This is unacceptable.

[5th SS Div Wiking]

I've found the file but it's 40MB (thought I'd be able to upload it here but the forum limit is 500KB). That threw me! 40MB?! Wow!

[5th SS Div Wiking]

This might work:

https://jumpshare.com/v/telfGU9eKDYh7IutjC5A

[RockinHarry]

This might work:

https://jumpshare.com/v/telfGU9eKDYh7IutjC5A

 

Ok, after watching the replay I noticed the Panther 3x times attempted to align the turret with the hull (blue facing line). Somehow the Panther got the turret temporarily stuck in 11 o´clock position and just at the 4th attempt aligning the turret it got a spotting and final shot at the Sherman. Between the time where the Panther was busy engaging the US mortar team and final shot, the Panther got hit at least one time in the frontal turret ring area so to say. 

Beside some smoke and dust the only other thing worth to notice maybe was the Sherman intersecting with a tree, although from my understanding that abstraction shouldn´t actually make any problems. Center mass to center mass line was unobstructed as one can see and the final hit went straight into the Shermans ammo bins (right behind upper part of the tracks)

Panther optics and tracks are only slightly damaged (def good) btw. 

Edited January 19, 2016 by RockinHarry

[5th SS Div Wiking]

My thinking is the commander should have immediately spotted the Sherman and directed the gunner to traverse until he had it in his sights. The inability of the gunner to spot the Sherman through his optic is irrelevant in my opinion. If the commander had spotted the US mortar team and directed fire onto it, once that was underway he'd go to checking through the cupola visors in order to maintain best SA (assuming all three crew-members failed to spot the Sherman in the first place).

I've narrowed the issue down to this: the game isn't able to use multi-threading, which restricts spotting cycles to levels manageable by a single core, which means in-game assets are, effectively, sight-impaired. In a big battle most of this seems to go un-noticed by most players, so maybe it's a peculiarity in those who do notice it (me being one).

Personally I think that if this game can be made to use multi-core CPUs to their full extent it will blow the lid off the genre.

[Bulletpoint]

 

1. The tree is obviously not blocking LOS. If the tree is blocking LOS in the underling code, then something needs to be tweaked with how the trees are rendered. Although it's not a bug by coder's definition there's definitely something wrong in that video, i.e. not realistic, not intended in programming. 

2. If smoke from the KIA tank is blocking LOS then something needs to be tweaked with how the smoke is rendered.

This.

[Baneman]

My thinking is the commander should have immediately spotted the Sherman and directed the gunner to traverse until he had it in his sights.

...

Many people have pointed out how even in real life, the possibility exists that the commander wouldn't spot it immediately.

In game, sure, it's probably a combination of smoke, KO'd Pz IV, tree and worst case spotting cycles.
Those are the breaks, but it's an outlier - most of the time the spot would happen more or less when you think it should.

 

[Baneman]

... In a big battle most of this seems to go un-noticed by most players, so maybe it's a peculiarity in those who do notice it (me being one).

...

Thing is, most of the time things do happen as expected.

And when it doesn't, we do notice, but we're willing to accept that the limitations of the game give rise to occasional wtf moments. ( and there's plenty of real-life war anecdotes that prove that "weird ****" can and did happen. )

But these limitations apply to both sides when playing another human player, so you win some and lose some. Against the AI, well, it needs all the help it can get
If it stops you being able to enjoy the game, that's a pity, but it's your choice.

[Vanir Ausf B]

This might work:

https://jumpshare.com/v/telfGU9eKDYh7IutjC5A

Do you by chance have a save game file from before you ran the turn?

A few things I noticed. 1) For the first 8 seconds the gunner and loader are not spotting. The gunner is fixated on a target and the loader is loading. 2) Optics damage is present, albeit minor. 3) The smoke rising from the KIA tank is a non-factor. However, there is a fair amount of smoke in the air for about the first 10 seconds between the tanks from what I presume was an explosion during the prior turn. It's not enough to block LOS but it may have degraded spotting.

Without a prior turn file to re-run it's impossible to say if this is a 1 in 1000 event or a 1 in 2 event.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Vanir Ausf B

[Pak40]

 

Yes, I do believe it should have popped up.  This is where I do believe there is a "corner case" involved where the crew is almost getting an ID on the tank but it isn't quite strong enough for about 3-4 cycles.

 

I saw that too but I'm not sure if it would have an affect or not.  But it could be yet another factor.

