So, you wanna be a beta tester? Now's your chance! CMBB 1.03 Beta Released! UPDATED!

[wadepm]

My test scenario runs the same with 1.02 and 1.03. All of the shells hit the hill in front although the gun seems to get hit by MGs a little more. Not one shot flies over the gun, everything hits the hill in front, as before.

[redhead]

I did a quick test and it looks better to me.

Minor spoilers.

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I modified jaegermeister to just have the 2 german pak guns and ran 4 IS-2's over the ridge directly into their crossfire since the gun behind the bump in the terrain is very hard to hit/suppress.

With 1.02, I lost all 4 tanks. With 1.03, 1 tank got knocked out, but the others quickly supressed and then knocked out both guns. Did the 1.03 test twice.

So the gun behind a bump problem seems much better.

On a side note:

I created my test scenario with 1.03, and 1.02 didn't recognize it. Scenarios created with 1.02 were picked up by 1.03. Just mentioning it in case this isn't expected.

[PeterX]

So the gun behind a bump problem seems much better.

Ah, I wish that were so. In my test scenario, however, the AT gun wipes out the platoon of Panzers over and over while the tanks crater the front of the hill. There's never a direct hit on the gun. At least with 1.02 & 1.03b.

Not with 1.01, however.

It's still Fubar.

[ April 07, 2003, 09:36 PM: Message edited by: PeterX ]

[Holman]

Tecumseh says:

AFAIK previously splitting a squad of 12 men into two teams of six (for example) would count as six dead soldiers for victory/score/morale purposes. If you rejoined the squad, the error would be corrected. Hence the rule: only split squads that you can rejoin before the game finishes.

This is just a bug fix. It would not effect the weaker morale of split-squads feature.

Hmm. I read "Split squads don't have direct negative effects on global morale or victory points" to suggest that each split squad no longer lowers global morale slightly during the game. This was always an incentive not to split your squads unless truly necessary, since splitting lots of them would affect global morale quite a bit (and thus affect whatever calculations *it* affects).

If we can split squads with no penalty now, I don't see much reason not to split every squad on the board. Tactical flexibility and all that.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by tecumseh:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Madmatt:

* Split squads don't have direct negative effects on global morale or victory points.

* Split squads don't cause large miscounts of casualties at end of battle.

sweet, finally! </font>

[flammenwerfer]

I've noticed Tanks panicking or retreating for no reason..

Anyone else?

[tecumseh]

Originally posted by Martyr:

Hmm. I read "Split squads don't have direct negative effects on global morale or victory points" to suggest that each split squad no longer lowers global morale slightly during the game. This was always an incentive not to split your squads unless truly necessary, since splitting lots of them would affect global morale quite a bit (and thus affect whatever calculations *it* affects).

That was just a side effect of the bug. Split squads will still panic quicker than full squads. There are still reasons not to split them.

The *global* effect on moral from splitting squads was an undesired side effect of the bug that treats the second half of the squad as dead. As was suddenly seeing your percentage victory points change for the worse when a squad was split. That's my take on it anyway..

[cbb]

Originally posted by PeterX:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> So the gun behind a bump problem seems much better.

Ah, I wish that were so. In my test scenario, however, the AT gun wipes out the platoon of Panzers over and over while the tanks crater the front of the hill. There's never a direct hit on the gun. At least with 1.02 & 1.03b.

Not with 1.01, however.

It's still Fubar. </font>

[redhead]

I'm no expert, I was just trying to lend a hand in the test effort by reporting my results.

I just tried out the test scenario from the "Un-hittable Gun" Game bug thread posted by Industrializer.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/berger50/TEST%20gun.cme

With 1.02, all the stugs get wiped out without ever hitting the gun. With 1.03, the gun is supressed in the first couple of shots, and consistently destroyed in about 15-20 seconds.

[cbb]

Originally posted by redhead:

I'm no expert, I was just trying to lend a hand in the test effort by reporting my results.

I just tried out the test scenario from the "Un-hittable Gun" Game bug thread posted by Industrializer.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/berger50/TEST%20gun.cme

With 1.02, all the stugs get wiped out without ever hitting the gun. With 1.03, the gun is supressed in the first couple of shots, and consistently destroyed in about 15-20 seconds.

That sounds like a definite improvement.

CBB

[Rob Murray]

Do you mean by " backing up the 1.02 .exe file " copying the file ( the one with the little SU 152 image ) found in the CMBB folder marked application? Not too sure what I'm doing so I'm asking before I install the new patch.

