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Howler

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Posts posted by Howler

    Bug/glitch thread

    in Combat Mission Cold War

    Posted

    On 6/13/2021 at 11:20 AM, Erwin said:

    I thought that was the same strange SOP with a Bradley.  But, it's been a while since I played with US.

    No problem. I just wanted to reported behavior of Dragon AT teams to not get lost in translation. Javelins won't fire on Target Light. But I haven't verified this since the 'collapsed' LAW/RPG patch was made available.

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    Bug/glitch thread

    in Combat Mission Cold War

    Posted · Edited by Howler

    11 hours ago, Erwin said:

    Yes, am wondering if it's a characteristic of missile weapons regardless of whether man-portable or on an AFV.

    A TOW won't be fired from a Bradley. You've even posted in threads discussing this.

    Also, Javelins won't be wasted when a Target Light is issued. You've posted in these threads too.

    The Dragon, in CW, may be classed differently. If so, I'll need to keep this in mind.

    Hoping some kind soul here will port a shooting range (ala CMBS) saving me some effort. I would in turn commit to reporting tests of LAWs and such in this title as they should  not normally be fired with a Target Light.

    Maybe the change altering the look (collapse tube) of LAWs (M72 & RPG-18) in the recent patch caused some unintended consequence?

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    CW Mortars and Arty.

    in Combat Mission Cold War

    Posted

    6 hours ago, womble said:

    Nope. It's the primary concrete difference in performance between the various "difficulty levels" and always has been. It's the only justification for referring to those levels as "difficulty", really, and only then if you consider that lightning quick arty response times help a human player more than an AI, which is questionable.

    I'm not sure I follow; are you saying that Elite/Iron don't use 'realistic' wait times?

    I thought once someone played on 'Warrior' the only difference was the amount of 'spotting' information provided. With 'Iron' requiring  friendlies to also be 'spotted'.  

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    Forum upvote/thanks/like

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Howler

    9 minutes ago, Canuck21 said:

    So, where does one go to find these settings (as in turning them on/off/whatever) for your own account? Not sure I'm grasping the concept here.

    Lower right of post, you should see a heart. Clicking that heart icon now reveals upvote/thank.

     

    Just tried to both upvote and thank your post but only the last one selected seems to stick. Anyhow, we can: Like, Thank, or Upvote.

     

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    Platoon movement orders

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Howler

    9 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

    A squad consist of 2 or 3 teams. They move on the same path unless you split them up. Instead of making a follow order have them moving in concert until split up decided by the player. The feature already exists in infantry units on a squad level why not on a platoon level with other units? 

    It doesn't already exist. Spotting updates continuously over the course of a 60 second slice and teams have varied movement rates depending on status (number of KIA/Wounded). I'm not sure what feature you're alluding to. When I displace a squad, I alter waypoint movement rates (eg Fast/Quick) of the individual elements accordingly.

     

    EDIT: Again, it might be my not understanding what is being requested.

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    Platoon movement orders

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Howler

    2 hours ago, chuckdyke said:

    We have a squad which can be split but us long they are not split they can move on the same path to unite them again in one squad is easy but not as easy as splitting them up.  Vehicles could be the same, a platoon which could be split up like we can with an infantry squad. It is a wish-list for the next engine. I think we go the wrong path of 'Follow'. Split and combine is what we should be looking at. 

    It isn't easy and results in stragglers not to mention the spacing is too close while on the move. Why everyone seems to think this is easy all of a sudden must have not experienced the path finding issues only recently alleviated (not corrected) with "withdraw" and movement generally in close terrain.

    How would this magical 'follow' command work exactly? All I've seen mentioned is a 'replicate' function which would also include pause(s). You'd still need to tweak it as vehicles differ in speed. Infantry differ in both number of men and wounded men in a given element. How far could the last element be from it's lead to be included? What happens when there's impassable terrain between the lead and follow unit?

