Walt

The 120mm gun was developed by the Germans when they figured out the 105mm wouldn't be up to spec killing T72s and whatever would come later. When other countries started to develope their own MBTs they latched on to the gun. NATO designated it as a standard, much like the NATO 7.62mm, and 5.56mm rounds. There's all kinds of NATO standard ammo, 20mm, 105mm, 155mm, 127mm, 40mm, 30mm, bla, bla, bla... As for the Russin 125mm, I have no idea. They have some wierd standards, the 37mm and 7.62x39 for example. I know the 152mm guns are the correct measurement for 6" guns (155mm=6.1" not 6"). I would assume they were designing all their new guns to fire old ammo. The russians are anal about that sort of thing, They're still storing allot of their old junk. I don't know if 125mm is a little smaller than 5", so I don't know where they got that. ------------------ This is my mouse. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. Without my mouse I am useless. Without me, my mouse is useless...

I agree with Pham. I think mods would only make Combat Mission a better game. I doubt any one's going to bother making a mod to tweak the existing WWII setting, there's no point, it's basically perfect. I can also understand why the people at BTS would prefer that ignorant people didn't screw up their hard work. Having said all that, I'd also like to say that CM has the only game engine I know of that exists right now that could accurately simulate battle in Vietnam and Korea. Both wars had unique attributes that caused them to differ from your average war, CM could model the mountainous battlefields of Korea and the jungles of Vietnam much better than any game engine out there. I also think it would be a good business move to offer the engine to companies who want to make new games out of it. It saves those companies the time it would take to write a new engine, and BTS profits from the license. But hey, it's your game not mine. So long as I get to beat up Germans in CM2: eastern front I will live. ------------------ This is my mouse. There are many like it, but this one is mine. It is my life. Without my mouse I am useless. Without me, my mouse is useless...

Come on! you don't expect people to get allong and communicate effectively do you? After all, if the world worked that well we'd be anticipating the first 3D, turn based simulation of The Lincoln Douglass debates, not a simulation of a massive conflict that resulted in the deaths of around 50 million people and the raping, maiming, torture, and disenfranchisment of millions more... Just a thought.

"I'm playing Quake3 with my K6-2 333 and a Voodoo2." Lucky Bastard! I've got a Pentium MMX 200 with a Monster3D II 8 meg!

Be carefull. The Geforce doesn't have much problem runing on a slower system. Go to WWW.tomshardware.com and look at the benchmarks. Buying a supersystem is a waste of money, unless braging rights are your only incentive. A PIII 450 will do him fine for a long time, will have great stability, and will play combat mission good enough. I don't know what other games he'd play, if he's a quakehead then go for the faster processor. You can quite easily grab a good BX based motherbord. I would gladly grab a AMD system, but I'd also have to be sure that the power supplie will work with the notoriously finiky Athlon, and make sure my drivers were stable enough on the newer platform, and overclock it all to hell. If he's willing and able to do that, go for the athlon. I don't get the impression that he wants to spend allot of time in the box. He's more likely have have a stable computer by grabing a PIII450 or Celeron 366, and I think stability is what he's after, not just speed. Keep in mind that a BX bord will usually perform within a few FPS of a AGP 4x, PC133 RAM motherbord. The simple fact is, 133mhz FSB and RAM can't feed the card enough to geta ny advantage out of AGP 4x. Untill we have the Athlon runing on a 266Mhz buss, and 266Mhz DDR SDRAM AGP 4x is just something to print on the box. I would imagine an Athlon 600 with a Via chipset would be a pretty good choice. Not as established as a BX solution, but a little more speedy. Geting a faster athlon probably wouldn't be a good idea right now. They're hindered by the terribly slow L2 cash. After Thunderbird comes out you'd have an easy upgrade in line. And of course you'd put in a new video card ever year or two. Why waste money on a few more FPS and sacrafice stability? Building a giga system is great IF YOU WANT TO SPEND MORE TIME TWEAKING THAN PLAYING. I would recomend a Celeron 366/400 with a Geforce, or an athlon 600 with the same. There's no reason for any one who doesn't want to have braging rights to get a less stable solution.

