Lee

Glad to hear all is well with LT Mike!

LT Mike: Any updates on what's going on lately?

More cool pictures of the M14.

I do indeed like the M14. Might end up getting one, a real one, I mean. Would go nicely with our other full-auto weapons. There are some good semi-auto ones available, as well. We know a guy who has a FAL, very nice gun, it was fun to shoot it.

More pictures of the great M14 in action. I like the natural wood color best, but that green looks good, too.

More cool shots of the M14 with our troops.

A very merry and blessed Christmas to all!

What in the *world* does that have to do with pictures of M14's being used by our military?? War is a very stressful thing and is hard on soldiers, that goes without saying. So what is your point? I suppose if someone here on the BTS forum posted to show us the cool picture they found of a U.S. soldier in WWII smiling as he holds his trusty Thompson sub machine gun that you'd post about how that guy (or anyone else) shouldn't enjoy the neat picture of the soldier with the gun, but rather should somberly reflect on how much stress that soldier must have endured as he slogged his way across Europe in one hard battle after another... I never noticed any lack of enthusiasm and enjoyment for all things combat and weapon related on this forum before, whether it be WWII or more recent warfare. It's one of the most common topics discussed on these forums for years and years, and no one has ever said we shouldn't enjoy the discussion of said topics before. If you can't bear to see people enjoying interesting pictures of our soldiers holding cool U.S. weapons, then don't read the thread.

Some more cool pictures of the M14 in action. I like the funny caption someone put on the one photo. haha

Well, I think Steve mentioned an improvement to the Tac-AI was planned for the 1.07 patch that would make APC crews be capable of retreating if they spot tanks coming their way. So this should really help prevent light armor from just sitting there and getting killed by tanks. M1A1TankCommander: Cool pictures of you in the M1 tank. It would be good if tanks in CM could attempt to avoid incoming anti-tank missiles that they have spotted being fired.

RommL: There is no listing of this mod at cmmods, all I see are player-made battles listed. Where is your mod listed at on that site and under what name?

"Nah, what's unrealistic is declaring a cease-fire every sixty seconds so that players can micro-plot the behavior of every unit in the battle. In fact, its down-right silly." Not if the player is in effect forced to do the thinking for every officer and sergeant in his force, which is exactly what happens in any CM wargame. If I have to do the thinking for that many men (which you wouldn't have to do in a real-life battle), then I demand the time needed to think all that stuff through. So the pauses at 60 second intervals are actually pretty realistic considering that it's needed to have the men continue to behave in a detailed way that they would be capable of on their own in a real battle.

I doubt anyone other than Charles has the necessary thorough knowledge of WWII/more recent weapons, aircraft, tanks, apc's etc., the many armor types and armor penetration factors/calculations, AI, math skills, programming skills, general wargame design, and the highly complex CM simulation design to even work on a game like CM. Add on top of that the level of personal interest in and dedication to the subject matter required to motivate someone to put in the incredible number of hours (within a restricted amount of time to make the game from start to finish) needed to make a wargame of the extreme complexity of CM, and you have *very* few guys that would even make for possible candidates for Steve and Charles to hire to help Charles with the programming. It's a highly specialized combination of God-given talents, acquired knowledge and skills, and very intense interest in the subject that enable Charles to do what he does.

LT Mike: How are things going over there lately? Been seeing some of the troops out on patrol over there on t.v. talk about the major gains they've had in securing sizable areas from terrorist attacks in their areas of operation. Are you guys operating near any of those areas?

I'd definitely like to see the M113 APC in several variants added. Ideally, including a variant with quad .50 cal's mounted, and the M163 Vulcan Air Defense System variant. hehe

Smaragdadler: Cool videos! It would be fun to have some battles like that, but WWII comes right after the first CMII modules. So unless the vehicles we might need for a Nato vs Russia battle are included in those modules, it would be pretty hard to have Nato vs Russia in custom battles. Plus, modders would have to add in the correct TO&E's for the infantry units, custom uniforms, etc. Hmm, it might just be possible, even if we didn't have all the vehicles it would be ideal to have, but it would take some major mod work.