    I've never been involved in devising/testing this feature but can readily understand the desire to not include/clutter the  UI panel with a player command that would rarely function as intended.

    Please do continue to believe BFC is being mean by holding this back from us.

    Oh, and explain to me how 'Hunt' would behave when a mixed formation of (light/heavy/tracked/wheeled/transport/etc.) vehicles? And, again with a mix of vehicles and infantry? We can repeat with a mix of Fast/Quick/Move/Slow...

    I'd rather they fix 'Hunt' and then move on to next quirk (eg infantry dispersal/spacing).

     

    EDIT: I micro manage and know full well the tedium of tweaking individual elements. It's brutal, but adding a 'cheat' key that wouldn't work reliably would only force me to continue to use 'double-click', shift way point, add pause, repeat...

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    Platoon movement orders

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    4 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

    I' not pretending anything. Just puzzled wh they couldn't make it work.

     

    1: Decided by the player using pauses just like current system

    2: Pathfinding along the road is done by the player, but only once

    3: They wouldn't - that's the point. The command would only copy/paste the waypoints of one vehicle to another, so no extra AI coding would be necessary

    4: Same as when the lead element is ambused or bogged in the current system

    5: I think the hull down command works just fine

    The problem might be with my comprehension of the feature being discussed. Are we looking at a command to allow movement in column exclusively? If so, why introduce a command with limited use to an already crowded panel? Can't we already copy/paste movement now by selecting the parent command (aka double-click)? Then move/pause waypoints around as desired?

    I thought the feature being requested included moving commands in wedge/line/column formation across any terrain (not limited to roads) with a defined spacing appropriate for the desired formation. My apologies.

    I don't mind responding to your points if you were envisaging something other than a copy/paste of both waypoints and pause which the current available mechanics don't do (eg pauses aren't copied over). I assume it would be expected of the feature to sort elements belonging to different organizations on the fly...

    Otherwise, given the fact we still can't cross bridges or road intersections (the latter being CMCW Fleeing Altdorf) with 100% certainty; I understand why this feature has failed to appear. Surely, I can't be only one noticing 'quirks' in the path finding as it is now. Asking this to be mirrored to every element can only lead to more frustration (new players more so). A wise vendor seeks to minimize such things... making their decision to not implement it perfectly understandable and rational. Assuming a design consideration is improving ease of use while avoiding additional frustration.

    Anyhow, apologies for not fully grasping what is being sought. I'll go back into the background.

     

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    Platoon movement orders

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    5 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

    Yes, that's also a way to get around this. But it would need additional coding to make the follow on vehicle aware that it was in a special mode that relates to the lead vehicle. The beauty of just copying movement node data from one unit to another is that it's a very simple solution and that the following vehicle doesn't even know it's doing convoy movement. It's just following a waypoint route like normal.

    But in any case, they tried to do it, and they couldn't for some reason.

    Possible reasons:

    1) what distance to maintain between 'travelling' elements? 15m, 25m, 50m, etc.. We already know that maintaining spacing within an element is an issue (too bunched up).

    2) path finding - while much improved - still rears it ugly head depending on the quality/condition of the map. Older maps not refined/updated to incorporate current terrain objects resulting to make this more apparent.

    3) Magic! How would individual elements upon having lost LOS to their 'lead' know when to stop?

    4) when the 'lead' element is destroyed, engaged in an ambush, or otherwise unable to continue (immobilized/bogged) - what happens?

    5) Any new command introduced needs to be absolutely bulletproof. You need to look no further than the 'Hull Down' to see how that was initially accepted. We can be a critical crowd...

    I can go on but let's not pretend the beta testers and BFC didn't give it their all. I can roll off a few other reasons as you like...

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    Platoon movement orders

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    25 minutes ago, chuckdyke said:

    The quickest way is Alt+P to show all move paths and click to copy the path of the first vehicle. Not nice if you must do a battalion that way. These 3 vehicles took me a minute.

