"Battle of the Bulge" - recruiting Betatesters -

[Beefy^]

the no key buisiness is just an error on some maps regarding atmosphere, i think bastogne and foy have it. it wasnt there prior to tov, its probebly okay to select and use, probebly just sets atmosphere to day time or such like.

as for stug versus sheman issue from previous posts, as i remember it was a balancing issue, the stug, unless it had veterancy, would generally lose against a 76mm sherman, i think because the sheman cost 60 fuel and the stugg 40, stug being an early game rush unit. and i too remember playing 2v2 and having to fight off 3 king tigers, while covering my side of the map. thank heaven for airborne trenches with 2 at squads in, & 76mm at guns , plus heat rounds from the entrenched howitzer

[sweeten2213]

Hey guys - a little help for me if you will.

I did a basic AI (VERY basic - not nearly what it could be yet) for the mod but I'd like to help improve it in the future.

So if you could also put some input about the AI, I would appreciate it (as I'm sure HT would appreciate it as well, since it will help me help him )

Thanks

[FiffA]

Merry Christmas all
.. and congratulations on the release Halftrack!

Hope you all get good speeds of my domain !

[GunsEmpty]

I can't be too specific, but i think the weapon stats are a little different from what they used to be. I remember tanks getting owned by AT guns and machine guns murdering entire squads in less than 15 seconds.

[marthalouise]

Fantastic Christmas gift from halftrack and his talented associates However, I am experiencing a severe drop of frame rate on several maps, even though my rig is pretty capable. Are the some specific effects that needs to be turned off? Thanks in advance

[rajicb]

Trees are a big impact i think, and wrecks...
It is a beta after all...but still the best mod for COH by far!

[Platoon_Michael]

The map previews displayed when choosing Fixed Locations of St.Vith and Krinklet/Rocherath are wrong.

St.Vith shows the town of Krinklet/Rocherath
and vice versa.

This Mod is really showing me I need to totally change my tactics.
I used to beat the AI soundly on Normal,now im getting crushed just trying to play it on Easy.

Great Mod,again Thank-You for updating it.

[SlipSon]

hi mod team i have simple question why i can't play BotB online with friends
every time we tru,it's says something abault different version of the game

any ideas ?

[GunsEmpty]

@slipson

One time for me, I had to make sure my and my friend's graphic settings were the same before it said we had the same versions.

[opo368]

congratz at getting this mod back up and running.

i always found it amazing how you guys got all of this working without the use of custom models or the object editor. but i think we can all agree that adding in actual models for vehicles such as the slugger, sturmtiger and variants of vehicles would make this mod that much more awesome. i realize that this is quite alot of work, so if you guys ever feel like making use of the model exporter and OE give me a heads up and ill help up with the modeling, i always wanted to help out with this mod.

and of course, best mod eva! not saying the others are bad... hehe

[GnigruG]

I read BETA so I guess this mod is still in development.
That's good.

[Lethal Dosage]

Great work guys! I'm glad all the old issues got solved and you were able to get a working version out to us.

This was a great Christmas present since i found out on Christmas Eve, and it's definately going to the top of my download list.

Once again, great work guys and Thank You on behalf on everyone for sticking with it and getting the hard work done!

[gsmiley]

Many thanks for your work to get this playable again.

I notice that your BOTB specific maps will work as replays (able to watch the game as recorded) whereas in TOV vanill or evcen other mods no custom maps show up as recorded.

How did you manage to get your maps to show up as recorded games and can we do something to other versions of TOV to get all custom maps to work as recorded games?

[Marder]

All the good mods for COH made me read up on german halftracks this autumn. I do not claim to be an expert, but this seems to be wrong.
The in-game vehicle you get as a call-in is a 250 light halftrack. The real 251/9 (Kanonenwagen) were a medium halftrack armed with a 75 mm L/24 "stummel" gun.
Now the 251/4 were the medium munition halftrack as far as I know. Nothing wrong with having a light munition halftrack, but then the version is 250/6.

[gsmiley]

I have experienced game freezing up in this mod as well as in all previous versions _should have mentioned it when first noticed. Anyone else having this experience? Is there a work around?

