David Aitken

Whoops. [ 07-21-2001: Message edited by: David Aitken ]

CMplayer and Fieldmarshall are right. The 'dead body' icon was never meant to be a dead body as such, it is simply an eliminated unit marker. In theory all of the men could just have disappeared, and the marker indicates their last known position. Or indeed they could have become casualties in any way from stepping on a mine, to being shot in the arm, to being blown to bits by artillery. Therefore a 'dead' bitmap constitutes pure eye candy and is irrelevant to the game.

As jKMkIII says, there's no point in representing more people, because they'd all be doing the same thing. CM is a squad-level game, it doesn't model individuals, so there's no point in seeing individuals. #'s of soldiers in future CM titles - will modern tech help? men flying from explosions An interesting idea for squad representation! A Case For Full Squad Representation

Ah yes, where would we be without SPR, the last word on historical accuracy? Spur of the Moment Complaining. Why can't LMG42's run?

Hee hee, steatorrhoea bought a Mac and it didn't work, what a surprise, hee hee hee. Oops, I use a Mac as well. Obviously I've been infected by the Maximus virus, an e-mail distributed 'trojan' which runs the script: 1 SEE "MAC" 2 SAY "HA HA, MACS ARE A LOAD OF CRAP" 3 GOTO 2 Never mind, you can take heart in the fact that Steve Jobs is giving his keynote speech tomorrow at Macworld Expo NY, and I won't be able to see it, not just because a 56K connection isn't good enough to stream it, or because it probably wouldn't work even on an ADSL connection, but because I'll be in the middle of Engerland at the time. This meanz no turnz for all my opponentz for about 36 hourz as of two hourz from now. PBEM Report PawBroon's Brits are dying a lot in rune's Caen Mutiny. Leeo's Germans are dying a lot in rune's Wide Front. As it has taken about 20 minutes to withdraw my pathetic Poles from the gaping dentures of Stalin's Organ, I might as well have left them where they were. Mind you, I did kill off two halftracks in the meantime. After the charge of the medium tank brigade into the valley of Panty Liner, we were both left with considerably fewer armoured thingies than when we started, and our prospects remained uncertain. Subsequently he manuevred some light armour and infantry into one of my killzones and we are having a nice little slugging match. What happens next is anyone's guess. MrSpkr claims my 3in mortars are naught but an annoyance, despite the fact that one of them knocked out a gun of his about a kilometre away with its first shot, and thus far they have only really been bracketing their targets. I haven't heard from armornut for a wee bit, but last time I checked I was about to attack him in the snow.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>it just never grabbed me in the seat of the pants like some other games do.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Other games are designed to grab you by the seat of the pants. They are designed to sell, and what you think of them after that is of no concern to the manufacturer. BTS goes to great lengths to satisfy their customers in the long term. CM is the only game I have never become tired of – everything else loses its attraction after the novelty wears off. CM has low novelty and high longeivity. For the amount of enjoyment you get out of it, it's one of the best value games avialable.

I am Dunnee, the one-man armoured division. All those crews who abandoned their tanks to avoid getting blown to smithereens were just a bunch of cowards. I've never actually fought in a tank, but if I did, I know that I would never give up until the enemy put an AP round through my thick skull (assuming they could achieve a glacis penetration, which is unlikely). Ricochet, internal flaking? Flaking? I don't care if the loader has dandruff. Non-lethal penetration? Quick, pass me my SMG and we can mount it in the new hole. Co-driver dead? Good, he's served his purpose, to absorb impacts and prevent further damage to the tank. Loader, AP round, quick! Loader? Where is everyone, and what's this pink foam everywhere? And where are my legs? Damn Jerries, it's time for some payback!

I was once playing Quake and a zombie started throwing slime balls at me, but did I run away? Hell no, I stayed and fought. I died anyway, but then I just pressed a button and reincarnated. You might say it's just a game, but it's photorealistic, and I have a really big monitor and speakers with surround-sound, and it's completely real. What a bunch of cowards these veterans are. Ahem. Andrew is right, on one or two occasions in CM I've put rounds into an enemy tank which has fired back and killed my tank. It doesn't happen often, but it sucks when it does happen. What happens more often is that two tanks kill each other. Maybe the percentage of crews sticking with their tanks should be higher when the enemy unit that just put a shell through them was subsequently knocked out within seconds of firing? Mind you, then your opponent would go berserk because his tank / AT gun which just managed a last-second kill before it was knocked out, in effect died for nothing. Never mind...

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>"Where were you when I needed you?"<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There were no British forces in the beta demo or the gold demo, so no-one had the opportunity to critique the models until after release.

Thanks for the link Andreas. I think it can be easy to misjudge the size and shape of the turret depending on the angle you see it from, so maybe Steve only had photos to work with.

I've been thinking that the Challenger looks a bit wimpy for one of the meanest tanks on the battlefield, and now my suspicions are confirmed. The Challenger was based on the Cromwell chassis, but longer and with an extra roadwheel, and of course the turret was bigger to accommodate the 17 pounder gun. Comparing the two in CM, the Cromwell is actually slightly bigger. Fair enough, modelling things in proportion in 3D isn't easy. But there seems to be a big problem with the turret – the Challenger's is taller, but otherwise it's a smaller turret than the Cromwell's, for a bigger gun. The Cromwell in CM looks much meaner than the Challenger. Here is the Challenger in CM: And here is a drawing by Jean Restayn: A plan of the Challenger I found online: And a photo for comparison: All the resources I have seen credit the Challenger with a much bigger, squarer turret than that in CM, which looks awfully cramped. I tried overlaying the plan with some screenshots. All in all, the turret seems to be much too small and a bit too far forward. Otherwise, the hull and the gun itself seem fine. Does anyone know if there were different variants of the Challenger? I wonder what Steve was looking at when he did the model. I can't imagine the CM version existed, because there's just no space to operate that gun.