    The issue remains in the execution and not the plotting itself. Formations can be selected and then the waypoints can be moved accordingly. You've shown this can be accomplished fairly quickly. The challenge is in who needs 'X' second of pause so as to not break the formation (eg wedge or column). For example with vehicles, which one and where in the formation will it bog? If the lead vehicle slows/bogs, the follow-ons will start to route around it.

    That 'route around' behavior is likely something we all want to retain. So, when/which use cases do we want troops *not* to move around obstructions?

    Troops are already not as dispersed during movement as we would like. How much "bunching" are we willing to tolerate when the lead element encounters a wall/hedge/forest/etc.?

    For these reason and a few more - it's never been incorporated in game.

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    Steam and Reshade

    in Combat Mission Shock Force 2

    Posted · Edited by Howler

    Usually, the reshade dll (opengl32.dll) needs to be in the same location as the executable for the game. I don't have the steam versions of CM but assume that would be somewhere like '../Steam/steamapps/common/Combat Mission Shock Force 2'.

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    Pop Smoke quirk?

    in Combat Mission Cold War

    Posted

    @Gkenny Thanks for that.

     

    TBH, I'm experimenting with CMCW to see how much it differs engine wise. I just never noticed squads popping *two* smokes before and wondered if it was WAD when both corners were hugged... One each in opposite directions seemed excessive and new to me.

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    Pop Smoke quirk?

    in Combat Mission Cold War

    Posted

    First time I notice this behavior when popping smoke. Had a squad lined up along the outside of a building that threw smoke in both the direction of the last 'Face' command (good) *and* at the opposite corner of the building in the other direction (bad).

    I'm forcing myself to use squads more often than teams in this title when playing the Soviets. The above might have always been the case when Squads are used to smoke (ie. they always threw two smoke grenades?).

    Granted, this might be long known and expected behavior. I simply never noticed before as I use teams exclusively (wearing out the Combine Squad button!) before now.

    Teams will also position a man at both corners of a terrain piece occupying an action spot but throw *one* smoke in the direction of the 'Face' command (my SOP -> Face then Smoke).

    So, squads throw two smokes where teams only throw one?

    When covering both corners a squad will throw smoke from both corners in opposite directions?

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    Artillery suggestion: "At My Command" option

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Howler

    45 minutes ago, Gkenny said:

    I think some improvements that would be relevant to pretty much all games would be:

    • Allow the firing of smoke rounds after HE rounds are spent

    My understanding is that currently, your off-map support has, for example, 156 rounds allotted . All of which may be HE and no more than 'X' can be smoke.  In other words, your limit is 156 HE fires and no more than 'X' fires can be something else (smoke, WP, precision, etc.).

    A ratio of 156 HE/ 56 Smoke means 100 HE when 56 Smoke have already been fired. If you have already fired 36 smoke than your HE count is 120 (and no more than 20 smoke remaining).

    I have learned to look at the top line for ammo count (HE) and anything else available listed below that line are 'type' limits *within* that overall HE count.

    On-map assets differ in that they actually carry what they show and may also fire directly. 

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    Artillery in SF 2

    in Combat Mission - General Discussion

    Posted

    12 minutes ago, Khalerick said:

    I did a little bit of testing and artillery in general is largely ineffective vs. infantry inside buildings.

    [SNIP]

    Fundamentally, it seems arty's role is still to fix the target in place. If it kills them, great, but if used as a fire-and-forget asset you're probably wasting its utility.

    In the modern titles, anything 120mm plus will hurt *and* demolish structures. Anything caught in a barrage is pinned. Casualties are a bonus. Do expect a lot of bonus.

    Infantry in a building isn't an issue as there are too many things (brads/bmps) that will cause the structure to collapse.

    The challenge, normally, is how best to clear the building while leaving it still standing.

    You want to clear mines or demo a structure - call a short mission (linear or point) with 155s. You want to demo a building - target light with a brad or abrams.

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