Renaud

I have success using flamethrowers in starting fires in areas I don't want the enemy to enter, or that I want them to leave in a hurry. I'm careful to always keep the flamethrower out of los of anything that can fire on it. That's right, I never fire at actual enemy units, just at the edge of suspected or known enemy positions. For instance, I fire into woods filled with krauts by firing between frontline infantry and into the edge of the area where I know the baddies are. Just make sure you don't hit the tile your own guys are in! Kind of gamey having to know which tile you're in but not too bad. The downside is you can't occupy the woods or building after that, so it's mainly a area denial weapon. It does cause em to run out in the open and get chopped down as others have noted. Ren

On my V5500 I use hardware anti-aliasing to smooth out pretty much everything. I only have a P450 which can't push the card that hard so I only use x2 aliasing to keep a good fast framerate. Actually I haven't checked the slowdown at x4 maybe i should. I presume it will be substantial slower though. Ren

Yes you have to be careful to buy the right combination of units which will use as many of your points as possible and still field an effective non-jalopy force. Particularly considering the limitations on how much you can spend on each category. However I find there are many cheap support and vehicle units which can round out your force and use up those last few points. Many times I come within a couple of points of using it all. Manipulating the experience level is also a good tool as this can have a large effect on unit cost, enabling you to squeeze in the most bang for the buck. For instance, why buy a veteran halftrack when you really need veteran status on some infantry. Ren

Maddmatt: The soundbite sounds incredible! People, this listen is certainly worth a piddling 2.7 mb download. Makes you want to play some CM that's for sure. Also, i'm curious. Who was getting ambushed, GI's or germans? I suspect germans are ambushing gi's but can't be 100% certain. Ren

IDF: You think you like it now...wait till you get the full version and get to play the quick-battles. As far as infantry toughness, I recently played a QB with a reinforced US infantry company attacking veteran german infantry entrenched in a town with light armor and loads of well-sited AT & heavy machine gun teams. In support I had 3 m10's, 2 sp 105's, a recon screen, heavy mg's, 155mm battery and 82mm mortar battery in support. I moved forward with utmost caution, using scout teams and recon vehicles fanning out far forward of the main force. I located enemy resistance and used the traditional US method: blast the bejesus out of em. Anyway, the germans were exceedingly tough to root out from their positions. I had to blast buildings and foxholes apart one by one while my infantry crept forward taking out MG nests one by one with hand to hand combat. I finally had to close assault behind a heavy smoke screen while a 155mm barrage battered the center of town. Everything i've read about wwII fits in with this scenario. HE and massed small arms fire alone will often fail to unhinge a well-situated foe. In fact, I think BTS has increased actual expected casualty rates quite a lot for purposes of enhancing fun and excitement and to maintain a reasonably short game scenario time length. In reality the firepower at my disposal in this scenario was trifling compared to what most allied attacks mustered at this scale. And in many of those historical situations germans rose from the rubble, tilted their AT guns/MG42's back upright, and decimated allied forces. There are loads of examples of veteran infantry holding out even after their defensive positions looked like moonscapes...villers-bocage...red devils at Arnhem...german paratroops at monte cassino...etc. It's important to note I was fighting veteran troops...they would continue to man positions in many cases after the buildings collapsed around them. Regular or below will flee and be cut down once out of position if enough firepower is put on them. Casualty rates in given situations feel right to me, allowing for the fact that they have been increased from what was historical to make the game more playable within 10-60 minute game-turn times. Sincerely, Ren

Pillar, A bridgehead is always a defended salient (bulge) on the enemy side of a bridge, ford or other river crossing. There's no 'defensive' bridgehead on a friendly side of the bridge. Yes, what you saw in SPR was a bridgehead in the tactical (CM) sense. The idea is to hold the enemy side of the bridge well enough so your reinforcements are able to cross without getting fired on. A Strategic bridgehead miles deep gives generals the opportunity to organize large offensives to break out from the bridgehead by providing the room needed to stockpile ammo, fuel and deploy the big formations necessary for a large offensive. Ren

