Andreas

Now that BFC are publishing Dropteam. Kip should be happy

The Germans had a third number 'Battle Strength' (Gefechtsstaerke), which ISTR included support weapons, while 'Grabenstaerke' excluded them. There are problems with using ration strength to determine actual strength. According to Michate on the axishistory.com forum, there are the following problems with it. Here is an interesting comparison: 17th October 1942, 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army Ration Strength: 334,000 Fighting Strength: 66,549 (20%) According to Schroeter.

Can I beta test? Will it have armoured hummers?

Claw to claw is what I am holding out for.

Man, space lobsters in tanks. I'm in heaven. What are the minimum system requirements for the Mac?

Web search for Siauliai/Schaulen/Rasienai should also throw one of them up.

Geraet = equipment The large 'chevy-like' vehicle would not have been Kfz 11 (or higher - the Einheitskraftwagen) by any chance? Linkypoo Accountant-type NCO = Zahlmeister? In which case maybe paymaster?

What happened Kip? Your local ran out of beer again? Someone pour that man a pint, and on the double!

General Rauss is not a reliable source IMO. Scheibert states that he pretty much made up an account of a critical night attack by Soviet 25th Tank Corps (should that be brigade?) on elms of 6.PD on New Year's night 1942/3, very strongly distorting events at which he was not present, without even mentioning that minor fact. E.g. Rauss claims the Soviet tanks ran into an ambush while that did not happen, and claims that 90 Soviet tanks were lost, while in reality there were 32 lost. Scheibert muses that the reason for the diverging accounts of the battle is 'ignorance of those with too much imagination retelling an event' (in a thinly veiled reference to Rauss). Rauss' account was published in the 'Allgemeine Schweizer Militaerzeitschrift', presumably a solid journal. Scheibert was present at the beginning of the battle, and the (in his view) most reliable account is by Dr. Baeke who commanded the battalion and the battle. So while he maybe correct on repeated hits on 30+50 armour being detrimental (that is confirmed elsewhere), I would not set too much stock in statements like 'point-blank', numbers of own units and enemy units engaged and destroyed, etc. YMMV.

Stops being ironic if you you grill the game you hunted there and eat it with mushrooms, I guess?

I would not go for Carell (aka Paul Karl Schmidt, chief propaganda officer in the Reich's foreign office and editor of Signal), unless you are really keen on the 3rd Reich version of Barbarossa. You know, the one where the Wehrmacht is clean, the SS does not exist, and it was all preemptive to move before evil evil Stalin attacks poor innocent Germany. Quite apart from the fact that the situation regarding sources has changed a lot since it was published. A very good and serious work is 'The early period of war' ed. David Glantz, based on an Art of War symposium in the 1980s during which military professionals, including a lot of German officers who were present, analyse the opening moves up to the battle of Smolensk. I have heard good things about Glantz' 'Barbarossa' as well.

Mark Can you drop me an email please? ta

Usually, Ferdinand means StuG. </font>

You are probably thinking of Hungary for 1944 as well. Those were relatively fluid battles from what I know, not attacks into settled frontlines. Anyway, they did manage a more serious penetration in the Ardennes at a later date. In October two German divisions attacked and achieved a good dent near Overloon against US and British forces, so I don't think there were many differences between the Red Army and the western allies in this respect. 10 miles is neither here nor there, considering the amount of forces the Germans concentrated for Spring Awakening. A similar concentration of armour did not exist in the west post-Ardennes, otherwise it would most certainly have made a 10 mile impression as well.

coe - a bit general. What sort of operations are you talking about in the east?

That is my solution as well.

IATM that the fundamental disagreement here hinges on whether only risk that you take should be simulated, with other inherent risk that is present in reality in war being ignored. It is a control question. If you can not control it and it is independent of your opponent as well, you want it gone. Right? The problem here to me is the boundary limit of the simulation. Your analogy with chess may help. If you want to simulate chess (tight boundary), you take the board and the pieces and the rules. If you want to simulate chess being played in a family home (think 'The Sims Play Chess' - wide boundary), you have to add a random risk factor introducing the cat and the kid running over the board and ruining your game, or the phone ringing and distracting you with a pre-recorded message by Tom De Lay. To my mind, CM is the latter. To your mind, as I understand your argument, it is the former. Both views have merit. Your frustration comes from not having your game at the moment. My satisfaction comes from having my game. Is that a correct summation? ISTR BFC mentioning a bunch of officers testing CM. From memory, half of them hated it because things out of their control happened. Half of them loved it because things out of their control happened.

I don't have the game here - what's the PSI? Tried it with Panzer IV (late models) or King Tigers?

I posted my replies before reading the latest postings, including the one where you agreed with me. I am all ears for a discussion on breakdown probabilities. Not one based on flashes of memory. I am also intrigued by this desire to remove luck and chance, and why it is so focussed on this feature. From reading your posts this maybe behind your reasoning as well? There is nothing wrong with it per se, we all have our visions of the game, and they will by necessity differ. I would not have any problem with a reduced bog-rate overall, if it is fixed, not variable by the player. I believe there was some discussion a long time ago on why using PSI alone may not give a correct figure, and I think that made quite a convincing case. Something technical to do with flotation, as one might expect. I would also welcome a reduction of bogging probability in scattered trees - from the accounts I have read that should be relatively safe terrain. But those changes (or improvements in CMx2) can not be based on misunderstandings - see in my post above, or just plain misrepresentation - see a). Anyway, I am off now for a sponsored dinner in Oslo's best restaurant. So have fun.

