John Kettler

Short answer--yes. There is plenty of footage showing far less impressive vehicles (early Mk IV, for example) driving right through walls far stouter than brick. I should point out that the turret is reversed when doing this and that unless proper reconnaissance is done ahead of time, there is a real possibility of crashing through the floor if there's a basement. Regards, John Kettler

killmore, "C" is hollow charge, NOT regular AP shot, which is your primary antitank projectile. Regards, John Kettler

Calvin, Contrary to your opinion, CM has already been pirated. Sales figures are BTS proprietary info. Regards, John Kettler

Calvin, Welcome aboard! That said, the Search function is your friend, giving you access to some 70,000 posts. And believe me, artillery effectiveness was, is, and remains a hot topic. Now, having pointed you on the path of search righteousness, I will give you an overview response. First of all, buttoning a tank does more than just causing the hatches to be closed. It greatly reduces the tank's ability to both acquire and engage targets and cuts the effective rate of fire. By way of confirmation, the U.S. Army officially considers a buttoned tank to be only half as effective as an unbuttoned one. Second, there is a small but nonetheless real possibility that whatever buttons the tank may injure the tank commander, potentially putting the crew into shock. Okay, that's buttoning. Let's talk about 105mm fire. It can: *immobilize the tank if it lands close enough, either via blast effects on the trackwork or through fragmentation damage to tracks and running gear *render the main gun and coax MG useless; this has happened to me in the far better protected Panther; might jam the turret *temporarily stun the crew through concussive effects from a direct hit *knock out the engine, either immobilizing the tank or immobilizing it and setting it afire; engine deck armor is thin, and there are lots of openings; I got a catastrophic kill with an 81mm mortar hit on a buttoned Stug III this way *a direct hit on the thin turret roof armor might penetrate; could conceivably blow in the vision blocks My suggestion? "Drop 200. Fire for effect!" Regards, John Kettler

KiwiJoe, There is another possibility. A good mortar crew can have something like seven rounds in the air before the first one hits. Maybe what you're seeing is the effect of all the already fired rounds continuing to arrive even after the ceasefire order is given. Regards, John Kettler

Jeff, Here's what "Seek, Strike and Destroy: U.S. Army Tank Destroyer Doctrine in World War II," Leavenworth Papers #12 by Dr. Christopher R. Gabel of the U.S. Army's Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas says on your topic (pp.57-58) concerning engaging Westwall (Siegfried Line) fortifications: "From a range of one thousand yards, ten rounds from a tank destroyer gun would penetrate a small pillbox or jam the shutters of a larger work and would often cause the pillbox crew to surrender. The penetrative effect was enhanced by aiming all four guns of a platoon at the same point and firing simultaneously. The 629th Tank Destroyer Battalion (M-10) discovered that the easiest way to reduce a pillbox was from the rear--where one three-inch round would blow in the entrance and one high-explosive round sent through the open doorway invariably induced the survivors to surrender." He then goes on to note that the 803rd Tank Destroyer Battalion assigned a platoon to each infantry assault battalion, provided that platoon with infantry radios and "engaged a pair of pillboxes at a time, with one M-10 firing at the embrasure of each pillbox, and with two M-10s standing by in an overwatch role. The three-inch rounds did not usually penetrate the fortifications, but they did prevent the enemy from manning his weapons, thus enabling the American infantry to reach the blind side of the fortifications." If you're wondering about the nastier 90mm M-36, the same monograph lists penetration as 4.5' of nonreinforced concrete, no range given, on pp. 53-54. The sources for all of the above items were period official field reports. I'd also suggest you take a look at what German 88s did to some of the French pillboxes in 1940. The pictures show shot groups measuring less than a foot apart, some even overlapped. The surface of these structures looked like that of the moon after being hit repeatedly, and the embrasures were barely recognizable as embrasures. That's all I have for now. Hope this provides some insight. Regards, John Kettler

Are there any? If so, how do I access them? If not, how are we supposed to know what these units did? In a recent Quick Battle, both my sharpshooter and the sole survivor of my 81mm mortar FO team were nowhere to be seen on the battlefield at game end, even as corpses at +4 magnification, but did show up as two exited personnel. Surely there must be some way to see what such units did, particularly since I know there are scenarios based on exiting units. Regards, John Kettler