A 'bridgehead' in military parlance describes a defensive position established on the far (enemy) side of a river or other body of water, typically organized around defending a bridge or ford exit around that side of the bridge. Thus, the name bridgehead. Bridgeheads were considered important to establish and maintain as they could be used to stage and launch further attacks into enemy territory (stockpile supplies, pack troops in). Without the bridgehead you were forced to attack across a bridge or ford or other crossing. Ren

I go for hardcore strategic/tactical simulation wargamer and CM is right up my alley. CC2 was incredibly fun and a classic game. But, i'd hate to see CM watered down from it's no-compromise position on detailed military tactical simulation. Frankly I could give a flip if it ever appeals to the masses. If it did it would probably start looking like something we already have hundreds of copies of on store shelves. For the semi-historical military side you have CC1-4 and for everyone else there's a boatload of fictional-setting tactical warfare rts in space, land, sea and air. There are already tons of good RTS games, why make another one. Ren

Never heard of these other scotches. They sound expensive and potentially caustic on my tender tonsils. Glenmorangie tastes great. I like it in a shot glass, no chaser no water. Roll it around the palatte a bit then swallow slowly. It's smells like butterscotch or caramel and has a peppery aftertaste. Great apperitif. Don't suck in a breath after downing it, kinda burns and spoils the effect! Dewars is nasty, especially with water, but nasty in any form really. I mean yuck. Not a scotch, but Wild Turkey bourbon whiskey is great too, especially mixed in a whiskey sour. Ren

Lanzfeld: I have to agree here. Many vehicle crews also carried other weapons besides pistols such as a SMG. There was some problem with that don't remember what. In any case crews, whatever their weapons, should probably be pretty useless once dismounted for realism purposes, so this omission doesn't bother me too much. But it would be nice to bail out with a smg or carbine or 2 and use them to hold some building as a last ditch! Come to think of it I believe crews of 88's had a single light MG42 issued as well as rifles and smg's. Not that they would be able to fire them while serving the weapon, but after abandoning they could be quite useful (if rallied). Also IIRC you can voluntarity abandon a crew served weapon in the full version or am i imagining things? If that were possible you could spike and abandon the gun if you knew it's time was up, then use the crew as very light infantry. Ren ps bonus points for knowing where the term 'spike' in this usage originated! [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 06-18-2000).]

thomasj: Are you experiencing a problem with CM and the V5500? If so i'd like to hear about the extent of the problem as i'm considering a new video card and CM is a MUST RUN. Thanks, Ren

Thanks to Sabot for his obviously informed posts. My knowledge is a fraction of his but enough to verify he knows of what he speaks. However, that won't prevent me from an extended clarification of an important point! quote: '****Someone stated earlier in this thread that rounds would not disperse enough at such short ranges (300m). I never took a maingun shot at under 500m. But the important thing to remember when talking about this is : A Mil is a Meter at 1000 meters. What this means is if your sights are 1 mil off (and they get this way even in properly boresighted modern tanks due to thermal bending {ask an M1 tanker about MRS update and you will start an argument}...you will miss a target ranged at 1000m by 1 meter. So at 500m with a 1 mil error, the round will disperse 50cm from the aiming point.' The someone sabot refers to here is probably me. You will find my post on the first page. I believe Sabot has reinforced my point regarding the lack of need for aim-off at short ranges in CM (under 500m) when using high velocity guns. Trajectories of high velocity guns are practically flat at these short ranges, allowing you to aim centermass every time. In this case a several-mil aiming error (assuming semi-decent boresight) will still result in a hit on some part of the vehicle. In fact you could miss the centerpoint by quite a lot or have a big boresight error, but at short range you are still going to hit some part of your typically large ww2 mbt. So, to my mind the significant determinants of steel on steel will be crew quality and condition and who reacts and lays on first. The finer points of modern gunnery need not be simulated to achieve a realistic feel. If i'm not mistaken this is the major point Sabot has been trying to make in prior posts. I stand by my original statement that at short range you can lay centermass and get a hit. The correction from prior shots at such short ranges will usually not be possible, making mathematically increasing chances of hits on successive shots unlikely if based on correction for fall of shot. I don't disagree with increasing chances of hits for other reasons however, such as providing the gunner with time to get calm and really aim centermass. NEVER hitting is also a real possibility, if your gunner has gone mental on you or the sights have been knocked hugely off kilter...but we won't go there. In my post I did imply some dumb things like tube droop may affect ww2 short range shots (NOT). Basically I was too lazy to go back and edit a rather hastily written post, so thanks to Sabot for not picking me apart on those. You just never know who will turn up here! One final thing to Sabot: my God how can any tanker not love this game??? Ren oh i forgot to mention how great that experiment by Mikeydz was. He should definitely be a beta tester. Keep in mind since stugIII armor effectiveness vs the sherman short 75 is not factored out, the numbers will be (any statisticians here?) different depending on target armor. If the test could be repeated vs something killed with almost every hit, such as a halftrack, the numbers would more purely reflect the actual hit %% and increases of %% chance on subsequent shots. [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 06-18-2000).]