You've got to be carefull. Most of the top of the line components out there today will cause you allot of headeachs if you're not into hardware with a vengance (if I got a computer that worked, what would I do? I'd be way too bord). One thing you should keep in mind, there are VERY few programs that will benifit from a CPU faster than 600Mhz. In fact, if the most taxing thing you're going to do is play Combat Mission, you'd be better off going with a Celeron. You could throw together a CPU, and a new Geforce or TNT and even get a new sound card for allot less. You could even splurge on a monitor, which is after all the most important part of the graphics subsystem. An important question is, what do you have in your system today? If you have an AT power supply you will need to get a new case. Depending on what type of motherbord you may be able to get a faster chip and not have to upgrade all the other components. The one thing I would recommend against is buying a Pentium III. Intel is having trouble producing high enough yields with the coppermine core above around 733mhz. That translates to higher prices for the consumer. Those higher prices are the reason Gateway has started using Athlons for their high end systems. There is a large problem with the chipsets used by the coppermine. The cheepest chipset is the 810, which does not provide for a video card other than the built in intel junk. You wouldn't be happy with its performance. The 820 and 840 use RDRAM, which is amazingly expensive because of the tolerences needed to manufacture memory that runs at such a high speed. A 128 meg stick of RDRAM can cost more than all the other components in the system. Further, it doesn't actually feed the buss faster than good old PC100 SDRAM. Intel caught this and provided a translation hub on later 820 based bords that uses PC100 RAM, but the result was much slower than a normal BX based motherbord. So you would best not buy an Intel motherbord. As for the Geforce, I think you would definetly apreciate the diference when compared to other cards. Don't opt for the card with 64 megabytes of RAM, it will not offer you much of any improvement. Be sure that you buy a DDR RAM based card, it's much faster than a regular car at higher resolutions. you will pay a premium for the DDR card, it's up to you to decide if it's worth it. Really, I would recommend a Pentium II or III 450Mhz processor on a BX based motherbord with a Geforce. it's not the fastest computer out there, but it will run rock solid untill CM 3. After a year or so you can buy a new top of the line AGP card. Then, when the framerate in Quake 5 is unbearably slow, you can build a new computer.

Just a thought. Why not modle secondary explosions? For example, when destroying an AT gun, did that HE shell hit the gun or the crate of shells siting next to it? You could model the ammo as a seperate part of the gun, if hit it will explode a few times with the blast radius and damage of that particular gun. If nothing else, adding seconday explosions to vehicles and guns when destroyed would add some more realism, even if they do no damage. Something nifty to add to CM2? Just a think.

Sorry about that. I would guess, it's more to do with positioning than anything else. Human beings are fragile, but that works both ways. A soldier is usually more concerned with staying alive than killing. Even the diehards will duck instead of shooting if shooting would have mortal consequenses. Of course both sides are doing their best to put themselves in a position where the enemy can concentrate the least of their forces, and allies can concentrate their forces at the most effective point. That's great if only one of you is doing it, but it's going to cancel it's self to an extent and just result in fewer options for the forces to smash into each other. If we wanted to we could just line up each others armies and take potshots. You'd have 100% of forces commited and you'd probably get 80% casualties. As far as I'm concerned it's a good thing. Enough people die in wars as it is.

Sounds fishy. I can see the laser guided bomb being developed post war, diging a hole and sticking a tank in it for a while seems a little simpler...

You can't have prepared positions for your vehicles? I don't know about WWII but of course you're going to put a bunch of dirt in front of your tank. The Iraquis simply pushed up sand birms with dozers. We use something like the ACE to dig a trench that the tank can back out of. Is this a post war innovation?

Most of the people in the military are fixing the tanks, or the rifles, or making food, or fixing up the lumps of flesh coming out of the grinder, or scrubing the bathroom floor in the office of the secretary of defense... That's the way a modern army works.

I'd still take my AC-130. Maybe in CM3 or 4 I'll be able to defend my Special Forces A-Team firebase from NVA infantry. Wave after wave of incoming aircraft, interupted only by incoming 105mm, 155mm, and 203mm artilliary... That would be fun to watch.

"US started limited use of it in late 1944 IIRC" Once more history conspires to ruin my fun. Next thing you're going to tell me no on the AC-130U because it came 50 years too late. What's a few decades any way

I'm not sure (WWII isn't my area of expertise, as I have proven), was napalm used in WWII? I seem to remember napalm being introduced towards the end of WWII. Maybe it wasn't used too often in this theater. It would be a usefull. It certainly wouldn't be important to nit pick on specific aircraft varients, BUT... Since the loadouts can very so much, I think you should be able to pick between, for example, a P51 wondering around looking for something to shoot at with a pair of 500lb bombs and 6 .50 cals, or a B-25 with a 75mm cannon and a buttload of bombs. Averaging out the aircraft makes air power less decisive or more dicisive than it really was. It's really not that big a deal though, CM is still the most realistic WWII tactical war game ever. I'd also like to get an AC-130U every once in a while, but I don't think I'm going to get it. Some people are just TOO into realism.