Guys, Thank you one and all for the kudos! What can I say? I started writing and kept going until, hours later, I was done, then had to go back and put in a few things I forgot. I shall now attempt a coherent response to the issues you raised. I never said I was an engineer. I said I was the son of one. I was a Soviet Threat Analyst, a position in Operational Analysis devoted to researching, analyzing and forecasting Soviet/ Warsaw Pact military developments as they applied to various current and planned weapon programs. Anything from a sapper attack to an antisatellite weapon was within my brief, as were nonCommunist foreign weapons such as Roland and Exocet plus such annoyances as F-14s in Khomeini's hands. My job was threat characterization and definition, which in turn drove the overall weapon system design in a variety of ways. I was a generalist in a department full of specialists, many of them routinely needing detailed data to plug into their combat effectiveness models (Soviet SAMs vs. B-1B, Alpha strike vs. Soviet naval units, etc.) or information on how a particular system fit into the overall combat dynamics. I had piles of reports, target lists, orders of battle, and map layouts like you've never seen. I used to have an 8'x 8' 1:250,000 map mosaic of East Germany with no less than eight sets of classified overlays upon it. I didn't get to wargame, but I definitely had the raw materials. Madmatt, if you want to cut out the extraneous personal stuff and post the rest to your free Combat Mission support site, then do so with my blessings. I'd appreciate an appropriate byline, though, since it is my creative product. As for BTS, if Charles and Steve wish to use my post officially, then they should contact me directly.We could then discuss all sorts of things. Finally, I also cut my wargaming teeth on Avalon Hill's Tactics II, playing AH games exclusively for years until discovering SPI and those who followed. My best to all of you. Sincerely, John Kettler

Incredible!!! Talk about immersive! Have notified George Bradford at AFV News. Many thanks! John Kettler

I feel galled, and I bet I'm not the only one. My ambushes seldom work, let alone work well. All too often, the foe drives all around,but never touches, my ambush marker. Though frustrating, the reason for this is obvious: small ambush zone; big battlefield. I believe the ambush marker would be of much greater tactical utility and far greater realism were it to be implemented as a line running from the firing weapon to the ambush marker. Crossing that line would trigger the ambush, rather than crossing the current problematic small spot on the ground. This would prevent the militarily ridiculous situation of watching the foe drive right past the waiting ambush set, say, between two patches of woods, simply because he didn't happen to drive over the ambush marker. In the real world I'd have that approach enfiladed and when that tank crossed the opening Wham! I wouldn't be sitting there rotating on my finger while gnashing my teeth in frustration. If the gun is boresighted properly, it should hit anywhere along that axis of fire, not just those few square yards represented by the ambush marker. I don't know whether this is feasible from a coding aspect, but I sure hope so. I think it would be a substantial improvement for a defense already laboring under other restrictions not found in the real world. What do the rest of you think? Regards, John Kettler

Ben, The .50 cal MG was and is a potent weapon against light armor, but is best employed against sides, top and rear of the target. I have killed quite a few halftracks with it. German armored cars are an entirely different proposition, though. Their armor is over twice as thick and is hard to pierce. Mortars are indeed the bane of halftracks (big opening) and open turreted vehicles. 60mm mortars are great for creaming halftracks and their occupants with direct hits. Near misses tend to shred the tires and immobilize the vehicle.Part of their effectiveness comes from their high rate of fire. Engine decks are also somewhat vulnerable. Jump to 81mm and per shell lethality jumps dramatically. Damage radius increases from both more explosive and heavier fragments. I pounded the daylights out of an American assault last night in a Quick Battle with FO directed mortar salvo fire, killing two halftracks outright, jammming the road,buttoning the surviving armor, including a Sherman 105mm and chewed up squads so badly that the whole advance ceased for many turns. I have also killed a buttoned StuG III with an 81mm mortar. From what I could tell, it landed on the engine deck, blew up the engine, which then set the ammo ablaze. Kaboom! Hope this helps. John Kettler P.S. Formerly Babra, WW II destroyers weren't armored. Metal was quite thin, hence "tin can" nickname. Also, you're probably talking about one being strafed by a B-25 with at least eight .50 cals firing simultaneously in a harmonized (converged) pattern. Instant metallic Swiss cheese; even worse if ammo hit. [This message has been edited by John Kettler (edited 07-12-2000).]

