David Aitken

Toongsten cah-bide drills? Wot's toongsten cah-bide drills??

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Jo Sha wrote: As if Meeks could make his mark ("X" IIRC)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Elijah Meex. How about LIJ-MEEX, in the J-LO vein. And I shall heretofore be known as 8-KEN. PBEM Report Just for the sake of saying something CM-related for once... I am playing Loir loir bum's on foir in Germanboy's atrocity To The Last Man. So far we have spent 17-odd turns tentatively ordering our men to do things which we vaguely suspect might be beneficial, and sitting back and watching them die. There is a ring of Jake's ex-armour around the town, and what men we have left are cowering in the ruins and hoping not to be incinerated. If I hadn't already sworn off CM, this scenario would make me a pacifist for sure.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Jeff Duquette wrote: If this is the case why weren't honest to goodness "snipers" also included in the game<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Because they are outwith CM's scope. They have no place in an infantry battle. It can take a true sniper hours to stalk and kill his target. Good sniper targets also tend to be rather elusive in a full-scale firefight. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Why segregate them from their squad?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> So that you can assign them individual targets. An entire squad blazing away at a TC will just force him to button up, whereas a marksman can hit him before he has the chance. I also gather that marksmen were used as outposts and bluffs to spot the enemy or fool them as to the position of your forces.

All the answers are in the threads I provided links to above.

What have we here... aha. The second link may be of interest to you. At witch distance a sniper can shoot Snipers should be VERY hard to detect and identify Snipers versus Sharpshooters, FYI

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>ruin wrote: Do not use the name of Krazydog in vain...the boy has got to do the 3D models BEFORE he starts on the skins.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Am I the only person on the forum who can spell Kwazydawg? I wouldn't go so far as to call Dan a Crazy Dog. Dirty Rotten Slacker is quite enough. No Dan! Pleease!! Don't set Matt on me! I'll buy two copies of CM2 when it comes out... even though I won't have time to play it... although I might, considering that ETA is 2005... SORRY!! It was a JOKE!! Nice Matt... good boy... have a biscuit. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>shaun vrad wrote: Red Dwarf is on tonight on BBC America. I hope it meets my expectations<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Series VII saw the departure of one of the writers and temporarily the best character. Therefore it abandoned all the conventions which made the show all the funnier for those familiar with its origins. I would recommend anything up to series VI (6). <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Do you Brits enjoy a good American classic such as Airplane or Animal House? Sonds like they could be along the same genre, without those great accents and bad teeth.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yeah, those are about the closest US equivalents. Leslie Nielsen and John Vernon could almost be British actors.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>von shrad wrote: I'm not too familiar with British humor other than Benny Hill<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Aha, I think I have identified your problem. If you want to put it in the context of TV programmes, have you never seen Blackadder or Red Dwarf? Here, for your benefit, is a gross generalisation about the differences between British and American humour. • Britons tend to understate where Americans exaggerate. • In Britain, it is common to say something in a certain tone of voice which denotes that you mean the opposite. Americans would call it sarcasm, but technically it is irony. Sarcasm is the use of irony in an attack. However, this is the simpler definition of irony. • The more complex definition of irony is something which is satisfactory in absurd circumstances. A good example which sticks in my mind is of a British aircrew flying over the Mediterranean. They need to make an emergency landing, and identify Corsica as a suitable destination, but are unsure who is in control of the island. One of the crew says something to the effect of "Corsica's ours, I read it in the newspaper!". The comment in itself is satisfactory, but in the circumstance that they are part of the armed forces which are conducting the war, to learn the news from a civilian paper is ironic. This may or may not cast any light on my above post. Make of it what you will.

Excellent! In the six months (?) since the last set of screenshots from BTS, they have managed to do textures for the KV-1. I think the previous six months was devoted to the textures for the T-34 and Russian infantry, if we discount the few models which they did exclusively for Computer Games Weekly or somefink. At this rate, I should have my Ergonomics degree and a Powermac G8 before CM2 is released!

Before I attempt to ascertain whether the above post by Comrade Jo Sha is worth further analysis with a view to convening a study group with the remit of producing a report detailing the subject matter of the aforementioned post, the author's possible motives for inflicting it upon us, and the value of further exploring the possibility of actually reserving five minutes on some day in the future to sit down and read it, I would just like to direct those present to this thread, and in particular the last post.