 

 

Which is part of the problem.  I've been doing this for a very, very long time and I can't tell you how often there's something not in the video that's relevant.  A picture might be worth a 1000 words, but pictures can still be misleading.

 

Again, you are speaking with waaaaaaaaaaay too much certainty and not taking into account other factors.  The visuals in Combat Mission are pretty darned close to 1:1, but they are not perfectly 1:1 because it's not possible for computers to handle.  When things don't make visual sense the first thing to do is try to figure out what factors might be at play and not presume "bug".  As I said, we've had you guys pounding on this game for a very long time.  The chances that there's any significant bugs remaining with the underlying system is quite low.

In this case it is necessary to remember that LOS/LOF is drawn between center mass of target and center mass of spotter.  I can not tell form the video but it is possible the tree is in exactly the wrong spot, so to speak.  There is definitely code in the game to prevent a tank being able to hide behind a tree, but with the other factors mentioned it could be tipping the balance.

Ideally, sure, but you have to accept some visual abstractions for the game to work at all given CM's scope.  Remember, thousands of things going on... not just a couple of tanks or a couple of guys.  We do not have the luxuries that World Of Tanks or Battlefield have, even if we had millions to invest in programming.

See previous explanation.  Plus, keep in mind that the Panther *DID* spot the Sherman.  It simply wasn't instantaneous.

 

 "Popping" into view is the only way to have Relative Spotting.  You either see it or you don't, there's no possibility for an inbetween condition.

Yet I looked at the same video as you did and came to very different conclusions.

44 seconds might seem like an eternity, but it's not.  People have far, far, far too high expectations for what happens on a battlefield.  Imperfect stuff happens on battlefields all the time.  So yeah, if every single last encounter resulted in near perfect reactions then we, the developers, would have done a poor job simulating real life.  Which means that sometimes you will see things that don't look or seem right.  That's not necessarily grounds to yell BUG!

Think of it this way... if tanks were routinely not seeing each other for 44 seconds at this range then we'd have a problem to look into.  But here we are some 5 years after CMBN was released.  We've released several other CM games and lots of expansions.  Ask yourself, honestly, if this one situation is a mountain or a molehill.

As for the Sherman firing, you bet that is a factor in spotting.  For all we know the Panther would have taken even longer to spot the Sherman if it had not been shot at.

 

I think there is more wrong with the interpretation of the video than what is actually in the video.

As for our definitions... BUG = something that is not working as it should.  I don't see any evidence to suggest that is the case here.  Is there something that could use massaging?  Perhaps, but it's not worth our time chasing down a single instance even if we had access to a save file.  Without a save file it is absolutely not worth bothering with.

Steve

Steve,

Thank you very much for these explanations. It's one of the reasons I love you guys.

Anyway, I think I'll chalk this one up to the smoke from the burning tank. I can certainly see how smoke from burning vehicles can radiate outwards and block LOS at ground level. Unfortunately the visuals in the game , i.e. a vertical column of smoke, don't really match what may be happening under the hood.

[Vanir Ausf B]

I don't think it took 44 seconds. I just watched the second video and it's the same replay as the first video but from a different angle. He just doesn't start the turn until well after the video begins.

Something to remember about buttoned tanks is that their situational awareness is not very good. The commander's cupola on the Panther is seven periscopes arranged in a circle, but he can only look through one of them at a time. If the Sherman fired while he was looking though the wrong scope he would have no idea where the shot came from expect that it probably wasn't where he was looking. I don't think the game explicitly models the direction anyone is looking at any give moment, I think it abstracts it with randomized spotting times.

The result looks to me like a bit of an outlier but far from impossible.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Vanir Ausf B

[5th SS Div Wiking]

Thing is, most of the time things do happen as expected.

And when it doesn't, we do notice, but we're willing to accept that the limitations of the game give rise to occasional wtf moments. ( and there's plenty of real-life war anecdotes that prove that "weird ****" can and did happen. )

But these limitations apply to both sides when playing another human player, so you win some and lose some. Against the AI, well, it needs all the help it can get
If it stops you being able to enjoy the game, that's a pity, but it's your choice.

