Gromit

Nice to see a video of action. I will withhold most of my comments until after I get the game, but I will definitely wait to try realtime until after I get used to the interface. Too much going on for a CMx2 newbie.

Those tintypes are awesome. I have a few in the family collection, I think one of them is civil war related. Lost my great, great uncle Hamilton West while fighting for the Union at Antietam. He is buried there in the cemetery. One of my many To-Do civil war battlefield trips.

You know you're right PT- thinking about things other than AFVs, I have to say I am most excited that (by all indications) infantry combat is gonna totally kickass now. I gotta believe that will make CM:BN seem a much more realistic depiction of WW2 ground combat.

Yep- I had forgotten about that, as you guys say once into the game it sort of stops being much of an issue. I guess I had it in my head that the 8m action spot concept wouldn't have a whole lot to do with how roads and paths need to be oriented. Oh well- far from a show-stopper. Might change in the future anyway. I just remembered the excellent Rock, Paper, Scissors article that Moon stickied about the AAR has a very revealing high-res shot just below the top of the article. It really shows the angles well. I did notice that there are some curvy roads here and there.

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that this whole Rarity business will, at the end of the day, be less of an issue than most of us are thinking it will. Maybe not a non-issue for some minority I am certain- after all we are talking grognards here, but I have a hunch it will work just fine. One scale for point cost based on the performance value of the unit and a second to take into account how far along the scale from ubiquitous to ultra-rare a unit sits. I'm not saying all the comments amount to teeth gnashing (more like fun ), but it's hard to judge when you don't even have the game yet to make an informed decision.

I think that is why Battlefront is getting away from the Activate/Deactivate model. It is pretty easy to forget one app out of hundreds on your PC that needs to be deactivated prior to wiping the drive and starting over. At least this way you don't need to worry about it. I must say that from my personal experience of building my own PC since 1993, if you need to do a total reinstall of Windows- any version, more than once a quarter, then you really need to look at your computer habits. I might reload once a year or every other year, and that is with fairly regular hardware changes.

Yeah Rake, that seems to be a good way to combine the exactness of a photo with the topography to make it all come together. Nice. LLF: So... you mean if no changes you wouldn't be able to lay down those gentle curves in roads in Rake's picture? Uggh. I hope not.

I have been musing over the map scenario creation for a bit now and I am sure the Betas can chime in here, but- wouldn't it seem a better process if we used either maps or aerial photos to get an idea of the size and layout of a similar piece of topography and then go from there? Having done some previous mapping, my biggest lesson I took away from it was a) Do your homework (i.e., research) first. Run that through multiple on-paper versions before committing to the in-game editor. c) Check scale and ingress/egress/chokepoints with objectives, etc., etc. d) Rinse and repeat until you're satisfied this is the map you really want to invest so much time in making. ...and we haven't even started testing the map yet. *whew*

Hmmm... so many choices! I think on the American side I am looking forward to the M16 Quad .50 "meat chopper" and off-board 155mm and 8" arty support. The Germans- well, still waiting on the Hetzer (he's just a little guy!) and the always deadly Jagdpanther, so I guess I'd say the Sd.Kfz. 251/22 with the short 75mm CS gun. The Brits- I gotta go with the Firefly Sherman. So many toys... so little time. **sigh**

**slaps head** Now who was the wiseguy that mentioned wine within hearing distance of Winecape?! Now we get to hear all his South African tall tales of drunken soccer-referee parties and other sordid accounts of debauchery. Obviously these guys don't know you like the rest of us do WC. Oh, and since it looks like no one pointed it out guys, there is an easy-peasy way to find out any member's assigned Battlefront "number". Just place your mouse over their Username and look in the lower left part of the screen. See that number at the end? That is your number. For instance, the one Steve (yes, THAT Steve) uses is 30. MarkEzra's is 9, maybe that's why his head is so big (kidding Mark!). Mine is 238. It doesn't always equate to sequential join dates, but it is a fair indicator of just how long we have all been under the spell of Battlefront. I suppose I should be classified as a bit of a lurker- I wasn't around for the majority of "Battlefront: The Shock Force Years".

