Flying Penguin
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Posts posted by Flying Penguin
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Definitely an awesome scenario
Played as the Russians and was thoroughly ravaged by the Hind, that thing must have cost me at least two whole squads at least! My glorious plan for a killing field degenerated into a bunch of heroic mini-ambushes and Mexican standoffs. A tactical victory, but not my proudest moment....
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Honestly, I wouldn't bother for WW2 battles, just not enough low level control for me.
However where it does shine is covering conflicts that no one else in their right mind would cover. Angolan Civil War (Operation Hooper), minor Russia/China border incidents (Zhalanashkol 1969) and theoretical Russian/Iranian conflicts (Shield of the Prophet).
There the lack of density is actually half way credible, and if the idea of stalking T-55's in Ratel IFVs through bush in 80's African proxy wars appeals, you won't find that anywhere else.
And yes the interface is an acquired taste....
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From the manual:
Step 1:
V = (A + 10) / (B + 10)
where V = Victory Level, A = earned Victory Points of the side with the higher score,
and B = Victory Points of the side with the lower score.
In other words, take the Victory Points score of each side, add ten, and then divide
the higher score by the lower score. The result is V.
Step 2:
The ultimate Victory Level of the victor is determined by V and also by the percentage
of potential Victory Points obtained.
Draw: V less than 1.25.
Minor Victory: V less than 1.75.
Tactical Victory: V less than 2.5 and 30% of potential VP earned.
Major Victory: V less than 4.0 and 55% of potential VP earned.
Total Victory: V equals 4.0 or more and 80% of potential VP earned.
The losing side will always receive the opposite Victory Level of the winning side.
So if the winning side receives a Major Victory, the losing side will receive a
Major Defeat.
Cheers,
Jamie
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When the cop asks you why you hit that stationary car in broad daylight, your excuse involves the phrase 'spotting cycles'.......
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Well, top of my wishlist would be the ability to filter by type of mod (terrain, unit, map, sound etc). It's great to be able to sort by date/downloads etc, but it would be nice to be able to see just the sound mods for example, as they tend to get lost in the swathes of graphical mods. Perhaps as an extension to this, being able to filter by "Modified Object"...
Second, when you go into a list of mods (by date, for example), it would be nice if things like column titles were click-able (to change sorting), and the same for Author/Country etc (to change filtering).
As it stands, it's a good site, but a few additions it could be much more easy to navigate and find what you need.
HTH
Jamie
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$20 inbound....
Great site ☺
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In Red Thunder there is TCP/IP WEGO (turn based), but it doesn't allow rewinding of the turn like you can in PBEM or solo play. This will be coming to CMBN in the 3.0 upgrade in a few months time.
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Ummm...I'm a little skeptical.
It's a cracking read:
In 80 out of 100 cases the Russian who has to stand on his own feet does not know what to do. -
I found this site and article today. I thought some of you may be interested.
http://www.allworldwars.com/Peculiarities-of-Russian-Warfare-by-Erhard-Raus.html
Fascinating, so far it's as illuminating on the psyche of early cold war western generals and propaganda as on the Russian fighting machine....
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Pointed questions are also welcome.
Pointed questions work better when I'm not talking from a position of complete ignorance
Thanks for the clarification!
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If the west would use a company to achieve a goal, well, if it takes 250 men, it takes 250 men. The late war Soviets would have to use a Battalion. (And to keep it balanced, recognize that many German Panzer divisions would be down to ~2 dozen tanks after a few days of combat. An entire Regiment would be a western company or so.)
A meatgrinder.
So (and please understand this is not a pointed question, just trying to clarify) you are saying that the old rule of thumb that you would send a Soviet unit one size up (say a company instead of a platoon) from an equivalent western force to do any given job was based on TO&E of heavily attrited forces rather than any tendancy to send more men to complete the job than the western allies would?
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Oh yeah, can't wait for this
Fuser, your mods are on every install of CM I have, looking forward to seeing what you can do with the Russians
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Oddball, that's pretty much what I saw, but I had at least half the squad doing the musical chairs routine.
Cheers,
Jamie
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Gent,
Firstly, cracking job! I haven't been playing long (family visitors put paid to that idea
), but it runs smoother than FI/BN, I love the Soviet options and it's immediately clear this is going to be great fun But a question arose, I was playing the first tutorial mission and decided to mount a squad on a tank (not really necessary, but hey, new toy
), they approached it and swarmed around, about half the squad mounted quickly, but the rest of the squad ran from one side of the tank to another several times, occasionally one of them would get on, but the whole boarding process ground to a halt. The mission ended that turn so I didn't get to see the full sequence play out, but they started the turn next to the tank so I saw enough.It almost looks like they are playing musical chairs with what are (presumably) "slots" on the vehicle and all going for the same one. Is it just me or have other people been seeing this behaviour?
Cheers,
Jamie
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Won't we get an e-mail before the front page is updated, though?
Only if you are pre-ordering, those of us that don't fancy having to pay lots of shipping and no doubt have a run in with HMRC and Royal Mail are waiting until the balloon goes up to be able to get the download only version.....
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And I win the sweepstake! Although whether the added trauma will make this worthwhile...
I suspect the extra trauma will be of the blunt sort, given the restless natives
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I think tomorrow, April 3, would be a good day to release the game.
Some historical events on April 3 (compliments of Google):
1865 - Union forces occupy Confederate capital of Richmond Va & Petersberg
1882 - Jesse James is killed by Robert Ford
1922 - Stalin appointed General Secretary of Communist Party
1941 - Churchill warns Stalin of German invasion
1964 - Beatles hold top 6 spots on Sydney Australia record charts
2014 - Battlefront.com releases Combat Mission: Red Thunder?
Or alternatively, wait until 22nd June, the start of Bagration
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What the hell happened to my thread???
