Blackcat

My son sent me an email, "Dad, the new East Front combat mission is out and it has WeGo TCP/IP". So I dash to the site credit card number in hand only to find it has WeGo TCP/IP, but no replay. The card went back in the drawer and the game remains unordered. Seems a bit odd that as super fast internet gets rolled out my favourite game series still can't offer the same facility it did in the days of dial-up modems. Such is progress.

Sincere thanks to both players for some great entertainment and some lessons on how to play the game. I look forward to the re-match.

Mr. Altipueri, thanks for giving us a link to that fascinating paper. Lots and lots of interesting stuff. Dr Pieter Lieb's comparative analysis of SS and Heer divisions in Normandy ouht to ruffle the feathers of a few on this site - myth busters.

Talking of names from the past who was the chap who made the "pissed him off on purpose to make him growl and show his teeth" comment and so sparked one of the most hilariously insane threads ever to enliven these boards? Was it Rommel122? Nice young lad, went into the USAF as I recall, wonder what happened to him. Hamsters don't get much of a mention on the threads these days. Time was when hamstertruppen were all over the place.

I don't think the game or the community is dying and am pleased to hear from Steve that sales are in line with expectations. However, it must be a bit annoying for a scenario designer not to receive any feedback on his loving crafted creation. Though I don't download as many scenarios as I once did, this is largely because CMx2 scenarios/campaigns have a greater re-playability coefficient and, with the number of new releases and modules coming out, I haven't got to the end of those provided yet. I would urge everyone to provide robust, but constructive, feedback to the scenario designers though. For myself I have sworn a great oath that as and when I meet Paper Tiger in the flesh I shall buy him a very large quantity of his favourite drink as a thank you for all the hours of entertainment he has given me. I shall then beat him to death with a haddock in recompense for all the hours of painful frustration his evil genius at positioning defences and creating AI plans has caused me (how does he know what I will do). Don't snigger, GeorgeMC, you are on the list too as are a few others. Battlefront, and we the players, are very fortunate that the game has attracted such a bunch of talented people who give of their time and creativity to provide us with so many well designed and challenging scenarios. The least we can do is take a few minutes to provide some feedback.

Fascinating stuff. Normandy really was a bloody battle with casualty rates, particularly amongst the infantry, well up to WWI levels.

Bit off topic there, old boy, and I have to say your post was a bit jarring - didn't actually expect to find someone actually talking about the game in a thread mainly about Tolkein's books. Was Bored of the Rings the spoof with an elf character called "LegoLamb"? The heroes rode merino sheep and the bad guys rode flatulent pigs? If so that book must be about forty years old. I am surprised so many people remember it.

In all my years of reading these boards I have been constantly amazed how rarely Steve gets seriously ratty. To be sure he blows up occasionally but only under extreme provocation and not half as often as I would or, I suspect, many other members would. He must have the patience of a saint on valium. If a new guest came into my house and started gobbing off to the other guests, not only telling them what an awful party I am throwing but actually telling lies about me, my values and behaviour then I would give him a smack in the mouth and throw him out the door. If you are reading this, Superwoz, then know that BF do take reasoned argument and comment from their customers seriously and do change things as a result. The behaviour/capabilities of machine guns in the game is a case in point, it took time and a lot of effort by a lot of people but the last set of changes went a long way to address the faults (still a way to go, mind). On another note, a fair few people seem to be complaining about the user interface. Am I the only one who doesn't get this? Granted I play exclusively WEGO and tend to take my time watching replays of the action and thinking out my next set of actions (a single turn can take me a whole hour) so slow and steady is my style. I also use the mouse for all commands and am of an age where I expect to have to learn how a game works. I do not expect a UI to take me by the hand and guide me through what I want to do. How could it? On the whole I find the UI does what it says on the tin. What am I missing?

"Steve has already said its not on the list or even planned for inclusion on any list" Mr. Flaming Picky, would like to point out that, as the issue is known and has been discussed and a decision made, along with a lot of other requested features, not to do anything about it, it therefore already exists on a list - the list of features that aren't planned for inclusion. I suppose it must also exist on the list of all requested features. Thinking about it, if we change "list" for "set" then we could prove that CM is inconsistent and so get to a specialised version of Cantor's Paradox - that the number of features users would like to see included in the game is in fact larger than the number of features in the universe.

A vote of thanks to Penry and BD for taking the time to provide a most entertaining AAR. Cheers chaps and well done.

Mr. Emrys, You are, as always, correct and reasonable in your comments. On the PIAT stuff, I was thinking less of the times C3K's men missed and more of the lack of kills when he did manage to hit. The two strikes on that AA beast and it could function afterwards seemed particularly unfortunate. I'll also repeat a moan I have expressed many times over the years, that CM gunners seem incapable of learning from the fall of their shot. Time after time I see a round go over or under then the next shot at the same unmoving target goes further over or falls even shorter. Drives me up the wall.

"I think many reading this AAR made a huge error in believing you a "bloodthirsty impulsive" who ricocheted from one crisis to another" And we were wrong? Seriously, C3K's biggest mistake in this AAR is, as pointed out above, his choice of fonts on some his pictures, especially the red coloured type face - I can't make that out at all. Of course having lost his armour for no gains didn't help but he has been dreadfully unlucky with his PIATs

Zenomorph, yes it was in Citizen Soldiers and it was a farm house and the other Germans were in MG positions etc. that the "assaulting" troops had no idea were there in the surrounding country side. If memory serves that was also the occasion when the surrendering troops started to relieve their captors of their watches, wallets etc. and it was that chaos the prompted the German Sergeant to take control and get the surrender done properly. Sometimes its hard to work out how we won.

Wouldn't argue with that at all. Still don't suppose the chap understood Cricket though.

I doubt that, and if it had been he wouldn't have understood it, would he? Mind you, I doubt that more of a small minority of people on this site would understand the term. Some of the English, a few Aussies perhaps, maybe the odd-kiwi (yes, Aussies, I know you are going to say all Kiwis are odd, so settle down), possibly one or two Septics, though they probably think we are talking about baseball and so miss the point completely. Be that as it may, I am far from convinced that Giap was as good a general as he was a politician, and to compare him to Slim, Patton et al. is to compare apples with oranges.