I'll try to make this an excercise in brevity. 1). In the final version, will tanks and guns use HE on unarmored and lightly armored vehicles? I would think that a 76mm HE shell would work better than AP against a half track or armored car. The Marines had to switch to HE when fighting the (crappy) Japanese tanks on a few occasions because the shot would penitrate and exit without causing much damage. Then there's the effects of fragments against exposed crew, tires, and unarmored weapons and components. I checked, and the M18s in LD were only using AP against the german half tracks. Was that the case in combat during that period? 2). I searched up what I could on air support. What I've been able to piece together was a). You don't get to pick what you get, and . there won't be representations of the aircraft, only shadowns (this could have changed, I don't know). I want to know what aircraft and loadouts will be available to each side. What will I get if I call for support as the USA? What will be the characteristics and firepower ratings for the bombs, rockets, and guns we will see employed in the final version?

But it would be great to see a platoon of panthers drive out through stacks of hay in a stable, just like an old propaganda movie.

Could you guys add a unit without having to recompile the code for the game? Reason I ask is, maybe you could release new units over the net like some other stratagy games? Maybe a tank of the month page where you could download a tricked out PZIV, and the next day grab a Sherman mine clearing tank. I would imagine the answer is no, but it'd be so cool I gotta ask any way. P.S. will there be mine clearing vehicles in CM? I've heard varying assesments of their effectiveness, but... Better than nothing.

"I'm planning a scenario with a single Ami squad and an M4A3 against a German infantry company in a town with three Tigers. There's a bank in the middle of town..." Sounds like a good one Barbara! "It's Babra!"

It'd be nice to make a woulda coulda shoulda mod for CM eventually, but from what I've heard it's not very hackable. Will source code be released? Will BTS support a unit editor? I can just picture German squads with all their MP40s and 98Ks replaced with MP44s, and even A P1500 (you thought tigers and panthers were scary! 11" gun go BBBBOOOOMMMM!!!! ). Of course "land cruisers" would never have been practical, but they'd be fun to have in a game!

There was a specific occorance that got me worked up on the subject. I was playing LD as americans and was wining. But The tiger was immobalized just on the edge of the woods, and I couldn't get a shot in with a TD without more than likely loosing a few because of the position of the tiger. So I snuck up on it with some infantry. That was easy enough as the woods were in between the tank and the squad, and the tank was buttoned and facing the other way any way. I figured that there wasn't anything to stop the infantry from raping on the hatch and leting it be known that the war was going the wrong way for the Nazis (OK, so that's what I'd have done in real life ), Or at least blow the hell outa the thing. But of course the infantry squad stops and starts chucking grenades, and the Tiger leasurely rotates it's turret and kills eight men before they run off with their tails between their legs. How is that realistic? The tiger should have been taken care of. I don't expect a squad to run across an open field, jump onto a fully operational tank, go Superman and rip off a hatch and murder the crew. I do expect infantry to take care of an immobile tank without infantry support that won't be able to see them coming. Maybe it's too dificult to put into the game, or just too rare for the programers to bother, but I've been in situations like this a few times and not been able to do anything about it but loose a tank or two. P.S. I actually think that Saving Private Ryan was a little odd in the final battle. Why would they try some chancy thing like blowing the tracks off when they had a bazooka? Sure they were low on Ammo, but they could have shot the tank through the roof from a window and run away. If you're going to take the battle literally that would have saved those guys taken out by the 20mm. If all else fails you can go after a working tank with a sock full of TNT, but I would call that plan B (or more like Z).

So long as my infantry can do something I'm happy. After all, how could paratroopers without much in the way of ammo hold off so many panzer divisions at Bastogn? Where's the proof? Well I'll admit I don't have any for THAT theatre, but the Japanese did sworm shermans (not just the suicide troops). I read a book about an M48 commander in Vietnam where he described being swormed By NVA/VC. He used the term back scratching to describe how they'd defend each other by firing M1919s at the aflicted tank. He described several instances where the tank crew had to fight off VC/NVA with submachineguns and rifles. There was even a situation where they lost a commander to an intrepid communist that stuck his SMG into the tank through the hatch and sprayed. He made a mess out of the poor guy. How else were the NVA units going to take out a tank without anti-tank weapons? They didn't give out a RPG to every soldier. Some times you go with what you've got and pray it works. It just pisses me off to see an infantry squad run up to a tank and stop a few meters off to fire at it. That's suicide. If you jump up on it there's nothing the tank can do about it (except for those german grenade launchers. Why bother with those if infantry wasn't a concern?). I would think that the nature of most of the combat on the western front precluded this sort of thing. You can't run across an open field to jump on a tank. You CAN jump out of a window onto a buttoned tank and screw with the sucker, same thing could happen in the jungle. Think of your choices. You can run away and get blasted to the other side by multiple machineguns and the main gun, or you can jump on the thing and stand a chance of survival. It doesn't make sense to run away and place yourself in a more precareous situation where the tank is better able to fire at you. Once you're on the tank it's a matter of time. An incendiary grenade would melt right through some parts, you can try to jam the tracks with something, find weak areas and exploit them, piug up the exhaust system... But of course you're screwed if there's any enemy infantry or vehicles around. I just think it would be usefull in urbin settings. I've been in a position to try it several times in the demo and been rather disapointed that I couldn't do anything about the tank siting in front of one of my squads. Oh well.