I for one will take an extended leave of absence of the forum starting in the next 24-48 hours, whether or not I have yet received CM. This place is going to be spoiler-hell once people start playing scenarios and spilling the beans here. Even glancing at the topic list on any given day will be a spoiling experience. It's a hopeless task to try and avoid spoiler topics because even the topic headings, if they are to relay any information about the contents of the topic, must provide some information about the scenario. Think back about topics referring to the new gold demo scenario shortly after it came out. Ren

As far as the lack of FOW for terrain goes, I'd like to rip an old post of mine from one of the several lengthy topics that have discussed this problem. This is my solution to the problem and if you have the cohones it provides an intense 'you are there' feeling: 'Along these lines I've been thinking of playing a game where I restrict myself to the #1 1st person perspective view (troops viewpoint) with zooming only from officer led units or vehicles (binos). No roaming around the map in #1 view either, just rotation around the unit locked to. I can only give orders from the perspective of the unit locked to in the #1 view, not from any other unit. I'd most likely have to cycle through my units with +/- since I wouldn't always be able to see them from the unit i'm currently locked to. Talk about difficult. Now listening posts and picket lines have some real-world importance. Hardcore...' I've played several games like this now and kind of made up a rules set for myself for this type of game. One addition is that I only view action turns from the highest level command unit on the field...I pan around during the action but don't get to replay. This makes you want to get your commanders to a good viewpoint to see the battle which is quit realistic imho. -Ren

Wolfe: Homeworld (publisher Sierra Studios, developer Relic Entertainment) would be good for showing off differences in 16/22/32bit color. The space backgrounds are vast panoramas of nebulas, stars and glowing gas clouds gently merging into the blackness of interstellar space. Banding is VERY apparent in these subtle transitions at lower color densities. Ren

Guys I'm thinking the first 50 might be mostly copies sent to reviewers, game sites, beta testers, other special folks. Ren

The Beast Cross of Iron A Bridge Too Far Das Boot -Ren

No copying here.

