Question on size and the relation to compute time

[Hortlund]

Suppose I'm making a fairly open map, (two dominating hills, two large patches of woods, and a river valley) about 2x3 km size, what is the limit for force size when it comes to reasonable turn compute time?

Battalion on each side? Two battalions? I want to have this battle as large as possible without the sledgehammer effect on the turn compute times to the Volga has.

What I would want to put on the Soviet side is roughly 1 bat guards inf, 20-30 guns, 2-3 coys of SMG infantry and 50-60 trenches.

What I would want to put on the German side is roughly 1 pzgren bat, and 20-30 tanks and other vehicles.

Is that doable?

My own computer isnt having that much of a problem handling it (1800+, 512 ram, GF2), but I dunno if my computer is above average these days, or just average...

Also I'm wondering if it would be smarter to make an operation of the battle instead, since that way I could make the map smaller, and not having to have all units start on map. But then I would not be able to do the computer setup, and I would rather have it as one large battle.

Any ideas?

[Master Dullard aka flyingcursor]

Whew. That's a good size battle. I'm working on one with a roughly 1 battalion and a couple armored companies apiece with some extra stuff for the attacker and it's slow enough.
My machine isn't as big. 1.4 256DDR GF3.
I've never tried it on another machine so I don't know if it's slow or not by comparison.

I wonder if craters, trenches and obstacles contribute to computation time??
Maybe some experiments are in order.

I'll try yours when it's done.

[Hortlund]

I've read somewhere that craters and smoke are the worst CPU eaters. So Im making it a "clean" map with no damage. I still havent finished with the computer deployment yet, so I cant really say what the trenches does to the compute time though.

[manchildstein (ii)]

i've read that rough terrain tiles cause longer 'compute' times...

perhaps someone who knows can chime in here and let us know definitively about craters, rough, etc. in relation to compute times

[Makes The Jelly Judder]

I think that there is only one thing that effects compute time.

Line of sight.

If noticed that if you drive a bunch of hiden tanks over a hill into line off sight then it takes a long time to compute the turn compaired to the previous turn.

I also think that the CMBB engine treats craters and trench's as if they are units. Thus it computes the craters/trenches lineof sight even if it is irrelevent as a combative unit/target. ( I think this might be true for barbed wire but I have no experince with this.

There is a CMBB operation called penny packets, if you double the German forces you get double the number of trenches and the game takes ages to compute a turn even though its on a small map with only a few units.

[Grisha]

I have a 9400 point scenario in the Stalingrad Pack. The map is roughly 1.7km x 1.2km with about two battalions worth of units on the map after all arrive. While computation time is longer than average it's nothing like "To the Volga." Terrain is mostly barren steppe with some large hills to cope with, but there is a bit of river (the Chir) and a small kolkhoz town.

[manchildstein (ii)]

i think 'makes the jelly judder' may have given us the needed information

by the way, the scenarios described here would all be playable on my duron 1200 with 512mb ram and 64mb onboard (shared) sis video chipset...

my cmbb maximum so is 2x3 km, 1 german battalion, 2 soviet battalions, about 70 or 80 afvs per side... takes awhile but is somewhat playable... the lagging cursor is a drag though...