Rhet

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>One person even emailed me asking for "Schmidt" to be removed since it was (and I'm paraphrasing slightly here) possibly the most common name in Germany and thus would have been common among anti-nazi resistance fighters ...<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Fionn, You have got to be kidding! If "Schmidt" perchance does not make it into CM I hope you will email me this guys address so that I can personally hunt him down and include him into the next road we build down here...permanently. I've told you this before but it doesn't hurt to re-itterate once in a while. Thanks for your efforts with the names! ------------------ Rhet

Boy this thread looks like a reunion now. Remember the old board with the never ending spiral of good discussions. Remember how it almost drove Steve crazy. Michael, make sure you give that computer a good once over, the Beta should be out soon and you wouldn't want to miss that would you? ------------------ Rhet [This message has been edited by Rhet (edited 10-27-99).]

rhet@magicnet.net

I started out as a boardgamer, somtimes I think that maybe I was keeping a few game companies afloat by myself. Board games: Squadleader(IC,CD,GIAV), ASL, Jutland, Diplomacy, Wooden Ships & Iron Men, Submarine, Storm Over Arnhem, Panzer Leader, Panzer Blitz, Luftwaffe, Victory at Sea, Gettysburg, Feudal, Ploy, Titan, Kingmaker, B-17, Arab Isreali Wars, Star Fleet Battles, Ogre, GEV, Carwars. Looking back on it my favorites were SL (of course) & Wooden Ships and Iron Men. Fun little games: Risk, Stratego, Illuminanti, Cosmic Encounters, Ace of Aces & Lost Worlds. Ace of aces was a lot of fun it really got you to understand WWI dog fighting manuvers and counter manuvers. Cosmic Encounters was a Blast, it was a great game to just sit down and have fun with. Computer games: Way to many to list! I would have to say that one of my old favorites war Empire. It was kind of a cool game for playing aginst someone. I think it was the first head to head game that had a fog of war element. ------------------ Rhet

Dunt da, dunt dunt dunt da, dunt dunt dunt da, duntduntda... (sort of a Mission impossible theme) Way to go Los! Anything in there interesting... like the use of satchel charges? ------------------ Rhet

Pythonisims are all well and good just as long as no one asks to have the Holy Hand Grenade included in CM. 1, 2, 3, 5 I think someone is already asking for the Black Knight scene on another thread of this board. ------------------ Rhet [This message has been edited by Rhet (edited 09-22-99).]

My Father-in-Law was a navigator in a B-29 and he has some great stories. Last christmas he showed me the war diary of his brother. His brother was a B-17 pilot that was shot down on the Schweinfurt Raid. This poor guy endured a whole lot of bad luck. He also took me to dinner with a Pearl Harbor Survivor. This guy was ordered to be a Naval liasion officer to Eisenhour during the final stages of the war. He told some great stories including this little gem. After the Germans had surrendered, he was ordered to oversee the transfer of a war prize back to the United States. This particular prize was a German Warship. When he told me it was the Prinz Eugen I almost choked to death on my beer! It is a shame what happened to that ship. Sniff, sniff ------------------ Rhet

Martin, What do you mean "the patch" is not effective for the game? Smoking cigarettes or smoking halftracks it is still smoking right? HaHaHa ------------------ Rhet

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>he drove into the English column, firing on the move. From 80m. Wittman first destroyed four Sherman tanks. He then positioned himself beside the column and roared along it, firing in his direction of travel<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It's all in there... He drove into the english column , this indicates that a traverse adjustment was a minor adjustment if any at all. From 80m , at this range it is just point and shoot baby. Finally, firing in his direction of travel, they probably had the turret set to a fixed skew angle to the hull and just fired as the targets came into alignment. Wittman was a tactical genius! He saw that he had the initiative and the element of surprise (along with the better equipment)and used it to legendary effectiveness. ------------------ Rhet [This message has been edited by Rhet (edited 09-22-99).]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Would anyone like to take a stab at the "high" speed issue? I can't figure that one out at all.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Mike, Please bear with me Dynamics are not my favorite area. I believe there are two major factors to consider to help you understand this statement. These factors are independent of the environment of your example so we can concentrate on these and not any "external" factors that may influence the problem (e.g. soft soil conditions) The first is how suspension systems work. Without getting into some really technical stuff here let us suffice to say that suspension systems are very effective damping systems. They lessen the intensity of the vertical forces acting upon the vehicle. The slower the vertical force is applied to the vehicle the less the suspension "damps out". The easiest way to explain this is with an example. Warning you must first agree to not sue the author before reading on! Drive your car (SUV, Truck whatever) up to a speed bump slowly, say at crawling speed (preferably in a shopping mall parking lot while no one is there). Note how drastically the hood pitches as you climb and decend the speed bump. Now try it at say 25 mph. (if your vehicle can take it) You will notice that the car pitches up less than at the slower speed. The suspension system is now working and instead of the vehicle riding "up and over" the speed bump it more or less "takes it in stride". The second factor is hidden in the above example. It is the invisble property of inertia (technically put...the resistance to rate of change of velocity). Inertia is a mass dependent property. Going back to the example above substitute the mass of a 60 ton tank for that of your 1.5 ton car. So a tank with it's MASSIVE amount of inertia is less affected by the bumps of the terrain. I hope that helps, like I said there are other factors but these two are the most relavent. ------------------ Rhet [This message has been edited by Rhet (edited 09-22-99).]