More details - doesnt always happen but it always occurs when using the tactical map - issuing move orders ordouble clicking on a location to move the camera view etc.

[GunsEmpty]

I've only had game freezes when I try to load a saved game. No matter if I have all the graphics set to low, still freezes when loading a saved gaem.

[gsmiley]

So I looked in the warnings log files for the last 2 freezes

from yesterday (last few lines only):

SIM -- Attempting to query bag not associated with this group type.
Group is of type 8. Query is for type 1.
Group name: 'sbps\races\allies\soldiers\assault_engineer_infantry'
-- FATAL EXIT --
simengine/propertysystem/propertybaggroup.h/85:!

and just now

13:19:42.03 MessageCounts: inval=0/0, seek=0/0, join=0/0,
integ=0/0, seek_reply=0/0, join_reply=0/0, add=0/0, remove=0/0, drop=0/0, data=0/0, voice=0/0,
rchk=0/0, nudge=0/0, peerhdr=0/0, proxy=0/0, ping=0/0, frag=0/0, Errors=0/0
SIM -- Attempting to query bag not associated with this group type.
Group is of type 8. Query is for type 1.
Group name: 'sbps\races\allies\soldiers\assault_engineer_infantry'
-- FATAL EXIT --
simengine/propertysystem/propertybaggroup.h/85:!

hope this helps

edit

went on a loaded up the saved game made just before today's freeze. after bloaded and pressed key - screen said fatal error action paused - I hit the pause key a couple of times and the game went on but it seems the enemy ai stopped producing units - could not view replay as it seems saved games played out to end |(in any version of coh) just dont work as recorded games

[Platoon_Michael]

Locked up on me today while trying to take a screen capture during the
View Battlefield after action.

Kinda dissapointed in the MG42 team,seems to me that weapon should have a much longer range.

[GunsEmpty]

Also:

When the Mg42 team is placed in the halftrack, the halftrack moves fine, but it's like the MG team is 'laggy' or slow to keep up with the movement of the halftrack.

Like when a movie is lagging and skips from one frame to 20 frames later. That's how the MG team is moving with the halftrack.

It's hard to explain but if you do it, you'll see.

[huetti07]

The MG42 is good enough, it caused me to loose the hole match

[lin]

@GunsEmpty - its not a bug every unit thats loaded into the HT moves like that, its just that they couldnt implement it better, it would require a new model with combat slots to be lag free

[dingdingjoke]

hey i have a problem.
the american inf never get suppressed, while the falschim easily gets suppressed, ever worse than the volksgren.
and
us bazooka squads have bugs, they shoot 2 rockets, but theres only 1 dude carrying a bazooka, while his partner shoots rockets from his BARE HANDS.

either the allies have too powerful infantry AT capabilities, or the axis have VERY poor AT capabilities.
the panzershreck takes ages to reload
the panzerfaust is too costly
the bazookas do more than decent damage on tanks
axis AT teams have 1 panzershreck while US AT teams have 1 bazooka+1 rocket firing finger
and i'm quite confused, the US AI seems to have UNLIMITED air support swarming over my base.
and.
i can see the enemy's HQ for the whole game.

[huetti07]

The Bazooka Squad only belongs to the Airborne, because of their bad Tank support and this squad has two bazookas.
The Americans get surpressed as well, i have seen yesterday
The American inf squads are even more prone to surpression, because it has 10 members, instead of 8 like volksgrenadiers

[lin]

some crashes happened today

SIM -- Attempting to query bag not associated with this group type.
Group is of type 8. Query is for type 1. Group name: 'sbps\races\allies\soldiers\command_platoon'
-- FATAL EXIT --
simengine/propertysystem/propertybaggroup.h/85:!

[vonDietz]

has anyone noticed that 76mm guns can knock out kings frontal armor with two shots? and has anyone noticed that the ai know where you are all the time and arty and swarming aircraft is encountered every couple of minutes? otherwise i love the mod and i love how i can still use my custome maps and i must say i love the pure white wash on tanks (stug, panzer 4 and the sherman 76) another thing that i don't like is the fact that 4 volks or 4 rifleman squads take quite some time to kill one squad.

oh well i'll just have to deal with it

[Kolaris]

I have to second that, combat pacing feels very different. MGs, Snipers the same, but it takes ages for anyone to die in Rifle combat.