After seeing Fieldmarshall's idea of offensive tactics, I was interested to see what kind of article he's written for Manx's site. I was very surprised – he has produced an excellent work of satire which I encourage you all to read here.

I have the ultimate answer to the national modifiers debate. As we all know (except tero), national differences are manifested at the tactical and operational level. Therefore, it is up to the player to control his units according to the doctrine of the army he is playing. To make the game more realistic, this doctrine should be enforced. If the player does not employ historically accurate doctrine, military police shall be despatched to his house and he shall be arrested and taken away for 'reconditioning'. If he was playing as the Russians, he shall be tortured, forced to sign a confession to being a tzarist saboteur, and shot. In the case of the Germans, he shall be relieved of his rank and prevented from controlling any forces in CM except penal battalions clearing minefields or burying the dead in the front line, whilst fending off tanks using bayonets and Molotov cocktails. If he was a British commander, he shall be given a good talking to and banned from the officers' mess for a week. As for an American commander, he shall be promoted to Lieutenant-General and given several divisions to play with.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Da Lem wrote: 1) username is a poo-head extroardinnaire, and z) tero is a weird one.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> And I've been led to believe that the sun rises in the morning. Where do you get all your replacement eyes from, and more to the point, how can you read the SMG gap thread whilst suppressing the urge to round up half of the participants and use them to see just how effective SMGs really are?

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Atkin: 25 Armornut: 75<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> It's a scam! BTS has modelled the Germans as a gamey bargain-basement arsenal!! I had a company of infantry and four Archers, he had three companies of infantry, to StuH42's and a Jagdpanther! And it was only a normal attack scenario! Archers are a bloody ripoff – what use is a backwards facing, open-topped SP gun that barely costs less than a proper tank? I lost three of the bloody things to mortars, panzerscrecks and crew cowardice, and the fourth engaged the Jagdpanther in a perfect hulldown ambush position, but the wrong way round because I forgot the damn thing was backwards-facing!! Damnit, I resign.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Y rll shld rd th Mthh Btfl Thrd bfr whnng lk tht, y wrthlss Brtsh twt.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> • I did more than that, I did a search, and it indeed turned up this thread as a result, but I couldn't be arsed trawling through all this drivel on the offchance that you had actually posted your address. You could have updated your profile, you, you, lawyer! • Besides, I did read your post yesterday, but by the time you challenged me I had long erased its worthless contents from my short-term memory. • I also read the legalese at the bottom of your e-mail, and I am concerned to determine whether or not I was the intended recipient, as if not I need to make preparations to repel the Feds who will be dropping by to kill me.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>MrSpkr wrote: Now send me a setup so I can imprint this lesson firmly in your mind.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> t mght hlp f y hd n ml ddrss.

This will be the last time I post to this thread. I've been reading it since August and now I'm bored. Thanks Mace for entertaining me, but it gets a bit old after the 2,048,105th run through. I am now off to orchestrate a push for Lebensraum on behalf of the Hamster Liberation Front.

MrSpnkr is obviously keen to see a textbook British withdrawal in the fine tradition of Dunkirk. You will get your setup tomorrow, after I have spent several hours dreaming about nice things like... oh yes, last night I was creeping around town in uniform... and before that I was talking to... oh goody... and then a few nights ago I had a very disturbing dream involving Jerry Hall which makes me think twice about wanting to sleep, but hopefully that won't happen again.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>lcm1947 wrote: You never know if the other player is still having fun or not either, so ask.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Oh, that's allright, I always get to know a girl well beforehand so that we can discuss these... whoops, we're still talking about CM.

Oh. My. God. I have just read some of the SMG Gap thread, and have now been deprived of any will to play CM2, and possibly also the will to live. I swear some people get unnatural forms of excitement out of discussing physically fit but tactically inept Russian farmers and the like. Oh, and Lewis is continuing to treat Steve like he's just pretending he co-founded BTS. Do not go out there. These grogs know no bounds. I expect they wouldn't hesitate to criticise god for modelling the universe unrealistically and not catering for a wider audience.

Battles where your tanks are trying to fend off massive air attack wouldn't be much fun, would they? A plane adds another dimension to a battle, but there is no place in CM for more than a couple. In order for that kind of fight to be even, the side with the planes would have to have no ground forces, ie. nothing at all to command. I repeat, CM is a ground combat game, so while it can feature the odd plane, air-ground battles are outwith its scope.

I'd sooner see an "abandon" command to actually allow weapons crews and immobilised vehicle crews to drop everything and get out. As it is, even if you withdraw meticulously, there are certain units that sometimes physically can't get away.

What is better, an apple or an orange? They're different, but they both serve the same purpose. It's best to use both for variety!

Nope, you've got to find firing positions yourself. A marksman needs to be careful not to get spotted, so it's unlikely that the computer would be able to move him itself without him being noticed and dealt with. Because CM is three-dimensional, you can visually scout out appropriate firing positions (use view 1). And keep in mind that the marksmen in CM are not actual trained snipers, they're just good shots.