My apologies Abyss - but seriously - there is some really interesting stuff about arguments over weapon system effectiveness in game if you can dig through all the noise in the Motor pool. 

And as I said, if you can prove as scientificallty as possible there is a modelling error they will correct it (soon!). :)

There is a great book on the training of the British Army in WWII if your into military history, I saw that in a thread there about PIAT accuracy being crap, apparently. (Churchils Army - David French(?]

Originally posted by Stug

My apologies Abyss - but seriously - there is some really interesting stuff about arguments over weapon system effectiveness in game if you can dig through all the noise in the Motor pool. 

And as I said, if you can prove as scientificallty as possible there is a modelling error they will correct it (soon!). :)

 

Ok Stug, I try that with the intermission, thanks for the information :)

Originally posted by Abyssuss

Originally posted by Stug

My apologies Abyss - but seriously - there is some really interesting stuff about arguments over weapon system effectiveness in game if you can dig through all the noise in the Motor pool. 

And as I said, if you can prove as scientificallty as possible there is a modelling error they will correct it (soon!). :)

 

Ok Stug, I try that with the intermission, thanks for the information :)

CRS has in the past made changes based on player testing. Just take a look at the bug forums and you'll see something on the opel's glass being impenetrable, and a producer response seeing it and fixing it.

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Originally posted by Stug
I am not talking about numbers - you seem to have misread me. I am talking about the fact that the glory day tactics where about combat avoidance over combat itself. The game today gives the player more intense combat than it did in the past.

"So David, all I'm saying is that the game today has much more combat in it today, than the early game where combat avoidance was much easier and I would argue the norm, as opposed to today's ops. Wouldnt you agree"

So I love the cute way you have all jumped on "OOO!! He's talking about numbers! Lets get on our normal "no one plays the game [even though there were fricking TONS of players on and the server was BUSY when I was on at the weekend] bulls*t rant". Its just like when Doc posted, role out the old hate....

So David - asnwer the question - how do players avoid combat today, like they did in the past? Or do they NOT do it as the game design has changed/evolved to code out player clubbing as a method of winning - e.g. peopel get chance to fight back wghich I would argue is a better thing.

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I explained it earlier. From a page ago:

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Originally posted by David06
Have you played the game lately? No one attacks a town unless they can get a camp going at the beginning, or manage a sneaky capture when the other side is busy with something else. I've seen players reprimanded by their high command, AOs pulled out from under them because to keep attacking a strong defense would waste supply."

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The main tactic today is still to rush toward town as quickly as possible before the defender can setup. Only now you have to attack a certain town, at a certain time, after obtaining someone else's permission if there's an attack order available. Everyone shouts "P1 flood!" because the defender is so advantaged that the only way to capture a town is to get tanks or a mass of infantry(then tanks) to pin the defender in the army base.

This all comes down from the high commands, who will rarely give you an AO unless you are ready to rush in to town ASAP and will frequently pull an AO after the first 20-30 minutes if you haven't made progress. It's accepted that if you can't camp the defender at the beginning then you're not getting the town.

So you still have the same tactics, the same "combat avoidance", the same "player clubbing" (even moreso now because not all towns have supply like they used to) but you no longer have large squads as part of your community or provide a sandbox experience. This is all completely separate of the average server population which I would argue is relevant when discussing the degree of combat on the server.

Originally posted by Company0

Originally posted by Abyssuss

Originally posted by Stug
So David, all I'm saying is that the game today has much more combat in it today, than the early game where combat avoidance was much easier and I would argue the norm, as opposed to today's ops. Wouldnt you agree? Abyss, whilst you are topic hijacking, I'll humour you here. Why can't a tiger kill a Sherman at 1k+? Well, it can, it's been recorded on you tube. So if you are a responsible wwiiol player I would get fraps and use intermission to test the 75mm vs the tiger and test to say if you say is true, that the 75mm can penetrate frontally. If it is the 76mm gun, you should find it penetrates the tiger more easier. Anything else is just noise. Please do go and start another thread if you want to discuss the.damage model abyss, out of this thread.

You mention the combat simulator aspect of the game, and that wasnt what I asked, I asked how can a sherman kill a tiger at long range (bold to help you) not the other way round.My tank knowledge is hazy but I think it took numerous Shermans to kill just one Tiger(maybe one could destroy one with a rear shot less than 70m away) so it loses it's title as combat simulator doesn't it?

I'm not bashing CRS, I used CRS software in the British Army as they use it for their tank simulators.

I asked you a question,a simple one, why should I start a thread about it?

He answered, just phrased it a little odd.

test the 75mm vs the tiger and test to say if you say is true, that the 75mm can penetrate frontally. If it is the 76mm gun, you should find it penetrates the tiger more easier.