My experience is somewhat different, though it's more of an overall feeling during a long battle. Things just don't seem to gell realistically. Too much stuff that I'm 100% sure is hidden gets knocked out, way too quickly and easily. So like I said before, I thought it was code LOS vs player LOS and shrugged my shoulders. But thinking there would never be a way to direct forces to an apparently safe area, due to my human LOS not matching the code's, that was already enough to dampen my enthusiasm. Then when I saw what's in the video I figured probably a lot of what was causing the mysterious kills were unseen enemy units that my guys should have spotted a lot sooner, instead of just bumbling along under fire until KO'd. It was a whole lot of very un-specific stuff that I couldn't nail down until the incident in the video and it was really doing my head in. Kind of like "Is it me? What am I doing wrong? Or is it the game, bugged or game-balanced/cheating?" Well, bottom line is I don't play for that kind of experience. I can deal with the occasional WTF moment, that's part and parcel of pretty much any computer game, but to be subjected to entire hours of it is over-whelming. I get the reasons as stated, they're legit. But I think it's also legit to expect a game at this price-point to be up to date regarding how it runs with modern hardware. If realism is being restricted by single-core inability to run the code fast enough then the game needs to be re-evaluated in numerous ways, in my opinion. But on the other hand, enough people are OK with it the way it is and provide a viable business-model to BF. Not that I have the faintest clue how many people have bought it and just quietly shelved it a couple of weeks later because of that 'can't put my finger on it' feeling.

To answer the question about saves, I'm afraid not (that would have meant me saving the game every single turn?). I save only when I'm closing down the game (or to record a specific incident, this one being the first and only).

[5th SS Div Wiking]

I don't think it took 44 seconds. I just watched the second video and it's the same replay as the first video but from a different angle. He just doesn't start the turn until well after the video begins.

Something to remember about buttoned tanks is that their situational awareness is not very good. The commander's cupola on the Panther is seven periscopes arranged in a circle, but he can only look through one of them at a time. If the Sherman fired while he was looking though the wrong scope he would have no idea where the shot came from expect that it probably wasn't where he was looking. I don't think the game explicitly models the direction anyone is looking at any give moment, I think it abstracts it with randomized spotting times.

The result looks to me like a bit of an outlier but far from impossible.

People can slice this pie in any one or combination of numerous ways but it'll always come back to an enemy tank about 30m away in clear view to a veteran crew in good shape, three of who were actively looking out, and their tank in decent mechanical order. Now consider the chance of a player happening to directly witness the moment vs the number of times it inevitably goes unnoticed (but gives cause to that uneasy overall feeling some of us have). Personally I do not think this is a rare event, I think it's very common. The chances of it being rare AND witnessed...do the math. Lol.

[Baneman]

... Too much stuff that I'm 100% sure is hidden gets knocked out, way too quickly and easily.
...

I can deal with the occasional WTF moment, that's part and parcel of pretty much any computer game, but to be subjected to entire hours of it is over-whelming.
...

 

I think this is a combination of the game's learning curve as well as the occasional edge case.

After a while, canny players ( and scenario designers ) become very adept at achieving keyhole LoS to small areas. If an asset isn't moving, it's harder to spot.
If it kills your vehicle/men shortly after they arrive at the location before they can spot it back, it can seem like you're being killed by invisible enemy- but it can be just very well positioned.

Again, I've read real life battle anecdotes where they talk about being pinned down by enemy gun(s) which they couldn't spot ...  for days !

Edited January 19, 2016 by Baneman

[Baneman]

People can slice this pie in any one or combination of numerous ways but it'll always come back to an enemy tank about 30m away in clear view to a veteran crew in good shape, three of who were actively looking out, and their tank in decent mechanical order. Now consider the chance of a player happening to directly witness the moment vs the number of times it inevitably goes unnoticed (but gives cause to that uneasy overall feeling some of us have). Personally I do not think this is a rare event, I think it's very common. The chances of it being rare AND witnessed...do the math. Lol.

Now I definitely disagree.

Many players watch the action from many different units for a single replay. Especially from vehicles and even more likely if it got KO'd ( because usually you want very badly to know what killed it and from where ).

If it was very common, people ( lots of people ) would notice and they'd be here posting about it.
- If you go back far enough to CMBN release, you can find at least a couple of my own posts about "spotting is broken". And it was a new game and there were a few spotting bugs ( not necessarily anything I'd posted about, mind ), but we're well down the road from that and spotting has been tightened up a lot. Hence the long periods between new "spotting is broken" posts here.

Edited January 19, 2016 by Baneman

[Pak40]

Personally I do not think this is a rare event, I think it's very common. The chances of it being rare AND witnessed...do the math. Lol.

