BFCElvis

I'm guessing it was the spring of '98 also. Found out by taking a shot in the dark look at Avalon Hills' site. Sure enough there was CSL in development and a link to a BigTimeSoftware site. I checked it once a week or so until the message board went up. Since then it has been everyday. I still have it bookmarked. Lurked until last fall because if you were reading the board back then you'll remember that people knew their **** and I never felt like a knucklehead would add anything to the conversation. Oh yeah..one other thing. That first link to BTS even had the now infamous line "When will it be done? When it's done." ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

I often have dreams involing CM. It usually happens when I am in the middle of a very intense PBEM game or have played an entire operation in one sitting....Sometimes they also include Heather Graham and turn into another kind of dream altogether....but that's for a different forum. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

When I first started playing PBEMs with the beta demo we used ICQ. I now only use AOL AIM. The downloads/uploads seem MUCH faster than ICQ and the instant meesaging is faster as well. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Tough question Roolstoy. My feeling is that the scenarios on the disc should all play pretty balanced but there are too many factors involved to give you a quick answer. If your opponant is more skilled than you a scenario will play unbalanced. If you make one bigtime wrong move early in the game it will then seem unbalanced. If you get unlucky at some point. You can see where I'm going with this. The reason I say try one from the disc is that for the most part they were playtested and tweaked the most before release so damn near any of them should be fine. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

My wife just went to spend 5 days with her mother and although I have plenty of time to play while she is here I will now have unlimited time. How can I not hurt myself? ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Fionn, I just sent you an email. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Thank you..that's all I needed...you may now return to arguing about what is and what is not gamey. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Damn, I have been following this thread for a couple days sense I first posted a reply and not one of you bastards has said "great job with the etiquette Elvis" or "You know so much about PBEM ettiquette that we are all really impressed"...Everyone just keeps focusing on Fionns etiquette contribution...well what about ME?..what about my needs? By the way Fionn am I making any progress on "the list"? ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Philadelphia, Pa USA ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

I was gonna mention that some people do that but it really doesn't fall under "ettiquette". Personaly no matter what the file is called when it is sent to me I change it before downloading to the person I am playings name with no designation for turn number. I have no use for keeping old turn files. The few times I have wanted to save a file I just save the newly generated file as something diferent and move on.If I were to ever do a full AAR I guess I would want to save them...other than that they clutter up my folders. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Number 1 with a star is:KEEP THE GAME MOVING!! By this I mean send the files in as timely manner as you are capable of. Once or twice a day is great. Once a week is not great. The best is if from time to time you can meet your victim on line and do file transfers through AIM or ICQ. Number 2: Do not stop sending files without a damn good reason AND notifying your prey. It is terrible form to just disappear and even worse if you are getting beat and just don't feel like playing anymore. Which brings me to point number 3.... Number 3: If you are getting your butt kicked and don't feel like playing the scenario out surrender AND send the surrender file to the victor because he may want to survey the battlefield to learn what you had, who killed who ect... Number 4: If you are getting crushed and the game is beyond help throw your opponent a bone and surrender so as to not waste any more of his time (or yours) beating a dead horse. ie..your global moral is at 13%, the only thing you have left is one tank and know your opponent has 3 tanks and a platoon or two left....It's over brother give up. Number 5: Whenever possible taunt your opponent and insult his intellect. Disparage his parentage and tell him he is silly as much as you can. Number 6: ALWAYS...I repeat..Always lie about the condition of your troops. If your doing great tell them how beat up your troops are. If you are suffering heavy loses say things like "Yeah, wait till you see what I have coming for you". I am sure there are many others but that is a good start. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Additional reason to level buildings: To have a clear LOS through the building. No building no blocked LOS. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

TeAcH, From what I am seeing here it sounds like v1.03 may have dealt with your area firing concern. I haven't blowed up any buildings on purpose yet with the new version. And as David Aitken said units in buildings that have just blown up around them usually aren't going anywhere fast. The reason I keep mentioning the 60 second aspect of each turn is because I have noticed that it takes 2-5 turns to level a building (depending of course on what type of weapon is being fired and what type of building). So it does not seem unreasonable to me if a unit that had fired AREA FIRE for 2 minutes 22 seconds before leveling a building to then continue for an additional 38 seconds. As far as tageting a building, as oppossed to area fire, I would think that would take of what you are trying to do (although I worry about me using it because I have a hard enough time clicking on passengers in AFVs from any viewpoint other than close up and I might have the same problem clicking on units inside a building). But here are the problems I can see with that. Say you target at building and it is no longer area fire it is direct building fire. The building gets leveled. Tageting unit then stops firing at that location and fires at either nothing or another enemy unit that the AI feels is more important. Meanwhile the unit you were trying to flush out may still be in the rubble. I would think that situation would be less desireable than the current build of the game. I do not want to sound like I am poo pooing your idea. It would be swell if you could easily click on a building and level it and then with 100% certainty that there were no remaining units in the building retarget and use the remaining 45 seconds/10 seconds/22 seconds/whatever working on blowing something else up. But because of FOW I doubt that could ever happen enough to make everyone happen. I can hear it now. "I blew up a building and the AI acted like the rubble was empty so I ran a squad into it and they got schredded. How come my tank didn't keep firing at the rubble?" Just my opion dude. I could be way off base, it wouldn't be the first time. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