(Long,detailed reply) Chickenhawk, To properly answer your question, let me try to give you some perspective on myself, so that you can then evaluate what I tell you about Combat Mission: Beyond Overlord. I am also one of those posters you expressed concern about. My Background I'm a dyed-in-the-wool wargamer, having gotten started in board wargaming in 1967 at age 12.I have wargamed with miniatures since at least 1975, playing TSR's Fast Rules and later Tractics, with many more systems to follow. I'm the son of a defense engineer with a deep interest in military history, got into military history, technology, theory and practice in childhood, and have devoured it ever since, with particular emphasis on WWII. I also spent over eleven years with Hughes and Rockwell as a professional military analyst on numerous major weapon programs ranging from the TOW missile to the military derivatives of the National AeroSpace Plane (NASP). My military computer gaming was initially done on an Amiga and didn't go well (SSI's Red Lightning), because I couldn't see what was happening on the 16 screens or whatever and got whomped. My next computer wargaming was on my friend's Mac playing CC2. I well remember how impressed I was watching a guy smaller than 1/285th scale belly crawling. CM vs CC2: A Rough Comparison Now, let me give you a rough comparison. Take CC2 as a wargaming experience and increase it by a minimum factor of ten. This is hyperconservative. Combat Mission is nothing less than a fundamental breakthrough in wargame design, a revolutionary synthesis of a multitude of individual developments into a stunning, engrossing, deeply immersive, wholly original creation. Combat Mission & Panzer Elite: Trailblazers Both But Not At All The Same The only thing out there comparable in creativity, ingenuity and immersiveness is Panzer Elite, a highly detailed armor sim, and the two are in no way equivalent. Combat Mission positions the player as overall battle force commander, but he is not directly participating in the battle, which can go as high as a reinforced battalion on a side. By contrast, in Panzer Elite you ARE the platoon leader and must not only fight your tank but direct your wingmen, coordinate with adjacent units, request fire support, etc. If you screw up or are simply unlucky, the last thing you see is a big explosion. With that said, let me now justify my claim vs.CC2. Combat Mission's Features For starters, the entire Combat Mission game except the trees, which are sprites (major CPU hit if 3-D), is in 3-D. That includes individual men who are equipped, dressed, move and behave quite realistically. Squads are depicted with three figures (again, CPU issue), but are tracked by the computer down to the individual man for casualties, morale, ammo state, etc. Troop quality ranges from raw conscripts to elite units. Movement is based on simultaneous mutual order issuance and execution, called WE GO, with the computer's calculating all pertinent interactions, then simultaneously executing the turn in the form of a 60-second movie, which can be endlessly replayed from any angle until the next turn is begun. This simultaneity eliminates all kinds of gaming dirty tricks which you may have learned to hate. AI is multilayered, running everything from choosing a battle plan to the behavior of a squad under fire.Though better on defense than the attack (less to compute), it is quite capable of thrashing you at even odds and can be tailored to increase or decrease its capabilities. Play is vs. AI, hotseat, LAN (I think) and PBEM. TCP/IP will come in a few months via free patch. Otherwise, the game release date would've been greatly extended. Smoke, depending on settings and system capability, is transparent or opaque, with white smoke for screening and oily pillared black smoke for vehicle kills. Explosions are frighteningly realistic and throw up all kinds of debris. House and building collapses throw up enormous expanding domes of dust. Fires can be started by artillery fire, handheld AT weapon backblast, recoilless weapons, or even flamethrowers. It's quite possible to burn down a house by firing a bazooka from it. There are bodies when squads are eliminated, but no blood. To permit sale of the game in Germany (huge gaming market) all Nazi symbology has been excised and stand-in graphics provided. Except for wind (would take a Cray), environmental effects are modeled. You can play in broad daylight, at dawn/dusk,night;in overcast, rain or snow, with attendant effects on mobility, visibility, etc. The sun is not modeled. Don't know why. Sound is point sourced, varies in intensity with distance, and is directional. There are so many camera options I won't even try to list them here. Suffice it to say that you can have everything from a God's eye view to a view padlocked to a single figure, like a tank commander. You can even allow camera shake for that authentic "you are there" feel. LOS modeling is real world, based on terrain and is automatically computed. Players have an LOS tool as part of an elegant, easy to learn interface. Speaking of modeling, a wealth of excruciatingly detailed data on weapons, armor, accuracy, projectile types, optics, armor quality, human factors and much much more (including accurate 3-D modeling of in-flight ballistics and terminal ballistics) went into this game, and tweaks are made when needed and properly justified. The people who made CM are themselves gamers, served in the military themselves, consulted with many veterans and really are devoted to what they're doing, going way beyond the extra mile to listen to their customers and field a first rate product. Hotkeys allow you to perform a multitude of functions including removing tree renderings, smoke and such to find units and plot moves, without affecting game play in the slightest. You can select smoke rendering/building transparency options this way, thus allowing my anemic Gen One iMac w/ 64 MB RAM and 2 MB VRAM to run this incredible game, just not at high resolution with all the graphic bells and whistles those with more memory and better video boards can. Theoretically, though, it shouldn't run on my machine at all. The troops