MOS was 71331

Colorado Springs, CO

There's hardly any combat action in "The Desert Fox." Most of the movie takes place in Germany and gives a reasonable picture of Rommel's interactions and final involvement with the group which attempted to assassinate Hitler in July 1944. I recall that Bayerlein (or another senior WWII German officer who had served under Rommel) saw the movie and remarked that James Mason's Rommel was entirely too polite. The scenes at the end when Rommel decides to commit suicide to protect his wife and son from punishment are particularly touching.

Isn't that the tactic Sherman commander Telly Savalas proposed to use in the late 60s flic "Battle of the Bulge"? As I remember, his tank had been badly damaged, but he didn't want to leave the fight. Possibly because he thought the Krauts had killed his Belgian girlfriend / black market partner.

The effects of air support are so variable and unpredictable that I only buy it when I expect my opponent is much more skilled than I am. If my air support performs well, I might just win a battle that I otherwise would have lost.

It's too bad you didn't post sooner. My employer's support contract with RSAF (Royal Saudi Air Force) ended on 31 December, so I'm now back in the states. I lived on a compound in Riyadh and worked at Prince Sultan Air Force Base in Kharj -- a 90 minute drive each way sharing the roads with suicidal Saudi drivers.

As a former engineer officer, I can assure you that you can't clear a mine field by hand in five or ten minutes. I was in the 2d Engr Bn of the 2d Inv Div in Korea in 1966-67, and my battalion had to clear a group of minefields in the DMZ. We had three full companies (27 squads) on the project, we worked five days a week, and it took us three or four weeks to clear the fields. [The fields were mixed AT and AP. We used metal detectors to find the AT mines and blew them in place. The plastic AP mines didn't contain enough metal to register, so we had to accept the casualties they caused -- three men experienced "traumatic amputation of the foot." After eliminating the AT mines, bulldozers scraped out the AP mines, all but four of them. One fellow stepped on an AP mine and heard the pin snap but the mine didn't explode. I think that AP mine was blown in place.] I suppose a mine field could be "cleared" quickly with explosives, but not with friendly troops in the field (as in the described situation). Clearing a field by hand is unreasonable in a 30 minute scenario.

I lost BOTH my artillery FO teams in one engagement to 'friendly' rocket fire. What annoyed me most was that the barrage was only half over when a short rocket took out the rocket FO team and the rockets immediately stopped coming in. I don't understand the rationale for the elimination of the FO team stopping the barrage. Rounds already fired but still in the air won't explode in flight just because the FO can no longer call in corrections.

If I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all.

I reported a similar problem with reinforcements in CMBO quite a while ago. I was playing the Germans in the Wittmann scenario and was annoyed when my Panzer IV appeared on turn 10(?) in the open surrounded by British tanks. I recall it lasted about five seconds. I think reinforcements should appear at a friendly map edge and move from there. This may give their owner more control over the reinforcements than the scenario designer might prefer, but it would avoid having reinforcements appear in totally impossible positions.

In a video tape I saw five or six years ago, Tom Clancy called commissars "chaplain for atheists." He was referring to the political officer aboard a Soviet destroyer who had conspired with other members of the crew to defect with the ship to Sweden.

Great! My order is on the way.

I already own CMBO for my Mac, so I'll naturally get CMBB for my Mac as well. What I'd like is to order the bundle with CMBO for Windows, so I can play at the office where we use Windows XP. I'd be glad to fiddle with the demo CMBB, but our company firewall won't let the demo in. (It also won't let your cookie through, so I'll have to order from home.) [ September 09, 2002, 10:28 AM: Message edited by: MOS was 71331 ]

What about me? I'm now living in Saudi Arabia working as a contractor for the Royal Saudi Air Force. September 1st starts here seven hours before it starts on the US east coast. Can I start downloading at midnight here, or do I have to wait for midnight on the east coast, or must I wait until I get home from work that afternoon? For that matter, WHEN CAN I EMAIL MY CREDIT CARD NUMBER AND ORDER CMBB?

Fighter-bombers are a high variance weapon. The average damage they should infict on your opponent's forces may be about the same as the average damage from an artillery FO with a similar point cost, but the variability of an FB's effect will be much greater. I'd only buy an FB if I were in a game with a much better opponent. If the FB performs well, I just might win. If the FB performs poorly, I'll just lose by a bigger margin.