...the British invaded...(along with a couple canucks, eh?)
oh.
Well at least you'll have good tea and plenty of bitter
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I'm sorry but you just aren't being accurate here. The problem, as I see it, is that you seem to view a 'scenario' in terms of a vacuum. As far as the player is concerned I suppose that might be accurate, but if you are comparing it to reality that isn't accurate. It isn't accurate because you have no idea what happens at the end of a scenario beyond the time limit that has been imposed. In real life, once the time limit expires the battle would not end. The battle would continue beyond the end point of the scenario. The only difference is that the conditions that were set to determine victory or defeat were not achieved within the amount of time that was allocated to the player to get a 'victory'. Victory in the sense of the issuance of points to each side for doing certain things. Victory or defeat in combat mission is an entirely artificial construct of the game that you are playing.
However you want to slice it, if you cannot achieve the 'victory conditions' within the time constraints that have been imposed by the scenario designer then you have not completed the mission as it was designed. Why did the time limit prevent you from achieving 'victory'? Take your pick of any number of reasons as to why the time expired. An atomic bomb exploded. General Patton sacked you for not being aggressive enough. Enemy reinforcements arrived at the exact endpoint of the scenario. A bridge was destroyed. Your flank became uncovered. Your troops have nothing to eat and refuse to continue fighting. It makes no difference. It makes no difference because what happens beyond the end point of the scenario is irrelevant other than to contribute to when the scenario endpoint is reached. The only thing that you need to know is that you failed in completing the mission within the time constraints that were imposed by the designer.
Perhaps that's just the problem, you don't know why.
The timer is just an abstraction for a whole multitude of operational factors which set the tempo required, Battlefront can't possibly code for every scenario so it's up to the scenario designer to explain their limit. If a scenario has a tight deadline. It could be perfectly reasonable in the circumstances but the scenario briefing doesn't generally give an explanation of the operational drivers for the timescale, which makes the limit seen arbitrary.
The timer is clearly a vital part of the game and of mission design, but like most abstractions, if the player doesn't understand why it's happening it can easily be taken as a completely arbitrary obstacle.
To quote the advert, 'it's good to talk'....
Cheers.
Jamie
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Please forgive the slightly provocative title, but seriously, what is the point of Bren/Universal carriers?
They're not:
- Small enough to hide
- Big enough to carry a useful quantity of troops
- Tough enough to leave in the open
- Quiet enough to remain undetected
- Hard hitting enough to be a base of fire
I'm struggling to find a use for them that doesn't involve them sitting at the back with the trucks and mortars or performing "recon by death".
How are other people employing them? They built over 100k of them in real life so they must have a use, but for the life of me I can't seem to make them work for me in CM....
Thoughts?
Jamie
- Small enough to hide
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The ramming could be modeled with some limitations
Have you ever seen inside a tank? Pretty much all of them are a mass of solid metal and unpadded sharp edges. There us one bloody good reason why ramming was never a tactic of anything other than desperation (Kursk aside), hit anything of substance fast enough to harm it and you'll probably incapacitate half your crew. Quite frankly unless it is small enough to simply snap or be mounted (e.g. a young tree or a small road car), the resulting deceleration is borne by the crew (remember they are not strapped in).
When tanks take out larger objects such as trees, they generally approach slowly then Push with their engines. Not an approach that has much use against anything but an abandoned at gun. The best you could probably hope for is being able to ram similarly sized objects with (numbers pulled out of ass but probably not too far off) 50% chance of crew casualties AND 50% chance of immobilising.
Either way it's probably not going to be as useful as you'd like....
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I have to agree that the existing CM games are extremely well balanced. I know our scenario designers don't put heaps of Tigers and expect Stuarts to take them out
As for the zig-zag roads, unfortunately that is going to remain with CMx2 until the day we make our last CMx2 game. The underlying system would require too many massive structural changes to allow for smooth roads at anything less than 45 increments. I know this for sure because at the top of my list for Upgrade 3.0 was getting rid of zig-zags and both Charles and Phil said "not a chance".
Steve
Now, having no idea of the underlying codebase (and fully expecting a kicking for this suggestion), but would it be possible to have the road tiles for a different angle? Five minutes with Paint gave the below suggestion with an additional 3-10 tiles plus possibly rotations of them (I'm not sure they cover every combination but beer + trig is a bad mix
). Not perfect but would give us options at least....Would this cause AI/Pathfinding issues or would it be a (relatively) simple graphical change?
I admit to a great deal of ignorance, but as a possible third way it would be a definite improvement
Cheers,
Jamie
Edit: It would be (imho) worth it even if the auto-road command didn't support it
Edit2: Top left tile is wrong as the road changes width, but I think you get my gist
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Let me know if this sort of thing is interesting or not.
Absoulutely! Whilst the cut and thrust part of an AAR is fascinating, I find I learn more from the seemingly mundane.....
), but it runs smoother than FI/BN, I love the Soviet options and it's immediately clear this is going to be great fun 
Ukraine Rules of Engagement
in Combat Mission Black Sea
Posted · Edited by Flying Penguin
Perhaps an inelegant way of saying it, but probably not a million miles from the truth.
A better way would be to say the Russians are likely to use "standard" wartime RoE, i.e. shoot it if it is or could be hostile, don't worry overly about collateral damage (obviously they aren't going to gratuitously shell hospitals!), rather than "kill all the things!!!!"
I would expect any NATO force to be similarly hamstrung as they were in Afghanistan/Iraq, i.e. only shoot it if it is confirmed hostile, don't bomb anywhere that is likely to cause non-trivial collateral damage, even if it increases risk friendly troops on the ground.
How long NATO would hold to principles as casualties mount (and how long their stomach for the fight would last), now that's the million dollar question....