BornGinger

In the Engine Manual it says about Quick Battle's victory points "Quick Battles consider only OCCUPY terrain objectives and unit casualties for determining victory conditions. All other objective types and parameters are ignored. All terrain objectives are converted to OCCUPY objectives automatically, and all Units are part of a force-wide UNIT objective. Quick Battle scores are determined differently than in Missions. The total point value is automatically set to 1,000 VP. Out of the 1,000 VP available, a portion will be allocated to the OCCUPY terrain objectives and the remainder of the VP will be assigned to the UNIT objective." The words "all Units are part of a force-wide UNIT objective" possibly mean that there is no reason to allocate VPs for unit casualties, which can be done in normal scenarios, as the game does that automatically. But if the total value of VPs are 1000, how does the game divide those VPs between terrain objetives and unit objectives if a quick battle have four terrain objectives with a total value of 1000?

Thanks IanL. I guessed there was a way inside the editor but haven't read any description of it anywhere. Or maybe I just missed that part when I was reading the Engine Manual.

Is there a way or procedure to use a master map .btt file and in the editor "cut it up" in different sections for a campaign? Or does one have to find a map of an area on the internet and then make several scenario maps in the editor with that map as the overlay map?

Look forward to new AAR videos on YouTube in a couple of weeks or months.

I'm sure all of us hope this won't be too far into the future. It seems to me that playing with having the icons only showing spotting contacts removes the stuttering (maybe I should call it lag) on huge maps. I have no problems on medium or large maps.

I think that is ok. Mostly because I've used that myself to check the line of sight in a certain situation.

That sounds like something you could find in a Paradox game. Are you maybe playing Europa Universalis a lot or maybe the newer Imperator Rome?

The film from 1955, I think, is better than any of the two newer versions of Unknown Soldier. The film The Winter War from 1989 is good too. The other films, about the continuation war, are ok and don't have so very much action, except maybe Tali Ihantala.

I sometimes wish there could be different kinds of mud in the editor - deep mud and shallow mud. The vehicles often get stuck and immobilized a bit too easily. I understand if a vehicle gets stuck in the mud on a field or a dirt road if it has been raining or is a very rainy day. But when a vehicle gets stuck and later on immobilized in a little splash of mud which lies beside a tarmac road it feels a bit too much.

When an MG-unit is losing the soldier manning the MG another one steps up to take his position. But when the whole unit is whiped out the MG is viewed as abandoned. Moving another unit to that spot doesn't change that and the MG is still abandoned. Wouldn't at least one man in a nearby unit prefer to use an abandoned MG instead of a rifle? A change of the game which allows men to man an abandoned MG, and even to carry it with him to another position, would be a good improvement. Another thing which would be good is if units of soldiers where able to reverse, like tanks, instead of slowly turning their backs to the enemy before moving away. That could be good if an MG-unit where shooting and wanted to crawl back to hide behind a crest. Using the hide option doesn't always work when tanks sometimes have a magical line of sight over several hundreds of meters. Could also be good when units fall back but want to shoot at the enemy so they don't get shot in the back while turning before falling back.

I just about finished the book Ostland, by David Thomas. The beginning of the book tells the story how Georg Heuser starts his new job as a Berlin murder squad detective in the search for the serial killer of women called the S-Bahn murderer. As this is during the war the different police departments are under the control of SS and Georg is later on being send away to the Minsk area in Belarus as a part of the Sonderkommando 1B. It doesn't take long before he understands what is expected of him and he is soon having the title Chief of Gestapo in that part of Ostland. The book also tells the story of the people who wants to sentence him to a long life in prison for what happened in the Minsk area when he was there.

Issues in night battles and fog battles are only two things which are wrong in this game and need a complete change.

I hijack this thread for a LOS question of my own to the game Final Blitzkrieg. In the top picture a Sherman tank is selected and one can see the highlighted units which see the tank. The other six pictures show what the individual units see when they are selected. All of them except for the PAK 40 AT-gun actually spot the tank when they are selected. Does anyone know why the AT-gun is highlighted as if it is able to spot the tank but doesn't spot the tank when selected?

The tanks were only an example and a tank can also have an open turret which gives it a better view of the surroundings. The units which may suffer inside the woods can be of any kind and not only a tank or an armored vehicle.

I think the situation with a bad line of sight and a bad line of fire from forests or woods is a problem of game balance when for example Tank A, which is among the trees, either can't see or shoot at Tank B, which is on a field, just because the game's coding is blocking the view of tank A whilst Tank B can see and shoot at Tank A.

