guachi

What about Auchenleck, umm, however you spell it. That British guy before Montgomery in North Africa, right? I'm not saying he's bad. I can't even spell his name. I was just wondering how he might rate. Jason

They were used to carry Girl Scouts and their cookies to troops. Hence why they were called 'Scout' cars. Jason

I think this ranks as the most asked for feature that has yet to be implemented. The only way around is to play PBEM, save all the turns, and get your opponents password. Quite useful for seeing the effects of your strategy. Jason

Is there a seek hull down command in CMBO? I don't think there is, but CMBB and CMAK have one. Otherwise you have to do it manually. Go to level one by hitting, not surprisingly, the number one. Then you have to manually zoom around the map attempting to find a spot that might, conceivably, be hull-down to some other spot on the map. You can check to see if you have achieved hull-down status by using the LOS tool 'L' and zooming around the map. In CMBB and CMAK you just use the 'D' key and plot a move just like any other move. Jason

I was struck by a section in "Achtung Panzer". In some chapter, Guderain lists the automotive production capacity of several major countries (Germany, Russia, Britain, America, etc) The Americans dominate and Germany's capacity sucks. I can't remember when "Achtung Panzer" was written, but Germany's capacity couldn't have increased that much by the time the war started. It seems clear (in hindsight, of course) that Germany needed to shift to full-time vehicle production if they wanted to stand a chance. Or they would get buried, at a minimum, under tons American equipment assuming America built equipment for Germany's foes (which they did) or entered the war and built stuff for themselves (which they did). Jason

Use 240mm or 8in. guns for the Americans or 6 inch or 7.2 inch guns for the British, I guess. How big would cruiser or destroyer guns have been? Jason

I was going to ask you to a CM scenario so I clicked on the email button. Then I saw your e-mail address and I realized I WAS playing a PBEM game against you. Jason

Somewhere, in the depths of the archives, is the ORGINAL Peng rant against graemlins. Once upon a time, the BFC board didn't allow graemlins, and when we got them, we went nuts. And so did Peng. His rant is truly a classic. Jason

Here is a simple strategy. Don't give up. I haven't played CM in a long time. Never played CMBB against a human and only played 6 or so games total. Picked up CMAK in March and am now playing 6 or 7 PBEM games. I've had some rather unusual turns of luck in my games. ME QB, 1500 pts, Italy. I set weather to random. I buy a platoon of M4A1 tanks. I discover it is raining and windy. My Shermans can't move worth a damn. Within a few minutes four Shermans are burning from 3 StuGs. My opponent gets to the two flags before I do. A Panther appears. I see fire from on-board guns. A few halftracks appear. I have 1 cowering Sherman and no opposing armor anywhere near my bazookas. Then my luck turns. I KO (I think) a gun at the far edge of the map as one of my 60mm mortars runs out of ammo. I KO a halftrack with another 60mm mortar. I maneuver an 81mm mortar and area fire another gun and KO it. I realize that if the Panther moves a few meters forward, my Sherman will be able to spot it from across the map. The Panther moves forward, my Sherman swings its fast turret around. As I'm watch the movie I can't understand what the Panther is doing. It has no reason to move. It dominates the left side of the map while the StuGs dominate the right. I don't know why the Panther doesn't have a cover arc towards my Sherman so its turret is facing the right direction. The Panther's one Achilles heel, turret speed, does him in. I get three shots off and get the Panther before its turret even finishes swiveling towards me. I get another mortar into range of the remaining gun. Area fire destroys it. I sneak bazookas towards the three StuGs in a line, but they are at extreme range. My opponent moves his StuGs closer. At 150m I open up. My luck has now turned as 17 bazooka shots later I have no hits to show for it. I was all set to give up after I had four burning Shermans. But, not taking flags into account, the score is now 33% me to 43% him. Don't give up. If you do, you'll never learn anything. Jason

Ahh, I see. Loading the mod as opposed to installing the mod. That was where I was confused. I was thinking that you already COULD see the difference between the mods you had loaded or not. But that I was really thinking about seeing the difference between the INSTALLED mods and uninstalled ones. Jason

Copy the NA bmps over the corresponding Italian counterparts. Voila! A bit of North Africa in Italy. Jason

That makes sense. I would have considered it a bug if discounts did apply. Jason

Something I always wondered, are VPs calculated differently depending on what level the unit was purchased at? A squad purchased in battalion formation costs less than one purchased in platoon formation. But does it give less victory points? Jason

I knew, back in Sept 99 that CM could be something special. What with all the simultaneous complaining/complimenting going on at this board. Plus the fact that Steve was posting all the time in his then never ceasing quest at marketing CM. Jason

