Parker Schnabel

I this behaviour according to the forum rules? Are you a moderator?

I'd recommend to read this thread: http://community.battlefront.com/topic/111876-hull-down-spotting-disadvantage/ Ignorance, denial, excusions, then admitting observations of a few strange things over the years - until finally several bugs in spotting mechanism were admitted. And the fanbois have hailed - once again - a bugged functionality... Am I the only one noticing the same in this discussion? I have mentioned a few parameters that could give the shown results some plausibility. We have learned the camouflage effects are not present. But if they are not present, then the results that are shown are not plausible. And when I hear the explanation that the model was way too complex to come to quick conclusions, then as an engineer I must laugh. Why? Because the engineer knows: not the complexitiy of a model has any significance if it is good, but there is ONLY one thing, that determines if a model is good: who knows the answer? If it works as expected. That's the ONLY measurement for the quality of a model. Not it's complexity. And this understanding of scientific engineering brings up PLAUSABILITY. So the question is not if a customer understands the complexities of a model. What counts is, when the computer is switched on, that it works as expected. No matter if I could explain it away with hardware settings or driver problems. That's what fans want to hear, but the average customers wants that it works. The excuses are not of interest. If camouflage effects in this case can be excluded, and switched off trees and smoke, then I miss the ability to accept, that the model in this case has a big plausability problem. And btw, if the maker of a model does not understand, why his model behaves in a certain manner, then I always am reminded what my professor in theoretical electrical engineering teached us: What is the best model? A: the most simple one that works. So maybe, if their models are too complex for them, they should reduce it to a level of complexity they are able to understand and control?

LukeFF, I don't believe that you can improve CM's success with your permanent attacks on customers. The building entering bug, the water fording bug, the QB setup bug and many more. If you would invest more energy in your job as beta tester and less into playing Ghostbusters, maybe you could prevent customers from facing nasty surprises?

You could have presented a few arguments to support the claim, the 79. VGD was destroyed during Wacht am Rhein. Aha, the racist hatred of a chauvinist? But, but your numbers show still lower losses than Alliied losses...Not bad on the tactical level for a failed operation, isn't it? As a tactically interested person I can only admire this effectiveness and combat power. I understand that you try to bring the discussion down by bringing up even German warcrimes to deny their combat power then, because it fits your emotional way to judge things. But I must disappoint you: what deems you fitting as emotionally driven chauvinist is of no significance to me.

It's not semantic. A rebuilt is nothing that is secret. You do not admit your logical failure that you brought up a newly set up unit like the 6th army as an absurd argument why 79. VGD was destroyed during Wacht am Rhein. What really counts for the soldiers on the tactical level is (and CM is only about that, you know), if the unit is capable to continue fighting. The 79. VGD division's history shows it kept fighting. So the claim it was destroyed is not only wrong from the operational view, it is even more false from the tactical view. Did the Alliied soldiers that kept fighting it, only do that in their imagination? I hope not. CM is about the level where the bullets fly. That's where the fighting takes place. It shows a very high degree of incompetence if someone uses operational, strategic, political and historical judgements to judge the tactical level. Why? Because high level judgements can be COMPLETELY DIFFERENT from the reality of tactical combat: Bulge ------dead----missed---wounded----total Germans 17.236--16.000----14.439-----67.675 Alliies 19.276--21.144-----47.139----87.559 And that's numbers for a failed German operation... Where did the Alliied losses occur? By imagination? By the Luftwaffe? Bagration---------dead----missed---wounded----total German Army---26.397--262.929--109.776----399.102 (Frieser) Soviet Army----178.507--------------587.308----765.815 (Kriwoschejew) To speak in the language of the BFC forum: who on the tactical level might have gotten his teeth's kicked?

Thank you. If I understand this correctly, it would be possible to include for example blown off turrets or much bigger objects as flavor objects, too? Could Kohlenklau place flavor object ships on the "isles" at the Malta coast?

But the 79. VGD was not rebuilt after Bulge. Therefore what was fighting afterwards was the same 79. VGD. This can be hardly called "reappear as a Kampfgruppe": What I know that during Wacht am Rhein the attack on Heiderscheid did not succeed and both sides suffered heavy losses. After the attack on Heiderscheid had failed, the division was defending at the Braunschweig bridgehead for four more weeks (January). Then in February it planfully begun to retreat (you know, destroyed units and retreating...). It was during these weeks of retreat in the Mosel valley, where the highest losses reportedly have occured. After the encirclement of Heidelberg and Darmstadt the majority of the division fell into captivity in March, while outside the divisional HQ with remnants formed Kampfgruppe Hummel and continued to fight until mid of April. This does hardly match to the claim it was destroyed during Wacht am Rhein. Which author is claiming that?

