If you shoot at an AT-gun that has not spotted you, chances are it will be suppressed, but you won't know, because you don't see it. So after firing at a potential AT-gun location, you're none the wiser. Firing at a suspected infantry position might make them shoot back, but ONLY if you are riding unbuttoned so they have a chance to shoot the commander. And if you are, they might have shot at you anyway - so what is this "recon by fire" really about in the tank world?
FLANKING - I understand flanking in general, but since tanks are so lousy at spotting, what is the benefit of flanking, say, an AT-gun? Won't the gun spot the tank first anyway, even when coming from the side?
Thanks again for your time, will be in overwatch on your blog for further training missions...
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Thanks for helping out, I realised now it's Bil with a single "l"
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That'll be because they're the only object you can target "behind", I guess. My memory fails to inform me as to whether the same jiggery-pokery applies to low walls.
I thought I was targeting the middle of the square behind the hedge, since that's where the red line end up pointing at. But maybe this is just a crude graphical representation of what really goes on: the target is actually on the hedge itself, but on the "far" side?
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I'm trying to find some more of Bill's AARs. So I type in AAR in the search field, but it gives me zero hits. Then I try searching by user and input Bill's name, but it gives me "no user found"?
I checked all the settings. Other search terms work fine, such as searching for "target" gives a lot of hits.
Sorry if this is a bit off topic.
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Yes, it's the interface problem of representing a 3D environment to the opeator on a 2D plane.
Seems to be specific to targeting hedges though...
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Bulletpoint - roughly - most German squads are built around the LMG - either an MG34 or MG42. The leader usually has 1 MP40. The rest are riflemen.
American squads have got a lot of quickfiring Garand rifles, so at closeish ranges, they are capable of putting a lot more bullets downrange much faster than the German squad ( and from more guys ).
If the LMG/SMG guy bites the dust ( or even starts to cower regularly ), it's going to go south for the Germans rapidly.
At longer ranges, the German MG has the Rate of Fire edge.
In Bil's screenshot, he has a red targeting line, so the mortar must have had LoS and is direct firing.
Thanks for clearing that up
About the mortar, I assume it's due to elevation that it can draw a bead. -
I think it's just an interface problem, really. After all, the game will indeed let me target that square behind the hedge, I just have to fiddle around with it a lot first, so why can't I just click on the middle of the target square, where the red target line eventually points to anyway?
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There is a trick to it ( yeah, no kidding
)What you do, is you turn the camera 180 degrees and position yourself so you can see the enemy side of the hedgerow. Now get your blue LoS line up to the hedge again. ( from above looking down almost vertically is best )
95% of the time, you can now get the red targeting line to "take" through the hedgerow. You may have to click 2 or 3 times, but try it, it often works.
Don't ask me why it works like that though
Thanks for the tip, will try that out next time
I hope they tweak this a bit so it doesn't have to take quite so much effort. -
Since I started playing this game, I have been struggling with how to target the action square immediately behind a hedgerow. Maybe I am doing it wrong?
Let's say I spot some enemy taking cover behind bocage. I want to target my tank to hit them as best possible, but the tank itself doesn't spot the enemy.
What I do:
I select my tank, click the target order, and then hover the mouse over the action square behind the bocage. The line is red, no LOS. I then fiddle around with the mouse on the actual hedge itself, until I get a blue LOS. I click to target.
But oh, the red target line doesn't poke through the hedge. It just goes to the square in front of the hedge.
So I click the target order again, and fiddle again with the mouse over the hedge. I click, no luck. I'm again targeting the square in front.
This continues sometimes several times, but EVENTUALLY I usually find the magic pixel, and the red targeting line pokes through the hedge and I can fire away.
But suddenly it struck me: am I doing this wrong? Am I actually supposed to fire at the square in front of the hedge?
Or if not, any ideas about how to more consistently "hit the spot"?
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Give the man some credit for working in a foreign language.
"Flawed"
"Idiosyncratic"
"sometimes ill-conceived".
I think "bad" is the nearest I'd come to those sentiments in any other language.
True, the interface can be discombobulating at times
The manual could be better as well.But isn't that what drives people to Google for answers, eventually ending up here, bolstering the community?
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I have been reading along with interest, and there are several things you do, Bill, that puzzle me. That usually means I can learn something
First of all, why do you prefer to engage the Americans at long range? I always thought of the Germans as being stronger in close fighting, since they have more SMGs (or appear to have? I always play as the Allies, so this is just what I see in the singleplayer scenarios). But you try to keep the amis as far as possible. Is that because all German squads have a better LMG than the Americans? Even if so, your LMG will still work well when they get closer, no?
Secondly, how did you manage to fire the mortar at the spotted machinegun so fast? In one turn you spot it, in the next the shells are already bang on target? Is it direct firing? If so, how is it spotting through all that bocage and foliage?
Third: it seems like you're fighting against someone who is not very experienced, and who is playing this as one would do against the AI - where it's not common to be engaged right off the bat. How come you don't find a more shrewd opponent? I fear this is going to be a bit of a rollover..
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The briefing usually has the designer's name in it, but you do have to load it to see that.
Ah alright, will do. Thanks.
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Well, I just discovered that the base game includes a lot of single battle scenarios, but it doesn't say who made each one.
As I trust some scenario designers more than others to deliver a good level of challenge on a well-made, natural looking map, does anyone have a list of who made each scenario in the list ?
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Bulletpoint, which vehicles have the better top armour values? You want tanks to protect their occupants and survive, say, direct mortar fire, so reasonably high values for top armour aren't necessarily unrealistic. Also figure the increase in fighter-bomber activity as the war progresses and some design changes to counter this...?
Not saying it's not realistic, as I don't know all that much about it. A true grognard will be here shortly, I am sure
But I seem to remember from somewhere that tank armour is generally stronger on the front, then weaker on the sides, then the rear, and finally the top, since it's very unlikely that anything bigger than mortar shells will hit the top of the tank, and even that is somewhat unlikely. Apparently, even in modern times, some anti-tank missiles apparently exploit this by first ascending, then descending on the top of the tank.
I can't remember which tanks have the strong top armour in the game, apart from the sandbagged Sherman I mentioned. But I think I have been puzzled about it a couple of times..
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There are some easy fixes that could be implemented quickly. As Womble said, use the right mouse button more.
Combine this with context-sensitive orders: You click a unit, then right-click on an empty square. The unit gets a basic move order. Click on an enemy unit: your unit gets a basic target order.
Want your unit to do something more advanced, like slow-move? Right-click and hold the mouse button, then a small popup appears, choose "slow". Or right-click an enemy unit, hold the mouse button, and select "target light".
Well, having said that, the thing that really bothers me about the UI is something else actually. I'm playing on an old laptop, and because it's a bit sluggish, there's often a delay when deselecting a unit and selecting another one. That drives me crazy, but Battlefront can hardly be blamed that my computer belongs in a museum
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I read the green symbol as meaning "impenetrable", and the red cross as meaning.. you'll soon need the aid of the Red Cross.
But knowing Battlefront, I wouldn't be surprised if there's one in a million chance that a shot might penetrate anyway, even though you have "green" armour.
By the way, I always wondered about the "top" armour. Isn't is quite normal that tanks have weaker armour on top?
Yet in this game, the final column usually shows better armour (not in your example, typical)
There's also a Sherman variant that has sandbags on the front. That one shows better "top" armour for some reason, even though the sandbags are clearly shown stacked on the front.
EDIT:I should say my experience is limited to playing as the Allies.
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I remain puzzled as to why wooden bunkers show no hit text, and concrete bunkers show "Penetration" the whole time (not "Hit opening - Penetration" or whatever it is you get on open top vehicles and hatch hits).
I have a hypothesis about that as well. When you look at a concrete bunker, you notice that it has quite a large primary vision slit, which in turn has a smaller slit, and so on in a stair-stepping pattern, until the final, narrow firing slit.
I am sure we all know these 'stairs' are meant to prevent bullets deflecting into the bunker, while still giving the occupants a wide field of view.
However, I think that the game might use the outer dimensions of the bunker for determining if a shot has penetrated or not. If so, then all shots hitting these 'staircases' will count as penetrations, as the bullet has indeed passed beyond the outer limits of the bunker. But in fact these shots do not penetrate the actual bunker wall.
So, in computer-speak: There seem to be two separate collision meshes, one for the outer limits of a vehicle/bunker, and another one for its internal, critical components. In the bunker, these two meshes seem to be adjusted wrong, making the game think that the bunker has been penetrated when it has in fact not.
But some of the penetrations are valid. Those are the ones that hit right in the actual opening. Their messages of "penetration" are masked between all the others though.
Well, it's all conjecture on my part. A technical guy from Battlefront would be needed to say if I'm right or wrong..
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Even if you've hit upon the reason, it's nonsense.
I assume you mean that it's nonsense the way bunkers work in this game, rather than what I said being nonsense - as I just theorised about how the game engine works, on the basis of your findings.
And if so, we both agree that bunkers could do with an overhaul.
I really like the way most things in the game works, and I hope to see Battlefront continue to improve, tweak and expand the engine.
I think I'm understanding more and more of that mission though, the fog is lifting...
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Eastern Front Exclusivity?
in Combat Mission Red Thunder
Posted
To each, his own. I personally like smaller battles, sometimes the smaller the better.
Platoon-sized engagements with a couple of vehicles, doesn't even have to be proper tanks. Stuarts are my favorite actually
So yes, epic scale and all that is well and good, but I really like the feeling of "doing more with less". The specific front doesn't matter much to me.