It's very rare. I've been playing CMBN since it was released and have never seen a case like this. Of course, it's rare to get two opposing tanks so close together in the first place. But even at long range I cannot recall a case where there was no visual impediment yet the tank could not spot another tank relatively soon.

[Pak40]

I don't think it took 44 seconds. I just watched the second video and it's the same replay as the first video but from a different angle. He just doesn't start the turn until well after the video begins.

Something to remember about buttoned tanks is that their situational awareness is not very good. The commander's cupola on the Panther is seven periscopes arranged in a circle, but he can only look through one of them at a time. If the Sherman fired while he was looking though the wrong scope he would have no idea where the shot came from expect that it probably wasn't where he was looking. I don't think the game explicitly models the direction anyone is looking at any give moment, I think it abstracts it with randomized spotting times.

The result looks to me like a bit of an outlier but far from impossible.

At about the 6 second mark in the second video he points his phone down to show the cursor on the rewind button. This is likely the start of the turn - so it took the Panther about 38 seconds plus or minus, to spot the Sherman. The Panther seems to acquire the target several times(blue line appearing) but immediately looses it. LOS is indeed right next to the burning tank and to me this is the only logical explanation why LOS isn't quicker. I just didn't realize that CM modeled smoke from the burning tank (other than the visible vertical plume).

[5th SS Div Wiking]

The most significant thing I've taken from this is how long apart the spotting-cycles are and how much better they could be if the game could take advantage of full CPU power. I have a feeling the game would be transformed, at least to those who suffer the 'can't quite put my finger on what's wrong' syndrome. Think about it...it takes seven seconds for the virtual commander to check his surroundings? In real life he'd be in his cupola, spinning his head from one visor to the next so fast he'd fall over if made to walk. What you have now is a knife-fight where one or both participants might be blind-folded, hand-tied or both. Randomly. Sure, somebody eventually gets stabbed but it's not a fight I'd pay to see. Or more like Russian Roulette. Is there really any appreciable amount of skill under such constraints? Probably, if trying to outwit the code is part of the battle. But that's not fun either.

I suspect running multiple cores doesn't equate to an exponential increase in performance. Probably not a straight-forward linear one either. But an extra 20...40...50%? I think spotting is a pretty huge elephant in this game's room right now.

[womble]

In real life he'd be in his cupola, spinning his head from one visor to the next so fast he'd fall over if made to walk.

If he was doing that he'd see the sum total of jack and nothing whatsoever. It takes time to peer at the surroundings. And vision blocks get dirty. The gunner's optics at least are damaged, making it take longer for the tank to get a firing solution; as soon as it does, the Sherman dies. The end result is exactly what you might expect if the commander doesn't look down the right vision block pie-segment the first time, and his seeing isn't perfect (which it isn't) when he eventually looks in the right direction. One other factor which delays the appearance of the model and icon that I think I've seen, is that sometimes the unit will actually have spotted the target before the icon/model-drawing routines catch up. I've seen infantry (who don't use area fire without orders) open fire at locations where there's no spotted unit, and a model and icon appear a few seconds later.

Asserting that the spotting cycle system effectively means that vision is "impaired" is simple hyperbole. Even if the TC of a Panther could get a useful picture through the vision blocks in one second, that's 6 seconds just to make a 360degree sweep for threats. So a 7s cycle is barely any slower, and you've got to account for other function, or a slightly slower glance through the block.

"Just make it use all the cores". You know it's not that easy. So why are you spouting?

[Battlefront.com]

Let me summarize the two possibilities:

1.  One person, with a couple of hours of gameplay under his belt, has discovered that CM sucks because it isn't realistic at all.  The thousands and thousands of people that have cumulatively put in hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of hours of play have apparently all missed the fact that CM fails to deliver basic levels of realism and/or they're too stupid to know the difference.

2.  One person, with a couple of hours of gameplay under his belt has jumped to conclusions and is doggedly sticking to his first impressions despite people who are trying to show him the problems with those conclusions.

Now, it is not really possible for both of these things to be true.  Therefore, if you had to make a bet as to which one is more likely to be the situation before us... which would you choose?

Steve

Edited January 19, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[Battlefront.com]

Regarding multithreading... it's not possible to wave a magic wand and implement, that is for sure.  As I've discussed multiple times, there are not enough customers interested in paying for games of this type to make it viable to completely recode the game every 2-3 years to take advantage of new hardware/software features. We can implement some improvements over time, but not wholesale change.  We'd be out of business if we tried.