Ah, so this is the lame joke thread now? Why did the chicken cross the road? Because it knew that because of the undermodelling of machineguns in CM, it could run across open ground while the enemy blazed away at it and it wouldn't get a scratch. Tread Head was having none of it, however, and jumped on his bicycle with a carboard skirt attached to the stabilisers with tank tracks painted on it, and pedalled furiously down the road to crush the chicken before it reached safety and was able to close-assault his troops. To late he remembered that CM doesn't model infantry being crushed by vehicles either, so the chicken suffered nothing but a morale hit. While Tread Head sat in the middle of the road considering the situation, BTS reached CMBB alpha 3 and enabled Extreme FOW, causing his own troops to misidentify him as a Finnish bicycle commando and go for broke with their new more effective machineguns. Within seconds Tread Head and his PanzerKampfFahrrad were reduced to a small, soggy pile of bone splinters, muscle tissue, intestines, metal dust and cardboard strips. Satisfied with the results, BTS elected to rename CM2 Combat Mission: Tread Head Is A Witless Ninny in his honour.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Lawyer (correct name used for good reason) wrote: Is there no decency left?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There never was any, but irony is apparently in plentiful supply. I would point that out more often, but I'm a decent chap, and I think "no... he's a lawyer, I'm sure it's been pointed out to him a hundred times before that the only way he can avoid been revealed as a lying hypocrite is if he keeps his mouth shut, so I don't suppose there's any need to drive the point home". And watch what you say about Prince Edward, I believe he has a TV production company and has been known to "work" in the USA (and complain that we don't respect him enough for spending our money).

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Lordfluffers wrote: A team effort with 85% of the effort going to the Soviets. Britain and America 7.5% each.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> A more accurate statement would replace "effort" with "suffering". Stalin didn't do much to end the war by hamstringing his army and causing them to lose millions of men to the Germans. The latter half of the Eastern Front was a success story, but it's a shame the former half had to happen. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>If Band of Brothers, SPR, and the Pearl Harbor Movie are inidcative of anything, it is a broad awareness in American culture of WWII. You just don't narrowcast multi-million dollar films for a very small percentage of the ticket buying public.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I think they are more indicative that if you create a big-budget, flashy, flag-waving film about a proud event in America's history, Americans will lap it up. You are doubtlessly correct about the "broad awareness in American culture of WWII", in that most people know it happened. Unfortunately much of the audience relies on the film to educate them, whereas the film makers only intend to base their films on history, not produce a documentary. Therefore the inevitable inaccuracies (not to mention outright fallacies) in the films result in wide misinformation about history. The perfect example is Pearl Harbor, a romance tastelessly set against a military disaster, and using that backdrop as little more than an excuse to show lots of stuff blowing up. Cute actors, big explosions, and a historical tie-in – not exactly an exemplar of America's historical awareness. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Lawyer wrote: All thinking people know for a fact that Sgt. Rock won WWII.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I hate to break it to you, but the real Sgt Rock was actually Sgt-Maj Rochdale, an upperclass British aristocrat who held dual membership of the LRDG and SAS and spent the war behind enemy lines machinegunning Jerries, drinking champagne, flirting with French and Italian girls, and delivering crushing line after line of vicious put-downs about the enemy in his cut-glass English accent before throwing on his scarf, donning his racing goggles and dashing off in his Bren Carrier to teach the dastardly Hun a thing or two.

The simple answer is don't read Steven Ambrose. I would recommend British historians, not just because I'm British, but because we've been recording and analysing history for rather a long time now, we have a long-established place in the world so we don't feel the need to exaggerate our part in events, and we speak English (which precludes me from recommending historians from the European continent to Americans).

I just got The British Army Handbook 1939-1945, which is one of a series which covers most of the main armies during the war. I haven't read it yet but on cursory examination it seems very thorough and quite impressive. The Russian version would probably be worth a look. The Red Army Handbook 1939-45, Steven J Zaloga and Leland Ness, ISBN 0 7509 1740 7.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Elvish wrote: These are some real Wankers.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Oh boy, Pat Robertson. His reputation preceeds him. He's in this country's bad books for describing it as a dark land where homosexuals have supremacy. His banking company had ties with The Royal Bank Of Scotland until he said that and there was a backlash against him. A religious preacher with a TV show and a financial company? Only in America. If he said what he said about Tuesday's events in this country he would be laughed out the door and back across the Atlantic Ocean. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Jo Sha wrote: While I absolutely HATE the idea of ANY Brit, let along David Aitken hosting the MBT, it is FAR better that he do so than the ignominity of having another {shudder} SQUIRE hosting it.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Think of it as a Blairesque chum-up-to-the-Yanks thread. We're your right hand men. Remember when it was the other way round? We were the ones who controlled the world and you were our outpost across the pond? Ah, those were the days. Well, just remember that you're always welcome on Airstrip One.

This is the Peng Challenge Thread. If you don't know for sure that you should be here, then you shouldn't be here. It would make a lot of people very happy, and save you a lot of time and heartache, if you would just hit that BACK button and go and discuss the muzzle velocity of a North American P45 Grognard. If you're still here, you want a game. If you're not prepared to get a game by singling someone out and challenging them in a loquacious, witty, inventive and sarcastic manner, then go to the menu at the bottom of the page, select "CM Opponent Finder" and post in that forum. Otherwise, you'd better have thick skin. You are very welcome in our midst. But not really.

