guachi

Fionn, I understood you fine. (That is, if you were referring to me) I was just saying that logistically it would be easier to do a smaller scale battle. Like a regiment sized with each player controlling a battalion or company. Or battalion sized battle with each player controlling a company. I think it would be incredibly fun to play a corps against a corps. I even think it would not be too difficult to get enough dedicated players to do it. But as someone who has never done anything like this before, I would probably be overwhelmed by the complexity. I just finished my first ever PBEM game of any kind and I've done TCP/IP play with one game (Entrepreneur). So I might need to play in the kiddie pool, so to speak, before I jumped in the deep end. If the people on this board and those I am playing PBEM games wiht are the kind people that would be involve in a game like this, I have no doubt it will be tremendously fun and a great learning experience. Jason

I think I read somewhere that BTS is coming out with a scenario entitled "Over the River and Through the Woods: An Assault on Grandma's House" in honor of the great holiday song. I hear that there are some great horse and sleigh graphics and the TacAI for the horse is pretty good. Jason

I'd be up for something smaller than a division sized battle. I wouldn't mind playing a regiment/brigade/battalion sized battle where each player controls a battalion or company. The company-sized battles in the demo are plenty big enough for me. It probably wouldn't take more than 20 people to run a regiment-sized battle. In any case, I have lots of free time outside of work. I would be happy to volunteer my time to doing this when the full game is released. Jason

I grabbed a reference book off my shelf and I'll pass along what it has. T-28 had a short-barreled 76mm gun on earlier versions and a long-barreled on later versions. MGs were mounted in two turrets mounted forward of the main turret. Armor ranged from 20-80mm on the various models. The tanks were of little combat value mostly being used against the Finns. The T-35 was a huge tank with a crew of 11. Check out these dimensions - 9.72 m long, 3.2 m wide, and 3.43 m high. It had five turrets with a 76.2mm gun in the main turret and two of the smaller turrets had 37mm or 45mm guns. I think the other two turrets had MGs. Armor ranged from 10-30mm. Hawk is correct when he says its only achievement was looking good in parades. All of the T-35s served in one tank brigade stationed near Moscow and were featured regularly in Red Square parades. I can imagine that a T-35 would look impressive in a parade. The tank had five turrets, none of which were effective against tanks and it had armor so thin that even the weakest German AT gun could penetrate it. Plus, it was so big and slow that it would be hard to miss it. Jason Jason

My PBEM game as the Americans is about over and I will more than likely win. And I won by being a complete coward. I don't think I put a tank within 150m of any German units. One tank was destroyed on turn one by the 88 and another was immobilized several turns later. I sent one platoon up the middle through the trees on either side of the road and sat it there. I sent one platoon wide left (American left) and parked them in some woods. I sent another platoon wide right with orders to come up from behind the hill. The last platoon was held back in reserve. Two tanks on the left and two on the right. The two on the left were the ones destroyed and immobilized. The objective was to flush out enemy units and destroy them piecemeal. Also I wanted to extend the German defense as much as possible and force him to redeploy. By doing so, I also hoped to spot the units that moved. If you look at the map, all the objectives but one are in the rear of the town. Why bother fighting all the way through the town? I intended to flank the town and enter from the sides. I used my Shermans to systematically reduce the town. The wooden buildings in the first row went first because they blocked LOS to the stone buildings in the rear of town. I took out the 88 in town with a Sherman. The other was spotted by my reserve platoon with the 105mm spotter attached to it and I called arty fire down on the 88. One of my units (I don't know which) saw some movement on my left which helped me pinpoint one German platoon. I marched the reserve platoon over to help the platoon already on the left wipe the Germans out. After the 88 was destroyed and the mortar was out of ammo, I assaulted with the two platoons on the left and wiped out the German platoon and started to march towards the town. I sent the platoon on the right (which had been shot up a bit by a MG and the 88 in town) down the hill and was going to move towards the wooden buildings near the wheatfield. After a few turns I withdrew a Sherman to follow the platoon for support. I saw ever so briefly a couple of German units move form the buildings to the woods. I had no intention of going through the woods but instead I was going to swing way wide and attack the two story stone objective building using the wooden buildings by the wheatfield as a jumping off point. In any event, I stopped and backtracked to attack the platoon. I lost my HQ and over half the platoon is casualties, but I took out the German platoon. The platoon in the middle and the reserve platoon that arrives aroun turn 10 assaulted from the front and are doing final mop up on the remaining Germans. It was Turn 23 before I had even set foot inside the town. Lessons learned: Don't put mortars on tanks. They'll abandon their weapon if they come under fire. Support fire from the Shermans is incredibly powerful. It enabled me to stand off and pound the German defenses. I had my Shermans firing almost continuously and they will still have HE shells when the game is over. Spotting is crucial. I had very minimal visual contact with the Germans. But all it took was seeing a squad or two for a few seconds to pinpoint the location of the enemy. Combat at <100m is over quickly. One German platoon was wiped out in about a minute. The other lasted about 3. German squads are very fragile. I was quite stunned at how fast the German units disintegrated. Their experience was probably a large factor. Green units suck. A green squad of mine took one casualty from either an 88 or a mortar and promptly panicked. A veteran squad ran right into an unseen German squad, saw its HQ vanish, lost 9 guys in one minute and managed to rally itself by the end of the next turn. Coordinating units is not easy. It took me forever to get my attack going because I couldn't get all of my units where I wanted them soon enough. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-12-99).]