[lin]

if you have played the mod before you would know that those things have always been like that so nothing new on that front

[DMz]

rifle squads always used to take a little time to die, like pio squads vs engineers, unless they had torches you could watch them pound away at each other for 2-3 minutes. also light cover to heavy cover made a big diffrence to squad vulnerability, stick a normal rifel squad with no bars in a trench and see how well they do. the mod is good in these aspects because it encourages you to bring up mg support or mortars . a jeep also helps or a grayhound with 30 cal upgrade.

[Toni]

Sometimes the game stops working, and i can't press anything... I can close it only terminating the process by taskmanager...

[Destraex]

Is there a trick to building buildings in the map KauNDorf? i PLAYED IT with a friend and we could not build on the opposite side of the city... the first building is fine but any others there are no space for.

[sturmmacht]

I haven't had any crashes yet, so I'm guessing those with crash issues are having the same one I used to have....running out of memory.

For those having crash issues, especially after playing for a while, the mod is memory intensive like several other CoH mods, and you will run out of memory after a while. This will cause the game to slow down (the warning) and then possibly crash. The easy solution is to lower the texture and other graphic details a notch from what you have usually set for vanilla CoH or other mods with less custom textures.

--

Whoever did the damage tables and testing for balance should go back to whatever mod they normally work on. BotB was a great mod. This is no longer BotB.

Aside from the maps and units, the heart of what made BotB great is gone. The realistic damage values, intense combat are a thing of the past. Instead you have vanilla CoH combat, where infantry in the open will dance around while being sprayed from a MG42. King Tigers will crumple in a couple of shots to frontal armor from weapons that could not hurt them. Units like the StuG have become worthless because of the nerfs to penetration and damage.

Whoever did the damage values and testing must love to play as Allies, because they are the dominant faction now. Old BotB was overpowered for the Axis, and required tactics and teamwork to overcome Axis opponents, but it made for great games. Now it's just build a bunch of junk, pew pew pew for a while, and once you get artillery you press the "I win" button a few times.

In a way, I wish the mod hadn't been revived, because this incarnation really damages the memory of it, the unique gameplay and complete package that made the original BotB worthy of being an actual expansion to the game, not simply a mod.

The closest comparison I can make is the Star Wars movies. For those that love the original ones, episodes I,II and III are an abomination and shame the memories of the original movies. Sure there are those that love the new movies, and with this version of the mod, I'm sure there will be plenty who will love it. But there will also be the rest of us who loved the original, and are saddened by this reincarnation.

[sweeten2213]

@ Sturm - for the record, the person who did the entire mod before is the same person who did it this time - Halftrack. I haven't tried the mod yet, but I know that Halftrack isn't biased in any way towards any faction. I'm sure he'll address any balance issues you guys have - just remember that he is the brilliant author of this mod (and a friend of mine) and you may want to be more "subtle" before openly bashing someone, as the person you are praising on one hand (the previous versions feel) and bashing on the other (current status) are one in the same

[Gamerisin]

@Sturm,if this is an abomination then why did u downloaded??? I mean...c'mon...@Halftrack has been the only person working on this and you complain about the balance...did u even bothered in trying making a mod yourself...I been modifing for a year my personal mod and I still doesn't finish it(though is nearly complete)

Seriously mate...try making exact or real damage values and then post them so we can make crictisism about your work...that's why I said if u don't like then don't download and even better..don't post the mod is an abomination and should never brought back to life.

[lin]

i believe there were no changes to damage, penetration or HP, its basicly the same as before so i dont really get why people are complaining, i feel its the same as before

[130Th Panzer]

game freezes when loading. And i get error what tells me that i need to make sure that i have enough free space in TEMP folder. WTF!?!?

[sweeten2213]

I'm guessing BotB has the same situation as N44 does as far as freezing and the temp folder thing.

In our case it is caused by insufficient RAM memory for the mod to run on based on the graphics settings chosen, and the odd temp folder error is due to the fact that the log files warnings (which are common in any game - even vanilla) are too large to be transported over (I forget what the limit is, but it's not much) no matter how much "space" you have in your temp folder.

