Peterk

> Afterall, they Have to show the green > troops how it's done! Right? It's funny that you say this - it seems to actually be working that way. Have you ever noticed that if you give orders to an entire Green or Conscript platoon to run into the open, the squads will sort of sit there until they see the HQ unit set out and actually make some headway and then they seem to all get off their butts as if they are saying "OK, maybe we _can_ do this!" and start executing their orders. Very nice! I never noticed this as much in the Beta. | use the experienced Cpy and Batllaion HW units to backup the platoon commands of the less experienced Green units. It definitely seems to have an effect keeping those units in line. p.

In my case with the Sherman it happened all the way near the beginning of the scenario. There really wasn't anything threatening that had LOS except maybe the 75AT bunker very momentarily. It was the second tank in a column of 2 and I gave them both orders to fast-advance maybe 50m or so down the road. The first tank executed the instruction properly, but the 2nd one changed it's orders immediately at the beginning of the playback turned around and reversed uphill (I forget the hill number of that big cliff overhanging Plomville) and into LOS of the enemy. Really weird. It wasn't a game wrecking move or anything - I got him right back on course in the next turn and he survived and performed with distinction. I remember someone mentionned this with the early beta demo but I never saw it happen there, but it rang a bell when I saw it in VofT. Steve & Charles - is this rare enough that we should hang on to save games to pass on??? p.

Hi Steve and Charles, I've seen the same thing but from the American side with one of my Shermans. In my case, it looked like the tank was reacting evasively but towards freindly units. I had some zooks and engineer and flamethrower squads in the vicinity. I wonder if there were any shrecks around the Tiger in Scott's case. Definitely smells like a small programming glich that got through and not really a Tac AI "blunder". p.

Not quite an AAR, but a summary of my first attempt as the US in Valley of Trouble. I was really terrified going into this one after I saw the description and the horrible complexity of the terrain, but the American artillery proved to be totally devastating and it turned into an 80-20 romp. Basically, I kept the default setup. I worked my way very slowly down the road on the right - infantry on both sides of the road, the two Shermans never moving past where they infantry have scouted. It took ages to move 100 yards, but I never lost a tank to an AT gun or mines which I knew were probably on the road near the town. On the left flank - again a very cautious advance down into the valley leading to Blumville - keeping pace with the advances on the right. I wanted all my infantry to arrive at more or less the same time to make a concerted assualt on what I thought would be a very heavily defended village. Dealing with the pillboxes and bunkers turned out not to be so difficult after all and I think it was the key to the entire scenario. Basically, I allowed the fortifications to show themselves while making sure I wasn't giving them too many juicy targets first and then using the artillery and mortars in teams of 2 to apply smoke and explosives until I was sure they were neutralized. The 105 is particularly nasty and it was amazing to look at the carnage they wrought by flying over the sites when the game was over. I got a lucky gun hit on the Tiger almost immediately after he showed - but at that point I had 5 Shermans with a bead on him from different angles so he wasn't going to do very much. It wound up being an easy victory without too much heavy fighting, we entered a deserted and quiet Blumville on turn 30 - but it could have been a totally different story had the artillery not been so effective - definitely worth a replay to see if I was just lucky. p.

What can I say? Runs smooth as silk. The action is somehow much more intense than the Beta and the graphics are gorgeous. Nice job guys!

Free print? What free print? Surely this gift will be extended to BTS' friendly neighbors to the north??? p.

Hi Apocalypse, It sounds like you don't know about the Battlefront Manifesto yet. Go to the top of he battlefront web-site and there's a link to a great letter that explains how they work and why. To make a long story short CM is only available via direct order from Battlefront - so you probably won't see it any stores. p.

Hi Thomm, Just my guess, I'm not a beta tester or anything - that would triple at least the size of the information that has to be carried through the game for this sort of thing. Also, to have more casualty markers means having to spawn dead units. Right now, nothing gets spawned - I imagine that the unit just gets marked as killed when it's finished off and gets a different bitmap in it's final resting place. Quick and simple. It sounds like they wanted to do _something_ to deal with causualty tracking but they also wanted to keep the impact to a minimum, hence the one-shot casualty marker. What you're asking for would be nice though. p.

