Renaud

There are some screenshots of forthcoming fog effects in the main site somewhere. It looks like typical first person shooter volumetric fog as rendered by 3d hardware so it should be good.

I don't know about you guys, but I can't wait to build/play a scenario with a whole tank company rolling over hill and dale to do battle with another tank company. Imagine the cacaphony as the roar of cannon fuses into continuous thunder and dozens of shots simultaneously arc over battlefields measured in square kilometers. Dare I say it...a whole mechanized battalion? Will this be possible? More to the point, if you put 40+ vehicles on the field what kind of computer would be needed to run it satisfactorily? -Ren

For what it's worth, you can see what looks like a Brit 2" mortar being free-tubed in the movie 'Bridge Over the River Kwai'. Of course it's just a movie but it looks plausible to me. -Ren ps: The mortar did not seem to have any kind of optional stand available. [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 11-19-99).] [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 11-20-99).]

On the Nahverthingamajig: 92mm could indicate quite a heavy and destructive projectile considering the power of comparably sized mortar rounds. On Zimmerit: It's my understanding that Zimmerit coating was put on mid-war tanks by the Germans in anticipation of a magnetic anti-tank mine threat. This never materialized so Zimmerit coating was discontinued on late war armored vehicles. -Renaud

Wargames traditionally lump the fighting characteristics of military units into a single rating. CM follows this practice. (The saving grace of CM comes in the form of leader modifiers which in effect change the quality of the troops under command.) I have always found this system incapable of modeling the diverse fighting units of WWII. Here's an idea for a more detailed troop rating system which would include 3 variables (for your amusement): 1. Training: Represents weapons and tactical training. This rating would affect the units basic firepower, effective use of cover and concealment (reducing casualties and increasing stealth), likelyhood of jamming weapons/miring vehicles, time to unjam weapons/free vehicles. 2. Experience: This represents the units exposure to actual combat conditions. This would affect unit firepower when under stress (enemy fire), reaction to enemy fire (more experience means more lower likelyhood of suppression, panic, pinning, etc.), chance to spot and identify enemy units. 3. Morale: (more accurately 'esprit de corp' or unit cohesion) This represents the feelings of comradeship and fellowship among the members of a combat unit. Unlike global morale, this rating would not change in the course of a single scenario. This rating would affect the likelyhood of flight or surrender under given conditions, behavioral reaction to casualties, potential for fanaticism, rallying. Examples: The 12th SS (Hitler Youth) had moderate training, negligible experience, but fanatical morale. The 21st Panzer Division at the time of the Normandy battles had moderate training, High experience, and low morale. British 7th Armd was similiar to 21st Pzr at this time period. Panzer Lehr had very high training, negligible experience and moderate morale. The 101st at Bastogne had high training, high experience and high morale. US Army Rangers at Normandy were at the top in every catagory. The 101st dropping into Normandy had high training, low experience and high morale. German tankers at Operation Citadel might have low training, high experience and moderate morale as they had just been re-equipped with unfamiliar equipment in the field with little break-in time. With these variables you could model highly skilled troops with no experience, burned out veteran soldiers, fanatically propagandized but untrained hordes, experienced troops with unfamiliar equipment, etc. -Renaud

Tom, If you only have a PCI slot and no AGP slot in your motherboard I recommend the Voodoo3 2000 PCI if you can find it. Should be around $100 US. They also still make Voodoo2's for PCI which are well under $100. This will get the job done. If you have a AGP slot you might go for a Ultra TNT2 chipset card for the 32-bit colors and bigger textures. I doubt if the 32bit TNT2 vs 16bit V3-2000 will matter much for CM however. The GeForce is really expensive right now so unless you are a hardcore 3d fps/flight sim gamer it's probably not worth the $$$. You would do better to drop $200-300 on a new processor motherboard combination if you are lagging in this dept. -Ren