Steve has a good point. In order to simulate just how bad arab armies suck at fighting, he'd have to effectively disconnect, at least partially, the ability of the arab forces to receive and follow orders in any sort of coherent and competent way. haha Kind of makes it hard to make a realistic wargame when fighting against such armies. Certainly it's very important to hit them with appropriate heavy command delays, spotting penalties, reaction time to threat penalties, accuracy penalties, morale penalties (so that they become panicked and confused much more easily in intense combat than highly trained units), etc. These things will help simulate the arab armies more accurately, but there's a limit to how how accurate you can make it if you have a very competent player issuing the orders to them. One of the things on that list that is particularly important is the command delay factor. This should be made very high for typical arab units, thus simulating their poor abilities. Yes, the player can still issue very unrealistically coordinated and complex orders to them, but they then carry them out so slowly that it somewhat effectively simulates their real-world lack of such abilities. The good news is that BTS can easily adjust that command delay factor for the arab forces to account for this.

MikeyD: I don't want my tanks to take the routes they happen to think are the "better" ways to go, I want them to take the routes I tell them to go. Otherwise they might end up in a position that will turn out to be dangerous, which I do realize, but the tank doesn't. Also, a tank turning when it's not been ordered to can give flank shots to the enemy that I don't want to happen. This applies to all units, they should go where they are ordered by the waypoints. If, for example, I order a tank to go through some muddy ground, then I choose to take the risk of bogging and so on. The only exception to this is, of course, if you order a tank, or infantry unit, or APC, or whatever to go from one place to another but there is impassable terrain in between. Then obviously the unit will have to try to figure out a route to get around the impassable terrain and get to where you told it to go. But if that happens that's your fault for not giving waypoints to get around that impassable terrain yourself. Anyhow, I'm sitting here looking at my nice new box with CMII in it. Trying to resist the urge to play it... And when I do play, the sound of the mighty A-10 Thunderbolt II firing it's massive gun on a strafing run had better be accurately spine tingling. hehe

WW2Wargamer: I understand what you're saying. But when I played the demo and ordered an M1 tank to drive from point a to point b in a straight line maybe 50-100 yards or so over open ground and it instead drove in an arc to the left to get there, I knew something was wrong. I'd rather not deal with irritating stuff like that, and the reported Tac-AI problems, if I can avoid it. I want a pleasant experience from the first time I play, not aggravation. 1.03 is supposed to fix a ton of stuff and get the game into really good shape overall. Although it will no doubt take at least a couple more patches after that to really get everything squared away. But since 1.03 is only about a week away, I think I can hold out until then.

CMII just arrived today. As hard as it will be, I'm waiting for the 1.03 patch before playing. No point in dealing with significant bugs that won't exist in a week.

It's understood that if we fought front line Russian troops with the latest Russian tanks, aircraft, etc. that it would be a much tougher fight than fighting these lame arab armies. We still would have the qualitative advantage, but it would be more of an even fight. Thankfully they are not the enemy.

Well, *if* it was some kind of contract agreement that made BTS have to release CMII before it was ready (I knew something had to be up), then I strongly suggest that Steve and Charles never again sign such an agreement. Be like id, they release a game when it's done, and when it's done is when id decides it's done. Activision has nothing to say about it, they just wait until id is ready and sends them the finished game and then they publish it. With the very strong sales of the CM games and BTS's low overhead (it's not like they have 80 guys on some huge game making team, that fill an entire floor of an office building that they need to rent, that need to be paid for 4 years to make the game), they should be able to finance the making of any new CM games themselves. And not taking any money from a publisher to pay to make the game means not having to answer to anyone about when the game is finished. You just tell the publisher when the game is finished and then they publish it. This avoids the problem of publishers more or less forcing game makers to release games before they are finished and fully tested.

LT Mike: Looking good. Kick some butt and watch your back while you're there. You guys are in our prayers.

Has this been fixed in the 1.02 patch coming out in the next day or two? Obviously you can't have hidden troops refusing to fire in PBEM. Many times it's important to have the troops hide in the setup zone so as not to give away their positions if they happen to be in a place where they might spot enemy troops right from the start of the battle.

I agree, the dedicated LOS tool needs to be brought back as soon as possible in a patch.