The Manual

[Greg Scurlock]

Hope this isn't a stupid question but...because of all the different equiptment modeled in CM, will there be an internal file or detailed manual with the game to provide info to us who are neither military historians or experts on equiptment but simply love to play detailed war games. I am learning though by playing the war games i have aquired over the past few years. HPS put out a real good book which i still use to find out more about various pieces. Thanks.

[Guest Big Time Software]

The majority of the important stats are in the game as a secondary display when you click on a unit. Cool thing is that all numbers are real world, not made up game values. If the armor is sloped 45deg and is 80mm thick in the front, that is what is displayed.

The rest, including armor penetration charts, are on disk. The latter is dynamic so you can pull up a Sherman "Jumbo" on one side and a "PzIVJ" on the other side and see how well the two would do in an engagement.

There is a pic on the main CM page that shows Vehicle stats, and there are penetration charts in the Resources area.

Steve

[Thomas Davie]

At the risk of having you engender less than polite comments, I'll ask a few followup questions;

1) Can I print up a 'dynamic' armour penetration chart from within the game, or must I use a screen capture program and then a graphics program to do so?

2) As you get closer to publication, can you post a TOC for the manual?

3) Is there going to be some way to generate a range attenuation chart for a given weapon?

4) Will armour stats/ thicknesses for vehicles be listed somewhere....in a form that can be easily printed out (not the penetration chart data)?

Thanks

Tom

[Fionn]

I think the answers are:

1. Screen cap etc.

2. Maybe.. if we're really nice

3. Ooh GOOD question.

4. Nope.

However. for points 1,2 and 3. It would be possible IMO for a dedicated group of players to do these as labours of love and post them to a CM site. It should be possible to take each value down and put it into a datafield etc.

BTS what do you think of that idea? Would you approve of a group of players doing this due to their love of stats and the game?

[Guest Big Time Software]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>1) Can I print up a 'dynamic' armour penetration chart from within the game, or must I use a screen capture program and then a graphics program to do so?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

No, because these charts take about 15 minutes each to compute. They're just not feasible to compute 'on the fly' during the game.

We will provide hundreds of these charts as part of the on-line documentation for the game. Probably in HTML or something, though we haven't decided.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>2) As you get closer to publication, can you post a TOC for the manual?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Don't know. We're insanely busy, but we'll see what we can do.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>3) Is there going to be some way to generate a range attenuation chart for a given weapon?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

This information is already inherent in the penetration charts. You can see the colors changing as you move further from the target.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>4) Will armour stats/ thicknesses for vehicles be listed somewhere....in a form that can be easily printed out (not the penetration chart data)?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You can access this info with one keystroke from within the game. It's not set up for printout though. However, we may include this data with the online documentation so you won't have to print it out yourself. We'll see.

Charles

[Guest aaronb]

With regards to penetration diagrams: may i suggest PDF files? As portable as HTML, more likely to have the exact look that you want, free reader, and compact format.

And _really_ easy for you guys to make - just print to the 'PDFWriter' print driver.

[Thomas Davie]

Thanks for your answer Charles.

Re: including 100's of 'dynamic' charts as online documents. This is what I wanted. I can and will print them all out

Re: The TOC. Not a big deal, since someone who buys the game will do so.

Re: The armour stats/ thicknesses. Not all people may wish to print them out, I do though.

Re: Range attenuation of weapon systems. I understand that this is built in to the system as a function of weapon .vs. target, and it is depicted graphically. Can I not view this data numerically?

Thanks for the quick answers you gave.

Tom

[Fionn]

Hell, I'm sure that when testers get copiesd they will start answering all manner of data-related questions like that that BTS is just WAY too busy to handle.

Subject to not actually giving any important info away of course but you get my drift.

[Guest Big Time Software]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Re: Range attenuation of weapon systems. I understand that this is built in to the system as a function of weapon .vs. target, and it is depicted graphically. Can I not view this data numerically?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

We're not planning to provide a table of penetration values for the simple reason that the diagrams are far more efficient and illustrative A table would contain less information and would be a spreadsheet as long as an 88 L/71.

Charles

[Fionn]

For those of you who still use the metric system and haven't converted to the far superior gun calibre measurement system that translates as 6.25m (this does not include muzzle brake length or inner-turret trunnions etc.)

Couldn't resist .

[Guest Scott Clinton]

Ahhh...for the Americans what is that in feet and inches...we are a little behind the times

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The Grumbling Grognard