speak in their own languages and accents. Forces in the game include U.S., British, Germans, Poles, Free French and Canadians. There are some 150 vehicle types in the game, beautifully rendered and many with camouflage so good it's almost impossible to identify them in battle unless quite close--which CAN be unhealthy--ranging from Jeeps and Kubelwagen up to Jagdtigers and Pershings. Fire support covers the gamut from onboard platoon mortars to offboard 14" naval guns and 300 mm rockets. Several varieties of airstrikes are available, and casualties from friendly fire of all types not only are possible but happen often enough to make people plan their moves carefully. Combat engineers have satchel charges, flamethrowers and can clear mines, which come in three types: daisy chain AT (lie atop the ground) and buried AP and AT. The Axis has several types of wood and concrete fortifications. Defenders on either side automatically start dug-in in foxholes. Target reference points are available for preregistered artillery and mortar fire.Barbed wire is also in. Fog of war is modeled so well that the other night I lost a whole bunch of .50 cal MG armed armored cars trying to knock out a Marder SP antitank gun by shooting through its lightly armored superstructure. Unfortunately, it was a Hetzer! If you can't really see something well enough to ID it, the computer will throw up a generic ID until you can. And if you've ever read about, say, hearing movement and that triggering artillery fire or some other response, then you'll be right at home here. The game will tell you when something's heard. How cool is that? The manual is a gem, 180 well organized,easily understood, properly spelled pages. And if you can't get your answer there, there is this board (quite a few sections) and a whole Combat Mission Webring to draw upon. The game has a tutorial scenario, some 36 battles, a bunch of operations(six, I think), which are minicampaigns,each consisting of as many as six battles fought on one large map, with limited troop replacements and return of damaged (not destroyed) vehicles between battles. You also get the Quick Battle generator--a few mouse clicks to select troop types, date, weather, terrain and battle size, and boom! you're fighting. I have yet to play a canned battle from the game CD, since I'm so engrossed in ginning them out in the Quick Battle generator. You can even handpick your troops. Combat Mission has a full Scenario Editor and Map Editor, allowing you to build almost anything you can think of. If that's not enough, dozens of new scenarios, graphic tweaks and sound mods are readily available and are free. Strongly recommend you check some of them out at Combat Mission HQ (follow link at CMHQ Update posting here on this board). Then there's the Combat Mission Metacampaign, which allows you to take command of a unit and fight from D-Day until the end of the war in blind, refereed scenarios. And let's not forget the official Combat Mission ladder series for those with intense competitive streaks. Those Worrisome Posts This board is awash in the thoughts, musings and sometimes rants of some very knowledgeable, often highly opinionated people, all of whom are intensely passionate about Combat Mission,many of whom served in the military (not just U.S. either) or serve now, many of whom waited two years for the game to be released. This fearsome brain trust has invested thousands of unpaid hours in an effort to make Combat Mission the best wargame ever. Period. To that end, there is an ongoing effort to provide the players with the means in the game to perform the same tactics and give them the same combat capabilities as their World War II counterparts. Sadly, there are real limits on what can be done. This is partially because the game was designed to run on mass market computers, not 1 GHz behemoths. This in turn forces things like 3-man squad renderings to be used. Similarly, there are coding limits. Certain things could be done, were more coders available and schedule and cost not considerations. Others are practically intractable. You can't, for example, screen troops behind moving armor, as was often done in reality. The reason is that the code can't handle dynamic cover (moving cover). It does, though, model a burning wreck as cover. Certain terrain features are tough to do, too, because the game's tile size is 20 x 20 meters and many features are much smaller than a tile, trenches, for one. Because of the above, plus partisanship,egos, language difficulties and various other factors,this board is a constantly roiling sea of demands,questions and complaints--all with the goal of further improving an incredible wargame that we all love. Ultimately, though, no matter how much we huff, puff and propose, Steve and Charles dispose. It's their game, their business, and they call the tune. They're excellent listeners, though, and their tremendous wargame fully reflects this. So, Chickenhawk, I wouldn't worry about all those posts; I'd worry if no one was making any. Summing Up This game is the single biggest threat I've ever seen emerge to board wargames and battles with miniatures. You don't have to count hexes, add combat factors, hand track ammo, casualties or morale. And you haven't lived until you've seen your Shermans, Stuarts and halftracks advance under fire, tank commanders in their spinning turrets seeking hidden enemy positions, guns blazing defiance as that last volley of suppressive fire crashes down on the town's outskirts. You haven't lived until you've heard the dread clang that betokens a pierced tank, heard the linen ripping sound of MG-42 fire and watched with sick apprehension as a Panzerschreck rocket, tail afire, arcs right toward one of your tanks. You haven't lived until you've desperately fought a bitter, frantically improvised defense against platoons of Allied armor and swarms of infantry, wondering whether ere long you'd be hearing a Jabo whistling down on you or the sky tearing as 105mm fire comes shrieking in. I could go on and on, but why? Get Combat Mission. Be happy!!! Hope this helps. Regards, John Kettler [This message has been edited by John Kettler (edited 07-12-2000).]