No TCP/IP games ever. Jason

I've got four e-mail games going just by searching the opponents forum for people that post or reply to 'PBEM wanted" threads. And I haven't played CM PBEM for several years (jsut a few games vs AI in CMBB) after I stopped playing CMBO. I just e-mailed my very first opponent and we have a VERY entertaining game going. Just today I e-mailed some other forumites about games. Starting a PBEM reminds me of being 7 again and seeing somebody playing with toys (WWII toys, naturally). A 7 year-old will just walk up to the kid and ask to start playing. That's all you need to do. Jason

I like it. A nice, simple mod. It adds to the mod rather than being a full-blown change. Jason

Sure. The penetration isn't any different between single and burst. Better burst FP, better to hit. The 20mm ATR is very similar performance-wise to the 20mm cannon. I just did a quick scan and the 20mm looks like it could take out almost anything listed in the 'vehicle' section. Plus a few of the light British tanks at the right angle and range (Crusaders, the MkVI) Jason

How does this differ from what happens now. I just downloaded and used McMMM and like it a lot. Will this make things better? Jason

Was this lack of increase only for squads? While playing the beta demo scenario of Riesberg, I had a German MG42 HMG unit expend some insane amount of ammo points at about 40m - like 35-40 points in 60 seconds. We calculated that he would have been swimming in cartridges by the time he was done. Jason

LOS calculations take lots of horsepower. Lots of units moving doesn't help, either. As far as I know, turn calculation is CPU dependent. Perhaps very math involved, which may give an advantage to AMD CPUs (I think they have better FPU capabilities) Examples - Eritrean PBEM scenario shipped with game. French v Italians. Small map, 2 tankettes, bunches of infantry. Biggest file - 365K 1500 pt QB, 5-6 vehicles per side, limited contact so far. Biggest file 560K Spaghetti Western, small ME, on disk scenario - 6+ behicles per side, small map,reasonable amount of action. Biggest file 755K Attack on Niebawa Fort PBEM - bunches of armor, medium map, LOTS of action. Biggest file about 1700K. None of these turns took more than 30 seconds to generate. Now, on my old AMD K6-2-350MHz a HUGE point battle involving bunches of tanks on open terrain (I was testing stuff) took about 45 minutes to compute a turn. Jason

In this case, likely yes. If I remember correctly, a unit can, at extreme ranges, use partial ammo points indicating only the LMG is firing. You can do this manually as well by dividing up a squad. Then just fire the half with the LMG (or two). Read the manual for the drawbacks of doing such. Jason

I said: After looking at things more, it looks like there ARE different BMPs for various theaters and time periods. I've been playing around with MCMMM available from CMMODS website. Nice and easy to use. Jason

Thanks for all the effort. I fiddled around with CMMOS way back in 2001 and am downloading 4.05a now and will give it a try. Jason

Are you interested in history or books on equipment? For equipment, I have two good books on German stuff. 'German Tanks of WWII" by Chamberlain and Doyle and "German Infantry Weapons of WWII" by some other British guy. I can't think of a good book off the top of my head for British stuff. But there are always bunches of websites. I found "Achtung Panzer" an interesting historical read. My father, and I don't know how he found this at amazon, bought me "Mit Rommel in der Wüste : Kampf u. Untergang d. Dt. Afrika-Korps 1941-1943 by Volkmar Kühn" Only the version he bought me was in English, not German. Quite interesting to read somthing published originally in German. Don't have the book with me at the moment so I can't comment specifically. For first person perspective, my favorite book is "Company Commander". Not about Africa or Italy, but good nonetheless. I think a good way not to get overloaded with mods is pick one scenario, then download mods of terrain, infantry, vehicles that go with that scenario. Get a mod manager of some kind (see CMMODS for example) so you can remove them. And then compare. Little by little, you will find the mods that you like. I just downloaded almost everything from CMMODS yesterday in between PBEM games. So today I am going to start rummaging through what I got. For some things, there is only one mod that is suitable. For example, if you are playing a desert scenario, there is, as far as I know, only one set of 'dusty' mods for vehicles - the mods by gautrek. So after playing a desert scenario you just use the mod manager to swap out the dusty ones for regular ones. Winter mods, on the other hand, don't need to be swapped out with regular mods. Battlefront has been kind enough to add empty bmp 'slots' that can be filled with winter mods. If the winter mods aren't there, it goes to the default ones. It would have been really cool if they had added that feature for all the different theaters in CMAK. Start small and replay the same scenario over again to see how the different tactics work. For those of us who have been following the game for a long time, all we had to play was the demo. So we got to practice and practice with a small sample of the game. The AI is pretty decent on defense and you could play endless Quick Battles versus the AI that way. I've found that on a small map and with a decent force (like one that you've picked) the AI can be a good attacker as well. Then dip your feet in the PBEM pool. People do things, fo course, that no computer ever would. [edited because I can't spell] Jason