Your complaint about 'laced with insults' would carry more weight if you did not call others names, or dismissed their postings as 'inane flapping' So instead of explaining to you why it was not an insult, I will only encourage you to remove your head from where it got stuck after some great display of bendiness.

1) It is an interesting philosophical discussion about game play, and how we view the game. 2) Yes there is. So, we come to the same point that we reached in the cowering thread. How much of an issue is it really? So far we have had: a) Seemingly every time my tanks enter scattered trees they bog. By the most unlucky CM player in the universe, or someone who's memory is tricking him. Not an issue. My AC bogged in a road in snow. Not a bug, a feature. ACs should bog there. c) Tanks bog and then break down completely on dry ground. Yep, could be a problem. Care to tell me how often it happens? Every game? Every second game? Every tenth game? Could it be you just remember it because the 'flash of anger' is putting the adrenalin into your brain that imprints it? Of all the girls I have seen in Oslo since yesterday, the cutest one was the blonde 20-something with the nice smile behind the 7-11 counter. If you ask me in a few years, I am going to tell you that girls in Norway are nice, many blondes with cute smiles there. Because that's what I will (want to) remember. The overweight brunettes, I don't really see. That's how memory works, you remember the exciting bits (your tank breaks down/cute blondes), not the mundane ones (your tank works/overweight brunettes). No equal opportunities officer was harmed in the writing of this post. Ps. Whether tanks bog more or less in CMAK is not much of an answer to anything, since they are by and large different tanks. Edited b/c I should really read all the posts next time. [ April 18, 2005, 02:10 PM: Message edited by: Andreas ]

I have, and they are not. German Ubertanks should on the whole be more vulnerable. You can buy fewer of them. Ergo you are better off with a lower bogging score. The Soviet player can afford more tanks, and they have a lower bogging value to start with. His gain is smaller, by comparison, because his risk is lowered by a smaller degree, since it is distributed more widely.

Unfortunately, flashes of anger are not worth much. My flashes of memory are of German tanks getting bogged. Are they worth the same as your flashes? Probably, and the value is approaching '0'.

Well, if you could be bothered to state what kind of T34, and a general description of the situation other than 'they were on a hill', or give some more info regarding their ammunition (did they have Tungsten), whether they had cover arcs for the area etc. then yes, I am inclined to not take this so seriously. Five tanks on a hill, two of them not even HD, facing an opponent that they are very unlikely to penetrate at a range where this opponent can make steak hache out of them in short order does not strike me as a great position. An ambush (which is what you claim it was) is emphatically not to hang around in full visibility with no cover, waiting for someone to shoot at. Especially not if that someone is vastly superior to you. Let's have a look at what the dicitionary says: "ambush: verb to suddenly attack a person or a group of people after hiding and waiting for them" "The act of lying in wait to attack by surprise. 1. A sudden attack made from a concealed position. 2. Those hiding in order to attack by surprise. 3. The hiding place used for this. 4. A hidden peril or trap." You missed the 'hide' bit completely, and I am sure the Panther commander was mildly surprised to be faced by five suicidal T34s, but not otherwise. Please also note that nowhere did I say that you lied, or stated my aim as being to discredit you, so quit making up stuff. From what you have written in your initial post, it appears as sound logic for me that the T34s disappear. It is very different from e.g. the instance that Jason reports about the T34 quitting when it faces a Tiger at 70m from the flank, ruining his flanking attempt. In your case. I'd thank the AI for it were it to happen to me, because it means they will live to fight another turn.

I do not think that FOW and rarity are at all the same things. People who believe that have not thought it through. Rarity, FOW, etc. refer to the overall framework of the game, and affect all units in an equal way. By removing bogging completely through an off-switch, you are affecting only specific units in a differential way. Clearly, the advantage of a tank with lower bogging probability (that may also be reflected in the price) over that of a tank with higher bogging probability will be gone. You are not in fact equalising things on the battlefield, you are giving an advantage to one player, i.e. the German in CMBB. You have control over bogging, to state that you do not have is simply untrue. In QB, your choice of vehicle affects it. In any game, your choice of advance route and speed affects it. These are also affected by enemy actions, because the enemy can try to push you into an advance route that is more risky for your tanks. If you ask for a choice to remove bogging, you can also ask for an option to remove weak spot penetrations, since they are exactly the same thing. If you still believe it should be removed, then you should realise that it would affect price calculations as well. Your KT has just become more expensive, and your T34 cheaper. It is not a small change. Ps. ACs getting bogged in roads with snow on them is historically correct. They should have high bog rates in snow. During MARS, 1.PD could not use its ACs due to snow. I do not believe (but stand to be corrected) that CM simulates roads where the snow plough has just been through.