Matrix Games Forums

Originally posted by Penetrator:


Allright, who can tell me how many cubic centimeters there are in a cube one kilometre per side?

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let's see...
meter=10^2 cm
kilometer=10^3 m
cubic km=10^3 km

so, (((10^2)^3)^3) cubic centimeters in a cubic km.

Originally posted by kgvm:

By the way, how do you say 1.000.000.000.000.000 in English? I confess I have always problems with the bigger numbers for IIRC there a slight differencies:

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: kgvm ]

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1 X 10^15 ?

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: Challenge ]</p>

John Wayne rides his horse into saloons all the time. Why can't we do the same?

You guys are missing something horses do in the yard that bicycles don't, but I won't go into that here, because this is a family-oriented forum.

Bing

Originally posted by Penetrator:
Allright, who can tell me how many cubic centimeters there are in a cube one kilometre per side?

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I know engineering too - the answer is 1E+15. Thought I wouldn't do it eh? <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Looks like we have 3 correct answers, one incorrect. Not bad. The solution can be represented in many ways:

1.000.000.000.000.000;
1E15;
1x10^15;
a million billion.

Funnymarx, you put on the hat and sit in the corner.
<img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Originally posted by Penetrator:
Heheh... Who here needs a course in maths/geometry?

Allright, who can tell me how many cubic centimeters there are in a cube one kilometre per side?

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Uh, whats a kilometre?


Metric is for sissies <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

<edit due to this doufuss not being able to spell kilometer>

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: SkyVon ]</p>

Originally posted by SkyVon:

Uh, whats a kilometre?

Metric is for sissies <img src="tongue.gif" border="0">

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: SkyVon ]

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Kilo is derived from the greek word for a thousand. It is one of many standard prefixes used in the metric system, the scientific system of measurements that was invented during the french revolution, and is now in use all over the world, with the exception of a very few underdeveloped peoples.
:Þ

http://www.hoxie.org/math/general/numnames.htm says Quadrillion

for what its worth, hehe

[ January 23, 2002: Message edited by: bigtroutz ]</p>

Originally posted by Penetrator:
Looks like we have 3 correct answers, one incorrect. Not bad. The solution can be represented in many ways:

1.000.000.000.000.000;
1E15;
1x10^15;
a million billion.

Funnymarx, you put on the hat and sit in the corner.
<img src="smile.gif" border="0">

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Ahhhh!! How'd i get off by three orders of magnitude???!?!?! <img src="mad.gif" border="0">
shoulda been
((10^2)*(10^3))^3
blah....

Originally posted by Challenge:
(...)

It does, however, make me wonder about vehicles passing through. In the city I live in there are alleys and building separations that would easily allow an A1 Abrams to pass through. The building convention is just that: a convention to allow a generalization of obsticles. I do think some of them come out weird, but hey, it's a game and we have to make some allowances, don't we?

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Here in Western Europe there was seldom any free space between houses in villages and town in WWII (modern parts are spacier). And many olds streets are so narrow that a tank would never be able to enter them !

Farms where I live usually are surrounded by a brick wall 2 meters high, which of course a tank could go through but at the risk of immobilization.

Visited the US once (Illinois mostly) and one of the things that struck me was how spread out the small towns are. Big gardens, few fences, few walls, large streets. I guess you could squeeze 4 French towns in one US one <img src="smile.gif" border="0">

Tell me more about a "typical" small town layout and the size of the fields surrounded by stone walls.... thinking of SPWAW, of course.

I would certainly appreciate it. It is tough sometimes having to rely upon photos, etc.

Originally posted by Redleg:
Tell me more about a "typical" small town layout and the size of the fields surrounded by stone walls.... thinking of SPWAW, of course.

I would certainly appreciate it. It is tough sometimes having to rely upon photos, etc.

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There are as many "typical" lay-outs as there are regions and lanscapes in Europe, which is quite a lot ! So I'll restrict my-self to those within 100 miles of Paris I know well enough to imagine how they were before the post-WWII demographic and urban expansions.

The older towns were often founded back in the Middle Ages or Roman Empire. They have a "historic" medieval center with a church/cathedral, market place (50 to 100 meters wide), sometimes a castle (in more or less good shape...), some remnants of old fortifications (part of wall, a tower, a gate) and most usually some peripherical street where once those fortifications stood. In that part of the town the houses are built in big clusters along narrow roads - which nowadays usually are one-way streets <img src="smile.gif" border="0">
Those towns would usually have expanded along the 3 to 6 roads linking it to other towns. If those expansions are themselves old, they have had time to develop into dense urban areas too, again with narrow streets and clustered houses with no separation between them and no gardens.
The most recent expansions lie along the outgoing roads. There you often see quite a few bigger houses, built in the 19th/early 20th century.

Other towns/villages are middle ages hamlets/roman hamlets having slowly grown over the centuries. Here you get a "main street", again with clustered houses, and often one big estate (often a manoir or a castle) at one end, a church in the middle with a grave-yard nearby, a few roads leading to the fields...

But as I said above, this i only "typical" of the region where I live and even here you find many other configurations... What will however hold true everywhere in Europe is that each town has plenty of history and none has a "clean" lay-out.

The best I can do is to open the editor and draw a couple of different real towns I know.

The stone walls of farms surround only the farm buildings not the fields. They would not be bigger that 1 spwaw hex. By the way the fields are divided into many small lots of a few hectares each (and as small as less than a half hectare). Some of these lots are woods. There is usually no clear separation between the lots but sometimes there is a line of trees (wind breakers) or a dirt road.

