Other Means

I don't care about jackboots or the SS. My fetishes don't feature men. I care about tactical challenges and WWII is an excellent vehicle for them. You have each combat arm fulfilling its role while interacting and influencing every other. A current US Marine squad, fully javelined up and with arty on call, can fight every other arm with little effort apart from occasional hiding. Not so in WWII. There you had to seek cover from tanks while pressing against MGs, scouting for your own side armour, killing enemy infantry etc. It's the interrelation of all arms that's fun. That's why, to me, Napoleonic or ancient battles aren't as much fun - there aren't as many factors coming in to play. So I'm looking forward to WWII. We have a lot more data on how things function so the current - ISTM - imbalance in how each side is portrayed will stop. That can only be a good thing.

Nicely done.

Finished it. Twas good. Might go back and do some more side quests, I kinda dove towards the end. I kinda task driven.

Love it.

Do tell.

Many, many debates And as you know the core of my argument is that yes, all the information is there, it's just not easily accessible. I'm looking forward to whatever solution is being stewed.

Giving the player the ability to place trenches is nullified by them not being hidden to his opponent. I think everyone would accept borg spotting for terrain - it's explainable in real life by them never moving. But the ability to hide good cover where the enemy doesn't expect it and can't see it is extremely valuable.

Yeah I forget who that is. Not important I guess.

If you play at level 3/4/5 like I do, then units 100m away give you very little tactical information. You get no gestalt when you're playing, you need to zoom in on each group to see what's going on. That's just needless hard work.

Dude...dude. You know what this talk does to me. This is the major point that gets in the way of enjoying CM2. If you can't see the units react to your tactics then you can't know how you're doing and so the cycle of plan->implement->observe is hindered. And you know I'm legally obliged to post this link.

Each unit would have to have a copy of the trenches or not, dependent upon whether they had spotted it, hence Steve's figure. Click on a unit that has spotted the trench and you see what they see - trench or no trench. Unit A may see trenches 1, 2 & 3 while unit B sees trenches 4, 5 & 6. Unit A has a chance to see trench 4 but may not due to smoke etc. Except if they've previously spotted it - in which case the trench would still be shown because it's not like they'd forget it because of some smoke. Unless they get the trench spot passed via C2. So the complexity grows. The spotted status of the trench has no effect on the physics - HE will still kill or not independent on whether it's been spotted or not. Personally though I'd accept borg spotting for trenches. Being able to see them from the off now really hurts the game. Of course, they need to be able to be player placed as well...

That's a good point. In CM1 I used to make a mental calculation thinking "I'll take that group of 3 large flags and with a positive casualty ratio I'll get the game.". Currently you can't do that. What you need to achieve and what you can sacrifice to do so is unstated. I think the old points system QBs helped in this. You knew what certain tanks were worth and how much infantry was worth committing to gain an objective. So maybe if something could be introduced that would allow you to gauge that it would bring some clarity to the scoring.

Bolt - welcome. I agree with all your points. I think a lot of the Syrian capabilities are modelled as worst case, while the US seems to be...optimistic in some cases.

Thanks. Re-affirms my faith in the superhighinterweb.

I think you can also create a firefox extension but I can't see how to do it yet. IIRC it's just an XML structure.

+1 ______________________________________________________________________________________________

Reads like it was just small arm shooting from the Marines. If the ship had returned fire there wouldn't be much evidence left.

Word. xxxxx

He posts over at Gyrene's place.

Keeps crashing on me. Like, twice a night. I'm going to install the latest video drivers and see if I can sort it.

Yeah Mord good luck fella. Write when you can.

He recognises them...

Sergei! Where the hell you been fella?

How do you find somewhere to sleep?

I've heard the PS3 vesion is considerably worse than any other. Shame. I'm enjoying it so far although the combat isn't that compelling. I'd also always like a "OK bye" option on the dialogue. Sometimes you're channelled where you don't wanna go.