Kip, You forgot the third method employed by the Russians to defeat minefields. Marching an entire penal battalion across the minefield to detonate as many as possible. ------------------ Rhet

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>They are, hands down, the single most powerful natural event on the planet.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Pixman, you ain't just whistl'in dixie! I was around during the Andrew aftermath. BTW, the Discovery channel shows a program on that storm. It was called "Storm of the Century" interestingly enough. P.S. I hope the clean up goes quickly for you. ------------------ Rhet

We got lucky down here in Florida. Just a glancing blow this time. It looked bad for a while but as it turned out we only lost power for about 5 hours. Sorry to hear about everbody elses misfortunes. Pixman, everone down here needs to send a Xmas card to the people of NC. You guys have been taking our beatings for us lately. ------------------ Rhet

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>'Grognard' is also slang for someone who likes playing wargames<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This quote came from another web site which I will refrain from mentioning. By this definition aren't we all Grognards? If you only play FPS games then go away! <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>..."grognards" who like to blast everything in sight.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Kevin, I just tend to think of these pompus people as rather poor gamers (they usually are and they are usually very poor loosers) and I agree with Steve, if they are wrong, pointing it out is important so that others do not get confused. If they turn nasty then like you say just ignore them. A real grognard is interested in learning information that will help them play better. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Don't worry, there's enough real grognards hanging around here to spot any "wannabes" instantly.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>Yup, and thank God for that! Finally, a few funny tests (1): You might be a grognard if... You ever enrolled in a Continuing Education writing course to improve the quality of your game reviews. (Fionn, Martin how about it? Fess up) There was never any doubt in your mind about the answer to the question, "Do you love those games more than you love me?" You have moved at least once because you needed more gaming room. Cannot easily count the number of times an excuse to the Wife started with; "Well, I had no -idea- it was going to take as long as..." You have scanned vacant football fields looking for a place to play a full game of Jutland advanced combat.. full battle. BTW, basketball courts are better You own 50 plus games boxed or not . Some you have never played...but you never know someday maybe. You take your wife to Aberdean Proving Grounds (to view the tanks) ,slipping into Gettysburg (because its close) all as part of your honeymoon and she loves you so much that doesn't notice and you're in Heaven by day and by night. You have played most of your games solitare...whether of not they were/are solitare games...and sometimes you have enjoyed playing the games solitare MORE. You own multiple copies of Panzer Blitz and Panzer Leader trying to have enough boards and counters to do those division scale battles. substitute Squad Leader or ASL here for me 1. tests courtsy of Web Grognards ------------------ Rhet [This message has been edited by Rhet (edited 09-19-99).]

Oh yeah, mines... The first misconception about mines is that they are designed to kill enemy troops. They are actually intended to deny or delay access of a specific area to the enemy. If you were just trying to kill people there would be no need for minefield warning signs. Also the leathality of mines are toned down to reinforce this. A soldier that has had his legs blown off yells and moans thereby further reinforcing to his commrads that they are in a place that they shouldn't be in (Wounded soldiers also require more resource expenditure to the enemy than dead ones, sort of a side benefit if you could call it that ). I brought this up because Brians post sort of indicated that the mine fields were covered with fire to keep the enemy from defeating the mine field. In fact it is the other way around. The mine fields are there to allow a fewer number of defenders to hold a location. He may have not meant it this way but it came out that way to me atleast, I could be wrong about his intentions and I apologise if I am. Uncontested (undefended) mine fields are also sewn. These are usually used in retrograde movements or withdrawls. They are a very cheap way to slow (delay) the advance of the enemy. Combat engineers are elite units! They require a lot of training and as a result armys just don't throw them into meat grinders. Like anything there are exceptions to the rule, but in this case they are usually extrordinary situations in which without engineers the position would be unobtainable or two expensive to be worth taking. DDay was such an exception, without the engineers the number of men left on the beach would have atleast been doubled. Like Steve said, these situations (almost always massive assaults on prepared positions) were larger than battalion level and thus outside CM's scope. As a side note... on the Eastern front the Russian sappers sent mine raiding parties out at night to remove German mines. They did this not to clear the fields but to steal the mines! Russian mines were very unstable and did not take to being repositioned kindly so they would rather risk their lives gathering German made mines than laying their own. Rhet [This message has been edited by Rhet (edited 09-19-99).]