I see it the same way. I'm quite new to the PBEM battles and the battles I'm busy with now is much of a possibility to test certain things. I hardly use direct fire, except when I decide where a mortar section is going to shoot or if I want a PAK gun to use HE shells on a certain position. The infantry has to use their own (the AI's) ability to choose what to shoot at and the same goes for tanks and other armored vehicles. But I sometimes use the area option to keep control on where they should keep an eye open.

Another improvement with line of sight/line of fire I'd like to see is the ability to use destroyed buildings as concealment for vehicles and guns while waiting for enemy vehicles and troops to come close enough. When it comes to the sound in the game, I'd welcome different sounds without the long distant shooting. There is a mod with two sound files without any shooting, but those two files don't have the wind or rain in them either. So sound files for autumn, winter, rain and so on without the distant (sometimes not so distant) rumble from artillery would be great to have.

A few things I've been thinking about while playing and making my own scenario which could be nice to have: 32 Ai groups instead of only 16 would help to split battalions or companies up more, for the use of encirclement, when making custome made scenarios with large or huge maps. Lorries and halftracks can be used to tow antitanks and field guns and it would be nice to be able to use a tanks and halftracks to pull vehicles up from being bogged so they don't get immobilized. The crew of a tank or halftrack should be able to operate any vehicle of the same kind (tank for tank crew and halftracks for halftrack crew) whether it's a heavy, medium or light. But if a tank crew jumps into a type of tank they haven't been in before they laft their own tank they could maybe operate the "new" tank like a green unit or something no matter their experience in their own tank. Any crew or squad unit should be able to drive a lorry. Two men of the squad could sit in the front seats and the other ones, if they're still alive, would sit in the back with the equipment they can require. When using artillery to shoot up an area where there are mines, the mines are untouched in the game and will still harm the vehicles and men stepping on them. Would be better if artillery could make the mines blow up on a direct or close hit. Improved line of sight so the squads see through the woods exactly what the player can see from the same spot would be great to have. And improved line of fire so the squads can shoot at what they see even if they are further into the woods. The square areas where to move units (men and technical equipment) could be smaller as a way to have more variation in where to position them. It seems units are positiones in the corner of these squares. If the squares were smaller it wouldn't be so frustrating to position a squad closer to where you want them. When a unit is moving slow (crawling) they seem to be coded to have their face turned to the ground below them and not to be aware of the surrounding area. Many times a unit has been crawling a few meters away from an enemy vehicle and not been able to see nor hear it until he is stopped. I hope that will be changed so the units in crawling slow mode actually are able to see what is close by and react to it.

Once I had a halftrack shooting at a tank from a distance and the shells hit a treetop below which two squadrons were hiding. The result was a few losses of friendlies. Friendly fire can also happen if you request an emergency artillery barrage. The artillery crew doesn't have much of direction where exactly the shells should fall so they just send them away with the result that they can land almost anywhere.

I bought Final Blitzkrieg because I thought it would be more up to date but later on realized that it doesn't matter much which game you choose because they all use the same engine. If I knew that earlier I would have picked Red Thunder. So if you want the theatre you're more interested in go for Red Thunder and if you want the theatre with more modules go for the Battle for Normandy bundle.

Like in the Paradox games where you can use their special scripting code (based on Lua, I think) to make changes to the games. However it could be done it would be great to have the ability to use the "when", "if" and other scripting tags in making AI plans.

It's maybe about time that I try a H2H battle. I only have FB and prefer a bit larger to huge battle maps. If you aren't too busy with a battle right now you can decide which scenario to play, make your first moves and let me know which scenario you have chosen. I have no internet connection at the moment so you'd have to send me the save through email. If you want to make changes to a scenario and save it with another name you can send me that edited scenario in the email together with the save. I'm not sure I'll be able to play every evening, but if you're already fighting against someone else that should probably not be a bad thing.

I'm sure you'll have loads of fun battles. But now you should maybe keep an eye on your bank account for possible fraudulent card transactions. I hope you won't get any of those surprises you can read about in that thread.

Thanks to both MOS:96B2P and Combatintman for the info on how to see elevations in the AI-map. It's a bit strange that the manual doesn't mention anything about it. If the manual do mention it I must have missed that part.

Would be great if we could see the elevation of the map by the click of a key (maybe the O-key as in the map editor) in the AI-screen when we decide how the AI-groups will move around.