> be the best wargame ever why not build on > that statement with a tv commercial or > something Sad but true - small companies can rarely afford anything but the smallest amount of mass-market advertising. I wrote a small hockey game about 5 years ago and almost had a heart-attack when I found out how much the big magazines charged for space (something like 7000$ for the smallest miniscule square on the least visited page). Word of mouth (big mouths! ) is still the best! The game's coming out in about 2-3 weeks Apocalypse.

> Yes it does, as well as falling snow. This game is sick... I love it. p.

That was a great speech. I'm not a marine or former marine or even american, but was very touched by his passion and honesty and courage in maiing those comments. Thanks for posting. p.

I think it's pretty tasteless to even mention piracy or warez-sites on this board in view of all the hard-work these guys have done. IMHO, the best defense against piracy is to write a game that requires intelligence to play, thereby taking the pirates out of the loop through natural selection. p.

Hi Michael, You can try sending the files zipped up instead of straight. Some people have trouble receiving the file properly if it's embedded in an e-mail as text. Just another possibility to check out. Also before you send the file, check the exact length and mention it to your opponent. That way he can tell if his file got mangled a little in transmission. I find a lot of times when a file fails to load, the size that was received is different than the size of file sent. Hope this sort of helps. p.

A fun way to vent your frustrations perhaps would be to call down a strike on Lt Himmelweit. And I bet it comes in right on target and within 30 seconds!

Congratulations to Griffin who also just won against me in his first PBEM game. Not bad for a self-proclaimed CM virgin! Rematch? Weird, I lost at a computer game, but I had a blast. Doesn't happen too often with too many games. p.

Do you guys program??? Do you have any idea how long it takes to build up a gaming engine from scratch and how much work is involved??? What BTS, Firaxis and others are doing by going indie and taking decisions into their own hands instead of catering to bean-counters is probably the best thing to happen to the software industry in the last 10 years. CM1 might take a while to bring to market, but I imagine CM2 and future will be easier and faster because they will be building on a stable foundation instead of something that was rushed out the door and half-baked. p.

> I don't want to repeat but in CE, German > STuGs somehow are no match to US Shermans. Hi Griff, Don't expose them too much and they can kick butt. I had a Stug wipe out 2 Shermans with 2 shots in CE and I don't even think the US player knew where they came from. p.

Nope! You can't damage him at all!!! Keep trying though. HAHAHAHAHA! Another similar question, can the Stug rip that flimsy building that the annoying 50mm MG is hiding in to smithereens??? Grif isn't desperate at all - in fact he's probably going to win the game handily so don't feel sorry for him. p.

I was just thinking the other night how much fun Gettysburg would be to do in CM. I'll probably wind up doing it with WWII units eventually. p.

I am dying to try one of the campaigns - probably something from Market Garden or Goodwood, but it's hard to say because NO-ONE'S TELLING US WHAT'S GOING TO BE IN THE THING!!!! Sorry about that. Had to get it out of my system. p.

> Press Print Screen key - open MS Paint > (comes with windows) - paste as new image > save as 24 bit bmp. Then get a jpegger to > convert if required, easy! Hey CCJ, I don't think this works if you're using a 3d card??? Or is it just me? p.

> Them yankee Cajuns make some good beer. Hey Bullet, I never heard of Quebecers being referred to as "yankee cajuns" before. I kind of like it. Should be our license plate slogan. p.

At least there haven't been any fights for a while! 10 cool points for everyone this week. p.

Hey Snark, You may want to keep that Tiger as far away from the Cats as possible - in Last Defense for example, one idea that works fairly well is to keep him on top of the hill at as extreme distance as you can manage - you'll see the cat shots (if you're lucky) just bounce off one after the other. Slightly larger maps in the actual game will make the proper strategy easier to judge - the small demo scenarios pretty much force the Tigers to be more vulnerable than they should be. p.

LAW, Give the demo a test-drive, you won't regret it.