Kraut

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Pham: Kraut, Maybe the Sherman moving to where your Panther was heading was not quite coincidence, but maybe it wasn't cheating by having the AI plot it's moves by scanning your plotted moves. Maybe the AI saw the Panther charge and moved the Sherman in to intercept and just happened to catch it where it did. If you saw a Panther making a break for the village, wouldn't you want to take advantage of the cover the buildings provide to jockey a Sherman in for a nice, clean, short range side shot? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> And maybe the easterbunny does exist?! Maybe i didn't make myself clear here, though i thought i did. Let me try again ... My panther and the sherman were sitting there shooting merrily at enemy infantry for a number of turns. Then, i gave the order to move my panther through the village, take a left and spot at the little intersection. The sherman came down from the hill near the village towards the road. The reason i wanted to put the panther there was beacuse this sherman was on the other side of the hill. Point is, the sherman started to move at about the same time my panther did and placed itself at the very best spot at the very best time to nail my panther in the side. Just seemed quite fishy. It wasn't like the AI saw my panther move and THEN ordered his tank to react, it was at the same time. MK

Kinda hard to define cheating anyways. All i'm saying is that the AI apparently seems to use my movement plots in it's calculations for the next turn. These weird things happen ever so often, as well as "stupid" AI behaviour. MK

I've noticed some weird "cheating" going on too. I was playing VoT as germans and at turn 17 my panther showed up. I parked him on hill 209 (think that's the right hill, the one iwht the big flag), and fired at the americans for four or five turns. Then i though "this is boring" and ordered my panther to charge ahead down the road, through the village and make a left turn and head down the road to that little intersection. Here's the weird thing. A sherman which was fireing at my infantry for more than six turns (two turns or so before the panther showed) started to move shortly after the turn started. It moved in an ideal spot to take out my panther from the side at close range. It felt like the tank knew exactly where my panther would be at any time and therefore could place itself right. I think the AI calculates its' moves by analyzing your orders. I'll just have to stop issueing those long, complex movement orders and move my troops and tanks in small steps. Thank god for multiplayer ... lol MK

I find this feature so friggin amazing i'm almost speechless. Just think about it ... endless amount of maps. The only thing that would top this is if you could generate random operations and campaigns. But i'll take this any day, and still feel spoiled. MK ps. Random map generator ... damn that's amazing!

The CC series has become a joke. It's nearly as simplistic and watered down as a typical RTS game. There is only one aspect of the CC series that i like, and that is the real-time play. It's not better than CM's type of play, but just something different. The sad thing is that the CC series just sucks is so many other areas, the real-time aspect doesn't help at all in making the series enjoyable. MK

Yes, i remember this mentioned a long long time ago. I would just like an update on what exactly is going on, if possible. Would help ease my troubled mind ... MK

The link to turn 4 doesn't seem to yield my AAR fix! You're depriving me of my needed drugs you sadist! lol MK

Noticed there was the option to play TCP/IP, but of course it doesn't work yet I hope it will be implemented asap because i really would like to have a faster way to play people. PBEM is very slow and tedious if you have someone online to play for a while. If you were able to give your orders at the same time then watch the action, it would really help the games a lot. So, when can we expect to see tcp/ip ? MK

Hehe ... i find it kinda funny that keith is brought into this discussion. Seems like anytime someone feels the dev's are "not listening" or "being dickheads" keith is the one to compare that supposed behaviour too. The very fact that steve even replies to these posts in a halfway decent fashion shows that he's far far away from being a keith. When i submitted some UI ideas during cc3 beta, all i got back from el presitente keitho was a reply stating "thanks for your contribution, but i personally design most of the UI (and a whole lot of other crap)". Pretty much pissed me off (were some decent ideas that would have brought much to the cc UI, IMO)... I feel if i posted something here, i would at least get a decent turn-off with some factual stuff thrown in just so steve and fionn can prove their so smart ... lol I like that a little better than "you moron, *I* make the UI how dare you contest my ideas!" Emm ... well, just thought someone out there might like to know what i think about this. Though i doubt it ... lol MK ps. If you really read this far, you must be either really really bored, or keith zabaloui himself. Yo keith, we gonna get those flame-hetzers from cc2 back for cc5? Th3y r0x j00 d00d!!!! ... rofl

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Ol' Blood & Guts: Bla bla bla ... something about nit picking and historic stuff, being entertained and rocking senses, and some more bla bla bla ... <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Well, you're kinda right. I mean, that's why C&C sells millions of copies eventhough it sucks donkey nuts. I believe any game or movie can be a hit if you have enough flashbang, some gymmic (in this case it's the ww2 "ohh we have to remember the veterans and all they gave us" gig), and massive advertising to spread the word. Hell, if BTS were to buy some ad time on CNN and god knows where else, they'd probably sell a couple million copies. You could then put steve on FOX news and let him talk about how we have to honor this and that, and it would probably be good for another 500k copies. Anyways, the review is funny and i think the movie looks really lame. But that's just me ... MK ps. Do i have to put a ton of those smiley faces in my post so this doesn't come accross as a flame? Well, ok ... =) Good? Wunderbar!

This is a review from ebert of the latest hollywood blockbuster movie U-571, which i did not waste my money on and probably never will (especially after watching the "special" about the movie on the increasingly corny history channel) U-571" is a clever wind-up toy of a movie, almost a trailer for a video game. Compared to "Das Boot" or "The Hunt for Red October," it's thin soup. The characters are perfunctory, the action is recycled straight out of standard submarine formulas, and there is one shot where a man is supposed to be drowning and you can just about see he's standing on the bottom of the studio water tank. To some degree movies like this always work, at least on a dumb action level. The German destroyer is overhead, dropping depth charges, and the crew waits in hushed suspense while the underwater explosions grow nearer. We're all sweating along with them. But hold on a minute. We saw the Nazis rolling the depth charges overboard, and they were evenly spaced. As the first ones explode at a distance, there are several seconds between each one. Then they get closer. And when the charges are right on top of the sub, they explode one right after another, like a string of firecrackers--dozens of them, as leaks spring and water gushes in and lights blink and the surround sound rocks the theater. At a moment like this, I shouldn't be thinking about the special effects. But I am. They call attention to themselves. They say the filmmakers have made a conscious decision to abandon plausibility and put on a show for the kids. And make no mistake: This is a movie for action-oriented kids. "Das Boot" and "The Hunt for Red October" were about military professionals whose personalities were crucial to the plot. The story of "U-571" is the flimsiest excuse for a fabricated action payoff. Submarine service veterans in the audience are going to be laughing their heads off. Matthew McConaughey stars as Lt. Tyler, an ambitious young man who thinks he's ready for his first command. Not so fast, says Lt. Cmdr. Dahlgren (Bill Paxton). He didn't recommend his second-in-command because he thinks he's not there yet: Not prepared, for example, to sacrifice the lives of some men to save others, or the mission. This info is imparted at one of those obligatory movie dance parties at which all the Navy guys look handsome in white dress uniforms, just before they get an emergency call back to the boat. The mission: A German U-boat is disabled in the mid-Atlantic. On board is the secret Enigma machine, used to cipher messages. The unbreakable Enigma code allows the Nazis to control the shipping lanes. The mission of Dahlgren, Tyler and their men: Disguise their U.S. sub as a Nazi vessel, get to the other sub before the German rescuers can, impersonate Germans, capture the sub with a boarding party, grab Enigma and sink the sub so the rescuers won't suspect what happened. "But we're not Marine fighting men," protests one of the sailors. "Neither is the other crew," says a Marine on board, who has conveyed these instructions. "And I'll train your men." Uh, huh. In less than a week? There are no scenes of training, and I'm not sure what happened to the Marine. The details of the confrontation with the Nazi sub I will not reveal. Of course it goes without saying that Tyler gets a chance to take command and see if he has what it takes to sacrifice lives in order to save his men and his mission, etc. If you remember the vivid personalities of the sub crews in "Das Boot" and "Red October," you're going to be keenly aware that no one in this movie seems like much of an individual. When they do have dialogue, it's functional, spare and aimed at the plot. Even Harvey Keitel, as the Chief, is reduced to barking out declarative sentences. The crew members seem awfully young, awfully green, awfully fearful, and so headstrong, they border on mutiny. There's a scene where the (disguised) U.S. sub is checked out by a German reconnaissance plane, and a young sailor on the bridge panics. He's sure the plane is going to strafe them and orders the man on the deck machine gun to fire at it. His superior officer orders the gunner to stand fast. The kid screams, "Fire! Fire!" As the plane comes closer, the officer and the kid are both shouting their orders at the gunner. Without actually consulting Navy regulations, my best guess is that kid should be court-martialed. You can enjoy "U-571" as a big, dumb war movie without a brain in its head. But that doesn't stop it from looking cheesy. Producers Dino and Martha De Laurentiis and director Jonathan Mostow ("Breakdown") have counted on fast action to distract from the plausibility of most of the scenes at sea (especially shots of the raft boarding party). Inside the sub, they have the usual cliches: The sub dives to beyond its rated depth, metal plates creak and bolt heads come loose under the pressure. "U-571" can't be blamed for one story element that's standard in all sub movies: The subs can be hammered, battered, shelled, depth-bombed and squeezed by pressure, and have leaks, fires, shattered gauges, ruptures, broken air hoses, weak batteries and inoperable diesel engines--but in the heat of action, everything more or less somehow works. Better than the screenplay, anyway. In case you're wondering, the German sub on display at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is U-505, and it was boarded and captured not by submariners, but by sailors from the USS Pillsbury, part of the escort group of the carrier USS Guadalcanal. No Enigma machine was involved. That was in 1944. An Enigma machine was obtained on May 9, 1941, when HMS Bulldog captured U-110. On Aug. 23, 1941, U-570 was captured by British planes and ships, without Enigma. This fictional movie about a fictional U.S. submarine mission is followed by a mention in the end credits of those actual British missions. Oh, the British deciphered the Enigma code, too. Come to think of it, they pretty much did everything in real life that the Americans do in this movie.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Wild Bill Wilder: In addition, we will open SPWAW week, four days of intense coverage of this marvelous new game. Articles, After Action Reports, Interviews, more scenarios, and a ton of of other things. You'll want to tune in each day for all that will be offered and included. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Bah! It's gonna take me four days to DL this monster ... lol MK

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tom w: can't these damn CPU's handle any more cycles or calculations? Apple Claims: "Apple engineers have produced a model that can achieve sustained performance of more than 1 billion floating-point operations per second a milestone known in computer lingo as a gigaflop. " {I'm sure that the Pentium Pro (whatever their fastest or latest is) is every bit as good if not better depending on which month this is, Lets not fight over Windoze vs. Mac} surely, if a cpu can handle 1 BILLION floating point operations per SEC then is CM pushing these CPU's to the max? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> So, you're volunteering to buy us all one of those "1 billion whatchamacalits a second machines"? I'm sure if BTS knew that you would give away a new machine to every person who bought CM they wouldn't mind doing the extra math stuff for us. lol MK

Just incase someone missed this i'm gonna post a reply so it goes to the top of the list ... mwhahhaaa MK

This is the first chapter of a short story written by David Chong, better known as Blackhawk in wargaming circles on the internet. I enjoyed it and I thought you guys might too, so I'm posting it! Enjoy! MK Beginnings The history books would have you believe it was easy; that the French threw up their hands at the first sign of panzers. The Battle of France is related as if it were little more than a live-fire exercise for unopposed German tanks, as they rolled through the Low Countries and on into Paris. In the event, it was a blur of terrible days and sleepless nights for everyone involved. Unteroffizier Werner Hauke used both hands to brace himself as his panzer advanced cross country. He was thankful for his padded black beret - exclusive to the panzer troops - which did its duty as a crash helmet on more than one occasion as he rode in the open commander's hatch. The wind forced him to squint as he checked his position in the platoon formation, venturing a glance over his right shoulder to spot tank number 221, his Platoon Commander's mount. As the platoon's second in command, Hauke rode tank 222, directly abreast of the CO when deployed in combat formation. His intended glance involuntarily turned into a lingering gaze, as he admired the muscular lines of Leutnant Ormann's Mark III tank. These new panzers weighed well over twice as much as Hauke's 9-ton Mark II, and their imposing 3.7cm main guns put the Mk II's 2cm popgun to shame. Unfortunately for Hauke and thousands of tankers like him, the Mk III had not yet been produced in sufficient quantities to replace the bulk of the older, lighter panzers. So it was that the Wehrmacht charged into France mounted on panzers that had only been intended as training vehicles! As bad as it seemed, Hauke and his unit were actually more fortunate than most. In his Waffen-SS Division, every platoon leader had the privilege of driving a Mk III, and the rest of the division rode in Mk II's. In many other divisions, the majority of the panzer units were handicapped with the lowly Mk I machinegun carrier. Hauke put and end to his musings and deliberately tried to focus on the advance. Whenever he began to reflect upon such matters, his thoughts followed an inevitable progression from equipment shortcomings to national readiness and finally on to political considerations. Many of his kamerades had misgivings about the Western Offensive. Most Germans had been firmly behind the occupations of the Rhineland, Austria, and the Sudatenland. After all, those were former German territories, and Germany was merely taking back what had once been hers. The invasion of Poland, however, was not so easily rationalized on moral grounds. The German populace had been led to believe Poland had been ready to invade, thus legitimizing a preemptive attack for Germany's security. Nonetheless, with the subsequent declaration of war by Great Britain, the Common Soldier realized Hitler had started another Great War, and no one really wanted that - especially the veterans. Even in the ranks of Hauke's SS elite unit, under the surface lay some serious moral misgivings - specifically in the command ranks, which were filled with veterans of the Great War. Overpowering these feelings however were the compelling calls of nationalism, duty, and military spirit. The crisis of conscience was nonetheless uncomfortable for Hauke, and so he always chose to focus on the task at hand. "Driver, adjust left, avoid ditch." "Adjust left," answered the driver. The tank jolted to the left, and Hauke cringed as his hip smashed into the hatch side as he was thrown up and right. It was for precisely this reason that Hauke had long ago foregone wearing his service pistol in his tank. His driver, fresh from the National Labor Service when the division was deployed to Poland, was a mere 18 years old and had a habit of throwing the tank around. Hauke wondered if he would've been better off taking the ditch straight on, as growing to resent a careless driver was less desirable than it was to bear malice toward a depression in the ground. As he had countless times before, Hauke let it go for now, and would have yet another talk with Private Bohg about his driving grace at an opportune moment. Anticipating another harsh turn, Hauke crouched down in his seat, so that only his head was exposed. Fully bracing himself by the shoulders, elbows, and hands against the square hatch lip, he gave a new order to Private Bohg. "Driver, adjust right, return to formation," ordered Hauke, carefully even-tempered. "Jawohl," came the reply. The tank curved gracefully right, and then drifted left again, returning to its position in the formation. Apparently, Bohg had remembered one of those talks, and he'd corrected himself on the second maneuver. Even the slow can eventually catch up, thought Hauke with a wry smile. An ear-popping "CLANG!" broke Hauke's smile instantly. It was followed immediately by a rapid succession of smaller pings, which he recognized as the familiar sound of machine gun rounds raking the tank. Hauke kicked out his legs, dropping himself down into the turret and reducing his exposure to the enemy fire. The radio came alive with Ormann's voice, "Platoon, engage infantry, right, bearing 350 degrees, dispersed in woodline! Range 300 meters!" "Driver, halt! Come right sixty degrees!" barked Hauke. "Jawohl!" replied Bohg in a wavering voice. Bohg had seen combat in Poland, so Hauke wasn't sure why his voice was so shaky. He did little more than note it, however, as his head was filled with the task of finding the enemy. As soon as his tank lurched to a halt, Hauke scanned the indicated treeline with the criminally deficient commander's periscope mounted on the Mk II. He could see nothing, hampered somewhat by the tank's slowly diminishing oscillations on its suspension as it recovered from the skidding stop. Another startling "CLANG!" signified a hit from something larger than an MG round, and the urgency to find and engage the enemy was elevated to a critically high level. Finding the periscope useless, Hauke hoisted himself back up into the hatch, grabbing his field glasses from the rack on the inside wall. He poked his head out to spot several muzzle flashes in the woodline, to the right of where he had been looking with the periscope. Leutnant Ormann was standing high in his hatch, pointing out the enemy positions to the rest of the platoon. Second platoon was beginning to deliver fire from the ridgeline to the East, from their overwatch position. Unfortunately, a bend in the woodline shielded the bulk of the enemy position from the protective cover of Second platoon, leaving Ormann's platoon to fend for itself. As Hauke prepared to man his gun, satisfied with his situational awareness, he was thrown against the left hatch cover by a violent explosion. Saved once again by his padded beret, he was nonetheless stunned. He could no longer hear the small-caliber rounds whining through the air like angry bees, the rumble of his tank's engine, or the crackle of gunfire in front of his position. He looked about in a world reduced to slow motion, and his eyes eventually came to rest upon the blazing hulk of hull number 224 - Fritz's panzer. He stared on as a figure that could only be Fritz struggled to exit the turret hatch, although his body was completely engulfed in flames. Hauke looked on with very little emotion in his dazed condition, a reaction which he did not even notice at the time, but would later haunt him. Turning back towards the enemy, Hauke saw a billowing cloud of smoke in the treeline, the telltale mark of an enemy anti-tank gun. Renewed pinging against the armored glacis of Hauke's tank brought reality crashing back. Shaking his head as if shedding a bad dream, Hauke burst into action. He lunged to the cannon, and quickly slewed the turret around to bear on the enemy gun. "Enemy ATG, extreme right!" he screamed into the radio receiver as he lined up his shot. He hadn't even properly ranged his target as he mashed the trigger on the Coaxial MG, sending a hail of 7.92mm bullets over the gun crew's heads. He steadily depressed the turret. As he did so, the tracers from the MG walked down through the trees, and eventually began dancing upon the gunshield of the gun, which he could now clearly see. Through his gunsight, he watched as some of the gun crew cowered behind the thin metal shield. The MG was specially mounted to match the ballistic performance of his main gun. If the MG rounds were hitting, his gun would be on target, as well. Satisfied of his aim, he sent a round downrange. He watched as a small plume of smoke signaled a hit. The automatic loader immediately cleared the casing and chambered another round in the gun, which was really a derivative of an antiaircraft cannon. Checking his lay, he fired again, this time adding another burst from the MG. He heard the report of a tank gun firing nearby, and a moment later the gun position lit up in a shower of fire. Without question, the Mk III had fired an HE round at the ATG, and it had set off an ammunition explosion. With no time to gloat, Hauke immediately began slewing the turret left as he triggered long bursts from the MG. In this manner, he swept the entire enemy position with his weapon. The hard thing about infantry targets was actually spotting them. In a buttoned-up tank, the chances of actually singling out an enemy soldier and successfully engaging him with the MG were immeasurably small. The best tactic was to pour fire into their position, and either kill them by random chance, or drive them off. Without infantry support, the latter was usually the case. Unfortunately, Hauke's battalion had outpaced its infantry earlier in the day, as it did almost every day. The panzers were always ordered ahead to cut into rear echelon formations, while the infantry mopped up resistance. Contrary to popular belief, the German Army was moving primarily on foot and hoof, not wheel and tread. The firing stopped, and Hauke secured his weapons and popped out of the hatch again. A secondary explosion from 224 made him jump, and a cursory look at the panzer made it clear there were no survivors. Leutnant Ormann was not in the hatch, so Hauke called out to him on the radio. "Two-one, this is two-two, standing by." Hauke did not get an immediate reply, so he prepared to repeat his broadcast. "Two-two, the Leutnant is dead," replied an unfamiliar voice. Hauke's spirits sank. Ormann and Hauke had been a command team since 1938, and they worked well together. His mind drifted for a moment as he adjusted to this new reality. "Radioman, switch to the kompanie net," Hauke ordered as he prepared to take command of the platoon. "Sir... Engel... he's dead," stuttered Bohg. Another loss. "What?" demanded Hauke, somewhat incredulous. After all, he was in the same tank as his radioman. "We... he got hit by a rifle round, sir. We were penetrated." "Damn!" complained Hauke. The Mark II's were, sadly, so thin-skinned as to be vulnerable to specially designed, large caliber anti-tank rifles, which could be operated by an individual infantryman. Apparently one or more of those "clangs" Hauke had heard in the battle had been a penetration by one such ATR. He paused again, gathering his thoughts. "Two-one, two-two. What is your status?" "Two-two, two-one is operational. One casualty." "Understood. Two-two is displacing to two-one." In this manner, Hauke signaled the rest of the platoon his intention to mount the Mark III and take command. "Bohg, our tank is undermanned. I want you to drive her back to our step-off point in Courcelles and report to the kompanie commander. Understood?" "Jawohl!" came an enthusiastic reply. Like the rest of them, Bohg had been on the front line of the advance for two weeks straight. The idea of heading for anywhere besides combat must have sounded incredibly appealing. With that, Hauke grabbed his duffle bag off the transom of panzer 222 and headed over to the platoon's Mk III. The four remaining crewman were already busying themselves with removing Ormann's bullet-riddled body from the commander's station. He must have fallen to enemy MG fire as he directed his platoon while "unbuttoned," standing outside the protective confines of his turret through the hatch. The unbuttoned position offered much better visibility than from within the tank, but at the severe cost of exposure to enemy fire. Certainly, Hauke's friend would receive a posthumous medal for his courage under fire. Hauke reflected on the Leutnant's bravery as he wiped the blood off the turret wall and floor with a grease rag. Although brave, Hauke did not intend to receive his medals posthumously. Hauke ordered the Leutnant's body loaded on 222, and reported in to kompanie HQ with his platoon's situation. "Understood, two-one. Continue your advance to Objective Braun" came the order. "Jawohl." And with that, Hauke signaled the platoon to resume the advance from atop his Mark III. ----- - Blackhawk's day job is professional writing for the Electronic Entertainment Industry. His writing credits include the strategy guides for "Close Combat III, Panzer General 3D Assault, Flight Unlimited III, and Prima's MS Flight Sim 2000. [This message has been edited by Kraut (edited 04-26-2000).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Reverend Mr.Black: Excuse me, Diablo II fans... but I can't quite find it an interesting game at all. Diablo 1 was a hit, and I still don't understand how a "Click here to move/click there to kill people" game had such a success... Of course, Diablo II graphics are pretty good, but I don't find it deep enough to be a RPG, nor fast enough to be an action game. So what's the good stuff about it anyway?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Because it's fun ... it's fun to just click and kill, to chop up thousands of dumb AI critters and see their virtual guts splatter all accross your screen. Sometimes you just have to let your braincells rest and give in to your flashbangy side ... MK

