M Hofbauer

to be frank I was a bit disappointed that there was no mention of CMCs demise in the newsletter (or did I miss it?). if CMC's death isnt news, then what is?

Dear Hunter, I am very sorry to hear these news. I thank you and recommend you for your efforts - thanks for trying - I mean it. Although I have gotten a bit disconnected with the whole BTS/CM affair, I have still kept an occasional eye on CMC, for it would -maybe- have been a classic augmentation to that classic game, CM. It seemed a very attractive idea to me. Both, together, would have stood the test of time as classics, for me. Thats why the delay did not matter that much to me, and occasionally, sporadically, I would check by this forum to see if there's any news or progress report re. CMC. Maybe the "mistake" was that the approach and concept were too ambitious. Maybe it would have been feasible if it really had been constrained to the most basic functions to connect several tactical CM battles. But then it would have lost a lot of its appeal; and - the ambitious approach would not have been a mistake had it succeeded. And I can totally understand Hunter's approach and "mistake", I would have acted similar in approaching the project, and indeed I faced a similar situation not too long ago, different topic but of similar weight and importance, and I know how terrible it must feel to eventually have to accept the fact that you simply have to let it go. Thanks Hunter and all the best to you, sincerely, M. Hofbauer

thank you.

is there a map somewhere that shows area controlled by the respective sides?

Thanks a lot for the info!

care to share? I'ld be really interested to hear your concise description of hwat is wrong with that game and why it is no entertainment as a VN chopper sim even with its shortcomings. I was really looking forward towards thisone but lost track. Still, its on my "some day when I have more time" list of games I was gonna take a look at. thanks

afaik there was no really popular, widespread colloquial name for the Pz IV. HOWEVER, there is one almost obscure nickname it earned very early - "Rotbart". literally "red beard", nickname of a popular historic medieval royal figure, emperor barba-rossa (sic!) however, the nickname came from a popular commercial in the later 1930ies for a razor blade (still on sale today) marketed under that brand name. I am going by memory here so I cant say for sure wether the original slogan was "Rotbart - hauchdünn" or "Rotbart - hauchzart", it possibly also had the addition "extra dünn" (extra thin). both slogans refer to the fact that the razor blade was very thin. which was also what the Pz IV's armor was - rather thin. hence the mocking nickname. this especially applied to the early versions up to Ausf. D. which is why I suspect it was mostly conceived w/r/t the early models. It does seem to me that while the nickname *did* exist, it was *not* very widespread/popular, it also seems a rather unwieldy word. kinda like nobody calling the UH-1 helicopter ("Huey") an "Iroquois". "Panzer 4" is a good guess that I would venture, too. "P4" is just plain funny, though. suggests a pistol type.

whats a TT43? sounds like a pistol (Tula-Tokarev) but I am not aware of a TT43. Is it an inside designation for a TT33 manufactured in 43?

nice find - a late model Shpagin PPSh 41. I wonder where the owners of such "exotic" weapons get their ammo from. one could wonder wether 7.62x25 ammo isnt probably even harder to get than the weapon istelf. loading up the drum magazine is rather complicated. and be careful, the PPSh had a nasty habit of firing when falling down or when striking s.th. with the butt plate. what happened to the gun? did you take it away from the owner? who gets to keep it?

... teh funny.

...or overengineered expensive luxury toys, which would be another way to look at them ...and doesnt take into account the extra "ivan is right behind my ass" pucker factor

Sivodsi and Moon are more than right, and IMO rather polite about it . Its just plain rude to run around shouting the big B-word, the worst judgement you can bring about an aspect of a game (which is a commercial enterprise), when all the commotion is really due to your own deficiencies re. most basic facts.

why dont you go ahead and enter whatever you want into wiki yourself. ...wiki as the penultimate judgement...this is what we have come to....