We have made use of multiple cores for some functions at significant engineering cost to us.  In particular file loading.  This was an area that lent itself pretty well to recoding because it's fairly isolated within the game code.  The user is locked out, there's nothing going on other than load functions, etc.  Since there is a lot of rote number crunching going on it has a pretty good impact on speed.

LOS/LOF, on the other hand, is the exact opposite.  It is deeply embedded in everything game related and the controlled chaos that takes place while playing the game means there are endless possibilities for problems to crop up which would require further engineering work.  On top of that, Charles has looked into this specifically a while back and determined that it wouldn't make much difference.  The primary reason is that there's so much else going on that even of the LOS/LOF checks were offloaded onto other cores the net effect wouldn't be very impressive.

One thing that people don't understand about multiple core programming is that there's overhead associated with handing things off and getting them back from the cores.  For large, rote tasks the overhead is quickly paid back, but when there's tons of little things going on it doesn't have the same sort of payback.  Think of it this way...

If I have 10 known questions to ask you it is more efficient for me to send one large email with those questions. It is more efficient for you to read them all at once, fill them out all at once, and send it back to me at once.  Right?  But what if I don't know how may questions I have to ask or what those questions are?  And what if I need the answers right away because until I get an answer I can't do anything else?  I've basically got to fire them off one at a time as they come up.  Queuing them for attention doesn't work.  Which means I have to compose and send each question one at a time while you have to open, read, understand the context, respond, and send to me.  I then have to open, read, comprehend, and apply the answer you sent.

This is the difference between what happens while gameplay is underway and loading a scenario.  Gameplay involves a vast diversity of functions and near endless possibilities.  Loading a scenario is orderly and everything can be anticipated ahead of time.

A gross simplification of extremely complex concepts that I have no first hand experience with, true enough, but I think it serves to correct the misconception that more cores automatically means more speed.  Or at least not as much as one might think.

Note that I'm not saying that multicore support wouldn't have benefits, because it definitely would.  But would it be this magical happy land where everything works liquid fast AND we can add more functions on top of that?  No.  Then there's the cost issue to consider separate from that which holds us back.

Steve

 

Edited January 19, 2016 by Battlefront.com

[sttp]

People can slice this pie in any one or combination of numerous ways but it'll always come back to an enemy tank about 30m away in clear view to a veteran crew in good shape, three of who were actively looking out, and their tank in decent mechanical order. Now consider the chance of a player happening to directly witness the moment vs the number of times it inevitably goes unnoticed (but gives cause to that uneasy overall feeling some of us have). Personally I do not think this is a rare event, I think it's very common. The chances of it being rare AND witnessed...do the math. Lol.

This doesn't make sense, from a mathematical/statistical point of view. I, like many others here, go over each replay with a very fine-toothed comb, and if something of mine is taking fire, I can almost always get a pretty good idea of where that fire is coming from. And in the several hundred hours of gameplay under my belt, I've never seen a spotting incident quite like this. Plus there are MANY people here with thousands of hours of experience, several of whom have no trouble telling BFC where they think improvement is needed, and these people are also telling you they've never seen anything like this... yet you insist on painting your situation as the norm? Seems kinda off to me. Honestly, and this is not meant as an insult, but it sounds like you've either not played the game much, or else haven't RTFM'd it? That may explain the "something seems off" feeling you say is persistent for you. I do understand your frustration, since we've all had our moments of LoS/LoF-inspired rage, but your incident is definitely an outlier. Frustrating, sure, but very, very rare.

 

Edited January 19, 2016 by sttp

[A Canadian Cat]

Actually this multi core thing is a bit of a red herring.  The fundamental issue is this: is it OK for a crew to fail to spot an enemy.  The answer is yes of course it is!  In fact it is a game feature and a simulation of real life that crews miss stuff.  If I suddenly, the game were able to double the amount of processing power that is devoted to managing spotting that that fundamental fact had better not change.  Soldiers on the battle field miss things and focus on one thing and not an other.

Yes, yes I know you will fire back but 30m right in front of them are you crazy.  Well perhaps.  I will admit that in close the game might have issues because you could argue that being 30m in front of a crew should perhaps be easier to spot. Perhaps easier but still not guaranteed.  The difference is I still do not think your crew should get "insta spotting" (tm), ever.  Especially if they are busy doing other things - like shooting at a mortar team.  For example what if the commander decides to check to his left after the gunner starts engaging the mortar team. It could easily be many tens of seconds before he even looks forward again.  Then you get what you saw in the turn above.

