Top ten things I have learned.

[Herr Straße Laufer]

Well now, Ed, one man's hill is another man's mountain. But if the scenario designer wants to model slopes that vehicles can't drive up, or forests thick enough to be impassable, he can very well do it; if he doesn't, then the terrain is negotiable, simple as that. I've driven Volkswagens up and down forested slopes, much less 4x4s or halftracks. I seem to recall a conversation not too long ago about armed halftracks being combat units, and except for certain outrages like unaccompanied assaults, being able to act like it. Observing for their supported infantry is well within my definition of their role.

Askari19

LOL!
You drive a two and half tonner up to the top of Lookout Mountain without using trails or roads, please take pictures. It will go viral on YouTube.
We are talking mountains and not forested slopes?

I have no problem with armed HT's assaulting any soft targets, or assisting regular combat units in assaulting other combat units.

I like to argue my apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Talk about bananas and it should reference other bananas?
It has nothing to do what the scenario designer did in making the map. But, everything to do with what a player thought they can do. They just could not do it "for real".

Larry, you should try my "truck wars" scenario? Huge map two roads, one river, and enough AP's for each to block the bridges from the other to cross, on the first turn. After that "?" marks can look at each other for the remainder of the scenario. Unless one moves and allows the other to cross the river.



HSL

[Warhorse]

LOL. Truck wars, freakin' funny as hell, Ed!!! I needed that laugh after my day, thank you!!

About pissed my pants!!

[PawelM]

I believe we could have as many oppinions about the game deficiences etc.... I could easily make the list long ....

On many occasions I choose to give the game designers the benfit of the doubt. I choose to assume that whaterver logic they applied when deciding which unit is able to spot, attack and fire they applied a common set of rules to each type of unit. So for instance if they have decided that a truck will see a question mark ( I do not know the driver was shortsighted or something and was not able to tell what units are few hundred meters away) and has an assault factor of 0, they deliberately wanted to make sure the trucks will not be used for spotting and reckon and also will not wage "truck wars". On the other hand hafltracks (yes my beloved haltracks) have drivers which can see better and have anon-zero assault factor. I do not think it was a roll of a dice decision.

[Askari19]

You guys can't wait for my newest scenario. All half-tracks (including Allied and Axis Bulgarian ones, and even a few Swiss thrown in for good measure), anti-tank rifle platoons, and 16 inch off shore naval artillery. And lots of hills to drive up too.

LR

Larry, you're truly a sadist. Sounds like the seventh circle of hell....

[Askari19]

Well now, Ed, one man's hill is another man's mountain. But if the scenario designer wants to model slopes that vehicles can't drive up, or forests thick enough to be impassable, he can very well do it; if he doesn't, then the terrain is negotiable, simple as that. I've driven Volkswagens up and down forested slopes, much less 4x4s or halftracks. I seem to recall a conversation not too long ago about armed halftracks being combat units, and except for certain outrages like unaccompanied assaults, being able to act like it. Observing for their supported infantry is well within my definition of their role.

Askari19

LOL!
You drive a two and half tonner up to the top of Lookout Mountain without using trails or roads, please take pictures. It will go viral on YouTube.
We are talking mountains and not forested slopes?

I have no problem with armed HT's assaulting any soft targets, or assisting regular combat units in assaulting other combat units.

I like to argue my apples to apples and oranges to oranges. Talk about bananas and it should reference other bananas?
It has nothing to do what the scenario designer did in making the map. But, everything to do with what a player thought they can do. They just could not do it "for real".

Larry, you should try my "truck wars" scenario? Huge map two roads, one river, and enough AP's for each to block the bridges from the other to cross, on the first turn. After that "?" marks can look at each other for the remainder of the scenario. Unless one moves and allows the other to cross the river.



HSL

Lookout Mountain?!? LOL!! Haven't played that scenario yet. You can talk mountains, that's OK. I'm talking forested slopes. It is PRECISELY about how the scenario is designed. Whatever you or I choose to call it, it's a cluster of CS terrain hexes with defined movement rules and costs. Terrain that is slow-go or no-go on the game map is just that, and a player that doesn't read it right and use it intelligently is just not as good as he ought to be; like a guy I know :rolleyes2: that let a battalion of assault guns get backed up against an unclimbable slope... So, right there in the same scenario is a slope that vehicles can't climb. Now that I'm watching more closely, I find I really can tell the difference...:whis:

I declare (as my great-aunt would say), you do go on about what a person should or shouldn't do in what is after all a flipping wargame... and I just really don't care. I'll choose to think of it as the kind of forested slope that I have driven on, and you can make jokes about driving up mountains, and never the twain shall meet.