I'm guessing that what happened from a game mechanics point of view is this: Crews that i've seen bail out attempt to route to the nearest cover. In the case of the tiger crew the nearest cover was the woods hiding the bazooka team. When they got close the crew was unsuppresed so the natural AI response is to attack the nearby enemy. This could lead one to believe that the crew 'went after' the bazooka team. Maybe Big Time can verify. This is the kind of thing that makes battles memorable in a wargame! -Ren

Has no direct applicability on CM beta, but: I've sat and watched 4.2" mortar crews practicing shaving seconds off their dismount and setup time (at Ft. Bliss El Paso Tx.) They basically dismount the mortar and baseplate from the track and set it up on the ground, doing some other mortar arcana i'm not familiar with, and voila! I seem to remember it took a little less than a minute for 3 guys to get it set up. I'm pretty sure this was for direct fire or they assumed they already knew their position. In live fire they were super-accurate (rifled tubes) and could blow the target lifter device out of a 3'x3' pit after a few ranging shots. (self directed fire of course) The explosions are really large. Imagine a 120mm mortar! -Ren

I'm guessing Kevin is referring to F.M. Montgomery...don't recognize the movie quotation though (sav pvt ryan?). I don't know if Montgomery was personally responsible for 7th Div. tanks usually outrunning their infantry in the bocage. Then again I think the Brits may have been willing to expend tanks and preserve their dwindling supply of infantry so perhaps it was a command decision. But its hard to imagine intentionally repeating the same errors from the desert battles particularly by the 7th. -Ren

TeAcH: 'I vote for realism every time. I say put it in the game and let us deal with it.' Me too! But Steve said they didn't want to put it in due to the enormous complexity and CPU cycles it would use, not because they thought we as users would have a hard time dealing with it. I think the posts so far tend toward the view that Tiger and Panther could neutral steer. This makes these two tanks very advanced automotively because it looks as if very few (if any) other tanks in WWII had controlled differential steering. Hey the Imperial War Museum in London has a jagdpanther. I doubt if it runs though since there is a big hole from a 17lbr in the side. -Ren

I think the manual should be on the CD in HTML or, better yet, Adobe Acrobat format rather than hardcopy. Just include a quick reference card at most for printed material. Don't have a box either, just the CD jewel case. This would minimize costs. -Ren

Hmmm...good question. On thinking about it I realized that I have always assumed all tanks could always neutral steer because modern tanks can. The M1 transmission has a special neutral steer position you select from a standstill and deselect when you're done. I thought all WWII tanks had controlled differential transmissions which address steering by varying power to one track or the other, but maybe the German tanks used some other transmission design which ruled out true neutral steering. Now that I think of it the only way i've seen a german tank pivot (on film) is by holding one track and powering the other to 'spin' the vehicle around on the locked track. This achieves roughly the same effect as the neutral steer so the CM tank animation would be off but the end result would be close I think. In cities I could see a tactical advantage to tanks with neutral steer capability if it were modeled. -Ren

Seems like a great way to implement IF for on-board mortars would be to allow command units to direct rounds to places they can see provided they have the mortars close by and in sight. Example would be mortars behind hill with command unit hiding on woods at top of hill 10 meters away but with LOS to both the mortars and the enemy targets on the other side. This wouldn't require wire to be layed and could be done on the fly I would think. -Ren

Another recommended sleeper war film: 'The Beast' It's about the Soviet Afghan war. They used actual Soviet equipment courtesy of the Israelis. The opening sequence will blow you away...full platoon of T62's (or 64's not sure) firing real ammo assault a village. All authentic tank nuts must see. It's on video but not DVD (damn!t) -Ren

Los: Thanks for that clarification on the NATO 7.62 civilian equivalent. I didn't read your post till after I submitted a clarification at the same time you were probably writing your post. The M1906 is going to be indistinguishible from the NATO 7.62 in stopping power even though the rounds are a teensy bit different. By way of comparison That was the info I was trying to provide. From my experience the support weapons are among the last to go when a squad suffers casualties so it seems the german squads are modeled to expend great effort in keeping them functional despite the fire those guys must be drawing. I am pretty darn sure CM doesn't randomly pick from the squad when eliminating weapons so they must be assuming the weapons are highly likely to be recovered/recrewed. I think Fionn's point was that the germans are in greater danger of losing a major portion of their firepower through casualties than are the Americans, who had high firepower spread across the entire squad in the form of the M1. And lets face it, losing the BAR is not that big of a deal compared to losing the MG42. -Ren