Thank you.

[ April 07, 2003, 11:41 PM: Message edited by: Rob Murray ]

[tracer]

One question to Battle Front, I have always wondered if the type of machne that the game is being played on will make a difference in the game. For example, would the amount of ram make a difference in the way the AI would act?? say one machine has 128 megs and a differnt one had 256 megs, or one machine is a 1 gig cpu and a different one has a 2 gig cpu, could this make a difference in the way the AI would react?? This might sound like a stupid question, but I had to ask, because I noticed this, and was wondering if it was just me.

[Sitzkrieg]

Good point, tracer.

I don't think the RAM would be an issue, I think motherboard (chipset, etc.), BIOS and processor (AMD or Intel) could all be possible hardware devices that could make the AI behave differently, depending on the hardware.

Look at the Dell "timer" issue when trying to fast forward a turn. I believe it has something to do with the motherboard or CPU in that instance but only with certain Dell computers.

It's a S.W.A.G. but you might be on to something there.

[redhead]

I ran one more test. I stuck a couple of light building on top of a hill, and put the tanks hull (bow MG blocked) down lower on the hill, but still with LOS to the light buildings.

With 1.02, I ran it 6 turns and the tanks were just digging holes in front of the houses. With 1.03, the building was hit in the first couple shots, and destroyed in 10-15 seconds.

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by Rob Murray:

Do you mean by " backing up the 1.02 .exe file " copying the file ( the one with the little SU 152 image ) found in the CMBB folder marked application? Not too sure what I'm doing so I'm asking before I install the new patch.

Thank you.

Yes Rob. I created a new directory called CMBB102 backup and made a copy of the "BarbarossatoBerlin.exe" Application file (the 7 MB file) in the new directory. Then I ran the patch.

Steve

[Legio]

Anyone tried using the patch with CDV version? It should work as I think its only the SS bit that has been changed?

[PlatCmdr]

Madmatt--

First of all, thanks for the great news and the effort all of you are putting into dealing with ironing out these wrinkles. It is much appreciated and will certainly serve to further the patronage of your customers and improve the level of gameplay down the road.

For the sake of clarification, I was hoping either you, or someone else at BFC, could respond to the following:

Back on March 5, Steve had indicated that there were several issues you guys were looking into. I quote him as follows:

"There appears to be three hit issues that have been raised on this BBS. Here they are and where we stand on each:

1. Shots hitting ground when shooter is Hull Down - this was understood to be a bug going all the way back into CMBO, but was not apparent until CMBB 1.0 (and wasn't even seriously seen until 1.01 for some reason). This was absolutely a bug and was fixed for 1.02.

2. Shots walking to target one right after the other in a straight line - looks like something is wrong, but Charles has not looked into it yet and therefore it is not confirmed as a bug. If it turns out to be a bug Charles will try and fix it.

3. Shots impacting at base of a small hill and not hitting some types of targets (i.e. guns) when using more or less flat trajectory fire - my hunch is that this is a bug, but since I only passed the info onto Charles 5 minutes ago I don't have confirmation yet at this point. If it turns out to be a bug Charles will try and fix it.

Now, with issue #1 being resolved by version 1.02, and what appears will be a resolution to the problem in issue #3 with the release of the 1.03 patch, that still leaves issue #2. Is that also addressed by the 1.03 patch? I have experienced this problem (even emailed Steve a scenario demonstrating it) in multiple PBEMs, and it has been incredibly frustrating to witness shot after shot walk its way to a target that remains untouched.

Just ddn't want anything to be overlooked given that this will be the last fix.

Thanks guys, and keep up the good work.

[Rob Murray]

Thanks Mr. Spkr. Just wanted to be sure that I'd got the right idea before putting in the patch. Well, I've been messing around with game for a few hours now & haven't seen any big bugs ( yet ). By the way when the final patch does come out will it be installed over the beta 1.03 patch?

[ April 08, 2003, 04:11 AM: Message edited by: Rob Murray ]

[tracer]

Thanks Sitzkrieg,

I was wondering if it was me or not seeing the difference. and as far as the patch goes, It's working fine so far, haven't seen any "bugs" in it yet, and as far as shots walking to the target issue, haven't seen that problem, (yet)

[PeterX]

I just tried out the test scenario from the "Un-hittable Gun" Game bug thread posted by Industrializer.

http://mitglied.lycos.de/berger50/TEST%20gun.cme

With 1.02, all the stugs get wiped out without ever hitting the gun. With 1.03, the gun is supressed in the first couple of shots, and consistently destroyed in about 15-20 seconds.