Speaking from experience.  

I was an ADVID tanker n WWIIOL.   I held a nearly tank ace k/d ratio in the StuG IV G alone.     The M4 Sherman as modeled in game CAN kill a Panzerkampfwagan MkVIE Tiger out to 1.9KM!!!!   When in real life it was hard pressed to do the same task at less than 1000m.    The issue is in the Tiger model itself.  

You only need to shoot one spot on the Tiger to get the kill, and thats ignoring the initial issues of the glass gun barrel.   Shoot the flat part of the armor beside the drivers veiw port over the track and it wil give you the kill.   Why, because the armor is thin there and flat.    But there is no way for the Sherman to kill the Tiger to a frontal turret hit, unless it hits the gun. 

The game engine is not capable, either through design or skill of the coders behind it, to do propper penetration affects.   It penetrates and travels in a straight line with a handful of "spalling" generated by the client computer.     This is why the APHE round doesnt do as much damage as it should or the "mine" round fired by the German aircraft doesnt do as much as it should.  

Then there is the ammunition type used and selection available to the German forces isnt correct either.   Most of the guns of the later tier tanks are using AP39 ammunition, which would not have been used by the tanks using them at that point in development.   

CRS did not model every item in the tanks, well in the later tanks, they went with simple model damage systems, that had a few "hitboxes" inside the model that could be damaged, or destroyed.   They did this for Aircraft, and trucks and even boats.   They also did not model the different fuel types used by some of the vehicles or the combustability of the fuel in question.   There is a lot CRS left out, again either through ignorance, lack of skill, or lack of ability in the engine.  

But this is not the topic of this thread.  

Originally posted by Stug
As for combat avoidance, human nature wants to get an advantage, but there are factors that favour combat over combat avoidance.

So your attacking a town with 2 spawnables and the attack has low inf ews. From audio you know that one spawnable is defend by an ei and other is not defended. What do you do?

1) AVOID combat and cap the undefended spawnable, contesting the town and allowing friendly infantry to spawn in and start a high intensity battle?

2) Run into the defended spawnable, get a kill, get the CP to 10% and then get killed by the respawning ei with his buddies who saw a skull on the map? The town stays uncontested. Combat instensity remains low, everyone is walking about or sitting on map screen not knowing where to go.

OJ.  Couldn't have said it better.  When they killed the squad play, they killed they game.  I have been away from a few years and popped back in witha few of  the old 3CD vets at Xmas.

I could stand it a week, no longer.  I miss the days of trying to sneak a large attack together and get it to target in tact or patrolling the skies looking for the enemy attacks forming up.  Alpha-Bravo town assaults with a hand full of squadies was a blast.

JEA3 still hangs around, but 3CD is dead, as is the game.  It went from bad to worse with HC, the insta army flag movement and FRU's.

We old players are pissed because we saw what the game was and what it could be, but it has lost it's way and will never find the road home.

RobHood

S! rob

Since people love to say how my gameplay avoided combat so much, I have to throw some bones out and confess that we avoided the namur river line like the plague because 3cd was based there.  It was far easier to go through tienengrad than fight along the river with them calling that area home base.  I dont think we ever armored column namur back then as that was known suicide lol.   It took one of the games great leaders to keep you busy there and that was dinker. Hell, many times kgw/lagus would even have to breakthrough tienen on 3rd shift because the primetime fights would leave us all with just rifles so much regional attrition warfare was happening. 

The fights were hardcore, heavely squad based, missions only limited by what you could conjure up.  This was all controlled by squads who followed some of the best commanders of their own choosing who rose to be a leader by... gasp...leading well and delivering highly immersive squad play. Want to guard namur like the queens jewels are there you joined 3cd,  want to camp and ninja you came to me, want to play super rifleman squad you joined drcairo/hathchicken and the list goes on and on. Shit, you had deadlock rallying 100+ tank columns from liege and driving them for hours just to reach the fight in tienen ffs.  He was able to get people to drive AXIS armor for 3 hours across the map and these people thought the game was crack to boot. That was all by allowing anyone to pick up the ball and play the game without some shit absolute hc system and borked supply system blocking every aspect of players freedom and ability to go where they wanted, with who, when and how. 

We had all this and the shilling/badger dog and pony hc show working just fine.  While not everyone was a hc fanboy, we all managed to give players an option that few of today exist in play   

Rob, you know how bad the game is with these mechanics, I know it, people like dinker can stop by and explain even.  These are people from squads that had more players than your game does today. Squads/players being able to control the tempo, targets and supply is a fundemental of this game working.  You cant take this away and put these vets in some box and yell "P1 flood"

I have been saying this since 2003 and one of these reasons that you see me here today being so vocal.  I'm not here to further my "agenda" but to explain exactly what went wrong and explain these developers dont understand the game any longer or have the means to fix anything 

As I have said, you cant FUP the command, supply and dev content all at once and expect this to keep carrying on.  While the command and supply mechanics sank the game mostly, the inability to dev the right or even close to right content is a close second.  I would of laughed whoever came up with the RA idea right out of the room.  To be asking for more charity donations, as if paying 17.99  a  month wasnt enough, you have some pretty big balls coming out with RA a game no one wants.