"30-06 in an M1? Are you sure about that? That seems a lot more powerful than the plain .30 round I assumed they used." The .30" M1906 round fired by the M1 Garand is known in civilian use commonly as .30-06. This is also the close equivalent of the 7.62 x 51mm NATO round. The .30"/.30-06 is 7.62 x 63mm but the bullet weight is unchanged. Muzzle velocity is 853 m/s in both cases. The MP40 fired a very light bullet at about 365 m/s. When folks talk about a german squad losing a mg42 under fire consider that due to circumstances other men in the squad might not be able to recover the weapon and/or ammo. Obvious reasons would be panic/retreat, the weapon is covered by enemy fire or lost due to hand to hand combat or lost due to catastrophic jamming when fired continuously for too long in a stress situation, etc etc etc. Also the heavy belted 7.92 round meant not too much could be carried so it's very likely the mg42 would run out before other small arms considering it's effective rate of 300 or so per minute (with barrel changes). Simply put, the germans had too many eggs in one basket unlike US infantry squads which had a devestating weapon (the M1) available to everyone. -Ren [This message has been edited by Renaud (edited 11-08-99).]

There was a mention of CM in the 'Grognards and Graphics' editorial at www.strategy-gaming.com: 'Take Big Time/Battlefront's Combat Mission for example. This is a perfect example of where wargaming is going...' -Ren

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... -Ren

Kingtiger: To me 'jam' means any kind of mechanical problem that requires attention because either the gun will be non-operational shortly or it is currently broken. A lot of things can cause mechanical problems with mg's. (I have personal exp with m240, m60 and m2HB mg's) Barrel changeout takes as little as 5 sec for a mg42 according to the info I have. That is also true of the m240, roughly a similar barrel configuration. M2HB is also easy to switch barrels. So...barrel changeouts are probably not indicated with a jam unless it's a very short one or the operators are panicking and fumbling about or running around trying to find a spare barrel. I think the most common 'jam' will be in stress situations with less experienced troops: they will continue to fire the weapon with the same barrel until it overheats, expanding and causing a catastrophic jam in the barrel...or perhaps the belt got loaded with the open face of the links up (this destroys an M2HB)...or the belt got hung on something and fed wrong jamming the breech. Some mg's required careful adjustment (like M2HB headspace and timing) or they would cease operation or become hazardous. Also water cooled mg's like the vickers or water cooled browning .30 cal could boil away all their water necessitating a scramble for more water (or a search for guys that needed to take a whizz). Some mg's can become fouled if they are gas operated and this could be a major problem. m240 and m60 are and I'm pretty sure mg42 is also. I fired a lot through m240's and m2hb's and they never jammed. M60 is a different story if it gets dirty. In short jams in CM probably subsume anything mechanical that could possible go wrong meaning it could take seconds or several minutes to fix really. A simple 'jam' caused by failure of the action to eject a casing or chamber the next round can be fixed by simply manually working the action. If you are under extreme stress very simple things can suddenly become very difficult. Many rifles of some green Union regiments collected on the fields of Antietam after the battle were found to have been loaded up to 5 times without ever being discharged. I'd like to think crew quality affects unjam times but I haven't played enough to see this. -Ren

Ken, Here's an recounting of an incident in Normandy by a Sgt. Stephens of E Troop 129th Battery (British versions of US M10's, very similiar to M18): 'The explosion of the mortar in that confined space had devastated everything inside. The 17lbr and .50 caliber ammunition had gone up. Lying on the floor of the turret was what was left of the crew, burnt to a cinder with their teeth bared in some kind of grin. I cried, having known them all for so long...' From 'OVERLORD, D-Day & the Battle for Normandy' by Max Hastings The M10/M18 series had a wide open turret where the entire turret crew was always exposed from above.

