herr_oberst

Avalon Hill on the tabletop in all forms... then Close Combat (I loved shepherding a Kubel w/a MG42 on it behind a hedgerow), then found CMBO Alpha AAR (Fionn and someone?) with 3 pixeltruppen marching along as squads -- mind-blowing at the time, and watched VoT, then played, driving a Tiger in 3d, feeling invincible (however short-lived). Been CMxx ever since.

Get used to getting beat-up... It's all an educational adventure. Crap, I've read tons o' books (mil hist generally, unit hist some), but that doesn't necessarily translate 1-1 to what you'll find in the game. Close, but not 100%. But then what is? Got my arse handed to me in a play-by-email vs an unmentioned person in the New Zealand military. What they practice I tried to play. Professional vs amateur. If you find one, they are the BEST opponents ever... You want real combined-arms instruction.. play a real military person in Play-By-EMail. It pays to: - Play "realistic/smart" for the period (WWII vs modern are VERY different), gamey tactics from other games might leave you wondering WTF?) - Educate yourself about what the period platforms are capable of (AFVs, arty, infantry squads) -- in WWII, a game year can mean a total change of tactics, especially against the Russkies in CMRT ) - "You aren't as good as you think you are" - some scenario creators are EVIL, and have already thought out all those advance route routes you think are ingenious... prepare to be decimated in the real Roman sense. All that being said, there is little I have spent as much money on, and have enjoyed less than the entire Battlefront series of games... CMBO, CMAK, CMBB, etc, etc. Started on the Windows platform way back, then got 'smart' and switched to MacOs. And bought everything I had again, 'cause it's that good. Through (almost) all the current titles (I'm a WWII guy), the most valuable dollars I have ever spent.

Dang... I was hoping the BOARs would be the chink in the armor that finally got us Space Lobsters...

And don't forget, the Peng thread was infamous for crashing the Forums when the sheer volume of posts in a single thread would bring the server to its knees. We had to institute a "watch number"... when it got to that many, a new thread was started in its place.

Aah... for the glossary, you simply cannot leave out "the Cesspool"...

Plenty of room for both types. Some of the designers do bang-up jobs of scripting and are very challenging, but then again, against a devious human mind can be frustrating/enjoyable. Aeons ago, during CMAK, there was a player (apologies, but who it was escapes me) who used the gamiest, sheer genius maneuver I can recall to mask his attack. Moving across the desert caused dust trails. Rather than telegraph his avenues of advance, he took a couple of his lightest, fastest pieces of armor and ran them back and forth across the map in front of the rest of the attacking force. A dust cloud effectively masked all his early movement. L'audace, toujours l'audace...

Yeah, just another whiny Mac user hoping for the new battle pack release for Mac. I have 12 days of PTO coming up, and would hate to spend it longing rather than playing....

Currently on an iMac x86, 24GB RAM, Radeon Pro 580 8 GB. Thinking about an MacBook Pro, M1Max, 32GB, Terabyte drive (why go less?), so interesting info... always have the iMac as a fall-back... All my dev tools (work) are becoming M1-compatible... Hmm...

le sigh Windows players getting the first release. Is there no justice???

Let's see... CMBO, CMBB, CMAK - aah, the good ol' days of 3 blocky pixeltruppen marching along, the Cesspool and its rather unique wit. And getting massacred in VoT that first time... Then CMBN + all the adds, CMFI + all the adds, CMRT + all the adds, CMFB -- I play these as time permits. Also own CMBS, CMCW - not that I'm into modern where tech seems to rule the battlefield, but 'cause I want to support the brain trust. Would still love to see an updated CMAK, or early WWII title.

I think MikeyD has a point. I did the same thing on a map I'm working on. Rotated the underlying real-world an arbitrary number of degrees until the majority of the roads were more or less 0, 45, or 90 (ish) degrees, then some later "road sculpting" to minimize the zig-zags. Later put some artificial terrain in place that make your road turns logical.

Something in this area perhaps...

Yes, the installed games are big. But then again, what's a terabyte drive cost nowadays? On my mac I've a 2TB drive, and used 486GB... with CMBN, CMBS, CMCW, CMFB, CMFI, and CMRT (about 75GB, not counting the maps I'm working on), but I'm less than 30% full... I use Crossover to support a Windows game... , counting the Crossover support, that 60GB by itself... Cool stuff (i.e., graphics heavy) takes space.

Sections of a map like this are particularly challenging...

Oh the good ol' days... and quite possibly the gamiest move ever conceived by man... In CMAK, on a dry desert map, buy 2 or 3 of the fastest tracked vehicles your side allows. In front of your advancing forces, run those vehicles back and forth to create a dust cloud the width of the map... Your opponent has no idea how much of what you have advancing. Sheer genius!!! Quantum that!

They shoulda skipped the tanks and assault guns that didn't fit on or across most of the bridges in Europe and parts east... either width or weight wise. Sure, you can build a Maus, but where you gonna fight with it? Doesn't help an assault if you have to build new bridges to get your material across the rivers.

So... watch the drivel on Netflix, or Amazon, or Disney+, or <name your service>, or play CM? Still waaay less expensive, and a ton more fun. Time is time, choose where you'll spend it. So its 19F outside? I'm not on the bike trail -- too much ice this time of year, so my second most enjoyable thing is CM (other than a good Jameson -- Jameson Orange with a Cream Soda mixer - it's an alcoholic Dreamsicle, stoopid good).

Hmm... bushes messing with the gunners view, given most gunners are lower than turret commanders?

Still holding out for the "Space Lobsters of Doom" module...

Sorceror soundtrack from Tangerine Dream... Fits the whole general sense of dread. Ok, I plotted a turn. Let's click 'Go' and see what blows up!

Too many trees on the top of that hill... where's the kill zone? But I agree... awesome mod.

But while you as a player could tailor a certain squad's, or a set of squads, 'react' behavior according to your instincts or plan, choosing to be cautious or charging forward losses irrelevant, how is the tac AI going to make the same decision on setting the 'react' posture for its planned moves? Some type of algorithm, which I assume is already in place when the tac AI chooses between the slow--fast movement spectrum for its pixeltruppen. One of the things I've always liked about the CM titles is the lack of precise control once you get far enough down the command chain. That 'randomness' keeps the same scenario from playing the same every time.

Yup, Mojave 10.14.6. Runs fine, just got massacred for fun. Kinda terrifying watching a missile fly towards a piece of armor and knowing you can't do squat about the final outcome.

No such complaint under Mojave...

Always someone who can't fully read an email and enjoy their boon in silence...