RudeLover

Actually, IIRC tanks can run over guns and mortars, but not anything else. ...perhaps I should try this now to see if that's right, but I'm at work.

I think that the ammo is the difference. The Firefly's value goes up when the 17-pounder HE is available IIRC.

Also, I think that once you've got the Pzkw IVF1, it's not too much extra to make a C, D, or E (if I'm remembering my Squad Leader correctly). Completely new vehicles are harder. They clearly have to make PzIII, so we should see all the variations of that, I would guess.

I wouldn't rule out the T-28 yet. The thread below specifically suggests that the 'land battleship' T-35 may not make it. They were very rare anyway...the T-28 is probably easier to model and was more common. http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/Forum1/HTML/015429-2.html IIRC many Soviet tanks also had machine guns pointing out the back end of the turret. As far as modeling time, ins't KwazyDog already building Soviet behemoths? Go Dan go!

Gotta agree with some other posters that the early war battles will be intriguing. The tables will turn for the Germans as they field Mk II, Mk III, Mk IV with the short 75, and Pz38t and run into some surprises in the form of T-34 and KV series beasts. I'm very curious to see how 1-man and 2-man turrets are modeled, as well as radioless afvs. Would you rather have better armor and a bigger gun or a loader and a radio? And of course no infantry shaped charge AT capacity...swap those PFs, zooks, PIATs and Schrecks for anti-tank rifles and molotov cocktails. Later in the war, I can't even imagine the impact of those 122 and 152 guns. Stay out of the buildings...

3 roadblocks 3 barbed vires 2 Vet 251/1 Halftracks 2 DaisyChain Mines 1 Anti-Tank mine patch 1 Anti Personell 2 Vet 81mm Mortars 1 Vet Stug III 1 Vet 75mm AT Gun If you do imagine the 'blocking action, then retreat' thing, you've got to think those two mortars will think seriously about dropping some friendly fire on the PaK so they can ride the halftracks home...

In the Op "Shanley's Stand" (with v1.1) I started the setup phase of the second battle with an occupied red setup zone (most of my side of the map), an occupied white setup zone (two little salients with ~ a platoon each), and an few bits of empty blue zone in areas right next to the white and red. My take was that these were areas where no bad guys would pop up, but that I didn't control sufficiently well to allow troop placement (which made sense as they were areas I could easily bring fire on but would have been hard to occupy given the situation at the end of the prev. battle). I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work, but it made some sense. The lines were far from straight overall, which pleased me.

Oddly, there was a quite positive review of CM and the ASL2CM stuff on the MMP web page a while back...the positive stuff about CM is still there, but the reference now is only to 3rd party addons with no mention of ASL conversions... http://www.advancedsquadleader.com/computerasl.htm Curiouser and curiouser.

Can we call for a 14" naval barrage on Hasbro's corporate HQ? Everybody bring a Crack FO...

Heroic tank jumps on (drives under?) 14" shell...absorbs explosion, saving comrades. Iron Cross awarded posthumously.

IMO Franko's designs are very, very good. Not that I have any standing to do so, but I'd nominate him for the design team for the release scenarios in any and all subsequent versions of CM...all of his work is very detailed and well-researched, with plenty of 'pucker factor.'

I'd guess that the Grant / Lee is much like a Churchill Croc from a coding standpoint...turreted weapon and bow mounted weapon (same goes for a Char B1). But a T-35...yikes! You guys thought the Archer was a pain in the butt...

I played the first battle of an op with the beta (not sure which build) and saw extremely jagged lines, not to mention two setup zones that worked right (playing as Amis, had a white zone and a red zone, with reinforcements in the red and survivors of the first battle in the white IIRC). I've been grading final exams and buying presents so I haven't had more time to explore this but KwazyDog's post suggests that Charles has worked some more magic!

Early war includes different tactical issues. There's German tanks with often inferior armor and guns facing big tough fellas like the French Char B1 and S-35 and the British Matilda II, the Panther of its day. Heck, even the Polish 7TP was a match for the Germans... This was also an era when many AFVs had only machine guns...the German Pz I and PZ IIs will not be leveling houses from halfway across the board. On the other hand, infantry didn't have so many options vs. tanks...the game should feel quite different in many ways. Maybe that seems boring after your Stalin II vs. King Tiger duels in CM2 and the 88s reaching across the desert to touch British Crusaders, but I still think infantry is the heart of CM...

IMG is where I first heard about CM...they've followed BTS since the very beginning. This review is pretty friendly (9.0 outof 10), though the reviewer doesn't sound like a hard-core grognard by any means... http://www.insidemacgames.com/reviews/view.php?ID=8