Folks we need to retire to some internet thread reserved for debates on political philosophy! But hey as long is they don't lock us out what the hell... quote from recent post: 'Thanks to the inherent human tendency toward greedy self-interest, every Socialist state laboring under the Western-supplied title of "Communism" has been a Socialist dictatorship, usually only paying lip-service to the "rules" of Socialism in order to keep the ruling clique in power.' I just can't resist this one. Practically every western public school and public or private university teaches this fable. It took me years of study to undo some of the damage done to me by public schooling in this regard. That is, that communism is theoretically sound, but we poor humans are too immoral to accept and faithfully implement its tenets. Every aspect of socialistic/communistic economic and social theory has been painstakingly taken apart and shown to be fallacious as well as immoral. I know I damn near gave a dissertation on this in another wildly off topic thread some months ago. So, how can a theory which I claim to be illogical nonsense provide the intellectual impetus to propel unnumbered tyrants to power again and again? Whatever theory of the organization of society is perceived as holding the moral high ground (socialism in this case) is the one men will aspire to, regardless of it's perceived impossibility, inherent evil or destructiveness. This is the reason for the triumphs of Statism in all it's forms in this last century. Men strive to be moral, and if the poison pill of self destruction and abdication of their individual rights is held out to them as the ultimate moral high ground, they will hasten to implement it in practical terms whatever the consequences. Our political philosophers have abdicated their responsibility to civilization by teaching entire generations of statesmen and voters that self-interest is evil, while surrender to the Great God State (as representative of the collective good) is the ultimate benevolent gesture to mankind. This is in direct contradiction to the teachings of classical western civilization, most particularly the philosophy of classical liberalism prevalent the 17th-19th centuries, and the documented principles of the US founding fathers. During this period even Germany, now depicted as always having been the haven and source of teutonic fascism, was more free than most European states (or the USA) are today. This was the time of Goethe, Brahms, Schiller and Beethoven. Of course it was a freedom-by-default, not protected by much in the way of a constitution of bill or rights, but it did exist off-and-on for a brief time. Only in the latter part of the 19th century did State Socialism introduced by Bismark start Germany down the path to self-immolation. Once you concede to a government of powerhungry bureaucrats the management of some part of your property, every other right once held to be inaliable goes up for grabs soon enough... Socialism, explicit and implicit (as western 'mixed' economies), triumphs because people who should know better are disarmed by legions of hoary professors and social theorists promoting it through tens of thousands of scholarly writings assuring us that self-sacrifice and self-abdication is moral and self-interest is immoral. If this is true then unaliable and imprescriptable individual rights can only stand in the way of the State's authorship of our utopia. Once your subjects have internalized this lesson they will happily 'vote' you unlimited power. Suggested reading: 'The Communist Manifesto' by Karl Marx; 'On the Duty of Civil Disobedience' by Henry David Thoreau; 'Liberalism' and 'Omnipotent Government' by Ludwig von Mises. (try amazon.com) I would recommend 'Das Kapital' but it's an imcomprehensible muddle held up as the authoritative exposition of Capitalism, written on the strength of a few years spent by the author clerking in an accounting office. Ren

I notice an undercurrent on many threads regarding the value of SPR vs other war movies. I've been looking for a place to spill my guts on this, so here it is. SPR is probably not a good example of hollywood writing Britain out of WWII history. The events depicted in SPR didn't revolve around the British sectors of the Normandy battlefield so you can't expect to see much UK activity. The sleight against Monty was unnecessary though. More likely the GI's would have been cursing the US generals that landed them at Omaha beach. On first viewing i've liked all the recent 'serious' Spielberg movies, but haven't been able to bring myself to collect them. While the emotional content of Amistad, spr, etc is riveting, they fall just short of 'classic'. For me a classic counterpart to Amistad, addressing the same issues of freedom vs slavery, would be 'Brazil.' That of SPR would be 'Savior.' or 'The Beast'. I suppose Spielberg's films strike out for me because they propose to teach moral lessons using a documentary-style depiction of historical events, then freely toy with the facts. There is something basically dishonest about that. Better to teach principles through pure fiction or completely fictionalized accounts set on a historical stage. For a good documentary style epic that depicts an entire operation and with appropriately weighted emphasis on the various nationalities, see 'A Bridge Too Far'. As far as I know the movie's facts are pretty solid. The book has been accused of some changes/omissions, but I don't know what they are. If anyone can enlighten me I'd appreciate it. Ethan: I heard American Beauty was good...but you've pretty much trashed it for me with that last analysis. Just when you think anti-capitalist freudian psychologizing ala Dickens and James Joyce is finally a cold dead turkey, it gets warmed over and served up by Hollywood. Maybe i'll rent it to verify. Ren

