Other Means

I almost exclusively play CM:AK, as I find the Russian armour and gun modelling to be too skewed. See multiple uber StuG threads. CM:AK also lets me play as CW and I really enjoy the armour mix they have. Plus the various terrain types have a greater effect on tactics than in BB. Still, the breadth of the game in BB is excellent. The whole eastern front from 41 to 45. You pays your money you takes your box set and gets the lot .

If you mean does the engine take into account the angle of the plate it strikes - yes it does. Related to this, a great trick for the CW player is to put a Churchill XI reverse slope of a very steep hill. Doing that I've bounced 88mm hits from < 200m

Sorry, the baby started crying, I had to dash. Basically JasonC puts the observed kills down to hail fire, the accumulation of non-penetrating kills affecting the morale of the crew and systems of the tank, rather than any difference in the angle of the shell strike.

Cheers for the offer, I've 5 games on at the moment but I might have a go later, or for CM:SF. JasonC has done a test for this and disagrees with the results: test

Really? I'd like to see some proper tests but that in itself is quite indicative.

CM models the angle the shell strikes the plate, I think it does this in all dimensions. The other case is when you can get to such an angle, with hand-held AT usually, that you can achieve a top penetration. I've had good success with .50 cals on the 2nd floor of buildings. In fact I had one with 4 PzIV kills, although this may have been an anomaly caused by CM's kill reporting showing the last thing to hurt the tank rather than the gun that made the actual kills. Still, they certainly have an effect. I don't think CM models the ballistic arc of the shell, assuming a straight line from shooter to shootee, so lower velocity shells plunging fire isn't taken into account, AFAIK.

The surprise issue could be given by starting the Germans tired and away from their CO's, possibly. Maybe use an AC rather than a white scout car or jeep as these fold under any fire at all. Still don't think it's well simulated with the CM engine but it still might be fun.

It's a mistake, as far as I know.

Yeah I think it's universally agreed they're borked. Don't play an opponent who over-uses them.

I've played a very enjoyable large scenario of yours like this against Bigduke6 where the Allies are attacking. We're playing a second now. I'll email him this and see if he fancies playing it in parallel, for the sake of balance. I've certainly got spare capacity for another game right now. Oh yes - I assume the tanks that aren't there are Tigers, the missing arty is nearly naval and we'll enjoy not using them on such a hot dry sunny noon.

I'd suggest posting it right here. Mainly because then I'd definitely get to read it And you may even get some useful feedback.

It's been confirmed as a Normandy campaign a while ago.

No no no, you're doing this all wrong. From my experience of software development what you do is tell the client anything they want to hear while you get ready to release whatever you can at an arbitrary release date, while saying this was what was agreed, while working the devs until they're -><- this far from telling you to stick the ******* job and walking off the job/having a breakdown/being left by their partner/killing you. I mean, how the hell do you expect to run a business like this?

Betamax had better colour, sound, resolution etc than the VHS. The betamax had all the quotable stats that geeks loved. The VHS could record for 3 hours, which meant you could record a whole film - which is what was really important. And so the VHS won. So maybe the 2 things aren't so different.

What strikes me about this is just how quickly an Army dies when its funding is cut off. Cut back on training, cut back on logistics, cut back on maintenance and very quickly you end up with a paper tiger. It reminds me of the British Army between WWI & II; asset stripped. It's a monumental task to turn it back to a fighting force, one that politicians underestimate the difficulty of. It explains German successes in Poland and France and underscores just how well the Soviets did after Barbarossa. [ November 11, 2006, 01:45 PM: Message edited by: Other Means ]

Combine these with a smaller version of the M31 GMLRS and you've got a hell of a weapons system.

Just to re-enforce, I'd back up the mods you want and re-install, then re-apply them. NOT including interface mods other than Tarkus'

ramagel is right, it's the modification of the menu screens. I've got tarkus' mod (grey steel?) and everything still works, however some other mods do move the buttons and PBEMH relies on faking screen clicks, therefore it's missing the correct areas.

Trees in high winds do tend to move like that, with the groups of leaves moving together. Of course, the whole thing tends to sway too but from a distance it's spot on. Quite evocative actually. And brilliant for an alpha.

Congratulations to you and yours Nietzsche.

I exclusively play people I trust (plus Elmar) so I'd love to have a trusted option, if it's possible within timeframe.

Doesn't work because all you have to do is make a copy of the PBEM file before using it the first time. You play on copies until you are happy with the result and then you send that file to the other player. The only way I can think of is to track the files loaded using the bit count and probably a few pieces of info in the file. This way when you load Turn 4 of "Desert for Dessert" CM notes the unique "fingerprint" of the file and will never allow a file matching that unique footprint to be loaded again after the GO! button is hit. This defeats the copy/reload cheat because CM will simply refuse to go through the Commands phase for that file more than once in a lifetime. In theory the "fingerprint check" prevents cheating. There are ways to work around it, such as loading the PBEM file on one computer and then doing the turn for real on a 2nd computer. However, that is a really cumbersome and determined method of cheating that is not likely to be practical for most people, so the fingerprint check is pretty good. Not foolproof, but probably good enough for most people. Steve </font>

Sure there is. If you are willing to trust your opponent (because he can re-do the plot for turn N-1 after watching the movie for turn N). In fact, it is what TacOps does, a very game you market. </font>

I smell a lovely scenario on the way. Yumsters.

Do you have a sniper? That can make all the difference in these circumstances. A T34 loses (IMHO ) 1/2 of it's effectiveness if the Tank Commander (TC) is taken out. It loses about 1/5 if you make it button. By making it button it won't get 1st fire against enemy tanks and it needs ~2 rounds more to get a good hit percentage. If you don't have one, by all means force them to button by any mean necessary, including your arty. They key to winning as the axis player is to win the armour war, as the soviets have very little infantry AT capability.