Can flavor objects be created by customers? If yes, how? Are they restricted in size?

It was written that the 79. Volks-Gren.-Div. was not destroyed. Did I miss something in the discussion? Who wrote the 6. Armee was not destroyed?

Isn't BFC at every opportunity emphasizing loudly that only they know what is good for business, when customers make suggestions? IIRC it was already around December that they had announced that Bulge was developed parallel with Black Sea and therefore that Bulge was claimed to be more or less already almost done and only the artistic finetuning was taking place. Now we are almost three months later, no graphical and atmospheric improvements at all even torwards CMFI can be seen, tactics and realism will not be improved, because the engine will stay the same and one week or so ago we learned, that they not even have started to work on new features for the engine. Strangely those "pissing and moaning" customers will naver be satsified...

It could help if camouflaged units would show some kind of - well - camouflage.If this tank has not moved and has such a bonus, then it could be imgined as being hidden under branches and bushes. Especially at night it could happen that one could stand beside it and believe it's a bush. It would be positive, if the behaviour was a result of that bonus. But currently the player has no indication at all, if it's a really cool feature or a bug.

If it was done already it seems to me to be the worst possible point in time, since Vulkan and SPIR-V are about to lift off. First demos from Intel show incredible performance (+50% framerates @50% less driveroverhead). The days of buggy and overall complex OGL and DX drivers forcing developers to implement specific workarounds finally seem to come to an end with this low level multiplatform solution.

Thanks, as a player since CMx1 one probably needs suggestions where to find a mod. A grid overlay is only needed during the turn phase, not permanently like a mod during playback. Since a toggable grid overlay for the terrain is an old and often wished feature among PBEM-players and it is argued it was technically not possible, I wanted to share my idea to use thrown shadows as grid.

Yes, to pinpoint unspotted ATGs to the exact action spot. Really great... Chess vs checkers. Trying to attract checkers players to play chess can only result in losing both in the long term. CM is WAAAY to complex to be attractive for the masses EVER. It will always be a niche product. Chess will also NEVER appeal to the masses. NEVER. One could pump up the graphics of chess and make it look like a FPS, but after the initial spike of shallow interest, it will again only be played by chess players who are not interested in explosions and action, but like the challenge of the mind. The same is with CM. I think the core CM-player was interested in realism above all. Now what will have the bigger impact on sales: those that like CM more because of hit decals, and therefore will buy the next game, or those disappointed customers who no longer perceive guns as threat after the first shot because of hit decals? I believe each of a disappointed core customer is a customer who bought all their products - contrary to those who are quickly attracted by shallow visual effects like hit decals and other gimmicks at the cost of degrading realism. Graphical effects attract quickly but the same crowd is also moving on to the next shallow effect in the next game. But beneath everything the core of the problem seems to be something completely different: The main game designer plays the game not in the mode the vast majority of wargamers play his products. That's never good, if you develop something and don't know, what your core customers need. There are no ladders, no campaigns, nothing played realtime. One could say: realtime does not exist among the wrgaming community. The result of this dramatic discrepancy could be observed since CMSF was released. The spotting problems as a result of keeping the calculation affordances as low as possible to make realtime play possible. Spotting works good enough for realtime but often not good enough for turn based. And I think this has dramatic consequences for potential new turnbased customers: they try the demo, recognize a strange spotting behaviour and lose interest. The 1:1 representation makes things even worse, since it leaves much less room for imagination than a symbolic representation. So again: 1:1 is attracting the visual oriented player, but if there are discrepances between presented action and results, itdegrades the experience of the customer who is interested in realism. The majority of realtime customers cannot be attracted, because FPS games offer them the much better quick action and cooler graphics. Additionally the game concept is so extremely different, that 99% will only shake their head. So the core group is lost and the big part of the massese cannot be attracted because it is chess and not checkers. I will never forget the disastrous relative hotkeys-concept when I tried CMSF the first time. What a punch into the face of WEGO-players that was. Or the water-effects since CMRT breaking FOW. Sounds from unspotted units? A problem since CMSF. But in combination with hit-decals since engine v3 this problem has been even increased instead to become solved. How easily foxholes can be spotted. Bunkers and trenches breaking FOW. And much more. I believe all these are results of a design process done from a realtime-player's perspective and therefore many of the problems are only discovered very late in the design process, or even too late after implementation. Instead that Battlefront had followed their former clear path torwards realism and protected and taken care of their brilliant WEGO-child, they lost this focus and now, with an ageing engine, they are sitting between the chairs, trying to keep new shallow action-customers somehow interested while they lose more and more of realism-focused wargamers which one after the other slowly give up, because the problems persist year after year and game after game and sometimes even become worse.

Hi all old CMx1 player here. I registered because I want to share idea for grid overlay: