Lee

Hehe. I wasn't trying to nitpick, it's just that when that particular gun comes up in a conversation I find it rather difficult not to say a word or two.

Yes, Steve is quite correct. Schmeiser isn't proper in this case. MP40 is the proper term. And a very effective weapon it is. I would rate it as the finest handling submachinegun around.

Steve or Charles, can we pre-order by check or money order if we prefer that. And if so, what address should we send the money to? [This message has been edited by Lee (edited 09-03-99).]

Well said BTS. It's very simple, we will have to wait for all the extra goodies that we'd like to see in CM but aren't very important to the quality of the simulation's realism. Personally, I'll take all the detail I can get now and wait for CM to get better and better with each new version to get all those nice details that we'd like to see. The first gigahertz systems are on their way next year, so the wait won't be too long.

Man, I am really addicted to these battle reports. Need more reports, feed me! 8) About los in CM, what if your los is partially blocked by light trees but you can still see an enemy unit, will the interface tell you that you have los but it's only at 80% (or whatever the correct % is) of what a full clear los would be?

It will be fun to watch a whole series of turns played out in order. Like a little WWII movie. But, as Steve said, watching movies from the other side could be a big problem. If that feature could be included (and I'm not so sure it's a good idea), then I would only want to see it if it could be implemented in a cheat-proof way. I don't really see the point for such a feature though. After the game is over the other player could e-mail you copies of any of his turn movies from his perspective. Then cheating wouldn't be a concern. And it would accomplish the same thing. Certainly you don't want to view your opponents movies while the game is still in progress. Just wait till the game is over.

Wow, this is really exciting to read. CM plays more like a WWII movie than any other wargame I have ever seen. NEAT. I was also shocked by the Jumbo's quick destruction, I read Fionn's account first and thought (as did he) that he had knocked out another regular sherman. I was quite surprised when I saw it was really Martin's much loved Jumbo! Ouch! But I completely support Charles' and Steve's decision to include critical hits, it's realistic and also helps keep players from getting *too* confident when riding around in their favorite bruiser. Ever heard of Achilles' heel? I'm really eager to read more of the battle reports as they happen. Any chance of getting 3 or 4 turns a day posted? This is a lot of fun. (:

Thanks for the links, they were most helpful. Hopefully future battle reports on the site will be designed to be visible to Netscape users.

5, eh? Cool. Gotta love those 88's (if you're not going up against them ).

I have tried the battle reports link many times but I see no reports, just a banner ad at the top of the page. I have java and cookies on in my browser (Netscape 4.61), so I don't think that is the problem. Arggh. I want to see the battle unfold as it happens, any ideas on what might be the problem?

I agree, it would most likely affect it's flight path, so this would only happen to vehicles that were right behind the first vehicle to be hit. I also wondered about the deformation of the shell nose, but when hitting very light armor I would imagine that those hardened shells wouldn't be affected much. That's about what I thought you'd say, Charles. I knew that if you did simulate one vehicle being hit behind another that it would modeled cleverly and accurately by you. The big question was were such hits possible in the first place. Which I didn't think they would be. Like I said though, it wasn't my question. (: Just out of curiosity, in your very informed opinion, how many halftracks could be penetrated through their sides by a Tiger 1's 88? This would assume the halftracks were in a line abreast formation and spaced fairly close together. And further, let's assume the Tiger had just crept to the edge of a treeline and was about 200 yards away when it takes the shot. Just wondering what one of those big 88 shells can really do is this sort of situation. BTW, let's say the Tiger is using regular AP. We'll spare the halftracks the APCR numbers.

Back before this board was changed to it's new format (this was months ago), a question was asked that was very interesting. For some reason the text of the question got lost in the switch to the new format. I waited all this time wondering if the person who asked the question would ever ask it again. Well, I think I've waited long enough and the question is important enough to need to be asked. I forget the name of the poster who asked it, but here was the question (not exact quote, but same meaning): If an armor piercing shell were to hit a light skinned vehicle and then exit the other side and hit a tank will CM accurately model the reduced speed of the shell when taking into account the armor penetration against the tank? Obviously, if a 88mm AP shell hits a halftrack in the side it's going to cut through it like butter and exit out the other side. This would leave plenty of velocity to hit a tank which may be sitting right on the other side of the halftrack (say, 30 feet away). So, the question is, in CM can an AP shell hit one vehicle, bust through it and hit another vehicle behind it? And, if so, how will CM model the changed ballistics of the projectile. I've been waiting a long time to see what the answer to this is, should be interesting.