So bottom line, more CPU power devoted to spotting will not change some people's unrealistic expectations they they should some how have "perfect pixel troops" (tm).  All it would do is handle a few edge cases better.  

We all get stuff killed by enemies our troops do not see - daily even.  I have a game right now where a Panther took, I forget four or five, hits from an AT gun that it did not spot for a really really long time.  Perfectly reasonable - it was 800m away in a tree line with another tree line in between.  I did not time it but I think it was over a minute possibly three before the Panther had a spot for it.  Some infantry near by saw it first but even they did not see it right away.  And this is a good thing (tm).  It is part of the game.  It is what makes the game so good.  So, suck it up butter cup

[Battlefront.com]

Actually this multi core thing is a bit of a red herring.  The fundamental issue is this: is it OK for a crew to fail to spot an enemy.

This is very much spot on.  Because if the answer was NO, then we'd have to take a look at what needs fixing in order to make sure that crews never, ever, ever fail to spot enemies at that range.  However, the answer is actually YES so we move onto the next question.

The next question is if this one particular situation falls within the the "pop happens sometimes" reality of battlefields, or is this something that even that doesn't explain the situation.  The more one has to bend over backwards to justify it as a "poop happens sometimes" situation the more likely undesirable code outcomes is at least somewhat responsible for it happening.

The next question is to ask how frequently does this "poop" "happen" under similar circumstances?  There's all kinds of crazy things that happen on the battlefield in total, but should not happen frequently within the game.  For example, there are a couple documented cases of enemy tanks ramming into each other.  Obviously there were special circumstances and many sources of failure in standard combat situations for this to be possible.  Having a player here and there encounter tank ramming isn't an issue I'd be concerned about.  Having most players see it once or more than once would be a cause for concern that something is not right.  It could be the game design itself, such as World of Tanks or Battlefield, unrealistically encouraging such actions.  Either way, it would need looking into.

Honestly, I think this is a classic corner case.  There are a number of things going on that mostly explain the situation as it unfolded.  Therefore, "poop happens sometimes" seems to be a reasonable way to explain the results.  We also don't see this sort of thing happening all over the place, which further decreases a need for concern about it.  COULD the code be partially at fault for generating this?  Yup, that's entirely possible.  Is it worth diverting resources in order to diagnose the problem and potentially implement a fix of some sort?  Nope.  Chasing corner cases is a really bad idea because the point of diminishing returns on development time exists from the get go.

Steve

[Pak40]

I'm going to jump to another conclusion: CMFB is fully finished and on it's way to the press. Why else would Steve spend so much time replying in this thread? 

Please tell me I'm correct, Steve. 

[5th SS Div Wiking]

This doesn't make sense, from a mathematical/statistical point of view. I, like many others here, go over each replay with a very fine-toothed comb, and if something of mine is taking fire, I can almost always get a pretty good idea of where that fire is coming from. And in the several hundred hours of gameplay under my belt, I've never seen a spotting incident quite like this. Plus there are MANY people here with thousands of hours of experience, several of whom have no trouble telling BFC where they think improvement is needed, and these people are also telling you they've never seen anything like this... yet you insist on painting your situation as the norm? Seems kinda off to me. Honestly, and this is not meant as an insult, but it sounds like you've either not played the game much, or else haven't RTFM'd it? That may explain the "something seems off" feeling you say is persistent for you. I do understand your frustration, since we've all had our moments of LoS/LoF-inspired rage, but your incident is definitely an outlier. Frustrating, sure, but very, very rare.

 

Well, everything you say right there kind of makes a bigger deal of somebody with just a few hours on this particular iteration of CM finding something you've never seen before. Yes, I was looking for proof of what was bugging me (what I thought was something not right I'd experienced big time in the larger battle) and I found it. What I found might not be what I think it is, and the consensus here is it's just a monumental fluke. Bottom line is it put me off the game but everyone who loves it can and will continue to enjoy the hell out of it. Good. I've got my refund so although I'm sad I can't get the same enjoyment out of the game I don't feel ripped off, thanks to Steve being a gent. It's all about perception in the final analysis, whether or not an actual issue exists.

Anyway, thanks to Steve for his forbearance and I'll leave you guys to your enjoyment of the game and wish you all the best. Salute!