**shrugs** Anything is possible when you're a brain in jar of Steve-concocted nutrients... In all seriousness: I would imagine that one of these days there will come a point where Charles determines that the effort to change all the code necessary to take advantage of CPU multiple cores will actually make sense from an effort vs. payoff point-of-view. We definitely aren't there yet... your guess is as good as anyones as to when that will happen.

I was kind of shocked that Oleg would tie himself to an outfit like Ubisoft, but I suppose in this day and age one can't be too choosy about one's partners if no one else wants to dance... I hope you are right nox, I hope you are right. Oleg deserves the best support possible.

If you go back and look through the first AAR, they talk about the difference of being positioned right on the edge of the woods (fairly good chance of being spotted) versus being just a few meters inside the outer edge (much less of a chance of spotting). I think it was Steve who pointed out the inherent danger in setting up right on the edge of woods and forest terrain.

Oh wow... you are really making the old noggin work now. I seem to remember that having owned Charles Moylan's excellent air combat games (which are still great fun to this day by the way) I was drawn to a link that announced Battlefront as their new venture and the state of the industry post. Fall of 1999 things were heating up with Combat Mission development and I joined here to follow the progress. The rest, as they say, is history. I have never been much interested in modern day "wizz-bang" ground combat on a tactical level, so I was away during much of the Shock Force era. I was content knowing that the foundation laid by development of SF would one day make for a second version of WW2 that would be "done right". I think that day will soon arrive my friends! :cool:

You know it really makes you wonder whether a more focused research program in Germany would have produced a few more practical, high reliability weapons in quantity for the Heer. It is fun to speculate for instance, if the G43 semi-auto rifle (or alternative) had seen intensive development and overtaken the old warhorse Mauser bolt-action say in 1941 or 42, what kind of firepower would the typical German squad or platoon have at its disposal then? Quite a lot I would surmise from the lessons of the Garand on the US. Anyway, it has been a fun discussion guys. Hey, we are down to a month now, right?

That's a tough question in my estimation Hamilcar. I have been playing boardgames and a few miniature rulesets since the 70's and I can't really say that any of them are really all that helpful with regard to research. I will agree with Magpie on the data ASL put out in their rules chapter H. Honestly, I owned few worthwhile books back in those days and I learned much of my knowledge concerning relative values in AFVs from chapter H. Having said that, it is a $70-$80 purchase online these days when you can find it- although someone might throw up an old 1st edition for less now and then. The historical content should be much the same for obvious reasons. Back to the research bit. I find that today I use the internet for my searches to narrow down possible candidates on any particular subject. It helps to have lots of feedback from former owners to take (with your handy "grain-of-salt" that is necessary on the net) into consideration.

Bil: I've been meaning to ask you if you could provide a source link or such for the Panzer Forwards! document? Thanks!

I agree with Wiggum in that there are many, many factors at work here that we haven't even begun to take into account. One of the things the translation authors did was essentially take to task the Germans for forgetting the strategic lessons given them by Clauswitz and Moltke. Their system also was not good for producing any senior commanders like Marshall, Eisenhower or Brooke. A couple other areas they get low marks on are combat intelligence and logistics, along with lack of development in the area of self-propelled guns that were never fully developed and ended up costing the Germans dearly in tactical battles.

