Bannon DC

Guys -- Also check the Scenario Depot. Look for the "opponents wanted" button. Two player is the way to go for great games. www.the-scenario-depot.com

Hi all. Regarding the picture specifically -- First... because you -- the player -- see the infantry does not mean that your gun -- the playing piece -- sees it. Another friendly unit on the map might see it therefor it appear "visible" but not in LOS of all units. (Borg sighting). Possibly your gun might be just meters out of range Or maybe not... Weather looks like a major factor limiting sight. Looks like it could be dusk, snow, fog or a combination. In really bad weather you might only see 60m or so. What I would do in that situation... if you gun has not already been spotted, put a cover arc on it facing the infantry and when they walk about 5 or 10 more meters your gun will open up on them while moving. Then turn on the other known or previously sighted units and pummel them too. Have infantry support nearby. .... If your gun is already sighted by the enemy turn and use area fire on that advancing unit with "close enough" being good to send him to cover... turn and pummel other units and have infantry support nearby to run off those red bastards! :eek: -- -- -- -- I read that too: I beleived it until I got shot over the crest of a hill when the LOS told me clearly I could NOT see the foxhole due to that hill crest. If the crest is between me and the foxhole, then it's between the foxhole and me (not like you being hidden in a foxhole and my not being able to see you, but you being able to see me). </font>

Did you post this in Tech support? Suggest you do if you haven't. Are you on a Mac? A friend had a problem like this a long time ago. The problem was ID in the FAQ tech thread. Something like this sounds like a graphics driver issue. Have you changed drivers recently? Has it been a long time since you played CMBB and done upgrades to your computer since?

Stuarts are amazing. A lot of freakin armament on such a small tank.

Good one.

A reply so nice you posted it twice. Thanks, Fussball. You can edit your post to delete the text I think. Very correct about the coax being used to aim the main gun. Flexible MG -- In CM, disadvantage is that the tank commander will usually fire all of his ammo off in one or two rounds if you have directed the tank to area fire. Button up if necessary to save flexible mg ammo. But, with many tanks or AFV having about 12 blasts, you will go through all of it in the early part of the game anyway. Rear MG -- I have never seen a tank fire from the rear MG and have been in a few situations when it should have been used. Has anyone ever seen the rear MG fired?

So that's the secret of accumulating 22,845+ posts... go around resurrecting old posts a year later. Old posts never die... they just read that way.

This is pure Jason-bating.

Jurgen -- edit the title of your thread... Sherman T-34? I came in expecting to find a delusional tanker. :eek:

Thanks BD6 and George

Bah! I know how to read a book! But, this is one of those "must reads." All-in-all, I'm not really sitting on the edge of my seat though. I though Guderian's "Panzer Leader" was much better. The detail of the unit movements was much better. Guderian discussed his reasoning for the orders he gave. Manstein seems to focus more on his reasoning why his strategy would have been better if it had actually been followed in many case. He has a big ax to grind (and for good reason!). It seems to be an odd job of editing for the American/English version to replace a chapter of a book (the one mentioned above) with a magazine article. It reads like a magazine article and feels like it was shorted for space considerations. But, that can't be blamed on the author. Any first person historical account needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Especially, an account from the losing side.

Coincidentally, I just finished that chapter on the train tonight. You're right, there is virtually nothing there. The end notes mention it was replaced by an article that ran in the US Marines Gazette. They really made it as simple as possible for those leathernecks... 'this battle took place as far from the salt water as possible, it probably won't interest you.'

Hans -- Played yours. Left comments for you at TSD.

Bayonette Strength has some useful info on "small units" for many combatant nations in WWII.

But more importantly, will you be able to fire it when assaulting? Lord, that drew a 9 page thread in the CMAK forum.

What I don't like are hecklers and those with a pretend air of authority. A few Chicken Littles have people all flustered and dismayed that games will take years to complete and require Staff Officers to manage the process. Doesn't that seem a little silly to you? People have become fixated on something that seems like it would be a rare occurance and are demanding a "fix" before the games is released. How can a person satisfy you with "factual" answers when this entire thread is complete speculation based on some perceived "flaw" in a game no one has played and one that does not appear will be release anytime in the near future. I don't agree with your premise that the game is overly concerned with realism over playability. From what I have seen I don't see that. So, you question is "is there really a market" for such a game? I wouldn't buy the game that the tangental speculation has concocted. But I would buy CMC.

If you are worried about that, you are cutting it too close. Bad luck will find you the time your infantry is advancing and your AFV is still firing. Try switching from the main gun to the machine gun. Move your area target behind the enemy infanty if you can get LOS. I would say within 20m is too close. You will start to "shake" your own men.