I'm with Dorosh on thisone. But it was inevitable that the TOW-induced influx of 20k RTS kids to these boards would sooner or later contain the request for avatars, signature pics etc. You're ignoring the 56k users. Besides bandwith, it's also cluttering up the overall impression of these boards. Lastly, I have no yearning to see n-th iterations on the 55 Ubertiger paintshop BS theme.

seems the latter refers to the already mentioned shaped-charge Granate 38 or Gr. 38 Hl/A fired by the L24 guns.

well, yes, and considering the likely crowd that ToW would / *did* attract - we sort of predicted that, didnt we?

the early T-34 is one of those tanks where the basic rule of going for the side and rear doesnt really work out. closing in might help but in the case of the Pz. IV Ausf. C with its L24 low-velocity stub gun its a gambe I wouldnt take, since any return fire of the powerful 76mm will do in the thin Pz IV for good. seeing that you dont really have any reasonable chance for a kill in the first place in this case you might also want to try to go for long range shots to take advantage of the higher precision of the german tanks, trying to achieve damaging hits on the T-34 before he zeroes in on you. whether or not that is modeled / possible with ToW I dont know. even then, the Pz IV Ausf. C simply wasnt meant to be duking it out with enemy armor, much less the T-34. The result that the T-34 wins hands down is not strange at all. "standard" based on how many samples, and using how many different attempts at playing this setup?

shatter gap in praxi isnt a problem with shaped charge ammunitions (but see commetn below). what can and did happen with highly sloped angles such as on the T-34 is that due to the design of the shaped charge warhead/fuze in question it may fail to detonate/vounce off. The Faustpatrone had a known nasty habit to do so re. the T-34. shatter gap as defined with a degradation of AP performance due to overpowered projectile energy/speed w/r/t projectile quality is siomething that, in theory, might also be experienced by shaped charges. Namely, if the shaped charge projectile has such a tremendous speed due to cliose range that the shaped charge detonates a bit late which is disadvatageous to the forming/focussing of the plasma jet. IOW, the whole thing gets squashed against the armor plate before the shaped charge had a chance to develop, making it no more effective than a simple HE charge in the most extreme case. The most important improvement re. the AP performance of shaped charge projectiles was forming the charge and especially refining the cone/detonator so that you reach optimum set-off distance for the jet to focus on the armor. if the projectile is too slow or simply detonates too early the jet will have unfocussed / the energy spent into air too much before affecting the target armor - but the reverse can also be true - if the shaped charge travels too fast/detonates too late the jet cannot properly develop before hitting the armor. Think of the original blunt hollow charges fired at the speed of a modern 120mm round. However the latter, all above about a "shatter gap of shaped charges", is really only a problem in theory, not in praxi, since the shaped charges detonate rather fast. the reverse problem of detonating too early and therefore spending itself is a much bigger practical aspect - see spaced armor.

fair enough; still, mind you, rather "prolific" going by the "per timeframe" rate

Well, I am still playing the demo, so presumably I do not have more possibilities for judging the game than you have. </font>

that doesnt seem right. the TKS only had a small 7.92mm machinegun as armament. only a very small number of TKS was modified with a 20mm gun - two dozen or so. TKS taking out german tanks was not the norm - there's a reason why the Sept. 18th encounter in which one 2cm-equipped TKS killed three german tanks is so famous: it was an isolated incident. IOW, are you saying ToW models the TKS by using the rare 2cm-modification?

Even though I have always spoken out for the right of BTS/BF.C to ban people for whatever they deem banworthy on what is after all their private board, and still stick to that, I *do* however take note that these latest bannings seem unusual given the very conservative application of this last resort over the last years. For years I was able to count all people I witnessed banned so far using my fingers, ISTR (Mabye toes, too). And then, it was for real BIG reasons. </font>

duly noted. thanks for being frank about it.

I faintly remember the outcry on the CC forums upon the release of CC3: tank fest, crawl-of-death, spinning tanks, ... Back then there was no indication that the 10 year old CC would once be preferred to a brand new 3D WW2 wargame Best regards, Thomm </font>

Even though I have always spoken out for the right of BTS/BF.C to ban people for whatever they deem banworthy on what is after all their private board, and still stick to that, I *do* however take note that these latest bannings seem unusual given the very conservative application of this last resort over the last years. For years I was able to count all people I witnessed banned so far using my fingers, ISTR (Mabye toes, too). And then, it was for real BIG reasons.