Yeah, I ran the "Un-hittable Gun" test scenario and it worked as you described. But in another test I setup, I got a replay of the old problem- HE shots plowing into the hillcrest and the untouched AT gun making mincemeat of the tanks. The only improvement seemed to be the marginally more effective MG fire from the tanks. I wish I knew how to post this scenario on the board, dammit. You used Lycos?

[c3k]

Matt et al.,

Thanks for the continued work! Now, will this slow down CMAK?

I ran a test w/10 Sov 45mm ATG's on a ridge vs. 10 Tigers. 3 guns were never destroyed. Game ended after 5 turns with Tigers out of usable HE ammo.

Not one single Tiger round overshot the ridge! Not one. Every single round impacted the ridge short of the guns. There were bright blue LOS lines to/from every gun and tank. (Guns showed tanks as hull-down.)

The guns were knocked out by blast effect, highly dependent on distance from crater to gun. Some guns were abandoned without being knocked out.

Some of the ridge was unrecognizable due to cratering.

The 3 remaining guns were slightly more set back due to folds in the terrain than the other guns. They survived. Let me emphasize, however, that these guns showed a good LOS at all times.

I think this behavior needs to be tweaked a bit more. At one point 8 tigers fired 3 turns worth of HE at a single gun. No hits, no knockouts, with LOS.

Thanks,

Ken

[Watson & Crick]

Originally posted by c3k:

Matt et al.,

Thanks for the continued work! Now, will this slow down CMAK?

I ran a test w/10 Sov 45mm ATG's on a ridge vs. 10 Tigers. 3 guns were never destroyed. Game ended after 5 turns with Tigers out of usable HE ammo.

Not one single Tiger round overshot the ridge! Not one. Every single round impacted the ridge short of the guns. There were bright blue LOS lines to/from every gun and tank. (Guns showed tanks as hull-down.)

The guns were knocked out by blast effect, highly dependent on distance from crater to gun. Some guns were abandoned without being knocked out.

Some of the ridge was unrecognizable due to cratering.

The 3 remaining guns were slightly more set back due to folds in the terrain than the other guns. They survived. Let me emphasize, however, that these guns showed a good LOS at all times.

I think this behavior needs to be tweaked a bit more. At one point 8 tigers fired 3 turns worth of HE at a single gun. No hits, no knockouts, with LOS.

Thanks,

Ken

I ran a similar test last night with similar results. I placed a pak75 below the crest of a hill ("hull down"). I had 9 russian tanks, (platoon of shermans and SU85 and 2 ISU122) attacking from 500-700 m. The net result after 20 turns was that the gun was still alive. It managed to KO 3 tanks and gun damage one before it ran out of AP. Most of the surviving tanks ran out of HE. I did see a few rounds overshoot the hill, but the majority fell way short. I even had 3 tanks area targeting. Thus, the "unhittable" gun bug described before is still occuring in 1.03. If you would like, I can send the file and/or screen shots when I get home from work.

Bad luck? Although this was only one test, I would think that 20 turns and around 100 rounds of HE would have KOed the gun. I for one don't think this is realistic. i hope that you can fix this BTS. My 2 cents.

[Firefly]

Originally posted by Legio:

Anyone tried using the patch with CDV version? It should work as I think its only the SS bit that has been changed?

The CD copy protection is different between the two versions too, so you will probably end up with a version of the .exe that doesn't recognise the CDV CD.

[Redwolf]

Originally posted by sitzkrieg:

Good point, tracer.

I don't think the RAM would be an issue, I think motherboard (chipset, etc.), BIOS and processor (AMD or Intel) could all be possible hardware devices that could make the AI behave differently, depending on the hardware.

That must be a hell of a BIOS...

[PlatCmdr]

Just a reminder for those of you running the test on 1.03. According to MadMatt's post in this thread:

In order to get a response from BFC, you guys need to be placing *NEW* posts defining any problems you experience, *not* listing your comments here...see his comment below...

"If you encounter issues with this patch related to the listed fixes below please post a NEW forum thread detailing what you see. If need be someone from Battlefront.com will reply to the message and possibly request pictures or a save game file which demonstrates the issue."

[ April 08, 2003, 10:50 AM: Message edited by: PlattCmdr ]