Originally posted by Stug

Originally posted by OtotheJ

Coming back in 2009 and finding everyone in one box of forced canned play and minus anything close to the numbers present in the games actual golden age must of been just my feelings.  Apparently, I must of missed this awesome 2008 era when you had 1200+ player server peaks?

 

Soooo OJ - tell me what you were doing when you were doign this.

Drvie to town A - Camp and capture it.

Drive to town B - camp and capture it.

Drive to town C - Camp and capture it.

 

Sounds very similar to a flashing box to me.....

Only if you where to lazy to check EWS Stug. You see I was part of the 101st and like many squads we had a assigned  AO as in area of operation that spanned a good number of towns on the front. I can count on one hand the number of times I was camped by any Axis squad  be it OJ's SG or any other of the axis maga squads. Why because as a squad we took our AO defense as a serious matter we used the tools available to prevent camps and many times cost the axis more gear and time by setting up fire traps that turned the tables on our foe. Hell I killed OJ himself a number of times trying to cap a CP in his famous simul cap attempts.

But forget all that what the arguement has been and will always be is which style of play provided the most enjoyment to the player base? Is it the HC based one where everything is shoe horned into a BOX and every attack is a frontal assault into a set defense, with little to no organization, no out the box thinking ( AKA- cross country attacks) or planning provided because well we just placed the AO 15 mins ago.

Or is it the squad based one where you got Organazation, planning well in advance  for everything from FB defense and resupply to CAP and ZOC and attack plans to capture CP's and hold them with proper support. You also got out of the box thinking and a feeling of haveing a part in the overall success of the operation.

For me its simple and I think for alot of others it is as well and thats the squad based was better. Yes we had more people playing but it was for a simple reasons.

1. You knew you had the proper support and planning.

2. You had fun regardless of the outcome because you knew the best effort had been put fourth to ennsure the squads sucess.

3. You had a part in the overall attack or defense. And this one is important this is a game and players want that feeling of being apart of something and the realzation that thier actions matter. We dont play to renact real life or military service where we are just a cog in the wheel whos actions are subordinate to the whims of a 12 year old who somehow got in control the map by virtue of being in HC.

4. The games path and population show the real trurth of the failure of the HC/AO concept.

Brother zbus certainly just spelled it out for you.  I had to look up the scoreboard for old times sake :P

The folks over at H&G havent even released their game yet and its a complete POS right out of the box.

I browse over there from time to time and noticed the same thing.

Flashy graphics and no content.

Don't forget those camp and captures happen when the defense didn't respond in time.  Once one city goes down, you can pretty much guess where the next one is going to be.  There was lots of epic battles that went down when camps were intercepted.  In some ways it improved gameplay.  The full camp that worked was over so quickly you didn't burn gametime in a crap battle.   A contested one with the old spawning rules became battles of epic proportions.  After depots, MSP and AO's the odds are it's another being surrounded, 360 degrees MSP supply grind for hours.  So chances are if you want some open field ATG work, the one or two AO's you find won't be that.

But camps were why we always tried to have folks taking turns being in every city we were responsible for to keep an eye out.  A quiet job, but the squad chatter made it fun.  Something to do when you're multitasking with something else.

Spotter: "Err guys... we have incoming armor.."

"how many tanks?"

Spotter: ".... all of them I think"

hehe, good times :)

LOL OJ  no reason to rub it in us poor Inf  die alot running back to the CP to guard hehe. Anyway that one kill on ya from the brit AF must have been on one of my many Blen of doom runs. I got pretty good dropping my bombs down the hatch of panzs hehe. Of coarse even makeing it to the battlefield and dropping my bombs in that flying death trap was a feat  with all the top ace fighter pilots we had back in the day. Man the memory of getting boom and zoomed on takeoff still gives me nightmares.

By the way 3CD and 101st covered the Namur river line we had a pretty tight working relationship between our squads and together we made the town a nightmare for any axis attacking it. But then again we knew back then that letting the axis split the line between the brits and the french along the river line was a sure way to ask for quick ending of the campaign  so we defended it like crazy. Anyway it was the only sure way to get you guys to beat your head against twerp for a few weeks it ensured some epic battles. Now I know some people hated twerp but had you been there to see some of the week long running fights going on 24/7 they would change there minds.