Hey Doug, I agree about Action Stations, outstanding naval wargame (still the king of realistic tactical naval combat in the WWI/WWII period). And it even resolved slowly on my 386sx , of course, it calculates an awful lot of stuff, sighting in particular I think soaked up processing time. Of course, my graphics card was so slow that it took a long time to even redraw the screen . I would LOVE to see Action Stations redone by BTS. The guy who did Action Stations (Alan Zimm, IIRC) was working on a sequel called Fleet Commander, but he got transfered (he's active duty Navy) and the game has yet to be released. It was going to have VGA graphics, some sound (the original has 0 sound effects) and the addition of carriers and subs to the wargame. The level of detail in Action Stations would make Steve and Charles proud.

Cool pictures. I wanted to point out that the M1 Garands look particularly nice.

Hey Steve, did anyone send in any vehicle models that really impressed you with their accuracy/quality? Which vehicles that you don't have models for yet would you most like to have? I imagine some of the more unusual vehicles are rarely modeled and even more rarely modeled superbly.

I agree, whether CM has WP shells in it or not is not a huge deal. It would be nice to have them to simulate certain scenarios and unusual battles, but it's not critical by any means. Since we are talking about 4.2 inch mortars and such, I was wondering if it would be accurate at CM's scale to simulate counter-battery fire against enemy artillery? If the battle lasted awhile might there be time to try and suppress enemy off-board artillery?

Very nice winter scenes. I can see now that half the fun of combat will just watching the battle unfold. There's a change of pace for serious wargames!

72 panzerschreck teams! LOL! Who comes up with this stuff? That would certainly be a unit for U.S. tankers to avoid. Hey Steve, how large of a U.S. armored (typical '44 equipment) formation do you think it would take to beat such an AT unit in fairly close combat inducing terrain in CM (assuming a *giant* map that could handle that large of a battle)?

Well, in CM the biggest guns available for artillery support are 14 in. But I hear they make real large craters, too. Hope you have a good shovel, don't hit your head on the underside of the tiger on your way down.

Steve, will CM be coded to take advantage of the new 3D cards coming out this year that will have 64 meg ram onboard? It would be nice to be able to jam all the textures needed for a battle in vram and never have to take the performance hit of accessing system ram for the textures.

I've been thinking about this WP issue for awhile and it seems to me that the characteristics that seperate WP from normal smoke are: 1. Instantaneous smoke screen deployment (as opposed to the delays inherent with normal smoke). This could come in very handy if your troops needed some kind of smoke screen to obscure enemy los ASAP. This might make the difference between getting that smoke cover now, before the enemies next turn to shoot at you, and having to wait till after the next round's (or half a round's) carnage. 2. An added psychological affect that smoke doesn't provide. I imagine having burning phosphorous on you would be rather demoralizing (not to mention physically damaging). That's something that smoke won't do for you. WP gives you that 1-2 punch.

Hmm... I'd rather see smoke and WP handled seperately. If that meant having to choose one or the other, I'd choose smoke only. But I want to be quick to point out that I wouldn't mind a little more complexity to the ammo menu at all in order to have both. I think it's safe to say that 95%+ of the people who play CM will be very glad they have the option of smoke or WP and won't mind a slightly more complex ammo interface at all.

I, for one, really appreciate the extremely secure nature of CM's multi-player game system. It'll be nice to know that the guy you are playing against has almost no chance of cheating. As was said by Steve, the peace of mind alone will be wonderful. And, if anyone is concerned about someone hacking the data files somehow, BTS can just do a file check when the 2-player game starts. If there are any differences in the files where there shouldn't be, the player would be notified immediately that the other player is using modified files. Simple and effective. With this kind of system, cheaters don't stand a chance.

Like I said, I know PG isn't the most detailed wargame ever devised, but I don't see any reason gamers have to tolerate huge errors. I'm talking equipment intro dates off about a year(!), attack and defense values that are backwards. Even in a "light" wargame like PG, these kinds of sloppy errors aren't acceptable. I really hope you get those guys to let you have a look at the database. In a few hours you could make a huge improvement to it. Please spare us the horrors of these *glaring* inaccuracies, Fionn. Also, it seems that in every successive release of PG they put in far fewer variety of units, and that is not a good thing. One of the funnest things in a wargame is the cool variation in model types, troop types, etc. Apparently PG 2 had far fewer unit types than PG and PG 3 may have even fewer. I'd hate to see such a fun game series ruined by being stripped of everything but flashy graphics. If only we could get the BTS team to do PG 3, THEN we'd be in buisness. Can you imagine an operational-level wargame like PG 3 being done by BTS? *DROOL*

I have that movie Stalingrad. Have had it for quite some time. Some of the best combat scenes I have seen, but it's a little hard to follow in German with voice-overs in Polish after the character speaks.