TeAcH, You are missing the point of what area fire is. By defintion it is fire directed at an area not a unit or structure. The AI does just fine if you are directing fire toward a unit and knock it out. If you were to change it worked it would change the way it works for area fire anywhere (woods, wheatfields, even open ground). I use it not only where I suspected units to be but also where I want to keep units from going to. The only reason I could see for what you are asking for is to level a building for LOS purposes. Again it is only for 60 seconds. Because we have rewind and pause that 60 seconds can sometimes seem like forever but it only a minute of combat. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

I couldn't be happier for you guys. You deserve all praise and cashish that comes your way. Let me know a couple days before the intial IPO so I can have the cash ready. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC [This message has been edited by Elvis (edited 08-01-2000).]

TeAcH, Tageting a building might be a cool idea but I don't know about the retarget thing. Each turn is 60 seconds. If you think of it like "Keep shelled that building there might be some unseen enemy in there". With that in mind there would be no reason to stop shelling it in a 60 second period of time because even if there were confirmed kills there still might be other units in the rubble. That is what area fire is all about....possibly blowing up unseen units. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

I will not post to this thread for fear someone will start up an "Elvis Defeats" thread and we will end up making the board crash again. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Sorry I know it is way of topic but the Republican National Convention is in Philly this week and it is starting to work my nerves already and the convention hasn't even begun. The streets are filled with every police officer on the payroll, my bar is too crowded to hang out in and there are NO beggers on the street to kick. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Permission granted. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Darwin, you hit the nail right on the head. I lurked for close to a year and a half before my 1st post (which was around beta demo time) because the level of discussion was way beyond my expertise and I felt I had nothing I could contribute. Once the demo came out and there were silly posts popping up all over the place I new I could contribute to that and came out of lurking status. I imagine by the time development of CM2 begins the board will go back a little to those heady days that you describe. In the meantime I am enjoying the party and very thankful for all the new smiling faces ranting about what has been a very long obsession for me. Please note I did not say smilie faces but smiling faces. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Welcome Sami!! If you ever want to play an email game just drop my an email. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

As a long time member of this board I must defend Fionn on at least one point here. He has at times been a target for hammerheads and it has affected the information I have access to because he is an excellent and willing giver of detailed and cool information. So Fionn being less likely to post here has affected me. Although Peng may have stated it stronger than some have liked he has a point. We must remember that this is a one dimensional form of communication . No one is hearing the tone of peoples voices or seeing their body language. Because of that things should be taken with a grain of salt. For instance I have seen many posts by Lewis that I thought were funny and intended as being funny that were interpruted as attacks. I was misunderstood because of my poor writing skills the other day and just decided to drop the subject because it wasn't worth spending the time getting into a debate over. My feelings about the current board is that if more people are in here that is a great thing. A basic law of sociology is that "whenever two or more people are put in a situation for an extended period of time there will be conflict". So the more people that are interested in CM the better it is for the game and the higher the likelyhood of conflict. So we should all just deal with it. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

I didn't even know you could set the QB for reinforcements. I guess I should check it out before I install v1.03. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

DAMN PENG!!!! you must have been typing your post while I was typing mine....wierd. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC

Peng and I started playing SL in the very early 80s and continued to play at least once a week until a couple of years ago when the bastard moved 2 1/2 hours away. The binder for ASL?....we sometimes set it up on the divider between my living room and dining room at had the book open at all times with lit candles on each side and empty bottles of Wild Turkey and Carling Black Label all over the place. Would get in fights about the interpretation of rules..."CONSULT THE BOOK!!!" That is why we are so juiced up about CM. It is the game we have always wanted and we don't have to argue about the rules. After last Saturday nights hotseat game (our 1st) the whiskey and beer are still factors in stratagy. ------------------ "To conquer death you only have to die" JC