What makes you think Jason is even half correct? He is purely speculating on a game he has not seen. He doesn't know what he is talking about any more than you do. Read the web site and skim the forum and you will know as much as anyone else. You will become the expert. But, what if... what if Jason is more than correct? What if he is 200% correct? What if it takes 10 years and 200 people to complete a campaign? What if they marketed the product only to prisoners serving a life sentence who possess a penchant for World War II minutiae. Of course there would be the odd guy who's shived in the shower or those misanthropic bastards who dump a rain of artillery on their own companies. But, you can work around that. Ridiculous speculation. Find a credible source. :eek:

Cropping is easy in the existing CMBB editor. So what? The "matter of scripting it properly" so that the CMC program can crop is not necessarily "easy." You are adding another feature to a program that is well along in development. That does not sound easy and as someone who has been programming for 20 years you would know that of course. The issue has been played and is completely moot. 2k x 2k is not perfect. The occurence of a platoon on platoon battle is going to be extremely rare. On the other extreme, the occurence of multi-battalion sized forces facing each other on 2 x 2 maps won't make a difference either. At that level, the problem is computing power rather than the size of the battlefield. Bigger map for more units? Same problem of computing power when fighting it out at the CMBB level. It's the "To the Volga" factor. Instead of cropping the existing 2 x 2 map, should the program have the option of choosing a "small," "medium" or "large" sized map based on the size of forces engaged? This again seems pointless and misses the basic understanding of how the game works. The 2 x 2 CMBB map corresponds to a part of the map or tile on the larger CMC campaign map. Now you suggest parsing out the CMBB maps in different portions. This disrupts the whole structure of the game. For a small battle you would give the player a small chunk. For a larger battle you give the player a larger chunk. Instead of an evenly sized grid, now you have a patchwork quilt of all different sizes. Your "easy" suggestion ignores the entire structure of the game and would involve a different campaign-level structure. The suggestion is reasonable if all the program did was spit out CMBB battles. But it ignores the larger level of the campaign game. But as a person who has been programming for 20 years, you already were aware of this point. To further bury this issue, consider what has not been considered in this thread. Reinforcements. On the campaign-level of CMC, various battle groups have been given orders to move to a certain 2 x 2 tile. Some of these are further away, some closer. Some are motorized, some on foot. They will not all reach the 2 x 2 tile at the same time. A battle is started at the CMBB level. Let's say at first it is platoon vs platoon. This battle goes a few turns and then reinforcements arrive. Then more reinforcements, etc. You get it. Now the platoon vs platoon battle on a 2 x 2 map is suddenly filled with a couple of companies and armor support. (Or whatever mix you want to imagine). How would this be resolved if the map started as a 500m x 500m map that is appropriate for a platoon vs platoon battle? Jason, you do not have a full grasp of the game. Nor do I think you have a full grasp of programming. Issues such as the size of the CMBB maps and their relationship to the campaign-level game are one of the foundations worked out before the programming starts. This is not something a little script re-write can change. To tell the lead designer who has spent 2+ years considering these and a thousand other issues that he doesn't know what he is doing is just a plain joke. It is like the drunk fan at a baseball game arguing that the umpire made a bad call. Analyze that. (edit typo) [ October 09, 2006, 10:11 PM: Message edited by: Bannon DC ]

Thanks, Tom. I found the area. Too bad those are lower resolution photos. For measurements, go to the "tools" menu. Then "measure." Bing.

Look at just some of the things JasonC is an expert on in this thread! Programming! You can tell he is an expert because he says things like it is "easy" and "just a matter of scripting it properly." Yup, when he can tell a guy who has been working on a project for the last 2+ years that he doesn't know what he's talking about... then you know JasonC is an expert. Russian topography! Yup, when he can tell a guy that lives in Russia he doesn't know the size of a typical field... then you know JasonC is an expert. JasonC knows what he is talking about because he is an expert. He just is.

I just DL'ed yours. Different take on the map. I based mine on current Google Earth and scaled back the size of the town. Mine is much more open field and flatter. I even added a grove of trees here and there that isn't present on the satellite map. Do you still have the pamphlete from the regimental history? Is it possible to scan and email to me? I played the first few turns and will leave comments at TSD when done.

Tom, I'm reading Chapter 78, Let the Bloody Black Bastards Come. I was trying to locate Takrouna on a map and also fix a date to this battle. Can you help me out? I was hoping to locate this area on Google Earth. Based on the section of the book, it should be Tunisia. Google has roughly 50% of Tunisia mapped with the higher definition satelite photos. And did anyone ever come up with a list of scenarios based on your book? Thanks, Bannon

Here is one of the articles that ran in the Washington Post over the summer: Washington Post article Excerpt (Note -- articles on the Post site are eventually archived and unavailable after a certain amount of time): Cold War Missiles Target of Blackout Documents Altered To Conceal Data By Christopher Lee Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, August 21, 2006; Page A01 The Bush administration has begun designating as secret some information that the government long provided even to its enemy the former Soviet Union: the numbers of strategic weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during the Cold War. The Pentagon and the Department of Energy are treating as national security secrets the historical totals of Minuteman, Titan II and other missiles, blacking out the information on previously public documents, according to a new report by the National Security Archive. The archive is a nonprofit research library housed at George Washington University. ... The report comes at a time when the Bush administration's penchant for government secrecy has troubled researchers and bred controversy over agency efforts to withhold even seemingly innocuous information. The National Archives was embroiled in scandal during the spring when it was disclosed that the agency had for years kept secret a reclassification program under which the CIA, the Air Force and other agencies removed thousands of records from public shelves. etc.

Left alert ! </font>