My father was career air force and stationed at Bushy Park AFB from Dec 1955 to Dec 1958. The base was near Kingston-on-Thames, about a twenty minute train ride from London, so, as a ten to thirteen year-old child, I was able to get into the city by myself almost every Saturday. [London was a lot safer then than it is now.] The Imperial War Museum was a favorite of mine. I'm sure I visited it half a dozen times in that three year period. I was particularly impressed with their collection of warship models, filling three or four large rooms of display cases. I went back to the Museum when I was in London a few years ago with my wife (who is British, even though I met her in Denver) and children. That visit was a disappointment, because most of the Museum was closed off for renovation. Only the bookstore (where I spent perhaps 30 pounds [around $50] on books I hadn't seen in the US) and a WWI exhibit (including a short section of trench) were open. If the renovation is complete and the Museum is fully open, there will be a lot of good stuff to see.

In scoring duplicate bridge hands, all the North-South and all the East-West pairs play the same hands. Each NS pair gets one point for each NS pair getting a lower score on the hand and half a point for each NS pair getting the same score on the hand. [The EW pairs are scored similarly.] As each NS or EW pair is playing the same cards, the luck of the deal is eliminated. As CM scores the games, the same approach could be used in CM tournaments, either with two person teams or with individuals. Everybody plays the same game, and there are two winners, the player with the best German score and the player with the best Allied score [or one winning team with the best combined score].

Duplicate posting. Sorry [ 06-21-2001: Message edited by: MOS was 71331 ]

This quiz must be rigged. It says my answers match up with Benedict Arnold.

Yeah, Coyote. That's why the immediate attack on one of my opponent's units didn't convince me the FB was mine. The FB has since made a second pass over the battlefield and attacked my opponent's StuG: three craters, no hits. That increases the probability that the FB is mine, but I'm still reluctant to move out into the open.

Lately I've been playing only Quick Battles with computer selected forces. In a PBEM game currently underway, a fighter bomber appeared and attacked one of my opponent's units. According to the message he sent with the next move, he thinks the FB is mine. I thought the FB was his, and immediately ordered my units to take cover. When the computer is selecting forces, how do you know when it buys air support? I don't know the costs of all the units, so I can't total the costs of the units displayed on the bottom of the map and compare with my total points available.

CM visually represents a squad with a three-man symbol, and most of us have bases turned on so we can spot visible squads more easily on the screen. However, I don't know what model CM uses to for a squad in the game's computer program. I'd expect the CM program treats the area occupied by a squad as a circle with the squad's personnel distributed randomly within the circle. I'd also expect that this circle is much larger than the rectangular area occupied by a tank. Even though the game shows the squad base as smaller than the tank base, the CM program may consider the squad area as larger than the tank's area. If so, a tank can't conceal a squad.

Duplicate entry posted by mistake. Sorry. [ 05-08-2001: Message edited by: MOS was 71331 ]

I'm getting the distinct impression that lower quality FOs are the better buy -- particularly for rockets. If their fire is no less accurate (which for rockets means they impact in the same county as their target), buy conscripts or greens and get more or spend the saved points on something else.

I'd like a ROADMOVE command which would let me pick the end point and keep the unit on the road until it gets to the end point. When the road curves, it can require a lot of plotted movements to make the directed unit follow the road. I know I'm supposed to pick ONE thing, but I'm going to suggest another. When I'm defending in either a quick battle or a scenario, I'd like to let the AI set up my units and then fine tune the AI's positions. The AI can analyze the terrain a lot faster than I can, but I should have the final authority over where they should go.

To lcm1947: I was on active duty in the army from May 1966 to May 1968. As I recall, we had a 106mm recoilless rifle. It was a standard infantry AT weapon. I was an engineer, so I'm not overly familiar with an infantry TO&Es, but I'd expect the 106 RR to be part of an inf bn's weapons company, with bazookas used by an inf co's weapons platoon. One interesting note: the 106mm RR had a .50 caliber rifle attached. The gunner would fire a .50 spotting round and fire the RR if the .50 hit the target.