CMBO and CMBB will only run in Classic with the Classic RAVE extension disabled. CM II (the engine rewrite) will support OS X and presumably OpenGL. However, I believe there are graphical glitches on new machines with nVidia cards.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>hansfritz wrote: Any way these are short sharp battles where crews after jumping out of there cripled tank want revenge for there dead or injured friends.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> If they took that attitude in real life, they'd end up dead or injured themselves. Any crewmen in their right minds pick up their wounded and hotfoot it to the rear to collect some new kit off the production line and go back into battle tomorrow.

Tank and heavy weapon crews are worth far more to your army than they are to you as infantry. If you need to use crews, for all they're worth with their pistols and low ammo, the chances are you ought to withdraw or surrender. That said, 2in mortar crews (and US 60mm and German 50mm) could reasonably be used to supplement your firepower if they lose their weapon, because they're essentially riflemen anyway, they don't lose their ammo when they abandon, and a few pistols at close range is a vicious bit of firepower compared to rifles.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>CMplayer wrote: They're sort of too square, raw and riveted, and lack mystique. But maybe they are kind of pugnacious and bulldoggish in a way.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I think that runs through all British vehicle design until the 1980s or thereabouts. You can say it about trucks during the war, or cars in the post-war period. Where the US had big and flashy, Britain had small and frugal. I miss the British trucks in CM, because they are very distinctive, and a reassuring sight on a foreign battlefield. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Priest wrote: If the Panzer4 looks good then so does the Tiger I.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> The Mark IV as seen in CM is a bit ugly, because it has skirts around the turret. This destroys the characteristic look of the tank, which is otherwise quite visually interesting. The Tiger I is just boxy and boring, but without the cuteness of the boxy British tanks.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>YK2 wrote: I actually missed you guys, nice to Know you are all well. Ohhh you too David <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Does that mean I'm not a guy? <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>KRS-L wrote: Then why are you still around?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yes, sorry I haven't gone yet. Give it a week or so. <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>MrSpnky wrote: I thought I had already demonstrated that by routing one of your platoons with my Finnish Panzerschrecks (fifteen times the effectiveness of a Heer Panzerschreck at only half the cost) in our last PBEM.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Correction, that was fifteen Panzerschrecks, free with every purchase of a battalion of Fallschirmjäger. While stocks last (or until the Rheinland is captured)!

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>CMplayer wrote: British tanks are so homely, pretty much any change is an improvement.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Why does everyone think British tanks are ugly? I love them all to bits. The cruisers are a lot sportier than their American or German equivalents. The infantry tanks look like big chunks of metal, which is what they were, which is very reassuring. I'll tell you my least favourite tank – the Royal Tiger. Call me British, I just can't identify with that at all.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Fairbairn-Sykes Trench Knife wrote: Certainly, during Market Garden, the 1st Airborne intended to use them (of course they were lost in glider crashes)<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> This is a myth. Gough's armoured jeep squadron went into action but met heavy resistance along with much of the British force. They were believed lost due to the communication problems. Only a few jeeps eventually made it to the bridge. They were used in an attempt to open the route for the Poles, but unfortunately Frost wasn't aware that the Poles had been delayed. I also believe that Universal Carriers were present, but in CM these aren't available to airborne forces.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Wolfe wrote: The US 105 How, 105 Pack, and Brit 25pdr all use the same model:<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Yeah, I have missed the 25 pdr, especially as one of the first model kits I ever built was a 25 pdr with Morris Quad tractor. I want my Morris Quad!! <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>BTW, I almost picked up that book, David. T'was a bit on the expensive side, tho. Does it go in-depth on weapons development? Is there much on lend-lease (that stuff is tough to find)? I recently got Hogg's Allied Arty of WWII and it doesn't go into as much depth as I thought it would. The Brit 6pdr section doesn't even mention the different marks nor the changeover to the longer barrel.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I can't give you a review as I haven't read it yet, but I can tell you what it says on these subjects: <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>In line with most of the Allied armies, the British used a large range of Lend-Lease items from the USA. These have been mentioned but not described as full details can be found in the companion volume the US Army Handbook 1939-1945 (Sutton Publishing, 1997).<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Ordnance QF 6 pdr A tk Gun Entering service in September 1941, the Mk 1 was quickly replaced by the Mk 2 (shorter barrel), later replaced itself by the longer barrelled Mk 4 (the Mk 3 was lighter and intended for airborne use). However, by 1943 its anti-armour capability – 2.7 in at 1,000 yd – was not good enough to penetrate the frontal armour of German heavy tanks (Tigers for example), so it was gradually replaced in RA service by the 17 pdr and given to the infantry who used it for the rest of the war. Weight complete 2,471 lb Calibe 2.245 in Muzzle velocity 2,700 ft/sec Max effective range 5,500 yd Rate of fire 10 rpm<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> From first impressions I would recommend the book. Even from leafing through it I have learned a lot. It has a lot of hard data, and seems to be very thorough. I paid the same for Joanna Bourke's An Intimate History Of Killing, which could easily have been a paperback at a quarter of the price.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Hachoo Ikio wrote: You never heard of "Big Time Software?"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Good point.