Peterk

Hey Captain, Welcome back. You got lot's of good advice about smoking and getting gas in Quebec but not much about programming so.... Actually Eridani was pretty much right on with his joke answer written in code. 1. Get a C++ compiler for Mac 2. Learn C++ 3. Learn OpenGL 4. Practice practice practice. 5. Start game, start simple 6. Prepare to throw about 6 years of your life away. I wrote a little hockey game a few years ago and it took something like 3000 hours. The good news is if you get this far, you'd probably be qualified to get a decent job in the software industry somewhere regardless of what you decide to study in school. p.

The best that I've seen: Carriers At War - SSG/ short-quick carrier engagements, no real long-campaigns Pacific War - SSI/ the whole bloody war in pretty high detail. I could never get into this one. The interface is _really_ clumsy IMHO. Don't laugh, the absolute best carrier game I ever played is an ancient thing by Gary Grigsby called Guadalcanal Campaign on Apple II+. This one is actually available for free in PC version somehwhere. Drop me an e-mail if you're interested and I'll hunt down the site. It's text only - graphics are non-existant - but it's the only game that really immersed me and made me feel that I was commanding a Pacific Fleet. p.

CM24 = The Great Escape Tunnel, forge and stooge your way out of a POW camp and across the Swiss border. Ships with Colditz and Stalag Luft 3 campaigns. Actually, it's a pity no-one's ever managed to turn some of those great escape yarns into a decent game.

...jammed inside an artillery shell.

> Humm, S Bakker, good post! > Peterk, hehe, better watch out.... The advice is much too late to save you Griffin. p.

-20 cool points. Warm up the truck.

Jeeez. Couldn't you have posted this stuff BEFORE I set-up my forces for my first Reisberg game. And it's PBEM too - I'm in the process of getting drilled badly. I always tend to think "I'll set them up forward, see how it goes, and if it's too hot, I'll pull everyone back to the next set of buildings". It's amazing how often this backfires on me. Moving around too much on the defense is definitely something to be avoided. S.Bakker - +10 cool points for taking the time to post a relevant and interesting strategy article.

Definitely negative cool points for this request? p.

> I recently played the Last Defense as the > Americans where my opponents both drove > their H/Ts with great speed right down the Someone just tried this against me and it ended the German attack pretty quickly so it can definitely be defended against if you have 4 MGs that can open fire on that section of road. It's an all or nothing strategy and I think he Germans are better off going with something more careful since the time-limit is very generous.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Please, more tactics articles!!! p.

Sounds like he's using Final Defensive Fire and Final Protective Fire? p.

> working on that member status.. > must... ke..ep.. p..ost..ing... That's pathetic! Hey Rob, Why not some PBEM now on the demo??? p.

Ask your opponent to zip up his game file for you and that way you can avoid the problem of the save game file being treated as straight text by some e-mail systems. p.

CM (due to it's FOW) looks like it will be the perfect game to put that to the test! Has anyone gone through a game of CM yet without having the horrible feeling that everything was going wrong and that the win was out of reach? p.

I sometimes use those guys to garrison victory locations far behind the front-lines to get rid of the "?" flag. But apart from that....

Anyone wanna bet that the Captain will end up getting a leader in the game named for himself? He's been behaving himself lately so lighten up. And I know that I never have to ask the impatient "WHEN'S THE GAME COMING OUT?" question, 'cause he'll do it for me (...and get creamed instead of me ) p.

> BTS-Steve - no need to get frustrated! I think that people trying to coerce CM into being something it was never meant to be is a perfect reason for the programmers to get a little frustrated. Steve and Charles are in charge of the thing and I think it's pretty obvious by now that they really don't want to do a RT game. p.

I've been wondering about this too actually. To rephrase part of Krille's question, does anyone know if a unit's powers of observation suffers if given the Hide order. Is there a greater chance of not sighting an enemy or of misidentifying a enemy if a unit has a Hide order?

...and I just finished a book about Stalingrad and I live in Canada. Is the whole world going Stalingrad crazy???? Must have something to do with it being winter. p.

> Words. Sentences. And stuff. No pictures? p.

Hey Manta, Keep in mind that your Tiger can knock out any of the British US stuff at even 2km (I hope I have that right), while they only have a hope of being effective at much closer range. I have a feeling that in the final release of the game, there will be scenarios with slightly bigger maps that will let you take advantage of the extended range advantage a bit more. Smoking the cats and/or keeping your Tiger at maximum range on that hilltop and not moving into town are pretty good strats for keeping said Tiger alive. p.

I'm having more fun with the demo and those 3 scenarios than I have with many, many full-fledged products that I paid big bucks for. Big Time Software is a class act all the way and I can't wait to see the fireworks erupt in the wargaming community when the game comes out. Great work guys! p.

I try to call down artillery strikes on some of the e-mails I get from customers at work. p.

Well, I finally won, but it wasn't pretty. I stuck everything over on the left hand side and worked my way slowly and methodically through to the center of town and then held against a poorly executed counterattack. Maikeathome, The suicide loaded halftracks tactic is definitely a lot of fun and I just tried it as well. But in my case I got a mortar spotter, a HQ and a squad and a half blasted to bits upon arrival in the city center. The squad and a half that survived scrambled into unnoccupied buildings and I thought that I could really use those positions to wreak some havok in the yanks' backcourt. No luck, they surrendered within a minute - but I had the satisfaction of liberating them later on. Thanks to all for the replies. p.

Hi guys, I am really having trouble with this one. I've tried all kinds of different approaches and have yet to produce an attack that works like a charm. Any ideas on basic strats? I have a feeling that attacking on a broad front with only the 3 platoons isn't really a great idea so it comes down to massing everyone either on the left or on the right side, and I'm pretty much failing with both. Do the Germans have any chance of winning this thing if they lose all 3 AFVs without taking out a hellcat? Those bloody reinforcements are a royal pain in the butt! I like to use my Tiger for close support in the first 10 turns, but the second the M-10s show up they get lots of free shots because my armor is preoccupied and get surprised a bit. And the alternative is keeping them back on the hill at 1000m where they don't do very much of anything for the first third of the scenario. The next time I play I'm going to smoke up the entire Yank hilltop so the cats don't get any shots when they show. Cheating, yes, but I'm frustrated and depserate. Argh!