What does it mean to have a greyed out main gun?

[CM1fan]

The display for my StuH shows its main gun, the first item in the list, in grey text. All the StuH's other systems are in black text. What does the grey text for the main gun indicate? (The gun mantel has taken hits from small arms fire.)

[Sakai007]

The weapon is re-loading and unavailable to be used at that moment.

[CM1fan]

Thanks, 007! I'm a WeGo type, so I'm not familiar with aspects of CM:BN useful for the real-timers. How on earth can you respond within a minute of my posting??? It took me five minutes to initially respond to yours.

[YankeeDog]

It's not so much a RT/WEGO thing as it is a time period/theatre thing. Bear in mind the CMx2 engine is designed to be flexible enough to model tactical combat from various historical periods. It isn't particularly important to have a weapon reloading indicator in the CMBN UI currently, because we don't have any weapons that require a really long time to reload in the game right now.

But, e.g., in CMSF there are certain ATGM missile systems that can take a really long time to reload. So it's good to have something in the interface that tells you a system is simply temporarily unavailable because the tube is empty, rather than actually damaged.

This might eventually become more important for WWII-based CMx2 games, if certain weapon systems are included in future game releases. Off the top of my head, the Russian ISU-152 comes to mind as a weapon you would see on the CM-scale battlefield, that has a very long reload time.

[Fuser]

This might eventually become more important for WWII-based CMx2 games, if certain weapon systems are represented. Off the top of my head, the Russian ISU-152 comes to mind as a weapon you might see on the CM-scale battlefield, that has a very long reload time.

[Sakai007]

LoL, just happened to be on the forum at the right time with that. It is strange to get a response within a minute tho! After many, many dead pixel truppen in CMSF and CMBN, I figured this out on my own as well.

Coincidentally, I recently discovered what an impact crew training can have on reload times in CMBN, or even straight up fear for virtual lives. In a PBEM w/Bradley Dick I had a MkIV take a hit from a Cromwell and reverse out of LOS. The TC was killed so I ordered the next in line to unbutton so I could see the Cromie when I came back into LOS. I saw him first and fired, shot was ineffective but stunned the crew. In the next 35 seconds or so I hit that tank three times and it exploded. This is with -1 crew member and a Vet crew, +2 morale SS. What a fun time that was to watch.

[stoex]

Thanks for those pics, Fuser - Sturmmörser Tiger for the win every time! I remember in CMBO I used to make test scenarios in the editor just to see it fire, and the devastation a single round caused. It took a minute or more to reload but it simply didn't matter...one shot was all you really needed.