BTW major roads are often tree-lined. I have been told the Germans planted a lot of these trees to provide cover against air attacks...

Much has changed since WWII: towns & villages have grown, the fields have been rationalized, roads have been straightened. Recent photos can thus be quite misleading - and old aerial photos and maps are hard to find !

Originally posted by Antonius:

BTW major roads are often tree-lined. I have been told the Germans planted a lot of these trees to provide cover against air attacks...

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The germans also used some highways as air strips and curioudlly some were painted green for camouflage!

Very nice graphical discription, Antonius. I will not talk about villages in Portugal as they are very similar to your discription and the WWII didn't happen here anyway.

Antonius, so then your saying that a cavalry unit would, in fact, have trouble entering a building hex just like a mech/motorcycle/bike unit would?

Also, regarding stone walls and the "risk of immobilization" for me the risk seems to run real close to 100%. Is this normal or am I just unlucky when it comes to walls?

I don't think you're all that unlucky. Six out of seven AFVs I sent over walls ended up immobilized. I've still trying to figure out if that was bad luck or if they had really thik iron spikes holding up the wall.

I'll go for this: thin brick walls are so thin that they don't count in terms of hex as other features Redleg mentioned don't count.

The only walls that deserve mention are the really thick stone or concrete ones.

Yes, I was saying that right here in St Arnoult and the villages nearby a cavalry unit would have real trouble entering a village building without dismounting and certainly would have real trouble going through it.
But this would not necessary hold true in other parts of Europe or even France. I do know a hamlet nearby where cavaly would move easily "into" buildings hexes...

The problem with cavalry and bicycle units in the game is that they would deserve movement classes of their own to realistically portray their movement capabalities. Classifying them as either foot or wheel leads to some strange situations (I have a PBEM game where a bicycle unit had a few tires punctured by ennemy fire and is now fully immobilized <img src="eek.gif" border="0"> )
Likewise we could use more terrain categories, like narrow streets which would be blocked by one wreck/vehicule, sewers to allow underground movement in cities, etc etc (if I remember right we had both in ASL), upper building levels, cellars. I think Matrix would love giving us them... but also need to work on the next generation of games. (which is what I want them to
once flamethowers stop burning my troops too easily!).

PS: the risk of immobilization when a tank enters a wall/building/mine hex is lowered at low speed. If you really want to move them there it better be should the first hex they enter.

Originally posted by Antonius:


The problem with cavalry and bicycle units in the game is that they would deserve movement classes of their own to realistically portray their movement capabalities. Classifying them as either foot or wheel leads to some strange situations (I have a PBEM game where a bicycle unit had a few tires punctured by ennemy fire and is now fully immobilized <img src="eek.gif" border="0"> )

Likewise we could use more terrain categories, like narrow streets which would be blocked by one wreck/vehicule, sewers to allow underground movement in cities, etc etc (if I remember right we had both in ASL), upper building levels, cellars. I think Matrix would love giving us them... but also need to work on the next generation of games. (which is what I want them to
once flamethowers stop burning my troops too easily!).

PS: the risk of immobilization when a tank enters a wall/building/mine hex is lowered at low speed. If you really want to move them there it better be should the first hex they enter.

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Taking it from the top ...

I'm not at home and can't experiment so I'll ask: Can cav and bike troops be "unloaded" (dismount) like other vehicle types can? If so do you get a horsey token?

The minus terrain level only seems to be useful for ditches and streams. The idea of sewars is great. I have used them to great advantage in ASL -- even if I did keep getting lost <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Of course, since I don't expect there will be another version of SP done, I doubt we'll see those new terrain types (nor the possibility of splitting single men off to be scouts for the squad). Wrecks slow down other vehicles do they not?

The Seven AFVs (Four tanks, three AGs) were all next to, or one hex away from, the wall in question. <img src="mad.gif" border="0"> Can I shoot the thing down?

Originally posted by Challenge:


Taking it from the top ...

I'm not at home and can't experiment so I'll ask: Can cav and bike troops be "unloaded" (dismount) like other vehicle types can? If so do you get a horsey token?

The minus terrain level only seems to be useful for ditches and streams. The idea of sewars is great. I have used them to great advantage in ASL -- even if I did keep getting lost <img src="confused.gif" border="0">

Of course, since I don't expect there will be another version of SP done, I doubt we'll see those new terrain types (nor the possibility of splitting single men off to be scouts for the squad). Wrecks slow down other vehicles do they not?

The Seven AFVs (Four tanks, three AGs) were all next to, or one hex away from, the wall in question. <img src="mad.gif" border="0"> Can I shoot the thing down?

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I'll try to answer:

I never used bykes but I did use motorcycles and cavalry and they cannot unload the vehicles with key 9. The motorcycles have a con - they can become immobilized and you have to just wait for an eventual repair.

Sewars!? Why not <img src="smile.gif" border="0"> But you also have minus hexes for Water - Sea, Rivers, Lakes,...

Vehicle wrecks slow down units except for a bug I reported in the Three Crawling Insects thread which nobody from Matrix replied ... <img src="frown.gif" border="0">

If you attack the hex with a wall with engineers or with large caliber guns (direct or indirect fire) you can knock them down, it will become a rough hex.

Hope this helps

[ January 25, 2002: Message edited by: RichardTheFirst ]</p>