Pillar, This is most impressive, but based on the architecture as rendered by you, what you have here in not a castle, but a Vauban pattern polygonal fortress from several hundred years after the castle period. Regards, John Kettler

Last night, I fought a Quick Battle (small hills, moderate trees, rural, Wehrmacht regulars in combined arm defense(human choice), Probe, Sept.'44, clear) against what turned out to be at least a French armored recon company (lots of M-8s, M-20s and halftracks), w/ hordes of infantry, 60mm mortars and bazookas). The linchpin of my defense (two dug-in platoons--one covering the main, the other two secondaries, augmented by 81mm FO w/ 250, a 250/9 two Hetzers, two Panzerschrecks, 3 x AP mines and a pair of sharpshooters, plus the gun we're discussing) against his main attack turned out to be that gun, which was faithfully served by Obergefreiter Ferner and his men until ammo was almost exhausted and no one was left. I had placed the gun behind some tall pines at the base of a gentle slope, siting the gun so it wasn't visible over a considerable frontal arc, but could enfilade the frontal approaches to the primary objective. I also set an ambush marker squarely in the likely approach. The gun caught the French flatfooted when they first left a closeby woods and tried to enter the woods housing my reverse sloped platoon and HQ, but they soon moved heaven and earth, from their initial position and two positions they managed to reach in the objective's woods, to destroy it and a shortly savaged squad in foxholes in front of my gun about 20 meters or so. Action was continuous, with the gun under fire not only from infantry weapons, but also an M-8 at virtual spitting distance behind a hedge, until Ferner and his men first immobilized it, then destroyed it with a shot through the side of the turret. Here's what one well served gun did officially against French regulars per the kill screen count(detail my own battle reconstruction except for M-8): Eliminated Sgt. Terrot's squad 12 men Eliminated Cpl. Darne's baz. team 2 men Eliminated Lt. Montagu's FO team 2 men Inflicted one casualty on M-8 crew 1 man ______ Total credited in kill screen 17 + M-8 In reality, based on watching the battle unfold and on the fact that much of the engagement was conducted solely by Ferner and his men (the foxholed squad in front having taken eight casualties, inflicted eight and been ordered to hide for a while), we need to add: Sgt. Vernadoum's squad, broken, 9 casualties Cpl. LeDoux's M1919 MG team, panic, 3 casualties Lt. Coche's platoon HQ, 3 casualties In short, one gun inflicted some 32 casualties, virtually destroying a reinforced platoon, sending most of the survivors fleeing rearward, and nearly all by itself beat off the main attack. Not bad for 33 points! By contrast, the mortar FO plowed lots of ground, killing no one, one sharpshooter died with no results, and the other got three kills (one finished off a platoon HQ) and KOed a mortar. The Hetzer on the same side as the infantry gun racked up five kills on swarms of recon vehicles, but didn't have LOS to where the gun waged its lonely war. It fought most of the battle from a ridgeline almost at the back of the map and was hit time after nerveracking time by some weapon which may have been an M-8, but which the crew wasn't able to ID.The Hetzer pumped round after round of HE into a house it thought had an AT gun in it. The Hetzer on the left flank helped hold the line against platoons of infantry and support weapon teams, both by blasting them directly with HE or bringing the house down upon them, shredding a squad in the process. This helped weak forces hold a secondary objective. Panzerfaust fire stopped an M-20 practically on top of the objective, and a Panzerschreck killed an M-5 halftrack. Its colleague made things hot for a platoon HQ, having had no vehicles in its sector. The AI gave up when French morale hit 17%, resulting in an Axis decisive victory. I've got three screenshots showing the scene with trees, stripped of trees, and with the gun's kill screen, but I don't know how to include them here. If someone tells me how (am on a Mac), I'll be happy to edit them in later. Sincerely, John Kettler [This message has been edited by John Kettler (edited 07-10-2000).]