Bottom line from our experience - you have to lower graphics settings. A good test is to try a 1v1 vanilla map (i.e. Ango) on the lowest possible graphics settings and see if it works. If it works, then that's the problem and you need to find where your rig and the mod "get along" the best

[130Th Panzer]

Doh!

[georider]

@sturmmacht you should test it more further before you response with "abomination" points. Try more and then perhaps we will try to talk about it.
Since the TOV and the change construction of the game structure, such problem issues are common.You can't have new models with model mixes for accurate approach in high settings, you must use alternative methods like 64 bits OS ,4mb ram and a 512/256 vga and the game should act very decent .

[funnyme]

Hi,

Think it is not a question of RAM , Cause I play BOBT on my sons PC, He has only 1GB ram and 512MB vid , But it plays perfectly for me .

Regards
Rishad

[130Th Panzer]

well i found out that if i have everything maxed out (not AA) i can play 1v1 and when i have everything on high then i can play on 2v2. but now game freezes after few hours of playing but no error.

Edit: WOW WTF!?!!?? is that SS squad supposed to be super strong? Because they eliminated my 4 rifle squads just in seconds and still they had 4 guys alive. Also when pioneers and engineers meet then pioneers will win

[gsmiley]

Sweeten wrote "Bottom line from our experience - you have to lower graphics settings. A good test is to try a 1v1 vanilla map (i.e. Ango) on the lowest possible graphics settings and see if it works. If it works, then that's the problem and you need to find where your rig and the mod "get along" the best "

If I go into options and graphics are you saying that I should set everything to the lowest possible setting?

[Niftyeye]

Hmm... just had everything on lowest possible settings yet it crashed in a 3v3

[130Th Panzer]

WOW great... I just lost 2 jagdpanthers to one AT gun... WTF!?!?

[GnigruG]

Old BotB was overpowered for the Axis, and required tactics and teamwork to overcome Axis opponents, but it made for great games. Now it's just build a bunch of junk, pew pew pew for a while, and once you get artillery you press the "I win" button a few times.

So... overpowered axis makes gameplay better, but if allies are OP it leads to shitty 'pew pew' games? L.O.L.

The closest comparison I can make is the Star Wars movies.

Oh God, please don't.

I just lost 2 jagdpanthers to one AT gun... WTF!?!?

So it should be immune to AT fire, or what?

[Sturmhaubitze]

What AT gun was it? If it was the M5 76mm, then it's plausible that it could knock out a Panther/Jagdpanther from the front (but not consistently). But not possible if it was an M1 57mm.

[lin]

76mil has the APCR so its reasonable

[Sturmhaubitze]

Even without firing special ammunition, it's regular shells could (and did) penetrate the front hull of the Panther chassis.

[sweeten2213]

Sweeten wrote "Bottom line from our experience - you have to lower graphics settings. A good test is to try a 1v1 vanilla map (i.e. Ango) on the lowest possible graphics settings and see if it works. If it works, then that's the problem and you need to find where your rig and the mod "get along" the best "

If I go into options and graphics are you saying that I should set everything to the lowest possible setting?

I'm saying that would be a good "test" to see if there is another issue with the mod. Once you test that and if it works fine, you can then raise them up some until you reach a level where your rig can handle the mod.

[DMz]

i think some people need to buy a decent graphics card i have no problems whatsover 4v4 max everything on my poor old GV-R489OC-1GD, and my son has no problems on his 3870 crossfire rig.

as for the at guns killing jagpanthers, thats what theyre for. jagpanthers were not made of titanium, or the stuff the black box on an aeroplane is made of.

[130Th Panzer]

i think some people need to buy a decent graphics card i have no problems whatsover 4v4 max everything on my poor old GV-R489OC-1GD, and my son has no problems on his 3870 crossfire rig.

I have HD4850 512Mb, Intel Q6600 @3Ghz (4 cores), 2Gb +1066 ram but the problem is that the game freezes randomly.

I think it was M1 57mm. 2 Jagdpanthers did no damage to that AT gun at all.