What is the point in arguing what constitutes a mountain, and whether a halftrack (or an M4!) could climb it "for real"? There's no way to settle such disagreements, so my approach is this: If the game system and the game map allows it, that's the only arbiter I'll accept about what can move where.

If it were "for real" I'd sneak a couple of soldiers with a pair of binoculars and a radio up that hill, and you'd never see them.... but since CS doesn't give me that realistic option, I'll do it with a great lumbering halftrack that you can spot and chase and shoot... doesn't seem to be much to complain about there, come to think on it.

[Herr Straße Laufer]

I declare (as my great-aunt would say), you do go on about what a person should or shouldn't do in what is after all a flipping wargame... and I just really don't care. I'll choose to think of it as the kind of forested slope that I have driven on, and you can make jokes about driving up mountains, and never the twain shall meet.

You, sir, brought it up? This whole thread morphed into what units could and could not do?
Driving a truck ... a truck ... (just to be clear here) up the side of a mountain is simply not possible in "real life". But, it can be done in the game?
If you did not care, why did you respond?

What is the point in arguing what constitutes a mountain, and whether a halftrack (or an M4!) could climb it "for real"? There's no way to settle such disagreements, so my approach is this: If the game system and the game map allows it, that's the only arbiter I'll accept about what can move where.

Is this misdirection?
I said, "a two and a half ton truck" could not climb a mountain. You bring in Halftracks and tanks?
I could care less for the argument "if the game allowed something" that could be done, but not in "real life", "all things go".
Heck, the developers put in a lot of rules (and units) that are supposed to make the game more "realistic". :fireman:

If it were "for real" I'd sneak a couple of soldiers with a pair of binoculars and a radio up that hill, and you'd never see them.... but since CS doesn't give me that realistic option, I'll do it with a great lumbering halftrack that you can spot and chase and shoot... doesn't seem to be much to complain about there, come to think on it.

Once again misdirection (and little condescension)?
Who's complaining?
You do have access to patrol scouts? At least scenario designers do. And, they can remain hidden?
Why send a truck/transport up a mountain (or series of slopes leading to a high point - cause I don't know what kind of strawman you want to erect) to a place where it can "see" question marks?
And, in case you bring it up again, a combat halftrack or tank can "see" more than just "?'s". Let's stick to trucks here?



HSL

[PawelM]

All 'realistic' points are valid and I am sure the designer has thought of them. One thing it is not allways clear cut what is possible and what is not. For intcnace from reading gen. Raus memoirs I learnt that the germans were impressed by how efficiently russian were able to move through the forrest (even the densest ones) and set up artillery positions in locations germans would struggle. I am sure any movemnt through the woods would require some kind of clearing up of the route for a period of time and the moving through it. the game designer surely realized that. Now how do you make up for that in the game? How about Isupplementary units not represented in the game help with that by preparing the advance route for 20 minutes and then the truck can move by 1.2km in 10mins? How do you make it work in a turn based game? How about simplifying this and letting a truck move 1 hex per turn which will emulate the above example of 5 hexes per 5 turns?

just saying we need to be careful with the 'realistic' label

[Askari19]

I declare (as my great-aunt would say), you do go on about what a person should or shouldn't do in what is after all a flipping wargame... and I just really don't care. I'll choose to think of it as the kind of forested slope that I have driven on, and you can make jokes about driving up mountains, and never the twain shall meet.

You, sir, brought it up? This whole thread morphed into what units could and could not do?
Driving a truck ... a truck ... (just to be clear here) up the side of a mountain is simply not possible in "real life". But, it can be done in the game?
If you did not care, why did you respond?

What is the point in arguing what constitutes a mountain, and whether a halftrack (or an M4!) could climb it "for real"? There's no way to settle such disagreements, so my approach is this: If the game system and the game map allows it, that's the only arbiter I'll accept about what can move where.