On the subject of Britain being depicted as the bad guy by hollywood and others... Might I add that when you control a vast empire of far-flung colonies for an extended period of time you are eventually going to be depicted in a non-too-glowing light by all your former colonies. In Britain's case that's a lot of former colonies. One other thing to consider is that brutality is required for the administration and exploitation of said colonies. For many native peoples there were undeniable and incalculable benefits to being a british colony (education, science, industrial civilization, parliamentary government, etc), but can any people be expected to submit to decades of exploitation and political domination without some serious 'persuasion' on the part of the overlords? I think the belief that some nationalities/cultures/races are inherently brutal/evil/badbadbad is laughable, or would be if so many people didn't seriously advocate it. That being said, if a nation-state is in the position of despotic rule over a far-flung colonial empire, you are going to find it's officers, administrators and military doing what it takes to hold the empire together. Regardless of the lovableness of these figures as individuals they will do dispicable things, willingly or not, if they wish to fit into the empire's hierarchy and advance the interests of the despots back home. It goes without saying that those with brutal tendencies will find comfortable niches within the edifice of such a State. This historical setting provides ample grist in the mill of future historians and dramatists, making fiction largely unnecessary even if fiction weren't an easier option than historical research. Ren ps: lest I be attacked by hordes of bloodthirsty Anglophiles , note that the above could well apply to the Roman Empire, or the relationship of the US Government to the various native american peoples in the 19th century.

Ironclads were barges and regular sailing ships clad in metal armor plating. They existed throughout the 19th century. The USS Constitution was plated in copper at and below the waterline so I think it qualifies. The US Civil War era Monitor and Merrimack were later ironclads with turrets and iron armor. With the advent of large steam turbine engines ironclads evolved into dreadnaughts such as the HMS Dreadnaught. The battle of Jutland in WWI was the high tide of the dreadnaughts. The ranges at which dreadnaughts could engage is too much for CM maps...unless you increased the scale x2 or x3 I guess. Ren

When I was in college me and some buddies went to Europe. We leased a car for 3 weeks of it. A Renault Clio. It was great because we never saw a tour guide or had an itinerary or schedule...just roamed around in a giant clockwise circle around Europe seeing all the great places. We put 3000 miles on that car in 21 days. We more or less on accident ended up at the crossroads of Malmedy. It was eerie to stand on that ground...no one could say a word the whole time. And these were guys who didn't know anything about ww2 history. Something about that place just grabs you. We passed over some bridges in the high hills of Belgium where I almost expected to see some US combat engineers and maybe a 57mm AT gun dug in around the corner. CM maps of those areas are going to be amazingly steep sided hills and very deep flat-bottomed valleys. Ren

I played a game as germans vs the allies set at +150%. The allies came at me with an amazing 1000+ infantry of all sorts and 10 tanks. The huge mass of GI's rushing the center village was unstoppable. I caused hundreds of casualties...dozens of little dead figures littered the ground. My 150 fired into a massive cluster of them. The effects were horrendous. I managed to pull out a draw...point spread was only like 2 or 3 between us. -Ren

All American: The command you are looking for in the first case is 'sneak'. Sneaking infantry in woods will stop immediately and fire on enemy they see. This is better than move since they see the enemy quicker and always stop moving which reduces casualties. To scout enemy positions you more-or-less have to crawl and hide. Crawling units avoid firing and if you hide them at the terminus of their move they will not fire then either. This is a bit slow. I recommend sneak since they will at least stop when they see a enemy. Then you can crawl them out of sight again. Also split a squad from each platoon to form 2 scout teams. Reform them once the enemy is located and you are ready to assault. Reform them by moving them onto each other out of enemy fire range and LOS. -Ren Oh I forgot to say that 'hunt' is the vehicle version of sneak except it doesn't reduce the ease of spotting your vehicle as sneak does for infantry. At least I don't think so. [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 05-24-2000).]