Here's my last defense story: My 2nd game of CM was as the germans, so I knew from playing my 1st game as US where and when the M18's would appear. They managed to destroy both stugs with no losses. Somehow one of the M18's was immobilized after moving about 100 meters laterally on the hill top with it's ass-end toward the germans. A 105 arty round must have done that since I ruled out shots from my armor. In the last 6 minutes of the game, my tiger held in reserve stalked and killed all 3 M18's from >800, 600 and <100 meters each. The tiger was unbuttoned and almost certainly unspotted. All 3 M18's were buttoned and spotted at all times.

Interesting debate! My .02 cents says that, although the retargeting has irked me at times, it contributes to the feeling of being in a real-life unpredictable combat situation. That's what I like most about this game, the feeling of witnessing a WWII battle without having to really be there. I can hear the rebuttals already, 'well go and rent a movie then!' A small suggestion: Why not tweak the target-switching tendency down for units within LOS and C&C of a command unit. This would be a great simulation of a commanders ability to more closely direct the fight when he is within screaming distance of his troops. Sure he might get them killed with his annoying butterbar micromanagement but then 90-day-wonders were a reality of WWII on all sides. This tweak would also stress the importance of C&C which is always a good thing in my book. -Ren

My pre-order is in...need I say more? Well why not: This game is worth the price even if the only additional feature for the retail version is a scenario editor. Innovation always surprises one in hindsight. Why did it take this long for a true real time 3d engine (ala Unreal, Q2) to be incorporated into a tactical wargame? All the parts were there but the synthesis was lacking. I class this game as a tactical ground combat simulator. Watching a turn play out comes very close to the experience of watching the action during a US Army networked simulator exercise displayed on a big-screen 2048x2048 overhead monitor. The US marines are experimenting with real time PC wargame conversions to teach OC's the principles of ground combat. At a higher level I think CM would be ideal for this purpose. Sure beats sand-tables. -Ren

Big Time Software developers et al are probably tired of hearing about the infantry figure modeling. I love the little guys to. *sniff. However... Without changing polygon count at all, I think a figure depicted in the position of a crouching run would be super. You know the position i'm talking about...you see it in combat footage. It's a slightly crouching jog with torso bent forward and weapon held at port arms like the current model. I think it would look nicer than the rather stiff upright marching-to-battle posture currently used. But maybe if I saw it I would hate it...oh well that shows you what a mongrelized monster would be created if consumers developed the product. Anyway I was just curious what other folks thought. I have to commend those concerned with the superb tank gunnery modeling. I've been driver/loader/gunner/commander on M1/M1A1's and the feel is just right when zoomed in behind and above a tank firing. The ballistic path, gun flash and reload time is all spot on and very reminiscent of the real thing. Also, someone mentioned the tracer effect not looking right for mg's/small arms. Well of course small arms wouldn't typically be loaded with any tracer ammo so the effect is for any mg's they may have and just for well...effect. I think the tracers effect for mg's in the game looks very much like real mg fire i've seen. They get fat when you zoom in really close but this is pardonable. -ren

frank, I managed to capture 26 allied troops my 2nd game of CM. In one case a .30 cal mmg team surrendered after being surrounded on 3 sides with pzr grenadiers set to rush the ground floor. Amazingly, after a brief US counterattack he reverted back to non-surrendered and attempted to flee the house but was killed by a german in the ground floor. You could see him up there with his hands up, I guess you have to collect them or they might change their mind, eh? But then again a lieutenant in another building kept his hands up for over 10 minutes and never tried to run. Most of the surrenders however were from close assaults and what looked like h-to-h combat. You have to suppress them completely and then get in their face. Also, teams I infiltrated behind US units policed them up as they broke and ran. However, mimicking real human behavior, the CM troops are unpredicable. In the above battle 1 lone M1 rifleman left over from his squad of 12 caused about 6 casualties by firing and running back, firing and running back...it was uncanny because he was outnumbered with all buddies dead. I eventually killed him so the Silver Star will be posthumous.