Is this misdirection?
I said, "a two and a half ton truck" could not climb a mountain. You bring in Halftracks and tanks?
I could care less for the argument "if the game allowed something" that could be done, but not in "real life", "all things go".
Heck, the developers put in a lot of rules (and units) that are supposed to make the game more "realistic". :fireman:

If it were "for real" I'd sneak a couple of soldiers with a pair of binoculars and a radio up that hill, and you'd never see them.... but since CS doesn't give me that realistic option, I'll do it with a great lumbering halftrack that you can spot and chase and shoot... doesn't seem to be much to complain about there, come to think on it.

Once again misdirection (and little condescension)?
Who's complaining?
You do have access to patrol scouts? At least scenario designers do. And, they can remain hidden?
Why send a truck/transport up a mountain (or series of slopes leading to a high point - cause I don't know what kind of strawman you want to erect) to a place where it can "see" question marks?
And, in case you bring it up again, a combat halftrack or tank can "see" more than just "?'s". Let's stick to trucks here?



HSL

No, no misdirection. I'm not talking about trucks at all. Go back to my original response; you had not said anything about a 2 1/2 ton truck. I responded to your post on the topic of halftracks, where you made the remark about climbing mountains to "take a peek". There was nothing in the preceding post that you were responding to, nor in that post of yours, about trucks, which developed into another thread within this thread. I never said anything about trucks; I said that I've driven forested slopes with VWs that I presume would be even easier to negotiate with a 4x4 or halftrack; there was your clue that I was not talking about trucks. Since I'm "peeking" at you with halftracks on forested heights in our current game, and your post referred directly to halftracks, it was not hard to connect the dots.

I was not talking about trucks at all. But in any case, as far as movement, the same logic applies. There are conventions in the game design that set the rules and AP costs for traversing terrain. There are NO conventions for what constitutes a "mountain". In fact, with a contour interval of 50 meters, a 1:5 slope is considerable but it's not a mountain in my book, and (in my opinion and the apparent opinion of the game designer) not prohibitive for wheeled vehicle movement. Double that - a 100m elevation change in 250m horizontal distance - and yeah, I'm with you. Which is why I say a scenario designer that wants his terrain to model steep, impassable-to-vehicles terrain can either steepen his slope... or place hexside barriers to limit movement.

Forests? They come in many flavors. I'm very familiar with western pine forests where mature trees with continuous overhead canopy are spaced far enough apart that you could easily drive a deuce and a half between them. I do not play the geographer or botanist or do map studies of every scenario locale before I play it; I accept that forests in game terms are an artificial construct that cannot represent every specific type of woodland. I can make my own assumptions about what "real life" type it represents, or I can ask you or I can simply interpret the generalized, stylized terrain that the game system provides, and the scenario designer used in constructing the map. The third approach makes most sense to me. I think you are constructing a strawman in suggesting that this approach means I have less concern about "realism" than you do.

My disagreement with you, Ed, is simply over our interpretations of what can and cannot be done in "real life", and what "real life" condition a particular CS game situation represents. Your interpretations are your own, and you're welcome to them. You can self-limit, of course, and we agreed in our ROE discussion a while back that there are things the game allows that we just don't do. But if you want your views & limits respected by someone else, they have to be reasonable and well-defined (which I think your designation of "mountains" and your assumptions of vehicle capabilities are not) and then agreed to.

I do not condescend; I think the beam is in your eye, because you take that tone yourself whenever anyone disagrees with you.
-Bill

[Scud]

Guys, this thread is turning argumentative. Discuss mountains and trucks all you want, but please everyone keep it civil? If you don't have anything new to add, please don't add anything at all.

Thanks,
Scud

[Von Earlmann]

Guys, this thread is turning argumentative. Discuss mountains and trucks all you want, but please everyone keep it civil? If you don't have anything new to add, please don't add anything at all.

Thanks,
Scud

Wow my first thread that has turned into a bit of a controversy ( actually that may not be true as I recall the turn scale and EA thingys)......anyway I never planned on launching truck wars II......just goes to show you how much diversity the club has :-)

VE

PS: To the best of my knowledge I have never knowingly started a halftrack debate........roflmao!