>I'd like to hear opinions on what aspects of >CM took the most getting used to, mainly >from a gameplay point-of-view. >For example: >• Did anyone have trouble learning to >navigate the battlefield using the camera >views? Learning how to do this quickly? This took one complete game to get used to. Figuring out which view I like best. >• What about calulating/juding line of >sight? Still not easy for me. But playing a PBEM against a human opponent forced me to concentrate more on positioning my units exactly where I wanted. > Interpreting the unit figures, especially >infantry? Not difficult. The AAR between Fionn and Martin had me prepared for what I was going to see. >• Interpreting terrain - eg distinguishing >between different types of woods? Woods are still a pain. I just end up memorizing where the woods and heavy woods are. >• Giving orders? Giving orders - easy Giving the right orders - not so easy >• Understanding how the command and control >system works? If so, which aspects: range to >leader, impact on delays, or whatever? Again, the AAR of Fionn's and Martin's battle was a huge help in knowing what to expect from my units. >• Getting used to units doing their own >targetting? Sometimes a pain. But 90% of the time I find it a benefit. I target some units to fire at an enemy squad. After they shoot it up for 30 seconds, cause some casualties, and force it to hit the dirt, I'm glad when they switch tragets and shoot at something that is actually firing back. >• And anything else. >In short, what are the areas that you think >might be helpful to explain to someone new >to CM? -The game structure i.e. give orders, simultaneous turn execution. -The 3D nature of the game -Game scale -Giving orders (Time delay) -Unit self preservation and partial autonomy -FOW and having to use limited audio/visual clues to figure things out. -Explain to them how incredibly cool CM is!! Jason

After reading Steve's post I did a search on the word 'hypersnap' and got the thread where Hawk's problem is discussed. It is in the aptly titled 'Screenshots' topic. Jason

I think some other people were having this problem, too. I don't recall what the solution (if any) was. You might try using the "search" function and see what that brings up. If you are using PSPro 5 you can always try using the screen capture function. I used that at first with PSPro 4. It was a bit of a hassle, but it worked reasonably well. You mentioned that you tried using PSPro 5 but it didn't work. What wasn't working? Just curious. Jason

I had my 'unlearning' about artillery happen in my very first game. Two halftracks taken out by dinky little 60mm mortars. I had revenge later when my 81mm nmortar and 105mm arty took out a few buildings and squads. Regarding buildings. I had two Shermans pump about 5 or 6 minutes (maybe more) of HE shells into the two stone Victory Locations in Riesberg before they collapsed. I don't think command wanted me to take a rubbled building, but the Marshall Plan will just rebuild it anyway. I didn't see any survivors. But, then again, I don't know for sure if there was anybody in there. Unless my opponent tells me, I'll never know. Jason ( [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-11-99).]

Wait a minute.... I just noticed the title of this topic. Who would want to fire at my Aunt Sherma? Or even a whole bunch of Aunt Shermas? My Aunt Sherma can't move very fast anyway. Plugging her with a Panzerfaust should be easy. Jason (No, I don't really have an Aunt Sherma)

What was the muzzle velocity on a PF100? Something like 50 m/s? At max speed a Sherman can move about 15 m/s. At a range of 75m it's going to take 1.5 seconds for the shell to reach the tank. In 1.5 seconds the Sherman has moved 22.5 m. Talk about leading the target! The analogy might not be quite accurate, but it reminds me of a quarterback throwing a deep pass to a wide receiver running full speed down the field. Possible for the highly trained but probably damned near impossible for the untrained. If I only had one PF, I don;t think I'd fire either. Any tank moving that fast probably isn't a threat to me anyway. (Unless it is moving straight at me, that is ) Jason

Multiple post deleted. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-11-99).]