I'd have to disagree with you. The most effective antitank weapons infantry has is infantry. With most tanks having open vision slits the soldiers would fire their weapons into the tank. Sticking a Thompson in a vision slit would clear out a panther or tiger pretty well. The Japanese would use their Katanas (SP?) to impale drivers heads in the pacific. I'm sure you know all this, but I like to hear myself talk. It's made me angry on occasion that my infantry can't hurt tanks (US infantry). I've been in situations in Chance Encounter where I could have put an infantry squad on one of the STuGs and take it out. I can't! That's very unrealistic. I'm positive that tanks can't "scratch" each others backs with MGs either. I'm curious about the Shermans MGs too. With one in the hull, one coax, and the .50 on the roof, it should be spitting out 220 firepower at 100m. It could be, but I've not noticed it. Could the hull MG be animated like the gun on the stug? That would be neat. Eventually fully animated MGs would be cool, but that would be far in the future I'm sure. I have a few more questions concerning the Sherman. Is there going to be some way to simulate the application of sand bags to the hull? More than likely it'd have little impact (bad pun! ) on AP penetration, but if for no other reason than spacing I would think a dramatic impact on HEAT warhead performance would be a result. Finally, (and concerning more than just the Sherman) will flame-thrower tanks (and other vehicles) be included? There was a POTD on CMHQ featuring a flame-thrower unit, but I haven't seen anything about flame-thrower tanks. Why don't tank crews, and weapon crews have Thompsons, carbines and grease guns? Inquireing minds want to know.

ACK!!! My plot if foiled!

How to beet Last Defense: 1). Wait till final game. 2). Load up editor. 3). Add two platoons of Pershings, replace 60mm mortars with 81mm mortars and double the number, add pillboxes, add 12 16" naval gun spotters, add a squadron of P-47 interdiction aircraft. 4). Delete all Axis armor except for the half-tracks (double the number of half-tracks so you have something more to shoot at). 5). Order your spotters to carpet the woods and area behind it with 16" fire, wait for the enemy to advance and be slaughtered. 6). After the barrage move into the moonscape and spend the rest of the war trying to piece together the German body parts to get an accurate body count. Anyone up for a PBEM game after the final version is released?!

Hmmmm... I suppose that if the AI were designed to take into account the type of tactics that a cover me command would allow it would be slightly redundant. I am just weary of trusting the AI completely. The AI for the demo is certainly the best AI I've seen in a game, and I'm sure the final version will be much better. But you're never going to get the AI to the level of intelligence of the human player. Although with some people you wonder... The reason I came up with the idea was a game against the AI. The scenario was "Chance Encounter", and I'd just taken out his STuGs and lost only a few men so far. I advanced one of my Shermans to a hull down position at the top of the ridge to pick off reinforcements, the machine-guns in the houses near the map edge, and whoever happened to be on the other side of the wooded areas. The tank found some targets are was casually picking off some poor shmucks in open terrain with its 75, when the turn ends and I notice that a Panzershreck is siting there well within kill parameters aiming at the tank. So I order two of my other tanks to suppress the shreck (one with 75, other with machine-guns to keep his head down), and figure that's that. The next turn the covering tanks shift fire to some infantry coming out of the woods to assault the two story house. A bad move because the house had the two M1919s in it and a platoon of infantry, not to mention the other two tanks parked up the street and the three mortars firing on the squad. Even with all this firepower and the enemy squad pined in open ground the tanks decided it was more important to kill that squad than the Shreck, and I lost my other Sherman. That kinda pissed my off. The problem is, the covering tanks didn't have a concept of why they were shooting at the Shreck. It's just the same to the AI as me designating any other target for them. In real life I'd be on the radio saying "cover them", not "kill the Shreck". If I just want them to plink at some target I'm perfectly happy if they shift their fire to a more juicy or important target, but I'm more concerned with supporting maneuver than killing the enemy at the moment and I DON’T want to loose a tank. If that situation happened to one of you guys you'd probably re-write the code to decrease the chances of it occurring. In fact, it's less likely to happen to you guys because you have written the AI and have a better idea how it'll react. I don't have that level of knowledge of what the troops are going to do in a given situation. Because of the AI and lack of an order for suppressive fire I can't use the tactic I want and end up having to kill the reinforcements in the woods, where they have cover. I waste ammo and loose men that I don't need to, and delay victory. Sorry about the length, I know you guys are busy. I'll try to keep it shorter next time.