MOS was 71331

All my posts were from work until I got laid off. Do you think there was a connection? ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

I live in Colorado Springs, CO. As a USAF dependent I lived near London for three years (1956-58). As a computer programmer, I lived on Kwajalein Atoll (of WWII fame) for twelve years. Kwaj was a German colony when WWI started. Graf Spee and his fleet sailed from Kwaj at the start of the war, beat the Brits at Koronel, and lost to them at the Falkland Islands. The Japanese had the Atoll until our invasion in Feb 1944. There are some ruins on Roi-Namur Island. The German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen is capsized in the lagoon after it was one of the target ships at Bikini.

If I hear anybody say, "Ich ist verwundet," and I'm running the German side, I'll target the area for my artillery. My German isn't the best, and my last German course was more than 30 years ago, but I'd expect "Ich bin" (1st person singular) rather than "Ich ist" (1st person singular 'I' with third person singular verb 'is'. If some real Kraut said that, he'd deserve whatever fire was directed his way.

Pretty spiffy: octagonal tires on the deuce- and-a-half! Check out that POTD.

My wife said she'd leave me if I kept spending so much time playing Combat Mission. I'll sure miss her! ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

My wife said she'd leave me if I kept spending so much time playing Combat Mission. I'll sure miss her! ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

My wife said she would leave me if I didn't cut back on the time I spend playing CM. I'll sure miss her. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

My wife said she would leave me if I didn't cut back on the time I spend playing CM. I'll sure miss her. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

Last week my wife told me she'd leave if I kept spending so much time playing CM. I'll sure miss her.

Last week my wife told me she'd leave if I kept spending so much time playing CM. I'll sure miss her. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

Last week my wife told me she'd leave if I kept spending so much time playing CM. I'll sure miss her. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

Last week my wife said she'd leave me if I kept spending so much time playing CM. I'll sure miss her. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

Don't be too hard on Ambrose for his "Panthers with 88s" error. It's easy to miss errors during proofreading. In one discussion here on great war movies, I praised "Zulu" and then placed it in the Boer War rather than in the earlier Zulu War. I caught the error and corrected it, but not before someone had read my reply and pointed out my mistake. In his "Flight of the Old Dog" novel, Dale Brown had a synchronous satellite over the north pole! I'd bet Brown, a former USAF pilot, realizes synchronous satellites have to be over the equator, but the error still got past him and his editor. As another mea culpa, I also posted a plea for CM in Korea in which I claimed there were no landings to simulate. I obviously forgot Inchon, though had I said "opposed landings" I might have got away with it.

I don't know all the numbers that went into the decision, but I favor the decision to distribute Combat Mission through direct sales on the internet. I expect that game developers selling through a game publisher would get perhaps 40 to 50% of the game price, and I doubt the game publisher would increase sales numbers by 2 or 2.5 times. I just hope so many people are exposed to Combat Mission that sales are sufficient to get all the follow on CMs out the door. I'm pleased every time I see the CM demo reviewed.

Every monthly issue of Mac Addict comes with a CD Rom of shareware and demo Mac programs. Why not offer your demo to them? While I certainly don't regret the hours of download time it took to get a copy of your demo, I'd rather have just copied it from my monthly CD. Surely Mac Addict would bring Combat Mission to the attention of a wider audience. I'd also expect there's some similar PC magazine which comes with a CD. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

For my money (and for over an hour download time) was the movie ending: MAY RELEASE!

Well, I lost my last Hellcat in LD to a panzerfaust -- unless one of the Krauts in the squad could lob a grenade 30 or so meters. Didn't Napoleon say something about the desirability of lucky commanders? As I used to say at poker games, "if I didn't have bad luck, I wouldn't have any luck at all." ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

I've paid off my credit card, so I'd like you to charge my Combat Mission purchase NOW while I'm sure the charge will go through. Who knows what my balance will be when you finally start shipping the game? I don't want delivery delayed because your charge was refused. Please let me know if you're willing to do this. I trust you to collect now and ship later.

I'd bet that story of the VC firing a LAW backwards is just a revision of a similar story I remember from Korea about the ChiCom firing a captured recoilless rifle backwards: they first fired it forward while standing behind it, and, after the backblast killed their observers, they turned it around and fired it again, losing another bunch of observers. They finally abandoned the weapon. That story's on a par with the one about all the abandoned alligators in the NYC sewer system and part of John Dillenger being preserved in the Smithsonian. [For the youngsters in the CM forum, Dillenger was a Depression era bank robber and murderer who was shot by Federal agents after leaving a theater.] ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

As "abwehr" means "defense", PaK would be an armor defense cannon or an anti-tank gun. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

Don't think you're weird for evaluating scenery in terms of tactical advantage rather than beauty. According to legend, von Schlieffen, the Kraut Chief of Staff who developed the plan for the invasion of France in WWI, was travelling by train with an aide who commented on the beauty of the river they were crossing. Von Schlieffen looked out the window and replied: "an insignificant strategic obstacle." ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)

My favorite oxymoron: tuning bagpipes.

Hey, promote Magnus from junior member to member. That sort of effort deserves some recognition.

When a squad shows casualties, I'm assuming the dead and wounded members have been left where they fell. Those still alive may be receiving medical attention, but I gather such administrative activities are not our concern as we or the AI direct the combat capable personnel. So, if there's a moving 4-man platoon HQ showing one healthy man and three casualties, is there only one man present and continuing to engage (or hide from) the enemy, or is the unwounded man accompanied by up to three limping soldiers presenting the enemy with a four-man target? One reason I ask is that in Last Defense, my hunting TD fired an HE round at a one-man-left Kraut platoon HQ only 5 meters away in the wheat field -- AND MISSED. [Had I deliberately targeted the HQ at that range, I would have specified the TD's machine gun. After all, I'm not a brutal killer!] ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968) [This message has been edited by MOS was 71331 (edited 01-06-2000).]

Is fire control in the final release going to be as pitiful as it seems to be in Last Defense? Neither the US mortars nor the German FOs, both firing or directing fire at things they can see, seem to be able to hit anything. There are plenty of craters scattered around, but German and US targets come through all the shelling untouched. The impact points seem to appear at random. ------------------ Airborne Combat Engineer Troop Leader (1966-1968)