Lt. Kije et al., If you'd like to see a whole bunch of color photos of a real Lynx in original camouflage please visit Missing Lynx (www.missing-lynx.com). I believe it's in the Tank Archives or some such. Regards, John Kettler

Thanks one and all! Sincerely, John Kettler

Dan, IMPRESSIVE!!! Does the crew have only .45s, or is there an SMG as well? In semishock, John Kettler

I've been so engrossed in Quick Battles and an ongoing PBEM VoT that I haven't played any of the battles or operations in CM yet. Since my opponent is already planning our next bout, I thought I'd take a look at my options (have choice of scenario) in the full game. Either I fundamentally misunderstood what came in the game, or something's seriously amiss. My problem is that not counting Quick Battles and the Tutorial, I come up with a mere five battles and seven operations. If there are more (and I fervently hope so), how do I access them? Also, the combatant icons obscure much of the descriptive text in the scenario list for battles and operations. Please tell me what's going on and why I seem to be missing much of my game. I'm running on a 233 MHz iMac w/ 64 MB RAM and 2 MB VRAM on ATI RAGE...board. OS is 8.6. Thanks for any and all help. Sincerely, John Kettler

Okay, I've read and read and read some more in the lengthy thread about pillboxes.I am therefore up to speed on pillboxes and bunkers being treated as vehicles, not terrain. I've also read in great detail the reasons why one can't take the HMG voluntarily out of the pillbox and why neither side's allowed to occupy an abandoned pillbox. Got all that. What I have yet to find is an answer on why the crews have only pistols, as opposed to rifles and/or SMGs. I will continue to wade through the thread, but if this issue is adddressed directly, would some kind soul please post the link and save me from having to plow through all 71 items and their subthreads? Also, USERNAME didn't start this thread; I did. Please correct the search engine on this. Thanks for any and all help. Sincerely, John Kettler [This message has been edited by John Kettler (edited 07-07-2000).]

BTS, The search engine wrongly credits this thread to Bullethead. I started it. Regards, John Kettler