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Brian Rock: If it only took one tank round to empty a building clearing a town would be a piece of cake. Infantry can be very stubborn, and IRL it usually requires sending infantry in to clear a building.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Unless of course you're playing CC3/CC4. There, one 75mm round will clear out any building, not to mention those terrible 37mm "super-mega-killa" anti-infantry HE rounds ... MK

Strat, your reasons are completely ludicrous, and you're straying off topic. Did you even read the retirement speech i posted? I don't think you did ... MK

Weird double-post ... [This message has been edited by Kraut (edited 04-22-2000).]

So strat, if the military "offers much better retirement benefits than any civilian equivalent occupation", then why doesn't anyone want to re-enlist and serve another 20 to 30 years so they can get all these "wonderful" benefits you talk about? What does the early 70's have to do with the state of the military today? MK

NO! That sucked man ... he has to close it at 199 threads ... 199!!! Damnit, he couldn't have waited until someone posted one more? Now we'll never know what it's like to have a 200 msg thread ... damn, damn damn damn ... MK

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: You currently are playing a 7 month old BETA, so trying to form a solid opinion about the specifics of anything in the BETA is pretty pointless. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Only solution here is to release the real demo, right? lol MK

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Big Time Software: In a multi-player game the ONLY thing that will force an end (auto-surrender) is when the ratio gets to a certain range that is overwhelmingly in favor of one side. Note, this is a RATIO, so if one side is doing piss poor and the other side is doing so-so, the game WILL NOT END on its own. It isn't like one side takes a beating and then packs it in even if the other side has also taken a beating. There is a random element in here as well. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is what i'm talkin' about. This is ok, as long as the game doesn't end any games when they start to get good. PL, in his first post, made it sound like the "feature" was broken or it wasn't tweaked properly (ie. it cuts off games that could still have been fun to play on). How the hell did this get into ladder games and that crap? Ladders suck and 99% of the people who play in a ladder are freakin disconnectors and dumbass whiners. MK

must ..... mu-ust ..... re re re reach .... t t tt two hundred ..... p p p posts ... lol

Well, steves' last post didn't sound very "multiplayerish". It sounded like he was talking about single player games where the AI surrenders to you, which is absolutely OK (sorta a no-brainer). MK