I don't have exact numbers handy on weight of HMGs but here are some estimates: MG42 approx. 11 Kg tripod 20 kg plus weight of extra barrel and ammunition M2 .50 cal total weight is about 38 kg plus weight of extras Jason

I've got a K6-2 350, 64MB RAM, and an 8MB Matrox G200. Video is fine unless I pan quickly and then it gets jumpy. The real sweet part of CM is the sound on my SB Live with a great set of speakers (In my case that is Midiland S2/100s in the front and S2/40s in the rear) Park the camera in the middle of a battle and I can hear gun fire all around. Tracers really sound like they are whizzing overhead. Jason

ARRRGGGHHH!! I put the words "Print Screen" in between "<" and ">" to set it apart from the rest of the sentence. Little did I know that it would not show up. I did the same with the "Escape" key. Step two is hit "Print Screen" Step three is hit "Escape" That should clear things up. Jason

I always have my spotters target while they are hiding. It's jsut that they already have to be hiding before issuing the targeting order. Once they are targeting, they can't be set to hide. Don't know why. Waht I do find irritating is that the time to artillery arrival is wrong. I find that it takes twice as long as the estimated time of arrival for artillery to actually arrive. This isn't just guessing either. When there was under a minute left, I carefully watched the clock and the time to arrival on the FO. Jason

Pretty simple to get screenshots. Fionn mentioned in another thread how to do it. 1: Get the camera positioned on a shot you like. During the replay, this may require lots of pausing. 2: Hit the <Print Screen> key. 3: Hit <Esc> to minimize Combat Mission 4:Start up PaintShop Pro 5 (Or you favorite picture editing program) 5: Click the Edit button 6: Click Paste As New Image I use PS Pro 4 so I'm guessing that steps 5&6 will be the same for you. For others, hitting Print Screen sends the image to the clipboard, so whatever brings data off of the clipboard should work. It's really easy to do. I did up an entire AAR. Got some cool screenshots, too. Jason

I should add that the Tiger didn't fire at anything for a few minutes. Guess it took the Tiger a few minutes to get up the nerve to engage anything. Jason

Talk about being cautious. I'm playing Riesberg as the Americans for the first time and doing it in a PBEM game. It's turn 16 and I've done nothing in particular except take out both 88s. Haven't even taken an objective yet. I'm probably boring my opponent to tears. Jason

Cam 1 (trench-cam) is great in playback for the 'coolness' effect and good for finetuning movement orders and eyeballing LOS from various points on the map. Cam 4 (jabo cam) is great for plotting a section of the battlefield and getting a good 3D view. 2 & 3 get used occasionally for close-up work and where trench-cam doesn't work because of intervening things like walls or trees. view 7 (Goodyear-cam) is a great overview level and encompasses most if the smaller maps. Sometimes I'll use an oddball view like level 5 zoomed in x4. Playing Riesberg, I've had several instances to use this. Scanning houses with my tanks to check precisely where they could spot to and targeting the best spot for area fire. Also used it to put area fire close to the 88 in town. It was *just* out of LOS and I used the close in level 5 zoom to inch the target line to within 3 meters of the 88. By the time the full game is released, I hope we will all be old hats at using the various views, zooms, and unit sizes to their best advantage. Jason [This message has been edited by guachi (edited 11-09-99).]

If you're relly mean, you can name all of the enemy units after ex-girlfriends. Jason

You know you're addicted when ... you check your e-mail every 30 minutes to see if another PBEM turn has been sent. ... you get a dedicated phone line for the internet just for PBEM games of CM. ... you look at photographs and wonder what view level they were taken from. ... you try to figure out the experience level of your dog by how timing how long it takes to obey your orders. Jason gotta go I just checked my e-mail and I have a new turn

Although, strange as it may seem, the discussion of CM on war-historical is a veritable lovefest. Fionn and others deserve a lot of credit for answering bunches of questions in the absence of an official presence. Jason

I second the request for a web site or some other way to get a catalog. It will help me add to my Christmas list. I've already asked for a bunch of books and some Ultimate Soldier WWII 12" dolls. Can't hurt to add more stuff that people probably won't buy for me. Jason

I want to create a map of my town and have places like my house be an objective. And it's a good thing that cliffs can be modeled because the entire northern border of my city is cliffs about 30m or so high. Jason