I think this thread is exploring some really worthwhile ideas, but sadly, it looks as though the defense is going to stay hamstrung by not being able to fire into smoke with small arms, arty or mortars, absent a TRP (for the latter two). No feedback either on the minefield issues I raised. I would therefore like to offer an alternative approach: reduce the availability of smoke so that it is no longer the defense breaker it currently is in some scenarios.Maybe model duds? If smoke is going to always block LOS and always burn for a fixed time, and can't be fired into, then it seems blatantly obvious to me that some such countervailing method is needed in order that the defense not be subject to what amounts in a sense to a superweapon. The main option I've just described would incur no CPU hit or any significant code revision, just minor tweaks in the ammo availability tables. Another approach would require identifying a way or ways to increase the defense's effectiveness after the unsuppressed, unhit attacker appears en masse more or less on top of the defender's position, engaging each defensive position with multiple attacking units. This is not an abstract issue, either, for I've had whole dug-in platoons shredded in VoT precisely because my foe could make entire major battlefield areas disappear behind huge smokescreens, behind which he advanced hordes of infantry with utter impunity. When the smoke cleared, the khakied formations were practically in my foxholes, having lost only a handful of casualties from the odd shot which occasionally presented itself during his advance. I just had another thought. Maybe you could have the AI generate random casualties and morale effects in the screened units based upon the defensive firepower available, modified by some suitable degradation factor, of course. This would have the effect of both slowing and disrupting the current march to victory which is, in my view, unfair, ahistoric and quite frustrating to the player defending. I believe that something needs to be done to restore the real advantages the defense had historically and which, for a variety of reasons are not being modeled in CM and may never be. What say the rest of you? Sincerely, John Kettler

Thanks for the explanation, Steve. I guess I'll just have to (growl, mutter, curse, sounds of heels being dragged) HAVE to play more quick battles and keep a running tally of who wins and who loses, taking the occasional martial oddity as the price of so much pleasure elsewhere in the game. I am glad you are tweaking the unit cost list, too. Seems like people have been finding some amazing military bargains there, leading to distinctly odd battles. Congratulations to you, Charles, and the rest on such marvelous reviews! You richly and totally deserve them. Sincerely, John Kettler

lother Here's something you might try. First, start the Gold Demo. Once the game's begun, hit the HOTKEY bar located to the bottom left of your screen. This will bring up the HOTKEY menu. Find the one for sound (believe it's Shift-s--hold down the Shift key, then hit s). Toggle sound off and on rapidly a few times. With a little luck, this may solve your problem completely. For some strange reason, part of the sound track seems to get stuck, resulting in what I call a "juddering sound," which I have posted about before (search under "John Kettler"). This particularly applies to motor sounds. If this doesn't solve your problem, then I strongly recommend you follow Toad's advice. Good luck! John Kettler

For some strange reason page 2 of this thread is way oversize, making it hard to read. Can this be fixed, please? Regards, John Kettler

Just wanted to let anyone with an interest in the American Revolution (especially with The Patriot as a prod to learn more) know about a first rate, tour de force book which looks at the topic from the perspectives of all the participants (patriot, loyalist, British, French), a viewpoint probably stemming from the fact that the author, Benson Bobrick, had both patriot and loyalist ancestors involved. His book, ANGEL IN THE WHIRLWIND: The Triumph of the American Revolution, is a stunning synthesis of multitudinous period sources, yet enfolds seamlessly the work of many scholars. The result is a book which immerses the reader in the period and sheds great light on the events, the society, the religions, culture, even the recreations and refreshments, while thoroughly discussing the events leading to war, the great philosophical and legal issues, the diplomacy, espionage on both sides, and of course military operations. This man can really write! I've learned more in a few hours than in everything I've read before on the subject, including college courses. Did you know that the British used biological warfare against Washington's army (deliberately sent smallpox infected prostitutes to his camp)? Did you know that a great patriot was unmasked as a British spy (hint, not Benjamin Arnold) Did you know that there were whole towns burned by the British (Charlestown, Norfolk) and that there were many times in which George Washington's army was on the razor edge of extinction (not just Valley Forge)? What do most of you know about our invasion of Canada, of Benedict Arnold's illustrious career before his downfall, of the defense of Charleston by palmetto log forts which absorbed horrendous British cannon fire and whose guns so punished a Royal Navy fleet that it was forced to leave? These and much much more await! Reading this book will be an educational adventure you'll never forget, one which will bring home in real, concrete terms what was at stake and the terrible price paid by all parties concerned that this nation might be born. Sadly, that priceless legacy is all but forgotten. I found mine at Super Crown on deep discount ($30.00 book) for a mere $3.99. The ISBN is 0-684-81060-3. At that price, it is the information bargain of the century. Sincerely, John Kettler