My short response probably didn't help clarify, but you are confusing two things here. All the doctrine was expected to be learned and utilized by the officers in a decisive manner. (It will help to show much of the Introduction that I mentioned- it lays out what is expected of a soldier.) What the authors are saying is that while the allies stood pat with their WWI doctrines the Germans were devising a combined arms doctrine and refining it for close to five years (1934-1939) including new technologies such as the Panzer division. The US, Britain and Russia began to change their own doctrines, much of it based on the German's own, but this took time and they never adopted some of the more radical ideas within Truppenfuhrung. As far as the allied officers, the Beck comments were aimed at his contemporaries at the staff level in regards to developing a doctrine, not at field troops and officers. But in regards to that, I think that at the General Staff level, the allies did lack the things Beck speaks of in the time between the wars and it wasn't until the early war years when their doctrines were scrapped and rewritten. I honestly think the authors are being objective here. I can just as easily say that your comment smacks of the overtones attached to the German Nazi "evil regime" and stereotypes just as much as you are claiming the authors have. I honestly believe that the truth lies between the two ends of the decades-old discussion. And here is the thing- if you read Truppenfuhrung, particularly the foreward, authors notes and the book's Introduction, you come away with one overall impression (at least I did) that the Germans didn't just write this stuff and put it on a shelf to gather dust. They lived it and expected the tenents within to be followed from the top down. It was part and parcel of what made the German Army what it was in WWII. As some others have said, I think many of the Atlantic Wall troops were of mediocre at best quality, some of them weren't even German! But I don't believe the core values were ever abandoned- even at the end of things. To be sure, the Germans had their own stop-gap troops and measures as things began to get more and more desparate with a multifront war. Here is part of the Introduction text I referred to earlier that I don't think one will find in any Allied Army doctrine or manual: Note that the General Staff knew going in that not all soldiers would be able to maintain such standards, and provided for that fact through mutual support of comrades. I believe that the German doctrine, unlike the allies, began with the concepts above and they continued throughout the war. These are the "radical" parts I mentined early on that the Allied General Staffs didn't feel fit within their armies, as far as I can tell. Remember the pre-DDay scene in Band of Brothers where Winters reprimands Lt. Compton for playing poker with his troops? The Americans didn't believe in "fraternization" as something to be actively promoted or practised. Officers did just about everything as a group when not actively leading troops, and the same was true for the rank and file. The concepts outlined above from Truppenfuhrung would seem ridiculous to most Allied armies. One last quote, this time from Major General F.W. von Mellenthin's Panzer Battles: One scene in Band of Brothers that I thought was done particularly well is the German Officer's speech to his remaining surrendering troops at the end of things. To wrap up- were the Germans some kind of supermen with fanatic zeal? No, I don't think so on average. I believe they were lead by determined, focused officers and non-comms that were able to get the most from their troops (foreign draftees aside) despite some very difficult situations more often than the Allies could on average.

I would have to say Yes to your question LLF, the reason why I found in my copy of Truppenfuhrung. Doctrine, as James Corum points out in the foreward, was the difference from start to finish. I'll give you some examples quoted from the book. General Ludwig Beck, to whom the english translation is dedicated, confirmed this "thinking" in a speech on the 125th anniversary of the Kriegsakademie, 10 October 1935: There are some specific examples in the book's Introduction that I will post if you are interested. They have to do with pushing responsibility for getting the job done down to the lowest levels of the rank structure and encouraging innovative command through individual judgement.

LOL!! Oh man Bil (wipes eyes) you just made my day! I haven't laughed so hard in a while. That was really something- I bet it was even better in realtime.

Back in 1986 while in the Navy, me and my cohort were bored enough at North Island, CA AIMD shop to change the face of the electric shop clock to binary... and made a tapeball cannon out of those plastic sleeves over the overhead tube lights with alcohol as propellent. It was pretty powerful all things considered. Obviously this was all on night shift.

I would recommend starting with being honest about what you can afford to budget towards the new PC. If you are not going to build it or upgrade an existing one yourself, I would highly recommend the guys at Digital Storm. They offer more reasonable cost units without all the bells and whistles that are still carefully tested and (most importantly) kickass! Look at the testimonials if you are hesitant. There are plenty of good solutions at affordable prices these days. Just don't skimp when it comes to the power supply if you do it yourself or you'll be sorry!

I'm gonna have a difficult time deciding in late April whether to play the game or plot my next map masterpiece plan... Muhhaaahaaa! Got a little carried away there.

Nah... that's just what the boys here like to say so they can relax and insult one another.