Bud Backer

Why do I see a story here? Oh dear! This looks so delicious!

Thanks, mate, been a hell of a year in a not good way lol

Haha you’re not the first who lost sleep, or snuck time away from work to read these; I’m delighted you enjoyed it that much. My signature has a link to other completed and WIP comics and AARS. Enjoy!

I have all the Combat Mission games in my MacBookPro and they all run very well. Upon initial installation they are slower to load but MacOS seems to be processing something in the background and after a few cycles of using the game and leaving, it is pretty instantaneous now. A friend of mine has a 2018 iMac and all games and they work fine there too. If you have problems with CMSF2 I recommend you contact tech support. It may be necessary to relicense the game. Often slow loading or crashes are related to an issue resolved by relicensing. This is something I know from personal experience as well as from problems examined by other testers.

There is a setting, indeed. Go to settings, system, display, then at the bottom, graphics settings. under Graphics Performance Preferences, you can set specific executables, (eg: CM) to use High Performance. That will use the discrete card rather than the built-in motherboard one.

Ok, so it really is as described in the manual. Thank you. I for some reason thought there was some confusion around that.

I can't remember how EW works. If I set EW at Medium for the attacker, does that mean the attacker is suffering from the effects of EW directed at them, or does it mean the attacker is using medium EW against the defender who then is degraded in various capabilities? I seem to vaguely recall that there was some confusion around this as to how it was described in the manual.

Yes, I understand the explanation. My difficulty is that I’m trying to imagine this in a real battle. Did real Panther commanders actually decide in a battle that remaining hull down was disadvantageous and purposely expose their tanks fully? I have a hard time Imagining that to be the case. Which makes me wonder if other aspects of the simulation mitigate this in some manner to achieve a more realistic outcome. This is one of the challenges of tests that are going to test a very specific situation. Not knocking the effort by any means. Just trying to rationalize the conclusions with what I’d expect in real life.

Interesting data, thanks for doing that and providing some plausible conclusions. While I appreciate the substantial benefit granted by being hull down, it does seem counterintuitive that once spotted it may easily confer a disadvantage. I expected that there would be a higher probability of not striking the exposed turret.

Why is CM Great? One answer might be that real militaries use it as a training tool, and I doubt they’re trying to simulate what may keep them alive… badly. Another answer might be that I can realistically simulate countless battles with friends and learn real tactics. Another are the fantastic mini-stories we see happen in each battle. Like, perhaps this One that takes place over 5 panels. Could not believe my eyes when I saw it occur.

I think this is a problem I am facing. For context, I only play QB. Anything short of an Assault in QB will give numbers a lot closer to 1.5:1, maybe 2:1 but I believe even an assault is still well under 3:1 for the attacker in terms of points. So for both Modern and WW2 battles I’m having a very hard time having the mass of armour I need to fight in what I think is “Russian style.” If my enemy is almost at parity to me points wise, what am I to do?

I suppose I should have been more precise in describing my experience - I don’t usually bother with scenarios, and I haven’t played against the AI in quite a few years. So my experience with them is purely against other players and being both and on the receiving and giving end of the barrel I think they can be very useful. Certainly when they supplement my more mobile elements.

These results are consistent with my findings during play. I have repeatedly used trenches to enhance the concealment of AT guns, and especially when coupled with the camo bonus, found them to be devastatingly effective when properly positioned. Not all terrain is well suited for ATGs, and it’s important to recognize that when purchasing a force to not end up with fodder for tanks. I’d change nothing about their points.

I haven’t found anything that would suggest a different figure than 80mm. I wonder if the added armour is some field expedient or shop alteration that was not part of the normal production run.

I have Wargame Air-Land Battle. Visually its a lovely game but I was very disappointed when I discovered that there is no FoW in these games from the AI's perspective. You cannot conduct a real ambush and surprise the enemy, they "know" where all your units are. A few battles and doing some research online to try to see if what I was experiencing was misinterpreted by me but no, I had it confirmed from several sources. What a pity. But to the OP's point - it would be nice to have visuals in CM like there are in the Wargame series. I'm not unhappy with them as they are and I get swept up in the evolution of the battles I play (hence why I make AARs) so immersion for me is not quite as disrupted as it may be for others.

I don't use the app on my Mac. I use the web site, like @Ultradave. I use the app on my Windows 10 PC.

If you are logged into Discord you should be able to go to the lower left where there is a “ + “ sign among your other discord server icons. Click it and one of the options is “already have an invite?” It will let you input the server invite URL

Ah, Matrix. Right, ok, that’s fine. Thank you.

I think it’s great that CM has an official Discord. I am a bit confused though, are CM staff sponsoring/organizing/running it? Maybe I missed it and it’s actually clearly spelled our somewhere.

I’m told this started with Big Sur. It’s definitely an OS thing, and not a question of game version.

Thanks very much for the help!

That’s wonderful! Worked perfectly. Can I trouble you to do the same for the other discord ?

Not loading for me, I get a blank page. Can you generate an invite, please?

Thank you! Not sure if you clicked on the link in my signature but there are other AARs in a different format. If you like modern stuff check out Be Not the Anvil and if you like WWII check out Apache: A Tank's Tale. More on offer in the links in my sig. Hopefully you got the notification for the addition I did today